Damn pick-up groups. Damn them to Hades.

[Rasix]

Like Way says, if you get aggro as a healer, just sit there and try and keep yourself alive until someone pulls it off you.  Use crowd control if you have it and it's appropriate for the situation (outdoor root for druid, stoneclaw totem for shaman (it sucks but if you have the mana it's at least a couple hits off ya),  shackling undead for mages).   Being a priest helps because you can PW:S yourself and that's not going to add the crap load of aggro that spam healing yourself will. 

Another thing is to avoid early overhealing on a tank.  If they're on multiple mobs, let them get to half or below before you start healing.  Don't worry about keeping them topped off, just alive will do.  Avoid spam healing if you can.  Priests are much better suited for the multiple mobs beating on the tank.   PW:S avoids a lot of the hate lock that a healer can get when a tank just can't keep all of the mobs wrangled in.   

[Signe]

Nah... he's not being sensitive, Paelos.  That's just typical love from a Scot.  We've even discussed adopting you.

[MrHat]

Nah... he's not being sensitive, Paelos.  That's just typical love from a Scot.  We've even discussed adopting you.

I heard monkey's make terrible pets.

[Paelos]

We throw things.



Naughty, evil things.

[schild]

He means poo.

Duck!

[Calantus]

I'm a priest, so I'll see if I can give ya a little help on how to play one.

First off, when I say "greater heal", I also mean "lesser heal" and "heal".

First thing is that healing someone gives you aggro on every mob that has any aggro on them. So whether they are beating something into the dirt, or the mob has just run into the engagement, you will get aggro on it. What is needed here is for the tank to get enough aggro on every mob in the engagement for your healing aggro to stay below their aggro. That's why tanking is not so easy and why the difference between a good tank and a bad tank is so big. Any chucklefuck can keep aggro on a single target as well as they are able (sometimes you just can't do it), it's harder to keep aggro on everything.

About fade, it lowers your aggro on every nearby mob by a set amount for the duration... the aggro will all come back once it ends so your tank needs to be on the ball. There were some calculations that showed it was more than flash heal, but less than greater heal aggro. What this means is that if you get adds and use a greater heal, fade wont get them off you. It also seems buggy in that it makes it harder for the tank to get aggro than otherwise if you fade and it doesn't get rid of the mob. Because of this, try to only fade when you have small aggro, otherwise just stand there if you can and wait for the tank to get aggro back (they really should taunt it at this point, but if things are really bad it might be on cooldown... plus it can be resisted, which always sucks), otherwise shield up and if you can spare one drink a potion/pop a healthstone over healing for less aggro. A trick I like to use in a duo when we get adds is to fade to pull the mobs onto the tank for their aggro generating convenience, and will mean that you can flash heal during the fade and still avoid aggro.

One more tip... where you stand makes a big difference in how easy it is for the tank to get aggro off you. The first is in making sure they can easily see that you have aggro. For this stand back far enough that the mob will have to move through the warrior in order to get to you. This will alert the warrior to the fact that they have lost aggro. The second method I use in a duo and that is to stand on the opposite side of mobs, this way the warrior will know he has lost aggro when they spin around to get at you (this is also important against backstab mobs... you don't want your tank to have to spin around). How close you stand is also important. If you can take a few hits you want to be close enough such that the warrior doesn't have to move to get aggro (besides spinning around, and if they are using the mouse for turning that will take less than a second), but if the mobs are too tough you need to be far enough away for the tank to be able to taunt before the mob gets to you. Also, don't run around when you get aggro regardless of whatever else you will be doing. You wont be able to outrun a mob if it's dangerous enough to force you to run, and if you're just running around in circles/random you will never get out of its hit range... all you achieve is making it harder for the tank to get at the mob.

[Train Wreck]

Thanks for the great tips!

[Kageru]

Making an "on me" macro is also worth considering. Basically a button that puts a message in party chat indicating you have aggro. It means that secondary healers can heal either you or the tank and lets the tank know that there is a loose mob. A good warrior is aware that they're pretty useless without someone keeping them upright so will make protecting their healer a high priority. And if a couple of rogues or mages die in the process then at least there's someone to rez them back in.

[MrHat]

Making an "on me" macro is also worth considering. Basically a button that puts a message in party chat indicating you have aggro. It means that secondary healers can heal either you or the tank and lets the tank know that there is a loose mob. A good warrior is aware that they're pretty useless without someone keeping them upright so will make protecting their healer a high priority. And if a couple of rogues or mages die in the process then at least there's someone to rez them back in.

I think that the warriors are usually concentrating so hard on holding aggro of 2-3 mobs that they don't notice a mob is on the healer.

Even at L60 I find myself having to vanish-cheapshot mobs that get on the healer so that I can peel it off them because the warriors don't even notice.

[Paelos]

That's because our taunt blows ass. Not that i'm a bitter warrior.

[Sparky]

I've found pickup groups in WoW particularly awful.  People running off, no one communicating, everyone pulling, people fucking off soon as their quest objectives are achieved.  Tons of newbie MMOers methinks.

[Kageru]

I love it when a healer has an "on me" macro. The 2-3 mobs I may be holding down are ultimately less important than the one thumping the healer because that cuts off my flow of heals. And WoW is so chaotic that it can be hard to track all mobs / potential adds (especially with those damn visual obstructions known as tauren). It's also a decent way of reminding a bad tank what their primary duty is.

Warrior taunt is not bad, gets the job done, and making combat chaotic allows "off-tank" to be a viable role. Although so many people are fixated on doing DPS that they don't pay much attention to the wider environment.

[Ironwood]

That's because our taunt blows ass. Not that i'm a bitter warrior.

Can you (or someone) clarify for me please ?  In what way does it suck ?  Not powerful enough ?

[Trippy]

That's because our taunt blows ass. Not that i'm a bitter warrior.

Can you (or someone) clarify for me please ?  In what way does it suck ?  Not powerful enough ?

I'm not a Warrior expert but here are some of the issues with Taunt as I've experienced:

• It generates enough aggro to move you to the top of the aggro list but if you aren't generating aggro in other ways (weapon damage, skill damage/effects) you'll quickly move below somebody else on the hate list (e.g. next time a caster nukes).
• It's only usable in the Protection stance which means your damage is reduced, reducing the amount of aggro you can generate through weapon damage
• It can be resisted, especially by mobs higher level than you
• It has a relatively long recycle time so if you lose aggro after just using Taunt you are screwed (well not you but the person who now has aggro is)

[Jayce]

I too have some issues keeping aggro.  Taunt works fairly well for me, but as mentioned above, isn't perfect.

I have read that shield bash and sunder armor get the most aggro for the buck.  It's kinda hard for me to tell if that's true "on the ground", but I have been experimenting with it.

Mocking blow only seems to work some of the time, which is odd because it's supposed to work (according to the description) 100%.  Also I've never gotten a stun out of my Improved Revenge even though I'm on rank 2 of it.  Is that broken?

The taunt AOE shout is nice in a pinch but the cooldown is too long to be very useful except in emergencies.

[Ironwood]

Interesting.  I have a warrior Alt who's just hit the requirements for taunt, so I haven't had a chance (or group) to use it yet.  Seems fairly broken.

[jpark]

That's because our taunt blows ass. Not that i'm a bitter warrior.

Can you (or someone) clarify for me please ?  In what way does it suck ?  Not powerful enough ?

I'm not a Warrior expert but here are some of the issues with Taunt as I've experienced:

• It generates enough aggro to move you to the top of the aggro list but if you aren't generating aggro in other ways (weapon damage, skill damage/effects) you'll quickly move below somebody else on the hate list (e.g. next time a caster nukes).
• It's only usable in the Protection stance which means your damage is reduced, reducing the amount of aggro you can generate through weapon damage
• It can be resisted, especially by mobs higher level than you
• It has a relatively long recycle time so if you lose aggro after just using Taunt you are screwed (well not you but the person who now has aggro is)

Sounds like EQ (until their warrior fix about a year ago).  I wonder if the Paladin is a better tank - since he has options to protect a team mate should he lose aggro.

Also - the above suggests that the 1 handed weapon + shield while good for defense on the warrior - may not produce enough damage to keep aggro?

[Calantus]

Sounds like EQ (until their warrior fix about a year ago).  I wonder if the Paladin is a better tank - since he has options to protect a team mate should he lose aggro.

Also - the above suggests that the 1 handed weapon + shield while good for defense on the warrior - may not produce enough damage to keep aggro?

Damage is not really the aggro tool of the warrior. While it does help, warriors rely mostly on their abilities to tank... sunder armour, revenge, demo shout, and shield bash being the bread and butter of such abilities. It's kinda weird though, they basically replaced the taunt spam with sunder/revenge spam but that's how it is now.

Taunt as I see it is an emergency ability for when you lose aggro despite other abilities and is also the only real way to get adds  onto you if the healer just slammed a big heal on you as they came running in. It's not an EQ equilavent, if that is your point of reference.



Edited to remove the mass of ugly nested quotes...

[Jayce]

Also - the above suggests that the 1 handed weapon + shield while good for defense on the warrior - may not produce enough damage to keep aggro?

That's the dilemma.

On the bright side, though, it does encourage the warrior to stance dance and switch weapons often to get the maximum effect.  That's quite a bit better than other games where "hit a and get a sandwich" or "click and stick" is the dominant theme.

[jpark]

Also - the above suggests that the 1 handed weapon + shield while good for defense on the warrior - may not produce enough damage to keep aggro?

That's the dilemma.

On the bright side, though, it does encourage the warrior to stance dance and switch weapons often to get the maximum effect.  That's quite a bit better than other games where "hit a and get a sandwich" or "click and stick" is the dominant theme.

Absolutely.

[Paelos]

Also - the above suggests that the 1 handed weapon + shield while good for defense on the warrior - may not produce enough damage to keep aggro?

That's the dilemma.

On the bright side, though, it does encourage the warrior to stance dance and switch weapons often to get the maximum effect.  That's quite a bit better than other games where "hit a and get a sandwich" or "click and stick" is the dominant theme.

The problem there is that you lose your rage doing that, which consequently sinks the boat on you keeping it together. The class talent in arms that lets you keep rage during switch, tactical mastery, requires 10 points in arms just to get it at an effective rate. It starts to spread the warrior pretty thin on talent points if you want to go defensive spec, but also have decent shouts. IMO, either fixing taunt or removing the rage penalty to switching stances is the way to go there.

[jpark]

If WoW truely is EQ 1.5, unless your tanking the most uber raid or instance the game has to offer, you're better off being a Paladin.  Speculation on my part, have not played  WoW enough to know.

Question:  is hate/aggro built up over time - or is it simply based on the damage done that round?  Does your position on the hate list reflect your actions that round or some history of the combat itself?

[jpark]

Sounds like EQ (until their warrior fix about a year ago).  I wonder if the Paladin is a better tank - since he has options to protect a team mate should he lose aggro.

Also - the above suggests that the 1 handed weapon + shield while good for defense on the warrior - may not produce enough damage to keep aggro?

Damage is not really the aggro tool of the warrior. While it does help, warriors rely mostly on their abilities to tank... sunder armour, revenge, demo shout, and shield bash being the bread and butter of such abilities. It's kinda weird though, they basically replaced the taunt spam with sunder/revenge spam but that's how it is now.

Taunt as I see it is an emergency ability for when you lose aggro despite other abilities and is also the only real way to get adds  onto you if the healer just slammed a big heal on you as they came running in. It's not an EQ equilavent, if that is your point of reference.



Edited to remove the mass of ugly nested quotes...

Interesting.  Again I just have not played this game much and EQ is my reference.

[Sky]

Remember kids, the master of controlling aggro is that smelly hunter nobody wants to group with. Get aggro, drop aggro, hold it on the pet for a while, then pass it off, they can do it all. Better not invite them along or let them pull.

 :mrgreen:

[Train Wreck]

I've found that the warrior's AOE lightning attack (I forget its name) is also effective, as it gets you on the hate list of mobs that have just showed up (and as such, are the ones that bee-line to the caster after the first heal).

[Rasix]

Remember kids, the master of controlling aggro is that smelly hunter nobody wants to group with. Get aggro, drop aggro, hold it on the pet for a while, then pass it off, they can do it all. Better not invite them along or let them pull.

 :mrgreen:

The aggro joggling doesn't work so well in higher level instances; the hunter or the pet seems to die a bit too fast. Helpful in a pinch, but not something you want to count on.

 But... they are the kings of pulling as I have now witnessed.  My gulid uses hunters and lots of freeze traps to make pulling very safe.

[Sky]

I deny the existance of instances in WoW. ;) If I wanted to play that game, I'd still be playing EQ2.

[Kageru]

A warrior really gets hammered by higher level mobs. This is because rage generation and aggro are all based on landing blows, which drops a lot if the levels are not in your favor. In addition your specials are resistable (taunt) and most require rage which you're not getting anyway. As a result the warrior generally needs to be the highest level member of the group, and only a level or two off the named.

The taunt model is designed so that it is hard for a warrior to hold multiple mobs. You need to be constantly switching targets and using revenge / sunder / demo shout in defensive mode (which gives a sizeable bonus to aggro on all specials). If you need to grab a mobs attention you need taunt (resistable, 8-10 second cooldown) and a couple of sunders to give you an aggro buffer. It's chaotic and tiring, but is designed to keep combat from becoming static.

Paladins are currently broken IMO. Like shaman they have a single target +aggro effect and another effect that increases the aggro when they land a blow. Their limitation is that they don't have a snap aggro tool like taunt and they have less ability to hold multiple mob aggro. Which means you really want a paladin and a warrior in a group. However initially they could AoE taunt by intentionally overhealing (now nerfed) and they currently have an AoE effect (consecration) which is useable as an AoE taunt. Of course removing aggro from the paladins healing, so they don't compete with warriors in taunt, has given them some healing advantages over priest and druid.

[Trippy]

If WoW truely is EQ 1.5, unless your tanking the most uber raid or instance the game has to offer, you're better off being a Paladin.  Speculation on my part, have not played  WoW enough to know.

Question:  is hate/aggro built up over time - or is it simply based on the damage done that round?  Does your position on the hate list reflect your actions that round or some history of the combat itself?

Aggro is like EQ, it's built up over time. The WoW Taunt is different than the EQ one (at least pre-PoP) in that it always moves you to the top of the hate list (assuming it isn't resisted). The EQ one just added a certain amount of hate which is why you often had to taunt multiple times to get a mob to switch to you.

The Paladin vs Warrior tanking debate is kind of complicated. There are definitely pros and cons to both classes in terms of how well they gain and hold aggro. To grossly simplify the differences a Warrior has more tools for gaining aggro but those tools require Rage which can be hard to generate in certain situations. The Paladin has fewer tools but they are more reliable to use since they require Mana.

[Ironwood]

I'm not sure I'm a big fan of the rage system yet - it seems to hard to gain and too quick to lose.  Though I do like any system that requires a Talent called 'Anger Management.'

[Sky]

Conversations like these are a part of why I don't bother grouping. It gets old so fast, I really don't care about the intricacies of aggro management..I just want to play a game and have fun.

But I guess after you've been playing the same game for so long, you have to have something to talk about.

[Phred]

If WoW truely is EQ 1.5, unless your tanking the most uber raid or instance the game has to offer, you're better off being a Paladin.  Speculation on my part, have not played  WoW enough to know.

Question:  is hate/aggro built up over time - or is it simply based on the damage done that round?  Does your position on the hate list reflect your actions that round or some history of the combat itself?

As a now 60 paladin I can tell you that paladins can't build and hold agro the way a good warrior can. We don't generate enough hate to keep one mob's attention much less a group. I've tanked a lot in small groups and one early crit nuke by the mage or an early heal pulls the mob off me and there's no way in hell I can get it back on me. The paladin taunt proc buff takes a while to build up enough hate (threat they call it in WoW). Even after off tanking a mob in a fight the warrior I group with a lot can pull agro off me at will when he moves to my mob. The best I can do if something is on our healer is stun the mob and start healing the healer. Stuns don't appear to have the associated agro that EQ stuns did either.

What's worse is that paladin heals don't even seem to generate agro like priest heals do. I've played both and a crit heal that would get a priest to the top of the hate list, for me, gets me ignored completely.

[Phred]

Aggro is like EQ, it's built up over time. The WoW Taunt is different than the EQ one (at least pre-PoP) in that it always moves you to the top of the hate list (assuming it isn't resisted). The EQ one just added a certain amount of hate which is why you often had to taunt multiple times to get a mob to switch to you.

Actually EQ's taunt put you at the top of the hate list +1 which is why it was easy to lose agro. The reason you had to taunt multiple times is because it failed so damn much, as people found out when they finally put in a message when you used taunt. A successful taunt always had you at the top of the list.

The Paladin vs Warrior tanking debate is kind of complicated. There are definitely pros and cons to both classes in terms of how well they gain and hold aggro. To grossly simplify the differences a Warrior has more tools for gaining aggro but those tools require Rage which can be hard to generate in certain situations. The Paladin has fewer tools but they are more reliable to use since they require Mana.

Paladins have 1 tool, Seal of Fury, and it doesn't work well at all. Even after stunning a mob that is pissed at someone else, it goes back to beating on them after the stun wears off rather than turning on the paladin.

[Jayce]

I too have some issues keeping aggro.  Taunt works fairly well for me, but as mentioned above, isn't perfect.

I have read that shield bash and sunder armor get the most aggro for the buck.  It's kinda hard for me to tell if that's true "on the ground", but I have been experimenting with it.

Mocking blow only seems to work some of the time, which is odd because it's supposed to work (according to the description) 100%.  Also I've never gotten a stun out of my Improved Revenge even though I'm on rank 2 of it.  Is that broken?

The taunt AOE shout is nice in a pinch but the cooldown is too long to be very useful except in emergencies.

Update on this: I have been using taunt + sunder armor to great effect lately.  And the Improved Revenge stun DOES work, it just works a little differently than most stuns.  It takes a second to "kick in", usually allowing the opponent to finish his/her/its current attack.

[stray]

Paladins have 1 tool, Seal of Fury, and it doesn't work well at all. Even after stunning a mob that is pissed at someone else, it goes back to beating on them after the stun wears off rather than turning on the paladin.

Holy Shock keeps aggro better than Fury actually. Having both is enough for keeping a couple mobs on you, but I wouldn't suggest playing Paladins as tanks in the first place. They're better as all around support characters. And if anything, better substitutes for Priests than they are Warriors. Funny thing is though, with the Holy Shock/Fury combo, the Priestadin can hold aggro more reliably (at least with single targets) than Retribution Pallys -- the so called "tank" build.

As for why Paladin heals generate less hate than the Priests, I think it's 40% less hate generation. I may be wrong about that, but I recall that it's something pretty significant. And like I said -- All the more reason to play them as Priests. Not as tanks.