My guild on Rexxar, Time Well Wasted, is going through a rough patch. Our Guild Master (who’s main is a Paladin Tank or Healer) decided to retire from the game, at least for now. Can’t blame him, being a Guild Master is about as thankful of a task as is being the parent of a new born baby. You are going to hear a lot of whining and put up with a lot of poop. At least as a parent you know the child will grow up and be somewhat thankful of all the time and effort you gave them. Not so much for a guild. So Guild Master burn out is high. I get that.
When the Guild Master quit he asked a few other higher ranked players (who happen to be tanks) if they would be interested in taking over. They responded by leaving the guild. The bottom line is we are a little low on tanks right now. Still, trying to keep the guild together we decide to do a 10 man Ice Crown Citadel run. We had to PUG a tank and two DPS. The DPS was easy. The tank not so much. I don’t know about other realms but on Rexxar tanks are in high demand. We searched for 30 minutes and found a tank. Turns out he thought we were doing another instance, so he dropped. Sigh. After waiting another 20 minutes we found another tank. This one wanted to do ICC 10! Yes, we were golden. The tank arrived in the instance. My heart fluttered, after nearly an hour of waiting this was going to happen.
The new tank looked at our other tank, our guild tank and then said, “I thought you said you were a tank?”
Our guild tank replied, “I am.”
The other tank said, “You’ve only got 27,000 hit points. Are you wearing the wrong armor?”
Our tank said, “There is more to tanking than stamina. I’ve done this before. Trust me.”
We all held our collective breath. Our tank has done this many times. He is a fine tank. We all told the PUG tank that.
Our group fell apart.
Here’s the thing, I know tanks can afford to be picky but come on, give a group a chance. I admit I don’t know a lot about tanking (my son says I am too impatient to be a tank) but I do know what works. I have seen our tank complete ICC on a number of occasions quite successfully. There is skill and timing involved, not just having the right gems to buff your stamina. If that tank had taken the group at their word and just gave us 20 minutes of his precious time to see how we did against the first boss he would have seen we weren’t making anything up. We would have downed the boss and everybody would have won. Instead the tank made nine enemies and nobody got anything down.
The moral of this story: when you are in a pickup group, remember you are human being first and player second. Give the group a chance before you bail on them.
Hey dude, I know exactly what you mean. 99% of the time it is the tank slot that is left unfilled in any PUG I do. So picky they can be because of their low number, but they don’t seem to suffer for it.
I think there is a whole culture of gear elitism in the game. It’s only a game after all, I wish they would all just chill out and learn to enjoy themselves. If I had a free day’s subscription for everytime I have had a negative comment about my gear I would never pay….
Don’t get me started about ungratefuil kids either….