Cata and dungeon queues are insane... share your horrible tank experiences

silverleaf

silverleaf

New Member
I don't understand why, but there seems to be a REAL lack of tanks. This has led to lots of mean behavior on the part of some tanks... to the point of kicking anyone who is not up to their standards. In fact, people are paying 50g for a tank on my server. Must be making a lot of moneys :D

The bad side (for everyone else) is the problem of tanks ragequiting or being incredirude. And when they phail, instead of apologizing and moving on, they just leave and join a next raid. But that ain't the worst I've seen. There are some who leave in the thick of battle just to let the whole party wipe.

Also, longer queues have made people a little less tolerant of newbs. Slack a little or push out noticeably less DPS than others and you're out, or failing to bow to the demands of some prominent party members (usually the tank with his group of friends).
This is something I'm personally guilty of (did it on a whim), kicked a 3k DPS hunter. Something I feel really guilty about now thinking about it. It's not that he's bad, it's just the rest of us are overgeared and pushing out 6k each.

Share your horrible tank experiences below :eek:
 
Sorry not really understanding what you're getting at...? The problem is even with the new xpac, while the total number of players increased, it should not have much change on the tank:dps ratio.
 
Last edited:
I shouldn't comment when I'm tired. :) I'll try to sum in up in a few points.

1) Wrath babies are bbbad have this concept of easy heroics and dungeons that you can just all walk in and crush it. Cata is not like this (yet). There are countless threads on the forums of people complaining that content is just too hard.
That being the case you will in no doubt have more frustrated kids running around on your server.

2) New Xpac = Less Tanks For some strange reason people don't level/acquire new prot gear nor do they want to be the first one to tank an instance (see point 1) as they may not want to embaress themselves into oblivion because they are still in "wrath easy" mode. Which is just silly because everyone is learning new stuff so it shouldn't be a big deal.

3) Bad groups are bad. This is kind of an age old adage. Play with friends/guildies. Problemo solved.
 
Also, the guilds with the good tanks are gonna be running those dungeons as groups rather than just queuing by themselves. At least that's been my experience with the guild I'm in so far. It's pretty much become an unspoken rule that if a tank is gonna queue, they say so in guild chat and 9/10 of the time they get a full group and don't have to pick up anyone else...


Also, level a tank. At least for me, that explained a LOT as to why there aren't more of them. Of the three holy, tank, and dps, tank is by far my least favorite.
 
Last edited:
Reading threads like these remind me that no one else in the known world plays WoW like I do, apparently. My top priorities in 7 days of WoW were exploring drastically changed areas (e.g. Auberdine) and rolling new Gnome and Troll toons to check out the starting areas. (On a related note: I really like the new Troll starting area, awesomely bad faux-Jamaican accents and all.)

If a game is this much frustration, then why are you playing? Or rather, why are you playing it in a way that frustrates you?

If it were me, I'd find something more fun to do while waiting for the game population to re-establish equilibrium. Or whatever passes for equilibrium in WoW.

/shrug

But this is coming from the guy who quit questing and running instances at level 48 to run battlegrounds and build a small fortune on the auction house.
 
Tek7 said:
But this is coming from the guy who quit questing and running instances at level 48 to run battlegrounds and build a small fortune on the auction house.
Click to expand...

and by so doing, never got to experience the awesomeness of wotlk and cata content. the Hall of Stone, Hall of Lightning instances, and what little I saw of Ulduar raid was absolutely fantastic artistic design in WoTLK. Vashj'ir and Deepholm areas are also totally worth the long trip to 80+ content.
 
Elader Arkon said:
and by so doing, never got to experience the awesomeness of wotlk and cata content. the Hall of Stone, Hall of Lightning instances, and what little I saw of Ulduar raid was absolutely fantastic artistic design in WoTLK. Vashj'ir and Deepholm areas are also totally worth the long trip to 80+ content.
Click to expand...
WoW past level 40 was too much work and not enough fun for my tastes. But that's me and that was WoW before Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclsym. I'm sure Blizzard's improved the game since then.

All that being said, I'm not really interested in playing WoW again unless my wife plays with me. I had 7 days of free game time I played 4, maybe 5 hours of WoW in that week. With no job and a baby on the way in February, I don't see myself returning to WoW any time soon, if ever. But it's just as well. Paying $15 a month for a game has a tendency to make you feel like you HAVE to play it to get your money's worth and I already play too many other games regularly.

TL;DR: I just don't have the time, money, or inclination to come back to WoW.

But for those who play the game and enjoy it in moderation: Have at it. I hope you have a blast. :)
 
All this talk about WoW kind of makes me sad that I currently don't currently have the money to buy Cataclysm and play. Tanking was actually my favorite role in the game, so I loved it when Wrath first came out and I was one of the few good tanks available. I leveled both a Paladin and a Druid to 80 and used them both as main raid tanks for a while.

As for leveling a tank, it really isn't that bad to level a tank CLASS, but you definitely shouldn't use a tank spec for leveling in most cases. With the random dungeon finder and the ability to dual spec, you really don't need to level in tank spec. Get in queue for a dungeon and level in your DPS spec until you get in, then you can switch to tank mode.

WoW past level 40 was too much work and not enough fun for my tastes. But that's me and that was WoW before Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclsym. I'm sure Blizzard's improved the game since then.
Click to expand...

I can certainly understand not liking it back in regular WoW, but the game has changed a lot since then. These days leveling is really easy and from what I've heard of Cataclysm, a lot of the lower level areas have been changed. Leveling to max is certainly less of a bother than it used to be, and I personally loved the gameplay at max level, so I would say it was worth it. That said, I can certainly understand not wanting to pay for it in your case, tek. You do plenty of other stuff already. :)
 
Ah so people ain't feeling confident enough to tank yet? It is definitely harder, though I only played wrath for 2 weeks before cata. Just bought game, play on PvP server frostmourne but won't be too active on it. Actually, bought a long time ago but didn't get 'into' it and it ended up a waste of subs. Just resubbed and bought all xpacks.

1-60 is pretty easy and dungeon queues arn't insane... or at least not when I was leveling. Cata dungeons, we wipe a whole lot more now. My guild is small, we're PvPers, not raiders so I have to rely on randoms... which can phail so badly at times.
 
The confidence thing may be part of it. Tanking is typically harder than other roles, which is actually part of why I liked it so much. The ability to quickly get into groups for instances was also a nice perk of tanking, especially since a good tank can make a huge difference in the success of the group.

There's really nothing more crippling to an instance group than a bad tank. A bad healer is also a big deal, but groups can usually get away with having a bad DPS as long as the others can compensate. That might be another reason why not as many people want to tank at the beginning of an expansion. They don't want to be the scapegoat if the instance doesn't work. In fact, another factor in the lack of tanks might be that the good tanks know they can be selective and get into dungeons with players that they know most of the time rather than having to join a random group.
 
Last edited:
Grimbeorn said:
In fact, another factor in the lack of tanks might be that the good tanks know they can be selective and get into dungeons with players that they know most of the time rather than having to join a random group.
Click to expand...
This makes perfect sense. Why would you play with strangers that will likely verbally assault you if you fail when you have the option of playing with people who will forgive mistakes much more easily?

And it also explains why I never leveled a healer class past 10 in WoW even though my main character in Dark Age of Camelot was a Troll Shaman. The player community in DAoC was, on average, more mature than the player community in WoW. (It also helped that I knew how to play my class and I ran instances with people who knew how to play their classes.)
 
However, I'm always nice to the tank and heals, even when they are terrible. Fact is their shortage has led to people treating them like gold. And theres no way I'm going to risk being thrown back in the queue after he leaves.

A 'strategy' someone taught me was to get a tank/heal CAPABLE CLASS to roll as that, then kick a random DPS and have that 'tank' who can't tank re roll as DPS. Skips the queue but I will never be desperate enough to be so mean. He just said I was crazy.

The fact that there are people willing to resort to such means, when they know all too well the person they kicked probably waited 40 minutes too, just shows the community's desperation at this stage.

I mainly quested to 85, and got world explorer and stuff. Was hard, but when it is vacation and you got 16 hours a day to play every day, you get there... eventually.
 
Last edited:
For the 'share your horrible tank experiences' part of this thread, yesterday the guild I'm in was doing heroics, we had three priests (one holy and two shadow) and a mage. Only thing we needed was a tank.

We queue, and get one (apparently groups with healers get tanks faster because we never had to wait more than three minutes) and enter Throne of Tides... where the tank had never been before. That's all cool, one of the guys explained the fight and how to do them. Get to the first boss and wipe, it's all cool, its his first time and it takes a bit to learn these fights well. ...But then he 'dced'.

We then went through four more of the worst tanks I'd ever seen in my time playing WoW. Badly geared is fine (a couple of the so called 'tanks' had just over the same amount of health I had though), but a complete failure to listen and follow advice of people who had clearly been there before and know what they're talking about is ridiculous. They are, truly, WotLK babies. Poor sixth tank though. Soon as he joined he got an earful... Probably what kept him in line. :p

Needless to say, halfway through that dungeon guild vent was not by any stretch of the imagination family friendly. We persevered however, and made it through, with each of us having to jump out and repair only once...
 
Elader Arkon said:
We then went through four more of the worst tanks I'd ever seen in my time playing WoW. Badly geared is fine (a couple of the so called 'tanks' had just over the same amount of health I had though), but a complete failure to listen and follow advice of people who had clearly been there before and know what they're talking about is ridiculous. They are, truly, WotLK babies. Poor sixth tank though. Soon as he joined he got an earful... Probably what kept him in line. :p
Click to expand...
/loads Super Mario Galaxy 2

Man, I don't know how you all do it. It's experiences like that that made me nearly quit playing Brood War online before I founded Tribe of Judah. I guess the frustration is worth it to some...?
 
Tek7 said:
Man, I don't know how you all do it. It's experiences like that that made me nearly quit playing Brood War online before I founded Tribe of Judah. I guess the frustration is worth it to some...?
Click to expand...

Pulling from my Econ 101 class, the benefits outweigh the cost.

I've had some... terrible Pick Up Group (PUGs) experiences when running missions in Guild Wars. People ill-equipped, ill-informed, and ill-prepared. Warriors who try to be a Paladin even though they have the worst Energy regen/pool in the game. Monks who bring all Smite skills even though they said they can heal. People who bring half a skill bar because "i foudn it online. ive yet to try it tho". Or people who rush into groups of enemies only to be swearing because "we ned bettir healrs. u all suck at this gam".

In the off-chance that you get a decent group, you're rewarded not only with in-game numbers (EXP, gold), but the positive feedback that you're team of random strangers accomplished something without a facepalm. And you'll possibly make a friend from it.

OR

You could wait for awesome guildies to come online. :p

While I'm not crazy about tanking like I was in the past (go go 3 years of Shield Crusader in Ragnarok Online!), I still enjoy it in MMOs like LOTRO or WAR when they can make the tank class fun enough.
 
Keero said:
In the off-chance that you get a decent group, you're rewarded not only with in-game numbers (EXP, gold), but the positive feedback that you're team of random strangers accomplished something without a facepalm. And you'll possibly make a friend from it.

OR

You could wait for awesome guildies to come online. :p
Click to expand...
And that's one of the main reasons I founded ToJ 11 years ago: To help make multiplayer online games fun again. There are games I would have uninstalled months ago if I didn't have ToJ members to play with. Left 4 Dead 2 immediately comes to mind.

So I suppose this thread validates and highlights the purpose and value of Tribe of Judah and other Christian gaming groups, even if that wasn't the original purpose or topic.
 
Tek7 said:
/loads Super Mario Galaxy 2

Man, I don't know how you all do it. It's experiences like that that made me nearly quit playing Brood War online before I founded Tribe of Judah. I guess the frustration is worth it to some...?
Click to expand...

social experiences. The reason I keep playing is because stuff like that is a rarity (I've never seen that many bad tanks in a row before) and while it was a terrible run, I did get to know the other people in the party (and guild since it was a guild vent) and share what has become a 'guild moment'. It's these moments I live for in MMOs (well, not this particular one, but moments that are different from the expected norm). I don't ever play to win because it's pretty much impossible to do so, but rather to experience the journey of it all.
 
Elader Arkon said:
social experiences. The reason I keep playing is because stuff like that is a rarity (I've never seen that many bad tanks in a row before) and while it was a terrible run, I did get to know the other people in the party (and guild since it was a guild vent) and share what has become a 'guild moment'. It's these moments I live for in MMOs (well, not this particular one, but moments that are different from the expected norm). I don't ever play to win because it's pretty much impossible to do so, but rather to experience the journey of it all.
Click to expand...
Point well made.

I had some excellent experiences playing Dark Age of Camelot several years back. I still fondly remember venturing out into the Midgard frontier WAY under level and healing the people who were kind enough to let me tag along.

Good times, good times.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top