Say, what?
December 15th, 2008 Posted in General“I don’t want the tank to mark. I’d rather we kept some chaos, keep things interesting.”
Er, what? The above was what greeted me as I joined a pug for Heroic Nexus yesterday. It wasn’t even the healer that said that – it was one of the DPS. I had reservations straight away, but I carried on anyway. We did dispatch the bosses in reasonably short order, so I can’t complain too much – contrast to the Azjol’Nerub pug I had done the previous day that I ditched two pulls in after having to blow cooldowns to stay alive on both. I hate ditching any group, but all that would have happened with them would be getting stuck on the second or last bosses, saved to the instance so I couldn’t attempt it with a better healer. There are times when things just don’t work, and I think it’s better to be honest about them up front and apologise for leaving than to get everyone in a situation where nothing gets downed. (Incidentally, what is it with mages? I don’t think I’ve found a single mage recently that’s managed to put out more damage than me over the instance. This is somewhat distressing.)
Encouraging chaos is a dangerous attitude to have. Ordinarily on guild group runs I’ll just mark the first target (and even then only sometimes), trusting everyone else to follow whatever I’m actively targeting, and for the most part it works. In a pug, though? Especially on the first few pulls where I’m getting a feel for each person’s threat, it’s a good idea to mark, so I can see everyone hitting one target and make a call as to who gets my Vigilance.
It’s just plain sensible to kill targets in order – it means the damage coming onto me is lower so the healer has to work less hard, and it’s far easier for me to hold threat on everything at once. Chaos is all well and good, but it’s far better to have a cleaner, faster run by doing things the sensible way. Give me order any day – it’s faster and easier. I’ll happily reserve chaos for those times when a pull goes awry and we end up pulling far more than I’d intended. The rest of the time, it just slows us down and makes both tank and healer have to work ten times harder than they would otherwise.
So, just say no to not marking, especially in pickup groups where nobody knows each other and you can’t second guess their intentions.
4 Responses to “Say, what?”
By Talldar on Dec 15, 2008
Aye, no chaos allowed. I’ve had some guys who would complain that I set marks for CC in general. And then there particularly was a mage who just wouldn’t sheep at all. I just stopped between to trash groups and told him to either give me my sheep or go tank himself. That helped.
Other than that I really grew cold on DPS pulling aggro. If we’re AoEing I’ll make sure everyone stays save, but if someone doesn’t have their action bars under control he will learn so by dying. Easy thing, as most heroic trash will two-shot unprepared non-platers.
Regarding dps I wouldn’t blame the mages, but DPS in general: They tend to think that since the only hard requirement for heroics is to reach 80, there’s nothing else to do for them. Do a gear check on pugs and don’t mind leaving behind those in leveling greens, 65 blues or just mediocre 70 gear. As a tank I’m geared to the max, socketed and enchanted and all that fancy humpty tumpty stuff. So I at least expect DPS to have something to come up with.
By Darraxus on Dec 15, 2008
Easy for a DPS to say that. All they are doing is Pew Pewing. They will pull aggro, then blame the tank or healer when they die.
By Tankette on Dec 16, 2008
For most heroics I mark but mainly just so I have an easier time managing the mobs with tab targeting. It is pretty rare that a pull will be handled with single target dps.
Our mages are starting out doing about 1500 dps when they hit 80 and have just the gear they had while leveling. We’ve had some rogues, one warlock and a DK that did poor dps but I think that was due to a player not knowing what to do as opposed to lacking gear or a class being bad.
By Aurik on Dec 17, 2008
I really need to set up my old marking macro… I always get beset by the people who think that if you mark things you’re ‘wasting time omg lets go already!’. On my tank I’m pretty brutal about talking to my healer and letting people die if they pull themselves or break cc early or nuke the wrong mob and thus I give them every opportunity not to be idiots by marking and telling which marks means what at the beginning of a run.
I very much agree that no marking, with a pug, will usually spell doom and gloom!
As a healer I am also noticing a trend for people not to bother with CC. They seem to think that ‘it’s ok, the tank can handle it the new instances are ezmode’ and don’t realise the healer in the back is having to blow cooldowns every fight just to keep up with the incoming damage as is, as you point out, the tank.
Chaos = bad.
/hug