The recurring problem of Non-Tanks in LFD Pugs:

[krasgoth]

To be honest, up until northrend heroics I have no problem "tanking" as my hunter, I have deterrence x2 whenever I need to not take damage, volley in mobs faces is not only uninterruptable but highly effective, and my dodge rate is around 30% with monkey on so it's probably better than a tank at that level in the first place.

I still think it would be an easy fix to get this dealt with. Simply cap the armor at certain levels (Say, 20k for heroics as an example) and that way no one can queue as a tank without at least being in tank gear. To prevent people from simply queuing in that gear and switching out, if you remove that gear at any point, you'll be removed from the queue.

It's really something that needs to be addressed, because I'm pretty mild about things like this, but I've had 10+ incidents in the last couple days and its getting pretty silly. Yes, it's fun to 'tank' on my hunter, but I'd much rather other people tank so I can practice actually doing damage, which is what I'll be doing when I get him to 80. I don't think queuing as a "Hunter Tank" will go over very well with anyone

The most recent example was yesterday: Zoned into Crypts, and we had an arms warrior as our "tank". Waited for him to change specs and stuff, and of course hear instead the dreaded "Rdy?" from our "tank"/dungeon guide (lol). Charges into the middle, pulls all the mobs and starts to bladestorm. Dies instantly. Goes "f this" and leaves. We got a clueless DK replacement who again, had no idea what D&D was or how to properly generate threat, pulled horribly for a couple of pulls before we again kicked him and I tanked the entire instance (again) on my stupid hunter.

[Cheezee]

I still think it would be an easy fix to get this dealt with. Simply cap the armor at certain levels (Say, 20k for heroics as an example) and that way no one can queue as a tank without at least being in tank gear. To prevent people from simply queuing in that gear and switching out, if you remove that gear at any point, you'll be removed from the queue.

It wouldn't work. People would just queue up with a shield equipped or in bear/frost presence until the queue popped.

Personally I would be happier if they removed the vote kick timer.

[Tro]

Dam iam crying in real life to the op's story. :'(

</nerd rage>

Damn I know what you mean. For lower lvls they get by in the tank department. But at cap lvl, these players get sent to Nexus for their gear score

[Baffron]

I never experienced anything like this on my disc priest that I have been leveling recently. OK a few DKs fail to know what frost presence is but until NR they weren't too hard to keep up. Most of the rets/fury warriors I've had tanking have been decent enough to use a shield. But for the love of god give DKs DnD at level 58. seriously. waaaaay too many ramparts wipes cause they have no aoe threat.

[Gestopft]

Yeah, Crypts is really a place that weeds out bad tanks. UK as well. It's unfortunate for those who want to tank going into Northrend with very little tank gear available to them from the outset. I have told countless DKs in int/spi/sp gear to go out and buy the cobalt set before queueing as a tank again.

[evan_s]

I believe the system already takes into account ilevel for a given spec and groups people accordingly.

Nope. The system isn't that smart and doesn't know how to check gear for a given spec. It doesn't even look at your currently equipped gear. You can be nakid, with no gear on at all and it will still let you queue for any instance you can normally queue for.

As far as I can tell the system works just like the superior and epic achievement and just tracks the best item ever equipped in that slot and then calculates your gear level from that. It doesn't know if your full 277 in your dps set and blues in your tank set you just started. It also doesn't even check to see if you actually have a tank spec for your class. If you are a class that can have a tank spec you can check the box to tank for the group. The first simple step would be just requiring you to actually have the appropriate tank spec before you can check that box. Even that is complicated by Feral druids and DK (currently, after catalysm they need to be blood speced).

Personally I've never experienced this on my 80's or my DK I am slowly working on leveling. Granted my dk has only done 1 random dungeon so far but we had a decent tank who was properly tank speced as far as I could tell.

[Deleted]

i had a similar issue yesterday in HoS hc, which is a lvl 80 instance. setup: feral tank, ret DPS (me), resto shaman, destro lock, frost DK.

the feral druid has 40K HP after the buff. we think: easy.

so he pulls the first pack. it goes down rather smoothly. he pulls the second pack, i throw on a sacred shield on him (as ret), and instantly pull aggro from one of those big adds. i swear, i pull aggro just from buffing him. i use salvation on me, the aggro goes to the lock. the lock tanks the mob till it dies, while the healer keeps getting hit from another ranged add. we get no taunts, no FFF, nothing.

so then he says: 1 min plz. and a sec later: brb. so the lock starts jumping around a bit, i join in, and 10 seconds later, the druid starts to jump around like a rabid badger. the healer calls him out on it, and tank stops and says sry, just give me one min plz.

so we wait a minute. i go to the toilet, meanwhile the druid pulled. i join in about 5 seconds after he pulled, 2 seconds later, i judge command on a target and i pull aggro. no RF, nothing.

then the tank goes around the left side of the circle instead of simply heading right. great, another wasted minute.

then the druid pulls the pat, i focus on his target this time and yet again pull aggro just from DPSing. then the druid pulls the 3 little stone adds and the big add and pulls them to krystallus (the giant stone dude). the pat, in the meanwhile, adds and even with those adds shooting at him, he ignores them and attacks the small stones. i repent one, stun the other and burn it down. he finally decides to attack the other one as well.

then he pulls 3 packs at once, but fails so hard at applying swipe. i had replenishment ticking from the previous trash pack and believe it or not, that minute mana gain just pulled aggro. i calculated it. one replenishment tick gives 56 Mp5 for a paladin. i pulled aggro 2 seconds into the fight. that means 22.576 mana gained. mana gains have 0.5 multiplier, and ret has a talented .7 multiplier. this means i did 8 threat during those 2 seconds. if he even used enrage to gain rage, i think he would have kept aggro. fearing for the boss, i opened my LFG menu and checked the box next to tank, thinking i would need it soon.

so we get a bit further, he pulled 2 more packs while we were killing those that he did not get aggro on. finally, the healer said mb. he kept pulling, and once every single mob before the boss was dead, he said "MB". I finally could not take it anymore (the brann event would probably wipe us). i said in partychat: i can tank. then i votekicked him. within 2 seconds, he was votekicked, i put on my tanking gear and spec, we got a nice shadowpriest and we proceeded to rape the instance.

it's funny. just 2 days earlier, i 2manned dar'khan drathir (a 5man elite in ghostlands, at the end of the questlines there) as a feral druid with a shadowpriest healing. we got feared, pulled 2 extra packs and whatnot, but we lived. i had barely a clue on how to tank, but i kept aggro on all the mobs. yet, this feral druid we had in our instance managed to even fail at threat on single target.

[Kuro-kun]

I had some problems of this type when lvling my priest and latar when lvling my DK. Once i went with my friend, who was rogue, to ramparts. And two other guys who was friends too queued as tank (DK) and healer (pally). Shammy, third DD used cleansing totem and never strength of earth and flametongued both his weapons. Pally buffed BoW to tank and never buffed rogue. We had few wipes untill we reach first boss! At 2nd boss i saw that noobkilling debuff, but boss used it on pally, who went away yelling "I HAVE DEBUFF". I said about debuff right before boss. And at last boss we had 3 wipes. First just because pally didn't heal tank. At 2nd try pally burned on fire. At 3rd try tank dead again. We killed boss at 4th try cause I healed tank.
Another party, another dungeon. One tank and one DD already leaved party after 1st boss and we find other. This new DD was DK. Healer drinked water just after pack when DK started to pull another pack. He even was in blood presence. We killed that pack and DK again pulled another. After that tank asked something like "I need to go DDing or I'll be tank?". DK said "Why we need 2 tanks?" and tank just leaved. We started to LFD again for DD, as we had tank — that DK. And DK queued as DD. Partyleader asked "Why do u choose DD role if u're tanking?" and DK said "I'm not going to tank, I'm a DD".
I'm only once had trouble with party when lvling my priest in Northrend and only once in heroics when played my holy pally.

[Eatfreshsub]

Pallys can tank with 2handers, they just need decent gear.

[Terrab]

I have heard endless amounts of complaints about retridins queueing as tank and DK's in spellpower gear. Never happened to me though, and I am on what some people call the dumbest server, dumbhammer. I have seen DK's with spellpower gear, but never ran into them in instances, at least they queued as DPS. I think you're just very very very unlucky. Did you steel from the cookie jar?

I don't know mate. Luckily you seem like you got enough brainz to put on a proper aspect and try tanking as a hunter (which will probably need a decent healer). Although, wouldn't your pet be good enough, if you let it get threat for a while? I haven't run low level dungeons for a while, so I wouldn't know.

Hope you don't run into them too often in the future. Ventilating anger +1?

Pet tanking only really works if your beast master. And it gets harder once you hit Outland.

[Deleted]

Have not happened to me in any hc yet. But on my dk that are about 73 atm, it happense all the time. Get a random tank, that dont know what to do, and just running around and dies, mean while I go frost and start tanking. Often it´s dk for some reason that have that problem though. And also people try to tank when they are dps.

Sometime I wish blizz would require license to tank. :'P

[Seanconneri]

I encounter this problem at least once every day. I'm working on leveling a shaman, and I'm resto for faster ques, etc. Anywho, it's very frustrating. Alot of times I even end up heal tanking mobs....it's horrible. The other day when this happened I typed, "Hey your healer has aggro" and the "tank" replied, "Well stop healing!" ......

lol

Another problem with the whole, "kick someone if they aren't really a tank" thing, is you always have a tard or 2 who is completely oblivious to the issues and is all, "why are you trying to kick our tank??" blah blah blah.

[Nemrod]

Yeah, Crypts is really a place that weeds out bad tanks. UK as well. It's unfortunate for those who want to tank going into Northrend with very little tank gear available to them from the outset. I have told countless DKs in int/spi/sp gear to go out and buy the cobalt set before queueing as a tank again.

Crypts I agree, but why Utgarde Keep? I went through that with my Paladin, Druid and Deathknight tank, and it's really one of the easier instances to tank, just kill the guys who lay down bombs first.

Anyway, as I am currently levelling another druid (healer) and a mage it happens quite frequently that I get teamed up with a DPS tank. So far not one bad druid, hardly any bad warriors but plenty of Paladins and Deathknights.

I am not so familiar with Deathknights (hardly play mine) but as a healer I would say below level 80 death and decay should be enough to glue the mobs to you for the first few seconds. Worst case was a DK in UK who we, the entire group, told four times to use Death and Decay but he just wouldn't listen. We wiped on every single group until we dropped out before the room with the dragon stables (or whatever). I get it that it might be new and more complicated to tank, but why not do what four other people suggest? We remained calm and polite the entire time, still, no response from that guy.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg, I had plenty of bad DK tanks, especially in the 70 to 74 range.

What I absolutely do not understand are bad Paladin tanks. At low level you can get away with everything, up until level 40 I only had tanks with 2 handers, and it's really no problem as long as they keep aggro. But alot of Paladins don't even know what RF is for, I mean... it doesn't matter what you do as tank, use RF, lay down Consecrate and that's it. But there are so many players who don't even know that, or reply with smart comments when you try to educate them. Most common answer to my question "Why don't you buff yourself with Rightous Fury?" is: "HEAL" combined with so much self esteem to only pull whole rooms regardless of my state of mana.

[hidey0shi]

Ive recently lvled up a druid boomkin and resto dual speced, signed up for instances as a healer. One time I got a tank with some greens from low lvls and some <lvl10 GREY items too, he was fury speced and had less hp than me as resto. When asked wtf was he doing he stood quiet. This was in sunken temple, no big deal you can say but there are some mean grp pulls there.

Also you cant kick a person for the 15 mins after they join, this means you and 3 other people need wait 15 mins to kick a tank (in some of the instances you just CANT do much without a proper tank, especialy the end vanilla dungeons) or leave and the first person that leaves gets 30 mins cooldown on lfd.

DKs are another problem, they sign up as tanks, then after a wipe realise they cant hold agro on more than 1 or 2 mobs and leave. Happened sooo many times in DM, BRD or BRS with <lvl60 dks.

[rabbimojo]

This happens to me -all the time- as a lowbie healer. I didn't run into it much after maybe SM? But before that, WC/SFK/etc it's all the time.

Fortunately those instances are easy so it doesn't really matter, but it really makes the run take forever.

I'm starting to feel like Cata should have some kind of... Training program? For these things. Like, seriously, an in-game quiz and test with mobs.

Like, suppose when you first open up the LFD tool, you have a DPS option, with little lock icons over any other roles your class is capable of. The window says something like "To unlock your tank role, click here to begin test."

Then they click that, and first they get a tutorial on what tanking is, why we have tanks, and what tanks look for as your particular class. Then, you can teleport to an instanced training room for tanks, where you are grouped with some NPCs and need to hold aggro off of them while they kill a mob (or multiple mobs) and keep the group alive.

After this action test, pop up a short (multiple choice?) quiz asking about some of the basics they need to know. Stuff like: "As a druid, I tank in: Caster form / Cat form / Bear form / moonkin form / tree form".

Do something similar for healers.

I know it seems sort of draconian, but really, -everything else in the game- is one long tutorial on how to DPS. Why not put in a couple of tutorials for the jobs that are apparently harder to do? Combined with some sort of karma system to keep people from doing dumb things, I think LFD could become pretty fun.

As-is, I dread queueing on my healer, because tanks are so bad. God forbid I decide I want to queue as DPS and have both tank -and- healer not know what they're doing.

[Kuro-kun]

What about classic 5mans almost in every group I saw hunter with pet whos growling in autouse and ret pally with RF on. Pallys usually turn it of when I say to they, but hunters never turn off their pet's growl autousing. They jut silent as night or some of them say something like "shut up noob".

[hoot80]

This is why I actually dropped my holy spec when I was leveling my paladin and went prot for everything. I was dual speccing prot/holy, but I got so many clueless or just horrible tanks that I couldn't stand it anymore.

In one case (and this was the last straw) I got a druid tank and noticed that he had 1500 less health than I did in my holy gear when he was in dire bear form (I think that was in Sethekk Halls around level 65 or 66). I thought, "Well, let's check his spec then." Of course, it was no surprise to see that he had 0/3 Thick Hide, 0/1 Survival Instincts, 0/3 Survival of the Fittest, 0/3 Natural Reaction, and 0/3 Protector of the Pack. He did not have a single tanking talent in his spec aside from Feral Swiftness. He also had 5 points in the Balance tree for some reason.

After buffs (and before I could drink) he pulled the first pat and the group behind the pat. I pulled aggro on my first heal, bubbled myself and he did not even attempt to taunt them back. I couldn't keep him alive even though I was spamming heals on him. I just left the instance after he died, dropped group, went to my trainer and respecced my secondary spec to an aoe Prot spec (my main spec was Prot as well). I have tanked every instance since on my pally and refuse to heal for fear that I will end up with another tank like him.

[rabbimojo]

Crypts I agree, but why Utgarde Keep? I went through that with my Paladin, Druid and Deathknight tank, and it's really one of the easier instances to tank, just kill the guys who lay down bombs first.
...

UK has some things that can catch new tanks off guard.
1) First pulls have sundering and sort of complicated pathing. If you're not crit immune and take a crit, it might mean a wipe. Even a clever DK can get beaten up pretty bad here.
2) Later you've got the aoe flame runes + the bombs, can add up very quickly.
3) The ghoul taskmaster guys charge, so if you think you can IT-DnD as a DK, sometimes you're knocked on your rear. Not uncommonly this means the mobs run amok.
4) The little geists for some reason can hit really hard on normal. I'm not sure why but I remember running through them and doing minimal aggro to pull later on and finding I was quite a lot lower on health than I expected.

All in all, it's easy for most tanks, but if you're brand new? I can see it being iffy.

[krasgoth]

It wouldn't work. People would just queue up with a shield equipped or in bear/frost presence until the queue popped.

Personally I would be happier if they removed the vote kick timer.

Well, what I meant was you have to stay in bear or have a shield equipped throughout the instance (not just the queue), or you get booted.

Have something similar to the battleground AFK flag. Stay out of a presence/bear/prot/whatever long enough (maybe a minute, simply to allow switching forms for cat/innervate/berserker/whatever) and you get booted.

Also - @rabbimojo: That comment is actually what I'm talking about. It wouldn't matter (So much) if the tank was bad, but the healers obviously have no idea what's going on either. But this thread is mostly about tanks, so....

Honestly, having my pet on growl has saved a lot of groups where the tank is so bad a caster will just shoot our healer until he dies because the tank hasn't hit it. Just MendPet tank it until the tank finally realizes "Oh hey, there's a couple of mobs back there".

The kick delay is gone now, so no big deal, but you can still kick only one person at a time. That isn't really a *solution* to the problem though, what I want is not to kick 5 people every time I zone into an instance as dps

[grevari]

I think Cata will help with this... the LFG finder will now have the talent tree to look at when ppl queue. If you don't have the mastery in the tanking tree (DK's will only have 1 tanking tree(blood)) then you wont be able to queue as a tank. NOt sure how that would work for the lower level stuff... but then again I could be way off on the whole thing anyway.