Post Your Tanking Horror Stories!

[AI_wass]

I dunno about you, but I'd rather complete three roulettes in 45 minutes rather than just one.

[Jpec07]

Because making a run literally three times longer than it has to be means you're obsessed with parsing.

A speed run of the 3.1 dungeons can be as short as maybe 20 minutes on a good day, if the stars align. Usually closer to 25 if you've got decent DPS. If you're pacing it normally, though, it won't take longer than 30ish minutes, depending on DPS. I don't personally enjoy speed runs, though I will usually do bigger pulls if I have at least one party member that can do good consistent AoE (SMN or BLM, or a really well-geared BRD) - big pulls only make things faster if you can burn down everything at once.

I think the problem with that run is that the tank in question was built to enable risk-taking, but they took no risks. A full-Vit WAR in Defiance will have >20k easily, and with that much HP, your healer can very likely fall asleep on small pulls without causing harm to the party. In this case, not only did the tank not take risks, but they also didn't cater to the group comp. SCH-SMN-SMN is as close to the dream AoE combo as I think I've heard of, but the tank was acting like everyone could only sustain single-target DPS.

But all of that aside, I'm sure tanks like that are sorry for not giving you back your precious 15-20 minutes. Because really, the faster you can get back to /mandervilledance-ing in front of the Idyllshire Aetheryte, the better. That crystal really needs you to dance for it.

[HoodRat]

A speed run of the 3.1 dungeons can be as short as maybe 20 minutes on a good day, if the stars align.

You must be pretty bad then.

[Awful]

My previous tanking horror story was doing Pharos HM where it was a 50 min run with a blm, a smn, and a Sch. The Scholar baned more than the summoner and the blm was an ice mage when I tried to explain their abilities they got defensive (even though I wasn't trying to attack them just pointing out their rotations). They responded with "we're both friends we won't hesitate to kick you" the Sch and I just rolled our eyes and said whatever. They both attacked 2nd boss with the static buff on him ignoring adds and getting stunned over and over and dying because of his Drill line move.

All in all was the most draining dungeon I have had in all of HW almost an hour of just beating my head off my desk while I think to myself it'll be over soon.

You must be pretty bad then.

Honestly it's DPS that make these runs really bad and unwanted if you have 2 DPS that are overgeared for the content with ilvl 200-210 weapons with average ilvls of 206-210, you should be wrecking things. Especially if you're a tank who knows their class by getting out of tank stance, DPSing with the DPS making the run significantly shorter. It's sad when I can out damage a DPS while i'm a tank...I hope the 3.2 changes are positive for tanks and that we can continue choosing how we do these runs.

Sorry for the paragraph of text /end rant.

[whiskeybravo]

This isn't particularly a horror story for myself, but I'm sure the group was thinking "wtf is this war doing.."

Was trying to get some gordian lens for bard headpiece and precision pieces for relic, so I q'd up for A3 normal mode as a war, thinking it would be faster than dps. We are going through the fight and I realize I didn't quite remember the order of all the mechanics, so basically I wasn't stacking up for handslaps. Several people died on the 2 phases cuz I guess other people weren't stacking either. I did the provoke part right at least :P Piston add phase I accidentally grabbed a tether (I know tanks are supposed to do this) but I wasn't thinking about it and just happened that the tether person basically ran into me. I go back to the edge and mind my own business waiting for the hit when the healer somehow got pushed into me and took it off. Of course they blame me for giving it to them since it wasn't like I was worried about the other mechanics so far lol. Whatever. We get to last phase, I know traditionally the tanks are supposed to swap at like 4 stacks, but I figured he could handle it. And he did, all the way up to 7 stacks, I was like wow I guess he does have it. Then the 8th hit wiped him out. It was kinda funny. They probably thought I wasn't paying attention, but I really was watching the stacks add up to see how much he could take. Oh well, now I know. Provoked and finished it off with some Fell Cleaves. Yus. Hello top deeps

No lens tho

[Twilite]

You must be pretty bad then.

If you're doing runs less than that(even 20min sounds impossible in DF), you're not doing it with pugs..you're doing it with 2 SMN/BRD/BLM at the most, or even 2 DRG friends..with all of them knowing what they are doing.

It's not always the tank that sets the pace. It's more of we set an ideal pace - but ultimately this idealism can be crippled by the DPS. I don't think I need to lay down any examples.

[Fredco191]

I.... don't have one... *walking away* man...

[Jpec07]

Back on topic, I'm borrowing one of my FC-mate's stories.

He was leveling his SCH for our raid team, because we'd rather PUG a DPS than a healer. But he had an...interesting time in Sohm Al. The reason? A DRK who was in the 115 set you get from Cloudtop/Falcon's Nest, who was doing big pulls while also being abnormally squishy.

Now, it would have been OK if they'd just wiped and moved on. But they kept wiping. And my poor friend was having to do everything in his power to try to keep this tank alive, and to no avail. And so the tank gets pissed, and he and his buddies (who'd queued together) start chewing out my friend. But he quietly sticks with it, but he notices something around the second boss: the tank isn't using Darkside.

It didn't click to him at the time, but as he watched for the rest of the dungeon (while they continued to abuse him), the tank didn't even attempt to use Darkside even once, and was constantly MP-capped. He would have said something, but being abused does not inspire confidence in that someone will be open to correction.

It was only after, when we were talking about it, that we realized that not having Darkside on was literally shooting himself in the foot. Not only was his DPS lower, but more than half of his cooldowns were inaccessible, including Dark Arts. So this DRK did not know how to play the job, caused the group to wipe several times, and berated his healer (along with his friends).

That was a nightmarish tank, and so I think qualifies as a tanking nightmare.

You must be pretty bad then.

First of all, was this really necessary? You just contributed nothing to the discussion. In an attempt to make an arbitrary judgment on another player, you then hurled a baseless insult, without any attempt at correcting the issues that person may have had with their gameplay. If someone is performing poorly, rather than just insulting and dismissing them, maybe try helping them. This isn't like WoW where people will bite your head off for offering advice, and if you do it respectfully, you may even make a friend or two out of it. But doing something like this? Calling someone bad for no reason and without justification? You're contributing to the growing toxicity of the community. And that is not okay.

I may not be the best tank, but I speak from a lot of experience in DF when I say that a decent, non-speed pace is ~30 minutes, and that I can see speed tactics shaving maybe 5-10 minutes off of that if you happen to get a good group.

I don't have a static Expert farm group, so I have to rely on DF for my DPS. If I'm paired with a ~170 DRG and a ~180 MCH, then there is no possible way the run will take less than half an hour. Even if I pulled everything to the boss' door and did all of the trash-skipping mechanics (which are horrible ideas because they lock you in combat), the new instances will not be "speedy." And in those instances, even if I stay in SwO the whole time and time FoF perfectly to make the most of CoS and GB every time, and execute my rotation flawlessly, I'm restricted in how fast I can go by the DPS. The only way those dungeons have been any shorter in duration has been when I get paired with well-geared players who know what they're doing. And if they're DRG, MNK, or MCH, then I've found it's actually more time efficient to pull small.

[Instrumentality]

My life while tanking is an existential hell from which there is no escape.

[HoodRat]

A couple months ago I queued for A3 with 4 friends. As chance would have it, 2 of the 3 randoms we got were from the same server as us. One of whom I will simply call Derpgoon. The other random was a drk. Anyway, the duty starts and the drk throws on grit and pulls the first group of adds. Apparently Derpgoon wanted more so he pulled all the other mobs and proceeded to die. We kill all those and make it to Living Liquid. Drk pulls in grit and whabam I get aggro in deliverance, with the drk eventually getting it back by spamming power slash. We end up wiping from something stupid that I don't remember. The next 4 pulls pretty much go exactly the same as this, except 2 wipes are from me grabbing a tether and continuing to attack the weak mobs and someone runs by, grabs the tether off me and runs it to the healers killing them. At this point, the drk tries to blame me and Derpgoon says I'm the worst tank on his server because he cleared A2S (not quite sure how that makes sense but whatever). I say someone keeps taking the tether off me and Derpgoon says I need to stop attacking adds because tank dps doesn't matter. One of my friends pastes the parse of the last pull in party chat and I'm at the top with a less geared and experienced drg above Derpgoon, who then remains quiet for the rest of the run. The drk pulls again and, you guessed it, I take aggro. Drk accuses me of intentionally provoking off him and he just runs in the electric stuff and dies and tells everyone to wipe. So they wipe and we vote abandon. Afterwards, Derpgoon sends me a friend request for some reason which we all laugh about.