They were a tank, and they advertised their own key. When I first joined, they said they were ‘new’ - I presumed they meant new to Tanking, and was like yea man, no problem. We start the key. I noticed they weren’t doing any interrupts, and they were pretty squishy, but it was my first mythic of the day and I was kind of on autopilot so I didn’t think much of it. I was the healer and was a little overgeared for the mythic so we did fine and timed it.
They questioned why they didn’t get any loot, which was. Odd. Then when the mage asked if anyone wanted the gear that dropped for them, the Tank asked for it. ..a cloth item. I found this pretty weird so I stayed in the group and inspected their gear.
All 158/171 gear. It was a low mythic, but not that low. And they had put on the cloth helm. I asked why, they seemed confused. I mention Armor Skills in their Spellbook and they.. don’t know what that is. I had to tell them how to open their Spellbook, what the General tab was, and then they found it - then I explained they needed all of one armor type. They eventually got it. Not knowing how to navigate their Spellbook was really odd, so I asked how long they’d been playing.
Ten days.
A ten-day-old player was level60 and tanking mid-range mythic keys.
I decide that I’ll just gear this guy up with some Timewalking dungeons to get them their weekly quest and be on my merry way. That didn’t really happen. Once I taught them what Timewalking was, and made sure they had the quest - First dungeon in and I realize they just. Don’t use their interrupt. I ask if they know they have one. They have no idea what I’m talking about.
This eventually turned into a 4-hour session of me doing practice Duels outside Stormwind with this complete stranger, discovering to my horror that they did not know what an Interrupt was, or a Brez, or a Silence, or a Debuff, or a Dispel, or even that their Ironfur could stack, or any Party/Raid functions like Ready Check, or - the list goes on. We only stopped because I had to go, but they added me, so I hope to help them more later.
I feel so bad for this guy.
A tank, doing mythic+ keys for who knows how long, with an item level too low to get any loot from them, not knowing so many of the basic mechanics of the game. And they were saying sorry so much, I am pretty sure they’d been flamed more than once and had no idea why.
Exile’s Reach is pretty but doesn’t teach NEARLY as much as it needs to.
P.S. tank friend, if you see this, know that you did just fine and you’re doing your best and I’m proud of you.
Edit: Some people are assuming they were a boosted character. They were not! They leveled to 50 through solo questing alone, then did the Shadowlands solo quest campaign up to 60. Then just started the dungeon grind I guess. Leveling is really, really fast in Retail.
