Dear DPS,
I know we’re in levelling content and that you’re anxious to get your bonus XP from the random dungeon and move on to another one. I get that.
I further recognize that, as it’s levelling content, people’s gear basically sucks and so DPS can be low.
But these two facts do not combine well. If you want to get out of the dungeon faster, please do not pull. Let your tank pull. Please do not CC mobs when your tank is trying to move them or execute a line of sight pull. Please do not stun mobs randomly for extra DPS (ret pallies, I’m talking to YOU about Holy Wrath) because it’s really freaking annoying. (Similarly, anyone with a knockback, if you use it, I will kill you.)
The fact that I have to go around chasing things that didn’t follow me because you CCed it or stunned it does not make for a faster run. The fact that I have to blow Challenging Roar because you ran into a group of mobs and dropped Consecrate ALSO does not make for a faster run.
To continue, Mana Spring Totem is secondary in terms of priorities when your healer is a priest and your ret pally doesn’t know where his Cleanse button is. Drop Cleansing Totem, please, shammies. Pallies, LEARN TO CLEANSE. Every paladin who doesn’t cleanse magic, disease or poisons when their healer is unable to cleanse one of those and there’s no totem, is IMHO, a FAIL. And you make me embarassed to raid as a paladin.
But perhaps you’re just unaware as to who can cleanse what. SO LET’S CLEAR THAT UP, SHALL WE?
1) Paladins can dispell: Diseases, Magic Effects and Poisons with one button – CLEANSE.
2) Druids can dispell: Curses and Poisons with three buttons – Remove Poison, Abolish Poison, Remove Curse.
3) Priests can dispell: Magic Effects (both offensively and defensively) and Diseases with three buttons – Dispell Magic, Mass Dispell and Abolish Disease.
4) Shaman can dispell: Curses, Poisons and Diseases (and can purge Magic offensively using Purge) with 1 button – Cleanse Spirit. Plus the Cleansing Totem removes Poisons and Diseases on a pulse. (Note that all shaman have Cleansing Totem and all shaman can remove poisons and diseases, but only resto shammies can remove curses.)
Do the math. If I’m a paladin tank with a priest healer and 3 non-cleansing DPS classes and I get poisoned, I WILL CLEANSE MYSELF. Get Decursive. Learn to cleanse when needed, people.
Please do not boast to me about your DPS numbers. I do not care. As long as the boss dies or the mobs die, and I can get the hell out of your group, that’s all that matters.
Having said that, the next time I have to tank Jedoga Shadowseeker and my DPS fails to kill the volunteer not once but TWICE, thereby buffing her damage 200%, I will be very, very cranky. Let’s just say I’m happy that I have Barkskin.
First volunteer: Barkskin, Survival Instincts.
Second volunteer: Enrage, Frenzied Regeneration, Lifeblood (go go herbalism) and Barkskin when it came back up.
And to the ridiculously mouthy, braggy ret paladin from my Old Kingdom group, who, it must be said, buffed us with Greater Blessing of Kings… I am SO glad I put your dumb self on ignore. If you want to tank, GO AHEAD AND FREAKING TANK. Do NOT just attack at will. Also, Divine Storm at the START of your rotation, before some of the mobs have even become aware that I, the tank, exist? BAD CALL, BUDDY. Finally, learn to use Every Man For Himself and your bubble to get out of fears before you pull another Faceless One, kk?
No love,
Your Tank
This post brought to you in part by frustration, annoyance and by the fact that I just tanked Old Kingdom on my druid for the very first time.
Thank you.
This is one more of your posts that needs to be required reading for anyone pugging. I’m now also dreading getting my tankadin up to content where the DPS can actually challenge me in DPS and damage done. At least all I have to worry about in terms of dispelling is curses, the rest I’m just used to handling any way..
It really does shock me how many people won’t make use of all of their abilities in levelling content — or even raid content — and focus exclusively on one thing. Those with that kind of tunnel-vision are the people that I never, ever want to group with again.
While I sincerely HOPE it’s just ignorance, I’m sure part of it isn’t. :(
As to threat, I’m thankful that my bear can still out-threat most level-appropriate people, as long as we’re on the same target, but it appears that there exist players who should be assisted by the tank to ensure they don’t pull aggro. At least, as a pally, Righteous Defense is available. I bind that in Clique to my right-click, so if I see someone who’s not me gaining aggro, I right-click on them and they come to me. Beautiful. I need something like that for my bear. >< Glad you've enjoyed my posts!
I use VuhDo my self and Righteous Defense is left click as I view it as my primary thing I should ever be casting on party members.
I gave up on bear tanking (my main is a tree) as I sucked hard at it. I think it was the lack of emergency buttons, and that I simply was not all that good at positioning mobs. With the paladin both taunts are 8 second CDs instead of 8 seconds and 3 mins. A nice Ranged multi target silence, as opposed to having to bash, back up, charge. The ability to dispel off of your self with out exiting tanking stance.
I think it basically comes down to: Bears don’t get very many buttons to press. Paladins get lots. I like buttons.
And again, thank you. I do enjoy all of your posts. I obviously showed up after some one linked to your “How to X in a group” posts at Ten Ton Hammer, but am easily sticking around.
Good call on the left-click. I wonder how many other pally tanks have bound RD to an easy-to-use click combo on a raid frame?
I’ll grant you that bear tanking is very different from pally tanking. I think I’m getting the hang of pally tanking (tanking daily randoms every day will do a lot for you!) but I’m still unsure about bear stuff. I DO love a lot of the pally spells, like RD, obviously, and the ability to cleanse myself, but I do like Survival of the Fittest and not needing to worry about positioning myself so mobs can’t crit me, like they can on my pally if they’re behind me. And Avenger’s Shield is approximately 80 kazillion times better than Bash! Hah!
It still strikes me as odd that paladins have lots of buttons to push. Not because they don’t, but because, historically, we haven’t. But as a prot pally:
– Consecration
– Hammer of the Righteous
– Holy Shield
– Shield of Righteousness
– Judgement of whatever
– Avenger’s Shield
– Righteous Defense (man, we are righteous folk, aren’t we? haha!)
– Hand of Reckoning
– Divine Plea
– Divine Protection
– Sacred Shield
– Avenging Wrath
– Hand of Protection (I also have that bound to a clique combo)
And I use all of those frequently. I think I actually enjoy the simplicity of bear tanking, but then again, I’m probably doing it wrong. ;)
Really glad to hear that you’re enjoying the blog and that my scattered thoughts and such have proven entertaining, if not useful. I’m still surprised my guides are that popular (but they, and the HoR strat/guide, continue to be the highest-trafficked paged). I just hope people are learning from them! :)
For prot, I have healbot set up so i can click button 6 for RD, button 4 is hand of salv, button 5 is cleanse! ofc :) and then loh, hop, hof, DI etc bound to various clicks/shift+clicks within healbot, which is a lot like grid rly but clique doesn’t seem to like my mouse >.>
so yes other prot pallies do that but unfortunately judging by the vastly sub-par tanking skills of most of the pug tanks ive grouped with on other toons, i don’t think many do, lol :)
Fad, that’s because you’re leet and many others are not. ;)
I’m totally not surprised you have cleanse bound. :D It’s my middle click in my holy and prot clique profiles. :)
I have to think for a second but iirc my binds are:
LMB: RD
RMB: Hand of Salvation (I think, I haven’t used it much)
Shift+LMB: Cleanse
Shift+RMB: Hand of Freedom
Alt+RMB: Hand of Protection, I think. Haven’t used it yet.
Ctrl+Alt+LMB: Lay on Hands
This is actually fairly similar to how my Tree’s bindings are set. I always put my dispels on Shift+lmb/rmb, my panic buttons are always ctrl+alt+LMB/RMB
I only have a 3 buttons mouse (the bane of using a trackball), and I use MMB for PTT for vent, so that is out the window. When I am healing I do use MWheel up/down for some heals, but I avoid using it for non-healing characters.
However, I agree. Most paladin tanks out there just don’t get how awesome their class is. They might pick up the 9696 rotation thing, but I have seen very few make use of hands or any other aspect of their class.
I suddenly feel scrubby, since I don’t have Hand of Freedom, Hand of Salvation or Lay on Hands bound to anything — on either holy or prot profiles. Hm. I should take a look at my bindings… hehe. :)