Tanks and Their Need of DPS Gear

You guys stress me to no end.  no really, you do.  please learn to outfit yourself with tanking gear. 

Last night, me and my girlfriend ran a few level 85 dungeons to try to reach 85 by the end of the night.  I am 20% away from dinging while she dinged during the dungeon. 

We added a friend who jumped from her home server to play with us.  She was happy to be playing with friends, at least, and we did several dungeons together.  on the last dungeon we did before we went out to dinner, we got Grim Batol and got a tank from the same realm.  he was 85, trying to gear up i guess, and didnt know the instance.

First off, the instances are dumb easy now.  they were hard six months ago.  it was fun. it was interesting.  and it was frustrating all in one. it made the game good.  now its almost a snorefest.  and on top of that, we had drakes that killed more than half of our trash packs for us anyway.  so it was triple easy even for level 84's doing level 85 dungeons.  and we get this tank, from our own realm no less, with almost all dps gear and a +int cloak.  at least he was spec'd blood to help with some of the mitigation. 

how did he do in the instance?  he did fine. he did fine only because he was being healed by my gf.  she's working on her holy paladin healadining toon and was healing him non stop.  but otherwise, he was horribad. granted, he did say he was new, so i ended up narrating half of the instance for him, boss fights and then some trash packs. also, i had to remind him that we needed CC in certain trash packs.  he would then wait for me to give to go ahead if no cc were needed.  honestly, having cc makes everything easier.  i dont know why tanks like to grab entire groups and spend just as much time on all the mobs.  our dps will remain relatively the same whether we down a group all at once or a couple at a time.  the only real difference is, would you rather wait for the CC to land, or would you rather wait for the healer to drink after the fight?  normally, waiting for the hunter to set his trap takes much less time than waiting for the healer to drink because she spent all her mana healing stupid pulls.

and so we got to the first boss where EVERYONE and their dogs knew to leave the malignant trog alone so he can be cc'd.  nope.  didnt happen.  i tried terribly to pull him out but he stuck. so my dps was halved for the fight, but we did get through it.  Second boss comes almost right after the first, with a few trash to pull.  it didnt go smoothly at all.  I had to tell him that the big guys are usually the decoys and the ones you need to focus on are really the small caster mobs.  i then began explaining the second boss fight, throngus, or something, and he pulls right after i said something like, if he picks mace, kite.  i had to yell KITE several times when he did pick his mace.  fortunately, this was a normal instance, my gf is an awesome healer, and the tank was at least in the right spec.  we one-shotted the boss.

from then on, CC was common unless i stated that cc wasnt necesasry.  we got through the trash and then on to the dragon fight.  every flame called that was placed on me was kited (just one, lol).  the rest, well they all kinda blew up.  the one that went to the tank blew up.  it was damage, but it wasnt anything we couldnt heal through.  still, bad play is bad play.  amazingly, when my gf said she was out of mana, the dragon dropped the boss and fled.  we cleaned him up with one more flame guy to take care of.  of course, the flame guy picked the tank.  we ended up beating that boss without trouble and went on to the last boss.

the last boss was fun. i put a mark on me to show everyone where the center of the storm will be.  lo and behold, the tank missed it twice.  the only time he was in it was when it spawned right on top of him.  shadow gale sucks ass on normal, so my gf healed through it.  the adds were easily killed.  nothing was out of the ordinary except for shadowgale and we downed the boss with no problems.  then a ring dropped. a dps ring.  my dps paladin friend rolled need.  she was the only dps who needed that ring.  there was a rogue, but he was looking for agi, im sure.  and then the tank rolled on the ring and won.  now i had to yell at him.  and i did.  my gf added her input since she's been there and have been ninja'd by many tanks in the past for her dps upgrades.  and so for a couple of minutes we tried talking this guy into giving the damn ring to the dps who actually needed it.  and how it would just annoy other healers if he did use dps gear to tank.  he didnt see it that way but said that an upgrade is an upgrade and then left. 

well that didnt turn out too well, but maybe he did forget one thing that night.  we were in the same realm.  so once i got out and back into org, i did a trade announcement to "warn" others not to play with him.  in my own fashion, i added his guild.  Y player of X guild is a ninja, please avoid playing with him, thanks.  a few replies in chat were basically affirming that X guild isnt pleasant to play with, etc. 

I'd figure that will be left at that. at least a couple of people from our realm will know that Y player doesnt have great character and should be avoided.  but to my surprise, i had two people whisper me, co-guildleaders, i assume.  who said that this behavior will not be tolerated and that they will talk to him when he logs back on.  i mentioned the person who did lose the roll was on our realm too, and they talked to her as well.  overall, it was nice to know that guilds do care, at least guild leaders, do care about their own guild's reputation within the realm.  through all of this, i hope that the tank will learn a few things.  grim batol is easy. but heroics are a pain, especially with dps gear.  ninja-ing gear that doesnt help you one bit only makes you a bad player.  you might have all the skill in the world, but when rolling on clearly off-spec items make sure no one else actually really needs it. 

character>gear. 
skill>gear. 
lots of things are > gear. 

gear is just a means to an end.  but it doesnt make you play better.  nor does it make you a better person than the next guy.  and dps gear surely doesnt help you tank.  now thinking about it, one of the bosses did drop a caster cape.  the tank did mention that it was better than his cape.  i wonder if he secretly wanted to need on that too.  who knows. 

one last thing regarding the new tank.  i wanted to put him on ignore to avoid playing with him again. but then i also wanted to chat with him in the future if he did change his ways.  i'd rather see someone change for the better than never play with him again.  maybe one day he'll be an great tank.  but until then, who knows.

One last last thing.  i also think it would be an improvement to the rolling system if we can roll for offspec gear.  it does assume that people know what their offspec is, and that blizz would somehow link certain gears to offspec.  although this might be reasonable, there can be other builds/specs/combinations that might be necessary for certain things. i dont know what, but there might be. 

much like how i dont mind casters, say, shamans rolling on cloth gear if no one needs, i dont mind tanks rolling for offspec gear if no one needs.  key words: IF NO ONE NEEDS.

So rolling priority will be like so:  Main spec need > Main Spec type need > Offspec Need > Greed.   where type is the type of material of the item (cloth, leather, mail, plate).  of course, if the drop is a ring or a necklace or a mace, etc, the type will not come into play. and if you totally cant wear it, say a dagger and you're on a paladin, then you get the Greed option only.

or maybe that's too complicated. who knows.  but i still like blizz' way now.  it leaves the interaction, the decisions, and how we impact society and this mmo up to us, the players.