"Gogogo" and being on the other side

Thanks to Shayzani from 2fps for letting me write my first ever guest post. Hurrah!

One of the things I mentioned in said post and that I wanted to talk about in a bit more depth is the issue of "gogogo" people in instances. I'd like to think that I'm a pretty patient and mellow person both in real life and in game, but there's just something about the phrase "gogogo" that makes me see red instantly. In part I guess I simply don't like to be rushed in my leasure time, and from my experience those who constantly push for everyone to go faster tend to expect an absolutely unreasonable pace. I realise that everyone probably has a different idea of what the ideal speed for an instance run should be, but I dare say that for the average pug group rushing from beginning to end without ever getting out of combat is simply asking too much. There will be breaks. Maybe the healer needs to drink up, maybe one of the dps is lagging a bit behind after skinning the dead mobs from the last trash pack before the boss, maybe the tank would just like to pick up his share of the loot too. Maybe someone received a whisper from their guild leader, maybe someone's phone rang. If having to wait even a couple of seconds for that kind of thing to get sorted makes you twitch, you have a problem.

More than anything though, I think it's simply the implied tone of the phrase "gogogo" that gets my goat. I mean, when do you ever shout "Go!" at someone in real life? If you're starting a race maybe, but otherwise it's likely to involve a situation in which you're annoyed with the other person and want them to get a bloody move on already. Saying that kind of thing to your tank every time he hesitates for two seconds just strikes me as utterly inappropriate and rude. In fact, it reminds me a lot of Tam's rant about people overusing the acronym "ffs". Communication skills, people!

Now, the other day something funny happened. I was in a heroic Utgarde Pinnacle run with my mage... and I found myself thinking that the tank was going kind of slow and wishing that he would go faster, seeing as he seemed to spend quite a lot of time between pulls just standing around. And almost as soon as I had that thought I did the mental equivalent of clapping my hands over my mouth and blushing furiously, feeling like I had committed a "gogogo" thought crime.

So, what do you do when you would like your tank to go faster? You could ask politely I suppose, which someone in the party eventually did - though then the shaman healer insisted on starting to pull whole groups with chain lightning to speed things up, which kind of ruined the effect of the initial polite enquiry.

Something still felt off to me however, and after thinking about it some more, I came to the conclusion that it's probably the fact that nine times out of ten, asking the tank to go faster - even if it's done politely - won't actually achieve much beyond making him miserable. I mean, why do people think tanks pull at the speed at which they do? I doubt anyone would make deliberately slow pulls just to waste people's time and piss them off. Neither is a tank very likely to be distracted enough to have forgot what they are supposed to be doing.

Most of the time the tank will pull at the speed at which he does because that's what he's comfortable with and what he considers fun. If he's new, that can be quite slow. The tank in my pug for example definitely exuded a certain aura of newness or at least rustiness, presumably thinking about how to best make each pull whenever he appeared to just be standing still for longer periods of time, and sometimes rounding up the mobs a bit clumsily. But even if the tank is not new there are plenty of reasons for them to want to slow down occasionally. Would I rather pull that group of casters now and struggle to get aggro quickly or wait five more seconds for Avenger's Shield to come off cooldown? Easy one! Or take loot. I'm continually amazed at the amount of tanks who don't seem to loot anything during instances, but that's their choice. Personally I like my sparkles even when I'm tanking, but people already get fidgety if I take even three steps backwards to grab the gold from the mob that ended up dying behind me.

To get to the point, what is it going to achieve if you ask a tank to go faster? The newbie might struggle to keep control while pulling things faster than he can handle, convincing him that he sucks at tanking and should just give up now. Another one might keep going even if important abilities are on cooldown, but the ensuing chaos is unlikely to increase his fun factor either. Or he might decide not to loot even though he wants to, just to speed things up, and then decide to sign as dps next time so he can actually get what he wants. In other words, all you're likely to achieve by putting extra pressure on the tank is that their job becomes less fun and they are less likely to do it again. First off this is hardly desirable considering that tanks are still highly sought-after for groups, and secondly I thought we were all in this to have fun. Don't spoil it for others just for the sake of speed. If you're so pressed for time that two minutes of delay will completely ruin things for you then you shouldn't be signing up for random instances with pugs.

The only situation I can think of where it would really make sense to ask the tank to go faster is if you're say a new healer and you think that the tank is holding back for your sake even though you feel that it's not needed. But even then I'd make sure to point out that that's what I'm thinking and don't pressure them into going faster if they don't want to.

You want them to lead, let them pick the speed. It's the least you can do.