Dear brothers and sisters in arms,
I am a tank. I enjoy tanking. It's a responsible job with plenty of risks and a nice amount of challenge. If I do it properly and with the right support from DPS and healers, I can really speed up the content we're running. I enjoy tanking so much, that I have several thousand 5 man instances under my belt as a tank through 4 expansions, the vast majority through random groups. I leveled as a tank back in TBC. I have tanked on all 5 tank classes, though the vast majority of my experience at max level is on a Paladin tank.
That's why I'm saddened to see so many DPS claim that their tanks are lazy because they sometimes wait a few seconds before pulling. Some of these DPS even pull themselves because they want things to move faster and assume that the tank is capable of getting fast aggro on those mobs. And if I can't manage to do so, they yell at me for being slow and call me names.
Here's my side of the story. When I'm waiting a few seconds, that's usually for one of 4 reasons:
1. I am slowing down so I can assign marks for targets that need to die ASAP, or when I'm typing something in chat for you guys to know or act upon. I rarely do this these days because of...
2. I am waiting for 5 seconds max so a key ability is ready that will allow me to pull multiple packs at once, or that will allow me to pull a pack in a more controlled fashion. Usually, this skill is a ranged silence like Avenger's Shield, but it can also be another ranged ability, or an ability that allows me to generate aggro better or interrupt a lethal spell. I also include waiting for patrols or mob movement in this group.
3. I have a debuff on me that I don't want on me during the next pack. For example, I don't want a -healing debuff, a strong DoT, a slow or a + damage taken debuff on me when I go to the next pack, because they can be dangerous to my survival.
4. I noticed that the healer has really low mana and will likely run out during the next pack.
These are also ordered roughly in order of importance to the wellbeing of the group, with marks being least important and healer mana being most important. You interrupting me marking isn't that big a deal. You pulling when the healer is low or when I'm badly debuffed might wipe us. More importantly, all 4 of the above allow me to make bigger and more controlled pulls, controlling the pace and speeding up the instance. You pulling in my place might actually slow us down.
An example: If the healer has decent gear (around 675 or higher), I usually pull the first 3 trash packs of Auchindoun together. Same with the 3 packs before the 3rd boss there. There are a number of other places where I do this as well, like in Blackrock Spire, in the Everbloom, and in Iron Docks. If you pull in my place, instead of clearing 3 packs at once, I end up having to pull them in 2-3 pulls. This slows us down. And if you now say "well, then I'll just pull all 3 packs myself", you just made my job 10 times worse, because I have to pick up 15 mobs at once who are going after 4 different targets at once, instead of carefully aggroing 3 packs of tightly clumped mobs that can easily be pulled together.
If I'm pulling multiple packs, I need to be careful about multiple things. My first priority is trying to clump them all together so you got an easier job of killing them all. After that, my priority goes like this:
0. Manage my active mitigation so I don't end up as a stain on the floor;
1. avoid all the fire on the ground;
2. interrupt heals and other dangerous stuff;
3. Keep them all in front of me so I don't get backstabbed;
4. Keep them all aimed away from the group in case any of them do a cleave or a frontal cone.
5. Stay aware of my surroundings so nothing extra is pulled and I know where to go next.
You might think that all of this is easy, and while some of it does become easier to handle after a while, I still need to hone my skills regularly. I still run 5 man content multiple times a week to practise my skills. And I still mess up sometimes, because every group is different.
The tank might be waiting, but he's not lazy. You don't know why the tank is waiting, but usually, he has a good reason to. So the next time a tank is delaying his pull by a few seconds, don't pull in his place. He might be preparing for a monster pull.
Yours truly,
The decent tanks of WoW
