Now this is an interesting comment. How do you figure that if a warrior is sitting at full rage he’s a bad tank?
Are you assuming that it is impossible to hold aggro without excess rage?
Because in the scenario where the tank is holding aggro well enough, i’d imagine pooling rage would be a good thing.
Nope max rage = bad.
If you are holding threat and have max rage you should be using that rage for damage so things die quicker and healer uses less mana.
Wasting resources is the sign of a bad player.
If I have agro, there is no reason to use abilities until I lose agro. If I think i’m low on agro… i’ll put a bit more in… but lets not slam the skillbook at an allready agro’d mob unless its a boss.
Heal Agro has never been an issue with Prot Tanks in WoW. If Heal Agro is a thing for arms tanks… well… just lol.
DPS… the thing your ‘math’ is failing you on are the mechanics at play here. Particularly of Taunt. If A dps goes wild. Taunt gives me their agro(thanks btw!) and Sunder comes over the top. At that point, anybody else might as well smash their face into their keyboards, they will not get agro.
And if the mob aint flipping, there is no reason to have to burn down your rage bar other than insecurity.
Ah ok. So you should be using those resources for damage.
I’d argue for the sake of argument of course, that pooling rage for the next pull is very good thing. You have dps in the group for a reason.
Couldn’t have said it better.
Ya but you dont understand tanking while leveling. And play suboptimally to the detriment of your group and cause it goes smooth cause your dps have to throttle themselves and you have a very sub optimal leveling build you think you have advice for players.
The problem is that its bad advice and people should not listen to you…
I play dps warrior. In dungeons if I target the tanks main target I pull it, every time. Then there’s other dps, doesn’t matter mage, hunter, shaman, they pull another mob. Now that demo shout is fixed what dps are you playing with that they aren’t aggressive enough to steal aggro from you all the time? Also, stealing 1 or 2 mobs shuts down tanks rage regen and now healer is pulling. So once again, how to deal with dps that can dps and choose to dps fast?
I’m going to go tank some, and I think for many pulls charge with at least 4 tactical mastery is way to go. Gun on pulls that can aggro like 3 or more groups and patrols. I tanked back in Vanilla/TBC and that was way I had to do it all the way up to BC heroics.
Also, any tips on marking targets? There are keybinds for it now right? I don’t remember that from Vanilla, but can they be done mouseover macro instead?
Thanks for advice.
So far a summary of his advice
Mind giving some good advice?
You could always keybind them… I use f keys for marks with f1 being skull and f2 being x and so on.
Again, #4. If a tank is pooling rage for the next pull, It’s at the expense if damage correct? So given the nature of PuGs and rage is a constant topic, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that pooling rage = bad. I mean, ok so you get some heroic strikes in but is rage starved for the next fight - which means damage to PuG dps, which means wasted mana. I’d argue that getting in a little big of extra damage isn’t worth the potential problems of being rage starved the next pull.
So to me, that point doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Now, if you’re saying use just enough damage but make sure you have enough for the next pull, that makes more sense.
But it also makes your statement that pooled rage = bad, a gross overstatement.
Every single thing you say suggests more and more that your DPS are asleep at the wheel.
Also, you do realize that aggro loss occurs at 110% of your current threat, right? And that in order to get aggro back, you need to bring yourself above 110% of the current target’s threat? If you aren’t acting until the mob peels off, you’re already screwing up. One sunder isn’t gonna get it back, and taunt has a 10 second CD.
It’s at the expense of your DPS players, a tanking warrior does no damage to speak of.
If you’re pooling rage, you aren’t using abilities. If you aren’t using abilities, you aren’t generating threat and it’s easy enough for most DPS classes to close the gap with a few big crits even when you are fighting for threat.
Its not just that, if you are pooling rage that means your threat is lower than it could be and the dps could be doing more damage.
Unless you seriously outlevel/outgear your dps they can pull off of you even if you go all out on threat. So pooling rage means dps has to throttle more.
Also you have charge and bloodthirst and berserker’s rage to generate rage at the start of a pull.
So ya if you wanna claim 4 is good advice, then keep living in fantasy land the rest of us realize that pooling rage means you are forcing dps to reduce there output.
I like to level full prot as well. But the advice that Shield Block/Revenge aren’t all that important seems pretty insane to me for this spec…especially when you put points into improved shield block and improved revenge it becomes the most integral part of my rotation.
I like to open with demo shout after the pull (yes still good even nerfed), shield block, revenge on main target, battle shout, then alternate sunders and shield blocks/revenges throughout the pack to keep their attention on me. My runs are fast and smooth, with no complaints.
I don’t really care to stance dance. Tanked as arms in actual vanilla/tbc so been there done that, and I like having more mitigation and being a rage fueled block machine. It’s way more satisfying even when out questing.
I’m about half instances and half quests, thanks for asking. When I quest, I just go DW out of Battle Stance.
It is if your intention is to play the role of a defensive tank, as you’ll always be scraping low.
Going into and coming out of a pack… near max rage is ideal, yes.
As a defensive tank? Correct.
Not once i have suggested the DPS not go all out. The DPS is going to do what they’re going to do. Its because I have no issues with that that you think I have some sort of Svengali power over the dps that gets them to hold back. Just l o l.
Dude. You gotta chill. I don’t know what’s up with private server players.
I’m just asking you to explain #4. It’s not good or bad. It’s not about right or wrong. Stop being so defensive.
It’s about weighing pros and cons about pooled rage. It’s not as black or white as you make it seem. At the end of the day, you aren’t seeing the forest through the trees.
Of course your threat is lower with less rage. But, what I’m bringing up is that IF you can hold aggro without using all of your rage, why waste it? It’s weighing whether or not you want flexibility going into the next fight, or finish off trash a little faster. Especially given the nature of PuGs.
Never played a vanilla private server…
I tanked in vanilla and I enjoy theorycrafting.
The problem is that your hypothetical situation where its good to pool rage never happens because dps will pull if you do not use your rage.
I do not like when people come on the forums and try to tell people here is how you should play and give very bad advice, convincing people to do bad things thinking they are good things is a terrible practice.
How would you like it if you went to a medical forum and someone claiming to be a doctor was like, sugar is great for you you should focus on eating sugar, while you can eat vegetables that is gonna take away your ability to eat more sugar so you shouldn’t do that unless you can eat the vegetables and mass quantities of sugar?
I have rank 4 sunder, which is 220 threat. I don’t know for sure if that’s before or after the Dstance modifier, so let’s assume it’s simply the base value AND assume you’ve got defiance. If you drop two sunders on a secondary mob, that’ll be around 655 threat total. A ranged player would need to deal 851 damage to rip that mob off of you. That’s two spells, even without a single crit. Now if you go back and assume that 220 value for sunder is with the D-stance modifer already factored, then it gets a whole lot worse. And of course there’s no guarantee they won’t be attacking an off-target, because
Point being that it is fairly trivial for a dedicated DPS to take threat from a tank at virtually every stage of Vanilla. It was the central problem to be solved in raiding beyond MC, it’s the reason a good tank was measured on how much threat he could produce, because threat was The bottleneck for every single DPS who wasn’t a hunter.
I only put one point into Imp Shield Block to get the extra block. Imp Revenge is something i plan on getting near the end. The problem is that Shield Block not only does no agro in and of itself, but it will likely eat a portion of the damage you would have taken, that gets converted into rage. So you’ve spent like 15 rage and lost a couple more points all to hit Revenge. You’re basicallly at Sunder Armor before improvement, and if you have imp sunder armor you’re saving points to do the same thing.
I’m not opposed to Shield Blocking, I love it to bits, but after you’ve gotten an agro-lock with rage to spend. Its situational… as is Revenge. Both are used, they just aren’t typically core.
Either way… whatever works for you man.
I just get cheesed at the people who clearly want to hug TM for all its worth and then wonder why they have problems generating rage and blame the DPS not waiting.
You don’t need to use shield block. Even while leveling, you have around 25% combined dodge/block/parry. If you’re fighting 3 or more mobs, you will almost never not have revenge lit up.
Sure… but if you guys are going to try to complain about the fantasy of me ‘holding the dps back’… why wouldn’t I use Sunder to get the same threat, and increase their damage at the same time by stripping the mob’s armor so their strikes hit harder? Theoretically Spamming Revenge seems like it would hold them back more than anything.