Pulls and picking up adds

I would prefer not to have the DPS pull for me, so I don't generally CC-pull. It does depend on the pull, however. If I have a group standing in a line consisting of:

C M M C M

where C is caster and M is melee, I will CC both casters, and use a CC pull. I use my AS on the right-most because it will skip over the CCd caster and hit all three melee, causing them to come my way nicely.

If I have a group of C M M M C, I will CC the one on the right, but will pull it myself. I run to the caster on the left and tank the melee ones there with him. I effectively CC him by stunning him and interrupting casts in order to reduce incoming damage.

In that case I would start running, use AS on the left-most, judge the 2nd from the right, use holy wrath when in range, HotR now that I am at melee, and drop a consecrate provided the CCd caster is far enough away.

There are few cases where I use a CC pull because the DPS who casts the CC will get initial aggro, but that will change if the healer casts anything. As a result, you could end up taunting off the wrong person and have a bit of a chaotic pull.

As a just-starting-out tank, use all the CC you have available because it makes the DPS take time to get their CC up, giving you time to get the pull under control before they go nuts.

Dazarol wrote:...If I'm reading your responses correctly, let me make sure I've got this straight...

5. Assuming all this went according to plan...

That's pretty much the key here...how does that famous quote go about the "best-laid plans?" Something about how they all turn to shit once all the shooting starts lol. Anyway, from my own personal experience, the biggest key to success is knowing what your abilities do and being comfortable with them. Tanking in general can often be very fluid, especially depending on what the 4, 9, or 24 other people are doing at the same time you're trying to do your job. Tankadins have quite a number of tools at our disposal to handle the various situations we're presented with when doing our job, so like I said, just make sure you're comfortable with them - even if that means just smacking a target dummy a few times to get comfortable mashing your buttons.

In my experience, knowing and being comfortable with these various abilities we have winds up being "easier" than having a set of "if x, then y" checklists to go through. The former allows you to readily adapt to whatever is thrown your way, as it is thrown your way, and requires less "mental bandwidth" to execute over the long run. The latter may give you a few "go-to" moves, but RNG and group dynamics can easily skew your plan of what to do next if it doesn't fit in nicely with what you had planned. I guess a good analogy would be like playing chess - sure there's a number of good famous "openers" and whatnot, but once you're in the thick of things you can't just rely on rote memorization. As long as you keep a few key things (generalizations?) in mind, and are able to adapt/think on your feet within reason, you should be able to adequately deal with whatever curve-balls are thrown your way.
To reiterate what others have already mentioned...
-HotR for short-range aoe threat
-AS is great for pulling/positioning casters as well as multi-target threat (when unglyphed), and also for keeping censure stacks up on targets
-Judgement is great for initial ranged threat, or keeping censure stacks up on targets, and also keeps the blue rage bar full...or at least not empty.
-HW for situational AOE stuns (if glyphed and the mobs are of the right type), or just initial AOE-"hi, I'm over here"-aggro
-And the list could easily go on, but that's just more specifically tailored to your question about pulls, adds, and AOE/multi-target tanking. Get comfortable enough with it and pretty soon you won't even be using CC on trash pulls.

Dazarol wrote:So, once I do my initial threat-building stuff, DO I have time to tab through targets while watching Omen, or should I just focus on DPS and continuing to build/maintain threat?

HotR and GC procs for multiple AS "frisbees" are a godsend for our AOE threat (so much so that I often don't even bother with consecrate anymore unless I just want to really pad my dps numbers, and don't even bother with HW unless the mobs I'm fighting can be stunned by it), so once you "establish" your threat and start building vengeance stacks it's really all up to you - i.e. you shouldn't need to be all that concerned with secondary target aggro if you're running with even marginally competent dps who target your target and/or follow kill orders. It never hurts to make sure your threat is secure on the mobs you're tanking though, so long as your primary target threat is solid (I'd say a minimum of 10% threat lead, preferably closer to 15-20%), feel free to "tab-target" or whatever. If you find you're having trouble with AOE/multi-target threat, and the issue isn't that the dps just massively out-gear you and they are actually following kill orders and such, make sure that you are in fact using HotR every 3 seconds (and in conjunction with inquisition whenever possible), nearly regardless of whatever else is going on. If you're not doing that now, give it a shot and see what happens to your AOE threat and dps - I'd imagine you'd be pleasantly surprised.

Nooby tank update, continuing this thread:

A few nights ago I had a wipefest on the first boss in heroic Throne of Tides. I'm told it wasn't my fault but I still have questions that are relevant in this thread.

So I pull the boss, whack on him, no trouble maintaining single-target threat, staying out of blue circles, blah blah.

Then the adds spawn, and all hell breaks loose.

Our strat was to CC the right caster and for me to grab aggro off of the left caster as well as the melee add in the back.

So I'm already more or less in the back of the room, keeping the boss facing away from the group. When the adds spawn, here was my thought process:

1. Target the melee add. Hit the melee add ASAP with something, whatever is available at the time, to grab threat on him. What should this be, ideally?

2. Switch target to left caster add, hit him with something, whatever is available. (What should this be? HoR? AS if it's up? Judge?) Run to caster add, hopefully pulling the melee add with me, drop a Cons and start AoE rotation on both of them.

If that strat/plan sounds right, then I guess our wipefest was due to some combination of these:

- failure of the right add to be CCed and CC not broken
- failure on my part to execute the above plan to grab adds
- DPS grabbing threat before I could, and my noobness in getting it back from them (is HoR/DR the best way to do this?)

What say ye?

If you drop Consecration where the melee add is going to show up, you can then bugger off toward the caster's spawn point and immediately hit her with Avenger's Shield to silence her. That gives you a good chunk of threat on what will be the first kill target, and gets her moving toward you.

When she reaches you, do a melee thing and judge while turning your camera around and confirm that the melee add is still trucking toward you. Then start looking for those frigging hard-to-see whirlies the boss throws out.

just remember, mark the person you want to kill first with a skull and the next person to kill with a X... that way your DPS isn't split which causes tanks to pull their hair out since the aggro will go to whoever attacking the target

oh and for that fight... you'll want some cc'ers..

shamens for hex
mages for poly
hunters for trap
etc..

you're bound to get at least 1 cc per random roic

assign each CC to left and right before fight so they can take care of the witches when they come out
then just taunt the melee guy and start your standard rotation, threat shouldn't be an issue, then move on to the next witch, it's nice to tell your party which witch to attack next before fight "get melee then get right witch then left"

if you only have 1 cc'er then assign him/her to a side then drag the melee with you to the other witch and just AOE both down with primary focus on the melee since he hits hard.

should be fine next time... all your job is:

1. make sure melee is taunted and killed
2. interrupt lady when she DBM warns you
3. move her away from blue crap on the ground
4. take care of witches in the right order

i recommend you take a look at http://www.wowwiki.com/Crowd_control, print it out and stick it next to your computer

She likes to drop blue crap and then stand in it and cast Shock Blast. Have fun with that.

Arcand wrote:She likes to drop blue crap and then stand in it and cast Shock Blast. Have fun with that.

Blue spells on a blue environment on a blue boss. 4.1 notes about making the spells easier to see, loved.

My favorite is when the last boss in Grim Batol drops a shadow cyclone, and
I'm panning the camera all over the place and simply cannot find the damn thing.
I've gotten to where I usually mark everyone in the group on that fight, and then
if I don't see the 'eye' right away I just look for a Lucky Charm that's moving
rapidly in a straight line and follow that.

Arcand wrote:My favorite is when the last boss in Grim Batol drops a shadow cyclone, and
I'm panning the camera all over the place and simply cannot find the damn thing.
I've gotten to where I usually mark everyone in the group on that fight, and then
if I don't see the 'eye' right away I just look for a Lucky Charm that's moving
rapidly in a straight line and follow that.

I learned fast to choose a ranged player and ask them if it is cool if I mark them so I know where to run since all I'll see is roach crotch. It has worked really well, since everyone else can follow them too (have a colorblind healer who has trouble seeing the initial circle, so literally macro'd follow so he could easily get where he needs to go )

Couple of comments on CC and trash/adds (mostly basic stuff, but worth repeating):
- Trust your CC'ers to re-CC (at least those that are able), or at least give them the few seconds to do it. It sucks when your shield hits a mob that was just re-sheeped.
- Be ready to start kiting if a sheep or froggie wanders too close (when I see that happen I switch to single-target abilities only as I kite until the mobs are away from the CC'd mob).
- Face the mobs you are controlling away from the group with your camera facing them. This with a unitframes setup like tidyplates makes it *much* easier to taunt, ranged attack, know when you need to truck it, etc. Basic stuff, but bears repeating.
- Make sure your party knows to run adds to you, as well. I had to remind my guildies (I blame overgearing leading to lack of caution...) that if more than 3 mobs are on someone and I am not physically at that spot, I can't help them and that they shouldn't stand there waiting to die. The gauntlet bit in Stonecore and HoO (hall of lights, IIRC?) made me have to make this really clear.
- LOS is fun. Why try to deal with a room full of spread out casters when you can deal with them in a nice 5 yard area? Once you start seeing all the nice places the devs gave us to LOS mobs, you'll see how they intended you to use it. Let folks know where you'll LOS to before you start. Dropping a consecrate that they'll have to run through is a good way to make sure you have a nice preload of aggro (especially if combining a LOS and CC pull).