1. Never, ever ever pull aggro off the tank.
Today, a mage could burst open his AoE four seconds before the tank pulls and it just doesn't matter. The mobs would die in the next few seconds, armor has far outpaced a mob's ability to really hurt the wearer, and the healer had almost all the time in the world to prevent that sort of death. No more. When you go to the Throne of Tides in Vash'jir, and pull aggro, you are dead the moment that mob turns away from the tank. The mob is going to pound you to within an inch of your life, and even if the healer can pause from protecting the tank, he isn't going to get his heal on you before the mob hits you a second, fatal time.
2. Stop jumping around.
Positioning mobs is going to be more important, especially when CC is involved. A lot of tanks have become somewhat glib about how they simply charge into a fight and you see them bouncing up and down because we all know that the only thing more fun than playing WoW, is playing WoW when you are constantly hitting your jump button. As a corollary to this, melee dps will do better numbers if they are not bouncing as well, and should never, ever do that PvP movement thing where you continually circle your mob, pretending that you can get it dizzy or something.
3. Put away your damage meter.
These stupid things in the hands of noobs turned your average dungeon content into a battle of wills between the dps players, determined to show how utterly fantastic their dps was by being able to lord it over the rest of the group. Dungeoning is supposed to be a kind of "all for one!" group activity, not a tournament for showing off to anonymous people you are likely to never see again. There really is nothing useful to be learned about how much damage one causes in a fight. And I would argue that whoever is doing the highest dps is probably contributing the greatest risk of wiping the party.
4. Tanks, do your healers have mana?
No really. Do they? Tell me right now. You guys don't know because the answer has been "yes" for the past two years, enabling you to go plowing ahead without any consideration about that question whatsoever. I should be fair; it hasn't mattered for the most part. Healers stopped bringing mana drinks to the instance too because it was so not a problem. It's about to become a problem again. A big one. Don't be one of the schmucks who will go charging into the next group of trash mobs while your healer is sitting down to have a drink. I will have a hard time not laughing at you when you do.
5. Tanks, Healers, are you really prepared for this?
I have noticed a rash of dps players trying to tank or heal dungeons because they can get in and out of their daily random faster that way. They are kinda mediocre, but being overgeared in Northrend, it really didn't matter. There was a run I tried to take in Stonecore beta over the weekend. A DK tank popped in, using the wrong specc, and splatted against a wall of mobs and /shamequit. After a considerable wait, a warrior popped in with dps gear and a shield and did the same thing. Everybody else quit after that.
There is a very sad but true reason for this, that no one really wants to talk about. It is that tanking and healing actually do require more effort than dpsing. I don't say this to dismiss dps players. And I really appreciate strong dps players. But I say it to point out that good tanks and healers know this is true and they try harder long before coming to the dungeon. (That's how to make it look easy!) Players looking to take a shortcut through the LFG line just make spectacles of themselves.
6. Don't stand in the fire.
I really shouldn't have to say this. But I did. I was watching the open raid event at Blizzcon and Paragon wiped several times on the first set of bosses, mostly because their melee dps didn't get out of Baron Gedon's AoE fire. Baron Gedon will be back, sitting out there on the slopes of Mt. Hyjal just waiting for you to pay him a visit on Dec. 7. Don't stand in the fire.
7. Bring your buffs, baby.
I keep doing heroic ICC and realizing half way through that I forgot to take my flask. Tsk. A good challenge is beaten by inches, not a mile. That potion or scroll or whatever might be the inch you need.
8. Don't /shamequit.
This is a relatively new phenomenon. Somebody doesn't like the group they are in, so they just log out of the game without saying anything. Usually, right after a wipe. More often than not, this is the person who might have been responsible for the wipe. Hence the "shame" part of this quit. The rest of the group is not 100% sure what just happened, if there was an accidental DC, or something, so we wait longer than we need to because we are not smacktards, and then decide to go on. It is even more frustrating when a tank or healer does this.
9. Abandon LFG
This last one is really just my plan really. I think doing random groups has gotten a lot of people through a lot of content a lot faster and that is probably good. But as a result, I don't know many people on my server anymore outside of my guild. Who would be a good dps to invite to a raid as a replacement? I dunno. I never meet anybody from my server anymore.
When Cataclysm goes live, my first method of dungeoning shall revolve around my guild. But after that, I think I might just go to tradechat and start asking for people to join me. I think we might all have a better time that way.
A good write-up and a good read! Looking forward for cata. Blizzard bringing back the fun in 5-man instances. No more AoE tanking. :)
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