I had a baaaad PuG this weekend.
We ran regular Culling of Stratholme. It was myself and Naelian on DPS, plus a DK tank, a DPS warrior, and a priest healer. We wiped a time or two on every boss. I think three times on Meathook, if you count the time I iceblocked and he wandered off out of combat and regained full health while I was doing my ice age impression amidst the corpses of my companions.
This is the problem, I don’t know what went wrong. I mean, I know some things that went wrong. The things we were able to identify and put right were the easiest. The first Meathook wipe was because the little zombies wandering everywhere were interrupting the healer’s casting and he couldn’t necessarily react fast enough when the tank got into trouble. It was easy for me to stand beside him and pop off the odd Arcane Explosion in between Arcane Blasts when they got too thick. Problem solved. Another thing that was similarly easy to fix was on the fight with Salramm, we found that if the priest got chained a few times in a row we were in trouble. So to fix this, Naelian kept a few HoTs up on the tank to get us through those situations where our regular healer was silenced. It put a little crimp in his DPS numbers, but it made it a lot more survivable.
What was harder to fix were the wipes that happened for no identifiable reason, or because of someone’s temporary lapse of judgment. On one of the Scourge waves, a Necromancer got loose in the back and just tore the priest and I to shreds. Was the tank not paying attention? Was she so focused on the (six or so) mobs she was already tanking that she didn’t notice us dying? Or did we not do enough to get her attention? I don’t know.
Another time the DPS warrior rushed in ahead of the tank. We were in the stretch where we go through the streets with Arthas to meet Mal’Ganis, and you can’t lose Arthas or you have to go back, so we were all in a bit of a rush. The priest was visibly annoyed that the warrior didn’t wait, as he was having a little bit of a hard time letting the tank build threat before he went in (read: could not for some reason do it at all). Usually it wasn’t as bad as this time. Anyway, I saw the meleeing going on in the middle of the pack of mobs, misread the situation, and slapped an AoE down in the middle of them, thinking that the tank was right there in the thick of it. The annoyed priest let the warrior die… didn’t even make the slightest effort to heal him, and the huge pack of mobs all charged at me. No surprise, we wound up wiping. Was this a momentary lapse in the DPS warrior’s judgment or is it a chronic problem for him? Would we have lived if the priest had bitten his lip and just healed the warrior anyway? What if I hadn’t panicked and not thrown out that Blizzard in the middle of everything? Would that have stopped the wipe? I don’t know.
After that the priest logged, with a few choice words for the rest of us, and Naelian and I sat down to look at Recount. Neither of us are super experienced, so we really don’t know if we’re doing something wrong. What we found was that we were first and second on damage done, and fourth and fifth on damage taken. We think that’s good. But maybe it’s not good. Something made the priest take more damage than us, and I know that isn’t good…
The most telling thing, I think, is that the DPS warrior took significantly more damage than the tank. And the tank did significantly more damage than the warrior. While the last wipe, I have to take at least 50% of the blame for, for my admittedly bad decision on using Blizzard, I’m tempted to attribute the rest of the problems to the dk/warrior combo. I’d say the DK maybe leveled with a DPS spec and is still learning to tank… she tanked bosses fine, she tended to let adds stray (sometimes fatally). Combined with the warrior’s tendency to think himself invincible–I’d say he was pretty new and not used to things that his plate didn’t protect him from–I’d like to make that the cause of the issue.
But how much of it was, or could have been from something I was or wasn’t doing? Later in the evening in another instance I was significantly out DPS-ed by a tank, so I know I’ve got a thing or two to learn. I do not know. I think the cure is experience. At least, that’s my hope.
On a sidenote: I love my Elkano’s Buff Bars for everyday, but when I go in instances and find myself with nine million buffs on, they block the screen! I find myself rotating the camera angle to look around the buff bars, and it is BAD. Does anyone know how I can minimize, hide, or replace them in instances so I can actually see what I’m doing without getting rid of them altogether? Or if I have to get rid of them, what’s a less obtrusive replacement with a similar functionality?
Popularity: 2% [?]
Entries (RSS)
There's a setting somewhere on EBB to change the size I think. That was my problem with it too. Eventually I just figured out that overall I didn't really care and would just go with whatever buffs I had at the time and deleted the addon. I'm pretty sure you can change the size though.
The warrior was an idiot, the priest probably did about what he was supposed to though he probably should have given the warrior a few warnings before just letting him die instead. If the warrior had been warned once or twice, then healer's justified in letting him die.
The healer should almost always be above the mage on damage taken. Your mage spells generate threat only on the target (or targets, if AoE), where heals generate threat on everything around you. The only time you should steal threat is if your damage gets too high. The healer will steal threat every time the tank fails to generate enough threat of their own though.
There's not a lot that a mage can do to prevent wipes, but that doesn't mean you're useless. Sometimes the most important thing for you to do is to back off of your dps and switch over to crowd control. Mages have some very solid CC, and they also have the ability to remove curses which not all healing classes can do. Your CC doesn't do a whole lot against undead, but /shrug. The point of every encounter is to live until the end of it. Having the most damage doesn't mean anything if people keep dying.
Who's to blame? The stupid agro-happy warrior who doesn't know how to cool his heels. I know that as a tank that's the one thing that ticked me off above all else. It's also the first thing that gets to your healers as well. If you're tank's not happy, people tend to die. If your healer's not happy, people are most definitely going to die.
Your blizzard at the end of the last one was what broke the healer. They've been dealing with one moron for the whole instance and then a single act from a second player probably made them think they were in a group full of morons. Was it your fault? To some extent, but really no it was the warrior's fault. Next in line was the healer for not trying to keep him up until the tank could get in and steal agro, and then it would move to you probably for throwing the AoE.
I've learned when to back off or slow down DPS-ing if my threat gets too high, but I wish I knew a little bit more about HOW to crowd control in group situations. I know when I need to use slow or put a frost snare on something when I'm soloing, and I know when sheep are convenient, but I've played more in groups in the last month than I did for the entire year before that, and nobody seems to WANT any crowd control. If you run around an instance making sheep where I think it's appropriate, they just get broken by the AoE machines in the group anyway, so I don't bother with polymorph unless asked, although I ALWAYS offer at the start of a run. Other types of CC might be helpful, but I have never really been told when or how to do it, and I've discovered that experimenting in PuGs leads to disgruntled healers and wipes.
I pretty much agree with where I fell in that particular instance, Psynister. It's frustrating to look at myself and realize that I played a bigger role in that failure than I'd liked to have, but if I didn't I'd be kidding myself.
Throwing Blizzard into the middle of a pack of elites when you're tankless is a VERY BAD IDEA. I *thought* the tank was there when I did it, but it's really not an excuse for not knowing where the thank was.
How you CC depends a bit on your group. Check with your tank (screw everyone else's opinion) and see if he wants you to sheep something. Most tanks these days actually want all the mobs on them they can handle except for casters. And even then, they can usually handle them if there aren't too many. CC depends on the situation, but when you see a mob off on its own that's attacking with spells, or even a melee mob attacking your healer, that's when you use CC. If the tank can't get the mob off of your healer, then you can do something about it instead. Either sheep it if you can, or draw agro from it yourself and then kite the mob over to your tank's, or off-tank's, AoE so that he can then pull threat off of you. A group can get by with less dps, but it can't survive without a tank and a healer.
Some helpful CC could be Frost Nova for instance. If threat hasn't been established by the tank, or the healer draws agro off of the tank on some mobs, then your job might be to use Frost Nova to hold them in place and call the tank over to draw agro. Similarly for Blastwave and Dragon's Breath with a fire mage.
The failure with the Blizzard wasn't your fault though. You did what you needed to in the situation, which was to start taking down the mobs. The fault was the warrior's for attacking in the first place. It then falls on two people evenly – the healer should have stepped up and given the heals, but the tank should have jumped right in with taunts and try to steal threat. Yeah, you should have known where your tank was, but the tank should have known what was going on and the healer should have done his job as well. You aren't 50% to blame on this, you're about 5-15% to blame.
The only person with any excuse is the other dps that didn't do anything.
I had a big problem with my buff bars being clipped by the rest of my interface, so I ended up separating my timed buffs from my auras and debuffs. It helped a lot for me, though I'm not sure about you since I'm not sure what your interface looks like.
The size of Elkano's Buff Bars can be modified – I like mine to be around 65-70% (it will depend on your screen size, but that size seems to get them enough out of the way for me).
The wipes were as much the DK tank's fault as the Warrior's fault. Threat generation and aggro control should not be a problem for any capable tank (although, admittidly, it does take practice). A tank losing threat on an occasional add will happen, but every tank has a taunt to get adds back on them. However, you should also be proactive when an add starts to attack you – run to the tank (I literally run through the tank!) and hopefully the add will be peeled off you, but if not, it should at least visually alert the tank that you have a monster chasing you!
As for the Warrior – some people are just natural Leeeeeeeeroys. Learn their names and don't group with them again.
Good luck and continue posting – its a great blog!
Running to the tank is the first thing anyone should do, and it's the first sign of a dps that doesn't know their role. If you don't run to the tank when you draw agro, it better be because you know you can kill the mob yourself, and you can do it quickly and easily with little-to-no heals.
An excellent example of how to handle this with the mage is just like Obeyfez here says, run to the tank. Running through the tank isn't always a great idea as you can occasionally agro more mobs or a pat by doing so. It's not wrong, it just has a chance to bite you if you aren't aware of your surroundings. When you get to the tank though, once the mob is withing range go ahead and fire off your Frost Nova. That's going to lock them into place so that they can't kill you, but it's also going to leave them sitting right in the middle of the tank's AoE threat generation.
While you're running up to the mobs around the tank, go ahead and cast Cone of Cold, Dragon's Breath, or Arcane Explosion while you're there. Get some instant cast AoE going to dish out some dps, but remember that the reason for you being there is to get rid of the mob that's behind you.
If a mob goes for the healer, throw some spells at it to draw agro to yourself, then blink over to the tank, throw an AoE, and then Frost Nova when your agro target gets within range of it. The tank should have it in a matter of seconds, and then you can go right back to doing your own thing.
I play a pally tank on my main – I really like the advice that if the mage pulls aggro, run towards the tank and fire off Frost Nova when you get to the tank. If the tank can't hold aggro after that, time to get a new tank.
Also, if the tank can't get to a caster – I for one would love you to CC the caster, or counter-spell and run towards the tank like gnomeaggedon suggested. When I tank, I usually ask the mage I run with to CC the caster before I pull all . Magic damage from casters goes right through my armor and becomes a mana-load for the healers to deal with.
My main is a pally tank as well, and casters are my only concern. If I'm running with a player who's fairly new to their class, then I call for CC even though I don't technically need it, and the casters are always primary target. If I'm pulling 1-2 groups of mobs and there's only 1 caster though, I just make him my primary target and make sure the caster dies first.
Spells chew through plate like a two-handed axe chews through cloth, it's a no contest. If you're going to CC anything with a pally tank, casters are the target of choice. I would imagine it's the same for most tanks, but Pally is the only tank I've ever played.
As other stated…EBB can be tweaked down to a smaller size. Also you can tell the text to display less (AB instead of Arcane Brilliance). Also there is a setting to even not show buffs that don't have timers (will remove auras, totems, "mounted status" etc).
Without seeing a current screenshot of your set up its kinda hard to say. I only tend be annoyed by it when I'm in a raid and have 30+buffs streaming down the side of my screen.
Also…I've never tried to "tweet this comment" with intense debate before…neet-o!
Good grief, I had to jump through about a thousand and one flaming hoops in order to post this comment – I've just about forgotten what it was I going to say =P It seems like you've had plenty of extremely good post-game analysis above so I'll just say something fluffy. Seriously, though, I've been in PUGs like that and I generally find it really discouraging – and I start to doubt myself.
In truth, I think it was low-level tardishness from pretty much all the major roles – you had a competent but grumpy healer (hehe, I know a lot about this
), what seems like an inadequate tank, and an impatient, idiotic melee DPS. The blizzard on your part was an honest mistake – don't fret about it. Honest mistakes happen all the time and nobody should either take shit for it from others, or feel bad on their own account. Everybody has more than one story about how their mind wandered, they did x and everybody died horribly.
Ultimately failPUGs are easy to classify if someone behaves obviously like an idiot throughout, so you can get come out of it and say to yourself "well, that DK kept deathgripping off the tank" or the "the hunter had his pet on aggressive." When a lot of little things add to a general feeling of "meh" it's harder.
Better luck next time
great blog! really enjoying the read.!
Not your fault.. simple.
AoE is the order of the day this expansion.. though making sure you are on the tanks targets and they have threat helps
I often get blasted my my Shammy mate for AoE threat.. the same one that is constantly pulling aggro off the tank, and is usually the 1st to die. I do a personal inventory… did I do anything bad, or did the stars just align…
Most of the tips are covered but.
1) You are not the Healer's bodyguard… that's the tanks role… however that said, you should protect the healer if the tank is otherwise occupied or ignorant of the problem. (This is an important point that someone put me on once when my regular tank was average, and so was my DPS… I was so busy caring for the healer, I wasn't doing damage)
2) If a mob is casting at your healer and the tank cant get at it… CounterSpell and run to the tank. The counterspell will cause them to melee, it's high threat so it come to you, but as you are at the tank they will play there instead.
3) Frost Nova at the feet of the healer may not be the best idea… then the mob is in max aggro range (110%) of your healer and the tank has to come to you/the healer.
Instead Fireblast, Blastwave, AE, CoC, IceLance etc to get it's attention and run to the tank.
4) As mentioned above, when you reach the tank, Fost Nova and blink back where you came from… then you will be back at 130% threat zone and the tank can play beat the mob into submission.
5) If you do pull aggro with your AoE.. you may take some hits, which you don't really want. Run to meet the mobs and frost nova, then get out of there. Running to the tank makes it quicker for them to reach and control them, and keeps them out of the healers 110% threat zone. If you have to run the whole way back to the tank, bounce along with some AEs to keep them on you and away from the healer spamming to save someone's life.
Finally.. I have run CoT a few times now… some groups that should trounce the place just fail… it only takes a distracted moment moment for AoE goodness to become AoE terror followed by a wipe. Don't lose sleep over it!
It was the tank, period, end of story. Good tanks are hard to find, and good DK tanks are even rarer. The melee warrior was a moron and didn't help the situation, but I'd honestly rather run with a good DK tank than any other tank in CoS. The healer should have been standing near the tank, not far away like healers are used to doing. DK throws down a DnD and the healer stands in it, that solves the issue of mobs beating on him. If the healer doesn't want to get up close and personal with the tank, preferring to stand at a distance then the tank throws a DnD wherever the healer is standing and uses blood boil and whatever other AoE damage he has. If he's frost spec he shouldn't have an issue with AoE threat. If he's any other spec then that's probably one source of his problems.
You did the right thing though, of popping the odd arcane blast to kill stuff beating on the healer. Also, my mantra in any instance/raid is "There's no problem that exists which more DPS can't solve." CoS is a bit different from other instances. There's a lot of running, and a lot of adds. CoS success is all about the tank and his ability to tank mobs and keep an eye on his healer.
Concur on the tank being the culprit. Was probably something as simple as: the DK just changed to their tank spec and forgot to re-enable Frost Presence. If a DK is your tank and adds are wandering around randomly, that's probably the first thing you want to check for.