lederhosen (
lederhosen) wrote2010-10-10 07:01 pm
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[WoW] People you meet in random pugs
So, I was running a random heroic dungeon on my warlock. As usual, the party leader was also tank (= heavily-armoured person whose job is to keep monsters occupied and keep damage away from the squishy healers and damage-dealers). At one point our healer, following somewhat behind the rest of the party, accidentally managed to catch the attention of a grumpy-looking tree monster. So, how does our heroic tank/leader deal with this?
(1) Use a 'taunt' ability to distract the critter from the healer.
(2) Charge in and beat on the monster to get its attention.
(3) Stand still and offer cool leadership and sound tactical advice, like the following:
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: OMFG
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: NO
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: LET HIM DIE I WILL RES
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: OMG
In the end I poked the monster enough to pull him towards the rest of us, including the tank, who then had to do something about it. But seriously, wtf?
(1) Use a 'taunt' ability to distract the critter from the healer.
(2) Charge in and beat on the monster to get its attention.
(3) Stand still and offer cool leadership and sound tactical advice, like the following:
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: OMFG
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: NO
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: LET HIM DIE I WILL RES
Party Leader:********-Spinebreaker: OMG
In the end I poked the monster enough to pull him towards the rest of us, including the tank, who then had to do something about it. But seriously, wtf?
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That said, even if he hadn't been party leader, that would have been a failure of basic tanking. "Protect the healer" is the tank's first priority, and it's not like it would even have been hard. This was just a bog-standard trash monster, on its own, not a boss or anything.
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All of which means, depending on the context, sometimes I'll happily let someone die if I think they've been an idiot. "Protect the healer" is my first priority in controlled combat that I've initiated (or uncontrolled combat some stupid DPSer has accidentally initiated). It's not an over-riding rule if I think someone needs a short sharp lesson in not wandering off. Especially if it's a healer dragging behind when he should be right next to me ready for my next pull.
Contrariwise, if a tank has rushed ahead while a healer is drinking, and the healer has been trying to catch up and just caught the edge of a pathing mobs aggro range, then the opposite applies. But it is context dependent.
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Also, IME, heroics are far more sensitive to the tank's capabilities than to anybody else's. It's mostly the tank's armour, HP, threat gen*, and competence that determine whether you can survive pulling small groups or large ones, and the tank probably has the best idea of those things. Healers have less influence on this, DPS almost none.
I will let people die if they're being obnoxious, but what happened in this case was: we'd just killed the second-last boss in Nexus (rock guy), jumped down through the hole, and killed the patrol down there. Healer said "afk, brb" or some such, the tank and everybody else snuck past the tree guarding the exit, and we were standing near the entrance to the final boss's room. Then the healer came back, tried to catch up, took the corner a little wide, and aggroed the tree.
I'm not a great fan of "we'll all just sneak past instead of clearing the room" strategies; IME they're far more trouble than they're worth, and if you choose to roll that way, you need to be ready to react if they go wrong.
*Which reminds me of another of this guy's tricks: telling us to 'kill the casters first', but not actually focusing on them himself, so he had virtually nil threat on our indicated targets.
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