Rage Starved?Follow

I ran heroic ramps the other night in a PuG. We had 3 forms of CC, and what appeared to be a well geared tank. The warrior didn't want us to use CC, as he said he needed multiple mobs hitting him to prevent him getting rage starved. The healer had a really hard time keeping him up, and we wiped 3 times before the first boss.

I've never played a warrior past level 10, and I know nothing about the class mechanics. However, this seemed strange to me, as most instances I have run we have used CC as much as possible.

Is it common to want to get hit by 3-4 mobs at a time in heroics?

I often find that there are people out there who just can't effectively play their class. This tank may be one of them. Considering the nerf for the Heroic Key's now, a lot of people don't really meet the bare minimum gear requirements anymore. They go in there undergeared and often lesser skilled. I'm not trying to put anyone down for playing their class, but often times a little help can go a long way.

If I were in the group and a CC'er I would have at least tried to debate with him/her to let me CC one and have at the most 2 mobs hitting him/her. Even if he's not full prot or doesn't have the gear, they'll get whacked fairly hard and should have some rage to spare...I know I do. It's rough pugging heroics sometimes, and other times you'll get a good group of people. Just let that tank know to come to Allakhazam to get some tips. If he ever does get curious he'll at least have some place to reference.

The only thing I can think from the description is this guy's tanking weapon (mace, ax, swd) was not up to snuff.... wonder if he was 60 skill levels below where he was supposed to be at. That would effect his rage with the misses and mob dodges/parries. The mob parries would have let the mob swing faster at him, causing your healer to work that much harder.

We would need to see his armory for talents and gear evaulation

Did you notice if there were Sunders being applied (Devastate if he was infact Prot spec'd)?? If not he might be some clueless tank, spamming Heroic Strike.

On a side note, when I run those for buddies... because my tanking gear is up to SSC/TK ready, I tend to Dual Weild and just swing away, revenge when avail. That way I'm not rage starved and can keep up T. Clap AoEing.... but that's called being overgeared for the instance lol. Bosses I still mace and shield it tho.

if hes rage starved with 3-4 mobs on him in heroics thats bs. watch his rage closely. he's probably got more than he knows what to do with in most situations if hes got 4 heroic mobs on him.
theres a lot of tanks that dont know how to tank well. everyone can tank 1 mob, but only a good tank can holy 2-4 reliably. this guy obviously couldnt hold hate on 4 mobs, probably had side targets running at healers, or dps getting mauled randomly.

pulling 4 mobs at once in a heroic as a warrior tank is just retarded. as a paladin its doable with good gear + healers, but as a warrior its too much to do at once.

Awesome response. Spell reflect makes warriors top notch spell tanks.

The trick is to get all of the shadow bolts in the air before the first one lands. Can usually be done with line of sight (they all come around the corner and start casting at once), or by keeping some distance and pulling with ranged. Luckily, the first thing most of those casters do when they get into range is cast a shadow bolt. :-)

Be a little careful with it. It is possible (I've done it) to break sheep with Spell Reflect. If the caster gets his SB off just before the mage lands sheep, the rebound will wake him up. Course, the mob is at least pissed at YOU at that point, but it's extra damage incoming and time that the mage loses on DPS by reapplying sheep.

I'd personally disagree on this point, but everyone has their own style. Me personally, I'd be happy if I never had CC most runs. I use it as seldom as possible. There are occasions where it may be needed, but I tend to opt towards not having it. Some may look at it another way, but here is my reasoning: When I am tanking, my job is to control the pull. It's my job to make sure everything is in place, and to keep it there. This is why I think you find a lot of prima donna tanks. Most good tanks are also control freaks. We do not like chaos in a pull. CC is, from my POV, chaos. That sheep? That's a sheep that can break and make a run for my healer while I'm focused on other things. That trap target? It's a resist and dead hunter waiting to happen. Don't get me started on banish and seduce, which have to BREAK and be allowed to run rampant for a few seconds before it can be put under control again. Every CC I put into a pull is a chance at random chaos. I'm putting complete reliance on chance and that other person's actions to make sure it doesn't hit the fan, when that's MY job in the group. So as a result, I eliminate the random chances at chaos littering my pulls, and instead just make sure everything stays on me.

Hell, I don't even consider it additional work. Personally, tanking on mob at a time in each pull would get boring very quickly.

In response to the OP, it just sounds like your tank though he was geared a lot better than he actually was. He probably doesn't know how to use rage properly, and was using heroic strike or something too much. This may have already been mentioned. He uses HS too much and thinks to himself, 'Man, I sure am doing good! My gear is getting really awesome, I'm not getting any rage at all! I better tank more mobs!' What he doesn't take into account is that his not getting rage is not accompanied by noticing a large lack of damage taken, which is when you know you're too geared for content. Sadly, you get to be on the receiving end over his misinformed antics.

It's not BS - we are simply assuming a real life situation, which is maybe a T4 level tank, not a T6 one, and not a lvl70 warrior charging a nest of gnolls. When was the last time you did heroics with a mix of blue and epic gear? I remember very clearly many wipes on 2 mobs, where the tank had to do everything to not being overaggroed by the DPS (who HAD to dps hard, because longer damage from 2 mobs was just impossible to heal in a longer term), while the second mob was turning on the healer because of the huge healing aggro.
Not being able to CC the second mob (I am talking about those pairs of guardians in Auchindoun) was a real problem in many runs.
In a typical PUG situation, CC makes life easier for everybody. I've been running a lot of heroics in the past couple of weeks, and there really is a big difference.

I'm very aware of the troubles of doing heroics in that gear, as I initially did heroics a year and a half ago in blues and green. That's not the case now. This just in: 2.4 badge gear IS T6 gear. There is every chance this guy has 16-17k armor and ~40-45% avoidance by this point in time. You can still be a crappy tank in all that gear and think you can tank more than you actually can.

Edit: Also, we're all quick to jump on the tank mostly because we're tanks, but I just noticed something. Nowhere did he actually give any sort of real evidence that the tank was to blame. He just said that the healer couldn't keep the tank up. There's an equal chance that the healer sucked. If this is the case, maybe he WAS geared like me, and DID need that many mobs. Maybe the healer just sucked, and even if it had been another tank who needed to do one mob at a time, the healer still would have failed at healing him through the damage. Based on what had been said, there's a wide range of things that could have botched the run.


Edited, Aug 27th 2008 3:58pm by FletusSanguine

I'm going to agree with the point that there are plenty of tanks who DO need to have multiple mobs hitting them in heroics to avoid rage starvation.

There is nothing I need badges for, but plenty of my guildmates and friends need them, so I'll often tank heroics in guild groups or semi-pugs. The worst gear I own will still leave me rage starved if I fight a single mob.

So I do let multiple things hit me. So, while it does keep the stuff in front of me so I can more easily track what's going on, more importantly, it means I don't have to take my pants off just to be able to toss out a shield slam.

Im gonna say that the healer seems to be a large part of the problem. Seriously, heroic trash and he can't heal? He must be spamming his most mana inefficient heal non stop or he was inexperienced and couldn't deal with the small spike dmg.

Seriously though, couldn't handle healing 2-3 mobs on a decently geared tank? I ran H shattered halls on my shammy and all my gear broke during the gauntlet. Got B rezzed and noticed ALL of gear cept for my weapon and shield were broken. I had 700+ heals, around 5-6k mana, and like 70 mp5 while casting. I didn't want to repair because it might ruin the tmed run so we just kept pushing forward. Tank was a pally and in Kara gear, 1 dps in kara gear, 2 meh geared dps, no CC (pally tank). We cleared the place with more than enough time to spare on the timed event. Easy cake.

Any healer should be able to keep a tank up on almost any trash pull if the tank has decent gear and can hold agro. According to your description it seemed the tank could hold agro. Of course on my run we had a pally which can hold agro easily on several mobs, but it sounds like agro wasn't a problem with you guys just too much dmg coming in.

I don't think it was the tanks fault, get better heals.

Edited, Sep 4th 2008 12:55am by Tugnus