Selectively tank random heroics?

[Ixliel]

Some heroic bosses are obviously harder than others, but I'm feeling very frustrated after a single roadblock boss, (Ozruk, Foe Reaper, name-your-nemesis), eats up more than an hour of my time in wipes. Not every instance has a boss where one wrong step is a wipe (by tank, dps, or healer, not pointing any fingers here).

Leaving and re-queueing only adds 10 minutes to my wait. As a tank, do you bail until you get one of the simpler heroics? Or do you stick it out through a dozen or more people failing and cycling through your group? I like to be a patient tank but I can't spend 2 hours a night just getting my daily done.

Comments? Suggestions? My armory is Ixliel on Darkspear if that is relevant.

[Viradiance]

Comment: People like you are poisoning the community with your absolute ineptitude and "I'M THE ONLY ONE THAT MATTERS HURRRRR" attitude.

Suggestion: Stop being a dick.


Hey, you asked.

[Deleted]

Foe Reaper.. really?

[Abandon]

Get better at tanking and you won't have this issue. I can't really recommend anything else.

[Ethes]

Whenever I tank a heroic, I simply go with the one I got from the random dungeonfinder. Although I have to add I usually don't PuG heroics. And honestly, Ozruk is my favorite boss of all times to tank. There I actually have to do stuff and not fail at it. As not moving out of shatter or pointing ground slam towards the ranged normally means a whipe.

Im sorry, but I can't get in this "Im not going to do this heroic because I whipe 3 times at a boss" attitude. Spend some time exploring the boss it's abilities and focus when you're killing it. It's no faceroll as it was in WotLK anymore.

[Deleted]

Get some patience and finish heroics you started. Though i enjoy when i get to unfinished Stonecore at Ozruk. You can even solo that boss as paladin tank.

[Deleted]

i Agree Ozruk used to be pretty harsh on tanks, running away from shatter just to get a shockway in the face when you are running back on him wasn't all that fun, but once you learned the couple of tricks needed to kill him, it wasn't really that hard anymore (now it's pretty much faceroll like the rest)

i can't really find any other boss that's hard in heroics, unless you have a group that tries everything in their powers to make it harder (i once soloed the last Boss of VP because the resto shaman said he couldn't dispel the root even if he had the talent to do so)

your best bet, instead of dropping and staying bad, is trying the boss, learning how to do it, and if you still have doubts spend your first post on MMO-Champion to ask help and tips on how to kill it instead of saying "i drop groups for istances i don't like"

[tyggyr]

Stick with the instances, even if they have higher than average fail rates.

Ozruk can be done just tank & healer - no dps - as long as your healer has a clue. I had a run once where a DK popped army on the pull, got himself killed and the healer's mana 3/4 gone in the first minute - he triaged and let the other 2 dps die after a bit, and 7 minutes later he and I finished Ozruk off... that was the longest ever!

Obviously most other instance-run-stopping bosses can't be done this way, but let me give you a hint - even if the dps look geared (don't forget that they often have 15% more hp now with the 3 randoms LFD buff, don't let that fool you), I still give a 3 sentence rundown on strategy.

This can be crucial. For instance for General Umbriss in Grim Batol, I'll suggest the healer stand over here... so that when troggs come for him, they go through my tanking area first and I can trivially pick them up... btw, strafe over here when you get blitzed and you'll be fine; dps remember ground siege is a frontal cone and can be ranged, keep that purple trogg cc'd or just kill it. Same instance, Drahga Shadowburner: give a quick note about how important it is to get away from the flame portal but to kill the fire asap (melee excepted if you're targetted etc).

Give a quick pep talk (either be a fast typist, or have it ready to copy/paste to chat beforehand), and then tank well, and you won't wipe, even with sub-par DPS, because even if they can't kill stuff really fast, they hopefully won't be in the wrong spot and will perform better than typical.

Personally I enjoy tanking for LFD randoms. I occasionally ask on my tradechat for people to queue with me, but often I'll just go pure random - teaching people the right way to do an instance is gratifying I find; earlier today I had a pretty good healer in barely-heroic-capable-gear (probably 330 including in-bag stuff lol) mention that he hadn't been past Commander Ulthok, probably not a rare occurrence for many - and the full run went off without a hitch.

[Deleted]

I sometimes skip Deadmines since it's so long, but seriously, if you skip heroics because they are hard to tank there's something wrong about you, not the heroics. There is absolutely no heroic 5 man boss that has any challenging mechanics for a tank.

[Culexus]

When im clicking the rdf and am queued as a tank i always hope its not one of the longer instances and just sigh when its a long one (Deadmines, Grim Batol *shakes fist*). Heroics arent hard anymore most of the time but there are some that are longer (stonecore isnt one of them).

[Deleted]

I can self-heal through Foe-Repaer until he enrages. And Orzuk is dead easy providing you're awake.

You seem to have a problem with bosses which require movement, bosses which are not tank and spank? Practice them, learn them, adapt, progress.
Re-queuing because of your own lack awareness isn't cool. Taking the easy road won't progress your game.


To help you with the two bosses you're having trouble with, here are a few tips:

Foe-Reaper:
Tank it at the top of the ramp. When it starts Overdrive run down the ramp - and your ranged and melee run the other way towards the door. Try not to get hit, and once Overdrive has ended get back to the top of the ramp asap so you are in the healers line of sight. When it casts Harvest move 20 yards down the ramp and wait, if the orange circle targets you, move another 15 yards down the ramp and stay out of it's path until the move has ended, if it targets someone else - then he should run the other away and you can move back to your tanking position. Remember to be careful not to let the boss face the melee, especially after Overdrive and Harvest, it cleaves. At 40% the bosses Enrages, use some cooldowns to help your healer. If anyone in your group doesn't understand Overdrive or Havest, kindly explain it to them.

Orzuk:
The two moves to avoid are Shatter and Ground Siege. Shatter is easy, it always happens after Paralyze. As soon as Paralyze has been cast, start moving behind you, thus, as soon as Paralyze breaks you'll be on your way - you will easily make it out of the area in time. Ground Siege really hurts, make sure the boss is facing away from the group at all times, or he is liable to one-shot members of your group. When he casts it on you, simply move behind the boss until he has cast the spell, and remember to move a 5 yards behind the boss, if you are underneath bosses moves can still hit you.


Also, as a rule of thumb, when you are moving, you should be sidestepping - moving sideways with A or D and using your mouse to rotate your direction. Never turn you back fully. You still move at 100% speed while side stepping, and you retain your chance to block, parry and dodge (providing your target is still in your front 180 degrees). If a boss is hitting you in the back, you're going to be taking too much damage.

[Ixliel]

Thanks for the useful suggestions, I appreciate the constructive feedback. I think my post may have seemed more inflammatory than I intended it, so let me be more specific about the example situation:

I have, say, 2 hours of play time in a given night. I never drop a group after a few wipes, and I prefer to vote no on player kicks because I think people need plenty of chances to practice. The situation I am talking about is when you've had 10 wipes, 15 wipes. I mentioned Foe Reaper because on this night 4-5 different players drove the proto, and for 2 hours I died on the ramp when the spawned adds came up and killed everyone.

At the end of 2 hours I had to go to bed and gave up on the daily. So the question for the PUG tanks is: when do you make that judgement call, "tonight, instance-X just isn't happening." Do you head into attempt 16 with determination? If not, when do you draw the line?

Again, thanks for your comments and strategies.

[Lansow]

It depends on the group. Are people showing improvement, or is the exact same mechanic wiping them over and over? I'll bail on the first wipe if people are being pricks in party chat, starting flamewars and the such. If everyone is being supportive of each other, and show even miniscule improvement attempt to attempt, then I'll stick it out.

If real life comes knocking, I'll bail then.

I've been in enough random groups to accept one immutable fact: the people in LFD groups don't care one whit about my progression. I am under no obligation to care about theirs.

[AnarchyAo]

People like the OP are giving excellent tanks a bad name. Strutting around with your blues, poor choice of spent talent points, and 5 unenchanted items.

This guy isn't just being a dick, he's being a dick and doesn't deserve to be. He's part of the problem.

Any good tank doesn't need the group to do anything for them, except mediocre damage.

[Deleted]

Only wiped on Ozruk once and that was the first time I tanked him....he was at 5% health or so and was easy enough to finish off for the dps. Not a complete wipe. It's not like he's that hard if you can read.

[eternalwhitemoon]

I only bailed as a tank once, and that was because the rogue kept pulling despite my polite and repeated attempts to ask him to stop (yes, even bosses when I was at 0 rage, gg bears ) and I could not kick him because it said I couldn't initiate a kick for some reason. At any rate, after wiping repeatedly because of his chain pulling trash+bosses simultaneously, I decided it wasn't worth my stress to try to deal with the rogue despite the good performance of the healer.

So it really wasn't about the dungeon itself at all, just asshats that go out of their way to try and wipe the group.

[Oerba Yun Fang]

I rarely leave a group early, on any toon. On my tank, if I get a random heroic I don't like (like, say, VP) then I'll groan to myself but I'll bite the bullet and do it because I know at least three people in my group have probably been waiting upwards of half an hour for me.

[AnarchyAo]

I only bailed as a tank once, and that was because the rogue kept pulling despite my polite and repeated attempts to ask him to stop (yes, even bosses when I was at 0 rage, gg bears ) and I could not kick him because it said I couldn't initiate a kick for some reason. At any rate, after wiping repeatedly because of his chain pulling trash+bosses simultaneously, I decided it wasn't worth my stress to try to deal with the rogue despite the good performance of the healer.

So it really wasn't about the dungeon itself at all, just asshats that go out of their way to try and wipe the group.

Some people do this because you are not pulling fast enough. I never allow a dps to pull, if they do -- then I know to speed it up.

Keep in mind, I carry about half a thousand swiftness potions on me at all times for tanking heroics. I keep a fast pace.

Once I had the druid healer pull -- and I was going fast as is, he was quite geared (This was just last week that this happened, actually). From that point on, I had him sucking down mana cakes the rest of the instance. I wouldn't be surprised if he had to hold his breath the entire instance to keep up.

[Fortera]

I'm a prot warrior and the only instance I leave is Heroic BRC. My guildies are busy with real life issues and I have to pug randoms. I've done this 50 times and not one group can handle the beams in the Corla fight. They stand in them and still muck it up somehow. Both of the mobs the other people are supposed to have duty over evolve and kill us. I cannot get a group to not fuck this up.

I always end up leaving. Can't do it after 3 wipes, let alone 5. Each time. I have never been able to find a group to down Corla.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

I agree Ozruk is the hardest fight in heroic for tanks, it's been slightly nerfed from 4.0.3 with the AOE in melee range is 3sec cast instead of 2sec cast. With this changes it's still incredibly hard to get right every single time, that being said it's far from being a reason to leave stonecore if you get it as random daily. If you're just going to leave any dungeon you dislike i cant imagine how it's like to be in a progression raid with you.

And really? Foe reaper? are you standing in the harvest or something? Foe reaper is one of the simplest fights in 5man heroics, yes it might take some time since everyone has to avoid the high damage Harves ability but comon? ive 3manned Foe reaper with a bear tank a holy paladin and a hunter on the robot killing every machine, the other 2 died at 70% so not a full solo but still, saying Foe is hard is making me judge you as a bad tank. sorry.