M+ PuG LIFE from the perspective of a tank

Community General Discussion
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We are now at week 2.5 of season 3. I just wanted to share some of my observations of what I have seen so far in this season.

I have no shame in admitting that I have pushed M+ pretty hard over the last week or so and prior to the season starting during the casual catch up week I worked my ar$e off getting my dream wardens reputation to rank 18 so I could get my augment rune and no I didn’t cheat like the people in the RWF guilds.

In addition to this I also spent a lot of time learning all of the dungeons from those who had played them on the PTR and then kindly posted guides for each of the dungeons on youtube. There were some dungeons that I was familiar with like the BFA ones but most I had to learn fresh due to never playing them before or forgotten such as the two legion dungeons.

I spent time learning the routes and optimising them in a way I thought would be best as I didn’t agree with the initial raider io routes (they seemed to be thrown together with little thought).

Finally I also spent the time to learn the first 8 bosses in the raid for both normal and heroic. I don’t really care about the raid and have little interest in it but I figured it would be the quickest way of obtaining the new tier set. I don’t have any respect for the normal or heroic raid content as a tank you only die if you mess something up and since I had been smashing M+ my item level was already 460ish before I had even considered signing up for a normal raid. I really do view normal and heroic raiding as casual content and the only challenge is the people in the raid rather than the content itself. I have no respect for it because people can get carried through this content pretty easily as there are so many people in the raid to pick up the slack.

Anyway with this wall of text my point is I put a lot of effort into learning everything which then brings me onto the point of why I am writing this post.

In my mind by the time you get to doing +15’s you should at least have a basic understanding of all of the dungeons in M+ but I am finding more and more that people are just trying to wing it and rely on deadly boss mod to tell them what to do but there are certain mechanics which DBM doesn’t inform you about and these are the mechanics I see people failing at over and over again. An example would be the timeways boss and the Chrono-faded ability. There are only so many times I can see this going off in the dark areas and then slowly making its way across the platform and killing everyone.

In addition to this there are certain mobs which are deadly to some tanks such as the spiders on the stairway on Black Rook Hold. The DPS just view these as cannon fodder but they actually apply a DOT which is pretty deadly especially during fortified weeks so its annoying having DPS typing go ??? when really they have no concept of what’s actually happening which is that the tank is simply waiting for the stacks to drop off or for the stacks to be dispelled. My point is if you’re a DPS just shut up and follow the tank, don’t say anything or pull anything unless asked to do so. Most tanks will have a better understanding of the dungeon then any DPS ever will so just follow the tank and just focus on doing your job which is to attack the stuff that the tank pulled.

Today I have decided to take a break from tanking, having reached 2500+ rating and decided to do some +15’s on my healer. As a tank it’s easy to have tunnel vision and just do dungeons in a certain way and not really ever improve on them. The way I try and learn new stuff outside of youtube is by playing as a healer and watching what other tanks do and trying to improve my own game play. But unfortunately all day it’s been a complete [mess] with people just simply not doing any of the boss mechanics or not understanding how they work.

I know the reaction to this post from most is that I am an elitist toxic moron who expects everyone to know the dungeons perfectly which isn’t true. Most of the M+ community if put in my position today would have just rage quit from the keys right away. Instead I decided I would come on the forum and have a moan but I have stayed in all of the keys and tried to help the group by explaining how to do the bosses to people plus its just been funny watching people mess up so badly so I have been laughing loads rather than staring at my screen watching every little thing that happens as I do when I am tanking so it’s been pretty fun.

Anyway it’s not really possible for me to keep doing this, all of the dungeons I have done have taken nearly 50 minutes and as someone who only really cares about player power I can’t really sit in dungeons explaining basic stuff to people. I just don’t understand how most people think they can just wing it and not put any effort into learning the dungeons and seem to just expect to be carried by others.

The last point I want to make is regarding the meta slaves.

Today I have witnessed while in +15 groups people inviting either a DH, BDK, Paladin tanks that have scores that are 500 lower and some times up to +15 item levels lower than other tanks that have applied such as as a monk with a 2300 rating, a druid with a 2250 rating and even a warrior with ~ a 2400 rating. It’s really pretty annoying watching this happening just because they have looked at some article on wowhead or watched some tier list video on youtube telling them that the tanks that I first listed above are the best. For a +15 you don’t need a meta class to do the dungeon, even for a +20 at this point in the season you don’t need a meta class.

When played correctly all classes are capable of doing the content. On the flip side of this most of the bad tanks I have seen are those playing the so called meta classes. It seems to me they believe that just by playing the class that some random video on youtube told them is the best they somehow have super powers and don’t need to invest the time in learning how to play the class or even learning the dungeons.

It is however funny watching the so called meta class tanks getting one shot by tank buster mechanics such as the Chronoshear by Chronikar in DOTI.

So to all you current meta slaves, don’t invite based on the class invite based on the item level and more importantly rating.

Don’t be a meta slave, it’s not cool and it’s not needed.

14 Likes
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Mostly I invite based on utility and XP. If ilvl doesnt match rating I open up logs.

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Pretty much agree with everything you’ve written here. (Except we’re 1.5 weeks into the season!)

I think you just need to accept that dps will only learn the mechanics when they hit a wall with them and die to them. As an example - people learnt pretty quickly how to deal with the dudes that jump on you in everbloom. It was easy to see the consequence of failure.

The “gogo” mentality kills me. Sometimes its better to wait 10 seconds and do something properly then go in right away and screw it up. Pulling a dangerous trash pack with only 4 people there? It can work, equally it can be a waste of time since you don’t have enough stops or damage and you lose people to attrition. Instead of waiting for the dead person to get back you just turned a 40 second pull into a 2:30 one because people formed a conga line ressing.

People telling me to pull more I just tell them to change spec and tank. Thats normally the precursor to unpleasantness but my last run the fella to his credit actually apologised. 2 min in I’ve normally got a decent idea of how to pace it based on if people are stopping stuff / dispelling / generally applying intelligence.

Finally, if you’re a dps spec your damn dispel if you have one. They are so useful this season.

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Being a bit too harsh there, brother. I sense that diva syndrome might begin to take a hold on you, don’t let it. DPS players are the same as you, and there’re enough of them that do the work too. Believe you me, sometimes they might even have a valid point to convey as well.

The unfortunate things that you endured because of bad DPS players are 100% comparable to all the abuse that your team members had suffered from all the sad and clueless tanks. Being asinine is role-agnostic. In the worst cases, you just add them to your badboy list and then hop along. Be the best part of your group, not the guy who tells others to shut up. This is “??”-after-spiders-in-BRH-like behaviour that only spreads negativity further.

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Cant speak for the other tanks but when im on my pala / dh i feel like i have so much more Control over trash pulls then on my Guardian druid. Double sigils and aoe stun on vengence or the sheer amount of interupts on my pala (where i end up having more interupts then whole group combined ) + offhealing from Word of glory really makes the difference imo when people still learn

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This is until Blizzard flawed design kicks in :sweat_smile:
The reason why I do ninja pulls sometimes is because as a hunter I have to rely on tab key to target the mobs unless I want to spend the entire fight with nothing to hit message. Sometimes mobs die at the same time while I do my tab dance and… let’s say my auto shot is instant while the other casters have a spell cd they can interrupt :stuck_out_tongue:

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The reason people are metaslaves and ratingslaves is because they are too ignorant of the classes to rely on their knowledge so they have to trust better players’ opinions about it and because the rating is one of the few metrics available to judge a person, just like the raid kills counter. It’s clearly not very accurate but it probably reflects the reality more often than not.

And unless something big is made to change the availability to these metrics, nothing will probably change.

Edit : I’m in a pretty similar situation to you, reached about 2350 rating on my tank in S1, didn’t play in S2, and came back in S3 to heal.
People are going to make mistakes no matter your role, you just won’t see them when you’re dps because you don’t need to look at others when you dps, you might see them as tank because you’re leading the train, and you will see them as healer because you have to keep them alive.

The mindset that I go with is that if people do not know what they are doing, they WILL do mistakes, and it is not my responsability as a tank, dps or even healer if they die to a puddle they stepped into. And if it’s too much to handle, I will just leave and go again elsewhere.

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Witness this god gamer

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Doing the same, I will invite lower ilvl over the experience/good combo, etc.
Also, I have noticed that mages, locks(nothing personal) on low keys are just plain bad. Mages don’t use any defensives at all (as a healer it’s very annoying), no interrupts, don’t know the simple mechanics. These characters are like new hunters or I just never noticed before…

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I didn’t say that. I said that I would invite someone because of their class utility and XP over ilvl and XP or meta. Experience (rio) is important.

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And I meant the same? Experience over the ilvl, with combo(utility/buffs depending on classes you already have in group)

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DH yday that kept dieing to random stuff, kept writing ‘ go ‘ as I waited for the rest of the group to catch up, really annoyed me :rofl:

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You know there is a reason why certain classes are meta right?
They bring more utility and self healing while also being rather tanky.
As an example dk and pally has roughly 2 aoe ccs on 1-2 min cd which other tanks dont.
So just because they dont invite a warrior tank or druid tank isn’t always about meta, its about utility.

You are though 100% right with people should know mechanics of each dungeon when doing a 15, there are no excuses as you can literally read abilities up on the adventure guide and also via mythic dungeon tool (addons) you can read each npcs abilities.

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I personally like dk and pally the most now, because playing healer, but I would invite warrior if we have ret or other melee spec for their buff. Everyone has something useful.

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well technically paladin has 2, which is useally 1 more than other classes :nerd_face:

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From a fellow hunter, positioning is key if you want to avoid this.

I’ve never played warrior tank so I don’t know exactly what tools it has, but I do play with one regularly (on voice), and he’s calling out ‘I’ve got this’ almost every time there’s an AOE interrupt needed, while I’m sat there wondering if I’m ever going to get to use my Chaos Nova.

And druid tank has an AOE disorient every 30 seconds, and a knockback every 30 seconds. That’s something for AOE every 15 seconds.

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Funny. The majority of times I’ve had my key ruined the past two weeks tanks with that sort of attitude were responsible. I say “Please play safe, don’t pull too much and be particularly careful in the hall before first boss” before we start Throne of Tides. What does the pala tank with the bloated ego do? Of course, the exact opposite. Wipes the group. Runs in, pulls the same stupid scheme again, expects a different result (which is the definition of stupidity according to Einstein) and :drum: wipes the group again. Then yells “More damage! Where is heals?!” My friend, M+ is not a solo show and if you can’t play as a team then probably run the dungeon by yourself. We’ll see how far you get.

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Seems like dps issue combined with lack of interupt indeed as begining of tot is very strightforward with pulls especialy on tyranical

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Oh wow, dps and interrupt issues in the first two weeks of the new season with partially pretty overtuned dungeons and 50 percent of puggers never having seen old raids from the inside. Wouldn’t have guessed. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re on purpose ruining my key if you’re rushing through no matter the cost and wipe the group while ignoring the key holder’s request to please play safe because I’ve seen time and time again what happens if you don’t.

If a tank as the big leader of a group recognises that a group struggles with the way he approaches the run it is the total right thing to just go on pulling more and more, two pats, a stationary group and then be surprised it doesn’t work? He always could pull less, but no. “It’s my way or the highway.”

Not even talking about the DH tank the other day ignoring my request to clear the hall where the second boss spawns, so nobody will accidentally be knocked into a leftover trash pack. Then acts all surprised if it happens and leaves the group.

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Its a nice post. I think many DPS players should at least experience tanking themselves. After I started tanking(on a pure casual, not aiming for keystone hero level), it also helped me become a better dps cause it changes how you see the dungeon run in general.
Really helps to get rid of the “I only care about my metters and nothing else. Stop making small pulls and making my dps look bad.” mindset some dps players have.

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