Vanco's Comeuppance

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. - Prov. 16:18

I've already noted that my better gear is getting me into the harder instances on Vanco, and last night was no exception. After a fairly easy AN run to net the daily frost badges, the random dungeon finder put me in Forge of Souls.

After buffing up, and telling the group to need the orb, I pulled the first two guys. I should have known right then that I might have trouble with this group in this instance, when I had to taunt one of the mobs off a DPS.

The next pull didn't go very well. I had trouble holding aggro on the caster as well as being unable to round up the mobs. A couple got away from me, and it seemed like they were not yankable.

The poor tanking elicited exhortations to "hold aggro."

Let me tell you, I hate it when someone thinks that I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. I know I need to hold aggro; I was having issues with executing my job. I communicated such to the group and was met with "well some of us are doing our job", which wasn't true as they were not monitoring their threat and using their threat reduction abilities.

The third pull (2 casters, 2 melee, and that stupid ghost that teleports around) was the straw that broke the camel's back.

As far as I could tell, I had 3/5 targeted on me. The ghost targets pretty much anybody, so I was prepared for that, but the other mob seemed to be stuck on this dpser despite my taunts and attempted yanks. I just couldn't get the mob back, and I don't know why.

We wiped, I was told "YOU SUCK" and "you really shouldn't be tanking", and the group fell apart.

So much for any confidence I may have had. I rezzed, popped back to Dal, and logged. I was in no mood to tank anything.

After some thoughtful and non-productive introspection, I've got a couple of things I want to rant about.

Everyone is complaining that there aren't enough tanks. 25 man raids only have 2-3 tanks, 10 mans have 2 or so tanks, and 5 mans have one tank. So there really isn't room at the top for a lot of tanks, so there isn't a lot of motivation for a person to tank.

Adding to that, from the stellar group I had last night, not only are DPS unwilling to give a tank a second or two to establish aggro before they unleash their full 5k DPS fury, but also, said DPS will ridicule and demean any tank that cannot hold a mob against their onslaught. I don't know about you, but who really wants to be the object of disdain for their learning curve?

Now, make no mistake about it, I know that I had real issues holding aggro, and I was at fault for both the lousy pull and the failure to keep the mobs hitting me. I realize that. But for cryin' out loud, dontchathink I could get a little slack or at least the benefit of the doubt? Nah...we eat our young...

It's good to remember that after mountain peaks there are inevitably valley lows. Great victories are often followed by stunning defeats. And just because you're Jennifer Aniston today, doesn't mean that you won't be Linsey Lohan tomorrow...