Face palm moment
I’m going to pretend that it was because I’m a bit under the weather. But last night I was *that* player in a PUG.
I can’t remember which instance it was. One of the bug instances in Dragonblight. Belmann pops in, and straight off sees the other four are the leader and officers of a guild. This could be good, or could be bad. Their gear was good, so he thought he’d judge how it was after some trash mobs.
The group operated with smooth efficiency, going through the mobs like a chainsaw through butter. I pause to compliment them, the tank goes out of heal range around a corner – and the mobs ate him for breakfast. Turned out he was relying on big heals and overpulling. A vote of confidence, but facepalm.
Resurrect, run in, buff as we run, top em off, get back to where we were. The tank is beating on a group, and my mana is getting low. So I get out the shadow beast, JUST as the mobs went down and the tank head off downstairs. Of course the shadow beast tore off after a group of mobs we were skipping, aggrod them, died, and the mobs overran the clothies before the tank could get back.
To my relief they thought it was funny, and the rest of the run went perfectly and in good humour.
The lesson being… Keep your finger poised over the get-back-here button when you pop the shadow beast.
November 2nd, 2010 at 2:16 am
You weren’t *that* player – you didn’t say “lol why we wipe?” or “l2tank noob” once 😉 Also it strikes me that the tank kind of failed in communicating with you when he went gleefully skipping into a massive pull.
November 2nd, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Thinking about it, I sort of agree with you. There was a mitigating circumstance in this case: we’d already gone through a number of pulls of increasing size, and the group was working really well. I felt that the tank had the experience and finesse to be feeling out what he could get away with, and we just suffered from an oh-no moment.
On the other hand, it does highlight something that has gone away in Wrath with the LFG environment: finesse and planning. I’ve seen a real trend for tanks, pressured by DPS shouting “go go go”, to barge through instances relying on brute strength and ignorance. We’re all to blame for this, having turned the instances into machines for generating frost badges for gear for raiding, but I keep thinking that everyone is in for a rude shock when Cataclysm drops.
Everything I’m reading about Cataclysm instances suggests that Blizzard designers are keenly aware that finesse has dissipated, and have designed the instances to force players to plan, strategize and communicate. It will be exciting and fun, though, if we have gone back to that. Remember how tough SM Cathedral pulls used to be in Vanilla? I’m optimistic that we’re going to go into a space where DPS have real jobs to do other than pew-pewing, and where strategies for crowd control and trash removal will have to be developed fresh for each run as the make up of the group changes.
And I still have my finger poised over the get-back-here button, just in case…