Back in Burning Crusade, I have a very memorable experience of questing on my druid. She’d just hit 68 and I’d sent her off to the Isle of Quel’Danas [IQD] to start the routine of dailies. I started with the bombing runs and then moved to the Naga side of the island, whereupon I got overwhelmed due to some nasty spawns. I remember that suddenly I was receiving heals and amazingly not dying. I thanked my savior and moved on to finish my dailies. After that I hopped over to my rogue to do dailies. I decided to start with the Naga area this time and whilst running over there passed the person who’d helped my druid. I cheered at him and saluted him with respect and in return got a /spit emote with a “rouges suck and are ninjas” comment.
I was a little floored. I commented on the event in guild chat and got told “oh yeah, everyone thinks rogues are ninjas and you’re going to be treated like that if you play a rogue”. I was a little dismayed because I’d always taken great pains to be honest on the rogue. I rarely used stealth on the island and if I saw someone going for a mob, I went to another – just like I did on every other toon. Nothing else had changed – I had simply hopped from a kitty druid to a rogue. And it wasn’t an isolated incident either.
That’s what I was reminded of the other week in Tol Barad whilst running around on my tank. I got blasted by a rogue, of all things, for being a ninja and a jerk because I wasn’t following his prescribed strategy that “everyone must pull one mob at a time”. I laughed that off easily enough – because it wasn’t the first time I was blasted for “cheating in tank spec” or “lol tank spec” or “you’re fail to do dailies in tank spec” or “you take too long to kill stuff in tank spec – gtfo”. In talking with other tanks, apparently these aren’t isolated incidents either. It’s happening on other realms, to other tanks. And from reading the forums [for what little they are worth], everyone seems to believe going in that “tanks are jerks”.
I’m not denying that there are bad tanks, jerk tanks, elitist a-hole tanks and the like… but to assume we’re all described by one adjective and a negative one at that? That’s going a bit far.
What amused me further was that the rogue in question that jumped on me for doing dailies in tank spec, was sitting in trade not an hour later looking for a tank for his daily heroic and promising to be a model player and not give a tank a problem. I admit, I couldn’t resist and replied that he’d already given me heck for doing my dailies in my main [tank] spec so why would I bother helping him?
He went off on his little tiff about how everyone should just pull one mob at a time and do their dailies as dps. Trade laughed at him.
So ironically, at a time when tanks are at an all high premium in the LFD, we’re getting treated like dirt just for being tanks? Ironic.