I was a jerk pug tank
I did something pretty mean over the weekend, and as a much-needed bit of catharsis I’m going to recount it here.
On Sunday I did a random heroic and was assigned to Utgarde Pinnacle. I buffed myself and the other party members up and sprinted off to the races. Once in that first long hallway I noticed that shadowbolts kept flying past the group I was tanking and picking up mobs up ahead.
At first I was willing to attribute it to a misclick by the Warlock, but after the second time it was obvious he was trying to speed me up.
Once at the first boss he declared in /p that we should do the Incredible Hulk achievement. The hunter agreed but the healer said “meh” and I silently agreed. As Svala does her little speech, the hunter picks up an Abom from the side hall and MDs it onto me. I immediately nuked it down. I wasn’t in the mood to carry these dps through an achievement.
Right before the boss starts, the Warlock decides to pull the other Abom waiting in the back of the room. I don’t know what he was thinking he was going to do once it got to him, because I let it squash him like so many gnats, and then picked it up.
No one said anything, the Warlock didn’t peep a complaint; we just downed Svala and continued on.
Nevertheless, the trigger-happy Warlock died a few more times over the course of the instance, mostly because he would pull ahead of me and I’d let the stuff kill him. I don’t think he ever got the message.
I ended up doing 43% of the damage done in that pug. It probably helped that one of the dps was dead most of the dungeon, and the dps as a whole were barely breaking 2k when they weren’t hugging the floor.
Armory Feed
Deciding not to rescue people from their own stupidity is not mean. In fact, I could argue that letting them learn from their mistakes without interference from others will eventually lead to a smarter person. It sounds like your lock moron will take longer than most to learn from his mistakes, but it doesn’t matter since you probably won’t ever see him again.
Galyan’s last blog ..ICC 5-Person Blind – Galyan
I’m a bigger d*&k. I drop group if anyone besides me pulls more than once or tells me at the beginning of the run “let’s go fast” or “go-go-go.” I honestly don’t need to prove anything by pulling so fast no one can loot. No one is bored at my pace and I’m still out DPSing most of the groups overall DPS.
I have another tank or DPS I can hop on until I find a non-retarded group, so it’s no biggie to me if people want to be rude.
Understandingly, I think part of the problem with people wanting to go fast is that most of us are bored to tears by the older WotLK heroics and most of us have alts. That combo means we’re running these heroics on 2-5 toons sometimes. Not sure if having heroics being driven by badge farming is the best things Blizzard has done.
Did you strip naked and charge into battle, thus wiping your group… at the precise moment your Random Dungeon debuff wore off? Did you follow that up by dropping group without a word? Then pffft! I’ve seen worse. :D
No, but seriously: you weren’t the jerk in that group. The fact that you have the ability to save people from ill-advised actions does not necessarily mean you always must save them from ill-advised actions. Being the tank means you should try your best to save your group members from the mobs, not that you should try your best to save them from themselves. :)
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@hazmacewillraid
28 December 2009 at 1:53 pm #
I did a H-CoS with my priest friend healing and me tanking. This is what we got for DPS:
- A frost mage with 71 points in Frost
- A DK wearing half tanking gear
- A druid specced half for DPS, half for tanking, who would just chill right beside me in front of every mob
None of them broke 2k DPS. I was CONSISTENTLY top damage and DPS. I linked the Recount for the first boss and just added “… seriously?”
Nah, you did just what you should have done. You gave one warning, then you let the fool kill himself over and over. I had a pug where the elemental shaman insisted on pulling for a tank that was still trying to get the fell of tanking. Everyone else had no problems taking it slower (ie not chain pulling 50 mobs at a time). On my hunter I of course was helping out with MD + Volley (I so love that combo now on both my hunter and pally tank). After a few pulls and us yelling at him, eventually I told the healer to stay back and the tank to be ready to taunt. I md’d King Dread to the shaman who immediately got one shot, then we vote kicked him as we killed the boss. Good times. Some people just have to learn the hard way.
I did this, too, in Culling of Strat. The offender was a shadow priest in my group. After the “he probably tab targeted” grace period ran out (three waves in a row), I gave him one simple warning. “Next time you pull before I’m ready, I’m going to let them eat you.” He didn’t say anything, but he stopped pulling. I guess he believed me! We killed the bonus boss with 8 minutes left on the clock, so I think my pace was plenty fast.
Ugh… people can be annoying when people like that appear in your pug…
As I healer I hate tanks running ahead without waiting for me a single second! I never need to drink but I need to loot sometimes, okay? u_u
I think you did best to let him die! Such guys are annoying!
Nanuki’s last blog ..Holy shieht, he’s back! And too much WoW is too much.
Yeah, my ugliest moment involving the new LFG was on Svala too. I popped into a group of four guild members from one of the fringe guilds on my server. Without talking to me about it, the healer decides he wants to do the achievement, so while I’m waiting for Svala to become attackable, the healer goes and lightning bolts one of the hulks, and starts yelling for me to pick it up as it chases him accros the room. I just said “Yeah…. you have fun with that,” and dropped group.
The Renaissance Man’s last blog ..Merry Christmas!
omg you jerk pug tank!
jong’s last blog ..Jedi Post Trick
@Rhidach
28 December 2009 at 3:29 pm #
Your words cut me deep, Jong. :(
You’re the nicest jerk pug tank ever.
I’ve told guildies that they’re free to pull as they wish in heroics. I like the exercise. Strangers are another story. I actually usually sign up for LFD as a healer because, as a tank, I hate getting blamed for strangers pulling before me, or attacking the mob I have the least aggro on.
I have taken to letting pug dps die if they pull extra. I am of the opinion that I pull fast enough. If you don’t like it leave and take the debuff or try to vote me out. In CoS this weekend I let a rogue go splat many a time. What did bug me was the healer saw that he was running ahead, not having the smarts to use ToT and was still healing him.
I average 17 minutes a run, with dungeons like CoS and long talky parts that I cannot skip taking longer. DPS need to learn that tanks have an insta queue and we can be uber jerks and drop group leaving them with a debuff, and their long queue times. In my battle group vindication, as soon as I join LFD I get a queue.
I’m not hating the dungeon finder too much and I haven’t yet had anyone join as healer or tank just to short-circuit the queue. Almost all of my groups have had at least 1 dps doing decent output. My last random was Gundrak with me tanking and a guild dps with 2 other dps from our own realm. The dk barely broke 1k on some fights. The rogue I don’t think broke 800.
At this rate I could probably queue as dps in my holy spec and nobody would really complain. At least I can break 1,200 since ToC gear.
Yeep. Unfortunately ive found that as awesome the the LFG tool is god you get some jerks. I used to run myself ragged trying to pick up extra mobs that the dps “helpfully” decided to pick up for me to make the run faster. Finnly I had a brain explosion and now I just let the dps die. A fellow tank has a great macro that he spams every time he has a pug.
“If the tank dies its the healers fault, If the healer dies its my fault, if the DPS dies its thier own damm fault.” Cuts out alot of the crap that you have to deal with in the age of the speed tank and makes the DPS look like fools when they pull and die.
@Rhidach
29 December 2009 at 9:42 am #
Based on everyone’s responses I’m glad I’m not the only one getting a little jaded out there.
@Malimber: That macro is awesome and I am totally going to start spamming it at the beginning of every pug heroic.
@LabRat: That’s rough, I can take a dps being a jerk, but definitely not the healer. Must have been a dualspecced Cat dps…
@Elladrion: I am so doing that the next time I get stuck with a crop of mouth-breathing dps.
Thats being a good jerk i would say. I don’t know in so many groups dps always feel they need to hurry the tank and usually someone ends up doing something during the run as a result of it. Man i been seeing allot of that in LFG Randoms. But if someone pulling stuns like that let them die.
Ardent Defender’s last blog ..Merry Christmas from the Horde
I don’t care if people are pulling low DPS as long as it it isn’t triple digits. Eh, it’s heroics, some people really are fresh 80s.
But I will *not* taunt off anyone who takes it upon themselves to pull for me anymore. I do wait until it’s clear that’s what’s happening, but I’m beginning to think I really do just need a macro for “If you pull it, I will let you tank it”. The final straw was a druid healer that facepulled every mob he could find in HoS for me. I finally let him tank one. He stopped healing me altogether. I still survived the rest of the instance.
LabRat’s last blog ..Dog Bleg
I’m slowly turning more and more into a jerk tank I’m noticing. And I also feel less and less bad about it after the run ends, which worries me a bit. I don’t want to become one of “those” tanks, but half of the groups I get has one or two people who do stuff like you mentioned, pull mobs, whine about achievements or their prefered tactics (and just do what they think is right, like staying in the hall in HoR for example), or act like the run is another stupid chore they have to get trough again and behave like bored kids. I always keep a good pace and I skip most things that can be skipped, but I do have this thing about clean runs. I like it clean, nothing more, nothing less. No mobs flying all over the place, no dps/pets offtanking. Sure I’m able to clean things up constantly, it’s not that hard usually, but I just don’t like the feeling that I’m babysitting bored, spoiled, or just dumb kids that are making a mess, because “dad the tank” (that’s how I feel sometimes) will probably fix it again. So if it’s too hard for them to do it right, I’m gladly letting the one messing up die, even if it’s the healer, wiping the whole group. The only thing that can save them is a rapid apology. I hate blaming, it’s not in my nature, but it does help to get them in line after that just by asking “Who pulled those??”.
I do feel bad that I’m doing this on the good groups too who just made a mistake, and they really don’t deserve it… But… because even if I ever see them again, it’s only in a quick BG or HC. It feels like it’s not even worth the effort of making a good impression each and every time anymore. That’s what I miss about the old system; you could make some friends to do HC’s or pug raids with later on. Now even if you do find some good folks, you can’t play with them some other time even if you want to.
I’ve been letting dps die more and more lately becuase of this, to the point I hate seeing rogues and hunters in the group becuse I know they AREN’t going to tank what they pull. Haven’t had a group bad enough to do it yet, but I’m waiting for the point where I just DI the healer and watch all the dps die if I get a particularly bad group. Better than bubblehearthing
See, this situation of DPS pulling ahead could never happen on any of my heroic runs. I’m constantly pulling 2-3 packs of mobs at a time and never stopping for even a moment, so there’s pretty much no opportunity for DPS to run ahead. Even with the most terribly geared groups, I nearly always finish my runs under 15 min.
I suggest every tank that’s at least Ulduar geared or above to try chain pulling multiple packs at a time at least once. I find it makes the run much more entertaining.
I would have done the same thing. Having a good tank and a nice one is a privilege that a lot of folks take for granted. Push that tank and you get squished because of the fact it’s not nice and secondly it’s really funny to watch them get squished.
I am finding a lot of really interesting people with this random dungeon stuff. Some are amazing players and the rest I reall just don’t know what to say to. I have had it all and with the new heroic tank spec at least I can carry the dps by out damaging them.
Best so far was this hunter that had over 1500 spellpower in all epics and they pulled a solid 576 on a boss fight in pit of saron.
I’ve been playing Bingo a lot lately.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22048447148&postId=220463235221
@Rhidach
29 December 2009 at 12:51 pm #
Holy cow, that is hilarious. Thanks for sharing that!
“I suggest every tank that’s at least Ulduar geared or above to try chain pulling multiple packs at a time at least once. I find it makes the run much more entertaining.”
I think this is fine as long as you’re letting people loot. I have a shit-ton of alts that all get upgrades and need mats from greens that usually get DE’d.
I’m conflicted on stuff like this too. Part of me wants to let them die, if not to teach them a lesson, then at least to punish them, and then part of me is like “well, doesn’t matter why it happens, you’re the damn tank, take care of it. /flex” So it really depends on my mood at the time whether I listen to the angel or the devil on my shoulder. I’ve let my not-better nature win a few times and I’ve pulled some dick moves in random heroics, but its only been once or twice. I don’t think I’ve ever dropped a group that wasn’t in the Oculus (c’mon gimmie a break on that one). I’ve frequently been 25% dmg done in random pugs and top damage done and top dps. It just comes with the territory since I’m in full 245+ and if I queue by myself I’m sent anywhere the first spot is, and if I’m not by myself, Blizz’s matching system selects people in greens and blues for me to “carry”. I don’t usually mind it, it’s the nature of the system, but it can be demoralizing. Random heroics definitely have a higher potential to bring out the jerk-tank in me because I don’t know anyone and feel no responsibility to them the way I would if I was tanking for guilds, but I mostly just settle for thinking about all the ways I can be evil and mean rather than indulging in any of them. Fortunately I haven’t really run into this problem since I tend to pull so fast no one really gets to loot in my heroics unless they make it a point to do so. I have long since stopped looting corpses since anyone can loot a corpse that has a green that I can roll DE on. DPS is too busy standing still casting Blizzard/Thunderstorm/Rain of Fire to go off on their own and pull more.
Wow I wish I read your post back on the 28th – here I was thinking I was the only maligned tank in LFG heroics.
Over that period I did things that I normally never do – call out people and accuse them of pulling (I always assume it’s a mistake), leave group mid fight (after repeated warnings not to pull ahead of me) and letting people die (due to non-tank aggro pulls).
In fact, my experiences in LFG were so bad at one point, I left 2 groups out of the 5 I got into one night and once I had my frost emblems I refused to tank again.
But I think it was probably related to the holiday period. LFG seems to have settled down again and the last few groups I have been in have been with great players who know what they are doing and don’t spam meters after every pull, don’t blame the tank for a wipe that was caused by a bad dps pull and don’t say go go go go go go after 5 secs of waiting.