I have mostly ran dungeons with friends, but the few PUGs I did went alright. Nobody did any LFR hero shenanigans.
Dont worry to much about them…
I’ve been running across my three dps (Iin 2 guilds and keep one additional for range of grouping) with guildie warriors tanking and picking up pugs and we have had minimal issues with the pugs. If someone starts pulling threat we just let them know to give the tank 1-2 GCDs on larger pulls and haven’t had anyone refuse yet. The only major issue we had was actually a druid healer who we couldn’t get to understand that if they were going to pre-hot the tank on LOS pulls they needed to stand on him.
Sunder.
Armor.
Posting on my retail character to say… 
Looks like I was pretty much right. Battle Shout does enable the garbage strategy of AoEing dungeons, Blizz didn’t fix it, people are aware of it now, so now people really seriously think this is how you clear dungeons in Classic. And… it IS! If something as stupidly broken as Battle Shout spam is left in the game, then OF COURSE it’s the way to go.
There ARE NO “AOE pulls” in Classic. There are at absolute most 5 elite mobs in a pull, usually far less. The intended approach is that you take on these mobs one at a time unless you ludicrously outlevel/outgear the dungeon. That’s why every class has some form of CC and only a couple have AoE damage. The dps is supposed to go “durrrrrr attack the mob the tank is attacking”. Or if you’re really sophisticated, “durrr attack the mob the main assist is attacking”. And with raid markers, which didn’t exist for the majority of vanilla, “durrr attack the one with the skull” (which is the one the tank is sundering). As you get closer to outlevelling the dungeon, you do more cleaving etc, but the idea that the normal approach is just to blindly run in and spam AoEs started in Wrath.
So fine. Now that this tactic that Blizz promptly fixed as soon as it was widely known, but since that wasn’t till the 2.0 patch, is in the game because #nochanges, dungeons in Classic are now AoE jokes just like retail. Guess maybe if they make Classic BC? There’ll be a brief shining moment where dungeons aren’t jokes again? Where CC actually gets used? Where what the trash mobs can do actually is something you need to think about?
I’m not going to bat everybody’s points back over the volleyball net on this. If people want to pretend that AoEing elites was common in vanilla they are free to do so. I think it’s more along the lines of people don’t really care if dungeons are AoE jokes, since that’s not what they miss from Classic (or they never played vanilla and never played a dungeon that wasn’t an AoE joke). It so happens to be the main thing I miss.
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Prot warrior is a better as a main tank for raids, rather than as a dungeon tank.
Tanks with cleave or aoe generally have a much better time of it in dungeons.
In general, when asked I’ve helped out by sheeping. And I try to Frost Nova to keep mobs clumped together. But to be honest most tanks haven’t asked for it, and often break my CC. Only one tank (out of four dungeons) has really worked with me in terms of CC.
My PERSONAL preference, for what it’s worth, would be to do a sheep pull. It allows me to control the situation much better. In particular, it makes it easier for me to keep the sheeped mob separated from the other mobs. But tanks don’t seem to like it anymore. I feel like they like to be 100% in control.
Yes, you do. Demoralizing Shout is learned at level 14. Spam it. You’ll never lose aggro.
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There are 3 primal rules of Vanilla (and now Classic) Dungeons.
- If the Healer dies, it is the Tanks fault.
- If the Tank dies , it is the Healers fault.
- If the DPS dies, it is their own damn fault.
Added to this list should be: - Fire bad, don’t stand in it.
- Healer mana is life, once their blue bar is empty, your green bar soon will be.
- Tanks will move the group along a lot faster if they are not chasing random mobs , focus fire one down at a time. Tanks, mark a kill order, DPS, kill it.
- Proper crowd control does not slow the group down, constant wipes from lack of it will.
- It is a game, not everyone is of equal skill or knowledge, be kind, be helpful.
You are used to the dumbed down ez mode tanking of the Paladin in Burning Crusade and that same template was made the standard from WOTLK onward.
Classic separates the bad tanks from the good ones and is very blatant about it.
There are warriors who can hold 5 mobs easy and there are warriors with tunnel vision who can hold 1 while the others run past him and kill the healer every single pull. Don’t be that guy.
It’s not that simple. A good tank will have no issues holding aggro on a boss, save for really bad RNG, e.g. several parries in a row and a resist on Taunt.
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I’m with you man. Some of the best times I had in Vanilla were in well-organized mid-level dungeons, and that’s something I was looking forward in revisiting it. I ran SM over and over and over, not because I was “farming” it but because I enjoyed it.
We marked every pull, and everyone on the server knew the kill order: skull -> X -> yellow cross -> moon. Moon got sheeped and re-sheeped until it was the last one standing. Diamond got sapped or trapped, with CC re-applied to it if needed and possible. Yes it took a long time, but when your group moved like a well-oiled machine (rather than a ball of non-stop annihilation), it was very satisfying.
Seems like every group now just wants to “lf2m mages AOE spam farm speed run faceroll,” every instance (btw when did we start calling them “dungeons”). Kind of disappointing.
Very very true
Because that’s faster, and we don’t generally need CC on every pull anymore, because we’re much better than we used to be.
In the event that CC is needed, you’ll have to Mages for Polymorph, Frost Nova to let the tank move away and heal, Cone of Cold/Blizzard to slow the pack for kiting, etc.
That is certainly one of the dumber decisions. Even on my hunter just between me and my pet I’ve seen how unreliable CTM can be.
Spam Battle Shout and cycle through mobs with single-target damage. BS adds 55 threat per person buffed each time it is cast and is better than Demo Shout for holding aggro.
I have been doing dungeons with a warrior tank and I just hate that play style - mobs running all the heck over, all I can say is thank god for mages.
You guys are just bad to play with.
“Faster” is not objectively desirable or better. I know I’m in the minority, but I don’t want fast. I personally find a slow, methodical march through the instance far more compelling and satisfying than the constant gogogo mash all the buttons as fast as you can thing all The Kids are into these days. Why does everything need to be fast?
…I know, I’ll go be old and yell at a cloud somewhere else.
BTW I’m not really buying the “we’re better now,” thing. I think this is just a nerfed patch we’re on. Like, at 17-30, there’s not a lot to “get better” at. Gear / ability / talent options aren’t really expansive. The never-rest spam-fest Deadmines runs we’re doing now at 18-19, in white and random-drop greens, was absolutely not possible back when I was leveling. There’s no magic uber-skilled combination of buttons that would allow you to do the damage/survive the beatings that we’re doing now. And half the players have never played before, so if anything we should be collectively worse.
Classic players need to learn the Vanilla players term “If you spank it, you tank it” 
I’ve been hold threat over AoE by spamming demo shout in defensive stance with 5/5 Defiance. Don’t stop or you’ll lose threat, just melee whatever your melee DPS is hitting, taunt when you have to, and throw up shield block (preferable improved shield block) when you think you can get away with it to help your healer out.
We’re all way better at WoW than we were 15 years ago. You don’t really need to mark up and pull the dungeon super carefully unless your group is very low level. The kind of runs nobody would even attempted back in the day, like our level 34 RFD run a couple days ago.
I’ve seen several others say this, but just to reiterate: you do have AoE threat abilities. Debuffing mobs and buffing allies generates threat. If there’s a large group, spam Demo/Battle Shout until you’re clear on which one is being focused, then start tab sundering with an occasional shout or two.
I think it actually started in TBC. Paladin and druid tanks could get a fair amount of AoE threat. Once folks were geared in mainly T5+, heroics were a lot easier. Groups would CC any mob that would toss a fear bomb, and the pack would be pulled away and AoE’d down.