One reason there is a tank shortage in group finder

[RikHar]

I began as a BH tank and abuse wasn't my issue for switching over to dps. It was the many knuckleheads who just wouldn't listen to advice of not where to stand or of not what to do. You ask everyone if they've done the quest and if some haven't you explain to them as you go along. But still....

 

Quick example:

 

On the Battle of Ilum run, once you get off the speeders and after bypassing the first enemy group, you'd tell the group not to go on the snow and to stay close to the rails while on their speeders. So what happens? One or two of the group decide to wander off into the snow and wind up being 1 shot killed.

 

Stuff like this happens all the time and being a tank (and usually the group leader) it takes a lots of patience to do this. Some players liike myself have run out of patience, hence the switch.

Edited December 27, 2012 by RikHar

[Viikuna]

I landed a level down with 1k health (the endurance made the difference)

 

I'm not 100% sure of the game mechanics in SWTOR when it comes to falling. But in many games falling damage is percentage based. For example fall X distance and get damaged for 50% of your health.

 

Now if that is the case with SWTOR too, your endurance did not help as much as you think it did.

 

(or i might have misunderstood and you were not talking about falling / falling damage)

Edited December 27, 2012 by Viikuna

[RikHar]

The best groups for HM FP's are the groups who don't have to say anything and everyone knows what they're suppose to do and do it.

 

FP goes fast and smooth and everyone is happy.

[BobaTed]

Actually, Revivification is the top healing talent in the Corruption tree, so there's no way he was specced for more DPS instead of healing. As for the bug with people getting queued for the wrong roles, I actually haven't seen that one yet.

Oops, yep, you're absolutely right. My bad. For some reason I keep reading those things upside-down.

 

The queue bug, however, used to get me often enough to be annoying.

[Rivenwind]

Isn't it always the healers fault?

 

*ducks* ...

 

No seriously ... Tanks and or Healers should be the group leaders since they both have certain perspectives on "battle field awareness". NEVER DPS (and I am primarily a DPS player).

 

 

Yeah. I run sniper for the most part. Can't imagine a group needing me to lead it. Would be a pure disaster, as I find my target and kill it, only looking for another juicy target. Usually don't have much overall awareness.

 

Can only imagine its worse for a marauder/sent.

[Dampylle]

Isn't it always the healers fault?

 

*ducks* ...

 

No seriously ... Tanks and or Healers should be the group leaders since they both have certain perspectives on "battle field awareness". NEVER DPS (and I am primarily a DPS player).

 

If only it were that simple... then again that also assumes that when we tanks (or those medics) explain something that people actually listen.

 

Sadly, that not happening occurs more often than you might think.

[jedimasterjac]

It's not a tank shortage; rather, a shortage of good tanks.

[amnie]

To be fair, having done a lot of healing over the years, healers take this same kind of abuse. I've healed my butt off trying to keep up stupid dps that stand in stuff and pull off tanks only to be insulted and booted. A guildy of mine who heals our HM EC/TFB Operations got booted out of a Group finder SM Karraga's Palace and called "the worst healer ever" because he couldn't heal stupid.

 

Tanks probably do have it worse though because the group generally looks to them to know what to do and lead the group around.

 

Anyway, there are some kinds of people that just want to pick someone to blame for failure - usually the one at fault is the one dishing it out.

 

same thing happened to me when I did a HM LI run (in my campaign gear at that time)

 

the tank was in recruit gear, dead set on 'having done this many times' (totally explains why he was in recruit gear... +cough+) and I was just a bad healer... uh hu.

 

 

 

that being said, I've seen plenty of 'mess-ups', from all roles...

 

I've also seen people queue as dps when they were heal-specced and then freaking out on me for healing, just to leave the group when one of the dps points out that it was obviously them - not me - who did it wrong, since I am the one currently wearing the 'healer' symbol. thehe.

 

or a few days ago... my lvl 41 guardian, dps - and queued as dps - getting told to 'tank' colicoid. fine, we had two more guardians who were both higher level, but sure, I tank.. result? the killing took forever, which was funny considering one of the guardians was lvl 48 (!)... apparently said guardian was wearing tank gear and actually tank-skilled, he was just under the impression he was dps since the lvl 45 ( or 44, not that it matters) guardian that was queued as tank (he was dps) and he was in dps stance.... *headdesk*

 

and don't even let me get started on the sheer endless number of DPS who apparently have never played any of the 'old school' MMOs and aren't aware of the good old 'aggro' rule to either kill the 'easy' targets first - or attack the same target as the tank. nooo, attacking the second (or third) elite is a much smarter idea....

I can't even say when that annoys me more.. when I'm on my tank, dying because the healer has to waste too much energy on derpy dps - or when I'm on my healer when I have to decide between only keeping the tank alive (which is tempting as I kinda like the idea of letting people die when they're being stupid) or trying to keep at least one dps alive since you kinda need dps to kill a boss, too...

 

 

tl:dr

it's not the role that will tell you if a player is good or bad, it's just a lot easier for a dps to blame someone else for failing since if all else fails there's usually at least one other dps who could have messed up instead of you. as a healer I usually see who messes up, but as a tank I rarely notice what exactly dps or healer are actually doing... I only notice if see green numbers above my head or not

Edited December 28, 2012 by amnie

[Quantum]

People can be very abusive of tanks. Having played healers, tanks and DPS in my long years as an MMO player, I found that I was a great DPSer, a fantastic healer, but my true calling was tanking. So, I ended up taking a bit of a break from the game. I came back, started working on my tank's gear while leveling alts and such, so I'm well on my way to being in full black hole gear. Long story short, I'm wearing better than Tionese gear on my assassin tank, about half Columi and half Black Hole, and I know my s***.

 

I queued up last night looking for my quick 5 comms. Group pops for Kaon, everything starts out okay. About the second champion robot pull, I notice my health dropping and staying low. I make it through just fine but didn't get a single heal. Well that's a little strange. We get to the turret event and wipe. Okay, not a big deal, s*** happens. Except, the healer starts whining about how tough it is on hard mode. A DPS instantly jumps in with "it's really not that hard if you know what to do". It really ISN'T that hard, but whatever, let's try it again.

 

Wipe number two, and I'm thinking about baiing when I see the problem. Instead of dropping Revivification, our sorc healer is just spamming on Force Storm to DPS mobs down while nobody gets healed. Same DPS chips in with "Just drop AOE healing on the turret and keep us up. *Sigh*, alright. One more try. We make it through.

 

The second warning sign came on the Rakghoul Behemoth boss. It started out fine, removed the first barrel and started kiting down the long stretch to the next barrel. Then something happened I couldn't believe. I was about halfway downt he run when the healer used Extricate on me to pull me back to the start of the turn, where the group was behind the boss. I got knocked down, so between that and the threat drop I lost control of the boss, and was now totally out of position, and the boss had re-shielded. I managed to taunt it back on my way sprinting through and got it back on track. I got virtually no heals during the fight, even with the little damage I was taking while kiting. Still, while I was nearly dead, we still got the boss down. Okay. One more to go and it's an easy one, no problem.

 

The last straw came when we wiped repeatedly on trash mobs going through the second set of dark rooms. And why? Once again, the healer started spamming Force Storms again instead of healing, dead-centered on ones I had just mind-trapped. I pop cooldowns, aoe taunt, self-heal, medpack and minimize the incoming damage but it's not enough. We still wiped. This happened for a second time before I finally put my hands up and said "I'm sorry but this really shouldn't be this hard." We're getting stuck on this, blah blah blah and gracefully bowed out. I could have initiated a vote to kick, but instead I decided to gracefully remove myself from the situation and find another group. The DPS was little better, and slow anyway.

 

But it didn't end there. The healer decided to come at me in whispers with something like "**** you, you suck, squishy tank" or some such and ignored me right after that. I had already re-queued and it popped right when that happen. I apologized to the new group, and took the 15 minute debuff just to log over an alt and tell this person off.

 

I have never been removed from a group or chastised for my tanking ability. And in comes this healer, with a classy guild name all in lower case, spending all of their time DPSing instead of healing, then couldn't let it drop and had to come at me in tells. One time experiencing that is enough for many people to say "f*** the group finder" and go guild-only.

 

Words of advice to all non-tank puggers. We are the person you wait for the longest in your queue. We don't expect special praise or to exert some special form of 'authority' over the group. We are there to do a singular job: keep you from harm and help the group complete its objective. But I will say this again. It takes us seconds to get a group, and takes you considerably longer. We are thick-skinned, but it doesn't take a lot to make a tank give up on RGF and go guild-only. We don't need you to kiss our feet or stroke our egos. But if you want your queues to be shorter, be nicer to your tanks. A well-played, natural-born tank is a rare and precious resource. Every time you behave in such a manner, your odds of losing one of those resources gives up. That goes for healers as well, I have seen a lot of them get p***ed on lately as well and it needs to stop. But in particular, at least watching the forums and chat on my server lately, there is a rash of tanks reporting getting s*** on by groups/individuals and I just don't get it.

 

This is largely why I rarely PUG with my Tank and when I do, it's with 2 Guildmates, one of which has to be the healer. I'm less picky when PUGing my DPS Sage, mainly because DPS is simple.

[onemoreround]

There are idiots in every role, started a flashpoint few days ago with my geared merc healer & the tank quit before we had even started (nothing unusal). No prob we queued for a replacement & started to work our way through the first 4 or 5 trash groups in FE. New tank appears & first comment is 'So you don't need a tank then?' I immediately thought here we go another player with an attitude problem. We carried on killing the trash mobs whilst we waited for him to catch up & the next comment was 'You clearly don't need a tank' & he quit. We definitely didn't need a tank to get to the point we had but it seems some tanks have inflated their ego a little too far! We all need each other at the end of the day & the ease with which tanks can find a group unfortunately has affected a small minority in a bad way. I've never quit a group or kicked anyone from a group but have been kicked from Kaon as someone mentioned earlier in this thread. It was another case of idiots allowing merc's to stun the healer multiple times & then wondering why they recieve no healing. Nevermind.... Edited December 28, 2012 by onemoreround

[Rothie]

Isn't it always the healers fault?

 

*ducks* ...

 

No seriously ... Tanks and or Healers should be the group leaders since they both have certain perspectives on "battle field awareness". NEVER DPS (and I am primarily a DPS player).

 

 

Simple rule of thumb:

If the tank dies, it’s the healers fault.

If the Healer dies, it’s the tanks fault.

If a DPS dies, it’s their own fault

[Bhemont]

I agree with this. But it does not seem to be everyone. You just mentioned 2 people from this group. One guy seemed to be on it... the healer not so much.

 

My question is, did you guys tell the healer that he was the healer?

 

 

I would have honestly vote kicked him out, since he was the seeming lynchpin to ya'lls destruction and frustraition...

 

It doesn't matter if isn't everyone, 1 or 2 is enough in every group or every 2nd group. It brings you down takes the fun out of the experience, and you always tend to remember the bad things rather then the good ones.

[DarthTHC]

Three simple words explain the bulk of the problems in groups today: Free to Play

[coille]

PUG's are a living nightmare in this game. Any sane person should avoid it.

 

Else you will stuck with a bunch of clowns that is barely capable of understanding their role, gazillions of bro-teams needing every possible item for their friends, drama queens ready to bro-team-kick you in your first mistake and just because you told them to "watch aggro" or "focus on healing"...

 

Seriously...I roleplayed in Ultima Online, I raided in WoW, I met people in Secret World, got into groups in Champions Online and DCU, I even played Final Fantasy. But hell, SWTOR has the worst PUG community out of all. If you want to be succesfull or get an easy time through community, a friendly Guild is a MUST.

 

Yeah completely agree. I don't do PUG's at all now.

[mokkh]

Funny you mention Kaon. I've had 4-5 tanks drop out of group upon entering the instance in the past week. One of these tick turds did so to the group I ended up joining as a tank through the instance. Imagine queuing for an hour to be one of 3 people left holding the bag before you even get to start.

 

In fact I had a dropout today on my sniper, first the tank dropped Kaon on zone in, then one dps dc'd. The sorc and I 2-manned it all the way to the cannon part, tried it and wiped. So we just chatted for a bit, an hour after we started (that's 2 hours for me since originally joining queue) 2 reasonable people show up and we trounce the remainder of the instance without incident. Ended up making friends with a damn good player out of it so wasn't all bad, but was a ridiculous expenditure of time for 5 bh comms.

 

Battle of Ilum: Assassasin tank decides to leave two people who had never been there behind and then drops group after multiple wipes saying crap like "I f******g hate you. F*****g die" to these hapless people in the group. I end up having to coach these two on my healer through the rest of the instance using my dps comp as tank, we beat it an hour later. One was 14k using all recruit and the other was a self-proclaimed pvper who had recruit/columi mix, it was a mess to be sure but they were actually happy to finish it and said they learned something.

 

The point: It's not just dps or heals that are crap to deal with, plenty of tanks get credit there too. For the record, I have 8 50s: 3 tanks (shadow, vanny, jugg), 3 dps (sent,sniper,merc), and 2 heals (sorc, sawbones) across factions. I do 4-7 random hms almost everyday, all are pugs and solo queued. I've paid my dues using the groupfinder, and the kicker is: as bad as this community can be it's still head and shoulders above the bs I went through in WoW.

 

It's not enough to say that there is a singular reason for a shortage of tanks when the reality is that there's a shortage of quality players (or players unwilling to learn), maybe all we need are more veteran players with the patience to set an example to follow.

Edited December 28, 2012 by mokkh

[siegedeluxe]

DUAL SPEC.

 

Oh wait, we can't have that in our game! It would then look like a 100% wow clone.

[lord-durpp]

i've had no such problems on my tank, of all my times pugging fps, never had i had a particularly nasty group

[Zsavooz]

Simple rule of thumb:

If the tank dies, it’s the healers fault.

If the Healer dies, it’s the tanks fault.

If a DPS dies, it’s their own fault

 

that's it. I play a Healer and I cannot for the life of me not think to heal the tank, even at my behest. As a tank, in a different game, (Tera), same idea. It's hard for me to believe that the healer is not healing, ***!? Just nuts!

Edited December 28, 2012 by Zsavooz

[Aelther]

DUAL SPEC.

 

Oh wait, we can't have that in our game! It would then look like a 100% wow clone.

 

Subs have n-spec

[funkhouse]

Personaly if i didnt know that sorc healer i would have just left. After playing ops and seeing how insanely awsome they are compared to sorc heals....I prefer to not have a sorc in my game ever. Ive had to tell the healer after wipes..to just do their job and heal and leave the dps up to the dps guys. Yes Yes i know you want to see your stupid force lightning in all..but hey you rolled a healer spec...do your job or ****.

[DorkTrooper]

People do tend to focus a lot of blame/anger/whatever on the tank if something goes wrong. Sometimes it's justified, and sometimes it isn't. I have only experienced the tank role so far in endgame. I can deal with people making mistakes, not knowing the instance, or being slightly under-geared.

 

However, if a DPS insists on rushing through the FP/op by charging into battle a) before the tank or b) before the healer has a chance to regain force, etc, then he or she may find another tank. I'll take the timeout penalty over running with a group that makes playing a chore any day. Happy queuing!

 

I run groupfinder PUGs most of the time, and I can't think of a time that I've had a healer who didn't seem to try their best to heal/support. The only issue I've had with a healer was one who was undergeared. He realized it and apologized and left the group. We requeued and got another one. I think most people who get to endgame with a healer are fairly dedicated to doing it right.

[Petnil]

Reasons i dont like to pug as tank. I might get Kaon and there´s a fair risc of wipes if your unlucky with the pug.

 

Tunnelvission dps..... They ruin my fun. They make tanking harder than is has to be. Plz dont tunnel on the big bad guy, kill the lowhp trash first and let the tank get agro on the stronger mobs. If a dps tunnels on the "big yellow" i´ll do his job of killing adds and let him tank the strong. Maybe the healer will heal him,, maybe not. When i´ve got the lowhp mobs sortet i´ll probably taunt the strong mob of the tunnelvisioned dps.

 

It´s not that i cant handle those types of dps, it´s that they make my job harder than it needs to be. They go for the 1 strong mob because that´s the easy thing, but by dooing so the lowhp mobs stays alive longer, the group takes more damage and the healer and tank are testet that little bit extra. Just do the group a favour and kill lowhp mobs first. the tank and the healer will love you for it and there´s alot better chance of you ending on the friendlist of the groups.

 

I rarely meet bad healers, or that is i rarely meet healers so bad they cant heal the group. Usually when/if i get called out as a bad healer it´s because i had agro and had to spend too much time healing myself to keep the whole group alive. Only thing i hate more than tunnelvissioned dps is tunnelvisioned tanks when i´m healing. When you get a good tank you realy dont need to heal that much. And if the dps is good too then healing gets boring unless you start helping with dps.

 

Also i like pre 50 FP more than this hardmode. Lost Island is fun with a good group though. Reason i like storymode FP is in those you actually play the dungeon as intended and most times do the bonus boss. And even if lowlevel FP many times are done with noone saying more then hello when we enter and thx when were done, then it´s still more common to get a group who´s not all silent.

[GalacticKegger]

Simple rule of thumb:

If the tank dies, it’s the healers fault.

If the Healer dies, it’s the tanks fault.

If a DPS dies, it’s their own fault

That is beautiful.

[aeterno]

I'm dps but I queue and tank all HM flashpoints. Can I be part of the exclusive clubs guys can I? Well played natural born and all that hubbub?

 

Dude lol, any dps/tank class that isnt a complete greenhorn to mmos and has a decent offspec gear set can tank kaon without even respecing to tank. May be a bit less "elegant" without the extra threat generating abilities/CDs but still quite easily doable. Other FPs you don't even have to change from dps to tank gear. So let's not overestimate our ability/importance here lol.

 

Mostly it just seems funny to me you would bail out after all that work with the finish line in sight lol.

 

I mean its the age old tale. What to do with someone that doesn't know the fights and isnt the best at what he does. On one hand you have a kind word, bit of patience in explaining what's gonna happen and what to do and /w with guidance and encouragement. And on the other the debuff and ignore list.

 

God knows plenty of tanks benefited from a helping hand around the shoulder. I wiped XY times on the last boss in LI when I wasnt tanking it but since we helped the dedicated tank LEARN the fight so he can now do it it was wipes well spent in my book. We could have shrugged, votekicked, been snarky, ragequit and ignored but what would be the point. Thered still be a tank out there not knowing the fight and we wouldnt have anything to show for the time spent in that instance.

 

Wasn't just that healer that failed the group, the group failed him in equal measure. I'll never get the "get by with bare minimum of hassle" and "if its not smooth I just... cannot be bothered" mentality.

Edited December 28, 2012 by aeterno

[symke]

OP ... tanks are a sort of unofficial leaders in SWTOR, so you do have an obligation to remind healers or DPSers of their mistakes. Repeatedly if needed.

I can understand you wanting to try a different FP, as it is your game you are playing, but a group dynamics can only work if the group is cohesive. And for that it needs a strong leadership. Often it is not required, especially with good geared or overleveled groups, but it still gives a group its form.

I don't know enough about tank or healers abilities, so I don't dare question their decisions or analyze fight results, so I, and probably many other DPsers, are counting on a good tank to lead. If ever we meet in FP, please feel free to remind me or anyone else in our group of our mistakes or your wishes. We cna work something out .

 

Oh, and while we are on a subject of good and bad groups ... I can understand that many are doing FPs like amusement park rides. Over and over. They need gear, they like doing FPs, whatever. I understand that.

But they also have to understand the fact that demanding of others to skip dialogues by spaceing and running around just to skip bonus quests or similar is extremely annoying to those that are doing this FPs for the first time, or a re doing FPS for their "story feeling".

Communication is the golden rule of groups.