I had two bad tanking experiences today while running my typical four random dungeons on my four 80s. And no, one of them was not while I was tanking, thank you very much. ;)
The first one was while I was on my hunter. Apart from the appallingly open racist comments from the group at large (three were from one guild and all of them were being racist and otherwise emitting perjoratives), the tank couldn’t hold aggro worth a damn. I mean, I really wonder if the dude was in Defensive Stance. Every class apart from warriors allows you to plainly see if the tank in question has their threat ability on — Frost Presence, Righteous Fury, bear form — but not warriors. Anyways, even after misdirecting mobs to him AND assisting him for DPS targets, I still ended up climbing the aggro list extremely quickly.
Of course, we blew through heroic UK without any real issues, so that’s not a huge failure. Clearly a mediocre tank, though, and I put him and his guildies on ignore so I wouldn’t get stuck with them on this toon again.
Moral of the story: l2threat.
The second tank failure was actually a very good tank, in that he used cooldowns and held aggro. Except that he was a total failure at keeping an eye out for me, his healer (on my shammy). He was basically running off through heroic Forge of Souls without me, not paying attention to either my mana pool (which only dipped low once, but not even a PAUSE before running into the first boss encounter). At one point, I stopped to drink and he ran off and some mob has AOE damage so one of the rogues died before I got there. So I healed, the mobs died, I tried to rez the rogue.
Tank runs off into a room and it takes me forever to get there and I blow my cooldowns. “You realize I was out of range because I was rezzing the rogue, right?”
Rogue who died: “I ran back it’s okay.”
Tank: “y did the rogue die in 1st place?”
Me: “Because you ran off without waiting for me to drink.”
No response, obviously.
Then on the first boss, they didn’t kill the corrupt soul thingy. Which, okay, no big deal. They all needed on the bag he dropped, so I did, too, although I typically greed on that stuff.
Thus far, just another dumbass tank who doesn’t care about anything, right? Nothing to worry about too much if I keep up with him. Well, on the last boss, when they practically killed the tank through the mirror effect thing, I got concerned. I was already hating the tank and the group, but clearly, they didn’t understand the mechanics of this fight if the tank was almost killed by the mirror.
The rogue who’d already died on trash died on the last boss because of the mirror, a little later on.
And so did I, when I got the mirror afterwards.
I think my PRECISE words were:
“Wow, l2 stop dps.”
Not another word after that. I didn’t pop my reincarnation until after the boss died, then started rezzing the rogue.
Whereas I would normally greed on the Frozen Orb, I needed, after they all did. And I hit disenchant for something (and won the shard). And lo and behold, the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion dropped. One of the rogues had it already and automatically passed, but the three others, INCLUDING THE PALADIN TANK, hit Need.
“Well, screw that,” I said to myself, and hit Need. I have an enhancement set and spec and this entire group, all belonging to the same guild, had made the run extremely unpleasant for me.
So when I won it, I grinned to myself and left the group. Turns out I also got the orb, meaning I won everything off that boss. Why can’t my paladin have my shammy’s rolls?
Anyways, I promptly scrolled up in my chat log and put the idiot tank on ignore so as to never group with him again.
Moral of the story: Tanks should keep an eye on their healer’s mana AND their physical proximity to them.
I honestly wonder what the hell I posted about before the random dungeon/LFG feature came out…