Been reading some other blogs and I guess I am a jerk when I heal. I say ‘gogogo’. It is another way of telling the tank ‘Hi, I am in good shape. My mana is fine. Feel free to continue pulling.’
I also aggro other groups on occasion. I don’t do it if the tank is having trouble holding aggro. I don’t do it if I can’t HEAL through it, and I don’t do it if I expect the pack is going to two shot me. I just heal-tank them until the tank shows up. Yeah. I am challenging the tank and pushing him to be better. If they say anything about it, they usually say that. Or they say how hardcore the run is. Some tanks like a challenge. I don’t do it all the time. And if I mess up and wipe the group I apologize. I will even pass on a few rolls to give the rest a few more G for repairs.
I play tank and heals and dps in pretty equal amounts. I know there is a fine line between being a jerk and not. For example if I pull three groups on my bear, pop cooldowns so I am easy to heal and we AOE the crud out of them, nothing wrong with that. If I was a failtank and simply aggroed two groups and then cussed out the healer for letting me drop I would be a moron. I don’t do that. I do pull two, and often more. I think my record is 4, or two groups and a boss. Depends on the boss though. Still, it is usually my wife healing me so no one can complain. And If I screw up and get the group killed I say ‘sorry’ and I pull more sanely. This is not being a jerk. This is trying to get a run that is not insanely boring to a 5.4+K geared tank specced and gemmed for ICC. I don’t even need heals for any single pull in most instances. So why would it be rude to a healer if I pulled two?
If I am healing and pull a second group back to the tank, what is the issue? No really… if we don’t die, he had no trouble getting aggro, I had no trouble healing, and the dps was all good, what is the issue? If I did it when the tank was AFK or not ready then yeah, that would make me a jerk and I would deserve the boot. But if he is downing the last on in a group and another group comes over, no biggy. I play a tank, I know what groups to aggro and what groups to stay the heck away from.
Oh, I am more of a jerk than that, I also complain about DPS. Yup, I sure do. If I get in a run with some guy pulling 700 dps I say, ‘hey buddy, you should read some blogs or something because you should be able to do more.’ Is that jerky? Some people thinks so. Other people in the group will be all, ‘his gear is bad, lighten up.’ To everyone that thinks that, FYI, I can do 1200 DPS on my hunter naked with just a bow. That is right, in my undies. So don’t tell me that 700 DPS on a rogue with a mix of quest greens and blues is ok. It isn’t. If I let that rogue know (as I did Sunday night) that he should use some finishing moves on occasion because melee and fan of knives should not make up over half of his 700 dps I don’t think that is being a jerk. If everyone is too nice to ever tell him that that is unacceptable how will he ever know not to?
Take the dps warrior I ran with on Saturday. I had to tell him a couple times to stop using Heroic Strike. If someone can’t figure out what they are doing wrong on their own then someone HAS to tell them. I mean, I think it is pretty clear that if the guy doing 3 digits of damage keeps pulling aggro of a solid AOE tanker there must be SOMETHING not right.
But I am an even bigger jerk that just all that. Yeah I even check gear scores! *gasp* I know, total sociopath, right? Not just that but I will tell people that 1100 dps is NOT ok for 4k gear. I am nice about it though. I will suggest reading blogs and such. I will even add that doing that is how I get better when I think I should be getting more out of a class. Oddly, most people either say nothing or thank me. My wife and I use GS to judge people all the time. But not in a vacuum and not before the start of the run. Nope. We wait for a few pulls and compare GS to DPS and often even check their rotation with the recount logs.
Oh it gets worse. Sometimes I even link recount. Or dare to complain about their underranked spells.
I don’t kick often though. No, I usually just try to offer some advice. Gevlon (http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/), rip up my ‘jerk’ card and stamp ‘social’ on my forehead. Sometimes I do kick though. If someone is really lagging the dps meter, had gear that is way better than his performance, ignores the 9 down ranked abilities that rankwatch is spamming him about and only seem to use 3 abilities in the recount log… yeah those people are likely to see the boot. But we are pretty forgiving. If someone even tries to fix their down ranks and takes constructive criticism with a ‘ok, thanks. I will look into that.’ then they get a pass. Everyone was bad at some point. Show me a glimmer of willingness or ability to learn and you are in. Ask for real advice and I will give you an earful. Come across as genuinely in need of practice and gear and I will invite you on a few runs. And, if you are getting serious performance out of ‘been 80 for an hour’ gear then you will get thanks and praise.
Yeah I judge. But I don’t do it in a vacuum. Some people DO suck. Pretending they don’t will just mean we are stuck carrying them through Cata heroics a year from now, or a year after than when they finally catch back up.
I find that, unless it’s a question of failing the instance or not, it’s a waste of time to offer advice in 5 mans. A 5 man takes, like, what, 15-20 minutes? You don’t have time to say anything clear and useful in that time frame, besides, in a 5-man, you should be killing stuff, not chatting.
If I see a terrible pally, I might suggest using a different seal or remind a tank to put up Righteous Fury, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. Anything more complex than that and they:
1) won’t understand or
2) won’t care.
Since most heroics can be pretty much 2 manned with a tank and healer nowadays, I don’t see the point in wasting my time and energy giving pointless advice.
Mostly the advice is pretty streamlined though. Things like “Use more finishing moves” or “you know you have ret pally shield, right”. Lately I usually keep it to “your dps should be higher. go read blogs”. That does not take any time and if only a few people take the advice then we will all be better off.
On our mains we usually que as tank and heals. And we have great gear. So we very often get some really low GS dpsers. We don’t nit pick every little thing. If someone is doing 75% of their potential dps that is not an issue. If someone is doing under 50% what their gear score indicates there is a serious problem with the spec or rotation (or itemization).
I just assume that if someone doesn’t care enough to go read blogs on their own, they’re not going to care enough to do it if someone tells them too. But years of being in a casual guild, trying to teach rogues and hunters and mages to outdps the healers probably ruined my faith in people, hehe.
I think it’s the (futile?) hope that giving advice will eventually raise the collective IQ of the LFG system. And because it’s either that or Reversion and I sitting there mocking the moron. And eventually The Nomster is going to pick up on it when we mock people like that and then we’ll have fun… “Mommy what does ‘total idiot noob’ mean?”
Haha! In a few weeks, you’ll catch him calling his playbuddies “total idiot noobs” when they get into arguments.
Tank pulling more mobs as long as I’m ok on mana? Perfect.
Healer pulling mobs from me when I’m tanking? One warning and then he can go tank him/herself if s/he’s so impatient.
Everyone’s got a role here and the healer’s isn’t to pull my mobs.
Rules change when the tank and healer actually know each other and agree on the course of action, but I would still hate for any healer (or DPS) to pull for me (except death gripping casters).
And teaching on LFG? No chance. I can never find a non-snarky way to put it, so I just shut up. If a player’s bad enough to make me rant, it will be useless anyway.
The whitboad gnome clearly agrees 😀