PSA: How to Off-Tank in World of Darkness

[Kiara]

I forget - is your server in a JP datacenter? I've heard that's the way things are done on JP datacenters. From everything I've heard, JP players play very differently from NA players, likely due to cultural differences. JP culture is very focused on the group and the wellbeing of the group, so people tend to work hard at their role in that group. NA culture (well, US culture) is very focused on the individual and individual achievement, so people tend to work hard to be noticed and stand out from the group. The MT role is the most visible, so it's no wonder that people often fight over it.

I wonder if JP datacenters have a problem with trolls in the Towers the way NA does - people burning Bone Dragon in CT and laughing when the party wipes, people bringing fire orbs to puddles in Scylla to destroy them (or ice to puddles to freeze multiple people), people grabbing the chains on Cerberus and just holding onto them, people dancing on and off the platform in CT Atomos, people spamming the teleporter in any of the three from the very start until it activates (which spams everyone's screen and chat log) even in WoD where the first fight is before the first teleporter, and so on. Going by my theory above, NA players do it to get attention, because the culture is focused on standing out, not just standing out in a positive way.

Hi Nyalia,

Yes, we're on a JP datacenter. The things you describe above... omg! That sounds awful. I can only say I'm thankful we haven't run into that in our Tower runs. /comfort

[Nyalia]

Yes, we're on a JP datacenter. The things you describe above... omg! That sounds awful. I can only say I'm thankful we haven't run into that in our Tower runs. /comfort

Trolls like that aren't in every run, but when they are... x_x Anyway, my post was really about my datacenter (Aether), where either everyone wants to MT or (more often as others have said) most of the tanks want to be DPS and do the whole dungeon out of tank stance, ignoring adds and mechanics designed for tanks to take care of.

[Alistaire]

how 2 OT WoD:

- ignore everything except wolfsbane and ahriman
- dps everything else

that's it that's all you do

Brevity is the soul of wit.--Shakespeare

You sir, have bested the OP. /salute

Edit: except you don't even really need tanks for the ahrimans.

[Nyalia]

Brevity is the soul of wit.--Shakespeare

You sir, have bested the OP. /salute

Edit: except you don't even really need tanks for the ahrimans.

People like you two are exactly why I wrote this :P So sick of raids being wiped by people with that mentality... Sure, the raid doesn't wipe if the rest of the players aren't bad, but bad tanks are annoying.

[SpookyGhost]

People like you two are exactly why I wrote this :P So sick of raids being wiped by people with that mentality... Sure, the raid doesn't wipe if the rest of the players aren't bad, but bad tanks are annoying.

It's not being bad, that's all you have to do for pretty much the whole dungeon. Most mechanics are everyone else's responsibilities, there's very little for the OTs to do in most of the fights. Slimes die in like 5s, Ahriman die in like 5s, only thing that stays alive for 500 years are the Wolfsbane because the digestion mechanic happens at the same time. You literally don't even need the OTs for Cloud of Darkness. Anyone can take the fire drakes as long as they're passed, they don't do that much damage. You also had this weird idea of having 2-3 tanks stand in front of the first boss, which never should be a thing. There's like 4-6 meteor circles that appear in CoD, everyone who can get to them will get to them, so being the first there isn't really going to make much of a difference. You're also pseudo melee DPS for CoD so you standing away from the clouds and standing around can be pretty detrimental too, as opposed to a healer or ranged DPS who loses no damage/healing from standing in them. You don't really need to try so hard in WoD, just grab Ahriman/Wolfsbane, follow mechanics as everyone else has to, and DPS a bunch.

[Instrumentality]

Doing work...as a tank?

[Alistaire]

People like you two are exactly why I wrote this :P So sick of raids being wiped by people with that mentality... Sure, the raid doesn't wipe if the rest of the players aren't bad, but bad tanks are annoying.

If you have wipes it's not because of what I'm sayin. If you don't realize that idk what else to tell ya. And yes of course if a mt goes down you step up, that's another story and you're no longer in the "offtank" role. So do what I, or other people, are saying, while paying attention to things to pick up slack if mt goes down.

You're pretty pompous to come in here and "PSA" what's essentially a bad guide, and then tag me as "people like me" as if we're the problem, when most people in this thread are agreeing against you.

[lvlagmarink]

Don't you know that it's been a trend at least in Chaos Data center that you can go afk, chatting, watching porn or only god knows what those few players do in WoD run that they just get close to the boss, do a few hits, then just leaves it there.. So they pretend to hit the boss, while doing something else on that time, of course they'll get hit by every aoe, dead, while only give auto attack, getting raised to only do the same thing again and again.. Since i've been trying to get puff of darkness and the card, for every run from 24 players, there's gotta be at least 2 or 3 of this kind of players.. I assume that they just get really bored from not getting drops from the said raid.. And this occurs to tank, healers and dps.. Mostly dos but the ratio of dps is 15:6:3..

[Alistaire]

Don't you know that it's been a trend at least in Chaos Data center that you can go afk, chatting, watching porn or only god knows what those few players do in WoD run that they just get close to the boss, do a few hits, then just leaves it there.. So they pretend to hit the boss, while doing something else on that time, of course they'll get hit by every aoe, dead, while only give auto attack, getting raised to only do the same thing again and again.. Since i've been trying to get puff of darkness and the card, for every run from 24 players, there's gotta be at least 2 or 3 of this kind of players.. I assume that they just get really bored from not getting drops from the said raid.. And this occurs to tank, healers and dps.. Mostly dos but the ratio of dps is 15:6:3..

True, but that's entirely a different issue. We're not talkin about afk tanks (or anyone) here, it's a matter of what offtanks that are actively playing should do. I've had someone that was clearly offtank tell me "I always leave defiance up" when I politely assumed they had forgotten to take it down. It's like they don't understand how provoke works and feel the need to cement themselves in 2nd place on the hate list fulltime. Which you don't. Which shouldn't even need to be said. And there's so very little even for the 2nd tank to do there let alone the third. 2 tanks is plenty for trash pulls and 1 for bosses, but you have to have 3 or df wouldn't quite work right.

And then someone posts a guide like this which is partly way off in left field and the rest is just completely unnecessary.

[MXMoondoggie]

Most of the adds in WoD can be managed by a WHM anyway it's only during the Cerberus boss because the adds have a nasty poison attack combined with normal attacks it does a lot of damage to a squishy healer. Everything else gets stun locked and destroyed with Holy. Sometimes that's the better choice especially for the adds on the first boss 2-3 WHM's will stunlock them so they do nothing and they are dead before they even get a chance to move. If you are in a tight spot you have swiftcast/holy and fluid aura. 3 Tanks shouldn't be mad dogging the boss trying to take aggro but I've learn myself and seen a lot of other Healers make the same mistake of just standing there healing themselves pulling more aggro instead of actively trying to pull them into a nuke zone or stun locking them.