Greedy Goblin

Thursday, August 18, 2011

What gives power?

I'm leveling a tank. The reasons will be a separate post. Leveling a tank gives a very new perspective. Everyone who claims that the M&S are just "new to the game" or "play less than us" should be forced to level a tank, only in random dungeons, queuing alone. I'm sure that around lvl 35, even the most sheep-souled socialist would be ready to kill them with his bare hands.

However low level dungeons gave me a new insight. I was always healer. I always felt that tanks control the instances. In a good group, it's true from the tank perspective too. I pull, I set the kill order and so on. In a bad, absolutely not. I can't do anything to stop them pulling, attacking wrong target, rooting them out of of AoE range and so on.

I think I recognized something fundamental about power itself. Among intelligent people, the source of power is the ratio of "how much they need me vs I need them". I need the tank to be present (long wait for him), to be competent, to do his job properly. He on the other hand don't really need me. The dungeons are easy, so if he have the proper talent, proper gear and turns his proper side to the monsters, a shadow priest can heal him. I know this and don't mess with him.

On the other hand among idiots the source of power is "who can hit them hard enough". As a healer I could simply let them die. Of course it is a highly sub-optimal solution, but works with them. As a tank, I can refuse to taunt, but then the healer can go OOM trying to save them, wiping us all. So I can't selectively kill them, therefore I have no power over them. The fact that they need me much more than I need them is irrelevant as they are unable to comprehend it. If their idiocy (combined with the healer attempting to save them) wipe the group, they just give a tantrum and keep on doing it. If the group dissolve, they lose much more than I do (I get another instantly, they wait half an hour), but this fact also eludes their simple minds. Me knowing it is little comfort, as I still lost something. My priority is not them suffering, but me being successful.

The punishment for failure is too indirect, far and random (some groups can carry them) for them. The direct and simple punishment of letting them die, laughing on them and calling them morons reaches them and does wonders.

On the other hand, the punishing power has little effect on intelligent ones as they will think until find an idea how to get rid of the tyrant. That's why there were revolutions against medieval kings by the middle and high middle class, but never against the "oppressing capitalism" as they recognize that it's a power coming from need.

To have power over a mixture of intelligent and moronic people, you must be both useful and needed and also ready and able to punch the idiots in the face.

36 comments:

Valdas said...

This is so true, I myself tried to level a bear druid, till level 30 everything was ok, from 30 to 50 not so good and from 50 switched to healing, game was to easy from then :)

Squishalot said...

Two questions, Gevlon.

1. "Me knowing it is little comfort, as I still lost something. My priority is not them suffering, but me being successful."

Not too long ago, you were happy to suffer 15 minutes wait because of a player without gems / enchants. Did you not prioritise your success lower?

2. Why are you using LFD and levelling with idiots?

On a side note, once they have a group, they don't need you terribly much. Last time I checked, the queuing system prioritises people in dungeon over people in the queue. As a result, they will not have to wait very long for a tank.

Foo said...

I am incurably social .... except in LFG dungeons on a levelling tank.

I learned that all DPS are bastards, with the rare exception only proving the rule.

As a healer or especially tank, levelling via random dungeon, I never had a problem with the instance; only ever with the DPS.

At one point, on a bear tank with an agressive DPS, I changed to cat form and /follow healer. The healer was going oom healing the AOE hit everything DPS, so I asked the healer why he was bothering.

He assured me it was only so he didn't end up dead. In turn, I assured him I would grab any loose mobs heading his way. The DPS died, didn't get rez and everyone else was happy.

I would however change your comment about who should level a tank. Everyone likes great, reliable DPS. Everone needs tanks and healers (great or reliable not required). Why level a toon that is not needed?

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: who said I leave the group. I just go out of dungeon questing until they quit with deserter AND having to wait.

I did NOT suffer 15 mins, I spent crafting in SW.

Squishalot said...

@ Gevlon: How is that any different to now? There is no difference in the circumstance. It is illogical that you do not suffer when there is a bad DPS in your guild group, but you do suffer when there is a bad DPS in your LFD group. Just teleport out and craft.

Leeho said...

I will state again that a good dps has more impact on a dungeon run than tank or healer. Being the tank, you can't make run faster, and you can't really make up for all mistakes, as you have a particular job to handle - keeping mobs busy. Same applies to the healer, he needs to keep people up. As dps, you can cc, you can burn mobs when things are turning bad, you can help healing or tanking (some classes can do both), etc. More important though is that a good dps can make the whole run fast and smooth, while good tank or healer can achieve only last of that two things. By dpsing 3 times as much as random pugger you can make the run 2 times faster, as well as you do the same with pulls and bosses, which sometimes earns the difference between wipe and kill.

Kurt said...

@Squishalot: Why do you keep insisting he's suffering? You claimed he was, he stated he wasn't, you claim he was again. This sounds like a classic case of projection. Tell us about your own suffering, Squish, stop projecting it onto father figures.

Bizdis said...

The fact that they don't care about losing another 30 mins in the queue is a big issue with morons. They can (and will) grind all day, as time isn't a great constraint to them. I simply do not understand why they do not feel bad about losing 30 mins.

At the start of Cataclysm, there were many idiots that dinged 85 quickly, because they had so much free time on their hands (and would play many hours per day). How some morons can fail endlessly in dungeons, do daily quests, then spend all the gold on rubbish in the same day is a mystery to me.

Anonymous said...

@Leeho

Good dps are largely measured by the amount of dps they produce. With a bad tank, there isn't enough threat to allow them to do this (at least, until Tuesday's patch). In other words, a bad tank largely negates the effect of a good -- or even great -- dps.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, good insight. There are a lot of people to whom power is, "Can someone stop me doing this?" And it's true, as a tank, you can't physically nail down the gogogo dps and force them not to run off and pull extra groups while you're still tanking the last set.

I've been levelling a healer, funnily enough, via lots of PUGs and I see so many dps just pulling everything in sight and expecting the tank to grab them. Once when someone called them on it, the guy said, "It's how they play at high levels, noob."

Foo said...

@leeho

While good DPS are a pleasure to run with, they are by no means necessary.

A while ago, I was healing a levelling tank via LFG in Dire Maul. Wipes all over the place. DPS agro-ing different packs than the one that the tank was on.

At that point we tank and I left the DPS to their own devices, and as a group they left the run. The tank and I - with level appropriate toons - duo'd the rest of the instance. As fast as with the wipe creating DPS, and a whole lot smoother.

For levelling dungeons, I like grouping with 'good' DPS (even wanding wannabees). I need to group with either a tank or healer (good or bad). No one needs (stand in fire/agro junkie) bad DPS

Ðesolate said...

I am tanking since my second Character ever created hit the level for DM, five years ago. My personal strategy to keep control over every last brainless moron is quite easy:
Pull faster than they can. A macro for raid targets icons and a bit of management of your cooldowns is everything it needs.

This works quite well. I don't get bored, as well as the DPSers and the healer won't even know what really happened.
In the main-statement is: If can DD pull, the tank is too slow.

But @low-Instances: almost everyone / -thing can tank theese if the healer is not afk. That is the real "problem".

Dangphat said...

Power is not someone needing you more than you need them. ("Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain."-Machiavelli)
Need drives certain things, but greed and understanding of it is the best way to maintain power.

If I am low level tanking and someone is performing negatively (ie not just bad but actively making things worse) I will bring up Atlasloot and link what drops from upcoming bosses. I will off incentives for competent behaviour.

Because we have no real form of punishment built into the game, we can have to invent one. So for instance offering a carrot then removing it can achieve a lot.

I am not sure if it is the goblin way to do things, but i find if you are laughing and calling someone a moron, you are the loser of that situation.

caerphoto said...

I found this post amusing in "well, duh" kind of way, since anyone who's levelled a tank could have told you what you've discovered. Still, nothing like discovering it for yourself :)

As a tank, I can refuse to taunt, but then the healer can go OOM trying to save them, wiping us all. So I can't selectively kill them, therefore I have no power over them.

For longer dungeons (e.g. ZF, Uldaman) it's worth whispering the healer and asking them to not heal DPS who pull or take easily avoidable damage. They'll often be happy to oblige.

KhasDylar said...

I must disagree with you, especially with the part "a good dps can make the whole run fast and smooth, while good tank or healer can achieve only last of that two things". Although noone questions that a good DD, who can do 3x the DPS a random idiot (or a tank) can do, is a benefit for a group, but it only won't make any dungeon runs significantly faster. By killing a boss faster, you gain like 1 minute per boss in an instance, sparing you around 5mins. Expand this to 10mins with the trash being killed faster too. However as a tank (presuming a good tank), you controll the pulls, marks CCs, get back loose mobs who attack the too fast attacking DDs, as a healer you keep the tank on high HP almost all the time, provide dispells and if you are in mood of helping morons, you heal the DDs too (and as a Priest, you Life Grip idiots, who stand in Consecration/Death and Decay on Hex Lord Malacrass).
The point here is not that a good or bad DD makes the run faster or slower, but the impact of being good or bad is much more significant if a tank or a healer falls into that category. If you have a bad DD, you mostly end the instance slower (of course you still have to be lucky at some degree), but if you have a tank, who runs around like a headless chicken, can't keep aggro, chainpulls too fast, doesn't watch the healers mana or a healer, who prioritises DDs over the tank or herself, doesn't dispell, etc. - these can prevent you from finishing the dungeon.

To be on topic: my - almost - favorite encounter is/was Corla in Blackrock Caverns. Here DD had the same responsibility as a tank or healer usually has on a boss encounter and if you had people in your group, who could not watch a single debuff on themselves, you wiped for sure. I loved that boss, because I was amused when I already saw after the first boss, that we will wipe on Corla many-many times, because X (who could be pointed out on first sight) will fuck up with the beams. Here you didn't have to yell at idiots, the boss did the punishment herself, you just sat back and smiled. I usually spent at least 4-5 wipes amusing myself on idiots: my time and gold on repair costs were spent in a good direction imho. Sometimes I even counted back slowly until the moron made his mistake.

Bobbins said...

'What gives power?'

The leveling from 5-80 is broken you have insanely geared/enchanted characters doing the same instances as 'newbies'. Can these new players compete with the fully geared players? By having the rerollers mixing in with the newer players you basically get no 'experience' of the vanilla instances or what makes classes unique.

Tanks/healer/dps only get real power when they group with similiar geared players and do a instance that challenges the skills of the players. This is no longer the case with the majority of dungeons in Wow. Basically by making lame dungeons (they were not always lame) Blizzard effective sucks 'power' from players.

People coming out with we let the dps die? That says to me that the dungeons are broken if you are able to sacrifice members of you party and be better able to complete the dungeon then that dungeon is broken. How many raids happen where you hear 'let the dps die' its stupid.

caerphoto said...

People coming out with we let the dps die? That says to me that the dungeons are broken if you are able to sacrifice members of you party and be better able to complete the dungeon then that dungeon is broken. How many raids happen where you hear 'let the dps die' its stupid.

That's not a valid comparison, since low level dungeons serve a different purpose to raids.

On the other hand, yes, dungeons are too easy and do very little to prepare players for endgame heroics and raids. They're not even particularly fun, since there's no real challenge. 3-manning them is much more fun, I've found; 2-man somewhat less so just because things (especially bosses) take so long to die, despite not being much of a threat.

Anonymous said...

I love tanking, and been doing it for years. In instances I just chainpull throughout the whole instance, becasue.. I think it's fun. So I never have any issues whatsoever with anyone else pulling stuff, and I get praised for the fast runs. Very rarely I'll get a random healer that is slow with following the rest of the group, but they usually sharpen up quite fast.

Anonymous said...

As someone who levelled up prot warrior lvl 10-85, DK tank 55-85, and prot pala lvl 10-85 I can give you some advice while refraining from discussing terms like "loladin." Since you play the one class I did not lvl up as tank (but do know inside out) I won't comment on the lvling aspect of bear tanks other than in patch 4.0.1 it was made difficult for them to tank low lvl instances due to lack of AoE, rage starvation, and heavy nerfs to bear tanks in the subsequent patches. In patch 4.2 they further nerfed bear tanks Savage Defense to only work on physical damage however in Cata you get Perseverence from resto druid tree providing 3x3% magic damage mitigation. Plus you always have MotW. Speaking of Savage Defense, you should use a "shield tracker" which tracks your savage defense (all other tanks have a similar "shield"). This will tell you how much of your shield is remaining.

The best way to gain XP is questing, especially for MS DPS though. You can share most of your tank gear with your feral OS. If you get kicked out of dungeon or "leave" (leave group, teleport out, /dance at entrance, or ninja D/C) because you get 4 moron freinds + you the optimal thing to do is questing (or lvling profession) so get a DPS offspec for soloing. If you ever reach lvl 85 you're going to do Therazane quest line as DPS. I contacted GM about /dancing at entrance; one cannot be forced to play the game. It is not considered an offense, and the dungeon system provides a kick system for such. Mount up if possible and rogue/hunter won't be able to pass threat to you.

If you queue with a DPS friend you have less chance getting a retard. If you queue with healer friend you know you have a competent healer who won't heal retards. That is, unless your friends are retards (happens to some, why else do 4 people queue with each other 1 being an utter moron?)

As a tank you could care less about DPS meters. You want high enough DPS to complete the instance (recent threat patch may mean higher DPS is now best since won't overaggro). You care about completing the instance while keeping aggro, using survivability (not required much at low lvl). Since keeping aggro is now not an issue anymore the only difficult part is making correct pulls, not pulling too much, and learn this after you did the instance once. Try to pop your CDs at low lvl anyway. 2 reasons: muscle memory finding good keybind for it at start, and good habit. A CD like Barkskin is only 1m hence should be popped a lot in raids.

At low lvl you don't need a tank specced tank. Or a healer specced healer. This can mean that people ninja chain pull Ragefire Chasm to zerg through it giving the healer some work. The quicker you complete the quests and kill last boss the quicker you get XP. Pop cat form (or non-defensive stance) and join the zerg. While this may spoil the fun for you as tank don't feel bad, and it isn't necessarily stupid, incompetent DPS; they may as well be trying to value their time. The ability to play cat as a tank is a good plus since there will be times in dungeon, raid, PvP where you need to switch between these 2. Even as tank. Or DPS learning bear.

Give people a chance. Everyone makes a mistake (especially DK tank who starts to run like an idiot in Auchenai Crypts); only fools keep repeating them and holding group back. After someone mistakenly pulled or gets aggro tell them that when they do this again they will keep tanking it. If you pull, you tank it. If you overagro, it is yours. Only kick the really bad players to save your vote (or vote streak). If there are too many of them, "leave".

[...]

Anonymous said...

Hunters, teach them to left click instead of right click. Every hunter must learn this. You may be their savior, their teacher. Requires little effort. My hunter learned this in the first instances (becoming aware of this, and unlearning the habit are 2 steps) and yes, I angried a few tanks. Loomed, skilled hunters are able to solo instances. Some may try this. Their pets and warlock pets sometimes ninja pull. These hunters (and say other plate users) can tank when you "leave."

Arcane mages, they must learn overaggro means die which will happen a lot as the unskilled arcane mage simply presses one button on the wrong target. Let them be. Bonus points if it was a gnome. Mages: go fire to learn complexity of fire, go frost for soloing and PvP. There is no reason to go arcane. You won't learn anything whilst lvling your character (which means it boils down to same as buying a lvl 85 at eBay). Any moron can play arcane, you can always learn this if your raid leader demands you single target high DPS at lvl 85.

Shadow priests will make bad DPS. All they should do is mind flay. DoTs on bosses only. They get AoE at lvl 74. Non-combat rogues don't have any AoE until lvl 80. If you have two of those it can be a long run. some other classes are very good at AoE but may sometimes pull threat. Survival hunter, demo lock.

At around lvl 55 everyone will be very happy to see you, bear, as tank! You are not a DK which is a relief. All too often, DK tanks barely know their class (or game) or they lvled a hunter to lvl 55 to make a DK. Nobody wants to teach these baddies how to tank. If they tank before lvl 60 their only AoE is Blood Boil (DnD at 60).

If you have a good group and not going for the satchel (which you will only start to get in Cata) stay with the group and go for another. The DPS will want to requeue with you. If 2/3 of them do good output and none ninja pull or anything stupid like that, stay. Especially if they don't compete with gear with you. I'd simply burn my rested this way. If one of them is very low lvl you may end up with an instance you don't want to play yet again though.

Ðesolate said...

Short add:
Patch 4.3...
Raid Finder: The Raid Finder will be introduced in Patch 4.3, it will work like the Dungeon Finder.
www.mmo-champion.com

Well that will be the most horrid environment for tanks / leaders. Just think about 25 lfr-Tanks trying to lead a gang of headless random chickens.

Backthief said...

"@Squishalot: who said I leave the group. I just go out of dungeon questing until they quit with deserter AND having to wait.

I did NOT suffer 15 mins, I spent crafting in SW"

Thats the meanest strategy i have heard. And its wonderfull.

From a different perspective, leveling a tank only trough Dungeons as i also did up to lvl 81 is one of the most boring things do to ingame. The amount of repetitive content you are forced to do is beyond hope. They are alot of queue ranges where you end up with 1-2 Yellow dungeons (the ones you have the most change to be queued into)

Anonymous said...

Chainpulling without leaving combat sucks for rogues. They need to get into stealth because they get DPS boost by being in stealth (sub rogue has burst ambush and CDs, ass rogue has 20 sec CD starting when they leave stealth)

Anonymous said...

Player power levels and the practical course of a leveling instance don't particularly support an authoritarian leadership style where hierarchy, obedience and punishment are primary concerns. An emergent leadership style that respects self-determination and clear communication is much more suited to the situation. I can see how this would be frustrating to you.

What you've realized is that people have different perspectives, different answers to the selfish question of "what do I have to lose here?" The idiot who pulls will survive 90% of the time; attacking the wrong target rarely has bad consequences. These are only failures when measured against your expectations. The "idiots" haven't played as you would have liked but they have little to gain by changing to please you and little motivation to do so if you treat people in your typical aggressive way.

Attempting to punish people in a collaborative setting where you are replaceable doesn't work. If you go AFK and craft, I'd vote to kick you (the cooldown on vote kicks was lowered when somebody is out of the instance so you make it easier by going to SW). At lower levels, it's often a short wait for a replacement tank. If the group falls apart, my wait as a dps is around 15 minutes at level 40. It's an inconvenience but not a punishment.

To have power over people, they need to have something at risk which you control. There is very little at risk in the leveling game and playing a tank puts very little in your personal control. It's largely an illusion and social convention.

Torpid said...

Personally what I've found is that past a certain point, the tank can cover even complete idiots and finish the instance in reasonable times. If the DPS all DD seperate targets, once you can do 3x more threat single target than any one DPS, you can simply multi target and hold all three, and the mobs will die soon enough. (This is extremely easy as a warrior since the default AoE ability, shockwave, stuns just long enough for the warrior to dish out 3 abilities, holding the mobs in place while you grab threat on every DD target.)

Far more of a problem was when DD cannot DD, such as say, dying to fire constantly, to the point where the healer would run OOM trying to heal them, and the boss would then kill me because the healer wasn't a paladin. (As a rule, paladins have infinite mana, always. At least if they're being played properly, judging for heal + mana, meleeing for mana, divine plea on CD, abusing holy power etc.)

But aside from bosses, most tank classes should be able to solo trash without problems, which ensures a smooth run as long as the DDs are capable of stand still DPS fast enough that the non-dispelling healer won't run out of mana healing DoTs and damage increasing magical debuffs. Which, as should be obvious, is a task most LFG groups are capable of, which might be why I had such smooth runs as a tank in the new troll Heroics. (Incoming tank damage is generally laughable, I wouldn't be suprised if DK or even Paladins tanks were capable of healing all the damage the bosses dish out to them. Sadly, victory rush is only active for the last 20% HP of the boss, and pretty much useless besides, so the warrior tank has to settle for insane mitgation.)

chewy said...

It seems to me that in a pick up group there is no contract. Everyone is there for their own reasons and plays the way they want to play.

For new tanks or healers the solution might be to form a contract. Advertise in trade as a "new tank, looking for a guild/group to learn with". They get a tank for runs in return you get an environment where everyone knows you might make mistakes as you learn. The finer points of the contract could be negotiated once you have a number of people willing to participate.

Kurt said...

@anonymous, you know which one:

"Player power levels and the practical course of a leveling instance don't particularly support an authoritarian leadership style where hierarchy, obedience and punishment are primary concerns. An emergent leadership style that respects self-determination and clear communication is much more suited to the situation. I can see how this would be frustrating to you."

Incorrect, the only frustrating thing here is your failure to even attempt to support your bullshit. Using ridiculous phrases like "emergent leadership style" is no replacement for logic or reasoning.

"What you've realized is that people have different perspectives, different answers to the selfish question of "what do I have to lose here?" The idiot who pulls will survive 90% of the time; attacking the wrong target rarely has bad consequences. These are only failures when measured against your expectations. "

This is bullshit, again. A practical observer would say that anything that impedes the run from going quickly and smoothly is a failure. Sometimes in very low level instances, zerging doesn't slow down the run. Details as that aside, we all have experienced runs where the fails you describe above have slowed down the run.

"Attempting to punish people in a collaborative setting where you are replaceable doesn't work."

You are wrong, I've done that successfully. I'm sorry that your inability to do so prompts jealousy.

"To have power over people, they need to have something at risk which you control. There is very little at risk in the leveling game and playing a tank puts very little in your personal control. It's largely an illusion and social convention."

Yes, the social convention is what they have at risk, hence why Gevlon is always talking about social conventions in the way he does. You are unwittingly arguing for his ideas, not against them. Thanks for playing.

Anonymous said...

Welcome to my world.
I've leveled a number of Paladin tanks up to high level, solely through LFG.

Like what someone has already mentioned, the key to success is to speak to your healer. If the healer is friends with the moronic DD, then you are kinda stuck with their antics.

If the healer is not, befriend him and watch the MOUNTAINS of dead DD bodies pile up who fail to follow even the simplest rules of Pugging.

Unfortunately for the most part even chain pulling DD retards can still survive as all dungeons below the Cata ones have been significantly nerfed. (bosses in Ramps/Blood Furnace have the same health as ones in RDF)
And Nerfed instances mean no inbuilt incentive to let the tank do his job.

The RDF finder needs a rating/ranking system so everyone can rate the quality of the 4 other players in LFG, and punish bad players with longer queue times accordingly. It will never get implemented, but I can still Dream :)

What I find endlessly amusing is how greatly I can out DPS the DD on my heirloom equipped paladin tank, from 15 all the way up to 80. The only people who seem to be able to beat me are similarly heirloom equipped mages.

Ellifain @ Khaz'Goroth

Anonymous said...

They could also be brand new. I only joined WoW really recently and did a fair amount of this, but I played two previous MMOs that didn't have 'threat' or 'tanks'. The monster simply faced whoever hit hardest and you either had enough armour or didn't.

Being the guy the monster was trying to kill simply meant you were simply the strongest of everyone and was kind of a badge of superiority. So levelling my first character I didn't know what a tank was, or that one specific person should be "fighting the monster."

Alleji said...

I just leveled a healer exclusively through LFD (65 atm) with my girlfriend tanking and I have to say that these "gogogo" DPS didn't seem as omnipresent as anyone says.

Instead all the time I saw damage meters where the tank did 50% of the group's damage and I on average beat 1 of the DPS as a resto druid, sometimes all 3. Yes, even on single-target boss fights with moonfire and wrath. Basically, we could have two-manned the dungeons 30% slower than with DPS and I thought of doing that if it wasn't for the travel time involved to get to actual dungeons and an occasional good dps that can beat the tank. We tried to do multiple dungeons with those.

But then again, probably I saw less of the gogogo pulling dps because we already pulled whole rooms at a time.

Anonymous said...

Alleji, there are two reasons why tank DPS is high: vengeance, and he can AoE. Most DPS cannot do AoE well on low level, and if they'd do they'd get aggro.

Anonymous said...

"The RDF finder needs a rating/ranking system so everyone can rate the quality of the 4 other players in LFG, and punish bad players with longer queue times accordingly. It will never get implemented, but I can still Dream :)"

PlayerScore (formerly GearScore) came up with this BRILLIANT idea.

Not. In such a system the socials will rate their freinds high "cuz they cool." Socials will vote on the basis of how much they liked each others. The asocials will get lower rating than the socials, the rude people will be voted on based not on their gameplay but on their behavior, and whoever gets kicked rates the rest 1. An absolute mess.

Here is the best way to never get queued with an absolute retard:

/ignore Player-Realm

Test it out. It works. If you are a tank/healer it will make his queue time longer since an other DD will take his spot instead.

An alternative is forming premade with skilled people who think likewise as you.

And if you stumble upon someone who calls you a "nigrow" like I had:

Make a ticket. He may not get a ban or even a warning, but if he continues to use such language he will eventually be spotted by GMs and reprimanded.

"What I find endlessly amusing is how greatly I can out DPS the DD on my heirloom equipped paladin tank, from 15 all the way up to 80. The only people who seem to be able to beat me are similarly heirloom equipped mages."

A heirloomed hunter will do more damage than any mage.

Squishalot said...

@ Kurt:

Gevlon said: "Me knowing it is little comfort, as I still lost something. My priority is not them suffering, but me being successful."

The fact is, Gevlon is losing out. Suffering is perhaps the wrong word, but in this instance, he's happy to put up with crap to get the dungeon done. In the previous case, he was not.

The big difference is that in this case, he actually has evidence (i.e. examples of poor performance) that the group sucks, whereas in the other case, he had no evidence (i.e. inspection only).

It's irrational, inconsistent behaviour.

Anonymous said...

I did what you are doing 2 times (once with a Worgen-warrior and once with a Forsaken one).

I was seriously annoyed with the whole experience out of the reasons you've stated.
Then I got it:
Groups at that level didn't need me as a tank, they needed another damage dealer.
And tanks below level 70 (or something in that range) are damned good DD.

A competent hunter in full heirloom gear can kill a mob in a dungeon before it reaches him. A healer can easily heal a "tanking" mage.

The leveling-dungeons are broken, a tank just isn't needed.
As soon as I got that, I stopped being angry and just started to do damage.

Tanking starts being important again as soon as one hits the Netherworld.

Evlyxx said...

A bit late to this discussion but I agree with Gevlon here, the bad DPS make it hard for tanks and there is no penalty system for them.

I am leveling a prot warrior and it is faster to do that outside instances with AoE grinding and questing than running dungeons with the DPS obsessed fools. Running with guildies is preferred but thats difficult until the 80s nowadays.

Anonymous said...

I've been playing on a free account lately, and I've had a lot more trouble with tanks / healers who get all upset over people not doing it properly than bad players. The instances are so easy you barely ever need a tank or healer.

That dps Warrior could have queued as tank and easily tanked the dungeon. There being a little red dagger on his icon does not make him any worse at tanking.

That Hunter can solo the trash. Refusing to pull because she's also pulling is slowing the run down. If you're not making the run go faster, you're useless.

Proper tanking and healing is not needed at low levels. You just need a melee / pet to take a few hits, and someone who can toss an occasional heal.