Monday, January 25, 2010

Boomkins are Naughty, Some are Naughtier

I came across a balance druid yesterday in Halls of Stone that rubbed me the wrong way. The first minor transgression was an add-on which announced in party chat whenever he innervated or barskinned himself. That information is never useful except perhaps if you are innervating someone else that needed it and wanted to let other druids know you were doing so to avoid wasting it. Other than that anyone being innervated will know by the sudden jump in mana.

The second was frequent use of Typhoon which wasn't glyphed to avoid knock back. Obviously a raiding druid and well geared, probably dropped the glyph recently to exploit Saurfang in ICC by blowing the adds off the edge. Still no one likes that in a heroic, least of all the tank.

The third and final strike was frequent use of Starfall to pull additional mobs and I let him get away with it twice. Third and fourth times not so much.

Now there is one and only boomkin that I like enough to let that slide and often encourage. Anyone else that pulls before me when I am tanking takes their life into their own hands. Usually even if I let them tank a single mob they never die since my healer won't allow it; I'll turn her to the dark side yet. I end up tanking most of what anyone aggros though just to keep stuff off the healer since 99.9% of the time someone who pulls just hits one mob and the rest are essentially body pulled.

Starfall provides a unique opportunity though for someone to pull a lot of stuff and over aggro the healer on all of it! This allows for a naughty tank such as myself to raise the repair bills of anyone who would do it since I don't have to worry about my healer getting beat on. They fall down since no healer alive could keep them up and all I have to do is ensure I am second for threat so no one else gets hurt.

Isn't that just terribly naughty! I'm pretty sure I got a dirty look from my healer when she found out I had done it on purpose after the second time, she asked and I was quite forthcoming. I don't think the boomkin ever figured it out though (or didn't care) as they did it again even after their second death, but I just picked them up that time. I had my fun by that point.

I've become increasingly more open to allowing DPS to tank when they go out of their way to do so. I had a rogue the other day in Utgarde Pinnacle that tanked pretty much every boss and even some of the trash. They had the best gear I think I've ever seen on one person and it was obvious they were going out of their way to pull aggro. At first I was doing my best to hold aggro, but eventually I was ok with just being second for aggro and saving some durability damage to my armor. I was on my death knight so rune strike made up most my aggro and since I wasn't being hit to proc that there was no way I could catch that rogue without taunting. I'm so not using my taunt every cooldown for one rogue not even using tricks (of if they were they were using it on themselves).

Ironically later that day I came across another well geared rogue that was actually carrying a tank who could not hold AOE threat just by using tricks of the trade and fan of knives. I knew that to be the case when that rogue left halfway though Violet Hold, just before the last boss, and chaos ensued. We made it, and it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be, but the difference one good player can make sure is obvious. I was on my hunter and just had to misdirect more as did the other hunter in the party.

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