There’s been some brouhaha in the blogosphere recently about the role of DPS classes in 5 mans. Are they just supposed to obediently follow the tank, should they be given more consideration, does the healer regard them as nothing more than useless mana-sinks? Really it’s the sort of thing I don’t think we’re going to be talking about any more once the expansion hits, at least not for a year or so, because we’re resetting the gear curve and things are going to be hard again.
That’s my theory, see: ease of content is promoting an attitude of “I can do it all myself, what do I need these other four losers for?” even in basically decent players. How many stories have you heard of a tank-and-healer out-dpsing the three dpsers – and laughing at them? Or the hunter who did 12k, pulled the boss off on himself, but got the pet to tank it so it was fine?
In less than a month we’ll be back to the old dance, where everyone had to know his part and follow it. But for now, here’s some thoughts. First, from my uber-geared-healer side: Shut up and follow the tank. That’s what I’m doing. Maybe he’s nuts and pulling three groups at once (Hi Reversion love) or takes forever to pull just one, or is going some really non standard way – I once had a tank go RIGHT in Nexus, can you believe it?
But he is standing between me and nasty big things with teeth and curses and I will let him do that. If you stick near us, you’ll get heals. I throw them at anyone who is in range. If you aren’t? If you’re on your own optimal path, or see some side path you think needs exploring? Don’t expect me with you. This is for your own good.
No, really. See, when you pull more than you can handle, you’ll die. If I’m there, maybe I can keep you alive. Maybe I can’t. Either way the mobs are going to attack me too. Then I die. Then we have a long run back.
However, if you die nicely where you are, maybe the tank and I will come and rez your butt. Heck, I might even innervate you if you’re a mana using class. I won’t need that spell for myself until Cataclysm.
See, there’s only one of me. Even if I could guaranteed keep you and me alive – what happens to the tank in the meantime? Or the other two dpsers? There’s four of you. Assuming you all come into the instance and run in different directions, I can only be with one of you at a time.
Now, the other side of things. This weekend I ran a Deadmines on my level 20 hunter alt. She’s heirloomed up, she has two different pets to choose from, she kills things so fast it ain’t funny. I get a group: there’s a priest healing and a druid tanking. There’s also a paladin and a shaman.
The druid goes tearing along like you expect. Then he gets to the room with the first boss. Somehow everything gets pulled at once (no it wasn’t me doing it) and he dies. I switch my pet to growling, keep aggro off the healer, the healer keeps us up, we finish, we rez the tank, who says something really dismissive to the healer. And then the tank rolls Need on the cloth gloves that just dropped, that the priest rolled on.
The priest asks the druid not to roll on intellect cloth. The druid says, and I kid you not, “I use mana too”. And then again criticizes the priest’s healing.
I chime in to say that intellect is spellpower, now, and a tank doesn’t need it. I get told to “shut up huntard” and asked whether I know how to druid tank. I refuse to play this epeen-waving game and we continue.
The druid now is in cat form. He stays in cat form the rest of the instance. The paladin throws Righteous Fury up and soaks a lot of aggro, I keep my pet ready to growl things off me if I can. However, I’m doing so much damage that basically every mob runs over and beats on me.
The healer does an amazing job and I don’t die, but my damage is now terrible because, well, I’m a hunter and all these things won’t stay at range. So now the tank starts mocking me. I point out how if he was doing his job I could do mine. “Learn 2 hunter” is his reply.
What exactly should I do? Feign Death? Don’t have it. Freezing trap? Don’t have it. Misdirect? Don’t have it. Disengage? Don’t have it.
At some point we finally get out of combat long enough that the priest is able to initiate a vote kick, reason “ninjaing loot”. I vote yes. The vote fails.
“Stop being loot whores” is what one of the other two dps say. I sigh. The group continues.
This is the incredible thing to me. The healer is being mocked, when his skills are actually above average. He’s not getting most of his loot. He’s dealing with inconsiderate, jerkish people. Me? I would have sat down and not gone any farther, or let the tank die, or something. But he didn’t.
As a low level dpser, I had two choices: drop group or keep putting up with this crap. I stayed. Maybe I should have dropped but at that point I was rolling need on spell drops so I could give them to the priest. It felt like I’d be abandoning a comrade in a pit of suck to leave now. So I shut up and followed the tank.
On thinking about it, I am depressed but think it was still the best choice. It was that or leave, and it didn’t really violate my principles enough for me to leave in a snit. What I didn’t do was head off on my own and kill something I’d decided needed killing, because that wasn’t my job and because that would have made it harder for the healer, who at that point was the only person in the instance I thought was innocent of blame. Even though the tank was wrong and he sucked, I could only have made the situation worse by independent action, not better.
But I don’t think I’m going into lowbie dungeons without at least Reversion again. Two of us makes a powerful force against stupidity.
Still, I think all of us need to steal a motto from somewhere else. I’d suggest “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You”, but man, that one gets harder all the time. Maybe “First, Do No Harm” would work?
Once did nexus baclwards just to do something a little different :)
But seriously, how hard is it??? In 5 mans, I set focus on the tank (come on people, click on the tank and type /focus). I mean how hard is that? Same goes for los pulls… Then I have a second target key that simply targets the target of the focused toon. Tank chooses a target, and that’s who I target. simple. Until of course, the tank starts randomly switching targets during the fight… then it becomes somewhat harder to keep up.
Yeah, and right now the bear tank method of keeping aggro on multiple mobs is “tab target like crazy” so you’ll get that with Reversion, I think Cruel was unhappy about that the other day! Hah.
I think Cruel is happiest when he’s the one doing the tanking. :p
I usually just target the first mob the tank does and focus fire it. If I creep up too much on omen, I tab to a new target. So far it hasn’t been an issue, Kar rarely runs into trouble. Then again, part of that may be that I’ve always been a single target mage at heart. I never got into the whole aoe-fest of Wrath and am not sad to see it go.
I wish I had something the right level to run with you guys. Three of us would make it impossible for a vote kick to not pass. I’ll be rolling a druid, lock, and shaman in a few weeks here though, so soon enough maybe I’ll be caught up. :p
Oh, and LOL @ hi Reversion love. Pulling one group at a time is boring!
Hey, let’s coordinate alts, maybe. We’re talking about out goblin/worgen alts… I know it’ll be a shammy for my goblin but not sure about my worgen. We can maybe do some runs together… or are all yours going to be on a different server?
My plans are girl dwarf shaman, worgen druid (feral), and worgen lock, all on Hoof.
My Horde alts will be elsewhere. Probably on Drak where my two 80’s are. At some point I may move my hunter over there as well, but not right away. Too much to do Alliance side to worry about it.
Awesome. I need to make a decision at some point… vaguely tempted to make a worgen druid. A resto/balance druid, of course. I could do a lock though, that was my other possibility. And I’ve been tempted by the dwarf shaman thing myself.. well I still have… let’s see…. 5 slots on Hoof. Even if I’m saving one for bringing my paladin over someday that gives me room to wiggle..
Oh yeah I have a 40 rogue, too. I almost forgot about him. He’s ended up like all my other rogues *cough bank alt cough* but … I wouldn’t be against leveling him if I had people to dungeon with.
hmmm… Reversion has this shaman that’s the same level as my hunter and my brother has a pally in the same range, when we get to 40ish I will have to look you up. Only I think when I hit 60 or so I might swap in my DK bank alt, I kind of want to try dk tanking.
Some friends and I are dealing with end of expansion blues by leveling up some (gasp! Alliance!) lowbies (our mains are Horde) and three of us did Gnomeregan the other night with a pally tank who was skipping all the side tunnels which we wanted to grab (are we not there for xps?) for quests and loot. When we tried to talk to him and he kept going without saying anything, we watched him pull a group and die (the disc priest stopped healing and then the rogue and I, a hunter, finished off the rest after the pally died). He finally talked to us then and indicated that he was intending to do the quests/optional boss but as soon as he was rezzed, continued heading past the tunnel without going into it. So we went into the tunnel and did it without him. We were unable to vote kick him until close to the very end because he stayed in combat and once he realized we weren’t with him, kept himself alive. It was very frustrating to realize that our choices were to follow the idiot and deprive ourselves of loot, not follow the idiot while he killed stuff out of range from us and deprive ourselves of loot, or drop group and accept the debuff.
So even with three of you, you can still be dragged along by idiots. The best solution is to be the tank, unfortunately.
I had a similar experience with a tank not talking. I was healing a pally tank in a lowbie instance and she did not have a shield. I requested she get a shield several times but there was zero response until I let her die once. Then all of a sudden it was like her chat started working again. Letting someone die does not always solve the problem but it does wake them up and get their attention.
I haven’t done a low level dungeon in a pug group is what seems like forever. This story makes me glad that I haven’t.
They can be really really nasty. You get really bad players, really stupid players, players who think they are all that and a bag of chips because they have an alt who downed the Lich King, people who have no idea how to play their class, people who think a dungeon at 40 is the same as a dungeon at 80…
If you go in alone, it’s nasty. Go with a friend and it’s not too bad. Usually two competent friendly players can cooperate to make a run good for all involved.
But there’s a reason why most our our pairs of alts are healer/tank pairs.
I’m still tempted by the idea of a gnome priest…
:)
I’m sure you have to admit that one of the reasons you stayed is that you’re a blogger and drama makes in interesting post. My concern is that ever-increasing blog posts about jerky players creates yet more jerky players with knee-jerk responses to potentially jerky actions by others.
If I find a truly jerky player in a pug, I first give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe I misunderstood if at all possible. If it continues, I try to kick or otherwise call them out as gently as I can. Then drop group unless I’ve made an ally of another player like you did.
Having an ally against a jerky player is really the most fun you can have in a random dungeon IMO.
I loved that you needed on cloth to give to the healer.
Oh, yeah, the blog and the whole “how bad could this possibly get” thing. Unfortunately I didn’t win any of the drops and while I explained what I was doing, I think some of them just thought I was being part of the ninja-loot-thing.
[…] Shut Up And Follow The Tank: Analogue over at Looking For More says that both healers and DPS should be happy to follow the tank blindly in an instance. Wait, before you get the pitchforks out, go read why. Her post is very grounded. It’s from her point of view of both a healer talking to DPSers and as her recent experience being a DPS in a group where things went a bit haywire (largely because of a nitwibbler of a tank). […]
” I once had a tank go RIGHT in Nexus, can you believe it?”
Oh heck, I did this once and you would not believe the amount of bitching from the group telling me that I was doing it wrong :)
Yeah… the whole “You CAN get there from here” thing seems to stump people.
My biggest problem comes while raiding with multiple tanks… Even with a clearly defined main tank, it seems that more often than not, the off tanks have the mobs we’re supposed to hit. Then i just get all cunfuzzled! But is it really that hard to follow a tank? Why does it always seem like the only ones hitting the skull are just me and a tank? Or on a los pull, why am i standing all by my lonesome around the corner while everyone else is right out in the open having all the fun? Why does it make me feel like i’m doing things all wrong?
I love to read blogs/posts like this.
The hunter experience you just had is pretty much universal for straight dps types.
I have raided as a hunter through BC and Wrath. Frankly I got used to the grief until most of our guild dpsers went shaman, druid or paladin around Ulduar. I wondered why mages all of the sudden wanted to be Enhance/Resto Shaman…. Then I rolled a healer of each class… the experience was eye opening to say the least.
I can count on one hand the negative comments I have had as a healer. It’s literally less than 5. I used to get 5 verbal abuses PER INSTANCE when Wrath Heroics started. I assumed that this was irritation with new mechanics or what not.
But it’s really just one simple fact…
People are Jerks to DPS… BECAUSE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT.
Queue up as DPS 20 min wait. Queue up as Tank insta-run. Tanks and Heals are more important and in greater demand for instances. Straight DPS are the underclass of WOW and that may always be the case. Easy solo, fun leveling but just another joe on raids.
I would have left at the Huntard comment myself…
Ya gotta have class pride for all the EJs out there right Ado?