Endgame and communication

[Jeeqbit]

Just wondering if discord is usual or it's mostly text chat.

It varies. Sometimes people do pugs as just party chat and sometimes they get in discord voice. Some of the people in discord voice don’t want to talk and just listen, so muting the mic is fine. Only one or two people really need to talk for callous anyway.

Most fights can be done easily enough without voice, it just helps prevent wipes and time wasting a bit because someone can improvise when someone dies and save the pull by rearranging spots while fighting. They can also prepare you for a future mechanic without needing to stop to type.

Some regions have people who speak multiple languages such as EU and JP and they play together with auto-translate. So they can’t use voice as often as NA and rely on macros that pre-determine spots.

I’m a warrior (only 50 so far) and not really looking forward to tank swaps

Tank swaps are easy. Make sure you can see the target bar and what it is casting. Memorize the cast name of the tankbuster. When it starts casting, press Provoke to take the boss from the other tank. That’s it.

If the other tank is taking it from you, press mitigation such as Rampart. Then when the cast completes or near the end of the cast, shirk the other tank. That’s it.

Shirk macros help. You can make one that does /action “Shirk” <2>

mostly because I think it will be difficult to monitor debuffs on other tank as well as focus on mechanics and rotation.

You can rearrange your HUD so that your rotation, target bar, status effects and anything else you want to look at its at the bottom. The mechanics are just above the hotbar then, so you can see rotation and mechanics at the same time. Then look at the party list when you can spare a moment, to see if any party members are in trouble. If they are, you can react to it, such as apply a support buff to them.

The concerns you have about swapping apply more to ARR (level 50) fights where swaps happened without casts. Fights stopped being designed that way pretty quick as fights became less RNG and more scripted and clearly telegraphed. But if you try those fights it is quite rough, like playing a different game altogether.

Also, will dungeons become more linear as I level?

Yes, dead ends stopped being a thing by level 70 and level 51-60 dungeons aren’t significant detours like 1-50 dungeons.

in WoW people were quick to even kick you if you didn't take the perfect FOTM path before you could even get experience with it

I don’t think this is common but it probably happens occasionally as there are some impatient people in this game as well. When I began tanking I sometimes had people frustrated that I hadn’t completed the map and wasn’t doing large pulls when it was my first time. They would say rude things at the end of the dungeon before leaving or abandon the dungeon at random.

So it is possible they will kick, but it should be rare and they can’t if you don’t roll on loot ever. There isn’t much you can do if they do manage to kick. However, if they say something rude that makes you feel hurt in any way, you can report it and they usually get warned or banned.

In WoW there was this general expectation of having to know everything, always, even before having experienced it.

This is more common in EU. I don’t see it normally in NA. But it doesn’t matter if you didn’t watch a guide for story content because story content is easy and clearly telegraphed to be obvious. If it is not obvious enough and you die, the others can rez you and won’t even care that you died. They probably expected you to die because people with a sprout usually die to certain mechanics their first time and it’s expected and not a big deal.

Now if you do hard content in the future, all of which is optional side content, it will say in Party Finder to watch a guide usually. If they say that, you should do that before joining. If you want to go in blind, then join one that doesn’t mention that or that says “blind”.