Although I certainly wouldn't describe my DK or paladin as my main characters, I have done a fair bit of tanking with each. It drives me crazy when I see the modern trend in WOW of rounding all the mobs up and AOEing them down. Not because it's inefficient in the hands of a good group, but because it can go horribly wrong in a bad one. It's led to a bunch of players who have forgotten there is an alternative: focus fire on the most troublesome mob in a pack to bring it down first & crowd control where needed. It had got so bad that when once I suggested marking mobs, I got met with a cry of "LOL! Marking is for n00bs".
When HOR first came out, I'd say 90% of wipes were caused by trying to AOE all the trash mobs down without having the tools to do so. This led to persistent cries of "it's too difficult" and people dropping group the second they got in there. So I started doing something sneaky. The so-called tanks were't marking anything, but I still have the keys bound from when I do tank, so I did it instead. Silently a skull would appear over the first mob to take down and a moon over the one to be CC'd. As if by magic, these previously incompetent random PUGs would start succeeding.
"Great tanking!"
"Great healing!"
"I think they must have nerfed it!" (they hadn't at the time)Me? I just kept my mouth shut. But it got me wondering. How many other people are doing things quietly in the background to ensure that random PUGs succeed?
SAN peep here: As a paladin, grabbing aggro from mobs that were headed the healer's way throughout the instance with an overconfident tank.
ReplyDeleteThough i think that's pretty common though XD i've even had a hunter try to grab aggro off me when i was a priest in an instance(thus proving that not all hunters are idiots)
The standard of play by hunters has rocketed now DKs are out. In my experience they're some of the best players now.
ReplyDeleteDon't know if this really counts, but I don't feel as if many people do it (certainly not in the PuG HCs I've been running): using "offspec" abilities.
ReplyDeleteIn my case that mean using abilities other than "SMASH" on my ret paladin, or even dropping back to throw a few heals if necessary. Call me strange if you like, but I have Repentance bound to one of the side buttons on my mouse, and I use it *every* time I see a caster outside the usual AoE-scrum by the tank.
Also, glad to have found your blog (I'm Anorak from SAN-EU)
I usually heal groups and it amazed me the first time I stepped into an UNDER PREFORMING pos run with a newish tank that people didnt want to cc in this instance. asked the mage to sheep one of the casters on the hill that everyone and their brother has problems with. He laughed at me, I reduced heals going to his butt, oh, no not to the point of death but to the point where he started to step back
ReplyDeleteBy under preforming, we had enough dps to get the mobs down but it took so long that I as a tree had to pop innervate.
The hallway of death from above was much slower than most groups but is entirely do-able by anyone who has learned to "stay out of the fire" even with low dps.