Prot paladin. Kitty druid. Holy priest. Your friendly neighborhood BM hunter.
And a Death Knight.
Our story begins in once upon a time in Howling Fjord, in Heroic Utgarde Keep. We get off to a pretty good start; we survived an accidentally too-large-pull (pet tank + Distracting Shot/kiting right before your pet dies = ftw!) and I even got to do a little chain trapping, which I miss dearly by the way. The Death Knight pulled aggro and died fairly early on, but he was rez’d and we continued on our merry way.
We get down to the that big fiery forge thing and we dispose of the groups there and our pallytank stops and says “Okay. I want to make this clear right now. I need aggro so I can get mana. So stop pulling aggro. Okay?”
Hmm. He did not specify who this instruction was directed to, but I woulda noticed if I’d had aggro other than purposefully (kiting/trapping/etc.) cause I would have feigned, and I hadn’t so far. And I really didn’t think it was the kitty because his DPS was, uh, less than stellar. So that left…
…our friend the Death Knight, who said nothing, although the fact that he’d been the only one who had died so far was some pretty incriminating evidence. Regardless, we continued on for a bit. Death Knight spoke up to voice his discontent about how slow we were going. To be honest, while we weren’t blazing along, I didn’t think we were going particularly slow either– I say this as someone who has run Heroic UK more times than I care to even try to count. Still, none of us said anything, and we made our way onward.
Downed the first boss without issue. Death Knight “accidentally” greeded the blue the rest of us passed on, despite the fact that he couldn’t shard it. Still, meh, no big deal. I’ve heard some people say that on their home server everyone greeds and on mine everyone passes and it causes confusion to server newbies, so yeah, no biggie. ‘s just vendor trash. We were about halfway to the second boss fight when Mr. DK decided once again, and a little louder and more obnoxiously this time, to point out that the group was slow.
Pallytank paused. “You want to tank it?”
Death Knight responded “with pleasure” or something similar, proceeding to make some remark on how good his tanking was.
Pallytank calmly sits down to drink.
Death Knight pulls.
Ten seconds later the priest is dead. Cause, um, everything had been on top of him. Instead of Death Knight.
No one really said a word although it was pretty clear what had just taken place. Pallytank calmly gets up from his drink and rez’s the priest.
And this is when Death Knight starts demanding that Pallytank pass him lead. “Give me lead please.”
No response. Pallytank starts to pull again and the four of us start doing our jobs. Mr. DK is standing back, still protesting and crying for lead. “C’mon, just for two seconds.”
“Why, so you can kick me?” asked Pallytank.
And then DK snaps. He says something about how much our group sucks and how stupid we all are (Pallytank in particular.) Then he leaves the group and hearths away.
Easily four-manned the rest of the heroic.
The Moral of the Story Is: Complain not about things if you can’t do any better yourself. Cause it’s gonna be reeeeally embarrassing if you fail, and you’ll probably wind up leaving the group and missing out on free badges. *nods sagely*
The End.
/bow
Had similar situations with DKs and a few misc others.
every time my responce has been after 2 wipes to whisper the leader and say
“Boot the schmuck, I’ll pick up the slack and cover the bill if we wipe..”
usally the problem child gets sacked, or I leave after another 2-3 wipes
I have been running into the “offtank” DK’s recently on my pally tank (still around 73). This breed of DK insists on taking agro from a single mob and tanking it off to the side, and everytime you try get agro back they steal it back…Then they complain about my tanking!
The most recent one was in Nexus on one of the four mob pull platforms, thought I had them all rounded up and noticed the self-designated “offtank” back up the path we came down tanking one of the melee mobs. This was after I had asked him to stop tanking them and just DPS them down. My wife, the heals for this run, ran down and stood on me and we just left Mr. DK alone. Needless to say with no heals and me not trying to pull agro back his glorious “offtank” plan failed. Neither of us rez’d him, we just pressed on.
Needless to say he was not happy and decided to explain to us using as many expletives as he could that we should have healed or tanked better. Kicked him from group and grabbed a bored guildie to finish the run.
I must say I have been running into more and more of these “offtank” DPS death knights…What is it with the tanking a single mob as DPS and stressing out the tank?
I’m sure there’s some nice people out there playing DKs, but doesn’t it seem like there’s a disproportionate number of @$$hat DKs out there?
This story, and others like it, is making me seriously reconsidering leveling my own DK. Not because I’m afraid of making mistakes and learning from it, but because I might get the “DKtard” label stickied on me just for playing a DK.
– Aenur of Hydraxis
As a fellow Death Knight I have this to say.
Can I eat him? Really? please>?
He stupidity sounds delicious.
Signed,
Colemand
Your insights are a pleasure to partake of!
Z
I’ve had excellent DK tanks (just ran Strat with one) and some scary ones. Personally, I Feign Death for the win.
And on Shadow Council, it seems to be a mix of greed and pass. Greed on greens, pass or greed on blues, but need only if it’s a direct upgrade. I generally either ask before hand or wait until after the group leader’s greeded or passed to get a sense of things.
And as far as the DK label goes, I figure if you’re honest about your mistakes and your inexperience, your group will react better. Plus you might even get some useful tips (I ended up tanking on my pally and had my group explain to me what spells to use).
I’ve never been in a group that didn’t greed on non-boss-drop blues.
That’s why I always tell people how badly I suck before a run, that way if I don’t screw up they’re impressed, and if I do screw up they’ve already been warned and chose to ignore it…
The main tank for the guild I am running in now is a DK. He does very very well. Ran a regular nexus tonight with a Shaman healer, DK MT, DK OT, and two BM hunters. We had an absolute blast. Everything we wanted to died, none of us did. Even though we had to back up because we almost missed a boss, I had more fun running with my guildies than I have had in a very long time.
And I hadn’t done an instance in at least two to three months. I’ve heard enough stories with-in guild and on other blogs to be wary of grouping with any DK… but then, I’m wary of grouping with another hunter I don’t know as well.
The newest thing on the block always brings out the idiots. We saw it with Paladins / Shaman in BC, now we see it in Wrath. It just is.
As annoying as these people are, at least they give us something to entertain us with. Somone has to be stupid, might as well be them cos it’s never us :=)
I’ve encountered a similar problem with a SV hunter i’m ashamed to say. He/She was battering on to me all throughout Nexus that i was a noob for not speccing from my current BM to SV to get more DPS and that my pet was retarded 😛 (he seemed like a nice guy!)… fair enough on the pet as i had recently tamed Uvuros (cos he looks cool) and it was level 75 and i was levelling him by doing instances etc..
Funnily enough at the end of the run my DPS was 600 higher than his (with a lvl 75 pet!), so i whispered him the recount and added “who’s the noob?” then put him on ignore 🙂 shame because i like chatting to other hunters about how they play the game etc
BTW the group knew i was bring a lvl 75 pet and most knew me and knew i wouldn’t let them down…
Kalam, Executus. newbie (noobie) hunter
Heh…been there, died to that, got the t-shirt.
Kudos to your pally tank for knowing not to pass lead.
Since WotLK hit, the groups I’ve tanked for have been greeding the blues instead of passing to the enchanter to DE and pass out the shards (like the groups did in BC). I’m not sure why it’s changed – perhaps b/c enchanters use the shards to buy patterns this time around…?
Great story – I enjoyed it, from a Prot Pally pov. I’ve yet to run into a situation where I’ve had issues like this with dps wanting to tank.
FWIW – as a prot pally tank, I like to finish H UK in less than 30m, my best has been 22m 🙂 I don’t stop unless my healer needs mana.
DKs are the new “huntards.”
Simple as that.
@ LS – it was a bind-on-pickup boss drop blue. You know, that wand that drops every single time. The one we always pass to you so you can melt it. =P
I love your blog, Pike. You have the most interesting in game stories. I check you blog everyday. 😀
Is it me or are a lot of DKs like how a lot of paladin tanks were in BC: cocky, arrogant, and quick to blame everyone else when they screw up?
I’ve pugged a lot. I’ve seen a lot of tards, and I’ve been the (hun)tard as well. I’ve had the pleasure of running with two-three really good DKs, both as tanks and dps. Still, my fav is running with pally tanks…as long as they don’t ask me to trap something they intend on av/conc(ing). Then, its just a walk down frustration alley.
Right now, DK seems to be the char of choice, the newest thing on the block. Perhaps we’ll see the number of tards drop as time goes by. Or not. 😉
Z
Then he leaves the group and hearths away.
Easily four-manned the rest of the heroic.
Isn’t it funny how that happens? Every PuG I’ve been where someone threw a hissy and hearthed out (3 times I can recall) the rest of us 4-manned it with less trouble than we had before.
This could have ended much badly, and in fact, has for me several times. I’m glad your story had a happy ending for all.
I love the way you retold that experience. 🙂
/sigh It’s a shame some people just have to be so…yeah. And why the need to rushrushrush? The pally was the tank, they set the pace.
Good story. 🙂
That guy was a blit. I’ve been a little worried about grouping on my DK for that very reason. Also I haven’t even tried to tank on him, ’cause I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m not afraid to admit it. 😉
Nice story indeed… I am a DK tank myself and even if i know that i am not perfect i can say that lately i’ve been doing some good things in heroics. We barely wipe in guild runs and (almost, hehe) barely in PUGs. I always try to keep calm and not to lecture people about what was wrong and who’s fault it was… Just sometimes, things happen without me wanting it, like last saturday:
I had been tanking Halls of stone heroic and everything happened fine, i was pretty happy because it was the very first time i was tanking the instance and we didn’t wipe. I was very happy and on my way to turn the daily heroic when someone whispers: “hey, wanna tank heroic violet hold?”. Being all confident thanks to the previous run and having 3 hours left in front of me, i answer: “sure, i’d be happy to” and i get an invite.
Violet hold is one of the heroics i’ve been tanking the most and i felt all relax. So, there it starts and i run from portal to portal, noticing that sometimes the dps shammy was doing the pulls instead of me but i could always manage to get the aggro back, everything was going fine and i only say in a very peaceful way: “guys, can i just ask you to let me do the pulls?” (instead of something like “WTF shammy, stop pulling”). The Dailai lama was guiding my steps, lol.
Time for the first boss: Xevozz. I’m getting ready to kite and i start as i have done so many times. The boss stays on me and i see his health going down while mine stays steady, good sign. All of a sudden, i see in party chat: “kite him ffs”, while it’s precisely what i was doing, no more, no less than usual.
And then i die, and we wipe. No problemo, these things happen and i start my corpse run when members of the group start telling that i should kite the boss. I answer that it’s precisely what i was doing and that it usually works fine. And there we go, here comes the answer that made me leave: “Then, if you are so good, how come that we are all dead? Pfff, another DK without a clue”.
The next thing i know, i was struggling with my two voices, one preparing a harsh answer and the other guiding my hand to quit the party before i become vulgar. I quit and took my chill pill. The group must have thought, what an arrogant DK again… When, to be honest, i was just doing my best while keeping cool and polite
The rest of my day in the DK skin was pretty much spoiled and, forgetting the nice success of the HOL run, i was simply leaving the game to go shoot some zombies in fallout 3. I only came back a week later, to start a troll hunter and have fun, far from the whole “end game grouping thing”. (also, i enjoyed every bit of the level 1 to 10 on the troll and seriously think about spending some time with him).
So why all the story? Just to say that i enjoy the DK class, it’s fun and it’s useful in groups but looking down at them became a bit the new pink…
If something bad happens, everybody look at the DK. I know that it’s a new class, that they have to show the people how they can be nice while well handeled and that, in the long run, they will earn trust just like any othe class. But at the moment, it just isn’t funny and i’m like 80% into rerolling. (the troll would be my third hunter 🙂 )
Ofc, it has nothing to do with your story. The guys wanted to rush you through and clearly was acting like a jerk. I’m happy that your run ended up nicely without him.
I just wanted to share another experience, view from a poor little DK in a group of mad people…
I lurve my Pally Tanks, especially when an Instance seems designed around their Multiple Mob Tanking abilities.
Way back in the pre-Wrath days I needed to run Shattered Halls for a quest, so we got a Guild Group together. I forget the exact make up but we had a Druid Tank, a DPS Warrior, my Combat Sword Rogue, and two others. It took forever, and I do mean forever. By the time we were done at least two Guildies had logged and been replaced. It was a nightmare. But at least I got my quests done.
The next time I ventured into Shattered Halls was by request of my Arena Partner for his Pally. It was a PUG, and I hate PUGs, but knowing how well my Arena Partner plays his Toons, and with my Rogue now dual-wielding Mongoose-enchanted PvP Blades, I agreed to go along.
I’d done Guild Runs runs on my Rogue before and knew I could bring the DPS, but my mate just laughed when I told him I was concerned about pulling Aggro off him. Go ahead and try, he said, so I did. I succeeded but I had to go all out to do it.
Two thirds into the Instance he threw up the Damage Meter and I was horrified. I was #2 on the list, behind his Pally Tank! That can’t be right, I thought. I threw up my own Damage Meter. He was #1 on mine, too. Guess it was right. That’s how we Tank and hold Aggro, he said 🙂
By the end of the Run I’d regained my honor and top spot on the Damage Meter, and it was one of the smoothest runs I’ve ever been on. Not just smoothest Shattered Halls Run, but of all my Instance Runs this one was smooooooooth. So much so that when my mate wanted to go again one of the PUGs stuck around, we grabbed two Guildies, and we smashed Shattered Halls again.
I retired from WoW before Wrath came out so I can’t vouch for DK Tanks, but a Pally Tank that really knows what he’s doing is teh awesome.
In normal nexus, we had a pissed off DK tank, a sleep-deprived healer (me), a ret pally who refused to turn off righteous fury, and a MS warrior who decided to skip mortal strike.
How the hell we managed to get up to Anomalus in the first place, I have no freakin’ idea. Anyways, we wiped there, I was annoyed at everyone, so I aggro’d everything I could and bubblehearthed on their @ss.
Me and the DK are still quite good friends, mostly because I warned the DK before the bubblehearth.
… reminds me of the time I MD’d sarth onto my GM with 2 drakes still up cuz we called OS.
Wow, that pally tank sounds EXACTLY like my pally tank boyfriend. I can’t count the number of times someone has given him crap about not going through an instance fast enough, and he just sits back and invites them to tank it themselves. Hehe, he’s going to get a kick out of hearing your story. ^_^
I play a DPS DK in a high end raiding guild atm, I must say… I feel your pain, but also in a different way. Ever since the class was announced, I was researching it and learning how to play it well. I have continued to learn and have done well what I have learned. It never fails though, that the “Deathtards” out there continually make my job that much harder. These idiots have burned so many people out there, that I have to beg and plead and assure people that I am in fact a good player just to get into pug groups for heroics. It’s gotten so bad that I am contemplating going back to play my pally or hunter. It’s a shame that a really good class with a lot of potential is being ruined by idiots who are jumping on the DK bandwagon.
Thank you, Deathtards…. I hope you get bored and leave WoW soon! lol
Well it is a new class. I think that contributes the high ratio of deathtard to actual death knight. In order to remove any ambiguity I simply named my DK Deathtard. I think I am doing OK with him, but I am using him for DPS not tanking.
It’s the one drawback of the hero class too. Since you start at 55 those early levels where some things get ingrained don’t hit until you are in your late 70s or even at 80.
@Spock I totally agree, I followed the same path, although I specifically levelled as a tank, as I’ve done the dps route before, and wanted to learn how to tank as early as possible.
I think the problem we have with this class is that it’s terribly overpowered pre80, I don’t think I grouped up for any quest bar a couple that I couldn’t solo, like most of the DragonBlight ones. It lends us a sense of superiority that doesn’t translate well into grouped instances. And since we don’t need to group, we don’t at all, and simply solo our way through the quests.
And then we hit 80. And we’re uber! And we’re wearing plate! Tanking can’t be that much different now can it? Frost Presence gives us a fairly decent buffer on threat so it shouldn’t be a problem right?
And then one mob loses aggro, zomg, DG. Another one gets pulled to the side, zomg, where’s Dark Command?! Oh noes Adds. And it turns out, just cause we’re wearing plate doesn’t automatically make us good tanks.
In the end, it’s the fact that DKs, as a hero class breeze through the pre80 content and never actually have to learn how to play their class well. I admire good pallies to no end, for in the 1-80 grind, I have never successfully levelled a paladin past 20, I suspect that the class mechanics are such that you -have- to learn how they intergrate if you’re to make it.
But really, don’t dismiss them outright, give DKs a chance, some of us are decent players! (But also, don’t fear to boot the tards if they turn out terrible)
I play a Death Knight tank on Zangarmarsh. I regret to say that many of us Death Knights are assholes who have no idea how to play the class. There are many DK’s you hear “any DK tree can be used to tank” and intrepret it as “any DK spec EVER can be used to tank”, which becomes “play the same way as you DPS, but using Frost Presence, and you’re suddenly a tank”
The class is capable of tanking very effectively and holding down tons of threat when specced and played correctly. I’ve tanked 7 instances straight without a wipe, the only death being because I wasn’t familiar with a boss and didn’t know it would spawn adds.
I will admit, however, that I am always wary of adding a Death Knight to my group, as DKs definitely have the highest chance of being total idiots.