4921

It’s been my experience that in certain instances, tank DPS is rather high:

  1. The DPS and tank are both at the beginning of dungeon gearing:

Since the DPS haven’t really gotten DPS specific gear, and the tanks haven’t gotten tank specific gear, they all have similar stats in quest blues/greens. However, if the DPS are playing “right” they’re attacking a single target while the tank has at least three targets. This, coupled with vengeance, tends to pop the tank DPS up relative to the DPS far more (not true for DPS doing lots of AE damage, but most tend not to once they die a couple times due to threat/healing issues).

  1. You’re not CCing at all. Vengeance + 5 mobs on a tank + tank AE damage abilities tends to put them at AE-type DPS numbers which are, again, higher than a DPS class single target focusing.

  2. Significant gear disparities. Let’s face it, if you’re tanking you’re probably a bit more careful with your gear knowing you intend to tank in a dungeon and you will therefore need to choose appropriately. Wherease if you’re DPS you’re just wandering through the quests killing stuff waiting for dungeons and sweet, sweet 'l337 DPS drops. (This is probably the type case you’re thinking of and would tend to be the “They’re not playing properly” bits.)

Overall I think you’ll see tank DPS in dungeons much closer to DPS until you’re well-outclassing the dungeons you’re running and ready to move up to the next tier, due to multiple mob pulls that hurt enough that DPS cares about aggro on them + vengeance.
None of this, however, excuses cases like the one I did where I was tanking (as a bear) and the DPS DK was putting out 1800 DPS. (Especially when my level 81 DK, albeit in ICC-25 gear mix, is putting out 5-7k DPS in Blackrock caverns.)

4922

Well, it might be gear disparities. I should have checked theirs. But whether it’s irresponsibly low gear or a shitty rotation, it should be DPS’s job to do more damage than a fresh 85 tank with quest and low-end rep gear only. I’ll admit, I feel really good about my rotation, but still – they should have theirs down too to competant levels. It shouldn’t be hard to out-DPS a prot warrior on a mostly-single-target boss fight. We shine the most on dps when fighting 3+ mobs at a time.

Most of the time we wiped was because the healer went OOM because the fight went on too damn long because things weren’t dying fast enough. The boss fights were lasting 3 minutes, and that big blue Bliz post recent said ~2 or less was the goal. We went 3 then wiped!

No doubt, there’s more my wife and I can do to gear up, and frankly she could probably afford a slightly better rotation and ‘system’ (UI, button/mouse habits, etc.) But I’ve played the game long enough to feel we’re not the problem. She often gets told ‘nice heals’, and I have no problems whatsoever owning up to my own mistakes.

But in Tol’vir yesterday, especially on the last boss, I left convinced we just didn’t have the dps to kill him. And I’m not sure what to do in that situation. Should I offer advice? Post recount logs and let them draw their own conclusions? Just keep my mouth shut and leave the group if I run out of hope?

I absolutely don’t want to be a jerk. And I’d love to be a part of helping other people get better. I just don’t know what to do, given that I’m already invested in doing the best I can in my own role.

4923

So after a bit of a break from this thread, I thought I’d post two recent stories. One of woe, one of joy.

The Worst PUG
Heroic Deadmines. It’s my first time there, and I’m the Healer. The Tank and two DPS are all from the same guild. The one other DPS there is also doing the dungeon for the first time like me.

So the first thing one of these guild guys says is: “We are going for the Achievement, that okay with everyone?” I mention that it’s my first time, and I’m not sure what the achievement involves. He replies: “It’s okay, we’ll probably boot you before we get there”.

Hrm. Not a good sign. But I assume he’s kidding for now.

So we get to the big robot boss, and these three dillweeds essentially cajole the lone remaining DPS (a shaman) into being the dude who keeps the adds at the bottom of the ramp. We’re about 2/3rds done the fight when he messes up and allows some adds through. Fair enough, it’s his first time doing it, I think that’s to be expected. But the three idiots proceed to berate him in party chat for a solid five minutes - just standing there typing instead of playing. “My seven year old brother could do that right on the first try, what’s wrong with you. Lrn2plynoob” etc. Asking them to calm down just sets them off more.

We finish that boss, but the poor dude can take no more abuse and quits. The guild then proceeds to laugh amongst themselves. “Ha ha, I love making people leave”. I lose my temper and say: “How about I don’t heal you on the next pull, would that be okay?”

Him: “I don’t need your stupid heals! I’ve got six cooldowns!”
Me: “Go Ahead” I sit there doing nothing while he pulls.
Him: [Wipes the group.] “Enjoy dying there, Healer. Ha ha, that wipe was totally worth it for me.”

After which I quit, not seeing a reason to stick around any longer.

It was honestly, without question, the worst PUG I have ever been in. Not because they were bad players - they were fine. They were just the worst kind of teammates. Smug assholes who just want to make everyone else miserable. Don’t they beat this kind of attitude out of kids in Phys-Ed these days? Ugh.

The Best PUG
Which brings me to the best PUG I have ever been in! It was literally just last night on Heroic Vortex Pinnacle. The Boomkin was accomodating and apologized for his low 5k DPS, saying he’s just learning, and no one made fun of him for it. The Death Knight DPSer was doing 13k. 13k!!! But he never bragged. The Tank was friendly, grabbed Aggro proficiently, marked his targets, positioned everyone nicely, allowed the group to move through not too fast or too slow, never got mad after a wipe (of which there were only 2 or so). People were patient when folks had to go afk for 1 or 2 minutes, no one yelled “gogogogogo!” At one point, when 4 of us died on Altairus, the tank proceeded to solo him from about 25% down to 8%, I was amazed. And when the low-DPSer won the special mount that drops from Altairus, everyone gave a good-natured “grats!” We one-shot every other boss in the instance and everyone had a ton of fun.

It was quite the palette cleanser after the bad PUG from a few days before.

4924

So we just downed Nefarian after no less than three 1% wipes, including one heartbreaking nailbiter at 22k health left. What a terrible, terrible fight. Maybe it’s just the fact that we’re doing 10mans and have next to no class selection with 11 raiders in total, but the entire encounter felt hard for all the wrong reasons.

Twenty minutes in Throne just riding the kill buzz felt refreshing by comparison. I think people tend to ignore that place due to the random loot, but the first encounter felt fairly easy and it’s not like you can’t use the drops to gear up. Al’akir should be interesting too.

4925

Congratulations!

after no less than three 1% wipes, including one heartbreaking nailbiter at 22k health left. What a terrible, terrible fight. Maybe it’s just the fact that we’re doing 10mans and have next to no class selection with 11 raiders in total, but the entire encounter felt hard for all the wrong reasons.

No, no, it’s pretty terrifying on 25man, too. Wipe after wipe to Blast Waves getting off, to getting a Tail Swipe at just the wrong time in Phase 1, to three consecutive shadowflame blasts on a healer right as we’re hitting a transition… and eight sub-10% wipes due to our kiters getting instakilled.

But we did down him!

4926

Nef’s caused a gigantic clusterfuck in my guild where all of a sudden we’ve switched from being a pretty casual bunch into an organisation that seems to want to match the Third Reich. It exploded at the weekend and I may have stoked the fires a little bit. Oh well :)

Guild drama, eh? Wonderful stuff.

4927

Thanks! And man, that does make me feel a little better. I had the feeling that we were seriously gimped or something because we couldn’t fit in a third tank for p1 adds. But yeah, it was the p3 tank splats that caused the real frustration and that can’t really be any easier with 25 people.

4928

Tanks can do a lot of damage these days. Today a saw a 83 pala tank sustain 6.5k dps in Stonecore - my mage can’t do that yet, sure on bosses but not over an entire instance.

But obviously in your case they were bad players. There’s not a lot you can do… random is random, today was just one of those days when things go wrong. As tank + healer duo, one option is to leave group, go in trade and advertise “Looking for 3 good dps players for running normals”. You’ll be flooded. Even better, if you like a dps player you met this way, tell him/her to friend you and look you up whenever he wants to run instances in the future.

One thing surprised me in your post, you just hit 85 and say you can’t even run heroics? That’s normal isn’t it? Run a few 85 normals and Twilight Highlands quest chains to get some 333 gear, wrap up a couple of revered and/or one exalted rep for even better stuff, and then start rolling the heroics.

4929

On another note, yesterday I ran a couple of wotlk dungeons on my DK alt. OMG it’s so nice to experience quick instances again even if it’s only going to last a few levels.

4930

Vortex Pinnacle, normal. I’m the tank, one dps is my buddy, the rest are pugs. Healer dies first pull, at least partly my fault. Healer dies third pull, no way is it my fault. Healer declares that the fucking tank sucks and rqs. New healer arrives, rest of the dungeon is smooth as silk.

I enjoyed that.

4931

What happened then?

4932

We downed hardmode Halfus tonight!

We’d had a rough start, with chain disconnects and lots of frustration, so we decided to head over to BWD to down a few bosses and let it get a little later so that some of the raiding Guilds would log off.

(And getting a few more pieces of gear is always nice; we downed Magmaw, Omnotron, and Atramedes in reasonably clean 1shots.)

We then went back to Bastion of Twilight. All three of our Priests went Discipline and were rocking absolutely insane positions on the healing meters with Atonement, but myself and the other Resto Druids were manfully holding at positions four and five, with the Holy Paladin and Resto Shaman below us.

We had four tanks, eight healers, and only 13 DPS, but we weren’t too worried about the enrage. We figured we’d learn the fight and then switch our Feral Druid and the other Resto/Balance dualspec Druid to DPSers, going to 3 tanks, 7 healers, and 15 DPS.

That didn’t happen. Instead, we quickly realized as soon as we got the first phase of the fight under … not control, but at least a step removed from disaster… that we were in fact way ahead on damage on Halfus, and were actually in danger of pushing him to 50% early and provoking his second phase before we were done killing the drakes we wanted to kill!

We had a number of wipes learning various mechanics (oh God, that stun chain he lands with Furious Roar just rips apart the drake tanks) and getting used to the fight (holy hell SPAM MANY HEALS, MORE BIGGER HEALS).

I’d like to take this moment to call complete bullshit on Blizzard’s “Oh, you don’t have to freak out if the tank isn’t topped of 24/7” stance. YES YOU DO. Because the tank is taking incredibly high spike damage, and that’s only balanced by the fact that our healers have the mana regeneration to spam non-stop for four straight minutes.

Anyway, it was getting late, the raid leader calls (in his French accent) (my raid leader sounds very much like the More Dots guy) for one last attempt in an expletive-laced minirant, and we have a damn clean fight (only one death in phase 1) leading to Halfus going down with a full 8 seconds left on his Berserk timer with four tanks and eight healers.

Good times, good times. And I’ve been up for the three and a half hours after that playing Magicka. Goddamnit.

4933

Patience! Cata instances will be like that in a couple of months.
4.0.6. is a good start but not enough to offset the amount of retards playing.
Not running any heroic before those nerfs. Saves some nerves for sure! :)

4934

Not certain, but I believe he stood in multiple cloudbursts.

4935

Yeah, I ran a VP yesterday with a dumb healer that did the same thing.

4936

I’m conflicted with the Heroics. On one hand I really like that they are a challenge in a guild group. On the other hand, they can be brutal with a LFD group. I hope Blizzard finds a middle of the road solution.

Is anyone else participating in Arena this season? I’m having a blast in 2’s as muti/disc and I find that the games so far (we are 10-4) are much more like BC. They last longer, new abilities that add more depth (first life grip -> smoke bomb was awesome and won the match), and the structure of the arena itself doesn’t feel like a grind anymore and the pressure of losses isn’t as extreme.

4937

Bots got thrown out (for the moment at least) so farming should make folks a lot of gold. Expect to see prices rise til the bots get back in business.

4938

Details?

4939

Yeah, I’m not certain what “bots got thrown out” means exactly.

4940

Grats on the kill Aaron. Would you mind elaborating on what your disc priests were doing with their atonement specs, like some kind of “rotation”? So far I have only raided as holy, and I feel like I need to be spamming tons of Prayer of Healings to get similar output as our as our 2 healers (we have a resto druid who consistently beats me, and a holy paly I am usually close to). I know healing meters aren’t the end all of what makes a good healer, but I feel like I am still not quite where I want to be in terms of output vs regen.

I only do 10 mans, so I’m not sure how atonement works there. My guild is 11/12 atm, and we started working on Neferian this week, so I am doing what I can to improve.