Hello fellow warriors,
I just stepped in SM, I’m a lvl 36 Arms Warrior. Up until now I’ve been able to hold aggro in battle stance with thunderclap and demo shout.
At this point I can’t hold any aggro even in Def Stance.
Any suggestions ? Should I just spam Demo Shout for the entire mob encounter or have I reached the point where you can’t tank as DPS spec anymore ?
Is it worth to spec into prot until you get increased Threat talent and put the rest of my points back into either fury or arms ? Or should I go full Prot spec ?
I’m new to the warrior class and new to classic so please don’t roast me bellow
Battle Shout is better for AoE threat if you can hit your entire group with it, so try to use that more. Even better if you have hunter pets.
Do you have tactical mastery? For me to hold threat it’s a combination of huge damage and stance dancing for taunts, spamming battle/demo shout depending on the situation
I usually charge -> bloodrage -> thunder clap -> zerker stance -> zerker rage for more rage -> d stance to taunt something -> bstance -> sweeping strikes -> zerker stance -> whirlwind -> d stance to hold more aggro. Also CLEAVEEEEEE
Keep threat just fine, top damage at the same time. 2H arms.
It’s definitely pretty difficult especially if you’re not used to it, but don’t just spam demo shout. Battle shout in d stance is better if you can hit your group (and also generates threat on mobs out of range/LoS)
Lots of stance dancing for mocking blow as well. Takes a lot of effort (and it’s even harder if your group goes balls to the wall right off the pull) but I’ve been holding AoE threat on 6+ mobs in SM just fine with just a few runners every now and again, then I usually just intercept them and taunt before they start smacking someone up
Some classes are also just threat machines, Shadow Priests and Enh Shamans seem to just always pull aggro with like 1 spell
In these low level dungeons, I find it more valuable to kill things fast than worry about keeping every mob glued on me the entire time. If I get a runner at half health, I might just let the DPS take care of it so I can focus on the other mobs
Thanks ! great info. I stance dance a bunch taunting etc. but this last dungeon I struggled big time with this mage and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I’ll just have to tell my group to give me a minute to get aggro
Also, make stance dance macros if you don’t have them. It feels like the global on stance dancing is shorter/entirely gone, I swear I used to have to press the button twice to do it but now I press it once and switch stance PLUS cast the spell. Makes it super useful and makes mocking blow/taunting a lot easier.
I also stance dance for Overpower when it procs and I’m < 25 rage, the damage is too high to ignore with 2/2 imp. overpower. Revenge otherwise.
Also, people going around saying “Spam Demo shout 100% of the time” is misleading information and tends to cause difficulty for a lot of tanks. I’ve seen that on the wowhead guides, I’ve seen it all over the forums. Demo shout is good for threat, but it’s not the best aoe threat ability you have in every single situation so be aware. “Spam Demo Shout.” as the only advice is bad and lacks nuance
Sword and board is a waste of good damage at low levels, only time I needed to wear a shield was for Agethalos or w/e his name is in RFK (the giant boar) and Herod in SM when they were 5 levels higher than me
That is the mages fault. The burden of paying attention to threat is on the DPS. Whether or not the tank has low TPS, the DPS is still responsible for watching aggro.
Def stance:
Shield Block + Revenge
Sunder is your rage dump.
Heroic Strike if you have the rage after doing the other two.
Lots of people say spamming sunder is the way to go, but Revenge creates way more threat and costs 5 rage.
You should pretty much be hitting revenge whenever it pops.
Use battle shout. Its a secret aoe threat generator you can spam. Also if the dps is aoeing right on pull you cant hold mobs. They need to wait atleast a few second for you to get a battleshout out and some sunders on a couple mobs.
Set a kill order. You dont have to set an order for the entire enemy pack that you pull. If you pull 3 mobs then tell them to kill skull first then after that you dont care about the order. If you pull 5-6 mobs then tell them to kill skull first then circle after that you dont care what they kill.
Positioning. When you pull a pack focus your aggro mostly on the first kill target and let cleave/thunderclap get aggro on the other targets. When the mobs get to you immediately face them away from the group. Either turn the mobs 90 degrees facing the left or right of your groups front or just turn them completely around and away from your group. Just make sure not to turn your back on the enemy cause you cant block/parry an attack from behind you. Dont do a lot of fancy movements or act like a spazz. When you turn the mobs away from your healer/ranged it is pretty easy to tell when you lose aggro on one of the mobs cause they will face away from you. When you see a mob turn away from you immediately target it and taunt it back before he gets too far away from you.
mouseover sunder macro. I havent checked to see if this version of classic has a macro system. But with the mouseover sunder macro you can keep a target A selected and put your mouse on target B or C and hit your sunder macro and it will sunder targets B or C without changing your selection off of target A. This is also useful for sundering CC’d targets. Sunder doesnt do damage so if target A is getting killed by your group and you move him next to target D which is CC’d (sapped/polymorphed/ice trap) you can use your mouseover sunder macro on the CC’d target and it wont break the CC.
mouseover macros in Classic work the same as BFA, so it’s a fantastic tool for taunts as well as sunder/hamstring/pretty much every utility spell you have
Demo vs battle battle is better on less than 6 mobs and you are applying the battle shout buff on all targets, on beyond 6 mobs then demo wins out.
Just remember battle shout only works for threat on people that are in combat, and have the buff applied to them, then the threat is divided between all targets in combat.
So at max level (because these are the only numbers I know of) 55 threat is applied per application of battle shout. so for 5 people 275 threat divided by 10 (to keep numbers simple) is only 27.5 threat per target.
Demo shout is 47 threat per target, that the buff is applied to.
Keep that in mind, normally I will battle early once, to apply the buff to everyone then demo shout spam, because I am normally tanking about 10 mobs per pull and having mages AOE it down. Then taunting specific mobs and hitting them with sunders or revenges if they get away from the pack.
I have a macro that says "NOW! in chat when I want them to start AOE, normally I do 3-5 demo shouts before I use it, they rarely pull aggro while doing 600+ DPS with AOE.
And that proves what? That Demo shout is probably bugged. You can throw all the theorycrafting you want to. Go ahead and spec it and spam Demo shout, you’ll never lose threat - ever.