How not to aggro your tank with AoE
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 22nd 2010 at 5:00PM
Part of the problem here is that certain classes/specs have no aggro dump or reduction ability and as a result their big DPS moves generate a lot of threat. Arms warriors, most DPS death knights (at least the blood and unholy specs I've used) and retribution paladins have limited aggro reduction at best (pallies at least have Hand of Salvation but that's a band aid at best) and while tanking threat (especially AoE tanking threat) requires ramp up time, it's very easy to hit the Divine Storm, Death and Decay, Pestilence, Whirlwind or Bladestorm buttons. (Enhancement shamans with Spirit Weapons seem to be okay, I rarely pull aggro even when I go nuts with Fire Nova.)
I won't pretend I'm not guilty of this myself when I go DPS. In general this seems to be an issue with the plate classes, as they're designed to be able to tank and thus have not traditionally been designed to shed aggro so much as to generate it. It also doesn't help that since they're in melee range it takes less to pull aggro. So, as a DPS'er, how can we be friendlier to the tank with our big AoE abilities? Here's a few quick and dirty suggestions.
- Wait for the tank to stop moving. This isn't always easy to do, but for big AoE pulls the tank often has to gather up mobs that are not close together and get them all close enough for his AoE threat move to work. Running up to a mob and hitting your big AoE while the tank is heading over to another mob not only wastes the ability's AoE damage, it almost certainly gets you aggro.
- Wait for the tank to use an AoE threat ability. If the druid hasn't Swiped, the DK hasn't hit Blood Boil or put down D&D, there's been no Consecraton from the paladin or the warrior hasn't used Thunder Clap, Shockwave or Cleave, it's not safe to use Bladestorm or a similar ability.
- Make sure you're in the same area as the tank's AoE threat. A good example is the trash pulls before Scourgelord Tyrannus in Pit of Saron. If the tank has four mobs in close proximity to him and one off in the distance hurling spells at him, don't Divine Storm on the one off in the distance casting spells. If there are two casters and five melee and the tank has not really bothered to try and hold the melee yet because he's Death Grip pulling the other caster to him, don't hit Bladestorm yet. Hold off on AoE until you see the tank has his AoE hitting the mobs you'll hit.
Filed under: Paladin, Shaman, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
Xues Jan 22nd 2010 7:23PM
I've noticed that boomy's and warlocks have a lot of threat problems. My favorite is the boomy that stands in front of me while I tank and AOE's before I even start a pull.
ElrithCC Jan 22nd 2010 7:35PM
As a night elf warrior, I've found shadowmeld comes in very useful in certain situations like this, as long as I am not taking damage from any dots, often a poorly timed bladestorm or a series of crits in initial pulls, I can break aggro with a shadowmeld and wait several seconds for the tank to build more threat.
Broken_toes Jan 22nd 2010 8:06PM
Think the general consensus is the 3 dps should be doin 1500 DPS each, I have to stress this is between the lot o them.
Last time I did a pug on my rogue I had pally barely touchin 1k and the other guy doin just past 1k in one o the troll places. Can't mind the name, its the one i always get for my daily.
Sure its annoying not being to nuke mobs willy nilly, but you just go with what you have.
And yes dinnercoat, playin on a tank I have to say yes it is dickish to pull aggro. The only excuse for pulling aggro far as I can see is, going by my experience (and what thesnipe said), is that we've geared so fast we don't know what we're capable of.
My rogue recently got hold of that armour pen trinket from one o those new instances, some crap about a scorpion, anyhoo when that procs I'm pretty much hitting my ArP cap.
First time I ran a PuG we had a "undergeared" tank (he was at the def cap but you know what I mean) I could barely use sinister strike without over aggro'n.
So what I did was right click, get a SnD goin, and have a smoke, kept my hand close to the mouse like- but yeah I just took it easy.
In a pug the tank doesn't know you, they don't know if your able to handle a mob on your own- they have absolutely no way of knowing that if a mob goes for you they can just carry on with what they're doing.
By over aggro'n in a pug, all you are doing is bothering who ever is on the tanks keyboard. There isn't a reason to do that. Spose if the tank came in with "hey guys, go mental- I really want to be hammering taunt for the next 20 mins" then yeah off you go, other than that there isn't really an excuse.
icepyro Jan 22nd 2010 9:19PM
As I commented elsewhere, now that I've healed some, I no longer care about going all dps when I dps heroics. I like being a solid not first place (above nonpally tank and healer, so doing respectable dps, but not crazy). I'm usually third. The thing I like about it most is that this is because I'm pulling mobs off of the casters, cleansing, I've even shielded/healed the tank for a bad healer/crushing blow, interrupting casters, etc all in between other cooldowns.
As for threat, my friend used to do heroics with his shoulders and gear from the waist down just to keep from pulling aggro until he realized how valuable maxing threat reduction via talents did compared to the bonus having the talent points elsewhere. (Tanks have talents/stance/presence to generate additional threat and I shouldn't be able to out-aggro them in equal gear that badly, right? >_>)
dyre42 Jan 22nd 2010 9:50PM
Its also worth noting that some tanks are causing DPS to pull because their in such a hurry that they taunt a second group of mobs while DPS is still AOEing the first group.
jam Jan 23rd 2010 1:07AM
I regularly pull more packs after I've done enough threat for the current one to stay glued to me until they die.
Also, I don't really mind if the dps are nuking with all they got, faster runs are welcome. The only thing that really annoys me is if I'm tanking on my paladin and some hero decides to pull the first pack before I'm done buffing.
A little tip to Prot Paladins... spec into seal of cleave (command), it makes the best aoe tanking class even better. I see way too many pallies using vengeance while tanking heroics. And it's perfect for tanking ICC trash too, if you need further justification for including it to your spec.
nieboh Jan 23rd 2010 1:10AM
Excellent point. I can tell you I get sick and tired of having to escape out of a blizzard channel and pray that my flamestrike is off the ground when I see another group come sauntering into the aoe zone.
Jorges Jan 23rd 2010 3:05AM
You forgot to mention Cats. We only have Cower for threat reduction, which is a joke. A well geared cat can (and probably will) get aggro easily by using Swipe on AoE pulls. I usually wait for all the indications that the tank has good aggro (my secondary spec is bear, so I know how frustrating can it be when the dps doesn't wait), target one mob, get a 4 CP Savage Roar and then start swiping away.. when I hear the alarm of omen or I see my aggro going to high, I use cower.... which last as much as 2 more swipes =/
If someone is wondering why I say that we aggro easily, well, almost every mob we hit with swipe gets a crit. I can pull 7k - 9k crits on every mob in front of me, and that builds lots of threat pretty fast, even if I try not to. Our main damage come from bleeds, and those crit a lot too, adding more threat. And god forbid if I use Berserk on an AoE pull... very few tanks can hold that (on 5 mans).
We ferals have absolutely nothing for threat dumping, besides cower. No talents, glyphs, nothing. Sometimes I have to literally stop attacking and move away, or I'll get aggro. Blizzard needs to do something about it, IMO.
Eyu Jan 23rd 2010 3:54AM
The way I see it.
If a plate wearing melee dps pulls agro me from after I hammered the mob with all my lovely SoC procs flying, that dps is geared enough to tank the one mob he pulled off of me. of course that one mob will be mostly dead by that point anyways.
Baldagrim Jan 23rd 2010 4:32AM
Unst0ppable, I feel your pain as a fellow tank. I sigh too when I see an arms warrior and hopefully this article will allow some of these people to get it right.
I don't hate arms warriors or bladestorm. I have mentioned this in another article, as a tank, I think bladestorm should be a finishing move instead of a starting move. This way you beat them down real fast and the tank has built enough aggro, so you don't pull.
PeeWee Jan 23rd 2010 5:25AM
As long as "common sense isn't" this will continue to be an issue. There will always be stupid people. And if stupidity was edible, there would be no hunger in the world.
2 points for trying, though.
jslim419 Jan 23rd 2010 9:53AM
as an arms warrior. yeah it's kind of rough. because one group you could be grouped with a super tank that can pull 50k threat right out of the gate against every mob in the pack, and doesn't take one second to rest in between pulls. then the next group you can get a tank that pauses for five seconds to use any abilities after he pulls a trash pack. there is just no where to get into a rythm unless you do multiple dungeons with the same group. add that to what rossi said about arms warriors having no threat reduction, and even as a very good arms warrior you could very easily end up paying huge repair bills after a random dungeon run. i mean sure we could be double super secret probation careful, slow our dps so we don't pull aggro off of the "slow" tanks. but then we face criticism when we only pull 2.2k dps on trash.
Pumadam Jan 23rd 2010 10:10AM
I would like to see a return to BC and earlier where a 5 man dungeoun made skills necessary. As someone has already mentioned, this whole pull the entire place at one time and burn things down isn't as challenging/fun as being required to play intelligently; AKA, LoS pulls, CC, single targeting focus, etc. What happened to the days when seeing a Mage in your group made you breathe a sigh of relief because Magisters Terrace was going to be 100x's easier, and not just because they have biscuits. I hope in Cataclysm they make the 5 mans more of a challenge, not unobtainable(unobtanium???), but just requiring actually paying attention. As fun as it is to face roll through a 2 boss brand new instance in 15 minutes(FoS anyone?) I miss the thrill of defeating a real challenge, and not just grinding reps and badges without any difficulty.
JKWood Jan 23rd 2010 12:48PM
Retribution paladins have the talent Fanaticism, and any DPS DK should be taking Subversion, leaving Arms Warriors as one of the few dps specs that don't have any aggro dumps or aggro reducing talents.
That said, it's possible that Fanaticism and Subversion need to be looked at by the blues - they may not be enough.
Wazooty Jan 23rd 2010 1:34PM
In a 5 man, bladestorm is virtually guaranteed to pull aggro from multiple mobs unless the mobs are all at 20% health and die before the second whirls, wasting most of the ability
Blame blizzard mostly, not so much arms warrior for trying to do what they should be able to. It's the ONLY aoe arms warriors have, it has a 1.5 min cd, and when we can use it, it is almost a fact that it will pull aggro. Arms needs better consistent aoe. This is why they do poorly on the meters.
Wazooty Jan 23rd 2010 1:34PM
Since I pretty much know I'll pull aggro from everyone except the most geared tanks in the game, here's my ultra-combo:
1. retaliation
2. challenging shout
3. Bladestorm
4. Immediately switch the zerker stance to get another whirlwind in.
5. intimidating shout to piss every off twice as much.
rkaliski Jan 23rd 2010 1:51PM
As someone mentioned earlier there is such a wide range of tanks you can go nuts with one guy and on others you feel like you will pull agro with an autoswing. I know. I tank raids for my guild but do heroics as arms. I had one pally that told me I had "insane threat". Folks, this is my uldar/TOC tier 9 collection of arms pieces with the same polearm I had when Uldar opened. Honestly all I could do is autoattack with the occasional rend and overpower on trash mobs otherwise I would pull the mob off him. Not his fault, his gear sucked and perhaps he was normally a ret or holy.
Bladestorm should be a finishing move, not an opening move. I tend to use it when it seems like the trash pull is taking a long time to hack down.
You as dps should adjust. The tank is doing the best job they can and probably can't pull any more threat than they are, however there are a couple of points to keep in mind.
On runs with a lot of multiple trash pulls the tank may get sloppy and just not hit a mob or two except with some splash damage. Be ready to face a mob yourself.
Second, if it seems like the tank is teleporting around they may have latency issues big time. Give them more time than usual to build threat and switch targets.
Oh and learn to throttle back. I was on my druid laser chicken and a deathknight was way ahead of me on damage. He did however die four times in an Utguard Pinacle run. That is an expensive bunch of badges.
BoomingEchoes Jan 23rd 2010 3:01PM
Probably been said but I'll say it any way: Paladins seem to forget (as does Rossi, shame on him) that their bubble sheds aggro for a short time, which should be enough for a tank to grab it off of you.. Sure its not optimal for using when your trying to really push your dps but if your pushing it so hard that your pulling aggro from the tank then your probably gonna die any how. Not to mention the tank and healer probably should let you, since it seems like most dps needs to learn their roles again. (I play plenty of dps classes and I know how to not pull off the tank on every damn pull...)
And to add to that, there are ways to shed aggro even if you don't have a button to do so.. usually its called "stop dpsing", or at least thats what we called it in the old days.. I know that doesn't look favorably on the DPS meters and it doesn't help you rush through an instance with no regard on how to do the fights the right way (which pretty much makes every one in the group lazy and stupid eventually any way) but it works and a tank will get that aggro off you one day unless you give him a reason not to to- like if your not attacking the right target, or if the tank just isn't good and is ignoring the fact that someone else has aggro at all, or if you just pissed him off somehow and he doesn't like you.
Hell, most of the time aggro shrugs/sheds don't work that well, and not only in such a situation where the tank doesn't have a clue your getting pulverized for whatever reason..Take Shamans Wind Shear ability, its supposed to shed a little bit of aggro but in all my experiences with the spell its a down right waste of time. The aggro reduction is so small that it isn't even worth moving your hand to the button if your still planning on continuing to cast or melee after.. Only way I've ever seen it be of any use (besides the interrupt, which is the ONLY reason its useful) is using it then waiting for the tank to regain (or just plain gain if he never had) aggro, in which case you usually have enough time to hit it again when it comes off cooldown, cause shaman aggro seems really hard to shrug off most of the time.
Seems to me Blizzard needs to make any threat generating spell that hits 3 targets hit 4 instead, if they intend on continuing to make AoE tanking the thing to do in all tanking situations, that'll help things a little at first. Then there's the possibility of lowering taunt cooldowns. Will people complain that its making things too easy? yeah, but they do that now any way, so what does it matter? Biggest pain if they made a change like this will be the people who will be whining again that Pallies are still too AoE heavy as tanks by having Righteous Defense and Avengers shield hit 4 in stead of 3, but if that ever bothered Blizzard they would have made Warriors heroic throw a little more heroic by letting it hit 3 mobs instead of 1.
OIK2 Jan 23rd 2010 3:49PM
For Shadow Priests, Fade then start mind sear spamming(you did make your mind sear spamable, didn't you?*), use fade on CD, if you start to get high on threat and have to wait on fade dot the donut hole in your sear and pick a new target, the one with the most HP, and start spamming Mind Sear again.
*To make Mind Sear spamable, when you run out of other targets begin mind flay spam
#showtooltip Mind Sear
/cast [stance:1,harm, nochanneling] Mind Sear; [nostance,harm] Shadowform
Vinicius O. E. Jan 23rd 2010 5:31PM
As a tank I simply let the dps die when they go crazy and start AoE'ing immediately after I pull. Some times I not even dropped consecraction yet and also I see is Bladestorm, Arcane Blast, etc.
After the dps is dead I /dance over his body and this problem never happens again, at least until the next group :-P