On Friday night I romped through a couple of instances with my usual PuG tank.
Yo Viking!
He even trekked back from Northrend to help me out… See, puggers will cross the seas and stars to help each other out.
Then it was back to BGs and quests until I got an invite to Blood Furnace. The original DK tank had to go before the run started so another one was recruited.
The Reluctant Tank
Well it was a DPS DK, as a reluctant tank. Don’t get me wrong, he was happy to tank, he just wasn’t sure if he could pull it off.
That was his 1st clear indication to the party to be cautious. It was pretty much unnecessary, most of us measured him over the 1st couple of pulls and worked within his abilities, which were fine.
Most of us…
Not all of us…
There was one, a Ret Pally that was consistently pulling aggro… Every fight. I didn’t mind too much, it gave me something to do, but the DK wasn’t happy. He knew the natural order of things.
Pally was told
See the DK was the tank. He knew he was meant to be the only one getting aggro, the only one getting heals. It wasn’t like he wanted to tank, he had offered the job to the Pally at the beginning of the run.
Over the course of that BF run and into our subsequent Ramparts run, the DK asked the Pally on multiple occasions:
You want to Tank?
No?
Then stop pulling aggro!
DK tells Pally to tank
Just before we got to the 2nd boss in Ramps, just after the pull at the top of the stairs with the Dark Casters, the DK had enough.
Pally, you tank this pull, I’ll be right back.
The Pally jumped in as requested
Now I was healing, spam healing, but the Pally went down. The DK hadn’t gone anywhere though, he was waiting for this moment.
No sooner than my screen lit up red with AGGRO, did it revert to a more serene green as the DK leaped in and took control.
Not surprisingly there were no aggro issues while the Pally was face down on the floor.
Squishy Plate Wearer is Squishy.
As I rezed the Pally I pointed out he was too squishy and I wouldn’t heal if he was tanking. The DK knew this would be the result. My statement was just the completion of his earlier statements.
If you pull aggro, you can tank, you can die.
Leave the aggro Magnet job to the tank!
Back to the DeathKnight
So the DK took over again and there weren’t any more problems over the next few pulls.
Why only the next few pulls?
Because the Pally took his bubble and went home, right before the 2nd boss.
What did we do?
We four manned the last two bosses. Easy peasy single target heals for the most part. No one else pulled aggro, no one died, except the bosses and the mobs that stood between us.
Moral of the story…
- If you pull it, you tank it.
- If you can’t tank it, don’t pull it.
- Let the tank do their job and save on your repair bills.
Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!
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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/10/06/
a-dk-teaches-a-pally-a-lesson/
*sigh* I need to get into a 5 man one of these days…
What do you use to monitor aggro? I just use the % indicator above the mob I’m fighting, but then I’m usually playing the tank/dps guy for the duo I run with, so I don’t have to worry about getting too much aggro. The Shammy I run with is the one that needs to worry if she grabs too much. (but a color indicator for when I start losing it would be a nice preventative)
Speaking of which, my elemental Shammy compadre will occasionally do *something* that just grabs aggro in a flash. She has no clue what it is, but it usually results in 1) a dead shammy, followed shortly by 2) a dead ret-pally… Her usual is to spam chain lightening…(I’m not sure since I’m busy looking for, and then hammering, whatever comes off CD)
Fun post, and instructional (as always)
“I just use the % indicator above the mob I’m fighting”??
I didn’t know that existed…
I use Omen, though to be honest I don’t know when I looked at it last. Since WoLK it has seemed unnecessary (it isn’t, but generally it has been).
That way you get the whole range of people gaining aggro.. like one of those old horse racing games…
Just don’t use it as an indicator of whether someone is alive… my mates always freak out when Gnomeaggedon previously #1 on the hate list suddenly drops right off…
It’s called Invisibility folks!
Re you Shaman woes… Well, I haven’t had a whole lot of experience with Squidly as Ele in instances, just the once. If I remember right, I was pulling a bit of aggro too. The two culprits:
Frost Shock: The I don’t want you tanked by that guy spell… sure they will come to you slowly, but when they get there, they will hit you… hard.
Chain Lightning: Possibly too early in a pull, maybe the chain jumps to one of the mobs with the least tank threat. Not sure what it is, but it isn’t uncommon for a mob to peel off towards me.
Actually.. one thing it might be is bad playstyle on my part… I see the “skull” mob is going to die if I give the 1st bolt to him, so I target another one (knowing the skull will get finished if it chains to it).
Windshear: No, you aren’t pulling aggro with it, but you will reduce it. Get it off as soon as the mob turns from the tank and it should turn right around again.
Hey,
is Squidly of an appropriate level to be healing lil zupa in AV and other such grounds of battle?
My guild disbanded and reformed twice in 3 days and im over it. I am loving PvP on big zupa these days, but perhaps I should jump on the shorty and peel for you!
I’ll start logging on with lil zupa until I finds ya, or perhaps you will find yourself on the wrong end of big zupa’s shatter-combo-o-death
(must remember to make a macro… /target squidly /cast counter spell /cast omg-shatter-combo-o-death…. /dance /teabag)
! and that’s a fact jack !
Hey Zupa!
Not quite…
I’m rocking 67 at the moment, another 60% of a level and I am in Northrend… which means 2.6 levels till I am in the same BG bracket as you.
Just don’t hurry to 80… if you do you will be waiting for me to catch up!
Teabagging is ok… just make it peppermint!
it will leave a better taste in both of our mouths…
Sometimes death is an excellent teacher. I would suggest not telling him to tank, but instead just letting him die and explaining squishiness from there. If he’s ‘tanking’ at your suggestion, that just makes you look like a bad healer.
Oh no, I wouldn’t have told him to tank… and I tried my hardest to keep him up.
This was really the tank’s lesson to give the dps… it just happened that I could support his claim to tankdom by failing to keep the Pally up
He had hit the floor a couple of times before from memory…
But if I kept letting him die it would have been a little obvious.. me with full mana bar humming away quietly to myself… him face down…
I wouldn’t agree more Klepsacovic.
There is a reason that I’m Holy as a main spec and prot as Dual spec, Rets are the new Huntards, there is a lot of them, and 1% of them who understand how to play their class.
I had a ret do the same thing in a heroic like a week ago, funny enough he did the same thing and hearthed away, we continued without him and did heroic HOL in exactly 15 minutes
That % indicator referred to in the first comment sounds like the built in aggro indicator that is part of x-perl unit frames…
just sayin… I could be totally wrong…
Also, Lil Zupa is only level 73 or thereabouts, so I’ll chill back for a bit longer and keep farming honor on Big Zupa, (bought 2 pieces of furious last night coz i was honor capped!)
How long are 3 levels going to take you anyway?
what you doing this weekend?
not sure if there is server downtime tonight. If not, then that should be one more level
After that it will depend on the Alliance success in the BGs, or my desire to quest/instance.
Been getting a bit more playtime lately
I let a DK guildie die in Mana Tombs the other day because he kept death gripping before the tank and while I was still drinking. I kept him up repeatedly through it, and then after one particularly harrowing pull where I brought him back from the brink of death, I gave him a final warning: “Don’t do it again, or I won’t heal you.”
He replied: “I don’t need healing, I’m blood.”
So the next time he did it I didn’t heal him, and he faceplanted as was incredibly obvious he would.
His next comment was a much less arrogant whisper: “omg, throw me a heal! XD” and after that he didn’t pull off the tank so much.
Later on, another guildie said he discouraged disgruntled healers from actually letting guildies die… pugs yes, guildies no… but that in this case (due to the commentary) it might have been warranted. Considering the results I think it was.
Healing makes me a meanie!
You big meanie
You have inspired me for another post!
Dunno about it in WoW but in EQ2, pulling aggro was considered a badge of honour by DPS and most resented the fact that they had to control it. They didn’t get that controlling their aggro was a skill just like tanking or healing. Letting them die a few times usually solved the problem
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