Dungeon Ettiquette?

Guides New/Returning Player Questions & Guides
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I’m a returning player, been playing on and off since MoP. I usually play Tank (monk) and back when i played the most the dungeon etiquette was that you start when everyone is ready and only the tank pulls so the dungeon is run at their speed (and you know, tank stuff like keeping aggro etc) Now, i am a bit slow navigating because it takes me a go-around to remember the dungeon layout when i return, but i otherwise tank well as far as i know how to.

That being said, without fail every time i come back someone has to say something along the lines of ‘wtf is the tank doing??’. During TW today all 3 dungeons i’ve run so far (literally only 3 since coming back) one of the other players runs ahead and grabs everything and bearly leaves me time to catch up to make sure i have aggro, it’s frustrating but i know i’m slow normally so i keep up and don’t say anything. The last dungeon today though, the healer was doing this, running ahead, pulling everything, literally getting themselves down to half health because i physically couldn’t run fast enough to keep up with them to aggro the mobs and they told me to ‘go back to classic’ because i was so bad at tanking? (and no, no one died or got below like 95% in any of these except that healer)

(unrelated but when classic came out it was the hardcore people doing that, guess it’s the new ‘you’re a casual’ insult?)

Since this happens every time i come back i’ve got to face the fact that i just don’t know how to run dungeons with people anymore, so if anyone can explain to me the new etiquette and how i should be tanking i’d appreciate it, gameplay wise i do fine it’s just there’s something i’m missing i guess when it comes to doing stuff as a group.

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Welcome back!

Sorry to hear about your experience, but … hasn’t it been like that for years?

I only started in late Cata, and didn’t really do many dungeons until Mists/WoD, but that’s how I remember things being.

Not every run, no, but a significant proportion. Half? Maybe less. That’s what the devs have made incentives for, so that’s the game the way they want it. And they got it.

It may well be that there were one or two in each of your parties wishing the loudmouths would stop it and let you tank. But they don’t speak up.

I do love a dungeon where

and I find you do get them often enough to notice, but mostly they are as you describe, or some mixture of it.

one of the other players runs ahead and grabs everything and bearly leaves me time to catch up

is what SOME people will do when they have no risk of dying. Personally, if I were a dev, I’d arrange to instakill any player who damaged a mob before the tank, but the devs clearly want the most impatient DPS (or healer!) to force the pace on everyone else.

I don’t know why, but that’s what they encourage. And I remember some examples of it from Cata, Mists, WoD. The memories stay with me. :frowning: That’s why I very rarely tank with randoms, and for that matter don’t do nearly as many dungeons as I could or should. I’ve got used to the shenanigans and the insults, but it’s never something to look forward to.

AFAIAC, that’s what the game has always been.

Not … exactly. After Classic came out, there was, as you might expect, some trash-talk between the Retail and Classic camps. Again, not all, but some. And in Classic, ofc, parties go slower and with more respect for their resources. So it isn’t really a generic insult, just that they suggest you are playing Retail like Classic when in their esteemed opinion, you shouldn’t.

That’s a factor. Because of the ease and the crazy scaling weirdnesses, people don’t respect TW dungeons at all. You’ve seen why.

As a practical matter, I would suggest you simply expect to treat TW dungeons like group World Quests, with minimal co-ordination, and Every Man For Himself. Run faster, and worry less than a tank should about stragglers. Odds are, every DPS can handle a mob of two themselves.

You could refresh your recollection of TBC dungeons by running around and soloing them if you want, but they’re mostly just simple tubes, maybe curled around a bit, except for The Underbog.

I think you got a bit unlucky. Not very unlucky, since this kind of mob-rule party isn’t the majority, but 3 bad dungeons out of 3 is a bit unlucky.

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Thank you for your reply, you’re right about it having been like that for a long time, i think i just had a better experience in leveling via dungeons before they changed that (bit of an alt-oholic so that was the majority of my dungeon experience)

Hilarious and i absolutley agree XD they’d learn quickly!

I’m really glad it’s not me though, it’s easy for me to blame myself so the fun i have playing suffers from that. I’ll take your suggestion with TW, since it’s open to low & max level you get a wider variety of ‘i don’t know what i’m doing’ and ‘i expect everyone to be a pro’ people in the same group.

You’ve made me feel a lot better about this kind of stuff though, so thankyou :slight_smile: Faith in WoW players restored XD

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No, it’s definitely NOT you. It’s everywhere.

I’m tempted to tell some of my stories, but they would just be like yours. Just across more expansions.

The way I figure it is that you will have on average one or two jerks in every dungeon. And it takes only one to spoil the whole run for everybody.

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It’s the consequence of making timewalking dungeons so easy for so long that players are used to just speeding them. I said this a lot of time but people keep saying they want to do their weekly 5 dungeons fast and they don’t want it to be difficult (to which I say they don’t have to do TW if they don’t want to but that’s a different matter).

My point is a lot of people are used to them usually being a breeze, even carried by low level characters due to how the scaling works. And so the impatient and intolerant players to anything that isn’t a go faster mentality start getting vocal about their displeasure if you go slow.

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