Pulls and picking up adds

New tank learning the ropes (or hoping to) in Cata instances (reg and heroic).

Ran a few this morning and found that I am pretty solid on single target pulls, no issues with threat or anything.

Where I struggled was the far more common multi-target pulls, trying to hold aggro on multiple mobs, and the associated issues with CC'ed mobs.

Few noob questions for the field:

1. What's the best way to learn WHICH mobs should get CC'ed? Just experience?

2. Are there things I should know about pulling after CC? If I toss in an AS, is that sufficient? Will I break CC? Or should I be single-target pulling and then trying to grab threat on the others that follow?

2. How are other maintankadins "taunting" mobs that go astray? I use Vuhdo on my healer so I put Righteous Defense as a click cast to toss on a party member who has pulled aggro. I have Hand of Reckoning on another click cast, but that'll take some getting used to (not accustomed to targetting mobs, having spent all my time healing and targetting party members). Do people generally target stray mobs by clicking on them on screen, or in your UI? Run over and whack on them for awhile? In other words, do you focus on the screen, or on party frames, or on the Omen screen, or what?

Thanks in advance, sorry for noobness.

-Daz

Dazarol wrote:New tank learning the ropes (or hoping to) in Cata instances (reg and heroic).
Ran a few this morning and found that I am pretty solid on single target pulls, no issues with threat or anything.

Where I struggled was the far more common multi-target pulls, trying to hold aggro on multiple mobs, and the associated issues with CC'ed mobs.

Few noob questions for the field:

1. What's the best way to learn WHICH mobs should get CC'ed? Just experience?

2. Are there things I should know about pulling after CC? If I toss in an AS, is that sufficient? Will I break CC? Or should I be single-target pulling and then trying to grab threat on the others that follow?

2. How are other maintankadins "taunting" mobs that go astray? I use Vuhdo on my healer so I put Righteous Defense as a click cast to toss on a party member who has pulled aggro. I have Hand of Reckoning on another click cast, but that'll take some getting used to (not accustomed to targetting mobs, having spent all my time healing and targetting party members). Do people generally target stray mobs by clicking on them on screen, or in your UI? Run over and whack on them for awhile? In other words, do you focus on the screen, or on party frames, or on the Omen screen, or what?

Thanks in advance, sorry for noobness.

-Daz

1. CC casters, if there is a healer CC that.
2. Mark you targets! Let others know what they have to CC. Have rogues sap, hunters trap 1st. The mobs will run towards you, allow hex, bind, sheep to go off then toss shield. It shouldn't break CC. There was a bug that was breaking CC but is not now. If you have relatively decent people after a pull or two they will have CC coordination.
2.2 (did you mean 3?)If done correctly mobs should not be running astray. If they are, HotR or Holy Wrath should take care of it. If a mob is really wanting to attack a player that bad, they (that player)are doing something wrong. Every now and then after a target is CC'd the player who CC'd 1st will grab aggro, see above for what to do. As for how to taunt, I think you answered your own question, its not really complicated. Just taunt. If that mob doesn't come back to you, BoP or Salv or if won't let you do your job, let the DPS die a few times and ask them to give you more time to establish threat.

Here's something that works for me, ymmv:

- I let the CC go first. And as Chasey said, Casters get priority for who to CC.

- Once the mobs are running towards us, I hit my Primary Target with a Judgement. Again, as Chasey suggested, mark your targets, even if you only mark what's getting CC'd and what your first Target is.

- Immediately after, the mobs should be far enough away from the CC that you can toss an AS and get the majority of them.

- Use HotR. Once you get up to 3 HoPo (alternatively, pop DP for 3 free) hit Inquisition and go to town. Inq really helps with AoE situations. Generally, if there are more than 2 mobs still up, I'm popping Inq every 3 HoPo.

Remember, that if a mob is CCed, your AS will not bounce to it. So you can throw your shield out immediately at a group of 5 once 2 of them have been CCed.

Example:

X mob mob mob C

Hunter trap X.
Mobs reacts.
Mage sheeps C.
Throw your (unglyphed) AS at the left mob and it'll bounce to the other 2.
Once the 3 mobs get close, do standard AoE rotation.

When I use CC, I let hunter's trap pull (and rogues sap, ofc) but otherwise tend to do a stationary pull using Avenger Shield before the dps poly, hex etc. I have glyphed dazing shield, so the CCers have enough time to cast before the mobs get into the AOE zone of death. The only slight risk is that if the poly or whatever is cast very close to when I cast my shield, I may break the CC.

I used Vuhdo with Righteous defence for ICC trash and it was great in 25 mans when there was too much chaos to target raid members individually. In 5 mans, I don't use Vuhdo and tend to rely on Hand of Reckoning, with RD only as a last resort.

OK thanks guys.

A more focused question: when a boss fight requires the tank to "pick up the adds," what is the best way to do this?

Target the add/s and HoR?

Run to where they are and HW or Cons? Or whack on them to get their attention?

Or wait until they get aggro on a party member and then RD?

How do the pros do it?

I use tauntmaster mod. When adds pop out I snag them with a HoTR and any additional adds up i just right click the person that has aggro and it taunts w/e mobs running to them (up to three) back to me. I left click for single taunt. It's a handy mod as it shows who's gaining aggro by going gray -> yell0w -> orange ..when they are red they have aggro and I taunt back off them.

Edit: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tauntmaster.aspx

frontallobe wrote:I use tauntmaster mod.

TauntMaster is a hideously bad mod. It works fine for Righteous Defense, because RD was designed to be an ability which is cast on a player rather than a mob, but it's useless for single target taunts, because they don't work that way.

If you're tanking multiple mobs and a DPS pulls aggro on something other than what they're actually targetting (splash AoE damage etc) and you use TauntMaster to single target taunt off of them, nothing will happen. Because it's just a target of target taunt.

You can get the same RD behaviour with any unit frames and a click-casting mod (or just the unit frames if they have click-casting built in). There's no unit frame solution to using Hand of Reckoning intelligently.

OK thanks guys.

A more focused question: when a boss fight requires the tank to "pick up the adds," what is the best way to do this?

Target the add/s and HoR?

Run to where they are and HW or Cons? Or whack on them to get their attention?

Or wait until they get aggro on a party member and then RD?

How do the pros do it?

Dazarol wrote:OK thanks guys.

A more focused question: when a boss fight requires the tank to "pick up the adds," what is the best way to do this?

Target the add/s and HoR?

Run to where they are and HW or Cons? Or whack on them to get their attention?

Or wait until they get aggro on a party member and then RD?

How do the pros do it?

I would by no means call myself a pro, but when picking up large numbers of adds, my prio would generally be HotR, AS, HW, Cons. This varies when the mobs are ele, dragonkin, or evil (HW stun in consecrate) or if you can drop a cons in a place that you know that they will run through, but I think the most important thing is to make sure that you drop the hammer every 3 seconds.

Edit: Waiting until your healer gets adds and then RD is a trick that I will admit I've used in the past, but it's not exactly reliable.

In most add situations, they will head straight for the healers. Because they all obey the same aggro rules, all of them will select the same healer (usually - there can be differences due to proximity). If you target one, you can see his target, so you know who to cast your RD on, though you really need to get the taunt in before another healer grabs aggro.

Other than that, I use ranged pulls to hit them first, so I will use AS, Judgement, and Hand of Reckoning. If I have time, I'll throw in an exorcism. When they get within range, I use Holy Wrath, then when they hit melee I start my HotR/Inq or HotR/WoG rotation depending on how hard they hit.

If they are spread apart, I try to convince them to come to me or at least meet me half way. If they are in a cluster, I move to them. Much depends on which ones will move and which ones won't. You always have to plan to move the physical mobs to the casters instead of depending on the casters to come to you. Invariably someone freezes or slows them en route and they never travel as far as you want them to.

If for example you have generic melee adds with various spawn points, where adds are A, B, and C, and healers are H, then I will drop consecrate on X, AS A, and melee B, letting A and C come to me. I may need to give C a bit of a nudge with a judgement or HoR if he's not impressed with my consecrate.

Code: Select all

A

     H
        X
B          C


Again, great info, thanks! Haven't been able to log into the game (and won't until at least Sunday) to test all of this stuff out, and it's killing me!

Anyway, you indirectly answered another question of mine, that being: from where do you get your information that you've lost aggro on a mob? Seems that most people would say this can be recognized by watching the actual field of play as opposed to relying on, say, Vuhdo frames to tell me.

I had a friend tell me, back in early Wrath (the last time I was doing any tanking) that I should be tabbing through all targets during the fight and watching Omen to determine which targets need to be taunted and/or which player needed a HoSalv. At the time, I remember thinking "Who the hell has time to do THAT during a pull?"

If I'm reading your responses correctly (and I'd like to think that I am), let me make sure I've got this straight: (this is, after all, the BASIC TRAINING forum, haha) All this takes place in a heroic 5-man, btw.

1. We approach a pack of mobs. I mark skull and x (kill order), and any CC. (I will go straighten myself out on types and order of CC later.)

2. CC pull, and remaining mobs come a-runnin'. I target skull, judge, then AS, then drop a cons in their path.

3. At this point, assuming the DPS have given me a few secs to build threat AND are practicing good target discipline (no one hitting anything other than skull at this point), all mobs should be headed my way, right?

4. HotR, HW, Inq, SotR etc to solidify my threat lead.

5. Assuming all this went according to plan, any mob that is NOT currently sufficently threatened by me has either a) used an ability that ignores threat and targets a random player, or b) been getting whacked by some careless DPS on the assumption that the healer will keep us all up anyway. In either case, I should RD on the player who has aggro, or HoReck on the mob that is straying. And, having done that, if they don't come back to me, it is safe to assume that some DPS are misbehaving. Which is likely the case at this stage of pug heroics.

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?

Generally HoTR is your best best for picking up a lot of adds. If they're undead/demon/dragon/elemental (and you're glyphed) Holy Wrath first is probably better, since they'll just stand there until you can HoTR/Consecrate and nothing should ever leave you at that point.

Generally in those situations I would leave AS available in case one gets loose and goes for a caster, you can quickly taunt/AS to make sure it comes back to you, because often with just a taunt, whoever pulled threat will just pull it back before it gets back into melee range for you.

As a general rule, just try to remember that Taunt isn't REALLY going to do anything on it's own, it puts you above everyone else on threat of course, but you still need to maintain that lead, so you should always follow up a taunt with some threat, or there's a good chance it'll go to waste.

How to determine when mobs are going for other people is slightly a personal preference thing. For me personally I have unit frames (just the default ones) that show aggro on party/raid members. The best thing to do (may require some getting used to) when you see someone pull threat is first decide if it's just one mob or more than one. If you're AEing stuff and the mage pulls threat, use RD on them and keep hammering the group. If it's just two or three mobs and someone pulls threat, it's likely because they're single targeting something you're not directly attacking. The ideal thing to do would be to target that person's target (either with a UI that shows the targets of party members, or what I do is just target the person, and then assist them and Taunt whatever they're attacking. Takes some getting used to, but being able to use the assist command to select your target's target is really helpful a lot of the time.

Sorry if that was kind of wordy!

Dazarol wrote:Anyway, you indirectly answered another question of mine, that being: from where do you get your information that you've lost aggro on a mob? Seems that most people would say this can be recognized by watching the actual field of play as opposed to relying on, say, Vuhdo frames to tell me.

An addon like Tidyplates, (with or without Threatplates,) makes a big difference if you run with nameplates on. That will tell you what is on you and more importantly, what ISN'T on you. The standard raid frames, or grid, etc. will glow red around a person that has aggro so that you can use RD effectively.

Couple of things. If you're particularly nervous about an AoE pull, use DP (talented) for the 3 free HoPo and start off with an Inquisition immediately. Gives you Holy Shield right away and ups your threat.

Also, I'm not sure which UI you're using, but Blizz's default will put a Red outline around the portraits of people who have aggro, and a yellow outline around people starting to get high in Aggro. Sometimes it's as easy as click RD, click their portrait, get back to work.

EDIT: and Cerwillis beat me to it