Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[Ametrine]

Is tanking really that fundamentally different in WoW? I've both bumped into and read about tanks moving to FFXIV from WoW only to be completely baffled by how bad they are doing here.

[Squintina]

So here's my story for the day.

I haven't had much chance to play in the last few weeks (other than crafting classes, things that don't need much attention) so I had completely forgotten that I had unlocked a new dungeon (new for me) for the Sunken Temple of Qarn, and sure enough it popped in my roulette, and because of that I didn't look up mechanics in advance like I normally do.

First boss comes and I of course die because I didn't know what to do for the Doom (silly me, I thought I could esuna it away, I was the healer) and we wipe. So I ask for mechanics and people give them to me. I still die on the second time because I swear I thought I was on the square but I guess I missed it. My second death didn't cause a wipe,but I still felt real bad. Thankfully, no one was being mean. Next bosses I asked for mechanics before entering the room, people gave them, and I tried my best not to act like a noob again (and succeeded, no deaths, no standing in crap, no getting hit by lasers).

On the last boss one of our DPS didn't LB and someone got upset over that and was being a little...jerky about it.

I was surprised. Given no one was a jerk over my 2 deaths (which added a few minutes to the run and I feel horrible over it), I didn't think anyone would care that much that our DPS forgot to make the battle a whole 5 seconds shorter.

[Lyrai_Celestine]

So here's my story for the day.

I haven't had much chance to play in the last few weeks (other than crafting classes, things that don't need much attention) so I had completely forgotten that I had unlocked a new dungeon (new for me) for the Sunken Temple of Qarn, and sure enough it popped in my roulette, and because of that I didn't look up mechanics in advance like I normally do.

First boss comes and I of course die because I didn't know what to do for the Doom (silly me, I thought I could esuna it away, I was the healer) and we wipe.

Yeah. That first boss in Qarn the only instance where Doom is not Esuna-able. Don't worry. Once you figured this one out, you'll never see a mechanic as confusing as this again.

Qarn HM's first boss, for example, has a quicksand mechanic in which you'll die if you don't get out of the AoE quick enough. That's already much more manageable than that "Doom, stand on the glowing one out of the three slabs" mechanic.

[TankHunter678]

Yeah. That first boss in Qarn the only instance where Doom is not Esuna-able. Don't worry. Once you figured this one out, you'll never see a mechanic as confusing as this again.

Qarn HM's first boss, for example, has a quicksand mechanic in which you'll die if you don't get out of the AoE quick enough. That's already much more manageable than that "Doom, stand on the glowing one out of the three slabs" mechanic.

And if you got a good paladin then the first boss in Qarn normal is almost mechanic-less. You can stun the boss while it attempts to cast the roar that inflicts doom, or if the DPS is good and you stun him you will DPS past the trigger for the doom roar. Resulting in never having to actually do the whole stand on glowing panel mechanic. Makes the adds more of an issue then the boss because the adds can both final sting the tank and one shot him since it does an enforced 75% of max HP in damage.

Is tanking really that fundamentally different in WoW? I've both bumped into and read about tanks moving to FFXIV from WoW only to be completely baffled by how bad they are doing here.

According to my friend, who did tanking in WoW and has been tanking here, the difference is pretty massive.

In WoW you simply cannot rip aggro off a tank, even as low as level 10. Once a tank smacks a mob that's it. They have aggro. DPS can go full bore right off the bat and they simply wont be able to take aggro off any tank that can half decently play the game. They also have almost 1/3rd the global cooldown we do, so any mistakes are really easy to recover from in WoW. Mobs can barely have time to turn before the tank has established aggro on a mob they initially missed.

Here they have to fight for aggro, the longer global cooldown means that it takes longer for them to recover from any mistakes. Which also any dungeon below 30, before you get your tank stance, is terrible because you have to work even harder to maintain aggro. He even says he can tell when someone is using a parser or not, because a person using a parser goes full bore right off the bat to try to hit the biggest numbers they can. Just like in WoW. Only here doing that means its really easy for them to rip aggro off the tank, something WoW tanks basically never get to experience.

[FedoraTheExplorer]

Tried tanking Dzemael Darkhold and Aurum Vale today and wow I suck. I keep zoning out here and there and that makes me lose aggro, keep making silly mistakes and overpulling(? think I did that in AV). DD felt really cramped and tight, and AV is just ugh. I've gained a new hatred for these dungeons. Really wish I could skip to the part where I get better at this lol.

But I do want to shoutout to the SMN at the last boss of AV who said "stop fking baby raging and play" because I was messing around saying "are you kidding" and "i want to die and be dead" after lag or whatever it was made me get hit by Bad Breath. You're a real star. Btw, I never caught that SMN using resurrection. Would've been handy for when we almost wiped to Coincounter.

[Krotoan]

In WoW you simply cannot rip aggro off a tank, even as low as level 10. Once a tank smacks a mob that's it. They have aggro. DPS can go full bore right off the bat and they simply wont be able to take aggro off any tank that can half decently play the game. They also have almost 1/3rd the global cooldown we do, so any mistakes are really easy to recover from in WoW. Mobs can barely have time to turn before the tank has established aggro on a mob they initially missed.

Has this changed recently? .. recently like within the past 2 years? I remember quite clearly having to not go full bore till the tanks had gotten off a couple particular skills. Otherwise we'd hear a familiar "Lol rogue tank" or "Lol warlock tank" and whatever boss it was would eat someone.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Finished up AST and decided BRD would be my next item on the list to get to 70.... starting from a wee babby level of 16. I don't even remember how I got it to that point, honestly, but regardless.

Queue up for Leveling roulette today, get Sastasha (expectedly). Party is composed of a Gladiator, Lancer, and Scholar - all with the leaf status, but upon checking party list, the SCH was 52.

This SCH... look, we've all been through the whole "queue up for roulette hoping for something on-level, get dropped into freakin' Sastasha of all things". It sucks, I know. I hate it too - which is why one would assume, given the absolute hatred most higher level players have for getting dumped into the very first dungeon in the game and having most of our skills greyed out, they would do anything possible to make the run go faster without screwing people over while doing so. Apparently this SCH didn't get that memo.

I notice that from the first pull with the wee bats, this SCH casts Physick despite the tank having took no damage. .... And then Physick again. And again. Eos is just sitting there twirling her fairy curls, until the SCH tells her to pop her HoT for some inexplicable reason. Physick spam continues. Tank gets a scratch? Have a Physick! Tank is sitting at full health and in no danger of dying or even needing to have a heal? Take a Physick! Oh yes, and not a single DoT or Ruin was put out whatsoever. I main a WHM and now have an AST, I know the whole argument about dpsing vs. not dpsing on healer. I don't care if you don't dps, I really do not care - it would sure make the lowbie dungeons faster, but so long as no one's dying and we're moving at more than a glacial pace, I honestly don't care if you sit there and let Eos do all the work. She definitely can handle it, that's for sure. But there's just something extremely irritating about seeing someone spam cast Physick for no other reason than... I guess they're bored being in such a low dungeon? Maybe?? I have no idea. Admittedly though the "VREEEEEEE" sound SCH/SMN books make when casting is annoying as well, but that's another discussion. About... maybe right after the first Madison fight, I just kindly speak up with "[Healer name], you don't really need to spam Physick so much! Eos can handle this dungeon easily, no worries." I don't even suggest they dps instead - I just say the fairy can do all the work, because she definitely can. What does this SCH do? Proceed to start spamming Physick on me until I literally stop doing anything, and also the tank gets slightly more than a scratch on him. At that point, I know it's literally boredom and someone feeling like being a lazy troll.

For a bit I actually stopped doing as much as I could have with my few skills - slightly spiteful, oui, but after that little display of theirs I wasn't exactly happy to be stuck in that dungeon for another 10ish minutes. I guess once they noticed stuff wasn't dying as quickly, they started actually picking up their slack - I saw DoTs going out after nearly half the dungeon of nothing, so at that point I went back to actually being a good dps. Thankfully, they continued their DoTing up to the boss rather than falling right back into lazy boredom - ...... they were still spamming Physick as much as they could though.

I never ran out of a dungeon so fast in my life once we killed Orca-tooth. RIP my sanity leveling through ARR dungeons for BRD.

[Moonfish]

He even says he can tell when someone is using a parser or not, because a person using a parser goes full bore right off the bat to try to hit the biggest numbers they can.

That's a seriously bad way to judge if someone is using a parser.

[TankHunter678]

Has this changed recently? .. recently like within the past 2 years? I remember quite clearly having to not go full bore till the tanks had gotten off a couple particular skills. Otherwise we'd hear a familiar "Lol rogue tank" or "Lol warlock tank" and whatever boss it was would eat someone.

He stopped playing about a year ago, though he does not know how it would go for warrior or paladin tanks. As long as some ranged did not hit the mob first then once he smacked the mob it was his till death.

[BlastHardcheese]

He stopped playing about a year ago, though he does not know how it would go for warrior or paladin tanks. As long as some ranged did not hit the mob first then once he smacked the mob it was his till death.

I've not played for a while (WoTLK) but I played Prot Paladin and it was an emnity monster like everything it did generated emnity, even getting hit. It was incredibly easy and incredibly boring even in Heroic (I think they were called Heroic) raids.

You'd still get caught out of the gate every so often by trigger happy locks and rogues but you never got the creeping aggro bar of doom once you had hold of something.