To Tank or not to Tank: that is the question

Here is another guest post from my good friend Azariell, who approached me with this text as his view on how tanking and as a continuation to his earlier guest post about the behaviour of the anonymous LFD PUG. As it happens, this post is very closely related to the post I linked yesterday, which I would like to push up once again.

This Shakespearian reference might seem very cheesy at first, but when reading the rest of the Hamlet scene it actually covers the content of the following combination of thoughts pretty well (Literary fanatics may shoot me now for such a ‘disrespectful’ comparison).

I am not going to talk about how tanks (and healers) are blamed for everything, and that they are the most underappreciated classes. What I want to talk about is what should tanks accept as demands from their party members and to which extent this is related to the new ‘Looking for Dungeon tool’ (combined with the rather unique position tank are placed in when using the tool).

So for the next 4 lines of the Scene (for those who care Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1)

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; 

Being a tank, you have certain advantages; one of the most important ones these days is that you can find a group using the LFD-tool within seconds of pressing the ‘join’ button. DPS can often wait up to 15-20 minutes before they get a group. Nowadays, a complete heroic instance can be ran in 20 minutes, effectively doubling the amount of heroics that a tank is able to do compared to a DPS. This of course comes with the extra emblems which can be used for those all important gear pieces, or just to make a quick buck by selling the raw gems that you can buy.

However, to be a tank in the LFD-tool, you get ‘forced’ into a certain mindset. The GOGOGO mentality by now could almost be a word in the dictionary. The DPS cannot continue without the tank taking the lead, but the only thing holding them back is the sky high repair bills. So instead they start to put pressure on the tank (and healer) “GOGOGO” “What are you waiting for” and so on. And for some reason, I tend to oblige those requests, even though I am not comfortable racing through an instance at such pace. Sure, I can do it, but do I want to? I know it’s just the power of the group (or single individual often) and as a tank you just want to be liked and not be told that you are a crappy tank.

But to whom are we catering when we fulfill the request of that DPS-er? My best guess is that only the fully geared players, who can blow through an entire instance without mana shortage might like it. To be honest, on my fully geared Warlock I have no problems taking things a bit more slow. Actually having some fun with the people in the group counts for something too right?

But the people duped by this are the tank himself, who is pressured into a pace which might not suit his play style. The healer who is strained even more by not only the constant healing on the tank, but also the healing on the group. And finally the not so well geared players. Players who have mana problems, underperform because the pace is way to fast for them to catch a breath (mana breaks have become a phenomenon of the past).

The strangest thing is that tanks are in short supply. The fact that tanks have a group within seconds of joining says it all. So, why do tanks feel pressured into doing things they do not want? They are the ones holding the best cards right? Taking this out into the open and acting like you hold those cards, is also not the solution as it would only be seen as arrogant behavior.

So to go back to my Shakespeare reference: Do we just keep taking the blows in order to rake in the easy cash? Or do we make a stand and say ‘screw you guys, I’m going home’. The second, however, results in becoming a disliked tank with all consequences attached.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; 

Now a follow up question would be, what demands should healers accept from their group? Should they accept a tank who’s personal mission it is to chain pull as many mobs as possible without thinking about the healer?

The behavior of the anonymous

((This is the first quest post in this blog, written by my old friend and former 'guild master' of sorts, Azariel, whose opinion I have come to respect very much over the years I've known him. He wrote this 'post' as a proposition for a post of my own, but I think it has it's own merit in the form he sent it to me. After reading this I found out that there are some issues which I can -and will- comment in a separate post myself. 

Without any further ado, I present to you, Azariell, Undead Destruction Warlock, Thunderhorn EU)

I would like to start by posing a question, the same (well, somewhat the same atleast) as the one I asked last night in Guild chat which sparked a rather ferocious barrage of comments by several (loudmouth) guildies.

The question is this, well more of a hypothetical situation then a question: You are the raid/party/group leader and one of the members of said group is not performing according to the requirements. The ‘logical’ (yeah, that’s debatable, I know) next step would be to remove that player from the group in order to find a suitable player to try and advance.

The question now is: Would you find it acceptable to kick that player without further communication with him about possible reasons or solutions? In other words, would you have the courtesy to tell him face to face that it isn’t enough, or just press the kick button and be done with it?

Now that I’ve given you something to think on, I’ll explain the situation. It was my first TOC-10 man run last night. I’m not a raider as you might know and only do occasional raids (ow and before you think that I was the kicked player, I wasn’t). So I have no real raiding experience or anything of that order.

So, first TOC-10 man run, group was complete, we all moved there and after a brief tactics explanation by our tank (I’m a Lock btw) we started the encounter. The first DK tank died pretty quickly causing a wipe. Second attempt ended in the same manner: wipe. Next healer assignments were switched, and guess what, another wipe. Between the second and third wipe, there had already been some murmurs on Vent that one healers HPS was low. And within seconds of the third wipe, the healer was kicked, and a new healer was brought onboard.

The question that formed in my mind immediately was, did he kick him without saying a word? Or would he have taken the time to whisper him saying that it just wouldn’t work. I posed that question in the Guild chat, and was greeted with statements like “Of course he just kicked him, he didn’t perform, hence kick” and “toughen up Az, that’s the way it goes”. I responded to it that it was just plain rude and that we are playing a game afterall, which should be fun for all. That statement was counter by the responses “Then go play a Dora game” (children’s animation for those who don’t know Dora) By that time the fourth attempt was already started so I couldn’t respond anymore, which was a shame. But is it true? Did we let this kind of behavior become the standard in games?

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that if you want to advance, you need to know what you’re capable of, and when one person does not achieve, they need to be replaced to make the group stronger. If I would have been the player that was kicked because of that, I would have been fine with it, but just as long as they had taken the time to tell me politely what the problem was. Otherwise I would just have been offended by their rude behavior. I think not all guildies understood what I meant with my question. Luckily others did understand as one response was “yeah that was too blunt, but the healer really did have to go…”

Now, I’ve noticed this in more games I’ve played over the past. The internet brings out the worst in some people. Some people apparently believe that they can act any way they want as long as its online. Behavior they would never resort to in real life, all of a sudden becomes completely ‘normal’ online where they can hide behind their toon/account. I’ve been in games where leaders were back-stabbing each other at every turn, thinking up the most devious plans to ‘win’ the game, no matter the consequences.

So, what is it that makes ‘us’ change our behavior when we transcend our mortal existence and step into the digitized anonymous world? What makes ‘us’ go into a flaming frenzy where in the real world we might have just said “I do not agree with your statement”

I consider myself to be old enough to no longer be influenced by the behavior of people online. But what will it do to the minds of the young game-players, who are still learning what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’? Will they copy this behavior from the online world to the real world? Making the behavior of the anonymous the behavior of the individual?

Will the behavior of the anonymous one day be elevated to the behavior of the masses?