The tank died...

A strange thing happens on our raids. Our main tank dies a lot. Sometimes, he's dead on trash, other times it on the boss. No matter what, he tends to go down.

Believe me, it was kinda funny in Naxx for the last boss in the spider wing. But lately, it's been on several pulls through out the night.

If it's not the main tank, its an OT.

So, here are my theories:

The tanks tend to pull without saying they are pulling. They can not blame the raid for this. They have been known to jabber on vent, presumably while waiting for a pat to come back around, then all of a sudden they run off. If they aren't running off, they are moving to odd places away from the group. I don't just mean for the good reasons like WW or chain lightning, but really, really odd places like around the corner or whatever.

If the tanks aren't running off, the healers are going afk assuming that the other healers will pick up the slack. This becomes a problem when three healers try to rez folks, and three go do whatever leaving one or so left to try to keep up with said running tanks. This leaves more people dieing the cycle repeats itself.

We have long and stressful raids. Thankfully, we don't have anyone who says they have to tinkle or feed their dogs or ask questions over vent that could be done in tells. Those were our SSC days, but something similar is happening here in Ulduar and it's getting to be a chore. Folks tend to lose focus during the trash, which slows our game down which leads to more tired folks by the time we get to our bosses.

I told one of our tanks that I rarely bitched about the kind of job they are doing, as I used to be a tank, but this is a growing trend so I will just propose my solutions (now that I have finished ranting) and see what comes of it.

Tanks need to say something! Anything! "Inc" "Pulling" and preferably a few seconds before they run off so the healers can run WITH them. They know when they are going to pull, as it doesn't take that long to get a sense of when a pat is due to return. If it's a quick pull, add a little urgency to that battlecry. It's not doing anyone any favors if the pull is made without the healers.

Healers need to communicate a little more. Use that healing channel to say you are afk. And, since I am a culprit of this as well, we don't need half our healers to rez people. Keep one person back and the rest can catch up. If it's a major screw up then we can yell at the tanks to slow down in order to get enough people back up and running. One or two dead does not warrant that much attention.

Since I never really got to do Sunwell trash (aside from the entrance) I can only be reminded of The Eye trash as we clear to things like Freya. It was a bitch, had to keep focus or the whole thing started over. Ulduar is not quite that painful, but it is evil and will only get worse (Mimiron, shudder).