Retail tanking habits are causing trouble in WoW Forever dungeons
Limited resources and weaker threat tools make smaller pulls a safer choice.
WoW Forever is supposed to be a slow game.
That was made pretty clear from the beginning, and it is even more true now that the game has launched.
Yes, some players have already reached Level 60, and others are really good at speed-farming groups of mobs with their own experienced group of players. But most people are taking it easy.
You quest, group up here and there with other random players, complete a few dungeons, and enjoy the journey through Azeroth one more time.
Can the Two Co-Exist?
The problem is when these two groups start to run into each other. One wants to take it slow, the other wants things to be as fast as Retail. And inside of Dungeons, that second one might not be the best.
So how quickly should dungeon groups move? And should tanks really be pulling many enemies at once?
The truth is that you probably need to leave some of your Retail habits behind, as WoW Forever dungeons are not designed around huge wall-to-wall pulls.
Dungeons in Forever can be very unforgiving if you try to go too fast.
Tanks have fewer tools to generate threat when they face bigger groups of enemies
Healers and damage dealers have limited resources to work with
A few too many enemies can quickly make a pull spiral out of control.
In Retail, and most recent MMOs, tanks can often easily gather entire corridors before clearing everything with powerful AoE abilities and defensive cooldowns. As someone who main tanked in FF14, for example, we can easily pull wall-to-wall and not lose Threat a single time, and Healers will manage to keep everyone up and running without running out of mana.
Forever takes a different approach. Tanks need time to establish threat and allow healers to recover mana before the next pull. If you keep going, your healer is not going to be able to keep up, and you will not manage to generate enough threat on all the enemies. DPS will get aggro faster, and you will eventually wipe.
It Is Not Just the Tank's Responsibility
It is easy to blame the Tank for pulling too much, or the Healer for not keeping up. But the responsibility is often on the entire group.
DPS players are still getting used to threat management as well. Attacking before the tank has established aggro, switching between targets, or breaking crowd control can make a pull much harder to manage.
Tanks should also not be expected to maintain the same pace for every group. A well-equipped party with experienced players might handle multiple enemies at once, but a group of underlevelled characters or first-time players may struggle with just a couple.
The healer's mana bar is another important factor. If the healer needs to stop and drink, the tank should generally wait instead of immediately charging into another pack. It is your role to make sure your Healer is ready. And it is the healer's job to let the Tank know when they need to refill.
And then there is also the pressure problem. If you are tanking and constantly being pressured to pull faster by your own group, it is not great either.
The best thing to do is to talk before starting the dungeon and agree on a comfortable pace that will fit everyone. After all, a big part of Forever is also the socialisation and talking to other players. You are not supposed to just group up, kill stuff, and leave without a word.
And WoW Forever does not need every dungeon run to be a speedrun. Sometimes taking an extra moment to deal with one enemy at a time is simply faster than wiping and running back.
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