Taunt Revisited
It wasn’t long ago that I discussed how to utilize Taunt, Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout as well as the priority in which you should use them. The following comment though reminded me of a key point I’d forgot in the discussion surrounding Taunt.
Taunt sets your threat equal to the highest threat on the mob, and gives you focus. In the hunter scenario, his threat can be at 129% of yours, and you will remain the focus, as long as he’s at range. When you taunt, your threat level gets set equal to his, so you immediately get that extra 29% of threat added to your threat. The Hunter now can start building threat again at 129% of your threat, and will not take focus from you. So if Omen is tracking the threat, let them overtake you by 109% if melee, 129% if ranged, and taunt if the situation allows. If the situation doesn’t allow, your dps’s need to lay off and let you catch back up.
This is a common, incorrect assumption surrounding the mechanics of Taunt.
How Taunt Works
When you use Taunt if someone else currently has aggro then the mob will immediately focus on you and you’ll gain threat equal to that of the person who used to have aggro. However, if you currently have aggro when you use Taunt you’ll gain no additional threat from using it.
Where does the misconception come from then?
When Taunt is used a Debuff goes up on the mob that lasts 3 seconds. Taunt doesn’t care if someone pulls aggro as soon as the ability is used or any time while the debuff remains on the mob. This is where a lot of the confusion surrounding Taunt occurs. In the comment above, the situation that’s happening isn’t Taunt giving you free threat just by using it, but instead when Taunt is active the person who is high on threat is actually pulling aggro.
But, I use Target of Target!
…and the mob’s target doesn’t change to the DPSer indicating aggro has been lost! And this is where even more confusion spreads. If you use Taunt and during the 3 seconds it’s active a DPSer pulls aggro the mob will not switch targets, you’ll see no indication that aggro has been lost at all, but I assure you, it has.
Another look at Front Loading with Mocking Blow
This technique was already discussed in the last Taunt post, but let’s take a more detailed look at it since couples well with the above information.
First and foremost, Mocking Blow does not work like Taunt. Where as with Taunt once you snag a mob back from a DPSer, you’ll keep all the threat this transition created with Mocking Blow you are simply forcing the mob to focus it’s attacks on you for 6 seconds. Once the 6 seconds are up the mob is going to evaluate who it should be attacking.
Front Loading with Mocking Blow is when you use Mocking Blow to force it to attack you and during the 6 seconds it has to you use no abilities that will consume rage. You are intentionally stockpiling rage during this time and letting DPSers pass you on threat. When the Mocking Blow debuff is close to falling off, you activate Taunt so that once the Mocking Blow debuff does fall off and the game recognizes that a someone has pulled aggro, you’ll keep aggro rather than it going after a DPSer that is undoubtedly significantly higher than you on threat. (remember you haven’t been using any rage during this time so you’ll have generated virtually no threat at all) As we’ve learned from the above information about Taunt, despite the fact that once the Mocking Blow debuff falls off you’ll have lost aggro since the Taunt debuff is active when this happens, the mob’s target of target will remain securely focused on you. This combination is particularly effective because you didn’t have to use any rage in order to maintain aggro and as a result once it’s done you’ll have a full rage bar (or close to one) to generate threat for the remainder of the fight.
A minor risk…
There is a small risk associated with this technique though in that if Taunt is resisted then the DPSer that is highest on threat is in big trouble. The good news though is that this technique has actually become safer since patch 2.3 since currently hit rating reduces the chance of Taunt being resisted. As a result, this is an excellent technique for trash mobs that you need to kill quickly since it will result in a very high amount of threat generated in a relatively small timeframe.
March 21st, 2008 at 5:32 am
I admit I rarely use Mocking Blow because I’ve found I can get away with just using Taunt and Challenging Shout. I will change this and incorporate Mocking Blow with a stance dance macro and see if I can pick up this ‘front loading’ technique (yay!). Now does Mocking Blow suffer the same immunities that Taunt does? I never use it, so I’m really not familiar with it’s capabilities.
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March 21st, 2008 at 9:00 am
The mocking blow front load really makes me think of building a million dollar squirrl trap, when in all reality, a $.05 .22 hollow point will do the job quick and easy.
I almost NEVER stance dance due to lost rage, and quite frankly if you just stick with the sheild slam, rev, dev dev repeat meathod and keep your taunt and intervene for oh crap moments. you have covered 90% of tanking in WoW. the other 10% is boss specific fights when you have to stance dance to avoid a fear or you have to multi tank where you are switching a lot of targets etc etc.
I guess my point is, To me Mocking blow is a lot more trouble than it’s worth and thus useless to me.
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March 21st, 2008 at 10:27 am
On a taunt related note…
In preparation for tanking Kara, I attempted to train my dps so that I don’t have to taunt. In exchange, I tried to gear, gem and talent myself up to give them a good threat cushion early on in the fight. I’m operating under the assumption that the quicker I can get threat, the harder the dps can hit, the faster the mob goes down, hereby making the TPS I gained worth the mitigation I give up. I used to get pretty cranky as a raid leader MT when a dps class would pull off me (its usually an affliction lock). But this post on taunt makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be all that upset about having to taunt. Is taunt something that I shouldn’t be unhappy about using? Or should I continue to joke with my lock friend “50 dkp minus for taunt!”? Does any of this make sense? Thanks for confusing me Vene lol.
As an aside: I keep hearing about how March Madness is keeping people from actually working at work. Good thing most people aren’t looking at WoW crap all day long like me.
Ooops gotta go, Big Brother is watching.
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March 21st, 2008 at 10:51 am
Wait, should it be pointed out that this wont work on taunt immune bosses?
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March 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am
Hehe I think it just was.
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March 21st, 2008 at 10:58 am
Here’s something you may want to clear up/explain:
Does Challenging Shout work as an AOE taunt, or an AOE mocking blow?
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March 21st, 2008 at 10:59 am
AOE Mocking Blow.
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March 21st, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I didn’t know that. very good to know. RE challenging shout
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March 21st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Great addition to the original article. The detailed, non-technical explanation of the “Front-loading” technique is excellent. Thank you for your work!
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March 21st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
If you have to taunt (or challenging shout or mocking blow), then either you or the dps did something wrong.
When we started T5 content I took taunt off my hotbar and convinced the other tanks in my guild to do the same and I made sure all the DPS were aware of it. I would rather have the raid wipe on trash because the DPS couldn’t look away from the damage meter long enough to look at Omen than wipe on a taunt immune boss. After a week or two the dps realized that I wasn’t joking and from then on I never even noticed it wasn’t there because people weren’t pulling aggro anymore.
Taunt is a crutch. Learn to play without it and both you and you dps will be better at raiding. All that front loading with mocking blow is cute and it might work and you might look fancy doing it… or you could just do a better job of spiking your threat at the beginning of a pull.
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March 21st, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Al’ar must have been tricky for ya
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March 21st, 2008 at 2:07 pm
We used sheer force of will to get Al’ar to change targets.
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March 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
One of the great things about tanking is that you often are able to make up for the errors of others, and, of course, your own. No matter how good your raid or group is, people will make mistakes and so will you, taunt is just one of the tools in your box to handle those. Nothing wrong about it.
Being a good tank is not about making no mistakes. It’s about handling them and those of your fellows in the best possible way.
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March 21st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
meh. taunt is another tool in the tank toolbox for me. And thanks for the very informative taunt post vene. learned a lot in a 10min sitting reading it at work during lunch the other day. Had to thank you sometime since it was my confused self that started the whole discussion. XD
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March 21st, 2008 at 6:21 pm
While raiding since TBC I’ve come to the conlusion that the devs have setteled onto three sets of guidelines regarding taunt implementation.
1) Taunt as a designed mechanic of the encounter - The mob has a threat dump or debuff that makes it need to be swapped from tank to tank.
2) Taunt as normal - The mob dosen’t hit hard enough to one shot everyone but a crit immune tank.
3) Taunt immune - The mobs you really desperately wish it would work on because you just know that if you lose it someone is going to die and probably take someone else with them.
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March 21st, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I dunno, maybe I am jaded because I tanked in a “hardcore” raiding guild so mistakes are not just something that ‘happens’, they are something that happens once and then we learn from them and never make that mistake again.
I know this is going to come off sounding totally elitist and I will look like a jackass for saying it but I am going to do it anyway - taunt is not a tool for a tank, it is an enabler. It either enables a bad tank to continue being a poor threat generator or it enables a dpser to continue to be bad at managing their threat.
When you learn to play without it you will be learning to play so that you will never need it.
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March 22nd, 2008 at 8:19 am
Rochelle sounds like he is trying to convert us to his religion. Not all the warriors in the game have T6 gear so keeping threat on multiple mobs can be difficult.
Putting a Mocking Blowing on the dps target and picking up some threat on the others and then coming back to taunt is an interesting idea.
If you are clearing through Kara in one night, you don’t want the dps to wait for two sunders on each trash pull. So you throw up an Autoblocker SS and they have at it. If, on the rare occassion, you miss and they crit, you can just taunt and the clear continues smoothly. The trash before Curator and the Bear Lord in ZA require taunt.
Being able to force your raid into doing it your way isn’t really a convincing argument. If I was a RL and had to choose between two tanks, one that was willing to use taunt and one that wasn’t, well…
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March 22nd, 2008 at 9:58 am
T6 gear has nothing to do with multimob threat as Rochelle is talking about it. He’s looking at threat control and awareness on the pull coming from every person in the raid group. If no one’s making any mistakes, and handling the mobs properly, you don’t need taunt very much. Gear doesn’t play much of a part in that.
The gear doesn’t make a difference. But the commitment to buy into that system means your crew is probably going to be pretty solid.
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March 22nd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Assuming your gear is roughly equivalent to the rest of your raid, then your gear level is irrelevant. As long as both you and the rest of the raid are playing well, taunt is never required unless the mob has an aggro wipe.
The only time you will ever lose aggro is because someone screwed up. My whole thing makes every more conscious of threat all the time so that on a boss fight, when it really counts, they know exactly how hard they can push it. And it is not as if people are waiting for two sunders on every trash pull and trash takes forever, it is just the opposite. Since everyone knows what the limits are, they can push harder sooner.
Taunt is a crutch, learn to play without it and the raid as a whole will excel. T5 and T6 content are all about situational awareness and not taunting when someone pulls aggro forces the rest of the raid to improve their awareness or get killed every other pull.
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March 23rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Rochelle, how many tanks died on the Bear in ZA before you realized you needed to put Taunt back on your bar? :-p
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March 24th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Removing Taunt from your bar is like removing the seat belts from your car. You might never need it, but if something goes wrong, it might save your ass.
Taunt is also great for multi-target tanking. It’s just good to know, that you don’t have to care about a mob for a few secs.
And I don’t see why anyone would be a better player by not using one of their skills. Also letting people die just to teach them to control their threat is a rather radical approach. Talking to my DD’s before getting them killed always worked quite good in my raid…
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March 24th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Taunt for me is an emergency button, that, little by little, i try to replace it by intervene.
The bear boss, in ZA, is a must taunt one, and the mechanics of that fight is really cool. I started tanking the Bear, i was undergeared, using 3 pieces of gladiator.
i really dont like to stance dance, except for Berserker, that is a must do it.
This mocking blow opener, can be nice, if you have some points in Stance mastery, for a combo, charge>mocking>def stance.
but that could easily be replaced by a charge>def>SS.
Imp BloodRage, is awesome, cause i can open with SS, and get around 2k threat on my 1st hit. And no, i´m like rochelle, with his T6 gear.
i have no pieces of T4 yet, although i´m already tired of kara.
Gladiator Gear, and kara purples.
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March 24th, 2008 at 10:35 am
rochelle, i can understand how a very experienced guild can think of taunt as a crutch, but a lot of my guild started post BC (some recently) and don’t know the mechanics of the game as well as you or many of the posters on this board. Heck, I only recently started tanking after being a healer/SP for a couple of years. So, i take the safe route in many cases and make sure ppl are alive in raids during the trash. I’d like to try t5 or t6 content, but our guild currently is plain and simply just not ready gear-wise, or personnel-wise to do any of it. Situational awareness is, to me, something that is gained by experience and that is something that my guild doesn’t have… yet..
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March 24th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Here is another way to think about it:
It is the classic “all gear no skill” argument that pops up in any pvp discussion. In pvp you can put a bad player in the very best gear available and that player will do OK. You put that bad player in mediocre gear and he will get annihilated. You put a good player in mediocre gear and he will do OK. You put that good player in the best gear and he will destroy people.
But here is the rub, the bad player will never get any better if he is wearing the very best gear. He already does decently so there is no real incentive to improve. You have to put the bad player in the mediocre gear so that it becomes clear that something is wrong with his playstyle.
When I said I took taunt off my bars I was exaggerating. I didn’t actually take it off, but I did stop using almost entirely. If it was taunt or wipe, I taunted. If it was taunt or let 2 warlocks, a mage and a shadow priest die, then we had some dead clothies.
I forced people to realize that there was a problem with their playstyle while forcing myself to really push as much threat as possible. So, to go full circle, I am arguing that there are a lot of tanks that are “all taunt no skill”. Stop using taunt to find out if you are one of them.
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March 24th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Well, that’s of course a totally different situation now. I guess almost all of us have already let DPSers die, although the mob could have easily been taunted, just to teach them a cheap lesson.
That’s one thing, and if you can improve your raid performance with it, it’s an appropriate thing to do, if talking to people just doea not help.
But telling people to “learn to tank without taunt” is just bad advice. There’s so many useful things you can to with taunt, not just pull a mob off of people that pulled aggro.
Just one example. Yesterday ran into in heroic slave pens, no CC, druid healer. You know those packs with two nagas that fear. Berserker Rage only makes you immune to fear 1/3 of the time, so what do you do in between? Taunt, Concussive, Mocking, Challenging, maybe Intimidating Shout. And just watch those naga stick to you even when you’re feared.
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March 24th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Although i apparently misunderstood about how taunt works and i use it as one tool, i don’t rely on it as you say (ie all taunt no talent). if somebody somehow pulls aggro off of me, i usually intervene, ss/rev/dev and get the aggro back. Same with challenging shout. i use it at select times since our mages almost always die during aoe pulls during moroes without it.
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March 24th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
correction.. before* moroes…
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March 25th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Sometimes your shield slam + dev freakishly get missed right as the balance druid in your group lands the biggest crit of the night. Taunt should not be relied upon regularly, but it’s foolish not to use it to save your party members when certain situations pop up.
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March 25th, 2008 at 6:26 am
I never use mocking blow because I’ve never ‘had’ to — I use taunt, challenging shout, and by then the mobs are either on me or dead. I’ve never thought to use MB as a means to get rage; typically zerker rage is sufficient. I may play around with it now — thanks!
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March 25th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Rochelle - I totally get what you’re saying; thanks for bringing it up.
I’m taking this as don’t get comfortable with being a ‘good’ tank - push yourself and your group to get better each time. If you’re using taunt every pull (barring a situation where dps completely out gears you), then you or they are doing something wrong. If you’re reading Vene’s guides, then you very likely want to improve your skills - I take the opinion of someone like Rochelle (who has tanked all endgame) very seriously.
Thanks guys
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March 25th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Come to think of it… I get apologies now and explanations when a dpser pulls off me. “Sorry Will, didn’t give you enough threat.” Music to my ears.
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March 25th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
i still get blamed when a dpser keeps pulling aggro off me and when i let them die, he quits the group when i tell him that he pulled aggro. While this maybe great on a server with plenty of 70s LFG, this sucks on a server where we have a really hard time finding casters as well as healers and tanks to do pugs as well as guild run instances/raids.
To make a long story short, the thought of waiting 30min-1hour looking for a replacement for one person makes me want to keep the ppl in my grp happy… Even if i have to unnecessarily use taunt.
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March 25th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I suppose it is different in a pug or in a 5-man, you just want to get it over with as quickly as possible. I honestly cannot remember the last time I ran a 5-man. I am really only talking about how to improve your performance in a raid and improve the performance of those you are raiding with.
Vrathmat: The druid in your group has to realize that it is possible that you will miss and should have opened with a different spell. And no matter how many times you tell someone, if you keep taunting every time they pull aggro, they are never going to figure it out. No amount of bitching at someone to not pull aggro is as effective as just letting them die.
You guys can keep trying to talk to your dpsers and try to convince them not to pull aggro and they will nod and smile and then 3 pulls later they will pull aggro again and you will taunt and then ask them nicely to watch Omen a little more closely and they will nod and smile…
I can tell you from experience that if you are in the habit of taunting, then you dpsers are in the habit of things getting taunted and they will continue to pull aggro no matter how many times you ask them not to. You have to break the cycle.
Vorp, for every one person who realizes that they have some responsibility in managing threat there are 10 more who are thinking, ‘this tank sucks’ because most players don’t understand how threat works.
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March 25th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I have to admit that way back when in Karazhan I’d always get the question of which colour of ghost is tauntable… green or purple? Upon a Shadow Priest pulling agg on the purple one and me letting him die I simply replied laughing… “I guess it’s the green one” while using taunt to make sure no one else died from his mistake.
I’d say I use taunt more than Rochelle, but then I enjoy 5 mans and do them frequently. It’s a refreshing change of pace from raiding and is a great use of time (money + badges) while discussing what happened in the raid. In general, I use taunt aggressively on trash, but really find that for the most part I don’t need to. Simply put my dpsers are responsible and using the occasional taunt to save a death and keep the run going a good speed is fine by me. (they’ll be the first ones to tell you though how fast I get on their case if they start dpsing like idiots)
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March 25th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I love to push the threat envelope, because I want my dps to be able to go all out. I think when I get my Blazefury today, I’m going to drop executioner on that bad boy. Yum
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March 25th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I guess I don’t like having to get on someone’s case about pulling aggro, I just let them die and things work themselves out.
I am reminded of the scene from Office Space when the Bobs are talking about Milton and how there was a glitch in the payroll system that allowed him to continue getting a paycheck even though he should have been fired. Instead of firing again him they just ‘fixed the glitch’ so he doesn’t get a paycheck anymore.
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March 25th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
The sad thing about that metaphor is that that scene from Office Space was illustrating the least humane way of dealing with a co-worker given that situation. That’s what the whole movie is about, terrible ways of managing people. It’s why so many of us in office environments can relate to it and laugh about it, but ultimately despise those that take such approaches to dealing with us.
Food for thought.
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March 25th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I like to Taunt for the sheer pleasure of it, whether I need to or not. Blizz gave it to us, might as well use it…along with Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout. Not everyone is in a hardcore, omg don’t screw up, I’m posting screens of you being a nub, guild so to all those out there in the same situation I’m in…Taunt away. In the long run…and probably the short as well…Taunting is goind to be better for you than letting some tard/unlucky crit-er die. And yes, you sound elitist Rochelle.
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Rochelle doesn’t sound elitist. If DPS pulls from me within the first 10 seconds, I don’t taunt. My taunt is there to save a healer, not an overzealous idiot dps. I let them die unless circumstances absolutely do not permit me to do so.
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March 26th, 2008 at 6:22 am
He does sound a little elitist :-p
I was not implying that I taunt every time. It’s rare that I use it at all, especially in raids. I was merely saying that sometimes the stars line up and someone pulls a trash mob off you by mistake, even if they were being careful. Maybe *you* even made a mistake or lagged without realizing it. It’s a real jackass thing to do to always take the attitude of “Pff…lazy, brainless dps. I could save you, but instead I’m going to stand by and let you die to teach you a lesson.” The DPS players are not your own personal drones which you can just ‘punish’ whenever they do not perform your bidding.
I understand that yes, sometimes the only way people learn is by letting them die. But for the most part, I do not believe you when you say that it’s impossible to make DPS players understand how to control their threat output “no matter how many times you tell them.” If you can’t get people to figure that out without always having to let them die every time they make a mistake, you need some better communication skills (or some new raid members who will play as a team). Like Vene said, it’s a terrible, inhumane way of managing a team of people. Show some compassion once in awhile. It may not be the same thing as an instant lesson, but it’s better in the long run.
That kind of attitude is also why I think the tanking community in general can have a reputation of being nothing but arrogant pricks who think they’re the only class who require skill. I don’t think that’s a fair reputation either, but I see where it comes from.
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March 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Let’s keep this about taunt guys and gals. Ultimately even my comment was out of line. My apologizes Rochelle and consider this everyone else’s warning to stick to the topic and not to your opinions about the person regardless of whether you believe her to be elitist or not.
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March 26th, 2008 at 8:54 am
That was harsher than I intended to sound, sorry.
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March 26th, 2008 at 9:47 am
maybe i was doing something wrong in reg Mg.T last night then. :/ 7-8 mob trash pulls, limited space, and me running all over the place taunting mobs that get away from me when the mage warrior(?) did glaive throw… But other than that, it was kinda fun running all over the place. =)
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March 26th, 2008 at 11:22 am
As always, analogies make terrible arguments and my Office Space comment of course was twisted. I will clarify it once and then drop it forever: in my raids I ‘fired’ the dps many many times asking them to watch threat better before ‘fixing the glitch’; it is not as if one day I decided, screw you guys. Is it more inhumane to stop communicating and force them to face the consequences of their actions or to let them suffer the soft bigotry of low expectations?
I am not expecting them to do my bidding and I am not punishing them for my own sadistic needs, I am doing it so that the raid as a whole gets better. The people I play with are very good but sometimes they were prone to getting tunnel vision and focusing on the damage meter to the detriment of the threat meters. Breaking them out of that tunnel vision is the first step to developing a situationally aware raider.
You have people who pull aggro in your raids. You can keep telling them to watch threat till you are blue in the face. I on the other hand never have to say a word because nobody ever pulls aggro anymore. They all learned 8 months ago that threat management is a raid-wide effort.
This is not the first time I have had this discussion so I am quite aware that it sounds elitist. In fact, I am pretty sure I prefaced my argument with precisely that…
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
You might also add that taunt does not require you to face the mob.
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April 1st, 2008 at 2:10 pm
“You might also add that taunt does not require you to face the mob.”
This is gold, definately something to keep in mind. This rocks for trapped mobs..wait till it gets in the trap, back up to it while working on the rest of the mobs, then taunt while it’s trapped. That way it’s likely your taunt will be back up by the time the trap breaks. Also great for shackles [healers QQ alot when mobs start beating on them]. Banished mobs can also be taunted. Now that I think about it, I might have to look into a mouseover taunt macro…though honestly I have enough problems taunting the right mob. Stupid Spirit Lynx…
Just like you love it when you don’t have to worry about the CC, CC love it when they don’t have to worry about the mob.
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April 2nd, 2008 at 5:53 am
Rochelle, I read you loud and clear. You shouldn’t expend the amount of energy you now do, to convince people as they seem to have missed your initial point entirely (not everyone, but some at least).
I do not let the dps die, but i do get those smilies you speak of, time and time again.
I guess I’m one of those who persists on keeping the dps alive and trying to talk sense to them, instead of letting them die and then let them think about it a bit.
It happens some times of course by default, when a rogue for the tenth time despite continuous warnings over vent, insists on charging onto the naga (on vashj) before i tuck him into place. Cleave ftw.
You will often find anyhow, that out of the three difference roles, dps tend to be the most lazy ones (and yes only think of dps meters), as lazy tanks or healers soon find themselves alone or pugging. But dps will always get away with it, which is why some key boss fights, such as Vashj, Alar and Kael, whereby the dps need to use their head a little, are exponentially more difficult than other fights.
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April 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I feel used properly taunt can be used a s a wonderful tool in a lot of creative ways - epsecially when it comes to heroics where there can be a lot of nasty pulls. Discounting it as a “crutch” seems hardly fair, especially with good dps who know its limitations. Anyone ever let a dps pull aggro on purpose? We don’t always have to be the hero tank, sometimes letting a dps pull a mob and run with them can be that moment that saves a run, when one of those nasty events happens where a healer gets stunned, silenced, charmed, etc. As good as I might be I ain’t going to last long sometimes without them heals incomming. Truly good dps will accept the fact that a few seconds respite on healing the tank is worth their own death if they can’t kite them back around to you, and if they can do it, taunt is sure handy for grabbing the aggro back.
Simply put, not every fight is tank and spank.
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April 9th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I put taunt on a mouseover for emergencies, so I can taunt a mob without targeting it, then do a mouseover ability like ss or sunder (if it is a cc mob), e.g. CC breaks
The mocking blow front loading thing looks neat, but in t5 it seems to me that opening with bloodrage + autoblocker + shield slam on the pull coupled with the expertise tanking gear from badges, getting a big buffer early is fairly easy, especially if shield slam or revenge crit.
And in all fairness this is assuming that you’re running with consistent tanks :p Pure DPS classes all have either a full or 50% aggro drop of some sort, and most of the hybrids have an oh shit button to go to. They should use them or learn to use them while they feel out their tanks.
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April 17th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
***Just one example. Yesterday ran into in heroic slave pens, no CC, druid healer. You know those packs with two nagas that fear. Berserker Rage only makes you immune to fear 1/3 of the time, so what do you do in between? Taunt, Concussive, Mocking, Challenging, maybe Intimidating Shout. And just watch those naga stick to you even when you’re feared.****
Here’s one thing I love to do: when a mob has an intimidating shout-mechanic, or a stun, or a gouge (something that CC’s you), you can ride a
taunt, berserker rage, mocking blow, taunt wave. You’re either immune to the stun/fear during BR, or the mob will stay on you and break his own CC. I use it in heroic arcatraz on the AOE gouge ladies, and in heroic shadow labs against the stupid gouge guys and the fearing demons.
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April 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I use Taunt to break CC
#showtooltip Taunt
/startattack
/cast Taunt
I got tired of those trapped dudes making a B-line for the hunters in 5 mans so this Macro has replaced my regular Taunt button.
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May 4th, 2008 at 9:37 am
One more thingy
I often use taunt just before i break any form of cc (except banish).
To be sure mob will go for me and not the hunter for example.
I’ve learned it once when shackled mob i’ve freed from shackles went directly for priest *crit* and the priest was dead.
Wait, Vene, actually i think you’ve posted something about it in the topic about securing crowd controlled mobs in case they break out to early…
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May 30th, 2008 at 7:09 am
I love taunt, on a boss i can have DPS go flat-out near the end and know i have a taunt up my sleeve to stop a squishy from getting owned. Also in low CC situations i can taunt d and use the time to build threat on a,b & c.
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