Awakened and mythic +10 dungeons as a tank

[Malkiah]

Is there even a point in taking the obelisks if you take all the trash anyway?

any mini bosses not killed will spawn with the last boss of the dungeon.

- - - Updated - - -

It's just a bad design that encourages toxicity.

sadly, this is incorrect - it's got nothing to do with the design, and everything to do with raider.io. this is the result of having a system that actively encourages people to leave groups if they think they won't make the timer, and actively punishes you for finishing a key over the time limit.

to the OP:
quite honestly, most dungeons don't change much on this affix - and while yes, the community has figured out the most efficient way to use obelisks to skip troublesome trash packs, as someone who's been tanking since the affix was introduced i can tell you that if you have two functioning neurons and a piece of lint to rub together, most of the time you're going to figure out how to use the obelisks on your own and it'll match up reasonably close to what the community suggests.

worst case scenario: run a dungeon as a dps and see what the other tank does.

[ClassicPeon]

Thank you for the feedback guys. I've bit the apple and am looking at guides for Siege of Boralus which i have a 10 key for myself. I assume my issue here goes away pretty much after 1-2 runs in each dungeon but this is kinda shaky ground for me.

[Hellobolis]

You are literally the reason people are complaining there arent enough tanks.

Not only are you toxic, but you literally misunderstand my commitment to this.

I'm one of those who wont do a run as a tank when i'm not certain what to do. I've been very vocal about that in my posts here, and for you to then come out and act like i'm just lazy and i'm ruining peoples keys is literally just toxic mentality.

You should take a look at what you bring to the world

hes just saying it as is it. you basically have 5 options:

-put in the work to learn ahead of time.
-play with friends.
-just join groups and learn as you go.
-learn the routes as not-tank.
-don't play.

if you are confident in your tanking skills, just go with option 3 and it'll work out. If you have 1-2 2k raiderio dps in your group you have a LOT of leeway timer wise in most +15s.

but i'm sure if you google a bit someone somewhere must have made a TLDR what to do with obelisks in each dungeon guide.

[Lucetia]

But there is more to it. People expect the tank to not just press the obelisk and tank the dude. They expect the tank to know where to kite the dude, to skip the trash that he was put there to skip.

Having the obelisks there is like having a rogue with Cloak or your entire group using invis potions.

If you don't want to plan things out. Just go to Raider.IO go to Weekly Routes and use those. A lot of the groups will be use to something similar. It really isn't harder or anything. You are thinking way too much about it and making it harder than it is. If anything obelisks can make your runs easier and smoother by skipping the harder hitting trash based on affixes.

Is there even a point in taking the obelisks if you take all the trash anyway?

Yes. Without obelisks you tend to be at 110%+ which means you lost time on the dungeon by doing the extra 10%. You want to optimize your run.

Yes. Thats exactly it. THe bolded part especially just sums it up for me.

The bolded part is irrelevant. There is no 27 paths or anything. It's 27 different pulls if you pull it from that site since he breaks everything down. Even then it doesn't matter. You pull at your own speed and however many you are comfortable with.

People say "just press, kill move on". Thats not what people epxect. Really, its not.

That's exactly what you do. Stop overthinking it.

[Hellobolis]

Yes. Without obelisks you tend to be at 110%+ which means you lost time on the dungeon by doing the extra 10%. You want to optimize your run.

not to mention all the mini bosses will spawn with the final boss. which is often fine to do on purpose with the spider pillar, but GL doing that with multiple minibosses in a pug.

[ID811717]

@Scrod @ClassicPeon:

Taking is a very hard role if you have no prior experience of the dungeons (as DPS, or as a healer). Here are the reasons why:
1. It's hard to know what trash should not be pulled. There are trash packs that are much harder than the rest, so no one ever pulls them and no one even remembers the abilities these trash mobs have. So when you pull this trash, people go mad and start flaming the tank. (Ironically, you might have been able to handle those trash packs on low keys anyway, if only people put their poker faces and focused on the game... but too many give up instantly and start flaming instead).
2. From the trash packs that are doable, you want to kill as many as you need for 100%, but not more than that (since it becomes a waste of time at that point).
3. Even if you know which mobs you want to pull for 100% total trash count, it's still hard to know how to do the next pull. Do you want to pull and kill a single mob, or do you want to pull 3 packs at once and AoE them together? Not only you are still learning the dungeon (so you are not 100% sure which mobs or which pulls are the most dangerous), but you also don't know which of your DPS players have major cooldowns ready to be used. You might pull only 1 mob and they will be annoyed because they don't want to waste their cooldowns on a single mob. Or you might pull 3 packs together and you will wipe because it turns out none of your DPS players had any damage cooldowns ready, and did very low damage as the result. It's a lose-lose scenario for you as a tank, you basically have to guess the right play and you will be hated if you guessed it wrong...
4. Even if you have nailed all of the above, you still need to be aware of little details like: Does healer have 0 mana? Did someone accidentally body pull an extra pack somewhere way behind you, outside your screen? Did someone just blow a major 3 min cooldown on a pack and still have 20 sec remaining (then you want to pull the next pack ASAP, so they can dump the remaining 20 sec of insane damage somewhere... they will hate you a lot if you spend 15 sec standing AFK and thinking what should be pulled next).

How do you improve on the above 4 points?
1. Comes down to experience. I don't think there is any resource that tells you which packs are never pulled in a dungeon. At best, you can take someone's MDT route, check out which trash packs are not marked there, and perhaps some of those are the ones you would never touch in any route... But that still requires guesswork on your side.
2. That's the primary (and for most people - the only) reason to use MDT. It's a way to quickly mark up the trash packs and check that the things you want to pull sum up to roughly 100% trash count. There is no reason to memorize what you marked, and you can improvise on it as you go. But you need to at least have a rough idea that your route will give you around 100% trash count.
3. Comes down to experience and guesswork. No MDT route will help you to get it absolutely right. In very high keys, the groups use voice chat so they can communicate the size of the next pulls as they go. In low level keys, you don't have that luxury.
4. Again comes down to experience.

The Awakened affix allows you to min-max the points 1. and 2. because it allows you to skip hard trash packs, and still get close to 100% overall trash count... But you don't have to start doing this min-max right away. Just killing the obelisks on the spot is usually fine.

People tell me to just use Method Dungeon Tools to plan pulls, and I go to the page and it lists out like 27 pulls for one dungeon. There's no Fing way I'm going to sit there and memorize 27 different pulls.

Even in very high keys, no one ever tries to memorize the 27 pulls. That would be useless. All you want from MDT is a rough understanding that you know how to pull around 100% trash count.

But there is more to it. People expect the tank to not just press the obelisk and tank the dude. They expect the tank to know where to kite the dude, to skip the trash that he was put there to skip.

Well, tough luck to those people. Too many of them have done these dungeons hundreds of times on their mains, then roll a 10th alt, walk into +10 and expect new players to be on the same page about how to min-max everything. It's their own problem, not yours.

Is there even a point in taking the obelisks if you take all the trash anyway?

You do need to kill all 4 obelisks before the last boss. The mini-bosses that you do not kill - will spawn on you when you pull the last boss, and you don't want that to happen. (In MDI they leave all 4 obelisks up, whereas on live keys people leave at most 1 obelisk up for the last boss, and you don't want to do that in a +10 pug for sure).

Tell that the the people in my group. Pull one wrong pack, or go out of order, and you'll get, "WTF" in chat. Most of the time you have no idea why the person says "WTF" until later, because people are a lot more focused on flaming than on contributing.

My best guess is you're basically running into the problem number 1. You pull some trash packs that are "never" pulled in any key-level/affix combinations.

then we tried to kill the dinos in the middle and wiped. Turns out you're typically supposed to skip that one.

The middle dino-patrol pack is only pulled in very high keys, and most people playing +15 and below don't even know it's a viable pull (and why).

This week is bolstering, so you don't want to pull that pack, because it has 3 huge mobs and 5 very small mobs (iirc). The 5 small mobs get cleaved within seconds and you end up fighting 3 insanely bolstered huge mobs. It's a huge waste of time even if you manage to kill those bolstered mobs.

It's just a bad design that encourages toxicity. I imagine that the original pugs back in vanilla etc. were full of people who were chatting and relaxing, exploring. Now it's, "Don't go in unless you studied ahead of time" and everything immediately on a timer that one mistake can destroy. It's just not good. The idea that you can learn in m0 is also nuts - I could likely solo some of these places on m0 at this point, it's not tuned for people to learn the fights before going to mythic.

That only happens because you're so late for the party. You end up playing with 10th alts of no-life players, who cannot handle seeing someone learning the mechanics that their learned 1.5 years ago. (Again, tough luck, what did they expect in a +10 key).

sadly, this is incorrect - it's got nothing to do with the design, and everything to do with raider.io. this is the result of having a system that actively encourages people to leave groups if they think they won't make the timer, and actively punishes you for finishing a key over the time limit.

That is not true. If people really think this way about raider.io, they are heavily misguided. Please don't spread this non-sense even further.

[ClassicPeon]

hes just saying it as is it. you basically have 5 options:

-put in the work to learn ahead of time.
-play with friends.
-just join groups and learn as you go.
-learn the routes as not-tank.
-don't play.

if you are confident in your tanking skills, just go with option 3 and it'll work out. If you have 1-2 2k raiderio dps in your group you have a LOT of leeway timer wise in most +15s.

but i'm sure if you google a bit someone somewhere must have made a TLDR what to do with obelisks in each dungeon guide.

No he is not. He was accusing me of being lazy and ruining peoples keys. If you cant be bothered to read what other people have read and then respond in a toxic way you deserve to get told off. Thats jus the way it is.

You dont play.

[ErrandRunner]

If you want to delve into the mind of a toxic elitist WOW player, just read through this thread.

[ClassicPeon]

Having the obelisks there is like having a rogue with Cloak or your entire group using invis potions.

If you don't want to plan things out. Just go to Raider.IO go to Weekly Routes and use those. A lot of the groups will be use to something similar. It really isn't harder or anything. You are thinking way too much about it and making it harder than it is. If anything obelisks can make your runs easier and smoother by skipping the harder hitting trash based on affixes.



Yes. Without obelisks you tend to be at 110%+ which means you lost time on the dungeon by doing the extra 10%. You want to optimize your run.



The bolded part is irrelevant. There is no 27 paths or anything. It's 27 different pulls if you pull it from that site since he breaks everything down. Even then it doesn't matter. You pull at your own speed and however many you are comfortable with.



That's exactly what you do. Stop overthinking it.

Its no really me overthinking it as much as me wanting to avoid the toxic culture that comes with not doing everything as expected.

[Hellobolis]

You dont play.

Not with pugs i don't no.

you can also look for groups with "don't care for timer / just for weekly" kinda stuff fin the description. it'll probably be a slow run with wipes, but everybody knows up front to expect that. but those groups are probably rare at this point in the patch.

[ClassicPeon]

Not with pugs i don't no.

you can also look for groups with "don't care for timer / just for weekly" kinda stuff fin the description. it'll probably be a slow run with wipes, but everybody knows up front to expect that. but those groups are probably rare at this point in the patch.

I could but thats not really the gameplay i'm looking for. I'm sure i could go in and get a group through a ten without it being a wipefest. I just want to avoid the toxicity about the run not going the usual way

[srathgar]

I guess the problem you face is that there is a ton of easily accesible information that can help you to somewhat optimise how you do the dungeon but you seem to insist on not using them (primarily Method dungeon tools and Dratnos routes on Raider.io). This is not neccesarely wrong but it does potentially make a key go from being easily timed to barely timed/depleted which means an increased chance of less rewards at the end of the run.

With that said i do think you need to take a step back and try to look at this from the rest of the groups perspective. The dungeon routes are a part of what makes a tank in mythic+. If a tank does not have a solid idea of what he needs to take/what he can skip with the obelisks it is in my opinion very much the same as a dps refusing to interrupt or use their utilitiy to make the run smoother. In this case i would say the dps is quite toxic if they dont want to use their tools to make a dungeon easier to do, while i would also say that a tank that goes into dungeons with randoms (assuming you join other peoples keys aswell with this attitude) is quite toxic.

That said, the easiest solution to this is to make your own group and advertise it just the way you want to advertise it, if you join other peoples keys and expect them to accomodate your way of doing the dungeon, then you will be disappointed quite freaquently.

[ClassicPeon]

I guess the problem you face is that there is a ton of easily accesible information that can help you to somewhat optimise how you do the dungeon but you seem to insist on not using them (primarily Method dungeon tools and Dratnos routes on Raider.io). This is not neccesarely wrong but it does potentially make a key go from being easily timed to barely timed/depleted which means an increased chance of less rewards at the end of the run.

With that said i do think you need to take a step back and try to look at this from the rest of the groups perspective. The dungeon routes are a part of what makes a tank in mythic+. If a tank does not have a solid idea of what he needs to take/what he can skip with the obelisks it is in my opinion very much the same as a dps refusing to interrupt or use their utilitiy to make the run smoother. In this case i would say the dps is quite toxic if they dont want to use their tools to make a dungeon easier to do, while i would also say that a tank that goes into dungeons with randoms (assuming you join other peoples keys aswell with this attitude) is quite toxic.

That said, the easiest solution to this is to make your own group and advertise it just the way you want to advertise it, if you join other peoples keys and expect them to accomodate your way of doing the dungeon, then you will be disappointed quite freaquently.

Actually thats not what i've said. Its pretty amazing how many people i need to correct here simply because they dont read the posts.

I said that i have not done any 10+ runs yet BECAUSE i dont want to slow other people down in this regard - because i'd rather not watch videos on the subject(in which i have caved into anyway). This is a "do you feel the same way i do post". Not a "i dont want to do x, it sucks, fuck off to the people who like it". I've said that i dont personally like it, and i find it badly designed because its such a jump in complexity for no other reason then provide an ability to the game that a class already has. Seems like its a problem with the design of that class, or dungeons in themselves when stuff like that feels good to people.

[Augusta138]

Agree with Fayolynn on questioning the opinion that awakened is horrible and ruins mythic+ by requiring not playing the game. It was clearly designed to not only skip trash but also allow flexibility in what trash you skip and groups not requiring a rogue anymore and achieves all this.

Also to OP, having brought up 4 tanks to 465+ over the past 3 months and dealing with a lot of pugs for 10-15 keys I wonder how much time you've actually spent looking for 10-12 pugs. For those first few key levels with awakened if you just kill most of the pillars where they are and use 1 to skip a few packs you can beat the timer. Not to mention as you are just starting to get into the awakened affix pushing the key isn't necessarily required and you can just complete it as you learn the pillars and what to do with them. In pugging 10-12s I've never had a leader test me on the route and have even asked questions about optimum route and people are friendly or don't care about going the perfect path.

I don't doubt that you have had some poor experiences, so just keep at it and try to move on from those ones once they are over. Good luck.

Yeah i have noticed the same in my runs on multiple tank characters,

Most people seem to be: take the route you wish / want / know by heart and 'than we are gucci.
(Some people throw in the: aslong as we time it thing, but most are fine with just completing the run it seems)

I totally understand that being a ''new'' or returning player is daunting, especially as a tank. So kudos for atleast doing it anyway!

[Twdft]

My problem is that i've spend a lot of time learning the dungeons on easier difficulties so i dont fuck it up for groups on harder difficulties. But i cant do this with awakened as its 10+ only and people in 10+ groups have expectations

I am sure you can think of a couple trash packs you would like to skip, and you don't always have a rogue and if you do half the time the skip fails anyway.

Quick example: beginning of Underrot the trash on the ramps down to the first boss. You can't tell me you like this shit, not only a fuckton of damage but in pugs Gift of Ghuun will not be interrupted enough and not purged if it gets through.

You can use the first pillar to skip that shit. Go in, kill adds where you are, move boss down to the ramp behind the boss and kill there.

Or: Atal Dazar the trash right before totem boss. Nasty trash, no shadow meld on horde, no hunter has camouflage, rogues tell you vanish is a damage cd and don't want to do it... you can skip that easily with pillars.

You already did most of the work necessary to plan new routes because you know all the trash from +9s. Take a look at MDT, I think it's even fun to plan ahead and when it all works out the way I wanted it's satisfying.

it's got nothing to do with the design, and everything to do with raider.io. this is the result of having a system that actively encourages people to leave groups if they think they won't make the timer, and actively punishes you for finishing a key over the time limit.

This is not true.

Please tell me how exactly you are punished by r.io for finishing over time.

[erifwodahs]

It's an awesome affix as a tank as you can skip the packs you don't want to kill. For any casual playing it shouldn't be any "grand" design on how to deal with it.
People saying that you have to learn anything before going into the dungeon are just full of shit and have no clue what they are talking about. You go there do the pulls and see how much you can handle. That's your pull. I use MDT for % calculation and route, but never to do separate pulls as such. You know what will kill you just by doing dungeons, like it always was the case.

[h4rr0d]

Tell that the the people in my group. Pull one wrong pack, or go out of order, and you'll get, "WTF" in chat. Most of the time you have no idea why the person says "WTF" until later, because people are a lot more focused on flaming than on contributing.

The overall attitude is horrendous. Today in Atal'Dazar, we did fine on first boss, fine on second boss, but then we tried to kill the dinos in the middle and wiped. Turns out you're typically supposed to skip that one. DPS says, "Scuffed group." Thanks buddy. Then we go to the third boss and one of the dps kills his pillar too fast. Two people leave. One, as he's zoning out, says "FUCK YOU ALL".

It's just a bad design that encourages toxicity. I imagine that the original pugs back in vanilla etc. were full of people who were chatting and relaxing, exploring. Now it's, "Don't go in unless you studied ahead of time" and everything immediately on a timer that one mistake can destroy. It's just not good. The idea that you can learn in m0 is also nuts - I could likely solo some of these places on m0 at this point, it's not tuned for people to learn the fights before going to mythic.

1) Since you are a returning player, you should know well, that before awakened was a thing, you never killed the middle group ever (and for a good reason), so that alone should've raised some red flags for you. On the other hand with awakened, killing the middle pack (usually with bloodlust and all CDs) is a fairly common thing to do, even on tyrannical weeks, as you need lust only on rezan and last boss. That being said, you should tell that to the group at the start of the run, so that they can plan their CDs accordingly. Doing it on bolstering week is probably not a good idea though, because the mobs have wildly varying HP pools and having to deal with 3 bolstered dinos is probably not going to be fun.

2) What does DPS being shit/toxic and failing on normal mode mechanic have to do with the affix?

3) If you want to do more demanding content (heroic, m10+) in pug environment, you are expected to know what you are doing.
As a tank, that includes knowing routes for awakened - and you need to know multiple different ones, because the route in some dungs does change based on affixes.
Or are you suggesting, that you show up to a heroic pug raid and don't know boss abilities too? If so, you are pretty selfish for wasting other people's time. There's a place for people like you though, and it's called premades. Find a group that's willing to learn stuff with you by actually doing it instead of reading up on it, but for the love of god do not force your choices upon people who did not sign up for that (and then come QQ on forums, how people are toxic, when they expect you to do your job in a pug)

4) As a tank, you can get anytime anywhere pretty much instantly. Maybe you could use the time you saved by not having to search for group by looking into different routes? It's not that difficult. And if you can't be arsed to do that, just go DPS or healer and run the dung couple of times that way, so you know, what the usual route is.

[Tower]

I came back about a month ago after a two year hiatus, currently at 452 item level. My really good friend is a healer fully decked out in 470 gear so I only run them with her. She just gives me a brief rundown on discord and if she doesn't remember we just wing it. It's also helpful that during a trash pull she will position herself in the direction of where to go next, helps me out a ton with learning the routes. There have been a few people that have been semi-rude but when the healer and tank have formed the group it's kind of hard for the dps to dictate jack. I can tell you the most annoying thing about M+ is the demands on your pc, I lag quite a bit on my older pc and need to upgrade.

[Miyagie]

I'm in a very similar situation to you - joined up due to coronavirus. M+ before +10 was all pretty simple, but then once I tried to do 10+ every group is a total mess.

People tell me to just use Method Dungeon Tools to plan pulls, and I go to the page and it lists out like 27 pulls for one dungeon. There's no Fing way I'm going to sit there and memorize 27 different pulls.

So basically, I do the best I can, and nearly every single key I'm in gets wasted. Some (many) times it is my fault, other times it is the dps or healer because they're encountering the +10 wall as well. I haven't completed a key over +10 in weeks. What's frustrating is, even using my own key, people are very impatient and will leave after one wipe, or after they realize you don't know the method approved super fast route.

I was in one today and the dps admonished me "this isn't the place to try to learn mechanics" but the mechanic was something that was easily brute forced in lower difficulties so I never needed to learn it. There's no place to just try, fail and get better without burning a key. When I can I do them with a tank in my guild over discord and he walks me through it step by step, and then everything is fine and I know that dungeon for next week. But it's a very difficult learning curve.

Meanwhile, on my healing offspec I barely have to know what's going on and I can do just fine.

You dont have to memorize 27 different pulls, you kill 80-90% of the mobs anyway.

[srathgar]

Actually thats not what i've said. Its pretty amazing how many people i need to correct here simply because they dont read the posts.

I said that i have not done any 10+ runs yet BECAUSE i dont want to slow other people down in this regard - because i'd rather not watch videos on the subject(in which i have caved into anyway). This is a "do you feel the same way i do post". Not a "i dont want to do x, it sucks, fuck off to the people who like it". I've said that i dont personally like it, and i find it badly designed because its such a jump in complexity for no other reason then provide an ability to the game that a class already has. Seems like its a problem with the design of that class, or dungeons in themselves when stuff like that feels good to people.

You seem to default back to watch videos, screw watching videos lol, you just need to make a route yourself (you can draw inspiration from the routes on raider.io or outright copy them and adapt them to your needs). Its not like awakening adds a complexity that was not already there. All it has done is make it so that you dont need a rogue to do the skips that can make a dungeon significantly easier.

So yea, i guess if you have a tank that does not ever consider using Shroud to stealth past packs or the like then this is indeed a small increase in complexity. With that said, you can either play with the awakened affix or stay at 9 or below. There is no shame in doing so, but claiming that the obelisks are theese highly complex puzzles is simply not true, they have at the very most 2 abilities each and what to skip/not skip should not really be rocket science, it should be obvious to you as a tank what groups of mobs YOU feel are hard and what is not hard.