Heroics - A Lesson in Etiquette

 I wanted to touch on a topic near and dear to my heart. I've been trying to gear up my resto shaman, and finish off my prot set on my paladin, so I've been hitting heroics pretty hard. As such, I've experienced both the tanking and healing sides of random heroic groups. There are a number of things that are understood in groups, and a number of things that should be understood, but unfortunately aren't. So let's just dive in here and open this can of worms.

Tanking
Let me just start off by saying that I'm not a pro tank. I'm no Rhidach or Wrathy. I tank heroics and maybe off-tank 10 mans. I don't have any tanking specific mods and only one tanking specific macro.

However, there are a few basic tenets of heroic dungeon etiquette that I feel tanks never receive.

First, and primarily, the issue of aggro control is a measure used by "skilled" DPS to gauge a tank's worth. However, when you attack a mob before the tank can get aggro, and/or then continually out-threat the tank, that's not the tank's fault, its your's. Get Omen, stop being an idiot, and don't pull threat. It's pretty simple.

Here's a neat trick to see if your tank has what it takes: after the tank pulls, count to 5 out loud, and then start attacking. If you pull aggro without using a taunt, then he probably needs to work on something. That, or you are just disgustingly epic.

Secondly, some DPS (and healers, surprisingly) like to speed the runs up by pulling and then hoping the tank will take aggro off them. Do NOT do this. It pisses tanks off. Often times I let them die, then pick it up. If I play their game, they are never going to learn their lesson. Let the tank determine the pace of the run, because if your tank dies, your group will probably be following close behind.

Healing
Healing on my resto shaman isn't that hard. Granted, my gear isn't that good, so I can't spit out LHW's like dolla dolla bills out of MC Hammer's bank account, but it's still not terrible. For the healing side of things, I only really have one piece of advice:

Don't ignore fight mechanics and expect me to heal you through damage! That just smacks of laziness and should get you booted from the party. In fact, I remember in doing BC heroics when doing stupid things like that did get you kicked, because BC heroics were hard.

Nowadays, if there is a void zone, your game will tell you not to stand in it because when you stand in it you die. When you get mirrored on the last boss of Forge of Souls, you better hope your group-mates stop DPS because not every healer can heal through that damage. If you don't know the fights, ask someone (politely) to explain it or *gasp* look it up on Wowhead.

That's it for now. Go forth and remember, when grinding heroics, DPS responsibly.