Good Advice from PuG Members

Yesterday I set aside some time to run Razorfen Kraul. There are a number of items I want from that instance, including two rings and a weapon upgrade.

Many of the items that I'm looking for drop off of trash mobs, so of course I took the first left turn to hit that optional part of the instance. Predictably, some of the members of the party told me that I was going the wrong way. I explained about the trash drops, and most of them were very understanding.

While crossing the chasm bridge, I lightheartedly said "no falling". The Warrior DPS got hostile at that point, and the rest of the group precipitously did the same.

"Don't tell me what to do, just keep pulling mobs" (Warrior)
"Absolutely, no problem." (Me)
"Pull very large groups so we can AoE" (Warlock)
"And trust my healing" (Paladin)

And just like that, I ate my humble pie and, throwing caution to the wind, decided to get really aggressive with my pulls, hauling in groups of 6-8 mobs at a time, strafing forward like a train, pulling the assembly along behind me and making frequent stops for Rain of Fire. Everyone seemed to enjoy the fight quite a bit more. The healer had more to worry about, I had a more challenging time keeping aggro off of the warrior in B2A gear, so kept FFF on cooldown, but the overall rate of completion was much faster and I only had to pop Lifeblood once. There were no more complaints, or talking for that matter.

So, in the balance of things, it was great advice, and a very good group. And in the final boss fight, I fell off the edge and into the pit. Epic fail. The warrior tanked. Chalk this up as an "experience" post.

On PVE Twinking, Thick Skin and Kid Gloves

The new Dungeon Finder has literally revolutionized the game. Why race to the endgame and wait in line to raid tank? Tanking is fun, that's the bottom line. It used to be that you raced to the endgame in order to increase your chances of finding other players who were on your server and looking for a group. For example, getting a group together to take on Sunken Temple was notoriously difficult when I was leveling my first five or six characters to 80 on The Venture Co. Getting parties together for Lower Blackrock Spire was just impossible, and entirely out of the question. I never even saw the inside of these dungeons until much later on, when I was leading tours for my alts with my main, and at the time I was overwhelmed with a sadness that these dungeons would never get played honestly again, at least not on my server.

All that is over. With the ability to find dungeon groups, and especially the ability to slow down one's experience and level progression, the option to savor these old instances is absolutely back on the table. Players like me, who are "new" to the game, having come in in the latter half of the Burning Crusade expansion, can get a taste of how the game used to be, and it has really broadened my ability to have fun with and appreciate the old instance content.

Blizzard has hit a silent grand slam on this matter. I don't see people talking about PvE Twinking, but I'm here to say it's a renaissance for the game.

Gushing aside, in the first bracket of instances (I don't count RFC--there's not really enough gear in there for it to be considered anything but a trailer to the dungeon game) you're very likely to run into players who have never run an instance before. It's especially sad, given the funny and well written article today at wow.com about how Death Nuggets are the new Huntards, that for truly new players, the Hunter class is still a strong and popular choice, and despite the potential of the class, its subtler aspects do not lend themselves well to novice play in dungeon instances.

By the time they hit level 19, a rogue is either learning how to play their class, or they're getting killed with every pull, and this while leveling. Same goes of a warrior, shaman, all of the classes really. The pet-as-protector does so much to insulate the hunter from harm, that the class stands out in instance play when that dynamic changes.

And, yes, I am specifically talking about novice hunters who leave their pets on aggressive mode, leave growl turned on, can't manage their mana, and generally make a tank's job unreasonably challenging. Not because they're bad or not worthy of playing in dungeons with the rest of us, not at all. Maybe they just spend too much time in the woods and need to learn a bit of teamwork is all. I'm just sayin'.

I've had a couple of great experiences in the last two days in dungeons with solid hunters who knew exactly what they were doing and rained holy havoc on the damage meters. And they make up for the others, but they are rare. I cannot lie. When I see a hunter in the ranks I tend to expect the worst. But, as this is not a productive attitude, I've been trying to be proactive and helpful instead.

A few bad encounters have gotten me into the habit of starting out the event with a standard spiel. First I'll ask if this is anyone's first instance encounter, and if there is a hunter whether they have Growl turned off and passive mode turned on. I'll also look on the party roster to see who is the healer, and then ask who the healer is. Not to be insulting, but I've had Druid Healers who immediately took to Bear form and then ran out and started pulling, then barked at me over and over and OVER again for a res when their laughable 700 hit points were splattered all over the walls and floor.

You can get a general feel in the first couple minutes whether the party is going to be a wash or if it's something you can stick with. If the DPS characters just run out and start going wild, the healer is in there swinging their staff in the melee, or leaving to go back to town for "milk", your hit points are slooooowly creeping downward and never coming back up, and you're scratching your head wondering what cradle these kids just crawled out of, there's nothing wrong with wishing them all the best and move on to another instance for a while. This is the "thick skinned" part of the life. If your party wants to do the dungeon without a tank, it's their call.

You're a tank, after all. You're not going to have to wait for a new group.

On the other hand, if you've got an alert, good natured healer and the players seem to take well to your starting spiel, you might have the makings of a very fun evening. In general, if you're tanking well and you have a good healer, the two of you should be able to offer a lot in the way of coaching and guidance to the dealers. The damage meters will tell you who needs coaching and who doesn't. The hard part about this is not being a sarcastic, arrogant jerk about it, and also not being a patronizing, smug know-it-all. It's worse with the stress of the dungeon and the limitations of text. In these cases, whispering might help--you're not chewing them out in front of the others.

In all cases, chewing them out never helps. Assume positive intent, go in with the goal of being a resource for them, praise them for their successes, and protect them from their mistakes if you can.

Besides, walking a hunter through the process of setting their pet to passive and turning off Growl for the first time might just transform the game for them, and mark the beginning of a new awareness of the potentials of their class.

I don't know if I'll see as much of the new player mentality in higher level instances, but I'm growing to see putting on the kid gloves as just another element of tanking.

No matter how bad it seems, remember this--at least we don't have to deal with Death Nuggets in the early dungeons.

Addon Review: WhoPulled

I installed an addon called WhoPulled a couple of days ago and had a chance to use it last night.  For the most part, it seemed to work like a charm.

It basically whispers to you in white text whenever anyone pulls anything.  Yourself included.  Then, you can type:

/ywho

And you'll yell "SomeDude pulled SomeMob!"

I discovered and remembered some things as a result of this process.  First, as suspected, a couple of my crew members were pulling naughtily when they ought not to have been.  Second, and not entirely surprisingly, it was my fault.

The reason it was my fault is that I was tanking with an "Inside Formation", which looks something like this:

     [add]     [add]
                     [add]

    [mdps]    [mdps]
         [mob]
         [tank]

         [heal] 

         [rdps]

A much more ideal Melee Formation for tanking, especially now that Bears have 360° swipe is the Outside Formation:

       [add]     [add]
 [add]

        [tank]
        [mob]
   [mdps]   [mdps]

       [heal] 

       [rdps]

If this formation is used, then Swipes bring incoming adds into the "Threat Well" of the tank, not of the Melee DPS characters. So, while I used the /ywho features of WhoPulled very sparingly, it did help me keep tabs on whether any of my crew members had made nice with the locals during midfight, so I could drop a growl and keep things flowing in a good direction.

I'd like to see a much more comprehensive tool (not Omen, which only shows me aggro for the mob I am targeting) to give me details whenever someone pulls aggro off of me, for any of the mobs that I hold aggro with. Ideally, there'd be an icon I could roll over in a "stack" then I could use a rollover /assist macro to yoink the agg back from them. It would be similar to WhoPulled, or potentially a useful extension to the existing functionality.

Introduction to Melee Formations

The old adage, which we've all heard, goes like this:

If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault.
If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault.
If the DPS dies, it's their own damned fault.

I take exception to this adage, and think it conveys a bad attitude and is disrespectful to damage dealing classes. If the tank dies because he's wearing spellpower gear and is not talented into mitigation or avoidance, it is not the healer's fault.

This is just one example where the adage fails. We need to be honest about survivability.

If the point of the game were merely to stay alive, then a tank and four healers would be the optimal group composition. However,

The first duty of a tank is not to stay alive, but to keep their party alive and buy them time to bring down the quarry. Staying alive is merely a habit in keeping with that primary goal.

Every member of the party is responsible for accomplishing the overall goal, which is to bring down the quarry. The responsibilities of the different roles can and do overlap.

For example, if the tank dies, it might be the damage dealer's fault. Whenever a mob parries a frontal melee attack, they get a ~40% haste buff on their next white damage attack. This means if you're standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three melee damage dealers, and none of them are expertise capped to remove the 12-15% parry chance, you will be taking a lot more damage than usual.

Yes, it is one of the melee DPS's responsibilities not to contribute damage to the tank. This further disproves the adage above.

If one of your damage dealers is a Fury Warrior with 0 Expertise skill, and you're trash tanking four mobs, each of their whirlwind attacks (assuming a 13.5% parry chance on each of the four mobs) are ~44% likely to proc the haste debuff on one of the mobs.

This is why you, the tank, should always be on the other side of a mob from your melee damage dealers. Always. Mobs can't parry attacks from behind them, so the damage dealers will be much more effective if you coordinate to keep the mob's backside pointing at the party (unless it's a dragon).

Once we accept that the tank and the melee damage dealers should always be on opposite sides of a mob, the tank becomes partially responsible for where the melee damage dealers are standing. When the tank moves, the mob moves, and when the mob moves, the DPS must also move, in order to stay behind or to the side of it. The question for the tank becomes where shall I place my melee DPS?

Acknowledging that some fights are just plain messy, accidents happen, and nobody is perfect, we should still do our best as tanks to keep our melee damage dealers safe. For starters, we should not put our melee DPS in any place where:

1. They can body pull.
2. Their abilities can pull.
3. They can be flung into a mob or other damage source.

If you do any of these things, then you're forcing the DPS to choose between not engaging in the fight until the tank moves somewhere else, engaging and likely getting themselves killed, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the tank and maybe getting him killed, or not using the abilities that define their class and role. It's a no-win situation for the melee damage dealers, and it does not contribute to the primary objective.

So, how can you, as a tank, avoid some of these common pitfalls? The answer is by planning and practicing melee formations. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I will begin a series of short articles describing various melee formations--general positioning strategies for party members that are not encounter specific. The goal will be to outline the advantages and disadvantages of each formation, and to provide videos that illustrate them in use with melee damage dealers. Because other websites such as TankSpot have encounter-specific raid videos, I will focus on formations for general use.

Melee Formations

By Way of Introduction

Hello and welcome to Khorium Powered Tank Engine. My name is Etaiu, and I will be your host. I started this site in order to provide a much-needed resources for feral tanks. I've read other feral tank blogs (they know who they are) and found them wanting in focus. By too-often straying from its core competency, a blog can quickly devolve into a personal soap box.

So, in keeping with my real-life and in-game engineering tendencies, I will keep the feature-creep out of this blog, and maintain a surgical focus on Engineering-augmented Feral Tanking. This is not my only blog, so you the reader can expect an optimal amount of (zero) spillover from unrelated subjects. Some of the information I provide will be my own findings, and some will be received knowledge that I will try to independently verify or debunk.

The main purpose of this site will be twofold.

1. To develop a more comprehensive understanding of Effective Health through Mitigation, Avoidance and sheer Leatherbelliness™. Gear analysis and comparisons will play a role in this.
   
2. To illustrate sound feral tanking technique, augmented by engineering, to maximize your control in dungeon situations. Tricks of the trade, including (but not limited to) dungeon strategies, macros, and gadgetry will factor into this analysis.
   

The first duty of a tank is not to stay alive, but to keep their party alive and buy them time to bring down the quarry. Staying alive is merely a habit in keeping with that primary goal. Threat generation, agg management, communication, mob handling, situational awareness, and wipe recovery are all equally important components of a tank's arsenal.