Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Three Baggie Perspectives

This is basically a short post to share something interesting someone said the other day, to say something I decided the other day, and to get some input on motivation.

About the random baggie:  Something interesting.

A hunter in my guild the other night told me he got the bribe bag when queuing up for the LFR the other day.  We both thought it was a complete fluke that a damage dealer had the baggie but then it happened to him again two days later.  Have you ever seen a damage dealer offered the baggie?  I never have.  I want my baggie.

When talking about it we came to the conclusion that it was the hour he plays.  He is a late night player, as in so late at night type of player that he is probably in the LFR when I am waking up for work in the morning.  Twice in the last week it seems damage dealers are needed at that time of day.  Or should it be that time of night?

About the random baggie:  Something decided.

I don't mind healing LFR.  If anything it is the only role I don't mind doing in the LFR.  Not exactly sure why that is, it just is.  But while playing around during the weekend it occurred to me, why bother just to cap being there is no longer any valor gear to buy with valor, and I do not raid enough with them to get new gear all the time to need the valor to upgrade it.

So from now on, I will only heal an LFR when there is an option of the baggie.  No baggie, no healer.  So the next time you are waiting on a healer and wonder why there are none around you will know that at least one healer is out there that is not entering the queue because there is no reason for me to gain valor without valor gear and there is no reason for me to heal without giving me something extra to bait me in.

About the random baggie: Motivation.

The bag has never been motivation for me to tank the LFR or a dungeon.  It is not really about reward or even instant queue.  I can ramble off a million and one reasons I do not like tanking random content but it comes down to the people in it.  I've actually become a pretty staunch tank protector in random content.  Even more so when I am on my healer and others complain.  As long as I have no problem keeping him up, you have no right to complain.  But all people do it complain about tanks.  All other tanks do it ignore or insult each other, usually.  Tanks get no love, only grief.

I currently have 6 tanks capable of tanking SoO LFR.  I've tanked some flex and some normal on two of them.  But I will not ever even consider for a moment tanking SoO LFR.  A baggie is just not compelling motivation.  I like to tank, I am willing to tank, but the people in them keep me from doing it.  I am sure I am not the only person that feels that way, just look at the fact there are always tanks needed.  What type of motivation do you think would get people like me to tank?  People who like tanking but do not like the people in randoms?

7 comments:

  1. I've tanked hardly anything this expansion for the same reason. I love tanking but despite trying to cultivate a thick skin it gets to me after a while when people are rude and critical. Tanking stuff for guildies? I love it, but tanking randoms? Not so much.
    I tanked a lot of random heroics in Cata and ran tons of them on my dps. And the only times I ever remember hearing really terrible abuse were when I tanked. And it wasn't even when there'd been wipes or anything usually. I hadn't done anything stupid, I hadn't failed, my gear was good, but people seem to love to rip on a tank.
    The worst run I remember we'd had no wipes at all but I got some of the worst abuse I'd ever heard for refusing to pull Ozruk while the healer (a friend I was in vent with) was drinking.
    Long story short: people are terrible to tanks and it's unlikely you'll ever find me tanking LFRs because of it.

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    1. There is so much to hate about people when tanking. Even when they are not being "go go go" jerks vocally, it is pulling on their own.

      It doesn't happen so much because of game design, but I always used line of sight pulls in leveling dungeons because I know groups with casters and pats and such. But you always get some jerk that come right up on your ass even after you say "pulling back here" and then causes all type of mayhem and sometimes a wipe. And somehow it is "my fault" because they can not read?

      Or like you said, I wait for healers. If my healer is drinking, I wait. If I am waiting that means don't pull. I know what I am doing.

      The people keep me from tanking. They are horrible. Not all of course, but you run into more bad than good.

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    2. People that pull on their own are another thing too. A guildie actually almost cured me of tanking in my prot pally's Outland days. That was about the level I'd finally got up the courage to start tanking randoms. We were doing Blood Furnace and got to one of those rooms all full of hard hitting mobs.

      Well she and one of the other dps were not happy with how fast I was pulling because admittedly I was doing them one group at a time as I learned and got a feel for what I could manage. So she ran ahead on her warlock and pulled the entire room for me. I picked it all up... and promptly died. I never did tank another random for her as long as she was playing. Made a point of always coming on dps to runs she was in after that.

      People in randoms need to learn to let the tank pull with the way they feel comfortable. Maybe they're learning and brand new to it like I was then. Maybe they're pulling the amount they feel comfortable handling. In my personal opinion knowing what you can manage both aggro and health wise is just as important a part of being a tank as the big health pool.

      Was healing a low level dungeon with a friend last night even. The warlock kept pulling and not surprisingly their health kept dropping like a stone and twice it dropped faster than I could heal it because I was busy healing the tank who had pulled a different group before the warlock started. After a couple pulls the warlock says. 'No way this tank sucks' and drops group. No, warlock, Tank was doing their job, you were the one who wasn't doing yours.

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  2. You know me, you know I love tanking. I haven't set foot in Siege LFR and I'm not going to. I only went to Throne LFR as we weren't clearing the last half of Throne consistently enough for those runestone things for the legendary. I wanted it done before 5.4, it took me 11 weeks to do it, so for those 11 weeks I was a tank in the LFR queue, but only for those 11 weeks. It was before they'd announced these things would drop in Siege and I wanted the achievement. Gear is vendored every new patch but legendaries last and achievements are forever.

    There isn't any bribe or any reward that will get me to tank LFR, I loathe it. It's not because people are abusive towards me as the tank, though I have had that, it's just generally the whole toxic atmosphere. I won't run it on my main and I won't run it on alts. I wish fervently that it wasn't part of the gearing ladder as it means playing anything other than my main is difficult.

    Actually I tell a lie, there is one thing that could get me to tank LFR - achievements. I'm a sucker for them. So if they introduced archy style achievements of "complete wing 1 of Siege in LFR", then "complete wing 1 of Siege in LFR 5x", then "complete wing 1 of Siege in LFR 20x" or something like that, then yeah I'd run it. I would hate it, I would curse it, I wouldn't enjoy it, but there would be another tank in the LFR queue.

    Mind you I wouldn't be a very good tank for LFR as I wouldn't go alone. In circumstances above where I had to run it every week I'd set up a calendar event, and I would pack it as full of guildies as possible, and I definitely wouldn't go without my co-tank. So that wouldn't really help the LFR queue at all.

    Yeah so basically unless they turn LFR into a dungeon run, so it's fast and easy, I'm not going to run it. It takes too long and it's too toxic. I might love tanking but I raid 3-4 nights a week with my guild, and that will do me, no need to torture myself with LFR.

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    1. If I had a tank to queue with I would consider going. If I had a lot of guild mates and a co tank, then I would go. Maybe if they offered something special to a "guild run" of 15 or more players where all 15 get something it might work and I might go as a tank. But even that is pushing it as a maybe.

      I believe the LFRs should be as easy and simple as dungeon runs, but you would still hear people complaining about tanks.

      I had a dungeon run on my hunter last week where as soon as we zone in the healer started picking on the tank. "I have more life than you", "you should gem and enchant before coming in here", "how do you except to tank in that gear" etc.

      I said, he is appropriately geared for a dungeon, just because you are over geared doesn't mean anything.

      I whispered to the tank. "Just taunt from a distance, I will kill everything before it gets to you. You don't need a healer."

      We blew through the instance with a low health tank and a healer that spent more time insulting the tank and me for defending the tank than actually healing. I wonder what they thought when they noticed that the tank did just fine without a healer because the healer refused to heal him even in his shitty gear.

      And people wonder why there are no tanks. Because people trying to learn, trying to gear up, are never given the opportunity to learn.

      I did an LFR yesterday, decent one too compared to most runs. One wipe on first boss, none on second, 3 on third, and still the entire time people where bitching about the horrible tanks.

      Even after a one shot they bitched at both tanks for being so horrible so they dropped group. We had to wait for new tanks, 4 times, as in we went through 4 tanks before we got 2 to stay because all the tanks that did zone in zoned into "I hope you aren't a horrible tank like the last 2" and just left.

      How there are any tanks left with the way the community treats them is beyond me.

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    2. That refusal to heal the person in the shitty gear reminds me of my first ever dungeon run at max level. I'm almost positive it was just a normal run, not a heroic. It was my first max level, I'd hit 80 on my mage and wanted to start gearing it. So I hit random dungeon and got Forge of Souls. As soon as I zoned in the healer started on me, saying that I was just going to die so they weren't even going to bother healing me as it was a waste of effort. They tried to start a vote kick and it failed.

      I was quite unhappy about this as you can imagine. It wasn't exactly a warm welcome to endgame. Did I die? Well yeah, I'd never been there before, but thanks to a dps off healing me I only died the once. I said to my friend, who'd recruited me to the game, about it later. I was worried that I'd done something wrong. He told me that if I wasn't geared for it that it wouldn't have let me in there via LFD. I wasn't cheesing it as I didn't know that was possible back then. I think I had just scraped in but even so.

      Some players are just arseholes, and tanks are an easy target as they are so visible. I too wonder sometimes why there are still tanks left in random content. Plus didn't those people in LFR realise that all they were doing was wasting their own time? Well that and everyone elses. I bet it was quite a while waiting for all those tanks to cycle in and out. Stupid people.

      Also if the boss dies, why moan? I don't understand this. Sure if you are wiping over and over and it's because the tank is dying/losing aggro/positioning the boss stupidly so melee all go splat etc. but if things are dying and loot is being collected, I don't get it.

      Mind you people are illogical. I tanked Ultraxion on my alt dk. The other tank died early on twice and so I tanked most of the encounter on my own. It was my alt so it wasn't as well geared, nor as well practiced as my main. So I ran out of cds and we did wipe at 5% or something. The person the raid blamed for that? Yup it was me. I think that's one of the few times I've dropped group but the things they were calling me.

      I think blizz, or Ghostcrawler should queue for some random LFRs incognito and then maybe they'd find out what it's really like. Rather than the rosy picture they like to paint it as.

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    3. Forge of souls as your first dungeon after hitting 80 must have been brutal. That was an end game dungeons meant more for people in Ulduar or ToC gear. Talk about trail by fire. Even the normals dropped better gear than the previous heroics if I remember correctly. Most defiantly not for a fresh 80.

      With that said, unless it was brand new just came out that week content, who cares, you could easily carry a fresh DPS through there. We used to chain all our fresh 80s through there to gear them up. That was just someone being an ass. As long as the entire group was not filled with fresh just hit 80s it would be no problem.

      I don't think normals checked item level at the time. I could be wrong.

      That is another kicker for poor tanks, they always blame the wrong tank. Tank died because the other tank did not taunt off and their debuff got to high? Blame them for dying, not the tank that did not taunt off.

      People are just stupid and do not know how to assign blame. They will always take the easy target and whoever speaks first is the one that wins. So if the other tank says "he wouldn't let me get aggro" even if he never tried to get aggro, it is now your fault.

      GC would quit the game if he had half the experiences we, the players have had. I am sure of it.

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