Bad Groups

[kildorn]

If you're lazy/bored, rank 1 LT appears to keep the buff up with a minimal health cost when you don't really need mana from LT.

edit: of course, I think this would require a macro to use given the new "no ranks cluttering the spellbook" theme, and I don't know how much health it saves.

[Evildrider]

I think it's funny that if I dps as much as possible, as cautious as i can be and die, I get bitched at.  Yet, if I hold back and play safe I get bitched at for not dps'ing enough.

I have yet to have a healer complain about me, most of the time when I die, its because the tank can't hold aggro... or the healer can't multitask and heal more then one person.

[Merusk]

It's not always about multitasking.. sometimes it's a combo of GCDs and just not enough gear power.

The RoS group I ran this morning, I was thinking  "Hey I'm right on the cusp of being undergeared here.  I hope this works."  Turns out it did, but barely and because I was spamming a very inefficient spell.  Even then, I still wound up with folks or myself dying.

When everyone is taking damage, sometimes you have to make the call of who gets that next GCD.  When you've just blown your CoH and Prayer of Healing isn't going to cast in time, sometimes that mage who's at 15% is going to die while you spam Binding or Flash heal on the tank and pray for a proc to let you instacast another.

[Sheepherder]

When everyone is taking damage, sometimes you have to make the call of who gets that next GCD.  When you've just blown your CoH and Prayer of Healing isn't going to cast in time, sometimes that mage who's at 15% is going to die while you spam Binding or Flash heal on the tank and pray for a proc to let you instacast another.

And bare minimum you have to know where the next cast is going and what type it will be while the current cast is still in progress, otherwise your healing slows.  Which leads to situations like when you've got your next two casts planned ahead, your tank eats something nasty, someone is going to die, and you have to decide who in the next half second.

[March]

I think it's funny that if I dps as much as possible, as cautious as i can be and die, I get bitched at.  Yet, if I hold back and play safe I get bitched at for not dps'ing enough.

I have yet to have a healer complain about me, most of the time when I die, its because the tank can't hold aggro... or the healer can't multitask and heal more then one person.

We're making the distinction between a hard HoR/PoS 5-man PUG and Utgarde Keep, right?

[Evildrider]

I think it's funny that if I dps as much as possible, as cautious as i can be and die, I get bitched at.  Yet, if I hold back and play safe I get bitched at for not dps'ing enough.

I have yet to have a healer complain about me, most of the time when I die, its because the tank can't hold aggro... or the healer can't multitask and heal more then one person.

We're making the distinction between a hard HoR/PoS 5-man PUG and Utgarde Keep, right?

I haven't failed on a PoS yet in a pug.  I've had horrible times with HoR though.  Although if you can just get past the first two bosses it's cake.  Hell we 4-manned the last part because somebody went LD and never came back.  The first fights in HoR are easy as well, until you get double mages.

[Selby]

I'll admit that it was a fairly petty form of passive-aggressive up-fuckery... but while all you folks think that DPS is the name of the game, or that Tanks are the true leaders... sometimes I feel the need to remind you all that Healers rule the world.

This is exactly how I feel.  I've got 3 raid-geared healers in addition to my main DPS mage, so I run ALOT of heroics with them all.  My main train of thought is "heal tank, heal self, DPS get whatever is left over."  A good tank will keep me from doing much and an aggro-thief will get some attention at first.  Bad tanks require work, and when I've got dumbass DPS that want to see how high they can go and not bother to assist the tank, I will give them marginal heals and hope for the best.  If someone continues to pull aggro and barely survive with me healing my butt off, I start to heal them less and less and let them get the picture.  Usually it only takes a few deaths to trash for most people to get a clue, but sometimes I get bitching about "dammit heal me" and my response is "assist the tank better, the tank is my main focus and you n00bishly pulling aggro is not my concern."

I've had some really bad DPSers who stand in fire, stand in the whirlwinds (UP Skadi, I let them die if they refuse to move away), or just flat out attack whatever they want without regarding to whether the tank has said mob's attention or not.  The warlocks that lifetap down to 10% before AoE intensive pulls get healed seriously only after the fight is over. 

Healers do truly rule the world, but you have to be stupid or dumb to find out with a competent one.  Bad healers are just bad news all around.

[Sjofn]

If a dpser is actually pulling aggro (this hasn't happened much to me because my dpsers have almost universally sucked ass), I let the healer decide if they want to let them die or not. Usually they do. 

[apocrypha]

I think that pretty much all the DPS/tank/healer problems are down to people not being able to assess a situation. Tank not geared so well? DPS needs to reign in the damage and let them keep agro. Healer not geared so well? Tank needs to slow down with the pulls and let them drink between fights and DPS needs to really not pull agro. DPS not geared so well? Who gives a shit. 

The problems come when when any of the group fail to make an assessment of the groups strengths and weaknesses relative to the dungeon. Just wading in in the same way that you always do without seeing wtf's happening causes headaches.

I actually had a group this morning that when I went in with my paladin (in 50% blues and 50% iLvl 200-213 purps) and said "take it easy folks, my gear is a bit sucky" did it! They slowed down, they let me drink and they didn't bitch once! It was awesome and a really fast and smooth run (this was HoL heroic) with almost no deaths and no drama. Sad thing is that this seems to be becoming a rarity 

[Ingmar]

The boohooing about DW DK tanks is out of date, by the way. DW frost is perfectly viable for tanking now - in fact I believe a good case can be made for it outperforming 2h frost for tanking now.

[Soulflame]

Man, do DKs have problems getting hit or something?  I had a DK tank in normal CoS last night, and it was taking just about every GCD to keep him alive.

It was very  .  I'm just glad that I have an illicit love affair with Lifebloom, or he'd have probably splatted all the damn time.

[Lantyssa]

Had my first group wipe last night.  By that I mean wipe which I was definitely the cause of.  Granted I learned from it, but I got to be that person.

[Nevermore]

The boohooing about DW DK tanks is out of date, by the way. DW frost is perfectly viable for tanking now - in fact I believe a good case can be made for it outperforming 2h frost for tanking now.

The only reason I haven't switched from 2h frost tanking to DW frost tanking is I'm having trouble deciding where to squeeze the extra talent points from.  Going by memory (which is notoriously faulty), I think I need six points to invest in DW (DW specialization and ToT) but only two for 2h (2h specialization).

[Sjofn]

If it was a newishly geared DK tank, yeah, they can be kinda squishy if I remember right. They've fucked with 'em so many times since I was a nub tank (back in MY day, I had to hit 540 defense without the stoneskin gargoyle rune while walking uphill in the snow! And we liked it that way!) I am mostly guessing here, though.

[Shrike]

The problem with DK tanks is most of them suck. The DW thing is just the worst symptom of the basic suck.

Having said that, our guild DK tanks are either blood or unholy these days. Haven't seen much from frost in some time (which I miss, since I could ditch the WF totem talents). PuG DK tanks are a crapshoot. About 2/3 seem OK if they're 2h. About 95% of DW DKs suck bigtime, as in I'll drop the group if I see one, since life is too short to put up with that shit.

I suspect of lot of the suck issue is unfamiliarity with the class and what it can really do. Lack of threat generation from clueless rotations and squishyness from never using cooldowns or using them at inappropriate times. The rest is probably gearing, especially on the survival side of things. Combined, you have a grouping disaster.

[Evildrider]

The problem with DK tanks is most of them suck. The DW thing is just the worst symptom of the basic suck.

This, there are a ton of DK's that don't know what the fuck they are doing.

[proudft]

I've tried numerous times to PuG-tank on my DK, and it's kind of a hassle, actually.  It takes a few ticks of death & decay and a couple of GCDs for the diseases to spread around for any actual AOE threat and if you have trigger-happy DPS firing off every artillery round as soon as they see you've targeted something it quickly degenerates into shit running everywhere.

In an ideal world I'd let the DPS die and learn a valuable lesson but I have the secret backup option of another character, so I just caved and just use him instead rather than bitch at these doofuses.   With the warrior, charge + thunderclap + shockwave gives me the valuable few seconds of being out of range of the morons and shockwave stun time to get some cleaves in for nice upfront spread-around threat, and with him the run of the mill idiots are not really an issue.

What was my point though?  Oh right, make sure you give the DK about 3 seconds before you go to town, or it might be your fault.    

[Merusk]

Warrior's ability to intercept the fuck away from the morons is a great point.

Except you can cast D&D at the same range, while running up to the mobs. If you really feel the need to build threat quick, prior to ss, it, pesti all firing off, blow a blood on Blood Boil and Blood Tap it back when you need to Pestilence.

[Shrike]

Yeah, but some of them just flat-out suck.

I don't mind waiting for them to set up their pull. What I do mind is doing all this then pulling aggro on the first SS/WF crit, because they can't generate enough threat--usually because they don't have runestrike hotkeyed or they're DWing or just plain stupid.

DKs aren't good at snap-aggro generation. But when you can't generate any meaningful threat over an entire encounter, there's something wrong and it's not the fundamental class mechanics. Yeah, paladins can faceroll tanking and warriors are almost as effective in that regard, but a DK can't be a doofus in the same situation. Sadly, most are, since they rolled FotM to level and now think, hey, I'm a tank, too! Not hardly. You can be a dumbass dps DK and won't be any worse for wear, other than people making fun of you in /gu or /trade. As a tank, though, it's just ugly.

[proudft]

Oh, yes, some of them are terrible!  I'm just saying make sure you aren't making things worse.   

I was actually pleasantly surprised with the single-target threat on the DK (he was unholy and I had read Dire Warnings that it sucked).  The AoE threat just takes a little time to kick in.  But I love love love love love love charge, and that pretty much was the final straw in the 'man, I really should just pick one tank' competition.   Death Grip just isn't the same, man!

Though I could finish leveling a bear, I guess.

[Nevermore]

The problem with DK tanks is most of them suck. The DW thing is just the worst symptom of the basic suck.

Having said that, our guild DK tanks are either blood or unholy these days. Haven't seen much from frost in some time (which I miss, since I could ditch the WF totem talents). PuG DK tanks are a crapshoot. About 2/3 seem OK if they're 2h. About 95% of DW DKs suck bigtime, as in I'll drop the group if I see one, since life is too short to put up with that shit.

I suspect of lot of the suck issue is unfamiliarity with the class and what it can really do. Lack of threat generation from clueless rotations and squishyness from never using cooldowns or using them at inappropriate times. The rest is probably gearing, especially on the survival side of things. Combined, you have a grouping disaster.

Unfortunately it's extremely difficult to try to get up the chain on the left side of the frost tree to get Icy Talons when you're specced to tank.  Just not enough talent points.  Frost DPS has less of an excuse, unless they have a lolwut spec like my crappy DK soloing offspec.  I've heard for a while now that blood tanking is the way to go against single targets (aka: most bosses) but I hadn't realized unholy tanking had made a comeback.

Personally, I like frost tanking specifically because Howling Blast provides more snap aggro than the other two trees.  It may not be the 'best' tree but for what I tank (Heroics or sometimes raid offtanking) it works and it fits my playstyle.

[Khaldun]

I dunno, as long as I'm using Tricks of the Trade well, I'm not having issues doing 4kdps as a rogue in the heroics. And if you've got a group of 2 or 3 dps'ers doing that kind of damage who aren't totally stupid about threat management, I'm sorry, but it does shave more than 45 seconds off the total run in a place like UK. Stuff dies before it can even do damage in some cases. If you try to hang back and be cautious, you get yelled at half the time by the tank and healer who want to spam pull through the whole place.

[dd0029]

Using Tricks of the Trade or Misdirection is by definition not stupid.  But most of the idiots out there don't and so are.

[Simond]

DK tanks are by far the sketchiest tanks in the game.  You can implicitly trust a paladin, warrior, or druid to have a clue what they're doing, but remember that DK tanks come from the same cliched population that wears spellpower trinkets to DPS and complained about /castrandom breaking their one-button DPS macros.  A dual-wielding DK is as sketchy as a van that has FREE CANDY written on the side.

Quick guide to DW DK tanks:
Q1) Are they heavy frost spec? (Y - go to Q2. N - Go to Bad End)
Q2) Do they have two slow weapons? (Y - go to Q3. N - Go to Bad End)
Q3) Do they have Rune of the Nerubian Carapace on both? (Y - go to Q4. N - Go to Bad End)
Q4) Do they use Death & Decay on every pull? (Y - Hooray, it's a real tank! N - Go to Bad End)

Bad End: Accept the 15 minute debuff.

[Arrrgh]

DK tanks are by far the sketchiest tanks in the game.  You can implicitly trust a paladin, warrior, or druid to have a clue what they're doing, but remember that DK tanks come from the same cliched population that wears spellpower trinkets to DPS and complained about /castrandom breaking their one-button DPS macros.  A dual-wielding DK is as sketchy as a van that has FREE CANDY written on the side.

Quick guide to DW DK tanks:
Q1) Are they heavy frost spec? (Y - go to Q2. N - Go to Bad End)
Q2) Do they have two slow weapons? (Y - go to Q3. N - Go to Bad End)
Q3) Do they have Rune of the Nerubian Carapace on both? (Y - go to Q4. N - Go to Bad End)
Q4) Do they use Death & Decay on every pull? (Y - Hooray, it's a real tank! N - Go to Bad End)

Bad End: Accept the 15 minute debuff.

Death and decay is a 30 second cooldown and in a high DPS PUG often isn't ready before the next pull, so not using it each and every pull isn't a sign of tank cluelessness. Three spare points for the talent that reduces the cooldown would be nice, but I don't have the spare points in my tank build.  Spamming howling blast (with glyph of howling blast) is plenty of snap agro. 

Not using death and decay on the first pull is a bad sign though.

[Jayce]

Since we're talking about tanking for some reason, someone tell me - is tab & sunder outdated now?  As a warrior tank I usually use my AOE threat abilities and assume the group targets my target when clearing trash, but I had a group tell me that I needed to l2tank. 


Incidentally, this was in Forge of Souls, we wiped, dropped group, then I joined a 2 guildie 2 random group and we one-shotted the place on heroic.  So I think I know the answer but I want to be sure.

[Sheepherder]

Tabsunder is obsolete.  You could try to spread your devastates around a little bit by tabbing through targets, but Shockwave, Cleave, Shield Block + Damage Shield, and Thunderclap should be sufficient unless you have serious AoE in the group.  If you're really desperate for more AoE DPS there are a few decent glyphs, but otherwise you should explain that if they don't like dying they should stop repeating the thing that makes them die.

[Gobbeldygook]

Since we're talking about tanking for some reason, someone tell me - is tab & sunder outdated now?  As a warrior tank I usually use my AOE threat abilities and assume the group targets my target when clearing trash, but I had a group tell me that I needed to l2tank. 

HOW TO WARRIOR:  Charge -> Thunderclap -> Shockwave -> Maybe a global for shield slam or something -> thunderclap.  If you have some rage from the last pull, cleave.  Your priority queue looks something like shockwave  (if a pull's mostly dead, skip it and save it for the next pull) -> conc blow -> shield slam -> revenge -> thunderclap -> devastate unless shield block is up, then shield slam -> revenge -> devastate.  You should switch off the first kill target before it dies; if you're nervous about losing aggro before it dies, hit it with conc blow or taunt before you switch.  If you use the glyph of devastate, drop revenge and thunderclap from your standard single-target rotation.  If you want to faceroll through trash, glyph of cleave.  15/3/53 is the cookie cutter tank spec unless you're doing 25s without a DPS warrior, then you should seriously consider 5/15 for improved shouts.  Your sustained AOE threat will never be as good as the other tanks, just accept that anyone who opens up with the AOE can pull threat off you if they want to.

---

My only complaint about the new LFG is that the BG mentality is starting to infect it.  I'm getting more and more groups where one of the DPS seems to be a bot.  I'm talking they do 1/5th the DPS I do as a healer.  I've been reporting them, but it depresses the fuck out of me that sometimes these people get emblems out of me before I can boot me.

[Jayce]

Since we're talking about tanking for some reason, someone tell me - is tab & sunder outdated now?  As a warrior tank I usually use my AOE threat abilities and assume the group targets my target when clearing trash, but I had a group tell me that I needed to l2tank.  

HOW TO WARRIOR:  Charge -> Thunderclap -> Shockwave -> Maybe a global for shield slam or something -> thunderclap.  

Thanks.  That's pretty much exactly what I do, except I do have glyph of cleave so I weave that in every swing that I have rage, which is most of them.  But I invented it on my own, which is usually wrong, so I wanted a double check.

My prot spec is 7 / 8 / 56, so I'll have to look into what I have different and if it's worth respeccing.  I did spec cruelty out of habit since it used to be a "required" talent in the past, but I've read the numbers at tankspot or EJ or somewhere about how it isn't, for prot nowadays.

[Ingmar]

Since we're talking about tanking for some reason, someone tell me - is tab & sunder outdated now?  As a warrior tank I usually use my AOE threat abilities and assume the group targets my target when clearing trash, but I had a group tell me that I needed to l2tank.  

HOW TO WARRIOR:  Charge -> Thunderclap -> Shockwave -> Maybe a global for shield slam or something -> thunderclap.  

Thanks.  That's pretty much exactly what I do, except I do have glyph of cleave so I weave that in every swing that I have rage, which is most of them.  But I invented it on my own, which is usually wrong, so I wanted a double check.

My prot spec is 7 / 8 / 56, so I'll have to look into what I have different and if it's worth respeccing.  I did spec cruelty out of habit since it used to be a "required" talent in the past, but I've read the numbers at tankspot or EJ or somewhere about how it isn't, for prot nowadays.

You do have some (IMO) mis-spent points in there. Puncture is a pretty useless talent outside of prot pvp builds these days; rage income is no longer really a problem even in stuff you overgear. I would go minimum 12 into arms for impale and you probably want deep wounds. Cruelty is pretty skippable what with all the +15% to this and that talents in prot now. Armored to the Teeth is a better point for point threat investment. Vigilance is also a really important threat tool you're missing. Being able to slap that on the guy in your heroic who keeps pulling off of you is a big help.

My spec.

[Sheepherder]

My only complaint about the new LFG is that the BG mentality is starting to infect it.  I'm getting more and more groups where one of the DPS seems to be a bot.  I'm talking they do 1/5th the DPS I do as a healer.  I've been reporting them, but it depresses the fuck out of me that sometimes these people get emblems out of me before I can boot me.

Bots add the opportunity for comic relief.

Does he auto attack/cast?  Get the tank to taunt a single mob and sit there with zero threat / pop an invincibility shield until / when the bot jumps in.
Does he follow a player?  Strip naked and kamikaze.
Does your group have a rogue or hunter?  Misdirect and Tricks of the Trade.
Does he sit at the door?  Strip naked and kite a mob back there.

Resurrect him, rinse, repeat nine times.

[Sjofn]

I've tried numerous times to PuG-tank on my DK, and it's kind of a hassle, actually.  It takes a few ticks of death & decay and a couple of GCDs for the diseases to spread around for any actual AOE threat and if you have trigger-happy DPS firing off every artillery round as soon as they see you've targeted something it quickly degenerates into shit running everywhere.

Yeah, it's annoying. I also don't especially like using D&D on every goddamn pull because it eats all my runes and I dislike the way my opening rotation has to work with it. :P I'm frost, though, I can howling blast for an initial smack of threat. I D&D way more often if I am moonlighting as a blood tank.

[Gobbeldygook]

Resurrect him, rinse, repeat nine times.

That's the worst part.  I armory'd him afterwards.  All of his gear was already at 0%, so I couldn't have even griefed him.

[Sheepherder]

Failing that, just kill him and leave him where he lies so that he cannot enter combat with the boss and so doesn't get rewards.  Last time I checked if you don't enter combat you get nothing.

[Rasix]

Next time I inspect a bear tank and they're wearing PVP blues for HPoS, I'm just going to drop.  Everything has to go flawlessly or you wipe. Took nearly an hour just to realize that any minor mistake on Tyrannus was a wipe.  Everything up to the gauntlet was passable, but once it hit the hard stuff, the wiping commenced.  Had to get the paladin to offspec the tunnel (his tanking gear was laughable as well, and he forgot to put on RF  )

Not that the group wasn't a mess outside of the tank. I was 1k DPS over the second DPS (and threat capped at around 3.2K) and the healer was admittedly undergeared also. 

Horrid group.  Hopefully I'll have better sense next time.