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Tank for Hire
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Post by
hatman555
Background
(TLDR -
Skip to tank for hire
)
I hit level 70 on my paladin tank 1 hour before the release of WotLK. It was my first level 70 and I was a paladin tank!
Tanking heroics and pugging Naxx (lvl80) was what my first true enjoyment of WoW was. I loved tanking. Not only was tanking fun, but it gained you a lot of respect if you were a good tank. Tanks were needed. Trade chat was always full of people
"LF Tank for (insert heroic here)"
. After gearing myself up, and running naxx successfully for tanking upgrades, I not only was a successful tank, I was a sought after tank. I would run at least 4 heroics a day with guild members looking to get gear on alts. I liked running heroics. I memorized all their mechanics, I started to develop tricks to tank them in different ways. I would challenge myself to pull in different ways and quantities. It was Awesome.
Why do something for free when: A.) there is a huge demand for tanks and B.) Getting extra gold for something you like doing is amazing!
When people would shout in trade, I would whisper them, and say that I would tank for them for 25-50 gold. People would say yes, a lot of yeses. The gold coming in would pay for food buffs, repairs, flasks, my raid expenditures. It was a golden system. Then changes happened. When 3.3 came out I was worried I was going to lose all my business. People would have a tank whenever they needed one. The game would do the work of finding one. My worries were unfounded lol. Business is better than ever. With the newer more challenging heroics, the want of a good tank and not a random pug tank of who you can't relay. The bigger driving force for people though, was TIME. DPS queue time was 10-20 minutes on my server. Queue time for a tank is whatever the refresh rate on your monitor was. People didn't want to wait. That is how tank for hire in trade began.
Tank for Hire
Getting a buyer
Hello, I am a Tank for HIRE. I charge 250 gold per random heroic. Pst for an instant queue time and a fast run. Don't wait 30 minutes or more in a group for a bad pug. I am an experianced tank (ilevel 361)©
This is the macro I post in trade. It takes about 3 minutes to get a buyer, but I get one. I fly out to them and take the payment before the run. Once I have the gold, I queue and hold at the "enter dungeon screen" that pops up instantly. Post one more time in trade:
Last call for Tank for Hire, leaving in 30 seconds.
If I get another whisper, I can cancel the heroic, invite, collect and re-queue, for another instant group. If the timer is running low, and its time to press the join button before I get a whisper, i queue and just take 1 person
Tanking the heroic
Tanking the heroic is not a real problem anymore. Even with low DPS the new
Luck of the Draw
makes any pug easy with some minor direction. A 250 gold group means we have 15% more damage, healing, and total health. Running a single stam trinket, and a priest buff I have 200K health O.o
When I run heroics with hires and pugs, there is a certain mentality that I take. Before each trash type or boss pull I ask myself the question
"How can someone mess this up for the group?"
I usually come up with 3 different answers and 3 different solutions:
- 1.) No problems, faceroll DPS and healing - No need for any additional instructions; PULL
- 2.) DPS or healer needs to do something special to survive - Whisper a player, give them a reminder and pull.
- 3.) Entire group needs to work together to avoid instant death - Review the boss quickly in party chat and pull.
By doing this, and marking CC and kill targets, the heroics I run are smooth and mostly event-less. I usually take the quickest path to completion and avoid all bosses which can be skipped, yet before I skip a boss, I always ask the buyers if they want to do them. If they want to do an optional boss, then we do that boss. It's their run. I do what they need.
Loot, and Pricing Rules
Price:
When doing something like this you need to be strict about certain things. Many times I will get whispers of people asking me to tank for less money, anywhere from 50-200 gold. The answer always needs to be no. I politely inform them that "This price is something I will be sticking with for a while, I might be reevaluating it in the future."
Time of payment:
Its always 100% of the gold upfront, no compromises. Its nothing personal, its just the reliability of the system. I am on the server day after day doing these runs. If I skip out on a heroic, I will lose that trust, if a random DPS skips out on paying, nothing will happen. This helps for DC's and it also helps for price misunderstandings. The worst thing that can happen is if you take payment at the end of the run, and the buyer says "oh I thought it was 150" avoid problems like this,
and take the money upfront.
Rolling on Loot:
The need vs. greed rules provided by the game itself often let you roll on many items that wouldn't necessarily be for a tank. If you get asked to help a person roll for an item, I find its just one more way I can keep the customer satisfied. Besides that, I usually roll "greed" or "D/E" on all items except for the Chaos Orb at the end. I do roll Need for that.
Ending the run and feedback
Since the price that I charge for heroics has gone up substantially since WotLK, and more and more people ask me how much money I actually am making from tanking for hire. I started to keep track of the runs I do in a spreadsheet. Some of the things that I now track in these spreadsheets are Deaths, Wipes, Time, Class, Spec, and a single line feedback comment at the end.
Recap: Wipes = xxx || Personal deaths = xxx
Thanks for using my tank for hire service. I hope you enjoyed yourself and it was quicker than most pugs. Please take the time to write me one line of feedback on the service or my tanking. Can be positive or negative.
After whispering that to them, and copying the feedback I get the following:
Tank for hire tracking (February 15th - March 3rd 2011)
Reactions
There are many reactions I get from doing this so openly on my server. May people find what I do offensive. Others who know me on the server defend my system saying that the price is well worth it. Others have started to copy my system and charge 100 gold instead of 250. (I haven't seen anyone doing it as actively as I do tho) So far on my tracking spreadsheet, 100% of the feedback has been positive. Everyone who plays this game knows how trade chat is, so I don't need to go into specifics about the negative things said it trade, but I'm sure you can guess some =P
Summary and Why
I love tanking the new cata heroics
(except for Deadmines F#$k that place =P)
I would rather tank heroics than do dailies or quest on alts. I raid 3 days a week progression. I need some level of income to do that. Flasks, food, elixirs, potions, glyph dust, respecs, and repairs add up when your wiping 20-30 times a night on a heroic boss. Tank for hire lets me have fun playing this game on my off time, while still getting me the gold I need to keep raiding.
I love tank for hire.
Cheers,
Hat
Post by
vincistis
Its really well written.
+1
*Hands cookie*
Post by
285998
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Post by
161859
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Post by
704301
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
hatman555
Its really well written. +1 *Hands cookie*
Thank you! *eats cookie*
Kudos to you for doing this. I remember when I started running people through missions in Guild Wars I got a lot of flak, but you are very right about 1 thing. I had a friend that did that....didn't it become a really acceptable thing in the game? People would even Respect for something called...."running?" where they would make a character thats solo job was just to get to the end of the map so that the whole party would warp or something like that....never really played the game so I just know what i was told...there could be more too it than that.
I'm happy to see another good tank in the LFD system, who won't drop group no less.
Stromstrike - US! Weekends from 2pm to 7pm. If you see me in your group...chances are I'm getting paid =P
also your post is very well written, full of good information and no huge wall of text.
Lol, It's a wall tho. I put in the skip at the begining, people don't really need to hear the history of it all =P
Sadly I see this thread encouraging a few less than ideal tanks charging gold only to fail and cause more problems.
Like I mentioned quickly in my post, some people on the server are trying to copy the system. For 100 gold no less. Its funny to see them advertise in trade. And then others will post "Wheres Ârês?" ^_^
Honestly, I love tanking too. So I always just ask in trade if anyone wants an insta-queue with me. I don't bother charging since I don't really see a need for it (i.e. I have plenty of gold already). Even if I see someone offering money for a tank, I'll tank for them for free. They are usually happily surprised, and that is good enough for me.
Good on you man. Not only do they get a good tank, they get that time savings from you too.
For me, it's fun to tank a heroic. So I'm happy to help out without having haters in trade.
I guess I'm willing to ignore the haters for a little compensation
Nothing like identifying a need, developing a solution, and making a profit as a result. Cheers to that, I don't see how anyone could fault you for your system, and you appear to take it seriously and run your business in a professional manner.
All I can do is take it seriously. I get a little gripe for that too, but honestly, keeping track of the runs, and running people profesionaly its another form of fun ^_^
Cheers,
Hat
Post by
vincistis
You should get a friend who knows code to design you a special personal "Tank for Hire" addon to keep track of info, and records. To keep
every
person you ran with in database, they're comments, and all that good stuff. It should also work with DBM to track deaths/wipes per dungeon, which pulls you are having trouble with. And regularly spam trade with your ad. That would be very neat.
Also, please edit the armory link in your sig, there is a new armory now.
Post by
vincistis
Also, sorry for double post. But you have inspired me. Since I am a mage I can not tank. I do however have portals. I will do the same thing, I am even going to have a completely pointless website to make me look professional. Thanks for the great idea!
Post by
hatman555
I forgot that "Small - Uniform Resource Locator" = bad, and that I'm really not trying to save space in a trade chat. I posted the corrected link to the spreadsheet now.
Cheers,
Hat
Post by
564336
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Thror
I am kind of a pioneer of Tank for Hire on my realm. Since it is a small realm, and people are not used to people offering this kind of service for money, i usually get more abuse than clients. But oh well, noone said that the life of a mercenary will be easy.
Same as you Hat, i started tanking for hire because i need gold for repairs, and this is my most favorite way to earn it.
Post by
ExDementia
People won't pay any more than 50g on my server now :(
Post by
118035
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Junkie55
Just wanna point out that you spelled Throne of the Tides wrong in your spreadsheet (Thrown of the Tides.) :)
Post by
hatman555
Just wanna point out that you spelled Throne of the Tides wrong in your spreadsheet (Thrown of the Tides.) :)
Lol, thats and inside joke, Ares and his terrible spelling. =P
Cheers,
Hat
Post by
665124
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Bellandra
Tanks for hire aren't new and I personally think "more power to you", so I was with you up until this part..
Rolling on Loot: The need vs. greed rules provided by the game itself often let you roll on many items that wouldn't necessarily be for a tank. If you get asked to help a person roll for an item, I find its just one more way I can keep the customer satisfied.
That's called being a ninja.
Post by
Doring
That's called being a ninja.
It's a Heroic, whaaaaaaaa . . .
It isn't like the loot is rare, exceptionally difficult to get or end game level. If your life is ruined by losing one loot drop, then this is not the game for you. Raid loot, I might worry about, random Heroic loot, ummmm, no.
Post by
hatman555
If there was a scale for "level of ninja" where like level 1 is "Friend finishes group quest first because loots last quest item" and Level 10 being "Raid leader master loots 1% drop chance mount from raid" Needing for a group member would be right around level 3 of ninja'ing naughtiness. It would be worse if we were just needed to sell for the 7-32 gold the item was worth, but in this case a player is actually going to get use out of it. Is me rolling on the item to increase another persons chances fair? No its not, but its more fair than another person hitting need for offspec winning and leaving before there is any conversation about loot.
Level 1 - Finishing group quest first because I loot faster
Level 2 - My AOE taps quest mobs faster. GG wait for respawn
Level 3 - Friend helps me need on loot for main-Spec
Level 4 - Friend helps me need on loot for off-Spec
Level 5 - Need on loot for off-spec and win over main-spec /leave
Level 6 - Masterloot BOE worth 5,000 gold or more
Level 7 - Masterloot rare drop recipe
Level 8 - Masterloot BOE worth 15,000 gold or more
Level 9 - Masterloot tier pieces in a pug raid
Level 10 - Masterloot mounts and ride them away from the group after /leaving
Cheers,
Hat
Post by
229149
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