I mean, I usually tank and know I can handle big pulls. If a tank is pulling slowly and I'm a healer I'll usually gently encourage them to pull more because again, I know I can handle it.
And I don't solo queue as dps specifically because I never want to deal with a tank and healer combo that refuses to pick up the pace when they're perfectly capable of it.
Honestly the tank sets the pace for the dungeon. If the tank takes it slow then respect the choice. I understand that healing like that is boring as hell but not much can be done about that at the moment. However I will say with healers being in such a horrid state it gets harder to make the content entertaining for them.
When I tank I try to make it fun for everyone n generally ask the healer "Hey u crazy enough for me to pull everything to the boss?" Generally I play DRK because it had little ways in terms of surviving without heals. If the healer seems nervous then 2 packs at a time. If not then wall to wall.
If someone pulls extra then yea ill try to pick it up n ask the person who did it to "please don't pull for me im doing smaller pulls because (insert reason here)". If they don't listen then they are on their own.
I do a similar thing with dps like if I see a dps pair that has great Gear on them then I'll do wall to wall n give the healer a heads up that "hey ill probably need a CD or 2 to survive this next pull" If it fails then "welp my bad wanted to try something fun for a bit."
Taking those few seconds at the start of a dungeon to Guage a group has made dungeons a bit more entertaining for me tbh.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who realizes it's more than the number of mobs being pulled that affects time.
If your pulling really big, it might be great for your ego but you might not be all that efficient anyway.
- Healer that's chain healing you to keep you up can't contribute to the DPS
- Larger groups can't be covered by all AE's and thus are going to be living longer anyway. This is made even worse when the mobs in question have large hitboxes like the last leg of The Burn or the last pulls of Mt Gulg.
Frankly, I believe that some of these big pulls are more about ego and stroking e-peens than any contribution to actual efficiency.
These both sound like player error on the part of the tank- poor mitigation usage and poor enemy positioning respectively. It's completely possible to manage both of those pulls if the tank knows what they are doing.
That being said, if you're going to talk about being tolerant of newer, less experienced tanks who want to go slow, what about newer, less experienced tanks who want to try to pull w2w? The only way they're going to learn is with practice. Don't they deserve just as much patience and respect from the rest of the team?
I will note that at least in the NA data centers, you run into basically two main types of party by default: the party that says nothing (even if things go wrong), and the party with that one uptight jackass who experiences a wipe and screams at the tank about how they don't have time for this and just want to finish their roulette and god why are you so bad at your job, tank and whatever.
The latter isn't common, but when one type is "nothing happens" and the other time is "one of the party members turns into a screeching chimpanzee and starts hurling their own poop all over", the latter stands out more for many new players. Maybe they haven't tanked before but they've seen those moments and so they're nervous about "what if I screw up and people get upset?" Etc.
Heck, I'm an experienced MMO player but I had historically hated tanking. So when I decided to try it in this game (and eventually found out that I no longer hate tanking, and in fact can quite enjoy it) to get at the DRK job storyline, I was a little bit nervous -- admittedly, less about "will tanking be hard?!" and more about "am I going to do something stupid like overlook something that I've never really noticed about tanking?" (Answer: no. Tanking really is that easy, as long as you make at least some effort to push your cooldown buttons.)
However, my very first roulette as a tank took me into Haukke Manor. We finished the first boss and our sprout healer continued on through the room towards the entrance; I stopped to type in chat "Wait, the rest of the dungeon is back this way." to tell them to turn 180 and head over to the cellar. The other DPS did not wait for anyone, opened the cellar door, jumped down the stairs and hit sprint. The rest of us sprint to try to catch up as he proceeds to grab all the mobs at the base of the stairs, all the mobs along the hallway, and then try to unlock the final cell to get those mobs, too.
Needless to say, he did not get the cell door open before he was liquified by all the mobs he was trailing. The hungry horde turned their eyes towards us, and while I grabbed aggro, the tank kit at that level is not enough to really lessen the damage; you get Rampart, Arm's Length, and Reprisal. And while the poor sprout white mage was spamming their GCD heals in a panic, it's not like they had many other options for reaction even if it hadn't been blind panic.
Having healed that dungeon many, many times, I was not wall-to-walling because a) the dungeon has no walls to divide pulls, and b) AoE coverage across jobs at that level is... let's go with "not universal", tanks have a fairly minimal set of cooldowns to use, and healing kit is not what I'd call obscenely powerful. Wall-to-wall pulls are great; they are less great in early Realm Reborn dungeons where "wall-to-wall" can be much larger, and the kit to deal with those pulls can be much smaller.
The DPS in question proceeded to tell absolutely everyone that the white mage should kill themselves, I should let tanking remain the responsibility of people who "knew that you always pull everything", and that a brain-dead possum could do better DPS than the other DPS. (I actually remember that specific insult because, I mean, the DPS being a frothing jackass notwithstanding, it was at least a unique insult.) Then they ate the penalty to bail on the duty.
We sort of sat there for a bit like "Okay, so, that just happened." And reassured the sprout healer that, no, they did not suck, the other person was a flaming idiot. (When a new DPS showed up and went "So, uh, what happened here?" the other DPS was like "SO ANYWAY let me tell you about the guy you're replacing...")
In that case, no harm done; we reassured the one sprout, and I didn't let it magnify any minor "first time tank" tanxiety. But I can absolutely see experiences like that -- rare as they are -- spurring tanxiety among first-time tanks. So especially down in lower level content, I do make a point to let sprout tanks know that if things go wrong, folks aren't likely to be mad. Obviously, by the time you're tanking ShB or EW content, you should be over any tanxiety... but I can absolutely understand how tanxiety starts, either witnessing stuff like the fiasco I described when you're on other jobs, or if it happens in one of your own earliest tank experiences.
That's why I try very hard to make sure there's a third party type sprouts encounter: the party that encourages them to stretch a little further (like, verbally, not just by yoinking them along into more mobs), while reassuring them people won't get mad if stuff goes wrong.
I aim to make my posts engaging and entertaining, even when you might not agree with me. And failing that, I'll just be very, VERY wordy.Originally Posted by Packetdancer
It's okay to say that big pulls are too hard, stressful or that you just can't be bothered with the effort required [in a multiplayer game]. No need to come up with excuses and "problems" that are easily resolved by playing properly.
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