Tanking Slower is Better. Trust Me, I’m a Doctor… Err, Tank
Posted on : 12-14-2009 | By : Molsan | In : Diary, PUG Tales, Paladin
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So I’ve learned that I don’t tank fast enough. I know I’m probably more of a conservative player, but even I know when I’m pulling packs of mobs at a decent pace… especially since the “Molsan Method” was named after yours truly. However, what I didn’t know was that PUGs formed by the glorious “Looking for Dungeon” tool expect an even more rapid pace. Chain pulling, zerging, and engaging bosses without mana are now standard.
Halls of Lightning – I Don’t Have All Day
In my last two random heroics, I was called out for my slow and lazy approach. In Halls of Lightning, I pulled the first group with Avenger’s Shield. While that was on cooldown, I pulled a stray mob with Exorcism. My tanking abilities were immediately questioned: “Why are we killing unnecessary mobs and pulling with Exorcism?” I stopped to think about this. Am I doing it wrong? While contemplating justifying my skills and approach to tanking to this complete stranger, the person decided to quit the group, leaving us with a “lol I don’t have all day. thanks. bye” parting shot.
Since they were DPS, they were replaced by my friend, LFD, in a matter of seconds with a new person. After we buffed the new guy up, I went ahead and pulled the next pack of mobs, General Bjarngrim, and his adds. We then continued on, skipping the other three corners of the platform, and breezed through the rest of the instance. We stacked up on Loken, took him down with no trouble, and disenchanted all of his loots. I apologized to the group for taking too long.

The Nexus – I Have a Raid Starting in a Minute
I figured that these kinds of people are few and far between… right? Wrong. In The Nexus, we were moving right along, having taken down the first three bosses with little effort. We had a great pace going; there were no deaths and lots of shards passed around (not by me, but by the aforementioned LFD). As I headed down the hallway towards Ormorok the Tree-Shaper, a player asked, “Can we please hurry it up?” I asked, “Why?” and the player responded with, “I have a raid starting in a minute.” Now, me being the literal person that I am figured, “Gee, no way we can finish this thing in under a minute. I hope he doesn’t bail on us… oh wait, he’s DPS, and there are probably fifty DPS players in line for a random.” I confidently told the group, “Ok, I’ll pick up the pace. Let’s go.”
I skipped a few Crystalline Frayers and let the rest of the party deal with them while I headed for the boss. I patiently stopped to tank the elites, and then moved right in on Ormorok. Without any trouble, he went down; we then proceeded into the tunnel, hopped down, and headed towards Keristrasza. We decided to stack up in front of Keristrasza, and we smacked her around regardless of how intense her Intense Cold was (it really wasn’t that intense). Before I could finish typing, “Sorry I took so long” for the second time, the hardcore raider rolled greed on everything, and quickly left the party. I’m going to setup a macro for my apology… I wonder what the macro syntax is for targeting the top whiner of the party? “/target QQ?”








I think that’s why there’s also that wonderful /Vote option to kick players out of your group. Annoying dps? /vote. Problem solved.
I haven’t run into any of that myself, but that’s exactly what my wife’s been running into. I have no idea what’s got everything thinking that the runs are going to be at ball busting speed. It makes no sense to me.
I usually like to take my time and go slow, but it seems like with the level of gear people have, that we can just steamroll through the content. It seems like people aren’t interested in the social aspect at all… I’ve been in a couple groups where we go in and do the entire thing totally silently, with a quick ‘thanks’ at the end. So I’ve just taken to saying ‘If you need a mana/food/pee break, let me know, otherwise I’m not stopping for hell or high water.’
By far the worst was the dude in the HoL run. The problem took care of itself, though, when he left the group on his own.
I think, as Tarragon put it, if you tell everyone that you’re going to chain pull, and to let you know if you should slow down, you shouldn’t have to worry about it.
The silence-thing is something I’m still getting used to, but I don’t mind it.
A friend of mine told me he got kicked from a group because they decided he wasn’t chain pulling fast enough. I have my DK geared well enough to start tanking but am thinking that when much better tanks than I am are getting griefed maybe continuing to sign up as DPS only is a wiser move.
@Ency It might be wiser, but you have to wait in line… DPS queues on my server are about 15-20 minutes. As a tank, I’m almost immediately inserted into a dungeon. But, I agree, I think it’s a little less stressful as a DPS in these 3.3, cross-realm PUGs.