To the heirloomed out warrior in the Dead Mines,
Thank you for your critical analysis of my tanking ability. For future reference a lvl 16 paladin does not have many tools to work with. Also note that if you are in the next room spamming thunder clap while the tank and heals are both drinking there is a chance the tank will not be able to ‘hold aggro for sh**’ as you so helpfully put it. You might also note that you did a lot better job tanking for us in the second half. I respectfully submit this had more to do with your party including the formerly tanking paladin that switched to backup healing you… a lot. On the other hand the party I had to work with included all the same characters except in place of the paladin (me) I had a warrior running ahead and pulling things the whole time (you). In light of this I am doubtful the difference in outcomes was related to your tanking ability (non-existent). My healer informs me she spent the second half of the instance healing herself, a lot.
To the gogogo hunter in SM graveyard,
I appreciate your eagerness to take a very short instance and turn it into a slightly shorter one by running ahead and soloing things. I was flattered by the request to run another instance after that one. I am sorry if you did not understand my response of ‘not with you’ followed by dropping group. Allow me to clarify. Yes I was talking to you and I would rather solo the place than run anything you ever again. Hope that clears up any confusion.
To the party in SM library who I ran with over lunch,
I know I directed my ‘you suck’ before I dropped at the druid who was pulling 9.7% of the overall damage. To be fair you all sucked. Yes, even the Lock who was ‘topping the meters’ at 25% of the damage done. You were all agroing things I was not on, running away from the tank, pulling things while the healer and I were drinking and generally playing like idiots. My Shaman I know it is very impressive that you can climb the bookshelves there near the end. I respectfully submit your chain lightnings work just as well from the ground floor and you have time to get more of them off if you don’t climb things. Mister Lock I would like to suggest that calling out ‘heal my pet’ when it is around the corner in the next room and the healer is out of mana is probably not going to get much of a response. I noticed you changed pets to a voidwalker after that and it stopped dying. I also noticed you continued to target your pet for things I was clearly not attacking. Nice try but you fail. I hope you all don’t think me arrogant to say that as a tank specced paladin with no heirlooms and being the second to lowest level in the party I probably should not have been doing 48% of the damage. No mister druid, the final boss sheeping you twice did not explain your 9.7% of the overall damage.
To the other 5 parties I played with in the last 24 hours,
Thanks. You killed things, mostly were not jerks, and generally played like you had a couple brain cells. Thanks.
I must add that FailWarrior in Deadmines followed up his promotion to tank by running to two groups, sort-of aggroing them, more or less killing them, and then running to the next group. Followed by this conversation:
Me: IDIOT
Me: I have NO MANA
Him: WTF how do you run out of mana lolz?
Me, mentally, sadly not said, “Because you didn’t actually TANK those groups. You let the group eat a ton of damage, and I was going nuts trying to bubble and save everyone, ran out of mana, now I’m drinking, and oh, I’m sorry you’re not dying on those trash there, gosh heirlooms are overpowered. You suck.”
Ahh the joys of low level PUGs! I think everyone should be forced to play a tank, and take some kind of Tanking Proficiency Test. If they pass that, they get to be a healer, and if they pass the Healing Proficiency Test, then and only then are they allowed to DPS.
Stories like these are exactly why I continue to 2- and 3-manned dungeons.
The travel time to the dungeon is a much smaller pain than the frustration which almost inevariably arises when in 5-man go-go-go group.
As an added bonus, you get to apply CC, and sometimes chain-CC’ing a mob! Fun Stuff.
Actually last night we twomanned Gnomer and it took so much longer than other runs we leveled about half as fast
That was even with 5 quests to turn in. Even one decent DPSer would have made things much better. Of couse if you factor in how long it takes to manually GET to most instances then the math gets even more against undermanning runs. It is too bad the system does not allow for it.
Congratulations on 2-manning Gnomer!
My experience is the XP/hour is about 50-70% of normal when 2-manning dungeons, 90-110% of normal when 3-manning dunegons, and 110-130% of normal when 4-manning dungeons with friends.
The wife and I prefer to 2- and 3-man dungeons because we like the challenge and we are in no hurry to get to 80.
And once at 80, we do stupid stuff like 3-manning Heigan, Loetheb, Flame Levithian, and Onyxia with friends just as crazy as I am (but not completly crazy as we do bring a 3rd).
It’s not a playstyle for everyone but it is certainly an option if you are looking for a challenge.
Ah, I love a good fail-PUG story! I had never seriously tried tanking before this year but recently started levelling my baby Pally solely by tanking using the random dungeon finder. It’s been great fun, and I’ve been lucky enough to not have any really bad groups. There have been noticeably fewer of the gogogo crowd that I encountered a lot when DPS-ing with my main last year.
Of course, you still get the odd warrior who insists on charging into combat before you’ve had a chance to get solid aggro or hunters who will rip aggro from you at the drop of the hat, but I try to take these things in my stride. Unless you have a group of several really inept players you will invariably clear the instance at this level anyway, even if – heaven forbid! – you wipe a couple of times. It probably gets worse when you get to the higher levels (say lvl 50 plus) as that’s when you really need to know about group dynamics and teamwork.