[Ciderhelm]

Im frankly surprised at the elitism tanks assume. Do yall read what you write because half of you want to doom new players to an endless cycle of karas, others want to doom new tanks to pitiful pugs and being guildless.

Doom new players? Doom new tanks? Hyperbole, yikes! New players who need to learn how to play their class are expected to party with new players who need to learn how to play their class. Elitism is when a player who just hits 80 assumes they have the right to by pass content and be carried by people who substantially outgear/outskill them.

Any tank here who has been with their guild through any 25-man content is part of a guild that does not need to complete 5-man content. By the time a guild is in SSC/TK, any 5-man run is a frivolous run that should have zero impact on the progression speed in raid content. That's not to say that you won't still get individual improvements in DPS, etc., but that virtually all guilds who are breaking into this level of content at this stage in the game will already have as much of a push from gear as possible and will be limited primarily by learning curve.

There are plenty of times tanks will run 5-mans. Those tend to coincide with the times DPS'ers and healers would, too. Things like needing gear from an instance, needing badges, needing reputation, or just having some time and wanting to help out a friend or guildie. Many tanks prefer to jump over to Fury to run 5-mans, because DPS is significantly less mind-consuming. However, expecting a tank to offer these services, or expecting an affirmative when you ask them, is selfish.


For these:

everyone in a guild should be there to progress, and that means helping eachother when possible. For tanks, like always, your called on to do more. But if you cant or wont deal with that put the damn sheild away.

Being a tank is a position of service, even more than healing. If you don't enjoy helping others drop your shield....

Raid tanking =/= 5-man Tanking =/= Fury DPS =/= PVP. They all require a unique playstyle, benefit from different gear, achieve different goals. Most importantly, they are completely different responsibilities, and suggesting someone's raid MT shouldn't be a tank if they despise 5-man tanking is not only completely illogical, but it's also guild suicide. Or, as Caoin said it:

Requiring your raid tanks to satiate the needs of the entire guild and all their alts 7 days a week will cause you some serious problems with tank retention.

The tank's responsibility in WoW or any MMO is to control chaos and learn to not make mistakes. That's the class role. Beyond that, they're expected (like everyone else) to have stable attendance if they're part of a raiding guild, and they're expected to be prepared for the content they're doing.

The tank's responsibility is not to be constantly doing something they don't enjoy so others don't have to go through the unpleasantness of looking for non-guildies or people who, like them, may still need to learn their class. Nevermind that there are always people willing to tank, they just aren't invited to most groups if they aren't geared or aren't a particular spec.

It's a cliche at this point, but WoW is not a job, WoW is not something you should stress yourself out over unless you're doing it to learn to play better. If you love running 5-mans every day, good for you. That's not a particularly good argument for people who don't love it.

[Haltira]

Source: breaklance Im frankly surprised at the elitism tanks assume. Do yall read what you write because half of you want to doom new players to an endless cycle of karas, others want to doom new tanks to pitiful pugs and being guildless. Then they just respecc pvp, and dollars to dimes, ya.......... everyone in a guild should be there to progress, and that means helping eachother when possible. For tanks, like always, your called on to do more. But if you cant or wont deal with that put the damn sheild away.

It isnt elitism when you are NOT interested running karas for undergeared recruits ( that probably shouldnt be in your guild in the 1st place since the gear they have could be miles behind what is needed ) and alt #583 getting kara gear etc.

Lots of us play this game for other reasons than just being tank slaves. I personally think i do my fair share. I have virtually 100% attendance on 25 man raids. Available at the spur of a moments notice for the 25man raid.

Dont get me wrong things like kara/ZA/ 5mans(heroics) they happen but all that stuff is up to me if i want to do them or not, and it stays that way since the second someone comes and asks you need to tank kara for this and that and do 2 heroics / day etc etc is the day i will stop being virtually 100% attendance in the 25mans since at that point it isnt a game and a game for progression anymore it has turned into an unpaid job.

And like i said it looks more like a recruitment problem of undergeared ppl making it thru the OP's screening process. make sure you get recruits that can function at your level of raiding and dont take undergeared ones that ontop of being undergeared needs to have the hand held by tanks grossly outgeared the encounters they need gear from. Those people are in a position where they dont belong they shouldnt be apping to sunwell guilds if you have like 1000 spelldmg

[Shorty]

""But when asked you should do what you can to help.""

I guess it all boils down to how much you are asked, I know I got a stage of not logging my tank in as the series of whispers from both guildies, friends and people I didn't know from a bar of pink soap was endless, even when in 5 mans or 25 mans I raids - I'd still get the "Can you tank xxx for us". If I responded saying "look where I am", I got "please afterwards" --- yep sure after spending 3 hours wiping on a new progression boss I'm going to feel up to tanking random people through a heroic!!! And then after 5 hours sleep manage to put in a full days work afterwards.

Part of the problem in recent weeks has been the lack of people running normal level 70 instances, everyone can get heroic keys so you get people who think they shouldn't need to (or genuinely can't find a group) run normal shadow labs for example.

Yes, being a guild tank is a position of responsibility and yes with the general shortage of tanks this means doing more than the normal number of instance runs, but at the same time guild tanks have the duty (shared by every member of the guild) not to get burned out by WoW - the worst thing in the world must be a top 25man tank refusing to log on and quitting wow because of the pressures of 5 man instancing, they have enough to deal with without adding to it.

Every tank finds their own personal limits - whether by previous knowledge or by being burned -- all most of us ask is that limit, once found, is respected.

[orcstar]

By the time you're doing high level endgame raiding, nontanking warriors, paladins and druids should have had more then enough opportunity to pick up a full set of offspec gear. Even to the degree of making heroics trivial. Heck with good enough gear you don't even need to spec prot and still be able to do the heroics.

Everyone is responsible for the wellbeing of the guild, time for some other people to step in and do the occasional heroic kararun/whatever. And if people say like: I'm dps/healer I'm not gona pick up a tanking set then there seems to be an attitude problem.

[Girlie]

Why Im basically done with 5mans/kara:

I did them non-stop for the past year with people geared at my level so in my opinion
I put my time in and learned them myself and am done.

Im done with wiping cause people have no clue how to play their toon and getting a 35g
repair bill for "helping" someone out

Im done with that one player in the pug who knows everything and pulls everything
and tells me "just pick it all up"

Im done with telling people "whatch your threat on this pull" (Im thinking skeletal ushers)
only to have the idiots pull, die..cause other people to die and then tell me it's my fault.

Ive played my tank for almost well over a year and a half now. I've leveled her and played every instance heroic and non heroic (cause you used to have to grind the honor to get the key).

I've done kara so many times my eyes bleed. I don't want to carry you through 10 wipes on morose cause the
priest doesn't know where his shackle is and the bored shammy is watching porn (true story ask klor).

It's not fun to run you through stuff to have to PAY to be there. I don't need any gear and I usually lose any roll on a shard over people who have gotten gear. Might it have been nice of the group to let me have a void crystal after each of you got a piece of gear?

Having cleared ZA in my last guild a few times, I no longer want to spend a few hours in there on one boss..I wanna get in..get out.

I spent a long time learning to play my toon. I resent sometimes the demand of people to run them through stuff. There used to be a time when you played your toon and worked on getting better. Now any noob at level 70 gets in a heroic and starts building better and better gear without ever having to actually hone any skill.

With all that said, I still help people out when they need a piece here or there. But my days of pugging are waaay over. I've worked very hard to
get my gear and my level and get in a decent guild (for once) I don't owe anyone anything.

[Wulverin]

Our guild ran for the longest time with really just two tanks, myself and the other prot warrior who are one of the officers and GM respectively and of course, we're the two primary raid leaders.

Having all that extra responsibility and all the stuff to do that it brings, plus being the only two tanks for the first few months of BC really wore us both out on 5 mans and Kara. We were burnt out on that stuff anyway and then the 2.3 and 2.4 badge frenzies started and guildies would have us in instances tanking 24/7, 7 days a week if they could.

As so many people have said it's really hard to drag your motivation up to a level where you'll say "yes" to a request to tank a heroic/Kara when you've been through it 407680579087 times already. Not to mention the fact that for the majority of well geared tanks worth their salt we all did the whole Heroic/Kara thing when it required a lot more grinding/attunement/gearing up and there weren't showers of welfare epics at every turn.

I now dread logging on in between 25 man raids because I know that I'm going to get asked 300 times to go and tank something so an alt can get geared up or as we're on a very low pop server we've had to recruit some slightly undergeared people and they too need gearing up a bit. All I really want to do in between 25 mans is relax, do some farming, stash a bit of gold and do some PvP for fun. I hate actually saying no to requests to help but I literally would have no time for myself either to relax and have fun or just to prepare for the next week's raids. So, I have to say no and I will actually log off sometimes because if I stay on I know what's coming.

It's not the same issue but it's kind of related, we have had a couple of friends of guildies get into the guild for various reasons over the past year and they've kind of expected to be geared up and dropped in a raid slot. I'm sorry but the rest of us earnt our slots the hard way over a long time. We went throught he whole green > blue > purple gearing process in Outlands through all those instances and where necessary we pug'd a lot of runs to make sure we got that rep and/or item that we needed. If someone now comes along and wants to get their character into a raid then great, all power to you. Show me how much you want it by getting off your arse and sorting your gear out, I'll be way more inclined to help if I see you busting a nut to do everything you can to get yourself raid ready. We had a minor amount of drama because two members in exactly this circumstance were apparently "treated differently" by our officers and we apparently "liked X but disliked Y". The thing was X would spend every minute she could learning about her class and getting gear whilst Y would drift about, log on sporadically and never PUG'd a run in her WoW career. Case in point, I know which of the two I was and am way more likely to help out by tanking a run or two for them.

This next point is a thorny issue as well of course but you really can't get away from it, when I've worked my arse off to get my gear to where it is I want to enjoy it when I'm using it. I can't do that when tanking Kara or Heroics because I get rage starved and have to downgrade my gear. It's a small and relatively trivial point but when a couple of us go to do a heroic and help out an alt or new member and I have to take half my gear off whilst the mage/hunter/whateverthehellotherclass is in their full raid gear performing just as well as they can in MH/BT it chaps my arse a little :P

I do actually enjoy it when we can get a group of my friends within the guild together and go do a fun run through somewhere, have a few beers, relax and take it easy. I find a real concentration/focus/effort issue with going back and doing supposedly 'casual' heroic/Kara runs though and they all too frequently end up in a nightmare. We were supposedly doing one the other week to gear a few alts up and get a few badges and it should have been a breeze. However, partly because the raid tanks are there, a couple of the top healers are there etc. the rest of the group messed about, we wiped, we even failed twice on Shade of Aran..... then people wondered why those of us who it costs and arm and a leg every time we die were getting a little abrasive during a 'fun' run. I'll tank fun runs for you if we're all kicking back and relaxing, so long as you all do what you're supposed to and the actual run goes smoothly. If you're just going to expect to be dragged round, have your loot presented to you and expect one or two of us to save a wipe everytime you mess about then forget it. Just like everyone else I don't want to have to work my butt off on a fun run tanking and controlling like mad because people are careless, breaking CC, pulling threat by hitting the wrong mobs etc etc etc ad nauseum.

It's frustrating as all hell when you know that people perceive us as elitist, unhelpful, selfish, biased towards certain other guild members etc. In actual fact I haven't really met many tanks who don't genuinely want to be helpful. However, at a certain point in time you have to say that me not being burnt out and actually being there to tank SSC/TK/MH/BT next week is actually being more helpful than saying yes to a load of heroic/kara runs only to find that logging on at all has become a chore and I start missing 25 mans.

All I can say is thank god I've got a couple of guys in our guild who have gone and created tank alts (and healing alts for that matter) so that the pain of doing 5/10 mans can be spread amongst more people.

[cael]

Going back to Kara oh noes!

I transfered from a 25 man raid guild to a new server with former EQ players just starting to level in wow. I've been running them through kara for several months and loved it. It was awesome to see them accomplish new content (even though Im not sure they knew how lucky they were to have 2 overgeared tanks).

Now we're stuck in kara cause of the same old probem of making a 10 man casual into a 25 man raid.....And Im burnt. I dont feel like running 10 mans or heroics for one person to get geared up to the rest of us....so suite me, call me selfish whatever, but we all play to get something out of the game. for me its being a part of groups of people accomplishing a new challenge.

I've raid dps, healed, and tanked... NOTHING IS MORE DEMANDING THEN TANKING...it takes its toll, and tanks should be freakin worshiped for what they do (even bad ones).

[Corise]

Source: Ciderhelm Nevermind that there are always people willing to tank, they just aren't invited to most groups if they aren't geared or aren't a particular spec.

I see this more than anything else. I have seen guild chat spammed by people wanting a tank and then a player who is perfectly geared for tanking their 5 man is told no because what they really want is one of our BT/Hyjal geared tanks. Doing things like this will definitly get a "no" out of me.

But back to the original post, the guild that this player is from looks to be doing Mag/GL encounters and is probably starting SSC/TK. So again I say, people who claim they need 5 man content gear to do these encounters would probably fair better doing some BG's or arena to gear themselves at this point. And if they can find a tank that loves to run 5 mans then stick with him. Have them read equivocal's Guide To Pugging, it was quite interesting and it may help them find tanks, also might help you find new tanks if you are not satisfied with your current ones.

[Ringthane]

Source: Ciderhelm Doom new players? Doom new tanks? Hyperbole, yikes! New players who need to learn how to play their class are expected to party with new players who need to learn how to play their class. Elitism is when a player who just hits 80 assumes they have the right to by pass content and be carried by people who substantially outgear/outskill them.

It's also refusing to help others when asked because you've seen it all, done it all, and bought the T-shirt, and how dare these minions pester me with their menial labors, yah?

The tank's responsibility is not to be constantly doing something they don't enjoy so others don't have to go through the unpleasantness of looking for non-guildies or people who, like them, may still need to learn their class. Nevermind that there are always people willing to tank, they just aren't invited to most groups if they aren't geared or aren't a particular spec. It's a cliche at this point, but WoW is not a job, WoW is not something you should stress yourself out over unless you're doing it to learn to play better. If you love running 5-mans every day, good for you. That's not a particularly good argument for people who don't love it.

So what? I don't love tanking 5-man stuff either. But I did it for over two years. I've leveled up two tanks - warrior and druid. I've leveled up three DPS - hunter, mage, and rogue. And now that I've done these two roles, I'd much rather DPS than tank. But when I'm playing my warrior, I do my job. If I didn't want to tank, I'd spec freakin' arms or fury, and never pick up a shield again.

Lots of lip service in here. "I tank because I love tanking. I love being in control, I love making decisions, blah blah blah." Bull. If you love it so much, you'd do it whenever you could. You'd jump at every chance you could get. The truth is, you all tank because it feeds your egos. No more, no less. If that weren't the reason, you'd be a DPS class, or a healer. You want to be the guy in the front that pulls everything together for the group/raid.

And I have to laugh at the people saying "If DPS wants to gear up, let them pug tanks." And what should new tanks do, when they have all the gear we had, and they're rejected because they're NOT a raid tank? Because they're NOT a prot pally, or they DON'T have 20k HP in their fresh Felsteel set?

Ah well. What do I know? My rogue's more damn fun than my tank any day.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Ringthane Lots of lip service in here. "I tank because I love tanking. I love being in control, I love making decisions, blah blah blah." Bull. If you love it so much, you'd do it whenever you could. You'd jump at every chance you could get. The truth is, you all tank because it feeds your egos. No more, no less. If that weren't the reason, you'd be a DPS class, or a healer.

That is probably the single most retarded statement that has been made in this thread. Excuse me while I clear the damage meters off my screen.