Warrior Aggro Issues - Need advice

[SICC]

So as the title embarrassingly suggests, I am in need of some advice when it comes to tanking, and keeping aggro.

The reason I'm making this is, I had my worst experience as a tank a couple days ago while doing RFD.

TL;DR - Struggling with keeping aggro 100%, need advice on which ability's to use, and when.(If you can though, my story is for a specific dungeon, so might help me if you can skim through the first part.)

I'm level 44 now, and I had issues even doing the first boss for RFD. When I hit the gong the first time, and those normal undead mobs come out, while it wasnt hard because they are normal, I was having issues getting all the aggro on me. Since Challenging shout has a 10 min cooldown, I try not to use it unless it's a do-or-die situation. With that said however, that isnt the part where my bad experience came.

My bad experience came on the second gong wave. I hit the gong, and the two initial mobs come storming out. So, I attack them, and try and pull them do me. That is when the other pack of 4 elites come out. This is where it gets bad. Once those 4 undead creatures come out, they ALL start webbing me like crazy, basically making me bound in place.

While that happens, every time, they start targeting the healer, and kill her instantly. This happened FOUR times, FOUR times... After the fourth time, understandably, the group was done. I apologized profusely for the wasted time, and I felt like crap afterwards. Now, when this happened, I didnt think to use challenging shout during the second gong wave as I was so flustered by what was happenimg, and disappointed in my complete failure as a tank. But even so, im not sure how much that would of helped, as in general, im having issues getting aggro off DPS/healer/etc.


So the advice I am seeking is; What are the rotations you use to keep a pack of mobs aggro'd on you 100%. For the most part, when I tank, I can get the mobs to focus me, but there is always that one or two who will stop, and start going after a different person.

Usually if I can, i'll charge in, rend, thunder clap, defensive stance, and try and spam cleave as much as I can, or revenge. Another way I have tried was, the same set up, but instead, I would try and get sunder armor and as many of the mobs as I could. But no matter what I do, I just can't seem to keep the mobs aggro'd on me 100%. Even with using raid symbols for DPS to focus on a single mob, it's like I cant keep up with their threat. I do have that KT-something add-on that tracks threat, but it doesnt seem many people use it, so i cant exactly see how far behind im getting when I lose the aggro.

 

[frederik]

Don't be discouraged. That encounter is pretty tough as mobs approach you from two different directions and you can't pull them yourself.

Tanking is team work if your group does not help you it can be hard to do if you have to take care of many mobs. Tell the mages to not use AoE in the beginning of the fight. You won't build up enough threat to keep the mobs right after they spawned. Also click away any HoTs healers may have cast on you before the fight starts. Each tick generates threat. That could be a reason the mobs were running straight to the healer after they spawned. In situations that are hard to control, eg. there are many elites to tank, it's usually safer when everybody is focussing on the same mob. It should not be that hard to hold aggro of other targets against heals.

Don't waste rage on Rend and Thunderclap. Those do not generate much threat at all. It is best to just stay in Defensive Stance all the time. So make sure you are in Defensive Stance. Right after the spiders spawned use Berserker Rage and Battle Shout. Make sure you buffed all your team members. The spiders should all run straight to you at this point. Even if they net you now it should not be a big deal. Now mark the main target with a skull. Everybody should focus on that one. As those spiders dish out a lot of damage pop Shield Wall if it is available. That way the healer does not have to heal you that much and generates less threat.

Right after the pull I usually pop Shield Block and Revenge on the main target. Revenge creates more threat than Sunder Armor but you have to wait until its available. If it does not pop and you need threat instantly, use SA instead. Then I use SA again on the main. Now start to cycle through the targets and apply either SA or Revenge if its up. Use it once on every non primary target. The main target should now almost be dead. You could use Taunt now, if you think it will die within 6 seconds anyway. That saves you some rage. Mark the secondary target (usually with a cross) apply Revenge and Sunder Armor and cycle through the other targets again. If you have excess rage and don't need your global cooldown use Battle Shout in between. It generates threat for each member buffed even if they already have it on all mobs. So thats really useful to do some AoE threat against heals for example.


So thats what I do on most encounters anyway. Sure some need other tacticts but this works on almost everything.

Usually I mark primary (skull), secondary (cross) targets before the fight. Also mark CC like Polymorph. I use moon for that. Square is for all other CC like Sap or Shackle. It might be useful to keep track of patrols as well. I mark those with a triangle. Cool thing is you can see that mark through walls, so no surprises.

After the marks I make sure I am in Defensive Stance as all my abilities generate way more threat that way. I range pull the primary target, use Bloodrage and Battleshout to do some threat on all targets. You should be able to keep the the mobs even after the first 2 heals or so. Then I use Shield Block and Revenge and Sunder Armor on the primary target and start to cycle through the rest of the targets. That rotation is usually enough for most encounters.

If you see that a team member pulled another mob or group just use Battleshout instantly. The other members most of the time did not do any threat to those so they should run straight to you. You don't even have to change your position for that to work. You can pull casters that way too. If you aggrod them with Battleshout just break Line of Sight to make them approach you.

Also you can use Taunt on targets that die within a few seconds instead of other abilities that cost rage, if you think you might lose aggro otherwise before it dies. After the taunt you can immediately focus the next target to get ahead of the group.

Casters and healers generate way more threat when they are in melee range, so make sure you tank mobs away from them.


Perhaps some stuff is inaccurate as I am not super experienced as well. But this is working very good so far (if the group doesn't go full berserk of course).

 

[vido]

Your only source of AoE threat really is battle shout on k2. You can spam that a few times first to beat some initial healer threat and meanwhile hold aggro on the primary target. If the dps are just hitting whatever then you really have to rely on your taunt and mocking blow. Sometimes you don't even have to tank casters for example just conc blow and shield bash.

If you want to keep threat, thunder clap is pretty abysmal and rend is horrible threat too. It's also a bad idea to charge into stuff 90% of the time, pull with your ranged that way you avoid aggroing multiple packs and the mobs will come at you one at a time rather than a huge burst of damage.

Without challenging shout up on a really big AoE group like the skeletons in strat UD, you're usually better off focusing on threat on 2-3 mobs and not using battle shout at all if you have a lock or mage AoEing them down and taunting additional mobs to keep the caster alive.

Your highest priority should be using shield slam followed by revenge>(shield bash)>sunder. Shield bash does more threat per rage than sunder so it's very useful to use even purely for threat. Cleave is decent threat if it lands on 2 mobs, but it's very inefficient and it helps very little to hold threat on your primary target. Since rage is very limited outside of 40man raids, you generally avoid cleave and heroic strike like the plague.

Also rage cost is important to keep in mind, if you don't have the rage for a shield slam you're sometimes better off using a less efficient but cheaper ability just to maintain aggro on pull. Managing your rage between pulls can also be a big deal, don't blow your rage on executes or sunders if you have a threat lead. Starting pulls with 0 rage can put you in a bad situation.

Another important aspect is the mechanics revolving taunt. When you taunt at mob that isn't attacking you and if you're in that mobs threat list, you're automatically put at the top of the list but you still have to follow it up with something if you want to keep aggro after the duration of the taunt ends. It does nothing apart from forcing the target to attack you for the duration of the taunt if you weren't on a mobs threat list when you used it. Also it does nothing at all if you actively have aggro on the target.

Now single target threat is brain dead, it's doable by spamming a single macro. A true test of skill is multi mob pulls, the more mobs, the higher the skill cap of tanking them. To get an idea of how much threat you need on every mob you should track the hp bars of all of them. You also have to recognize when regaining aggro on a certain mob is futile and ignore it until your taunt comes off cooldown.

 

[Bolverk]

The best way to do this particular pull is to tell the DPS to only use single target DPS. Then tell them to stand right next to each other, e.g. next to one of the pillars. Then you hit the gong, stand just a short distance away from them and start spamming battle shout until everything is dead.
Preferably you mark one skull target that you auto attack while spamming Battle Shout.

What will happen is you doing your maximum AoE aggro, which will just be enough to keep the mobs off the healer. Maybe the DPS will pull aggro of the main target, maybe it'll stick to you. Either way is fine. If one of them attacks the wrong target it'll attack them for sure but they can take the damage. If someone is stupid enough to use AoE chances are good they and the healer will die because first all of the mobs attack them, then they attack the healer because it messed up the aggro table and the healer had to heal the DPS.

 

[SeeQ]

Yo, make a group of usefull people and it'll be easy. They need to make some effort, not just blindly hit greater heal or shadow bolt

 

[Cpstabber]

BTW don't be discouraged, the pull with the gongs and the 4 large spider type mobs is one of the hardest pulls you will encounter until lvl 60 instances.

While it is good to conserve your CD abilities, experience running an instance will allow you to know when the next difficult or big damage pulls come in, and use the abilities confidently, knowing they will be off CD when the next time it is needed.

That being said, I go all out on that pull. Shield wall, pot, challenging shout (not at the start but after healer gets threat). Pulls that are difficult like that and no snap aggro, just mark a kill target, get hits on the non kill targets to ensure the healer can heal you w/o getting threat, and taunt the main target, move back to the other targets. When taunt is about to wear off, mocking blow it if needed. Focus the non kill target and the healer should be fine.

Mix in what SeeQ said - pretty much they need to be mindful of the situation knowing I prob shouldn't open with an AoE/Blade Furry/WhirlWind/Flamestrike.

Do not feel discouraged. But if you ever go back in there, don't hold back on that pull.

 

[Karben]

This pull is very difficult. Especially since hunters, mages and warlocks are beginning to get their aoe smash abilities. The whole of RFD I was have a helluva time holding aggro because of arcane explosion and multi shot. I even specced protection on one run to see if that helped at all. It didn't. And if you ask the Mage to stop AEing you gimp your groups ability to burn through the trash. Best to just focus your attention on as many elites as possible. Let the Mage hop around rooting, and blasting everything and hope for the best. Sometimes when I know the Mage has the focus of all the mobs and s/he knows what she's doing, I realize that all I'm doing is spamming taunt on cd, which is worthless, I'll pop over into battle/zerker and equip my 2h and just help with dps. Trash packs are usually fairly simple it's the bosses that must be tanked.


The encounter you speak of is a HUGE pain in the ass. What sucks even more is if you wipe and have to restart. If you have a rogue or hunter and it looks like you may wipe, have the use vanish or FD. right before the wipe to reset the mobs. If times right, everyone runs back to the instance and (hopefully) if you guys killed 1 or 2 of the spiders, it shouldn't have reset the gong encounter. Kill the remaining spiders 1 at a time and badaboom.


All the advice here is excellent. Sure, trash packs like these must be at least attempted to be tank. Pop your rage gen before pull and hit gong. Wait a second or two and use battle shout while running into the middle of the room. Tell group to relax on dips for 4-5 globals. Mark kill target (make macros for this if you don't have them) shield block>revenge always shield block followed by revenge constantly. You want 100% uptime on sblock. Impossible but strive baby. Demo shout the mobs. Shield wall, last stand (if talented) and tab between the mobs after a few aggro abilities on skull. If you can get the dos to single target the spiders it's a huge help. Killing them all at once and having the encounter last as long as it would if they'd single targeted means you take full damage from all 4 spiders for the duration of the encounter. Instead, pick off one at a time, effectively cutting the damage you take by 25% each spider killed. Once you gets 1-2 of them down it shouldn't be hard. If you have a hunter or lock, have them use taunt on one of the spiders to alleviate some damage on you. Both would be nice as you'd be only needing to tank two of the mobs.


Vanilla wow is a different animal. Sometimes you need to pull out all the tricks you can. It's a lot different than the mindset of retail. Which is just brute forcing all the encounters. Vanilla requires tactics and thinking about how to tackle a situation. If you keep attempting the same encounter using the same tactics, it's just not going to happen. The bummer is, if you don't know what abilities other classes have at their disposal then it becomes tough, especially if THE PEOPLE PLAYING their class don't know what they're capable of. It becomes a mess.


I like to think I'm a decent tank, if you need assistance with anything in game my name is Press - Kronos 2. Best of luck.

 

[SICC]

Sorry for the late reply.

After reading the initial replies here, and doing some searching online, I had attempted RFD a few days ago. I'm happy to announce to I was able to do the pull with all the suggestions I learned here and while searching.

When I attempted it again, I was more strict/clear with my group as to what to target. While I did know about skull and moon, i actually used the red X to mark patrols, or targets to ignore. I didnt know about the square to be used to other things, so I will def keep that in mind.


I also used the suggestion given where I had everyone stand by the pillar, while I hit the gong and tried to control the aggro. Our group was a little odd, two rogues, and a paladin as DPS, while I tanked, and had my friend druid healing.

Overall it went pretty well, and I got some much needed practice in controlling aggro since there are a lot of big group pulls in this dungeon. I made sure to instruct everyone to only attack the skulls I marked, and I would tell people to wait before attacking. While sometimes the rogues didnt listen, and would attack the skulls as they were running to me, I was able to manage it pretty well I thought.

I learned a lot from this experience, and have a whole different outlook on tanking/dungeons which I think will help me in the long run.


Thank you for all the replies/help, I really appreciate it!