1. #1

    Sick of tanking dungeons as a fresh 90?

    Okay, some backstory. I define myself as a "casual" player, the kind that doesn't really raid at all (not the kind that bitches at Blizzard on how "hard" everything is... I'm not the reason they invented LFR), and I spend most of my time just faffing about. I haven't played seriously since the end of Wrath, and I was not playing WoW at all for most of Cata.

    I just dinged 90 yesterday on my Brewmaster monk (yes, my first 90, I only got back into the game a couple months ago). I'm decked out in pretty much quest greens. I never bothered with the dungeons, even while leveling. My average item level is 426, most of it from Kun-Lai, I hit 90 before I really got anywhere in Townlong or Dread Wastes.

    I've thought once or twice about doing some minor gearing up through heroics (actually running them for the gear), but I put it off based on what happened back in Wrath when I first leveled my prot pally to 80. As an alt, I dinged 80 toward the end of the expansion, and while I could run the heroics easily (I'd seen them enough on my shammy), I would usually get some kickback from raid-geared players, the ones that were looking for a quick-and-easy run for their badges. This would range from snide remarks to "n00b" or "L2P" comments, flat-out insults at how much I sucked as a player (based entirely on my gearscore), and even getting kicked from the group once or twice. All because I had the audacity to run dungeons that were level- and gear-appropriate for a freshly-dinged tank. Power creep on gear right now is ridiculous, and I know any dungeon I enter will be filled with four other people way beyond where I am.

    Bearing in mind I'm probably catching most of this because I'm a tank. I enjoy playing them, and leveling as them, for the fact that they're extremely hard to kill under normal solo gameplay.. things like doing group quests by myself, or getting a quest to kill six snow moose, and pulling them all at the same time. That sort of thing. But, on the flip side, I actually do know how to play them. I read the posts here at at EJ, I watch the videos and such. Gear aside, I'd probably be fully capable of tanking LFR.

    So my question is: Is the "lol, get outta here n00b tank" thing still going on? If I were to start running some dungeons tomorrow (I'm not even eligible for heroics yet), with a bunch of people who would probably prefer everyone in the group have 525+ ilevel, I think I'm still going to end up catching a lot of flak for that, and it's simply not worth it. But I would like to get some better gear, even if it's just dungeon drops and one or two pieces of Justice gear. Even a slight bump like that would make dailies easier and so on.

    Everybody's got to start somewhere, right? I'm absolutely confident I can tank well (well enough for heroics, anyway), it's just getting other people to believe I can tank well when all they look at is gear score.

  2. #2
    I got to 90 about 3 weeks ago. I don't like to read about dungeons before doing them, so on occasion I had people kvetch about me figuring out fight mechanics experientially (still no wiping thx), but not a word about item level.

  3. #3
    If you're a new tank, I HIGHLY recommend getting tidy plates/threat plates. It will revolutionize your tanking, trust me.

  4. #4
    There are always people who'll tell you to GTFO!.. With my well geared tank I was outdpssing quite a few DPS, they actually started raging at me because "I was supposed to tank, not dps" which I actually was doing.

    My advice, just do LFR and enjoy the game. Ignore idiots who tell you to GTFO! They're not worth your time.. If you know what you're doing, there is no problem!

  5. #5
    If you get mad over such a small thing chances are there're some truths in what the trolls said to you.

    You can't make everyone happy, no matter how good you are, you are bound to get some jerks along the way, maybe you should try private servers with vanilla/TBC realms, you get less jerks there I heard, plus it's free, of course the downside is you won't be able to kill 6 mobs at once while leveling, since there's no heirloom and you won't have gold to even buy level-appropriate gears, you will be leveling undergeared all the time, and the class trainers will empty your pocket and some.

  6. #6
    The Lightbringer Blufossa's Avatar
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    You'll be fine as long as you're hitting the right buttons at the right time and moving mobs/boss around as needed.

    People are just bitchy. Sadly there's no cure for stupid.

  7. #7
    once people get the ilvl to do MSV LFR they dont do heroics again really, or ever after they can do H scenarios.

    i would hit up the new quest chain/dailies as well as the isle. you get 502 boots and a 489 random stat item of your choice every week. make sure you dont buy anything with VP that isnt a 522 and dont worry about upgrading anything that isnt 522 either.

    the world bosses have a nice chance to get you some early tier gear, so hit them up as well.

    make sure you do the treasure run before doing LFR for the first time, you should easily have 15+ elder charms your first week. get atlasloot and use your coins intelligently.

    on both my pally and shammy alts it took just over a week of stuff at 90 to be ready for ToT LFR, and now i do PuG ToT on my pally.

    if you do all the things to get gear outside of heroics(not including PvP that is another topic), you should only ever have to do 3-5 heroics total before you no longer need them.
    Quote Originally Posted by tkjnz
    If memory serves me right, a fox is a female wolf.

  8. #8
    So noone told you anything yet? Where is the problem then?
    Even if someone tell you something, why even bother, just ignore the chat?
    If they kick you, you have instant queue for new dungeon and just carry on, right?
    Although they wont kick you probably, noone wants to wait 5-10 min for new tank.
    And why would anyone kick you, if you say you know how to play?

    Guessing you are quite young if you have this low self-confidence problem. Dont worry, it will get better over time.

  9. #9
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    I'm ilvl 543 and all I care about is that you play smart and try to keep aggro (I'm a hunter so I help you with that). The most common problem is the other 2dps sucking and not having newbie tanks with bad gear.
    In the recent months I only raged once. In scholomance on Jandice the tank pulled all the adds at once and then someone also the boss too early. Result was that the tank died, the other 2dps and the healer were running outside while that happened and I ended up soloing the adds and the boss. Since hunters have so many healing I got to waste a hp pot and bandages. I left the group after I got her down and simply waited 20min to find some new decent folks.

    MoP heroics aren't even heroics so the requirement for a tank to do his job (stay alive) is very easy. A DPS his job is never done because you want to do as much DPS as possible and so a lot of people fail their job miserably.
    The only things I see tanks do wrong currently:
    - They get overconfident when they see me and pull too much. So healer has to spam them constantly and ends up oom too much. Healers hate when a dungeon goes like that. They won't say anything because as a healer you often feel 'along for the ride' but they'll hate it.
    - Not pulling fast enough. Unless healer has problems, keep chainpulling that trash. If you wanted to make phone calls or take care of your baby you shouldn't have logged into a game that you can't pause.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by herpecin View Post
    once people get the ilvl to do MSV LFR they dont do heroics again really, or ever after they can do H scenarios.
    There's a point though where 522-530 geared people run them to cap their valor because you can pretty much just zerg pull the whole instance at once, making runs last 10 minutes. Those kinds of groups can be a bit of a "surprise" for a new tank.

    With that said - as a new lvl90, you don't really have to run 5-mans at all. And apart from seeing the places, I don't know why you would. Certainly not for gear upgrades.

    Do Arena of Annihilation scenarrio for 450 weapon. Some questline (forgot which) gives you 502 boots. Get the 458 crafted PvP set, the crafted 476 chest and gloves, 450 craftable neck/rings, Ghost Iron Dragonling trinket, kill some shieldwall rares to get the 485 trinkets and you should be over 460 and can just queue for MsV LFR and skip all the heroics. Alternatively, run BG's for honor, iand buy PvP gear, f that's your cup of tea.
    Leech some worldboss kills and with luck you'll get some upgrades and pop 470 at which point you're set for all LFR's.

    In LFR's - you can queue in first as DPS (set your loot prefs to Tank though) - see how the place looks and how the fights work if you're not confident enough to queue as a tank cold turkey. No one will care if you do crappy DPS.

    In the end, if you care about what other people might say in random groups, you're probably playing wrong game. Just go out and have fun - learn from constructive comments, ignore idiots - it's not worse than that.
    Last edited by mmocdd602b3b80; 2013-07-29 at 07:12 AM.

  11. #11
    Do yourself and your LFR/LFD buddies a favor and read up on fights before you inflict yourself on other people. If you've at least put in the minimal effort to come prepared many LFR/LFD runs tend to be reasonably accepting.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by glycerethe View Post
    If you get mad over such a small thing chances are there're some truths in what the trolls said to you.

    You can't make everyone happy, no matter how good you are, you are bound to get some jerks along the way, maybe you should try private servers with vanilla/TBC realms, you get less jerks there I heard, plus it's free, of course the downside is you won't be able to kill 6 mobs at once while leveling, since there's no heirloom and you won't have gold to even buy level-appropriate gears, you will be leveling undergeared all the time, and the class trainers will empty your pocket and some.
    Do you hear yourself? How is it his fault that he's a fresh 90 and getting kicked, insulted, etc just for stepping into a dungeon that's designed to gear him up? My guess is, you're probably one of those people that insults the players before even letting them try because they don't meet your standards. Instead, you tell him to go play on a private server where people won't insult him. Sad, just sad.

    As for the OP, yeah there are tons of idiots out there still. From my experience, just disable your chat and get on with things as you want to. If they kick you, oh well, you'll find a new group in under a minute. Good luck

  13. #13
    Please wait Temp name's Avatar
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    Don't be surprised if you lose aggro. Had a full guild group get together for a couple newly dinged alts, the tank (who was in 450~) couldn't keep aggro to save his life.
    But hey, that's from people in 540+ gear, so it's to be expected. Just do your best and have fun though. That's what the game is all about after all.

  14. #14
    I've never had this. I got some whines on my druid in PoS when I was pretty bad geared but I just showed them I didn't suck ass and everything went fine. In cataclysm nobody complained when I tanked on my undergeared paladin, aside from ZA since they were hoping for a fast run to get them their mount... (which we still got! ) Alot of people assume that skill=gear, just prove them wrong and you whould be fine. There's the occasional ass ofcourse but you can just ignore him.

  15. #15
    The unfortunate truth is that the only roll that needs to be 100% solid in dungeons and LFR is 9 times out of 10 the tank. Having an inexperienced or under geared tank is VERY noticeable, and will frustrate some people who are just looking to finish as quickly as possible. Therefore, I have a suggestion: queue as dps, but set your loot specialization as tank. Monks share most of the same gear for DPS/Tank and so you can do decent dps while getting a feel for the fights and slowly building up your tank set. Once you have a decent set and have a grasp as to what you're doing, then queue as tank.

  16. #16
    A lot of people are going to be screaming at you to hold aggro. Of course, you're probably using an 450'ish weapon and losing your target within a half-second of the pull to people with 522-535'ish.

    Just take solace in knowing that they're in your dungeon group to cap Valor because they've been benched.

  17. #17
    As a WW, I've gone into heroics with 150K more health than the tank, had tanks say they just dinged or will apologize right away if it is slow or he is undergeared.... to me, this means i'll be using my Paralysis a little bit more, my aoe stuns, my Karma etc. I'll throw my orb on him, I will try not to be a dick DPS, but I'm sorry, I rip agro from 800K health tanks in full heroic 2/2 gear... it happens. I'm not doing it on purpose, but if i die, it's no ones fault but my own.

    People get too butthurt when their 530 ilevel toon can't clear Scarlet Mon in 8 minutes and that it takes 12 instead. Get over yourself, more tanks queued up shortens your overall run time. Help them, help you.

    And yes, OP, people are still dicks.

  18. #18
    Herald of the Titans Racthoh's Avatar
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    you might run into threat issues but it's not going to be a big deal. you're all there to get to the end doesn't matter if the ret pally is tanking a mob or 2 every once in a while.

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