I can't pull good!

Sorry, made a thread from my other one I just made since it's a completely different topic. I find myself losing a mob every once in a while on the pull. I think it was a DPS being RETARDED, but I wanted to see if you guys thought I was doing wrong. For instance, there is a pull in nexus with 2 big melee guys and 1 caster. I mark caster first and a melee 2nd. I sent my AS up and hit HS as I'm running up. Then I usually hit HotR, Judge, ShoR, Cons and ensue as close to the 9696969 rotation that I can. On that pull, I lost a melee to the healer apparently. I have no idea what happened. The only thing is that my AS might have missed. I just dinged 80, and my hit is about 25 (!!!!). Is there anything I can do to prevent it until I'm pushing 150+ hit? Am I pulling wrong?

This is probably a topic more for basic training than advanced, but nevertheless:

In that situation, the mostly likely occurance is that:

A: The AS didn't bounce to the melee mob, and
B: Your HOTR was improperly positioned to tag the melee mob.

The odds of them both outright missing are pretty low, and I can't imagine you losing threat to the healer if you has *anything* more than proximity aggro. AS is tetchy and while HOTR is forgiving, lag or just an accident of positioning might spoil its cleave.

In multi-mob pulls, don't fear to move consecration up in your rotation. It is not ideal to do so for bosses, but I personally find that swapping it forward offers better peace of mind and group aggro than sticking to the strick judge-first mindset.
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"Our only hope is revolution. I'll put up a sign-up sheet. We need one person to bring pitchforks, one person to bring torches.... am I thinking of revolution, or killing Frankenstein monsters?"

As the above poster said using consecrate is a great way to ensure you mop up all the mobs at the start of a pull. Often you don't need to keep it going but at the start of a fight it is a good way to make sure your healer lives (stupid dps will die anyways).
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Majiben
If we wanted Ret to be a joke, we would have just left the tree as it was, and maybe kicked it a little for good measure. -GC

remember: single target threat is almost meaningless right now. the ONLY times people pull aggro are when they
a)AoE mobs that haven't been controlled yet
over 10 seconds, a cons ticking for >300 +ret aura >>> Seed of corruption threat. however, as one of our locks remembered last night...if you detonate a seed just as new mobs enter the consecrate, 1 tick of cons <<< one seed explosion, and 5 naxx spiders <<< warlock melee mitigation

b) healing aggro on a mob that has NOTHING on it
on 2-4 mob pulls , I drop cons *10 yards before reaching the mobs* this forces anything that decides to attack a healer because AS+HoR missed or decided to chain elsewhere to run through cons, which 90% of the time is more than enough threat to get them back.
NOTE: this doesn't work on fast moving mobs without an earthbind/freezing trap, they have a good chance of making it all the way across in the 1s time between ticks(I'd KILL for a cons glyph that made each tick do 25% damage but it ticks 4x a second)

c)single target burst something that ain't your target.
most of the time, they can get away with it now...but if some HoR's miss, and other mobs eat your holy shield charges, they can still pull, which always surprises them.
answer: make them assist like they're supposed to.

Reading these things makes me realize what I do almost without thinking.

Caster groups, mark caster with skull. I concecrate then do AS on the melee mob then go and tag the caster (this all happens really fast). If dps can't wait until i get to the caster then they die.

Things are spread out enough that AS is guaranteed not to hit everything and you loose 3 seconds if you try to HoTR the melee before getting to the caster. The melee will come to you, the caster will not.

And usually the healers I go with know my pulling style and will hold off until I get to skull.
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Moved to basic training.
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Arthas, we're coming for you. (Eventually)

Run in screaming "This... is... SPARTAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Also remember that some mobs (Like Skirmishers in Azjol-Nerub) now have 'Focus' Targets (the Wolves in Utgarde Pinnacle are like this too). These mobs will fixate on a single target, and will kill it if not handled properly.

Also make sure that you have Righteous Fury up , I don't know how many times I've looked up to see it wasn't there.
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Don't be another lazy tank and watch to see who your shield toss doesn't hit. This is especially true for pulls with more than 3 mobs. On the mobs that didn't get hit, use your judgement on them or specifically target them when you hammer of righteousness. If your shield hit the "skull" target, you have enough of a threat lead to focus your attention on other mobs for a couple seconds before smashing skull with a shield slam that will give you the threat lead for good.

Be hawt.

Sorry, I don't feel helpful today.

I've gotten used to telling all DPS to wait until mobs have congregated around me. A lot of the paired mobs are far enough away to never take an AS bounce, so AS skull and judge+HotR the other. Some groups (like the nexus caster+mech groups) don't bounce at all, too, if I remember correctly.

It's these occasions that I drop consecrate early, because I know even with my warnings most DDers just can't hold their fingers. Consecrate is the only way I can have the mobs gather around me for HotR and ShoR.

Also, I find that I can only fall into 969 on single or paired mobs. Anything more than that, I instinctively look for low threat targets to drop ShoR and judgement, breaking my rotation.

For casters, LOS is always best. But sometimes when LOS isn't possible, yeah, I also AS the melee and charge the caster. Most DDers can't be bothered to silence caster mobs. Even with all the death knights around, I've only met one who will actively bring the caster to me. (Death's Grip, I think.)

The whelps at the start of Nexus is a pain. I have to drop consecrate on the largest group, then stun one, judge one, HotR the next, ShoR another, RD on the loose one (which almost always is on the healer), drop consecration again, running around like a mad chicken.