I think this last response is due to the “fake care” tanks that I’ve seen, who do a ready check not to check if people are ready but rather as a very loud “I’m going now, you better be ready or else” warning.

I’ve rarely run into the extreme jerks who call me a n00b tank, and I think if I did, I’d just tell them to shut up or drop group. In the extreme case, I can always just sit there for 15 minutes – nobody can kick me either. Though that hurts the rest of the group, the one time I’ve had to do it the whiner swore a bit and dropped group after about 2 minutes. We then picked up a polite replacement and finished the instance in good time.

The only wrinkle is the DKs and Arms Warriors who like to come out with the “wow, noob, my alt can tank this, you suck”. Some of them don’t realise that we could tank it, we’re choosing not to.

Ironyca :

Me and my partner reached level 80 on our two new alts, just this evening. We quickly took them through the random heroic dungeon system – and oh boy, were we in for a ride..
[...]
It almost felt like we had to apologize for our greens and blues at the beginning of every run, even though, running heroics is the obvious choice when gearing a new lvl 80.

I think part of the problem is that the original design is for you to run normal lvl80 dungeons for a while to get full 187/200 blues before entering heroics, rather than entering heroics in a smattering of 156-187 greens and blues, but this aspect of the progression path is so compressed that the name “heroic” has become meaningless and synonymous with “5-man”. I’d prefer to see the distinction either improved or just removed in Cataclysm.

Now heroics in even dungeon blues will still attract snarky comments of course, that’s a separate issue and I’m very sympathetic to the OP, I just wanted to pick up on a sub-issue of interest to me.

On the US realms, that ratio is nearly flipped around, if you could a “bad” run as being one where someone did what you described.

I do like the “take it as a challenge” line. I have to wonder if any of the selfish people were running heroics at WotLK launch. That was a challenge – having an undergeared person in a heroic today is just slightly less of a cakewalk.

Me and my partner reached level 80 on our two new alts, just this evening. We quickly took them through the random heroic dungeon system – and oh boy, were we in for a ride..

Throughout the 8 random dungeons we attended this night, 7 dungeons had incidents were people either left randomly without a word, or with the comment the group sucked, this before even entering combat, (we both easily fulfill the dps requirements).

It was a very harsh transmission from 79, where both of us topped normal instances, to lvl 80 and suddenly we were looked upon as if we were complete detriments to the heroic group assembly.

It was often hard not to be rude back to these people, when told we sucked. It almost felt like we had to apologize for our greens and blues at the beginning of every run, even though, running heroics is the obvious choice when gearing a new lvl 80.

It made me angry at the end. Like your headline “I’m Just Here for my Two Emblems of Frost”, well we were there for much more than that. And apologizing for that seemed wrong.

So I tried to come up with a reasonable response to the epic people who called us out on our gear- a response which wasn’t rude, nor a long explanation about gear progression.

And in the refusal of apologizing, and being rude, answering this seemed more befitting:

“Take it as a challenge”

It was a great pleasure to read, especially this blog entry, while being queued between the random instances with rather inflexible players.

I wish more people would take the game as a challenge, instead of expecting cruise control.

Ending on a positive note, the 8th group were 3 dutch players from the same guild. We had a quick but cozy run, At the end I couldn’t help but burst out in gratitude to them, because they had been so pleasant.

- Funny how casual niceness can be so rare these days.
Ironyca´s last blog ..Is it rude not to speak english in a cross-realm pug?

Thank you for the response. I’d like to clarify two things that, on reflection, were not clear in my earlier post.

First, I’m not a fan of the ‘put up or shut up’ attitude of some tanks and healers. It’s not something I endorse and it’s usually not deserved, either. The point behind my original statement was more along the lines of ‘if you just want to get your heroic done and get out of this bad group, you should put up or shut up’. In an ideal world, of course, the three roles would be balanced and tanks, healers and dps would sink or swim simply on their merits. As it stands, though, tanks can get away with a lot because of the shortage. If we can solve the shortage, though, this behavior should get nipped in the bud quickly.

Second, I agree that incentives need to be chosen with care. As you describe, simply awarding more frost badges or gold are likely to encourage behavior that is not desirable. I’ve thought a little about things that might get me to tank more. I’ve put together a short list below:

-more control over who is randomly assigned to my group. it would be wonderful if people I like (eg, the helpful and skilled dps from another server) would automatically be placed into my group if we are in the queue at the same time.

-a buff that helps me level up a friend or get him/her more badges from heroics. I did a dozen chain heroics a few days ago for a friend and, while fun, it was also exhausting for me.

-a longer ignore list

-more power in kicking people from my heroic group. (notice: anybody that queues with a friend becomes unkickable in randoms at present)

-more gold. if heroics were a better source of money, I wouldn’t fish.

-some sort of really fun buff or ability. for example, if I have already tanked three heroics today I would like to be able to cast Bladestorm while in prot spec. I can’t tell you how much fun that would be! I want something that would be so amazing and exciting that my dps would wish they were tanks.

-if Blizzard -really- wanted me to tank more, the special ability would let me Bladestorm one member of the group. I would dearly love to punish the wicked on occasion. It would be fun to use on friends, too.

-a noncombat tank pet. it would rattle along and frighten the perky pug pet. the interaction should be similar to Stinker and the black cat.
Lujanera´s last blog ..Festergut: what does that icon mean?

In fact, due to the scarcity of tanks, I think it could be argued that it is in the best interest of dps players to act as if they owe the tank and healer.

[...]

I see only two ways to [address the tank ad healer shortage]. The first is to get more players to roll tanks. To encourage players to do so, Blizzard created a new tanking class. I don’t believe this attempt has been successful. The second way to solve the shortage is to encourage existing tanks to tank more. Since many tanks run heroics only for frost badges, shorter queue times are not a sufficient incentive.

Remember: you get what you reward. What rewards are there for players performing a dearly needed role?

On the first point, I think we need to be quite wary of diminishing the role of the DPS and building up tanks and healers (full disclosure: I’m speaking as someone with five regularly-played healers). I agree that when viewed pragmatically a DPS causing a tank to leave is worse for them than a tank causing a DPS to leave, but I would disagree that the solution is to “put up or shut up” and let tanks get away with more rather than lose them. I’ve seen as many tanks as DPS be rude, arrogant or ‘underperforming’, yet when it comes to a vote kick it’s rarely the tank that gets the boot. To me this looks like sending the wrong message and a bad thing for the game experience overall.
Personally I’d rather wait longer and get a decent tank than spend 15-30 minutes suffering a bad one, and although that’s down to everyone’s individual choice, I’d encourage other people to consider the message they’re sending by treating tanks and healers as indispensible.

On the second point, I’m probably going to echo what Karatheya has already said in a few places, which on this blog is probably nothing to apologise for . I think giving more badges or gold is not the whole solution to the problem. What I could imagine happening is exactly what Blizzard foresaw when they remove the benefits of signing up to Randoms as “leader”: that people would sign as leader who had no business leading a group. Likewise, if the rewards for (particularly) tanking were improved enough to make it attractive, what I suspect you’d get is a lot more people queueing as tank without necessarily an increase in the quality of the tanks out there.
The problem is the motivations to take on your role. You acknowledge this in your post in a way, noting that that shorter queues aren’t actually a particularly significant benefit for people. I’d suggest that a large proportion of the people tanking and healing heroics well do it for reasons other than “getting more groups”, such as wanting to be helpful to PuGs or guildies, the supportive rather than competitive nature of the role, the satisfaction of knowing that you hold a modicum more control in your hands. The tanks and healers I know of also tend to be the best raid attenders and tend to drift into leadership roles, which leads me to presume an amount of dedication on their part, in and out of the game. Adding an extra couple of Frost badges wouldn’t actually make much of an impact based on my value set, but it might attract a class of people with different motivations.
“You get what you reward” indeed, but I think you need to be careful you tailor the sorts of rewards to the sorts of people you want to get.

Now I don’t have a better way of making tanks and healers want to queue more, except other group members taking pride in making their lives easier rather than harder and everyone making heroics a more pleasant experience overall. I’d love to hear good suggestions though.

It might be interesting if you got an extra EoF for every 5 instances you tanked or healed, but that’s sending a clear message to DPS that they aren’t as important. This may be intrinsically true for heroics, but I don’t think Blizzard wants to send that message (nor do DPS want to hear it).

The “tank ceiling” that Gravity has written about is another big part of the problem – who wants to gear up a tank to the level that groups demand if there’s no space for you to play that role in your guild? Ghostcrawler has said they want any tank-capable class to be able to tank normal Cataclysm instances in DPS gear, and heroics in tanking gear (with the uncrit talent we’re all getting), which may help some. Still, I expect that groups will look down on a fury tank (however capable) in the same way they look down on tanks today who are appropriately geared for instances instead of vastly outgeared.

It’s an interesting subject, but a little off-focus for me. I’m sure there are more than a few tank blogs that will go more in depth if they haven’t already.

Cheers