The Care and Feeding of Warriors: One warrior's view of the Call to Arms
by Matthew Rossi 
May 7th 2011 at 4:00PM
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to discover that I have strong opinions about the new Call to Arms feature for the Dungeon Finder. As a warrior, I play one of the classes that can fill the tanking role, and I have gear that is more than adequate for even the Rise of the Zandalar heroics. As a result, you might expect that I'm out there tanking a load of heroics for instant queues and a chance at free pets and mounts.
You'd be wrong. I haven't queued as a tank since patch 4.1. I have not, of my own will, tanked a single heroic since before February. When I have, it's been for friends or guildmates -- and yes, it's been generally successful. Why am I not tempted by the extra rewards of the CTA? Well, there are three reasons.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to discover that I have strong opinions about the new Call to Arms feature for the Dungeon Finder. As a warrior, I play one of the classes that can fill the tanking role, and I have gear that is more than adequate for even the Rise of the Zandalar heroics. As a result, you might expect that I'm out there tanking a load of heroics for instant queues and a chance at free pets and mounts.
You'd be wrong. I haven't queued as a tank since patch 4.1. I have not, of my own will, tanked a single heroic since before February. When I have, it's been for friends or guildmates -- and yes, it's been generally successful. Why am I not tempted by the extra rewards of the CTA? Well, there are three reasons.
If you've tanked forever, why won't you tank for us?
- The rewards are not in line with my interests. I don't care about rare epic mounts or pets. I have the ones I want and a few I don't but which I ride around on because they're cool. I am the guy who, on the absolutely last reset of the old 20-man ZG, saw the raptor mount drop and passed on it. It was 50/50 odds I'd get it, and I passed without blinking an eye because I just don't care. So trying to buy my services as a tank with mounts and pets is like trying to buy my services as a writer of fiction by promising me all the leaflets I want.
- Even if the rewards were in my interest, they are insufficient to get me to put up with some of you guys. Some of you are awesome. Some of you are funny, do your jobs right, put up solid DPS without ignoring kill order, heal while moving out of Toxic Link. Some of you make the game worth playing. But some of you guys are buzzkills, racists, braggarts, or inept. Some of you are even all of those things at once. It's not worth it to me to take the tanking role and have to explain kill orders and fight mechanics to people who spend 20 minutes talking about rectums during a Zul'Gurub run. Seriously, dude, the reason we kicked you is we didn't want to hear any more about your internal organs and their foibles. I know there are tanks who do all these things, but the great thing about me being DPS in a group with one of those guys is, I can drop and go about my day without being accused of being a prima donna tank.
- Tanking often becomes the equivalent of taking three or four preschoolers into a monster-infested ruin. Seriously, one of the reasons I applaud the new incoming CC changes is that they takes one thing off my tanking plate. I don't care if it makes things easier for the DPS or healers; I'm just relieved that one more of the annoying little tasks that no two groups can agree on will be streamlined.
Raid tanking good, FIRE BAD!!!
I love raid tanking. I love working with another tank or a tank corps, spreading out the duties and responsibilities. I like having a DPS team I can rely on to be responsible with their threat and having healers I can trust. I like knowing who all these people are and knowing what they'll do. While I am as irascible there as I am here, I like to believe they know how much I appreciate everything they do for the raid and its march forward through content.
I do not feel that tanking for a raid is harder or more demanding than healing or DPSing for it, as I've done two of those three roles in this expansion and seen the damage the healers need to address. Everyone comes to play and contributes to our success.
Pugging as a tank denies me, save for rare cases, this feeling of us vs. them. Instead, it becomes me vs. the rest of my group at the same time that it is the group vs. the monsters. The very personality traits that I use as a raid tank -- determination, a desire for perfection, and a willingness to trust my group -- become weapons used against me, harrying my patience and destroying my peace of mind.
If my guildmates and I run a heroic, all is smooth glass water and coordination. I often don't even have to tell them what I want them to do. No pickup group can match this level of understanding. We earned it. We played together and learned one another to get it.
A need for success
I've had pickup groups where everyone in the group was clearly a skilled player, we were all geared at or above the content's requirements, and yet our egos got in the way and we couldn't get it done. I've had groups where I came into a run with four complete strangers looking at me, all of them barely geared enough to get in the door, and yet it worked.
It comes down to a simple yet completely unenforceable, intangible need for group success. You have to be able to do your role and let everyone else do theirs and trust them to do it. This is not a requirement of perfection. Mistakes can happen and can be dealt with if the group communicates succinctly and works to correct them, and wipes can be overcome quickly and recovered from. What makes it all so much harder and what makes me not want to tank for pick up groups is when individuals put their egos ahead of success.
Efficient communication vs. yammering
Hopefully if you've bothered to stick around this long, you've realized that I do not blame all of this on any one role in the group. You're more likely to get a disruptive DPSer over a disruptive tank or healer by the simple fact that there are three DPSers in the group, not because being a skilled DPSer is easy or what have you.
The problem is a simple one. Pickup groups start out at a disadvantage in that they are often mostly or completely strangers, with no easy way to bring about the "raid mentality" of communication and group understanding. This isn't insurmountable. If it were, we'd have no good PUGs. And it's not the responsibility of some of the players in the group; it's the responsibility of all of them.
As a tank, I like it when groups stop talking when I'm trying to explain a pull, mark targets, and tell them I'm pulling. Groups that do this and pay attention to the kill order -- I love you guys. One ZG run that I ended up tanking started out extremely poorly, with a tank who managed to be offensive on so many levels that his own guildmate voted to kick him, and I ended up tanking simply to keep the group moving. (So no, I didn't get my bribe.) Once that disruptive tank was gone, the group was amenable to my specific quick-and-dirty fight explanations, marking (I generally only mark the first kill target and any CC) and even occasional odd joke. I grew so comfortable with them and they with me that when a tank finally showed up just before we pulled Zanzil, I was actually somewhat sad to go back to DPS. If it hadn't been 5 a.m. my time by the time Jindo died, I'd have run with them again, even in the tanking role.
So I guess, in the end, I will tank for you if you take the time to treat me like a person. And likewise, if your tank won't treat you like people, don't be afraid of queue times. A good group is one with respect and communication. A bad group is just wipes with nothing learned and your time wasted. No one wants that.
The Call to Arms isn't really going to make groups good. Only we can do that. All the Dungeon Finder does is give us the opportunity.
At the center of the dury of battle stand the warriors: protection, arms and fury. Check out more strategies and tips especially for warriors, including Cataclysm 101 for DPS warriors, a guide to new reputation gear for warriors, and a look back at six years of warrior trends.
Filed under: Warrior, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
e.friedman1992 May 7th 2011 4:24PM
Great right up! The only thing I have to say (as a healer, not a tank) is that, while you do get crappy groups that make your life miserable, the times that I get a great, funny, friendly group are the times that I really enjoy this game. and Being an altoholic, I would gladly give up any server community feelings again to be able to continue using LFD for low lvl instances... Do you remember trying to find a group for, Say, scholo pre 3.3? Never happened once since BC dropped.
e.friedman1992 May 7th 2011 5:52PM
write up... deetdeedee
Eirik May 9th 2011 1:28PM
Time of day still matters, as does the pool of people looking to make that run (and qualified to do so), and the role they play. For instance, BC heroics, last I looked, could be run as late as level 74 or so. Wrath heroics can be run only at precisely level 80. (In order to run them level-appropriately, I have turned off experience gain, for one of my toons.)
Talelon May 7th 2011 4:25PM
I agree with a lot of this and to date I've only really pugged the new heroics a grand total of 5 times maybe.
The main thing that bugs me in most pugs (and some times guild groups, sadly) is the occasional DPS who refuses to watch their threat and when mobs start beating on them, it becomes my fault.
WTB dps that know how to watch a threat meter, or knows when to stop for a sec so I can regain threat
Amanda A. May 7th 2011 4:55PM
If it helps, it is sometimes an accident. My death knight is frost for his dps spec; the first few days after 4.1 I pulled constantly because my DPS had nearly doubled overnight and I hadn't adjusted yet. Even now, I still occasionally get a lucky string of Killing Machine procs (which makes either of my strongest two attacks auto-crit on next use and pops incredibly often) and suddently pull because it crept up on me so quickly. On the other hand, when I do that I'll stop DPS or pop defensive cooldowns, use a few death strikes to heal damage taken, and try to give the tank a chance to get it back. I would gladly use a threat dump, but I don't have one.
Dicon May 7th 2011 5:47PM
@ Amanda A.
You have 2 ;P
For multi mob fights its called the tab key
On single mob fights its the hands off keyboard agro dump move :D
Talelon May 7th 2011 6:15PM
@ Amanda A.
I can understand if it's a chain of lucky crits or procs, but constantly pulling aggro when a dps has pulled, I taunted, and then they pull again (I have a frost dK buddy who is guilty of this) just shows a lack of attention and a focus on the numbers, at that point I just let em eat it, taunt it back, and then move on with my day :)
@Dicon
You forgot #3: Death, the ultimate aggro reset, lol
Herman May 7th 2011 9:03PM
the one that i hate the most is when they pull aggro, then you taunt, then they frost nova/stun/snare the mob in place, so it sits there and either keeps beating on them or just goes back to hitting them as soon as your taunt wears off.
or when you silence something with heroic throw and then someone stuns or slows it while its coming to you. i mean its like "really? you really had to do that? i just blew a 30 second cooldown to get the other caster to come to me, and you made it a complete waste of time. thanks a lot buddy"
/endrant
PeeWee May 8th 2011 8:06AM
Why the heck was Dicon voted down? They ARE threat dumps.
Just. Stop. Bloody. Attacking.
-.-
Frostwound May 8th 2011 8:30AM
There is a big difference between of why you gain treath. I as a warrior can in most cases always pull aggro if i want to. But if i have a good geared tank, if he cant hold aggro when i am doing like 25% of my max dps then he is doing something wrong. And most times by simply being close to taking aggro most pug tanks start pulling out more TPS. And if he cant then i will vote kick him for the same reason i votekick a full epic dps that does 7k dps.
nikdaheratik May 9th 2011 1:39PM
What I hate the most are the hunters that decide to "help me pull" and then don't even bother to use a Misdirect. I mean seriously, you can't find that one button that actually makes the asinine move you just did forgivable after the third time you've done it??
Kaphik May 7th 2011 4:25PM
I feel almost exactly the same way. In addition to the raiding comments, I'll add that I get my fill for tanking in raids, and not in 5-mans anymore. I've tried a few times to queue as tank for random instances, but as soon as I zone in I lose my desire to tank.
One good thing about running as dps though, on both my warrior and my death knight, is that I know at least one person in the group is going to control their aggro, interrupt when needed and follow a kill order, or at least figure out which one everyone is targeting and kill that first. Oh, and the other good thing is that I have time to fish, farm or do dailies.
Eridian May 7th 2011 7:55PM
Exactly this, I've managed to finally max both fishing and archaeology whilst waiting to DPS, and being a shaman I know that the group's going to have some cc an interrupting to go along with the damage.
Huey2k2 May 7th 2011 4:28PM
This about exactly sums up my problem with tanking PUG's... I feel like 90% of the time I get one or two people in the group who are almost completely inept and make me question how they got to the point of being able to do heroics in the first place.
This is exactly why the Call to Arms has done absolutely nothing for my motivation to tank PUG's, why tank a PUG where I will probably get a group that will fail, when I can tank a guild run where I know everything will go smooth? Combine this with the fact that when I tank PUG's the second I say anything negative about anyone in the group to attempt to fix their poor play, I immediately get labeled as tank with "attitude", and everyone then proceeds to yell at me because I "think I am better than them".
I think the idea that tanking is "more difficult" than DPS is flawed, I wouldn't say it is more difficult, the problem is that you are expected to lead the group, and if that group fails, 99% of the time the failures of the group are immediately blamed on you. Tanking is not necessarily more difficult than DPS, but you have far more pressure as the tank than DPS does.
Call to Arms does nothing to address the fact that tanking a PUG is just not fun for the most part, you are saddled with lots of responsibility, and when anything goes wrong, it for some reason is immediately your fault. This is a problem that cannot be fixed, and DPS in general will just have to learn to accept that essentially no matter what Blizzard does, there will be que times. The bright side about all of this? Even if there are 30-45 minute ques, it is still better than before the dungeon finder existed, where people would spend hours spamming trade chat to find a group for anything.
This is the best it is going to get.
Matt May 7th 2011 6:03PM
I can tell you how they got into heroics...
2 things:
1. They need rolled on ANYTHING they could wear that was an ilvl upgrade
2. They bought gear that was an ilvl upgrade
Getting into heroics does NOT require skill. All it requires is time. Even the worst player is going to find a group of 4 other people willing to pull them through an instance just to get it done.
Fletcher May 7th 2011 4:29PM
Sadly entirely true. As a DPS (I haven't tanked much since a brief spell during Wrath) it's readily apparent that the real boss isn't the one marked with a skull; it's the other four people ... or nine people, or twenty-four. One of the reasons I burned out on raiding in ICC was the feeling that it wasn't the difficulty of the bosses holding my guild back, but the ineptitude of my fellow raiders.
It's a really sucky feeling to feel that one's progress and success is dependent upon a bunch of strangers - one of whom is a twelve-year-old, a second who's stoned (and keeps telling you all about it), a third who doesn't respond to anything, and a fourth who spends the entire run repeating 4chan memes in allcaps.
It's a testament to the low barrier to entry that dungeons can succeed even with the wunderkind, the stoner, the vegetable and the moron doing their best - intentionally or not - to sabotage it. The Zuls, with their higher skill requirements, are walls against which the dregs of the dungeon finder will wash ineffectually forever ... which is no great consolation for the good players bobbing about in the bilgewater!
Since I'm no longer guilded Alliance side, and my Hordeside guild doesn't do current content, I've resigned myself to waiting a month or two before I attempt the Zuls again. There's just no way for the dungeon finder to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Fletcher May 7th 2011 4:40PM
To get back on the topic of the CtA feature rather than the failures of pugs - I'm pleasantly surprised that the CtA actually seems to have worked to reduce DPS queue times (at least for now). Based upon Blizzard's previous attempt at bribing people to run dungeons (the loot bag and drake in the Oculus) I was expecting it to fall flat. But dungeon queues are at least halved! So that's not so shabby.
vocenoctum May 7th 2011 7:01PM
I've known (and know) plenty of folks that smoke weed, I do not. But for whatever reason on WoW, those that do smoke think that everyone does, and everyone wants to hear about it. I had a raid leader that was obviously getting worse and worse in the raid and he and a few other potheads in the group thought it was hilarious as the raid went worse. After a few wipes half the group just made excuses and left.
It just goes back to the general "no consequences = no consideration" factor.
Fletcher May 8th 2011 4:49AM
I once wiped in ToC25 because one of the tank healers got so drunk he couldn't see the screen ... and then passed out. Friends don't let friends drink and raid.
Manadar May 8th 2011 6:04AM
I actually think it's the other way around, they think they're special because they smoke (or drink). Well, they're not. Bragging about those stuff all the time I would expect from a insecure kid. The rest of us can handle it fine and don't let it affect our performance or our fellow players.