(WoW) Cautionary Tale
Gear isn't everything. But it does count for something...
I recently had the joy of queueing my priest up for a random heroic dungeon and being dropped into Pit of Saron. It seemed odd to me that one of the group members was a ghost. And odder still as I started following people around the side, finding parts of the instance mysteriously clear. I hadn't seen a "do you want to join a dungeon in progress" message. And yet, we stacked up before the cave run to the end. Garfrost and Ick were already down. Well... okay, that leaves one boss and since I'm doing it mostly for Emblems of Frost, that should be easy, right?
Then I look at our paladin tank. Some items are particularly noticeable, and I recognize the Titansteel Shield Wall. It's a good "entry level" epic shield for level 80 tanks. It's not terribly comforting to see in one of the hardest 5-man heroics in the game. A quick inspect didn't fill me with much confidence beyond that: a few EoT pieces and several blue drops, even a haste trinket. No enchants or gems to speak of. With priest and paladin buffs in place, he had about 31k health. I couldn't help but wonder how the dungeon finder thought this person was geared enough to tank the instance, as they seemed more suited to 3.0 heroics or maybe 3.3 normal modes at most, but hell - gear's not everything, right?
The run to the center of the hall was... difficult. The tank had minor aggro problems, but that's not surprising. I pulled aggro just keeping him alive to the middle and then I was actually spamming Greater Heal. I almost never have to (or want to) do that. We only got through it because of a well-timed Guardian Spirit. In the span of a few seconds, the tank had gone through both that and his own Ardent Defender - two death preventions. And by the time we cleared the revenant and undead there, I'd popped a potion and my mana pool was still in sorry shape. The last time I'd had so much difficulty healing involved lots of breaking line of sight and party-wide damage. I cannot remember when I last struggled so much to keep a single person up.
So as we get ready to run the second half, he suggests I hold off healing until he gets to the end. Bwuh? I think about what we just went through and offer as politely as I can manage explanation that I'll try, but my first priority is keeping him alive. So sure enough, on our run he's down to a quarter health less than halfway to our destination. I start healing, because the alternative is to watch the tank die. I pull aggro and get killed. The tank dies. The other manage to slog it out enough to gain purchase a the top and trigger the NPCs. So we rez and ready up for the boss.
The tank asks for pointers on the particular boss fight, which I offer. This proves inexperience (at least with the instance) as well, but the simple fact is that healing him is hard. Unless he's waggling his ass at every enemy he can, he shouldn't be taking significantly more damage due to inexperience. That mostly seems to be gear: lower health pool and less avoidance than I'm used to dealing with.
We wiped. It wasn't even close, with the boss at 45% health or more. The tank asks what went wrong and I'm too reserved and polite to explain "Dude, I'm maxxed out trying to heal your ass. If you lose aggro for an instant, there's very little I can do to keep others up too. And I already told you to kite him when he's enraged, he can squash you like a bug before I can do anything." ... Yeah, probably should have said that. Ah well.
He bugged on our second attempt, re-mounting Rimefang. ... I thought that was supposed to be fixed. Ah well, I'd sunk more time into futile bashing my head against a wall than I'd wanted to spend doing an entire dungeon, so I bowed out.
Bad/inexperienced tank? Yeah. But everyone starts somewhere and I sincerely believe if he were better geared and no more skilled, I could have healed through that.
I recently had the joy of queueing my priest up for a random heroic dungeon and being dropped into Pit of Saron. It seemed odd to me that one of the group members was a ghost. And odder still as I started following people around the side, finding parts of the instance mysteriously clear. I hadn't seen a "do you want to join a dungeon in progress" message. And yet, we stacked up before the cave run to the end. Garfrost and Ick were already down. Well... okay, that leaves one boss and since I'm doing it mostly for Emblems of Frost, that should be easy, right?
Then I look at our paladin tank. Some items are particularly noticeable, and I recognize the Titansteel Shield Wall. It's a good "entry level" epic shield for level 80 tanks. It's not terribly comforting to see in one of the hardest 5-man heroics in the game. A quick inspect didn't fill me with much confidence beyond that: a few EoT pieces and several blue drops, even a haste trinket. No enchants or gems to speak of. With priest and paladin buffs in place, he had about 31k health. I couldn't help but wonder how the dungeon finder thought this person was geared enough to tank the instance, as they seemed more suited to 3.0 heroics or maybe 3.3 normal modes at most, but hell - gear's not everything, right?
The run to the center of the hall was... difficult. The tank had minor aggro problems, but that's not surprising. I pulled aggro just keeping him alive to the middle and then I was actually spamming Greater Heal. I almost never have to (or want to) do that. We only got through it because of a well-timed Guardian Spirit. In the span of a few seconds, the tank had gone through both that and his own Ardent Defender - two death preventions. And by the time we cleared the revenant and undead there, I'd popped a potion and my mana pool was still in sorry shape. The last time I'd had so much difficulty healing involved lots of breaking line of sight and party-wide damage. I cannot remember when I last struggled so much to keep a single person up.
So as we get ready to run the second half, he suggests I hold off healing until he gets to the end. Bwuh? I think about what we just went through and offer as politely as I can manage explanation that I'll try, but my first priority is keeping him alive. So sure enough, on our run he's down to a quarter health less than halfway to our destination. I start healing, because the alternative is to watch the tank die. I pull aggro and get killed. The tank dies. The other manage to slog it out enough to gain purchase a the top and trigger the NPCs. So we rez and ready up for the boss.
The tank asks for pointers on the particular boss fight, which I offer. This proves inexperience (at least with the instance) as well, but the simple fact is that healing him is hard. Unless he's waggling his ass at every enemy he can, he shouldn't be taking significantly more damage due to inexperience. That mostly seems to be gear: lower health pool and less avoidance than I'm used to dealing with.
We wiped. It wasn't even close, with the boss at 45% health or more. The tank asks what went wrong and I'm too reserved and polite to explain "Dude, I'm maxxed out trying to heal your ass. If you lose aggro for an instant, there's very little I can do to keep others up too. And I already told you to kite him when he's enraged, he can squash you like a bug before I can do anything." ... Yeah, probably should have said that. Ah well.
He bugged on our second attempt, re-mounting Rimefang. ... I thought that was supposed to be fixed. Ah well, I'd sunk more time into futile bashing my head against a wall than I'd wanted to spend doing an entire dungeon, so I bowed out.
Bad/inexperienced tank? Yeah. But everyone starts somewhere and I sincerely believe if he were better geared and no more skilled, I could have healed through that.
One wonders how he got into a Pit run in the first place with bad gear/inexperience. Are the lessening of restrictions -really- that loose?
ReplyDeleteI really don't know. I... sort of suspect he was in there as Ret, they lost their tank, and he switched rather than finding a new one. But... I can't prove that.
ReplyDelete