Apparently I Have Trouble Making Up My Mind
So… you know how I wrote about learning to tank on my baby paladin, and then a few days later gave up due to the poisonous jerks I encountered in LFG? Well it turns out that I’m a bit of a flip-flopper.
M paladin is still a tank. I’ve thought things over for the past few days, talked to a lot of people, and realized that I still really want to learn how to tank. I want to learn it on the way up, not when I get to 80.
So how am I going to deal with the jackasses? I’m going to do my best to not let them get under my skin. My new philosophy is that if they aren’t going to treat me like I’m a real person, and worthy of respect and politeness, then I’m not going to treat them like a real person either. Mobs in WOW yell nasty things at us all the time, and it doesn’t bother us. If a player says something nasty, then they are just another enemy that needs to be dealt with. I’ll either ignore them, let them die, try to kick them, or leave if they are going to hinder things too much. When someone says something rude, they are no longer a part of my team.
If I have a moment of weakness and let someone get to me, then I’ll just leave. I will probably mope and/or rage about it for awhile, but that is life. People are idiots. A little bit of a thicker skin wouldn’t be a bad thing for me to have.
I tanked quite a few instances over the weekend, and each run went fine. In almost every one there was an overzealous player or someone who’s pet went a little wild and pulled more mobs then I was interested in pulling. It was annoying, but survivable. When the extra mobs get pulled, I hit Consecrate and taunt if necessary. There was one “helpful” warrior who would would run ahead and grab more mobs (after he decided I hadn’t pulled enough), and bring them back to my Consecrate. There was also a healer who decided not to wait for us to loot Houndmaster Loksey and ran on to pull a few mobs. I find I can handle this stuff if I just laugh and mutter under my breath. I’m sure Jardal will eventually get annoyed with my continuous “omg did he really just do that?” comments.
All my healers were competent, and no one insulted anyone. I’m becoming far more confident, and willing to charge in when the healer says “pull the whole room”. Having 8-10 mobs beating on me is such a rush – I feel invincible 
. I can understand why some people love tanking. I can’t wait until I can get some better mana-generating abilities, as even judging wisdom leaves me running on fumes after a few pulls.
I went from 33- 36 today in Scarlet Monastery. Instance leveling is incredibly quick, and the queue for a tank + dps is almost nonexistent.
I’m still leveling my priest on the other side, and she’s roughly at the same level. I’ve encountered quite a few horrendous tanks that make me feel really good about my tanking skills. Like the Pally tank that decided mana wasn’t important enough for him to bother with. On each group, he would hit one mob with Judgement of Wisdom, and do absolutely nothing else. I’m pretty sure Jardal’s shaman tanked most of that instance.
Now that I’ve decided to stick it out, I’ve been researching some tanking addons to use. Here’s a few I’d recommend:
ThreatPlates
ThreatPlates is a theme for the TidyPlates addon. It has threat-reactive nameplates can change color, size, and alpha depending on aggro level. You can select Tank mode or DPS mode. In the Tank mode, the default behavior is that nameplates are green and small when the mobs are aggroed on you, yellow when you’re beginning to lose them, and red when they are not on you. In DPS mode the behavior is inversed. It is very configurable – you can change things threat threshold, scaling, and alpha. When you switch specs it actually can switch mode for you, which is pretty cool. I don’t know if I could tank without this addon. I know there are other similar nameplate addons that people like such as caelNameplates, but ThreatPlates works nicely for me.
LuckyCharms2
LuckyCharms2 is one of many addons that enables easy marking of targets. It has a scaleable, configureable bar that has the mark icons on it, as well as a ready check button. You click the mob you want to mark, and then hit the respective mark on the bar. I haven’t had the opportunity to use it much as most groups seem to want to faceroll through the instances, but I think eventually it will come in handy.
Final note: Don’t tank angry. Those antics the DPS pull will not be amusing.
I found tanking gets less stessful after 40, less squishy and the asshats have been kicked enough to change their attitude.
Though of course having said this, my next instance will consist of 4 asshats that like to pull more than I can handle.
Even at 80, you’ll get folks who feel that the tank isn’t moving fast enough and they’re just going to pull for you. You have 2 options – you can let them die and risk crazy aggro afterward, or you can try to pick them up.
If you’re overgeared (like I am for heroics) it’s usually just easier to pick them up. If you aren’t… let them die and do what you can and pretty soon they’ll learn not to do that, or they’ll leave.
I’m so glad to hear that you haven’t given up! Heaven knows we need more competent tanks out there.
When you feel that there are too many fools around, just remind yourself that even in a group with one dps who makes you crazy, you’re forgetting that there are three others who are quietly not pissing you off… and the majority of your groups have nobody at all that you can’t deal with… and that makes quite a good proportion of bearable people, if you think about it.
We just notice the crappy ones more.
Welcome to the get beat on club. Developing a thick skin helps with pug tanking alot. Best aspect to PuG tanking is that when you get to run with friends/guildies its so much easier and you just get to ride out the run. Plate makes life so much easier I cant remember when you would get what an do much has changed it wouldnt matter.
Best of lucjk and I may see ya in a random if I can get my 20 toon caught up to ya.
You won a victory already, there and then when you decided “They can’t get to me. They can’t get inside me.”
People notice these things, it’s like we all have radiate an aura of “pick on me”, “is not to be trifled with”, “couldn’t care less for your opinion” and you just went from the former to the latter. It’s the same as the school bullys, it’s no fun picking on someone who doesn’t care and/or puts you in a world of pain, should you try. I think you’ll notice a lot less griefing from other players since they quickly see you’re not suspectible to it.
In case you didn’t know, you can actually bind the raid symbols to keys through the WoW keybinding interface.
I use F5-F8 for marking for example.
Yup, I did know this. Unfortunately I play on my laptop, and the F keys control hardware features like sound, screen brightness, etc. I’d have to hit the function key and then the F key which to me is just as awkward as clicking and marking from the addon.
Glad you got back to it.
My little project alt is not moving along quite as fast as yours but I can safely say I am having a blast tanking my way up.
I hit 20 on Friday evening, caught a port to Dal courtesy of guildies, and commenced to pugging. Four instances later I am sitting at 23.
I am finding this so much fun. If it keeps up like that I may even consider making the Pally my main.
I’ve tanked, healed, and dpsed just about every instance in the game, so I can say with utter certainty… asshats are everywhere…
If you want to know how you’re doing as a tank, ask the healer. Don’t listen to the dps. If a dps tells you to pull more and your healer can’t keep up, you wipe. If your healer tells you to pull more then they don’t keep up, it’s their fault. If you healer is feeling overworked and running out of mana, help them out by slowing down. This should go both ways, too; healers and tanks have got to communicate. Dps… well… go f yourselves. More pew pew, less QQ. If you pull aggro off of one or two mobs and die, the tank messed up. If you pull aggro and die in a fight with 5 or 6 mobs, you f’d up.
So, next time you’re tanking and a dps bitches about you going to slow or how they keep pulling aggro on you, vote to kick them. After sitting through the wait time that dps get for random pugs, they’ll learn to stfu. And if they don’t, you’ll probably out-level them and won’t have to put up with them.