December 24, 2009

Kiting? Why?
Yesterday I had a very strange experience. I was going to blame it on the new looking for group system (or "dungeon finder" might be its new name). But, in retrospect, I realize this could have happened in any group, no matter how it was formed.

Heroic Violet Hold was the random dungeon and I was in there on my druid. The tank was a bear with some very good equipment. Clearly he was an experienced player, no question about that. First portal opens, out pops a mob. The tank gets its attention and we start dealing damage. Then, the tank proceeds to kite it around the room. I thought it was odd, as I've never seen a tank do that before. But, I shrugged and adjusted.

The next portal had multiple mobs. Time for AoE spells. Nope, no good. The tank pulled them away from the portal and kited them all around the floor. No chance to focus AoEs.

He repeated this on every pull. Finally, the mage in our group spoke up and pointed out that kiting didn't seem necessary and it was making it difficult for the dps to do their job. The tank's response was...well...something I wouldn't write in my blog. Let's just say the tank didn't like his methods being questioned.

As (horrible) luck would have it, our first boss was Xevozz. This boss requires effective kiting to beat. Can you guess what the tank did? He stood perfectly still, which eventually caused a wipe. He then said, "What? I thought you didn't want me to kite."

/sigh

The group disbanded. Thank goodness you don't get the dungeon debuff if you leave a group while you're dead!

So...his asshattery aside, I'm curious why he was kiting the mobs. If any tank happens to catch this post, please let me know if you can give me insight into why he was doing that. On EVERY other time I've done Violet Hold -- I've done it 51 times on all my lvl 80s combined (13 on normal, 38 on heroic) -- no tank has ever kited regular mobs. Kiting Xevozz, sure. That make sense. But kiting the regular mobs that spawn through the portals. NEVER. Why did the tank do this? He was adamant about knowing what he was doing. But I'm hard pressed to understand his reasoning.

Miscellaneous
Nothing much else to note from last night. I did random daily heroic on each toon then spent the evening snuggling with my husband. :)