Bloody Tanks

   I hate tanks. I do. They're glorified ass-hats. It's true that not all of them are so selfish, but when they're the ones leading the group and deciding when a mob should be pulled, many of them can be complete twats. But I suppose that's just pugs for you.

   I've not done dungeons really since Cataclysm. They became quite complicated at that point, meaning DPS like me couldn't just stand still any more. We had to move. And at the time, that was daunting as I never raided, so tactics were a new concept to me.

   I ran a lot of dungeons in Cataclysm, though, because I learned with everyone else, but in MoP, I think I did a total of 5. Not 5 different dungeons, I mean 5 dungeons, period. I was so scared of the changes and that it would be hard and I'd be shouted at (which I was because no one told me the tactics even though I asked and I hadn't found the dungeon journal yet) so I never went in them. As a result, I'd forgotten how stupid some players could be.

   I tried my first Warlords dungeon the other day. Seeg's best friend offered to take us through a few as a healer and tell us the tactics (we did read up, of course, but it's nice to have someone patient in the group, especially one in a position like Healer which can be hard to replace), and we went into Grimrail Depot.

   Our first tank said little, but they ran us through for a short while until they DC'd. Fine, can't be helped, and since the fourth player was another friend of Seeg's, we decided to kick the tank and find a new one since it was a safe bet that none of the group would leave because of it, and the tank had been running on the spot for a few minutes already.

   Well, then it fell apart. We got some orc tank who kept pulling more than he could handle. Sam, our healer, was doing a fine job keeping him and everyone else alive, but the tank couldn't keep aggro. I admit, my damage, somehow (probably because I'm a hunter), was through the roof, so I did take the aggro a little bit, but it wasn't just me, it was the others, too. We tried what we could to reduce it, but he got shitty with us for taking the aggro and left, but not before pulling a huge mob towards us, leaving the group in the middle of it.

   Then we got another tank, a tauren, and he got shitty with us for falling behind. He kept running ahead and pulling mobs before the healer was ready, other times before we were even with him because one of us had clearly said BRB or were drinking for mana, and left in the end because we wiped (guess why!). There was abuse thrown our way though it wasn't our fault, he just decided, as tank, to charge through at his own pace, never mind the rest of us, and blamed us for his arrogance.

   We weren't sorry to see him go, and it hadn't yet been our fault that any of these tanks had gotten so upset (though a few rough words were exchanged once the tanks started getting on our case) or were making mistakes. But it was taking a while to replace each of them.

   In the end we got our fourth tank for that first dungeon. It was a tauren, and I was dubious - no offence to tauren players, but from my experience, honestly the most asshats I've come across in the game have been tauren tanks.

   This guy, however, maintained aggro, laughed when we wiped and said things like "second time's a charm" before actually corpse running (so far, despite five previous wipes, none of the tanks had corpse run, instead insisting we res them, even though it would have been quicker for them to run with us given how long a res can take) back to his body and trying again. He had good humour and was a good tank, and we ran another dungeon with him after. We stopped after that since the first had taken us so long and the tank had to leave anyway, but while the story had a happy ending, I have been reminded, unfortunately, of how arrogant tanks can be.

   No, not all of them are so arrogant, like I've said at the beginning, but I think tanking does attract a certain type of player - some are leaders and can actually command the group, while others have superiority complexes and choose those roles to put themselves above the rest. A group can't go, after all, if the tank's not there, but the tanks seem to forget the need for the rest of the group, the healer in particular.

   The dungeons were good fun, Grimrail Depot in particular, and I loved all the little cut-scenes (I'm sure they'll get annoying in time), but I can't say much for the loot system. Still, I suppose it keeps your bags from getting cluttered and when there is loot, you can use it and there's no worries about anyone else needing on something they don't need, or having bad luck at rolls, though you still need luck at drops. Still, it was good fun, possibly because I was running it with a group of people I knew (look at me! I have friends now!), but the dungeons themselves weren't bad either.