Post Your Tanking Horror Stories!

[Ilenya]

Level 52 conjurer.

"Raging Strikes, Blood4blood and internal release make conjurer much better than whm, I only really miss Holy. You have no idea how hard my stone II hits."

What? I just...What? This tortures my healer nature to its very soul.

[Rydia_Feymarchian]

I was fresh of a weeping city with an arcanist, too. I have screenshots of that. (And I'm main healer so I can relate to your pain)

Are classes the new black or something?

[Lilyth]

Five words: Worst Aurum Vale run ever

Omg, that must have sucked so badly!
In such cases it's kind of hard to know what the right course of action is.

Should you have kicked the healer? What if she was literally trying?
But at the same time, you and the rest of the party were given the finger at the end of the dungeon after carrying her for 50 minutes ;/

I honestly don't know what the correct answer is.

[Pixelmancer]

I'm trying to level marauder with dungeons for cross class skills for my dark knight. No complaints from any other group. 2 to 3 commendations usually. This particular dungeon I ran several times as a gladiator and this was my third time as marauder. This run the bard is obviously doing a roulette and is way overgeared. He's pulling in every room. When I finally get things under control after a bard pull he still never attacks what I'm attacking. Then the conversation goes something like this.

Me: Don't pull if you're not tanking please.
Bard: You need to use your combo right!
Me: What does that even mean? I don't read minds.
Healer: He's giving you advice. You're new so you should take it.
Me: I might take it if I could figure out what he's trying to tell me.
Bard: Maim is important.

I was trying to explain that he was making it extremely hard to keep enmity at all, much less with something other than my enmity combo, but I got vote kicked in the middle of my sentence. I can't facepalm hard enough without breaking my nose.

[Sweetgrass]

when every expert is like this, more or less

[Jpec07]

So this is one that taps on the fears that a lot of nervous tanks entertain.

I'm extremely late to the party when it comes to Weeping City of Mhach. With my FC, we basically skipped most of the 3.3 casual progression because none of us really liked the gear, and real world things kept us away. Now, though, we're playing and very much enjoying 3.4--and we all agreed that Weeping City was worth at least trying for glamour (the gear is very pretty).

We've run it a few times with varying degrees of success, namely because even this late in the game, some people still don't know the mechanics (to be fair, we didn't fully understand them ourselves from MTQCapture's guides until we actually experienced them). After four clears, I decided to try main tanking it. Neither of the other tanks in the group seemed to mind this development, and so we went through the raid. Arachne Eve goes down without a hitch. A few people die on Forgall, but we recover and get it in one shot. Ozma is the smoothest time I've faced that encounter. And then we get to Calofisteri.

Calofisteri, for those who might not have fought her, is a very challenging boss to tank--not because of damage, but because group success hinges on your every decision and move as a tank. Because of Haircut, it's best not to move her around, and while some strats say to turn that side of her away from the raid, that sort of thing puts even more pressure on the tank.

As we approach the fight, people begin discussing the mechanics for the new people. It comes up to see if I should tank it, and people give me their confidence, because we'd gotten through the first three bosses with ease. I'm effectively volunteered on a vote of confidence. And so after a ready check, I countdown and begin. Because of Haircut, I know to keep her in place, and to face her the same direction, so for the first part of the fight, I keep her in the middle, facing due north. Some people are hit by Haircut, but this is on them--the boss is not moving. Everything seems to be going fine.

Until she does her first Depth Charge.

For some reason, my brain lapsed over this mechanic, and I made the rookie mistake of running to her, instead of pulling her back to the center and pointing her north again. But by the time I realize it, she's against the wall, and she's in the phase where she starts casting Haircut again. I do my best to keep her facing one way, and to not move her, but then her bulb AoEs go out. I move to avoid, not realizing she was going to cast Haircut again, and I immediately see the entire platform light up in that telltale orange.

I screamed several profanities in real life, and apologized immediately for my mistake.

And then the group began to tear into me. It wasn't directly at me, but several comments went out about "crappy tanks" and "never had a run like this," and "now what did we learn, folks?". I didn't keep the chat log, but the passive aggressive berating was on a level I haven't seen since I quit WoW. It frankly left me on the verge of tears.

I dropped group, left the game, shut down my computer, and spent the rest of the night a blubbering mess, because I'd messed up, and my single mistake had caused the group to wipe. And playing on my anxiety, they hated me for it. It was the first time since I tanked my first dungeon in WoW that I ever considered putting down the shield and never tanking again.

I recovered after some conversations with friends and a good night's sleep, and I've read quite a few guides on tanking the encounter after the fact, so I've got my confidence back, but that experience jarred me.

Not asking for pity with this, as I made a mistake that wiped the raid, but this is what truly qualifies as a tanking horror story in my mind: a group comprised of graceless, tactless members, who express confidence in you, only to betray you by jumping down your throat for making a single critical rookie mistake on a boss you're still learning.

[VanilleFang]

When the DPS does not follow the kill order in Sastasha and when the Conjurer (Level Synced) heals for 32 HP OUTSIDE of Cleric Stance. (Not that Cleric Stance healing is that bad in low level dungeons anyway.)
My Hi-Elixirs are finally being put to use!

WTF, how is that even a thing? I would have kicked them so fast. 32 HP is just a waste of MP and time. Holy hell.

[Pixelmancer]

WTF, how is that even a thing? I would have kicked them so fast. 32 HP is just a waste of MP and time. Holy hell.

Agreed. I don't know how that's even physically possible. Even in cleric stance a level 15+ shouldn't be healing that low. That's like a level 1 healing. O_o

[Hierro]

So this is one that taps on the fears that a lot of nervous tanks entertain.

boy do I remember you

[Jpec07]

boy do I remember you

With 23 other people in the instance, I wouldn't be surprised if you were there, but if I may ask: are you sure it was me? I've since been told that it's a very common mistake, and have even seen other tanks make it.

I didn't say much during that raid, save maybe a couple explanations, or when I apologized immediately after messing up.