Impatience = the most formidable EQ foe

[frefaln]

First, a disclaimer: I'm having a blast with P99 and meeting a lot of great people. None of this should be construed as crankiness or sanctimonious on my part. They are strictly my observations.

And now for the rant. This weekend was something to behold, a true study in player impatience. In all but maybe one or two cases, deaths of groupmates were avoidable and, more importantly, the result of only one thing: impatience.

I'm a 15 paladin, and yeah, I feel I do my job very well for this level. If I'm not the one pulling I'm very alert and snagging mobs right off the puller on inc. In a patient group where people know about group dynamics, I'll time Flash of Light such that it fires as the mob is next to me, and the fight is pretty clean from there.

But that's the problem. A vast majority of the groups I've found are not patient in the slightest, nor do they have any concept that Taunt by itself is not a license for people to go apeshit on nukes, dots, etc. And so, with every single fight, I cast Flash of Light and hold my breath, hoping that casters will just wait a good 3-5 seconds for it to take hold. And they typically don't, which makes me work about 5x harder than everyone else just to keep things stable.

And God knows I won't say anything in /groupsay, otherwise I'll just come off as that paladin with a chip on his shoulder.

I realize none of this information is new and that this comes off as whining. I get that. But with any luck, a young tank will come across this post and realize that he/she is not alone. You're not crazy, you really ARE working exponentially harder than most people in your group, and yet your job is generally thankless (and boy, will you hear about it if you screw it up).

Maybe when my patience runs out, I'll start dropping nice hints asking people to not slow/nuke/dot on inc. And of course there'll be some bruised egos and hurt feelings in the process, but maybe that's the price I'll have to pay in order to actually enjoy pick-up groups from time to time.

[Bruman]

I think people generally learn as they play too. In most groups that I'm in now. most nukers don't cast till the mob is 75-50% dead.

As a matter of fact, in most groups nowadays it seems the most problematic thing is people constantly ninja-afk'ing. Especially healers.

[frefaln]

^ fair enough, it seems you're having better luck than I in terms of the patience dept. I haven't had much of an issue with AFK'ing (yet), but yeah, that'd be frustrating too.

[Arkis]

Yeah, pretty much what Bruman said.

However, I will add that even at higher level some people STILL do not ASSIST. As a bard it's already a bit more crazy than other class... but add the people (especially Mages/Necros) who are half paying attention and not assisting and I just want to ragequit. I didn't even realize you could do this /assist MA -> /pet attack, in one macro until I played a necro recently. How hard is that? Seriously? =P.

For the most part though other than that people get better as they keep levelling.

[Alleusion]

If the players are truly new to EQ, they will learn soon enough not to do anything on inc. It took awhile as a young cleric to learn not to heal the puller as he came tearing down the hall with 4-5 things on his tail. I had to sit there and bite my nails as he FD'd (if the puller was a monk) to bring one or two to camp. As an enchanter, I learned that having a warrior tank (in PoP) was akin to death for me. No one could hold hate like a paladin or SK. Wizards that over nuked, or woke up my mezzes got left to deal with Mr. Unhappy_Mob01 all by their lonesome.

[Kraftwerk]

Originally Posted by Arkis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah, pretty much what Bruman said.

However, I will add that even at higher level some people STILL do not ASSIST. As a bard it's already a bit more crazy than other class... but add the people (especially Mages/Necros) who are half paying attention and not assisting and I just want to ragequit. I didn't even realize you could do this /assist MA -> /pet attack, in one macro until I played a necro recently. How hard is that? Seriously? =P.

For the most part though other than that people get better as they keep levelling.

I can explain this one as a Magician. You have to give some slack to us Magi and our brothers in death, Necromancers. We become so accustomed to faceroll soloing that when that once a blue moon grouping time comes along we are borderline retarded in knowing what to do.

[Goobles]

Dude, it's common code. Casters need to nuke mobs before a mob gets down to 90% or they might as well be replaced by rangers.

[frefaln]

Originally Posted by Alleusion [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As an enchanter, I learned that having a warrior tank (in PoP) was akin to death for me. No one could hold hate like a paladin or SK.

Oh man, I can't even imagine trying to roll a warrior on P99. I played an Ikky WAR to 65 a few years back, and though I enjoyed it, the only thing that made it tolerable was the LDoN anger augs and some disciplines.

Unless I'm mistaken the P99 warrior isn't going to have a whole lot of help in the anger department, thus he/she'll need an extremely disciplined group to truly shine. I just haven't seen enough of that discipline yet to have much faith, so I won't be rolling a war anytime soon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[kariden]

I enjoy when groups rage on the healer because half of them died on that last pull of 4 or 5. Lets just go ahead and forget the fact that the healer said "LOM 10m" which in puller speak must mean "omfg get 10 mobs right nao"

[Auvdar]

You gotta remember, most of these people leveling spent a lot of time in WoW. SO basic group mechanics need to be retaught. As the tank in your group, that duty falls soley on your shoulders. When I play my paladin alt (lvl 15 too omgawds) im constantly telling people to not do this, don't do that, etc etc. As long as you are nice about it, most people are happy.