Fair warning: There's complaining here.
All that yelling I'd been dreading happened people called for them to kick me, called me the worst tank of the year and several other things I'd much rather block from my memory, so I left before they were forced to finish voting and went to lick my wounds. If they had let me stay I'd have been too shaken (and disgusted with myself) to tank well anyway.
That night when SprYte was over I decided it was time to 'get back on the horse' and give it another go. I do know that fight and with a less distracted and more alert brain I was bound to do it as well as I usually do. Immerseus went down fine and we got to Protectors, but just before we all got gathered and ready to go the other tank left. I settled in to wait for a replacement, but one of the dps wasn't having it and pulled.
So I picked up Rook and He and tried to wing it solo. I'm sure solo tanking them in LFR isn't a big deal for a better geared tank who knows the fight inside and out but I'd never tank Rook before and didn't know what he did except that I couldn't point him at the raid. I was freaking out. Poor SprYte got an earful, but I was managing to hold them both and avoid gouge and the healers had me standing. At least they did up until the point that someone passed the Mark of Anguish to me while I was still tanking Rook, and Sun's desperate measures went off before it went down and my health vanished so fast I barely had time to see it.
The Battle Rez was fairly quick, I got the bosses picked back up, but when Mark came up again they handed it to me and Sun went and wouldn't you know it, I was back to tanking the floor. That time there was no Battle Rez and the party wiped.
Probably unsurprisingly I was the first person to get blamed in chat. The trash talking started and I was debating whether or not I wanted to hang it up for the night when somebody spoke up and said that I'd been doing great but I couldn't handle the mark and Sun adds, though. People actually stopped blaming me and started arguing about other things. We got another tank and the rest of it went fine, and despite that wipe I felt a lot better about myself than I had that morning. Not only because of those words, though they helped, but because I knew I'd done pretty well with what I was given.
Still, it'll take a while to get my confidence entirely back, and I can't help that I'm still a little angry, not because I got called on my mistake but because of the level of hurtful comments made about it. I knew I'd made a mistake, I felt bad about it already, but I'm a human, it'll happen sometimes. What upsets me most though, was that second wipe, they were ready to blame me for that too, until somebody spoke up. But you know who never got blamed or threatened with a kick? The dps who pulled with only one tank in the first place.
This is just terrible. The blaming in LFR is out of control, and I think also the responsibility that are being placed on the tanks are just too much. From what I read, you have nothing to feel bad about at all! Too bad we can't queue together. :-)
ReplyDeleteI wish we could queue together!
DeleteIn the first instance I made a mistake and I do feel bad for that, but I don't feel at all bad about my solo tanking attempt the second time.
As for tanking, it's not the responsibility I mind it's the amount of recrimination when a mistake happens. There's a reason it takes ages to find a second tank when you lose one. For every person like me that'll try again there's somebody like the person I was last expansion who will hang up the shield and pick another spec or alt to play.
That's exactly it, name calling doesn't bother me but what happens is I get upset that so many people want to be hurtful to other people. It's depressing. I go to the grocery store or where ever and look around and think that's what they'd be doing to each other if they had anonymity.
ReplyDeleteI know, I should lighten up, lol. But it is why I stick to world bosses with strangers. I don't need to get depressed and they are usually so happy to have a group they behave more like people should.
It is sad to think that so many people will go out of their way to be hurtful. In that first one for example. Yes, I'd made a mistake, there was no reason to be crowning me worst tank of the year, or calling me out saying I had no enchants (I was missing four on some pieces of gear I had hoped to replace and everything was gemmed). After all it's not like any of those enchantments would have stopped me from making a mistake. I needed more of the IRL coffee enchant for that.
DeleteBut when it starts getting me down I have to remind myself that for every person like that there are people who don't behave that way even with anonymity. People like you and me and the rest of the Old Ladies. :)
I was going to ask, why did they not blame the person who pulled. Random groups tend to have a problem with blaming the wrong people. It is easy to lay the blame on the tank, even more so when there is only one of them, and it is easy to blame the healers when you die because you did not get healed but I personally believe that 90% of the wipes I have seen can be better connected to the damage dealers.
ReplyDeleteThey stand in crap and expect healers to heal them through it and then blame the healers. Excuse me, move and you will live, it has nothing to do with healers. They blame the tank, like in your case, when it was them that pulled. They sit back and auto attack, they do not run the maze, avoid the avoidable, pull mobs no one is attacking and just generally act like poor players and spoiled brats.
From what you said, be very proud of yourself you got as far as you did solo tanking it. When I first started reading the thought was you were going to get hit by gouge, but you avoided that. Doing that alone while still tanking rook and dealing with the stun shows you did as much as you could have possibly done. One turn to avoid the gouge and rook does his stun and hits you from behind and it would have been a wipe anyway, which would have happened sooner or later. Don't blame yourself.
I am so glad someone else spoke up for you. I like when there are a few reasonable people that know what is really going on. I almost got kicked from an LFR for DPSing on my disc priest. They said I queued as a healer and I should not be DPSing and the group was ready to kick me until a few people pointed out I heal by DPSing because I am a disc priest.
It is amazing how few people realize how other classes even work. Or how hard some fights are to one tank, even in LFR, unless you are instantly geared. The only wing you can solo tank in LFR is wing 4.
I agree with you about blaming the wrong person. Not sure why they didn't blame that guy, unless he was the top dps guy and they didn't want to lose him. Seems like in a random if it's not the tank's fault it's the healer's as far as everybody is concerned. Having done lots of healing this expansion and working my way up to a decent amount of tanking I can say that a lot of times we wipe the dps definitely have plenty to do with it.
DeleteFor one thing I've noticed the dps like to pull for tanks in LFR, even on bosses. It's especially frustrating when I'm trying to give the other tank a whispered rundown of the fight because they've never done it before. Even more so when I've specifically told the group I'm explaining things to the other tank and they pull anyway. But on almost every occasion that's happened the other tank and I pick up the mess and get through it and nobody blames that guy who pulled because we did fine. And if we didn't, no doubt that would have been our failing and we'd have heard about it.
Yet at the end of a well executed run nobody bothers to say 'Hey, nice tanking.' Very very occasionally I've seen healing complimented, but not the tanking. If we want a pat on the back we have to administer it ourselves. Which is why at the end of every LFR where the other tank has communicated with me and we've both done our part decently I make it a point to whisper and tell them it was a pleasure tanking with them.
Thanks so much for your comment, it made me feel better do. I hadn't even thought about what would happen if I mistimed that turn for gouge, but it likely would have been as sure a death as that person putting mark on me which I think was basically murder in that situation.
I feel for you on the disc priest, lots of people don't realize how those work. I saw one trolling a group once, heroic geared and queued as dps, then calling out the other healers for doing less heals than a dps. I was number two heals in that one so I moused over them on the healing meters to see what they were doing and said, 'Yeah well, you're disc queued as dps, that's going to happen" and ended up having a really fun whispered conversation with them for the rest of the raid.
It's amazing to me how many people are willing to criticize the tank mercilessly when most of them have probably never tried tanking the fight. A lot of them aren't as easy as they look.
Ugh, I have so been there. I have not set foot in one raid in this expansion, but after learning the fights as dps, I attempted to tank a few in Cataclysm. I wasn't super geared, but I was geared enough, but people would start trash talking before we even started. It's just insane.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I have never gotten upset, especially when people are being really stupid or you work really hard on something only to end up wiping, but I very much have an "it's a game" mentality. Just calm down. People make mistakes. Everyone has to learn somehow. And so often the people who want to call you out on your mistakes are making plenty of mistakes of their own.
I'm glad you were able to get back on the horse, though. There have definitely been times where something like this has happened and I've wanted to quit tanking altogether, even though I really enjoy doing it.
People are terrible and some of the trash talking about gear I will never understand. How do they expect a tank to get geared without tanking things? How do you they expect them to really know the fights without seeing them? I read guides and keep one up in a tab when I'm tanking in case I need to check a number of stacks on a boss just beforehand but I still don't really feel like I understand a fight until I've tanked it.
DeleteIt's natural to get upset and frustrated when you wipe on something, I think but unless someone is obviously trolling or queued as heals and fighting in ret spec (I've seen that.) I have ar hard time getting actually mad at them. Other things I'll just assume it was a mistake or they don't know and if anything I'll try to whisper them and offer them the most kindly worded suggestion I can manage.
There have definitely been times for me that I've wanted to quit tanking too. That cruelty takes its toll even if you like the job. And that's partly why I knew I had to make myself go back in and do that one that day, because if I put it off too long I'd talk myself out of it.
I've been kicked from LFR after pulling the first trash pack of SoO wing 2 (just the three, not the pat) with the other tank, all healers and more than half the dps in range. When I died, I ran back in and picked the mobs back up. The pat had been pulled by then, and the other tank was afk. When I died again, I ran back in again. I did this at least four times before we just wiped it. Then the blaming started. I was kicked for not doing a readycheck first and for "griefing". I do not value the opinion of anyone in LFR anymore.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry to hear that. Even more so because hearing it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Who ready checks before the trash? Before bosses, yeah, a ready check or a pull warning is nice, but not before the trash. Besides chances are if you -had- ready checked they'd have been annoyed about that too. The truth is that sometimes in LFR you just can't win. Definitely doesn't sound to me like you did anything wrong. If anything you went above and beyond running back in repeatedly to try to compensate for an afk tank.
DeleteYesterday I had heroic-geared 'children' intentionally pulling trash in an LFR I am certain because they were bored asshats. This game, in the public realm of strangers, is not about playing well, nicely, or better, but often seeing how much of a troll one can be. It depresses me, admittedly. However, there is a cure! If you can come to our half-open raid nights on Tues/Thurs - send me an email when you can and I'll get you Breige's battle tag, too, in case I'm not on! mataoka.of.exodar@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteI've raided with those type of childish jerks before too, not entirely sure the dps that pulled the bosses for me wasn't one of those overgeared and bored. But then I also co-tanked with the nicest bear tank who was geared enough he might have been able to solo tank a lot of it in that part of ToT but instead talked to me in whispers and let me do my share.
DeleteI'd love to try making it to your raid nights! Not sure Tyl's dps is quite top of the line, but his gear is decent and I'll do my best. I'll drop you an email in a bit to get Breige's btag and find out times from you. :) Thank you so much.