tanking uldamanFollow

Last night i was in uldaman with a shadow priest healing, a shammy of sorts, 2 mages and me a fury warrior tanking. everything was going fine untill we got to areas where there would be 5 mobs on us at any given time. i asked my team to hold off on the attacks so i could gain decent agro on the mobs and tank them properly. I would strafe targets stacking sunders, hit them with sunders and DS. I figured this was a good way to keep all the mobs on me and make for an ez run. as soon as the mages would attack they would AOE and not stop untill they were being attacked by most of the mobs and then they would eventually die. my question is am i a bad tank for not being able to hold agro against these mages? or are they not doing their job right and just being suicidal?

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hakkar&n=Zoidbrg
is a link to my warrior, i think i have decent gear for tanking, with the priests sta buff i have 2700 hp and i have over 4000 armor for a mitigation of 49% or so.

sounds good i hardly use sunder unless peeps ganging agro. but if thats what works only thing i see missing is a TC even though only hits 4 mobs it seems it hits the 4 closest to me so if more than 4 i move alittle to make a diff mob closer so next tc hits it. and even if it dont thats still debuffing 4 mobs that are wacking on you. i'm arms tc and ds is normaly all i need for threat unless mages are doing what your talking about or dps is on wrong targets all together.

A lot of mages get the idea that just because there are multiple mobs that they should AoE. Usually this lesson is learned the hard way, through deaths and wipes.

Just because you can use an aoe doesn't always mean it's the best way. Talk to your mages about when it's appropriate to use aoe and when it's not. If they're pulling agro and hitting the smack down then they need to back it off some. Suggest they target the main mob first until it's dead or 50% or 25% hp and then start up the aoes. By then the tank should have much better agro built up on all the mobs. Less healing/rezzing the mages and they still get to aoe for mana efficiency.

If they claim you're not a good tank because you can't keep agro then state that agro is not just the tank's problem it's everybody's. Even if you are a bad tank a good mage will back down on the agro. I've been in multiple groups and some tanks are better than others and it's very noticeable in some cases. Even if they're bad I usually won't say anything but instead change what I'm doing. It's a lot harder to change other people's way of playing than it is yours. There are some cases where it just won't be possible to complete a task, boss or instance, if someone is that bad. In those cases I think it's okay to speak up, but do so in a nice way. Make a positive suggestion instead of telling them how they suck.

I was tanking the humanoids along with the stone elementals. I would tell the mages to poly and usually only one of them would listen to me. if they both did poly then things would generally go a little smoother, but i could only do so much once they started to AOE everything. I was asking them towards the end to hold back on the AOE's and damage untill i established a good amount of agro but it didnt always work. I was using TC but it didnt seem to make a difference

anyways thanks for the feed back. If this happens again to me ill ask them to stop the AOE's.

Edited, Oct 10th 2007 5:56pm by Kronikthedemonik

@Kron

Next time mages do that to you, threaten to leave the party. You're the one taking the brunt so they should be listening to you. God knows i stopped tanking for a scholo group during the invasion (they group let a rogue get Lord Blackwoods sword over me, the tank).

@Kokacha

Sunder is useful for building lots of threat up on one enemy, where as TC is more useful for smaller threat to 4 targets at once.

Did you 'tell' or 'mark' the mobs? Telling someone is confusing, also you won't know who's mob is not sheeped. Marking mobs with icons puts a big flag over it saying 'if you don't sheep this, everyone in the party is going to know it's you, so do your job'.

Yeah, I've noticed from doing all PUGs on my Hunter and Warrior if there is no CC, the PUG party tends to suck, sometimes disbands. I basically demand it from my PUGs. Is it because I'm a bad tank? IMO no, others might tell you otherwise lol.

My reasoning is we all have a job to do. I tank, I keep mobs that are moving around on me. The healer... well... heals. DPS/CC ...ummm DPS and oh yeah...CC!

If I cheesed out on my job (tanking) I'd get laughed at or booted from the group, so why do the CC get a day off? Yeah, I'm working here...so is everyone else. I have no problem marking the mobs. I got moon, star, and skull binded to my keyboard. It takes me 2 seconds to mark, then I change the skull when tanking the next mob.

CC helps keep the PUG together IMO. So far I've been doing pretty well on the PUG scene. Everyone wants to rush rush rush, CC makes them slow down a bit. When you run thru something accidents happen.


Edited, Oct 11th 2007 10:56am by GYFFORD