Dear Honors,

Hey there, glad to hear you're raiding again. I've myself hit 80 just a bit before you posted you did, and heroiced ever since. Or tried at least. I'm currently standing on uncrit, 21K health, and 23K armor, and yet 70% of the heroic groups I try to get into say i'm not geared enough. Now,i know that good tanks at the moment on my server have 30K+ health, but, how am I supposed to gear myself, if I can't get to heroics? I got almost every rep upgrade to my gear I could get,and enchanted every stamina enchant that's better than it's fellow enchants to the same piece of gear, yet still, I can't find a group to the harder instances.What buggs me the most is that with friends, I finished HoL heroic, I even Offtanked Archavon on a time(even outthreated and lived our full epic MT), and I know I have the skill to tank almost every thing in this expansion, considering the time I spent as tank, and the fact that I leveled prot 58-80. How can I get out of this situation?

Thanks, - Hurting For Heroics, Sporeggar EU

PuGs want overgeared tanks. They always have and they always will. It's perfectly fine for the Hunter to show up with a level 75 pet, or the Mage to show up with empty sockets, but the tank better have all his gear up to snuff and then some. This was the hidden truth of the 'tank shortage'. There were always enough raid tanks, but never enough PuG tanks.

So what can you do to make the situation better. First of all, no one is going to care if you leveled from 1 to 80 as Prot or if you just respeced to Prot 5 minutes before the run.

I saw that you mentioned running a successful Heroic Hall of Lightning with your friends. That gives you two possibilities.

First of all try to run Heroics with your friends whenever possible. Get as many of them run as you can. Then when someone in your PuG questions whether or not you are geared enough for Heroic X, you simply link them your Acheivement showing you've successfully completed it. If you haven't completed that exact one, I'd link the Heroic HoL one because most players know that is no walk in the park.

Continue to gear yourself up. You can't control the RNG, but look for crafted stuff, and Badge stuff to fill out as much of your kit as you can.

Keep offering yourself to groups, but start forming your own. I know I'm as guilty of this as anyone, but start being more proactive in your grouping efforts and spend the hour in LFG and trade piecing your group together.

Put good healers on your friends list. On my server, a tank and healer can find 3 DPS fairly quickly to form up a group.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The tank/healer combo is such an amazing start to a group. Yesterday a guildy healer and I were going to do Heroic Nexus. The healer was on his alt. In the space of time it took him to switch characters I had the 3 DPS. And they were good DPS too. I just feel bad because even after kinda asking in guild chat, there was a DPS guildy who wanted to go :(.

Oh well, we kicked VH's butt afterward with the guild.
bobpally said…
Just remember that as a tank they need you more than you need them. They would be fools to think that a tank with 30k health is sitting in LFG for Heroics. Something else I would suggest is when you have to pug only pug heroics that offer an upgrade to a piece of gear you have. If you need an epic shield you should be trying for the one in Heroic COT-COS. Anyhow, I hope that helps some as well.. BTW, I've run a few heroics myself and I only have 21k health. I never get caught on the threat meter and I've never had healers complain about healing me....
Anonymous said…
posts like this always remind me how lucky I'm with my guild. It's a casual raiding guild, but for the heroics, people do not think to much about gear.

I'd say, try to find a good guild and run with them.
Put your favorite healers on your friends list and try to make that you can organize runs with him/her.
Anonymous said…
One little bit of this gentleman's comments leapt out at me - he said he had a hard time finding groups for the *harder* heroics.

Why do the harder heroics? You can gear up just fine by running the easier ones, the ones that people may be more open to taking a less-geared (in their minds) tank.

I'd run Heroics like UK, Nexus, and VH as much as possible, at least until you have the drops you want out of them. Gundrak is pretty easy as well.

I'm sitting at 27.4k hp unbuffed and I have yet to run Occulus, Drak'Theron Keep, or either of the Halls. Haven't really needed to; I pursued the epics that I wanted as well as the easy badges from the easier instances. One of these days I'll run 'em.

And I agree with everyone else that a tank and healer combo is pretty much a done deal for running a heroic. My friends list is about 80% healers.

Fedaykin98
Anonymous said…
I know for me (Holy Pali) I had a friend who was a hunter and for a long time, getting groups was miserable leveling.

Later my wife started playing and rolled a healer as well, and he rolled a tank. We never had a difficult time with finding a group. So my suggestion is make friends with a healer, or recruit a friend to level one.

I would say hang in there and perhaps advertise yourself a little more. If you sit in lfg, people may be too lazy to look there, sad but true.
Aleathea said…
I have noticed that pretty much the only thing PUG's look at is the tanks HP. You may be blocked capped and have 55% avoidance, but they don't care. They want to see a ton of HP.

So, I have a stam set which I wear for the first few minutes of any PUG. Once we get going, I switch to my regular set and they never notice.

I realize that early on most tanks don't have multiple sets, but as you accumulate more gear keep this trick in mind and always start with your stam set. I've found this cuts down on the annoying questions and keeps everyone happy.
Anonymous said…
I second the motion that they need a tank more than a tank needs them.

Besides, the fact that they have such stupid requirements should be a giant red flag that you're grouping with potential idiots who have no idea what's going on in the instance. I've been asked by people when I offer to tank normal VoA with my feral druid "what's your hp and your defense" and I feel like replying "if you have no idea that feral druids don't need defense, why are you asking?" I could tell him that I have 5000 defense and he probably wouldn't know any better.

So don't worry about it, a good group will understand that as long as you're uncrittable you're fine.
Unknown said…
First of all, pugs don't want to do heroics, they want to get free loot/badges, piggybacking on an overgeared tank (and/or healer).

There is also a big difference between what hp you show up with, and what hp you actually do the tanking. What I mean with that is, that when i barely hit 20k hp unbuffed, I tanked with kings, food buff, looked for priest/warrior/lock for more hp. This way i tanked with a comfortable 23k hp (at which point i barely ever felt undergeared). At the moment, I have 26k unbuffed , and I usually tank with 26-27k hp using bosanc, having absolutely no problem with my healthpool. Yesterday I got complaints about not taking damage (healer got bored) so i went dual stam (sonic booster + essence of gossamer for a total of 192 stam) and i was tanking a heroic at 31.6k hp. I have tanked naxx in worse avoidance gear with that much hp.

All this to say that you don't have to have 30+k hp (at which point heroics are total care). Just run with a group that isn't totally retarded and knows that skill > gear. As long as you're above20k hp unbuffed and uncrit, you're good to go. Get a decent healer that you know and dps will be fighting for a spot in your party.

Also, I always stay away from 'LF2M tank/healer' groups
Anonymous said…
I agree with who said run nexus, VH and UK, with good dps, you can plow through each in 30 mins or less, 11 badges for your time.

if you are pointing out to them that you leveled prot when they ask you about your tanking, that doesn't do much for them. i never level prot as it is too much of a headache with the tools they give you as ret. lving as prot and raiding are alot diff, one major thing is the unlimited mana pool to heals you get.

i did have trouble with people myself not wanting to take only a 20k health tank at first, but all you have to do is find a good healer and you are made. if the healer is good, he knows your stats are just fine and if he is having trouble keeping you alive or not.

if you are an engineer, a nice way to fluff your HP is the sonic boosters, you can double stack them and they are 81 stam a piece.

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