Herk is up to his old tricks... talkin bout tanking.
K... now the other side.
There comes a time, young padawans... when, as a dps, you gotta step up.
Maybe itsa stupid tank. Maybe itsa bad pull. Mybe its just fate... screwing with you.
Herk's a good tank. Mebbe even a great one. But even tanks have problems. And in every group... you gonna need a backup plan. If ya get too much pain on on the tank...
If ya a hunter... trap one, pet tank one, and ranged duel another.
If ya a mage... aoe pull em, frost snare, and kite like its the chinese new year.
If ya a dps shammy... time to drop defense totems, summon an elemental and start offhealing what the healer can't... or put on the shield, frost shock a mob, and off tank that mob that went after the squishy... keepin yourself healed in the process....
One reason to despise so many dps these days... is that they really have no clue how to dps, nor what to do when more than dps is called for. It's in times of stress that you find the good players...
The lock that pulls that extra mob down the hall, only to come back aggroless and with a fatter demon...
The hunter that handles two extra mobs while burning down skull with the party...
The holy pal that drops everything and aoe aggro pulls when the tank goes down...
The rogue that pulls that mob offa the healer and pops evasion, doin the ultimate dance of death....
The Boomkin that swaps in earthwarden and gets medieval on something trying to eat a squishy...
And the mage that pulls 4 and kites em to the entrance and back, givin the party time to recover...
Asa dps, you gotta keep an eye on everything... is the healer keepin the tank up? Is he losing ground? God and tanks hate rogues that doan know when to stun and when not to... but a timely blind on one mob, and a stun on another might help that healer keep the tank alive...
And there comes a damn time when you gotta step up to the plate and pull a little damage offa the tank. He might not understand it, but the healer probably will.
It helps a ton to know class vs mob strengths... a rogue or shammy can pwn a caster mob with minimal heals. A mage, with proper elemental warding and shielding can do the same.
We all have a moment of glory story in instance running. My favorite is back in the days when I was running a gnome frost mage in scholomance... back in the bad old days of tier 0. (This was just after MC opened, so there really wasn't much tier this or tier that...)
Thersa pull at the end. Big old skeleton casters that spam frost nova and an aoe shadow damage effect. You pull 2-3, you o.k. You pull more, itsa wipe.
Now this was back in the days of 10 man scholo. You really had to have been there. Anyway, I went in with a group. And they pulled 6. Before ya know it, we down to 6 peeps, and the wipe is on.
But then my noble Remorse stepped up. Frost nova... CoC... pulled 5 after me, and up the stairs, kiting those bastards around the room while my peeps killed number 6. Jump offa the balcony... the 5 come back, group pulls one, and I kite 4 back up. Blizzard, frost nova, blink. Jump back down.
We lived. No wipe. All cuzza truly 1337 kiting skills.
What am I saying? Well.. mostly that tanks are egomaniacs. They can't stand it when mobs pay more attention to other toons than to themselves. But sometimes... just sometimes... that's the way it's gotta be.
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3 comments:
Too True... Tanks are egomaniacs in that sense.
But ya gotta understand... If I saw anyone other than Noobed pull that stunt... I would be running after them trying to get aggro thinking they screwed the pooch.
And as a pugger for the time being... How many Noobeds do you think are even out there? Well, in my experience 1 out of 19494209824.
It will be interesting to learn how to DPS on my Shaman. Posts on that should be fun.
"Tanks are egomaniacs" so true, It's even worse if your GM is a tank. Ego the size of a bus.
This is all truth.
Thing is, most folks don' know what DPS really is supposed to do.
I smell a blog post.
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