Tanking as a feral druid in TBC classic is exhausting right now. In every dungeon there’s always at least one DPS who will keep hitting mobs before you’ve finished pulling them in LOS, or start attacking a mob that fears that you’re trying to pull back etc.
Same with healers starting to heal as soon as you’ve pulled and before you can get any threat in so they suddenly grip all the mobs and you have to run everywhere to grab mobs from 5 different people all hitting things early before you even got a chance to actually attack them. This is especially a problem given that a lot of TBC dungeons are full of dangerous packs that fear and need to be pulled back.
It’s probably a lot easier for prot paladins that have a lot of good way to maintain threat, but tanking as feral is so stressful because I barely have any way to generate threat at all and people will just straight up kill themselves trying to DPS mobs while my rage is still at 10 and I haven’t placed a hit.
Bonus points for people who will straight up spam AOE as soon as the mobs are pulled like they’re doing a retail dungeon
Trust me all tanks require at least a second or two of initial aggro handling before any DPSers should start nuking. Even prot paladins. If people cannot understand, then I don’t know…
I feel you, i too Tank as a feral right now and i spend most of my time running around with no rage trying to pick up mobs because every DPS decided to pick a different mob to go all out ham on before i even manage to reach the mobs when pulling.
This too… I now religiously place at least skull and cross signs on every single pack before pulling in the hope that it will somewhat make them focus a target, but it’s often not enough anyway.
and I just don’t get what makes a DPS think “yeah the tank is running back and waiting for the mobs to come to them, sounds like a good time for me to charge and AOE”
I hate the way most tanks don’t know how mana works. Healer and/or dps low on mana, yet continued to pull the next pack of trash or better yet pull a boss, making our lives a lot more difficult than it needs to be. Rush mentality.
Kind of unrelated but ok. It can happen sometimes cause it’s easy to not notice empty mana when grinding the same dungeons constantly. And the oom often happens in the first place because of the problem this thread is about, which is everyone gripping aggro and forcing the heal to use half their mana bar in a 30 second fight.
The thing is if you start drinking when the fight ends, usually the tank can pull a mob and bring it all the way back while you’re still drinking and by the time the actual fight starts and you need to heal, you actually have mana. So most of the time you can pull when people are low on mana as long as there’s enough buffer distance for the drink to mostly finish.
Like, you don’t have to immediately get up and heal just because a pull has started, and it makes dungeons super slow when you have one of those heals who wants a complete mana break to get back to full every pack. You can do a lot of packs before being properly oom if you start drinking quickly when packs finish.
Agree, except 9 times out of 10, tanks don’t pull the pack and bring it back within range of the healer, instead they are out of range (and by a lot I might add) forcing the healer to cut off drinking when they are only back up to 30-50% mana because they know that if they don’t run towards the tank right there and then, the tank is dead meat and likely the entire group to follow, and because the healer has had to do this, usually you end up having to spam heals to keep the tank alive since by the time you get to them they are almost dead, meaning you consume that 30-50% mana you had left down again to 0% pretty damn quickly.
Well I mark Skull and X as 2nd target, if they cant DPs marked targets i usulay let them die , after few of thouse they ether learn to atack marked or jsut rage quit, good that DPS are easy to repleace
Being a tank in Retail, I meanwhile do my best to wait a few seconds before I do anything and always go for a skull if it’s marked /wait for los pulls if the tank is doing them.
Believe me I know the feeling. I’ve been tanking with my Protadin and I’ve had to pug due to work as I can’t fit my friends leveling schedule and it’s honestly roulette every run.
For me TBC is nostalgic because back then I remember that TBC exposed the bad players as dungeons were slightly harder with trash having more annoying mechanics and raids was now 10/25 and you realised who you’d been carrying in Vanilla and the same is true again this time around.
Honestly though I’ve had some great runs where I can do monster pulls, with a frost mage you can pull entire rooms as a Prot Paladin and just kite them around your consercration. Only problem so far for me has been bad healers who can’t pump and of course impatient people who won’t give you a moment to drink and will start pulling for you, which is actually really annoying and then you get those players (usually Hunters) who will be blasting mobs you are trying to pull behind LoS before you even have any real threat on them and then you get mobs split in all directions and if your taunt gets resisted it becomes more of a problem since there are some mobs you want to maintain threat on at all time like the rays in UB so they don’t fear you.
I can imagine it’s more frustrating for a Druid or Warrior though but just know these players who start blasting before you can get mobs in place annoy Protadins as well!
i 100% agree, i mained feral tank in classic, never had any issues with threat or rage generation
going into tbc im running around trying to pick up mobs with 0 - 10 rage, its not fun to play at all, i want to enjoy my time in dungeons not chasing a mob thats after a hunter
Ask warriors, especially “Classic Andys” As pala I just tell where everyone should be and they listen, but I don’t PUG that much, mostly guild or semi guild runs.
And yes, a lot of players still thinks this is RFC or Stockades. They will be surprised with heroics or late level dungeons hard. TBC is a major step to what we have in retail WoW and in retail there is a very good reason why scoring system exist - not everyone is interested or capable of doing harder content where even trash mobs have mechanics.
And I hate tanks complaining that they loose aggro even tho everything is going fine and som of the dpsers are pumping 1k dps.
Its not the end of the world if some dps get abit aggro, the mobs aint 1 shotting and most healers can handle some extra damage.
The best solution for that is let the dps die few times and they learn their lesson. If not, you just kick them. The life is too short to haggle with dummies.
If they dont get they have to wait for the tank to pull first and get the whole group into risk of a wipe again and again, then sorry… we dont need you. There are lot of other dpsers around, no worries
Dont be defensive, just do your work as the leader of the pack that always faces the enemies as first and gets the biggest blows. If you see someone is not respecting his role just say so in a polite but emphatic way.
Yeah, it can be very annoying. That’s the main reason why I only tank on my warrior with friends/guild mates. Those people who believe this is like retail with older content should roll a tank (any tank) and give it a try. They would actually learn how to DPS/Heal properly in this game.
As pala I just tell where everyone should be and they listen, but I don’t PUG that much, mostly guild or semi guild runs.
