Genuine compliment or not?

Kurn / / druids, lfg, ramblings, tanks

So tonight, my brother hit 80 on his hunter. We did a random heroic (Old Kingdom — which spawned the previous post to the “tanks” of the Bloodlust Battlegroup) and we did regular TOC and I tanked heroic Utgarde Keep…

And then he needed 7 more badges to get the Mirror of Truth. So we queued up again; me as a tank/healer, him as a DPS, obviously.

We got The Nexus and I breathed a sigh of relief, although I was tanking. I know the instance, I know the boss fights, I know how trash works. I had about 29k health, fully buffed (mark, kings, no fort) and off we went.

I swear to God, I thought the DPS warrior was actively taunting off of me. Until I checked his gearscore. 5300 or thereabouts. Mine, as comparison, is about 2800. Still, I was doing okay on single targets. The issue would arise when the warrior’s whirlwind would simply out-threat my swipe.

So we’ve done the mini boss, the caster boss and Anomolous and we’re at trash towards the rock boss, when the warrior says, apropos of nothing:

“UR A DAMN GOOD TANK 4 GS OF 2.8K”

The holy paladin said:

“lol i agree” “amazing”

I didn’t say anything. Were they being sincere? Or were they being sarcastic dicks? You never know with these people.

So at the end of the run, I say:

“Thanks very much for the group, everyone. Apologies for not holding aggro too well on multiple mobs. :)”

The pally comes back with:

“ur amazing”

And the DK said “psh did great”

The warrior had already left the group by the time the pally had said anything.

So I don’t know. Maybe the warrior was being a sarcastic ass, but it seems like the pally thought I did great for my gear and the DK seemed to not mind too much.

If any of them were at all sincere, I really hope that what they take away from the run is not that I am awesome, but rather, GearScore does not make a player. GearScore shows a player’s potential maximum output and nothing else. Like, nothing I could possibly do could help my Swipe out-threat the warrior. At all. But that’s a gear issue. As it was, I was relatively good with single target threat and I didn’t let things beat on the pally and I was super-quick to growl at things or even use Challenging Roar. I like to think that I pushed at the limits of my gear.

I think it really helped that I’ve tanked the instance on regular and tanked it on both regular and heroic on my pally. Damn me if I didn’t miss Righteous Defense something fierce, though. :P

5 Replies to “Genuine compliment or not?”

  1. I ran into this recently also. I’m still leveling my tankadin via the DF. At level 71 I ended up with a rogue around 5K GS in my UK run because he wanted the off hand for the VDay achievement. His comments were of shock and surprise (And appreciation) that I could hold threat, when he normally would pull off of tanks in heroics. Honestly, I think this just is a comment against other tanks than in favor of me being awesome.

    I think it is that there are just so many people out there that DON’T get it that some one who is competent will blow your socks off.

  2. You know, Thansal, I think you’re right. There are SO many incompetant “tanks” out there who DON’T understand how to hold threat or make sure they’re immune to crits that if you at least TRY to hold threat and you know how to pop cooldowns, you come out looking like a champ.

    I really do need to make macros to announce that I’m using my cooldowns to the party, though, I think. At least on the druid. I’ve seen a lot of healers sort of panic if my health dropped substantially.

    Another thing I’m realizing is that people don’t understand that, if they’re not a druid tank, they’re crittable if their backs are to the mobs. You can’t parry or block or dodge a mob if they’re behind you. That removes, you know, ALL your avoidance. Only druids with Survival of the Fittest can’t be crit if things are behind them. But they can take increased damage, since they can’t dodge those attacks.

  3. The positioning thing is something a LOT of players don’t know about because it doesn’t seem immediately obvious, and it isn’t documented in game any where. You see it in melee not positioning themselves behind mobs, you see it in idiots using knockback spells.

    I have been tossing about the idea in my head that players should have to go through basic training before they can tank. Things that would teach them about being crit, about positioning, etc. WoW is NOT newbie friendly in certain aspects of the game, forcing you to rely on outside information.

  4. Let us not forget Army of the Nub, which has what, 10 ghouls all grabbing aggro, swinging the boss around this way and that!

    There is a definite problem with newbies tanking. Particularly with dual specs, we see a lot of people just grabbing a cookie-cutter spec and going out there to tank with basically no gear. People aren’t crit immune, people have no idea how to position mobs properly and, more to the point, they don’t CARE.

    Healing a DK “tank”, who was not crit immune through half of Old Kingdom yesterday led to at least 3 deaths and/or wipes before we even got to the second boss. But it really wasn’t just the fact he wasn’t crit immune. It was the fact that he was standing in the center of his death and decay and letting things instagib him from behind.

    Basic training would be amazing. You go into a tanking-only practice instance, with like, three levels of difficulty. (Level-appropriate, heroic, raid difficulty.) You are then told to tank various mobs, or groups of mobs, by positioning them so that you don’t get crit. And then if you do get crit by a mob who’s facing you, you’re thrown out to get better gear or something. And if you get crit from behind, you need to restart it to reposition them properly.

    And if you don’t have the appropriate achievement from the practice instance, you cannot set yourself as a tank in LFG.

    Sounds perfect!

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