Post Your Tanking Horror Stories!

[Jpec07]

Bah, right you are. Still, good to see that my non-speedy-pull pace is consistent. I typically wind up pulling the final bosses with ~65 minutes left on the clock, depending on DPS.

[MusicGamer]

I've only got just the one tank horror story so far, but this is mostly due to I haven't done that much with Paladin yet (at least not in terms of difficult content).

I'd just gotten Paladin to 50, and I thought I"d use some of my POetics to get some of my Ironworks gear. By the time of this particular story, I'd gotten my shield, my bodypiece, and my augmented sword. To try and get some practice tanking for 8-man trials, I thought I'd queue into the Trial Roulette. It chucks me over into a group for Shiva, with a new tank and two new DPS. I don't recall that anyone else had levelled a tank to that point, and if they had then they weren't saying anything, so naturally nobody knows what to do to tank it. Best way to learn is charging forward, sword drawn, I figure, and the other tank (also a Paladin) agrees to Main Tank. (continued on next post due to character limit)

[MusicGamer]

(from last post) We get to Phase 2 before things go south.

The MT had died at this point, so naturally i pop Shield Oath, use Provoke and chuck my shield at him to try and get aggro back. Again, I didn't know how to tank the fight, and even though I main BRD it had been some time since I'd done the fight in general, so I didn't remember a lot of the mechanics anyway.

Not sure why, but before I knew it everyone had died except for myself and one of the healers, a SCH, I think, leaving me as the only damage dealer. I had mentioned that I had about 3 pieces of Ironworks gear; however, everything else I had on were either my job gear or crap accessories.

What this amounts to is 10-12 solid minutes of me having whole thirds of my health being knocked out of me while desperately trying to buy time for the healer to pop Swiftcast and Raise the other healer to get back to normal.

Most harrowing ten minutes of my entire tanking career thus far. :'D

[bounddreamer]

I usually get 16 min runs in DF as tank or healer. If it's lower it's usually when one or more isn't well geared.

Back to topic, just remembered a Syrcus Tower that I queued for last year. Got ready for the pull, went in, and right during my first combo the entire floor's worth of trash hit me and I didn't get a single heal. Before I got off any cooldowns I was dead on the floor. I didn't even want to off tank the rest of that dungeon. I refused to pull any more encounters because I could not trust the healers. Kept adds off my party and didn't say a word. I won't rage on people who don't do their job but god I wanted to say something.

[Februs]

Back to topic, just remembered a Syrcus Tower ...

You just reminded me of the worst run of World of Darkness I ever did, and the main reason why I absolutely HATE 24-man raids. This one's a doozy, so I apologize for the wall of text.

An FC mate guilt tripped me into tanking it for them because they didn't want to put up with a random. I was already starting to hate the 24-man scene because of toxic players and massive tank penis envy, but I agreed. We get in. Someone points out that Alliance C has an "archer." Seemed weird, but no big deal. At this point, everyone was over-geared for the raids anyway (I myself was rocking a finished zeta). A few people are joking about it in the Alliance chat, but some of them seem to know the guy, so whatever.

We kick off. I let someone else MT, because I don't want to deal with the whole, "I have the bigger stick" tug-o-war that was oh so common back then (I generally take the prisoner's attitude of, "Do your own time" into 24-man raids. I look after my party, and my party only, unless the other 2 tanks are cocking it up so badly that I absolutely have to do something about it). We get to the first boss without problems. A Tank pulls.

A short time into the fight, they lose aggro. I saw a Voke go off, so I assume that the other tank is fighting for enmity. nothing unusual there, only the boss is moving around all over the place. It's anarchy, and I notice that it is chasing a Dps around the edge of the arena. The tank Vokes back and re-positions, but people start bitching to high heavens about Tanks not doing their jobs.

The fight continues ... and the tank loses aggro again. Someone voked, and the boss goes on a rampage. The tank seems to be having trouble getting enmity back, and it's happened twice now, so I step up. I pull the boss, re-position him, and hold him down. Near the end of the fight, someone Vokes him off of me. I figure the MT wants enmity back, and think nothing of it. That said, I don't trust the MT, so I hold aggro. Boss wiggles on the spot for a second, but I keep him. Someone complains almost immediately about Tank enmity.

At this point I'm starting to get suspicious, because I noticed that each time the tank lost the boss, a voke had gone off, and when I lost the boss, a voke had also gone off, but the boss was always chasing around a non-tank player. I have a bad feeling I know what's happening, so, I start to keep my eyes open.

We get to the next boss, and sure enough, the tank loses enmity. Someone voked, and it wasn't a tank. The Archer has been voking the boss on cooldown and kiting him around the map. When I see it happen this time, I voke the boss, and re-position. I know what the archer is up to, and I call him out in the chat. No one kicks him, even after he vokes again. I was waiting for it, so I had voke at the ready followed by a proc'd enmity strike. He keeps trying, the entire time, to get the boss off of me, but I hold him in one spot (with a bit of wiggling).

Fight ends and I hit up the Alliance Chat to tell them to kick that moron. No one does. I got the impression that Alliance C was a pre-made and they all knew the guy. They were intentionally trolling.

I take over MT position for the rest of the fights because I was best geared and knew how to deal with the situation, but it was a royal pain in the ass. After all of the toxic players I've seen in the 24-man raids, this was the straw that broke the camels back. I renounced ever doing them. I basically did what was required for my weekly for the rest of the 2.x lifespan, and I never Q'd for them again. I've held that attitude for Void Ark as well. I never tank it, and I only do it once a week to avoid the pool of toxic waste that Q for those raids.

[Februs]

Snip

Fyi, you can avoid the character limit by editing your original text ... unless you're on a cellphone, that is. It's a stupid feature, and everyone hates it, but there is a way around it.

I'm kind of surprised the entire party died... Shiva is kind of a sissy. The only mech I can even think of that would have killed everyone is if the golums weren't dead before Diamond Dust. In which case, you did nothing wrong. The Dps were too slow. I'm assume you lived through this encounter, though. So good job! It's always exciting to come back from the brink of death in a Trial or Raid.

Also, welcome to the ranks of Pld. I hope you enjoyed learning it, because it's supposedly changing in 3.2 ... so you're gonna have to re-learn some stuff.

[Ragnorak]

T11 :') Im the WAR OT in my static my tank bro is a PLD. I tunnel Vision so hard focusing on pushing out my deeps. Well i notice TS is really quiet and then suddenly my tank bro start to go "OMMMMM" and then start screaming my name. I tunnel visioned so hard i didnt provoke the head. He died then we all ended up dying :')

[MusicGamer]

Snip

Oh, well that explains it then. Thanks for that tip!

And actually, that's exactly what happened - DPS didn't kill the adds quickly enough. :'D It also didn't help that I was also tanking said adds since the tank was dead by the time they spawned. ^^;

And yeah, I lived through the encounter, but to this day I'm still a little wary about tanking for Shiva (or any trial for that matter) as I'm afraid that it'll just happen again. :'D

And I heard they were changing up Paladin in 3.2. I figured I'd have to relearn it eventually anyway, it was just a matter of sooner (patch adjustments) vs later (expansion + potentially new skills/level cap).

[Februs]

Oh, well that explains it then. Thanks for that tip!

And actually, that's exactly what happened - DPS didn't kill the adds quickly enough. :'D It also didn't help that I was also tanking said adds since the tank was dead by the time they spawned. ^^;

And yeah, I lived through the encounter, but to this day I'm still a little wary about tanking for Shiva (or any trial for that matter) as I'm afraid that it'll just happen again. :'D

No problem. Everyone hates that character limit.

And I wouldn't worry too much. Most of the Trials don't go that badly (with some exceptions. Steps/Nabrieles tend to still get fail groups on occasion). So long as the tanks and healers are not pants on head stupid, things work out. That said, there has been a sudden surplus of new subs into the game recently, and most of them don't have a clue how to do their jobs or what any of the boss mechanics are. If you see that new player bonus notification come up, beware, especially if the new player is a Tank or healer (you can usually tell based on who is watching the whole cut scene).

[PenelopeWinn]

It's possible you may have also faced her towards the party while she was in sword stance (it goes off during adds a couple times). It's the right method for EX but for HRD mode it'll bring about some quick disaster.