DPS can carry a group too

I’m back on the Bloodlust Battle Group and getting groups again. I’ve now beat Utgarde Keep three times, two of those times getting me my daily Emblems. Utgarde Keep should be a relatively Dungeon to clear, yet it seems to be the other way around.

The pulls are set up in a way that you typically can pull 2-3 mobs and on the very rare occasion you must face 4. In the worst case scenario the tank should only have to be taking damage from two mobs at any given time because it is reasonable to assume there are two forms of CC in a group, be it Sheep or a DK off tank. The problem is no one uses CC. This creates a more difficult dungeon for the Tank and Healer trying to deal with more damage coming in over a shorter period of time. DPS typically only need to worry about killing things, thus a fairly simple job.

Now an interesting even occurred last night. I got in a group for Utgarde Keep again and I could tell right away this group probably wouldn’t make it past the first boss, however since I have my debuff timer I figured I may as well hang out until it wears off. That ended up being a good idea.

The group struggled the entire time. The healer, a priest, was running OOM after every pull and the tank’s health was doing the yo-yo thing that they all hate. Two of the DPS in our group, a DK and Rogue, were doing about 500 DPS. That left me. I typically push out around 850DPS and can control my agro but this group was having an issue. If we had more DPS spread out over 3 people we would reduce the amount of damage the tank is taking, and increase the mana pool reserves of our healer.

I took it upon myself to put in the extra effort and bring my DPS up to 1200. It took more effort than I typically care to give in a PUG Dungeon and it also puts me in a precarious position of almost always pulling agro. I had to chew up a lot of Soul Stones just to drop agro and stay alive.

The group was fun though, even if it felt like a 3 man. Our tank did her best to keep agro and the healer kept the tank, himself, and me alive. We made it all the way to the last boss, Ingvar the Plunderer. By the time we had reached him I had done over 52% of the damage for the total run and the other two DPS classes each had about 18%.

We pulled Ingvar and the DK and Rogue saw fit to die in the first 10 seconds. The Paladin made it to phase two where he died. I switched to demon form, put me pet on taunt and life tapped Ingvar. I did eventually die but not until I brought him down to 30%.
This isn’t a story about how great I am, I think I’m probably a mediocre Warlock who just plays with subpar people. This is to point out that Healers and Tanks aren’t the only ones who carry a group. One or two strong DPS classes can be as good as an over geared healing. The bottom line is killing the mobs before they kill you.