04-11-2005, 03:03 PM
I'm just going to jot down my basic philosophy of tank instance play here, so it can be debated and that people who play with any of my tanks know what's coming. :)
Since I play on PvE servers, I have the luxury of decking out my warriors in a full-on Protection-based defensive stance talent build, with minor additional talents in the other trees to make me tougher/better able to hold aggro. On a PvP server this would make my warrior a joke. However, I really shine in instance play with the ability to take a severe beating and hold aggro.
From my healbot experience, I know that little irritates me more than the Slow Moving Group.⢠This is a group where the main tank doesn't take charge and seems to lead by committee - the whole "everyone ready?" thing before each and every fight. To me, it is one of the major roles of the designated tank to decide when the group is ready and thus start each encounter. Why's that?
Well, because I like to complete my instance runs before the paint peels on my walls, that's why. If you're going into an instance with me as a tank, be prepared to move from fight to fight to fight without much stoppage of play. What makes me halt?
1) Someone has to go afk a bit.
2) A boss fight.
3) Something that will clearly challenge our group and requires strategy discussion.
4) My healer(s) is out of or low on mana.
If I do not encounter one of these 4 scenarios, I am *not* stopping after a fight. I am moving on to the next one right away. I don't care if you're a mage and you have to drink - if I feel that the group can afford to fight the next encounter while you're drinking (which is true a high percentage of the time - contrary to many mages/warlocks beliefs, we CAN live for 20 seconds without you), I'm going for it. Likewise, if you need to loot the corpse, go ahead. If you need to create something, feed your pet, whatever, go ahead. Again, it's about not spending 6 hours in an instance. If I'm looking to start the next fight and see that the healer is looting, the mage is out of mana, the hunter is summoning their pet, and the rogue needs to apply poisons, I will take that into account before continuing, of course. But most of the time, if one party member needs to do some quick activity, the whole party doesn't need to stop and wait for it!
The reason a lot of players don't like to play their tanks this way is because playing this way puts a lot of responsibility on the tank's shoulders. If my aggressiveness gets the party killed, it's my fault. I don't see any difference between this and being a healer responsible for keeping everyone alive - maybe I'm just used to having a lot of responsibility in a party as a healer, so I don't mind having that also on me as a tank. Too many tank players don't want to be seen as the player who got everyone killed, so they play the let's-wait-until-everyone-has-100%-mana-and-health-and-tell-me-they're-ready-before-I-start-the-next-fight game. That's mostly only needed for boss fights, and that's how I play it. In many instances, most encounters are "junk" encounters where the threat to the party is minimal if they're playing correctly.
Going to level 60 as my Priest, my most enjoyable groups were ALL with tanks who played this way. They had their finger on the pulse of the party, made a quick evaluation on the party's ability to enter the next fight, and moved on immediately if the answer was yes. I recall specifically a Sunken Temple run that took about 3 hours to clear the entire thing with level-appropriate players, when another run I did with a Lurker group and a hesitant tank took almost 5. Not naming names or trying to be insulting - just educational. The aggressive tank knew when we were ready for the next group - and there are some big groups down there, so he couldn't just go from fight to fight to fight as I've described. But we also didn't wait around for a full minute before each fight to make sure everyone was ready to go - he could see we were and moved in. A well-oiled machine, no doubt.
There are some major advantages to playing this way, as well. For instance, a warrior tank's biggest gripe is when other players start engaging too quickly and pull aggro off them, because it takes some time to get that Rage bar built up. If you're immediately engaging the next group, the tank gets some time to do just that - build up aggro and rage before the partymates move in. In essence, you are starting the next fight so soon in order to make things easier!
Other players not used to this will get rubbed the wrong way. Mages who expect the whole party to sit and wait for them to drink up to full will be especially annoyed. However, I know that expert mage players understand and accept this - unless they are needed to sheep something early in the fight, they are there to blow opponents away, and they can't start doing that to their maximum potential until aggro is built up on the tank anyway.
No, in terms of mana, it's the healer that counts, and that's what I pay attention to. But to pull this off completely, what is unfortunately required of a tank is knowledge of what every other player is capable of. I do have the advantage of having thoroughly played priests, mages, warlocks, and warriors, with slight experience in druids and rogues. But there are aspects and subtleties of playing druids, rogues, shamans, paladins, and hunters that I've only gained from watching them play. And I can see how that hurts me! Just yesterday I was running Razorfen Kraul with a Lurker group and I repeatedly forgot about Sap to help out on some boss fights that had adds. I also appreciated the Lurker who reminded me of it each time, so that I can be a better tank in the future. Knowing the abilities of every other class in the game makes you a better tank - which you need to be if you want to be a TRUE tank (in my opinion) who takes the responsibility of party survival on their shoulders.
I find instance runs to be much more relaxing when I play a role other than main tank or main healer. The ultimate survivability of the party isn't my responsibility, simply because I have less actual impact on the outcome. Not to lessen the other classes, but it's true. While an amazingly cool well-timed move might save the party in a drastic situation as a non-healer or non-tank, that might not have been required had the main tank not performed a bad pull, or the main healer accidentally let the tank/other player die mid battle. This makes instance runs more exciting as the tank or healer, but also more pressure-packed as well. I know I can't fall asleep doing an instance run as a main tank, not when I get all the action of making the pulls and watching over my party. :) But the pressure not to make a mistake is higher as well.
In summary, if you group with me as a main tank expect that I will push you a little. I try to gauge how quickly a party can move through an instance and develop a rhythym, as fast or as slow as it may be depending on party makeup and instance difficulty. But you won't be able to say it's boring - unless we're TOO good. :)
My basic play checklist:
1) Fight's over! We r0xx0r! :)
2) Can I loot anything? If so, loot.
3) Does the healer have enough mana for the next encounter?
4) Is the party in general good health?
5) Yep - attack! They'll be along right after me, and I'll have some time to build up aggro...
-Bolty
Since I play on PvE servers, I have the luxury of decking out my warriors in a full-on Protection-based defensive stance talent build, with minor additional talents in the other trees to make me tougher/better able to hold aggro. On a PvP server this would make my warrior a joke. However, I really shine in instance play with the ability to take a severe beating and hold aggro.
From my healbot experience, I know that little irritates me more than the Slow Moving Group.⢠This is a group where the main tank doesn't take charge and seems to lead by committee - the whole "everyone ready?" thing before each and every fight. To me, it is one of the major roles of the designated tank to decide when the group is ready and thus start each encounter. Why's that?
Well, because I like to complete my instance runs before the paint peels on my walls, that's why. If you're going into an instance with me as a tank, be prepared to move from fight to fight to fight without much stoppage of play. What makes me halt?
1) Someone has to go afk a bit.
2) A boss fight.
3) Something that will clearly challenge our group and requires strategy discussion.
4) My healer(s) is out of or low on mana.
If I do not encounter one of these 4 scenarios, I am *not* stopping after a fight. I am moving on to the next one right away. I don't care if you're a mage and you have to drink - if I feel that the group can afford to fight the next encounter while you're drinking (which is true a high percentage of the time - contrary to many mages/warlocks beliefs, we CAN live for 20 seconds without you), I'm going for it. Likewise, if you need to loot the corpse, go ahead. If you need to create something, feed your pet, whatever, go ahead. Again, it's about not spending 6 hours in an instance. If I'm looking to start the next fight and see that the healer is looting, the mage is out of mana, the hunter is summoning their pet, and the rogue needs to apply poisons, I will take that into account before continuing, of course. But most of the time, if one party member needs to do some quick activity, the whole party doesn't need to stop and wait for it!
The reason a lot of players don't like to play their tanks this way is because playing this way puts a lot of responsibility on the tank's shoulders. If my aggressiveness gets the party killed, it's my fault. I don't see any difference between this and being a healer responsible for keeping everyone alive - maybe I'm just used to having a lot of responsibility in a party as a healer, so I don't mind having that also on me as a tank. Too many tank players don't want to be seen as the player who got everyone killed, so they play the let's-wait-until-everyone-has-100%-mana-and-health-and-tell-me-they're-ready-before-I-start-the-next-fight game. That's mostly only needed for boss fights, and that's how I play it. In many instances, most encounters are "junk" encounters where the threat to the party is minimal if they're playing correctly.
Going to level 60 as my Priest, my most enjoyable groups were ALL with tanks who played this way. They had their finger on the pulse of the party, made a quick evaluation on the party's ability to enter the next fight, and moved on immediately if the answer was yes. I recall specifically a Sunken Temple run that took about 3 hours to clear the entire thing with level-appropriate players, when another run I did with a Lurker group and a hesitant tank took almost 5. Not naming names or trying to be insulting - just educational. The aggressive tank knew when we were ready for the next group - and there are some big groups down there, so he couldn't just go from fight to fight to fight as I've described. But we also didn't wait around for a full minute before each fight to make sure everyone was ready to go - he could see we were and moved in. A well-oiled machine, no doubt.
There are some major advantages to playing this way, as well. For instance, a warrior tank's biggest gripe is when other players start engaging too quickly and pull aggro off them, because it takes some time to get that Rage bar built up. If you're immediately engaging the next group, the tank gets some time to do just that - build up aggro and rage before the partymates move in. In essence, you are starting the next fight so soon in order to make things easier!
Other players not used to this will get rubbed the wrong way. Mages who expect the whole party to sit and wait for them to drink up to full will be especially annoyed. However, I know that expert mage players understand and accept this - unless they are needed to sheep something early in the fight, they are there to blow opponents away, and they can't start doing that to their maximum potential until aggro is built up on the tank anyway.
No, in terms of mana, it's the healer that counts, and that's what I pay attention to. But to pull this off completely, what is unfortunately required of a tank is knowledge of what every other player is capable of. I do have the advantage of having thoroughly played priests, mages, warlocks, and warriors, with slight experience in druids and rogues. But there are aspects and subtleties of playing druids, rogues, shamans, paladins, and hunters that I've only gained from watching them play. And I can see how that hurts me! Just yesterday I was running Razorfen Kraul with a Lurker group and I repeatedly forgot about Sap to help out on some boss fights that had adds. I also appreciated the Lurker who reminded me of it each time, so that I can be a better tank in the future. Knowing the abilities of every other class in the game makes you a better tank - which you need to be if you want to be a TRUE tank (in my opinion) who takes the responsibility of party survival on their shoulders.
I find instance runs to be much more relaxing when I play a role other than main tank or main healer. The ultimate survivability of the party isn't my responsibility, simply because I have less actual impact on the outcome. Not to lessen the other classes, but it's true. While an amazingly cool well-timed move might save the party in a drastic situation as a non-healer or non-tank, that might not have been required had the main tank not performed a bad pull, or the main healer accidentally let the tank/other player die mid battle. This makes instance runs more exciting as the tank or healer, but also more pressure-packed as well. I know I can't fall asleep doing an instance run as a main tank, not when I get all the action of making the pulls and watching over my party. :) But the pressure not to make a mistake is higher as well.
In summary, if you group with me as a main tank expect that I will push you a little. I try to gauge how quickly a party can move through an instance and develop a rhythym, as fast or as slow as it may be depending on party makeup and instance difficulty. But you won't be able to say it's boring - unless we're TOO good. :)
My basic play checklist:
1) Fight's over! We r0xx0r! :)
2) Can I loot anything? If so, loot.
3) Does the healer have enough mana for the next encounter?
4) Is the party in general good health?
5) Yep - attack! They'll be along right after me, and I'll have some time to build up aggro...
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.