http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/04/21/one-reason-tanks-wont-pug/
heh. at least two or three times a night i get random U WANNA TANK tells, even if i'm already in an instance. so far i haven't had to /ignore them, but if they keep it up i just reply 'sry boomkin.' that shuts them up. one guy even checked out my armory page and knew i was feral, to which i replied 'sry cat.'
Even at the lower levels! I ran a PUG with my 22 druid in Wailing Caverns, and it was a bitch-fest. With a mage rolling on all of the (obviously) Druid fang blue gear. I kept saying in group "leather? Really?" her reply was "I need to DE for mats". I almost bloodied my knuckles on my keyboard. I never PUG anymore, I just get too angry.
The thing about being a tank - you are often party leader and people will need you more than the idiot DPS player that pulls that stunt. I just boot them from the party.
I got asked to tank once. Or was it she called me a tank? Or maybe it was she said it looks like an oil barrel. I don't recall now, what were we talking about?
In all seriousness though. Good tanks are hard to come by anymore, and they are usually fairly busy. I have been fortunate enough to not be one of those "idiot dps" players and as such I am invited quite often to runs with tanks and healers I've pugged with before. General rule as we all know: Don't piss off the tank, and don't piss on the healer.
Indeed, tanking is a doubly heavy cross to bear. I've tanked a ton of heroics on my druid (I don't even wanna think of how many badges worth of gear I've spent on him), and while I'm lucky in that most of the instances are with guildmates that I mostly trust, I a) get stressed at having to shoulder a lot of the burden for the group's overall effort, and b) wind up being a conscience-less aggro-whore when I do get to do dps ;D
Now that I switched over to Retribution, I see and feel the pain. Not a huge deal for me, as I can swap over to tank gear for the lesser runs, and I am focused on grinding up professions and PVP gear. Once I hit 70, get the gear mentioned in this thread (http://hordedefenseleague.org/index.php?topic=69.msg415#msg415) from quests, and the rest from instances, I will start tanking again.
Quote from: Kellanon on Tue, 2008-04-22 : 10:49
The thing about being a tank - you are often party leader...
Probably another reason I'll never level Iratus. I'm not a good party lead. I'd make a good soldier, but a lousy General. I'll leave the thinking to you smart folks. Cap is strictly for damage output at the direction of the leader. (Oh yeah, I occasionally pick locks.)
I get constant tells to heal. Usually goes: you resto? yes. Healz plz. And when I am doing dailies on the isle, I get requests to group after they see me heal myself, etc. Really odd that some people have "trouble" soloing the dailies. I've helped out some, but normally just toss them a heal now and then instead of grouping.
I don't mind PUGs, when I need to run them. PUGging heroics is painful, though. Or was. Not as bad now. But I PUG when I want to. No biggie. And when I am busy, I politely say no.
You can have some incredible times with PUGs. [ramble warning]
Tell you a strange "PUG".... back after release when people first started in MC. Was running UBRS with DotD a few times with Heavybull and others. Was dps _and_ healing. Was a blast. One of the DotD guys, a rogue, asked me to come to a 10 man of Scholo (back when you could do them in 10 mans). I said, sure. I show up and we roll. Had some Trans guys and others. Was a total slaughter. To spice it up, someone went nekkid and soon we were doing Scholo all sans gear. Multiple deaths each pull. Tons of chaos (tank could not keep aggro at ALL). _NO_ total wipes, either. Was a riot. No shammy head drop, though. :(
Even when things go bad, it can still be enjoyable.
Another PUG. Around the time of most people first hitting 70 (week or so after release of TBC). I get pulled into a PUG to heal for SH by one of our mages (not Kyndi, but he can probably guess who it was). Their healer had bailed. Tank was horrid and I was having to heal waayyy too much and pulling massive hate (and I am in greens/blues mostly). Somehow, this was my fault as the tank pointed out and suggested I downrank my heals (which I was doing, but was limited in what I could do). So, I said fine and used rank 1 healing wave on the next pull.... he died. I shrugged and said sorry. We moved on at a glacial pace. The dps (mage and rogue..... can't remember the other) start to ask him to taunt.... yeah, it was THAT bad. He flips out and starts yelling. We calm him down and move on. We got to the second boss (the shaman ogre guy). He runs in _without_ waiting for mana, then I start to Astral Recall and put out that I "have to go. Good luck!". Followed by the mage going invisible and the rogue vanishing. Thank goodness, I got the recall off. I put the tank on ignore and everyone else sends me "lol LMAO lol" tells. Never saw the tank again. Normally, I don't bail on groups. Or try not to no matter how bad it gets.
And last one..... you'll love this one. I still laugh when I think about it.
While in UP, was asked to PUG UBRS with one of our druids. She NEVER was on without it being a raid night, much less doing a PUG. And I couldn't say no. She kept me sane in some of the bad BWL nights. The PUG was trying to get the Dungeon gear set. Me and the druid were the only ones with purples. It. Was. Horrible. Just getting to Rend was a challenge and there was 0% chance of getting to Beast and doing the event. 0%. The whole entire time, me and the druid were laughing our asses off. It was like the keystone cops on acid. So bad..... so very bad. It actually made my day because it put things into perspective somehow.
OK. One more.
Oney has couple T3 and he is teh ubers just before TBC came out. Mostly doing AVs and laughing at rogues 2-3 at a time trying to kill him. A guy sends me a tell and asks me if I would "please" heal a Scholo run for them. I agree because he literally says, "Mr. Ear, would you please heal a Strat run for me and some others?". This guy was good..... because when I show up, he had formed a group of all Naxx geared guys from various guilds to help him do a 45 min Strat run. The guy, a lock from a guild I never heard of, was real smooth and sharp. We did the run with almost 10 minutes to spare.