I remember being told back in the day. That if someone other than the tank pulls the mob with an attack, it messes up the threat for the tank making it harder to hold aggro and pull off. Is this true? And if it is can I get a source on it.
Getting the initial threat is a big deal in some cases, but it’s not insurmountable. Which is why pulling a hunters misdirection helps gain a significant lead on everyone elses threat table.
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whoever makes the first attack gets a large amount of threat, as a pet class I’ve really noticed this that doing the same rotation if I send my pet to attack first before attacking I take a much longer amount of time to pull aggro from damaging abilities. Often if I attack first my pet can never even get aggro.
This is exactly what I was asking about, is this just a placebo and aggro is working as intended. Or is there some sort of advantage that you can only get by pulling first? I skimmed a few threat guides and couldn’t find anything on attacking the mob first.
There is no advantage to hitting a mob first other than initial aggro.
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Thanks Betty. That was my question.
So, there’s no numeric threat advantage to hitting the mob first, but there is an advantage due to the way threat works.
In order to rip aggro, a player needs to exceed 130% of the current aggroed player’s threat from range or they need to exceed 110% of the current aggored player’s threat from melee range.
Additionally, who ever pulls first will have initial aggro on any linked mobs.
So, here’s how it can play out in reality:
Option 1:
A warrior tank runs in and attacks Skull first hitting for, let’s say, 100 threat.
Skull and all his buddies start hitting the warrior, instantly giving him a pile of rage.
The warrior demo shouts putting some additional threat on each mob.
While he demo shouts, a hunter crits on his opener and does, let’s say, 110 threat. The hunter is at range, so he did not exceed 130% of the warrior’s threat. The mob continues hitting the warrior and generating rage for him. Enough that the warrior sunders and now the mob is stuck to him for good.
Skull and all his buddies are stuck to the warrior and the warrior is generating a good amount of rage from all of them hitting him. Pull proceeds as smooth as butter.
Option 2:
The hunter pulls because he feels like it. Crits Skull for 110 threat.
Skull and all his buddies aggo to the hunter.
The tank could get all the linked mobs to attack him be dropping a demo shout since the hunter only has essentially body pull aggro on the linked mobs, but the warrior hasn’t been hit. He doesn’t have the rage for that.
The warrior hits Skull with 100 threat, but he needed 121 threat in order to pull the mob off the hunter. He uses the rage from hitting to sunder the mob and finally steals it back from the hunter.
The hunter, having taken a hit or two, gets a heal from the healer. Remember, the warrior never got off a demo shout and all the linked mobs only have body-pull aggro on the hunter. All of the linked mobs instantly aggro to the healer and now the Warrior’s demo shout might not be able to exceed 110% of the healer’s aggro when the warrior can finally get it off.
Warrior only has aggro on Skull and is generating low rage from that. Healer is getting crushed and can’t even heal himself with pushback. Healer dies. Pull is a wipe.
Again, there was no numerical threat advantage to the Hunter attacking first. All the attacks and abilities still did the same amount of threat. But due to the way threat and rage work, the outcome was slightly different.
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This is a good summation of the advantage of initial threat.
This is also why it’s beneficial to utilize buffs after the pull as well (as the prot warrior in the above scenario.)
Generally speaking, you want to:
1: Pull with range. (to abuse LoS to your advantage)
2: Use bloodrage to grant yourself a buff; thus generating threat on all of the aggroed mobs.
3: Buff the party with Battle Shout. (it grants threat to you multiplied by the number of party members buffed.)
4: Debuff the mobs with Demo
5: Use your threat/damage abilities as needed.
It’s not a big deal in most cases. If someone pulls before you do, you can just taunt the target they are attacking, bloodrage, then demo shout to get everything onto you.
The issue, like others have said, is you need everything hitting you in order to generate more rage, so you can keep using your abilities to keep generating threat.
You may be thinking of situations where the boss is immune to taunt, like Onyxia. In those cases yes that initial aggro is everything.
Yes, and no. If someone pulls before you do, you can taunt to get a head start on your own threat (if it doesn’t resist). But, as a warrior, if I don’t get the initial threat revenge doesn’t proc and revenge is big with little rage cost. Missing the initial threat affects threat because it doesn’t proc revenge, at least for warriors.
While it’s harder, it’s not a game breaker. It’s something you have to adapt to, and if you get the initial threat it makes it a little bit easier to build threat.
It makes a MASSIVE difference. When somebody else does pulls for you, youll find yourself rage starved and not able to properly hold aggro. You only have a taunt every 10 seconds so if you didnt have the rage to sunder before then your not gonna keep aggro. Letting the tank pull leads to easy and smooth pulls with easy and smooth rage generation and maintained levels. Its chaos if you keep letting somebody else pull and you have to play catch up on each pack of mobs and are constantly rage starved.
What you will learn is that tanking with a warrior is probably the deepest skill pool in the game. It requires knowing a bunch of stuff the game doesnt really tell you in order to tank well. As well as always staying on your toes.
To add to this, youll find that other people dont give a shat about how hard it is to tank as a warrior and will pull constantly use threat moves when they shouldnt be and pull when they shouldnt cause they are selfish insult that have probably never had to tank themselves.
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Chuck a grenade or pop a sapper and you’ll be golden. Bonus Style Points for using Ramstein’s Lightning Bolts.
Figured I’d post here about my latest experience. I don’t know how you tanks deal with groups. I’ve tanked deadmines on this character several times now.
“Hey guys, give me a couple of seconds to establish threat before you attack the mobs.”
Hunter immediately attacks the mobs as soon as the mob makes it to me after I pull by throwing weapon. At least the hunter waited for the mob to get to me, even if he didn’t let me establish any aggro. I had a rogue in another group that would attack the mob before it even made it to me. The rogue was laughing about how he’s topping the damage meter.
Meanwhile the mage runs into the group of elites and immediately starts spamming arcane explosions, which rips all the mobs off me onto the mage. The mage instant dies and all the mobs come back to me.
Is two seconds really too much to ask for most people? My head hurts dealing with people, tanking sucks.
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Retail is back in dungeons. I let them wipe and do my thing.
If they want to lead go ahead.
If you don’t like it stop tanking now. This experience doesnt change. im tanking lvl 55 dungeons and its still the same, people pull before you way too often and people dont care about their threat. Maybe its different tanking raids idk.
I’d agree with that. The other part is people playing their class and role well. If they pull aggro, then using their skills to drop or lower aggro, or stop attacking and run to the tank so he can pull it off. Some people once they start attacking don’t know how to stop.
As a healer I don’t worry about getting aggro on 1 mob while healing, I can heal through that. But if it’s multiple I’ll either run to the tank, or bubble and drop all aggro.