Loading ...AOE Tanking: It really is your fault
I stumbled across this thread at Tankspot regarding a bad pug experience and it got me thinking about my old Multi-mob tanking article. Unlike Multi-mob tanking when it comes to those silly eel pulls in Magister’s Terrace most of the time, it really is our fault!
Many Multiple Mob Tanking…?
A common misunderstanding surrounding tanking are that the concepts of Multi-mob Tanking and AOE Tanking are one and the same issue. Just by reading them, you’ve probably already picked up on the subtle difference.
Multi-mob Tanking really is just conventional tanking. It’s something expected of a tank and it is something that as Warriors we can and do excel at. In a nut shell, it’s keeping high aggro on 1 target so that it can be focus fired while keeping minimal aggro on the other target(s) so they don’t aggro on your healer.
AOE Tanking on the other hand doesn’t have a primary dps target. It’s usually done when there’s at least 6 targets, but in the case of the eel pull in Magister’s Terrace… it can be upwards of 15 targets. AOE makes sense on pulls where the individual targets themselves are especially low on health, plentiful in number and for the most part don’t hit particularly hard as individuals.
So wait, why’s it our fault?
Well the common mistake that warrior tanks make when presented with the “impossible” task of AOE tanking is they try to tank like a Paladin. They try to tank everything. I’m guilty of falling into this trap too I assure you. This is really stupid.
So, how do we AOE tank as a warrior?
Less is More
Don’t worry about tanking everything. Any logical, AOE pull like the one in Magister’s Terrace doesn’t require you to tank every single target. 1 mob does not kill your AOEer… 10 mobs do. So here is what you do:
- Demoralizing Shout… once
- Thunderclap… once
- Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devaste… only pick 4 targets to rotate between
Now if your AOEers are being especially patient you’ll have to renew Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap somewhere in the middle, but for the most part the only real danger of this technique is if your healer heals too much and gets healing aggro. (in the case of the eel pull… you really shouldn’t require a whole lot of heals, but it’s in your better interest to warn your healer)
So for the sake of our example… let’s assume a warlock is what you are putting up with for this pull. Just 1. Once the seeds start flying, you’ll quickly lose aggro, but if you’ve done your job right, it won’t be on the 4 you’ve focused on. At this point, you need to intervene your AOEer then:
- Taunt 1 mob off him
- Tab, Concussion Blow another one
- Tab, Mocking Blow a 3rd one
- Tab, run away and Intercept a 4th one
You’ve now handled 8 mobs (4 for a solid duration and 4 for a limited time) and from this point onward, it’s mostly up to the dps of your AOE combined with the healing of your healer to get the job done.
It’s Chaos… I’m useless!
Once chaos ensues (you know how that feels) your best bet is to simply spam Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap to reduce the amount of incoming damage hitting your AOEer and patiently wait for your Taunt, Intercept and Intervene cooldowns to come up. Make sure to save rage for Intervene and Intercept because there’s no point in mindlessly blowing rage fighting an uphill battle vs massive AOE threat when Intervene and Intercept are two of the most important things you can use your rage on at this point.
So remember…
“The difference between impossible and possible is the courage to try something new”
…or at least that’s how I try to convince my guildies to AOE the Murlocs again!!! 
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Having a sporeggar shield with a spike would help amirite? dunno this forsure if it’s *That* significant, but i always use it
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admin reply on June 3, 2008 12:13 am:
Yup, it’s definitely great to use for this. It won’t necessarily help a great amount with AOE threat when up against a lock or mage dpsing, but it is nice for making sure the healer doesn’t pull healing aggro early in the pull. (this is especially relevant if your healer is a paladin)
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Kavtor reply on June 3, 2008 7:37 am:
Although if your healer is a pally, he can tank the wave just fine.
The sporeggar shield is pretty nifty though. A spike, some thorns, and tell your group to go grab a quick drink while you solo the pull!
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June 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 am
yeah very true, i definatly agree that the differences between aoe and multi tanking are mistaken by alot of people. Some good advice.
Cheers Vene
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June 3rd, 2008 at 12:48 am
This actually reminds me of a thing I noticed in the past.
I used to tank the spawning mobs on the fourth boss in AQ 40. All I had to du was demoshout the whole time, together with thorns buff, the MC shield that deals damage, a shield spike, the ring from BRD that deals damage to attackers… you get the point… after a while, we gave a signal and the casters would all AOE the adds and they went down after a few secs without me loosing agro. Strange thing was, after a patch, this did not work anymore. Don’t know if they reduced the agro done by demoshout or from the damaging items, but I never read anything like it in any patch notes. Maybe anyone here can un-confuse this rather old “problem”.
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Speidel reply on June 3, 2008 2:29 am:
Yea, I think at one point demo shout did a static amount of threat regardless of whether the target was already affected by it. But those times are long gone
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Ridlyblade reply on June 3, 2008 8:43 am:
yeah i remember somewhere right after naxx opened, blizzard adjusted the threat put out by all shouts…i think it was mostly done to combat the tactic used to hold the stuff in the gauntlet on the way to heigan by spamming blattle shout and demo shout
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June 3rd, 2008 at 1:22 am
For Magisters Terrace flying worms, I use a fel iron bomb before my DPS friends start their job. Since that, we never had problem any more with these fights.
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Grimgorr reply on June 3, 2008 4:01 pm:
Fel Iron Bombs FTW, for those of us Engineers, anyway.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 2:27 am
Hmm, I agree with a lot of these ideas.
BUT… I’m highly skeptical that your rotation on 4 mobs is going to hold them off me. Perhaps a magister’s terrace run is in order here..
However, the main idea here still holds true on basically every AOE pull besides the ridiculous 82 eels or whatever in MGT - That you shouldn’t have a single ability NOT on cooldown afterwards.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 2:33 am
for Magisters I go with high block rating gear, Dawnforged with shield spike, Dabiri + Figurine of the Colossus. I usually pull two groups, thunderclap and demo a few times throughout the group and start cycling through them with devastates, revenge, slams and renewed thunderclaps. This works pretty well if the DPS is patient for the opening few moments.
I’ve toyed with the idea of picking up some pallie tanking gear (just for kicks, really. I’ve already picked up every piece of badge loot that’s of any use to me) to see if it would make a noticeable difference with my thunderclap threat. Anyone out there that’s done it and can comment on it?
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Glakatak reply on June 3, 2008 2:34 am:
for the above post I meant specifically for the eel pulls, of course.
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bosephus reply on June 3, 2008 7:13 am:
It’s my understanding that since Thunderclap is physical damage, the stats on pali gear will not have an effect on increasing the damage.
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RSRYchro reply on June 4, 2008 10:28 am:
Awesome with the Colossus and Dabiri’s I use that combo with a shield spike. If people are patient you get a significant amount of threat. As far as Thunderclap Sets go, well this is a joke with a group of my friends. When we would run heroics I would grab shaman elemental gear and get my spell damage up for a thunderclap set, I never noticed a difference. I ran a Kara and got to the mobs after the Curator and did what I always do I thunder clapped to hold the worms off the healers….oh wait they are magic damage immune right? Why is my thunderclap doing damage? Thats when I realized the Thunderclap set is useless because it is counted as physical damage and now the on going joke is when a nice caster item drops (Leggings of Channeled Elements off Kaz’rogal) I tell the raid I’m gonna bid dkp for my thunderclap set.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 4:19 am
Do you do:
first mob: shield slam
second: revenge
third: devistate
fourth: devistate
or
first mob: shield slam, rev, dev, dev
repeat for the other 3
?
It seems an awfully long time to wait if it’s the full SS, rev, dev, dev on each of the 4?
Flyte
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admin reply on June 3, 2008 6:57 am:
first mob: shield slam
second: revenge
third: devistate
fourth: devistate
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June 3rd, 2008 at 4:38 am
I havent been to MgT since ive gotten my sporregar spike shield, but before then I would have the Druid put thorns on me, or get warlock imp fire shield. Pull a group or 2, and turn around. So every incoming attack is retaliated with 22 damage. Where as if you were facing them, you would dodge and parry many many atttacks, and those dont retaliate with thorns.
Works good enough
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June 3rd, 2008 at 5:15 am
I agree with Glakatak on the magister worms.
High block rating (I’m at ~45%), shield spike and fury deck trinket helps alot for that fight. I also spam thunderclap and try to hit as many mobs as I can.
Its really important for the healer not to hold off on heals for as long as possible. When aoe starts that’s pretty much the end of tanking for me and the healer should switch to the lock or mage to finish things off.
All this taunting, mocking blow, intervene, intercept stuff is not worth it in my opinion. If aoe’ers die its their fault and they should have waited longer, hopefully they learn from this.
Mogri
Prot warrior from The Drunken Badgers of Feathermoon
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admin reply on June 3, 2008 7:02 am:
“If aoe’ers die its their fault and they should have waited longer, hopefully they learn from this.”
When the AOEer dies, you have a choice. You can blame the AOEer or you can blame yourself. Taking responsibility is the first step towards becoming a stronger player.
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RSRYchro reply on June 4, 2008 10:33 am:
Agreed. yes the pull sucks, yes its hard on prot warriors but as long as they wait for you to give them the cue to aoe. Well at that point their death is your responsibility. SS, Dabiri’s, Colossus, ask for patience and no heals til you top yourself off.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 5:15 am
Hmmm… maybe the folks in my guild are just that good, but it seems that all I need to do is cycle through this rotation: rage, dem shout, thunderclap, taunt one to keep rage up, dem shout, dem shout, thunderclap… then make sure that the aoe person begins at that point… healer doesnt heal me but heals the aoe peson until I’m down to 4k health, so no issue there…
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June 3rd, 2008 at 6:58 am
if you go in with geared out dps (impatient warlocks come to mind), you pretty much will not be holding aggro unless dps gives you ample time to build initial threat. that being said, a lot of people panic a little and try to devastate/ss each mob, but what ends up happening is that one hit doesnt keep aggro in the long run, and eventually all the mobs will go to the aoer/healer. i like the idea of focusing on a set number, since its better to keep 4-8 mobs completely on you instead of having most on you for about 5 seconds, then watching your aoe get mauled. another helpful post :]
as for the fankriss adds in aq40, they had a weird threat mechanic, sort of a focus on the first target to attack them. i used to use my essence of pure flame (rag trinket) and the old high warlord shield wall (had reflective dmg) and could keep a ton on me without much effort. at the very least, way less effort than i takes for the damn mana worms.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 7:12 am
Good post… but you forgot challenging shout.
While handling your 4, be sure to watch your poor ‘lock’s health, if they dip below 35-40% or so (and they probably will) drop your challenging shout and a trinket (if you’re still a little squishy) to give your healer a chance to get them back to full.
You must be judicious with it since chances are you’re only going to get 1 challenging shout in the eel room.
However in instances like Kara, my guild finds it useful to set up a rotation between the warriors and any unlucky feral druids that wander in, to save our poor hapless 9+ pack soloing ‘lock from certain death.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 am
Hopefully we get some type of AOE tanking ability in the deep recesses of the lvl 80 prot tree. Not something spamable or consistent like concentrate, but at least something that will allow us to put threat on multi mobs in an AOE tanking situation.
I will mention two things I have done to help get through AOE situations.
but then it also has had great success in letting my rouge friend pop blade fury and adrenaline rush in order to burn down multiple targets at once.
If using vent work out with your AOEs when to start AOEing so you can time your Challenging shout better in order to maximize the amount of time amount of safe time they have to AOE. This has gone wrong though and ended up with dead AOEers
I have also equipped a two hander and made a pull and hit retaliation in order to do a lot of damage to the mobs, while spamming demo and TClap. I have done this on the mana worms packs a few times to great success. I just tell the AOEs to wait for retaliation to end before they start to AOE.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 7:44 am
Taking advantage of group buffs goes a long way to helping out in AOE tanking. Fire shield from and imp, retribution aura from a pally, thorns from a druids. Food buffs like stormchops are great and the sporegar shield with a spike helps a lot.
Even though it is totally possible for a warrior to do it, any pally, even a holy pally, will be able to do something like the worms in mgt a LOT easier.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 am
Challenging Shout was intentionally left out since you can’t rely on it to be up for every AOE pull nor should it be required for effective AOE tanking.
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AnotherTank reply on June 3, 2008 10:47 am:
Its true that you should not rely on it being available for every AOE pull you come across, but I don’t think one should completely cut it out as an option. It can be effectively used in an aggressive manner instead of it only being used and an “Oh No” button.
I can remember a lot of times where I use it on normal pulls just so I can allow the rouges to Blade flurry, warriors SS and WW, and let the lock seed spam. Of course though I do have good synergy with these players and I dont normally attempt that in a PUG.
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Dezdemone reply on June 3, 2008 1:33 pm:
…”Challenging Shout was intentionally left out since you can’t rely on it to be up for every AOE pull nor should it be required for effective AOE tanking.”…
Ok Vene, I hope you won’t hate me for this, but I disagree with your statement that Challenging shout should not be required for effective AOE tanking.
First let me say that I don’t disagree with your original post at all. I think it’s very pertinent to show us warriors that we can be useful even in situations where there are a bizillion targets. Furthermore I can understand leaving out Challenging shout particularly if the aim of your post was to show us that we can be useful even without using our AOE taunt.
The fact is that we as warriors are here because we want to make the most effective use of the abilities provided to us by blizzard. We are here to min/max. That said, a carpenter would never say to his hammer “I am not going to use you because the end of my screwdriver works just as well to pound in this nail” No, the carpenter would use the hammer for pounding in the nail.
Just like the carpenter would use the most effective tool for the job, if you’re in the midst of an aoe pull and there are 9 mobs, 4 of which you’re tanking and 5 of which are about to kill your poor hapless ‘lock a quick Challenging shout is going to benefit your group a lot more than a lot of stance dancing and ability swapping that 75-80% of tanks would need macros to figure out in battle anyway.
Challenging shout is a hugely useful tool in aoe tanking particularly when used with a technique in mind. If your challenging shout is not up, following the instructions in the post will be your best bet. If your warlock or other AOE class isn’t in trouble already the post will be the best way to keep them out of trouble. However if your AOE is about dead use the hammer, not the end of your screwdriver.
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Veneretio reply on June 3, 2008 2:17 pm:
Ya, I definitely didn’t intend to give the impression that one should avoid or that it was in some way incorrect to use challenging shout. If there is only a single AOE pull in an instance then by all means… use Challenging Shout. In fact, you absolutely should use it.
However, the purpose of this post is for all the other times that Challenging Shout isn’t up since AOE pulls often come in bunches not in convenient 10 minute intervals.
Regarding the topic in general when Challenging Shout is on cooldown, while certainly we can single target dps a lot of AOE pull situations (if not all) and definitely we can equip a number of situational items to aid in these pulls that’ll simulate AOE tanking like a Paladin if your group is willing to wait (sporeogar + spike is fantastic), but… (oh yes there is a but)
Your group can also just invite a Paladin. I’m giving you a technique that can help give your group a closer experience to the part of Paladin tanking that DPSers truly enjoy… not waiting. Yes, it’s not going to be as carebear, easy-mode for yourself, the AOEers or your healer as with a Paladin, but it’s interactive, it’s fun and it doesn’t involving that horrible word… waiting.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 8:00 am
I use the Sporregar Shield + Felsteel Spike + Dabiri + block set - works well. Takes longer than a Paladin but works real well.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
{Taking responsibility is the first step towards becoming a stronger player.}
Quoted for truth!
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June 3rd, 2008 at 8:48 am
It’s too bad only engineers can use the Force Reactive Disk. It’s the only Old World item still in my bags, and it’s made every AoE pull in any 5-man an opportunity to see if the DPS are really listening when I tell them to simply wait for 8 seconds and let my nifty shield work it’s happy lightning magic.
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Alkahn reply on June 16, 2008 10:17 am:
I don’t usually post here but I just wanted to say that this post (and in particular the pointer to the Force Reactive Disk & Dabiri’s Enigma) was hugely helpful for me this past weekend. I finally got the item made, got a shield spike on it, pulled out some bombs, and it made the difference in our dragonhawk strategy in ZA (was able to tank an entire side at a time, pali-style).
The net result was our guild’s 2nd bear mount, with our pali tank unavailable - so thanks for this blog and the posts; it paid huge dividends for my guild :).
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June 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 am
Yea I’m an engineer myself and I just resort to tossing Fel Iron Bomb, strapping on my Force Reactive Disc + Fel Steel Spike, and my block set and I’m usually good for a bit O’ AoE tanking fun. Defnately make use of those in-party buffs. Paladin Retribution Aura, Blessing of Sanctuary, Thorns, Earthen Shield, nothing but Prayer’s of Mending and the like for all the AoE aggro you can gen.
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Rochelle reply on June 3, 2008 10:55 am:
Blessing of sanctuary is 21 points deep in prot so if you have a pally with it, he is probably doing the aoe tanking instead of you
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June 3rd, 2008 at 10:51 am
Well, as a warlock main, I know that being a retard will get me killed in AOE pulls in a split second. So yea, sometimes it is the AOEers fault. If I die, I don’t ever blame the tank (except when Vene tells us to AOE the murlocs in SSC…grumble).
But if your AOEer has half a brain, and he dies with you having abilities other than challenging shout not on cooldown, then you could have done more.
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Rochelle reply on June 3, 2008 10:56 am:
“But if your AOEer has half a brain”
These are DPSers you are talking about, having half a brain is far from a certainty
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Orenus reply on June 4, 2008 6:27 am:
Who needs a brain when you can have BIG YELLOW NUMBERS!!
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Speidel reply on June 4, 2008 12:07 pm:
OMG IT WAS SOOOOO AWESOME
Talisman reply on June 4, 2008 3:26 pm:
HELL YEAH I’m winnning on Omen!!
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 am
While tanking those pulls. I generally pull 2 or 3 at the time. Usually I have a warlock or druid in the group that gives an extra nice buff to increase threat along with the sporr shield.(I don’t even have mine spiked) My guild is only 5 bosses into bt.. so that might be why… but if our aoer is a mage and they die they did it wrong. Warlocks are a little trickier but have a ton more hp and are easy to keep full on heals if you just keep your demo shout up and just use interviene.
Honestly I’ve even seen holy palys just consecrate.. Then again I’m probably looking at the stand point that we over gear the instance by so much..
I would have liked to see you talk about multi target tanking more than aoe tanking. I’ve done all of heroic MGT with only a warlock for CC. Warriors are perfectly capable of holding aggro of multiple targets as long as your dps just dpses 1 at a time. Those big aoe mana dudes can be killed one at a time as well. You don’t NEED to aoe them its just faster.
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Kavtor reply on June 4, 2008 12:34 pm:
A mage can solo those groups pretty easily. With FN, Ice block, blink, etc. Really easy with cold snap, but very doable for an arcane or fire mage if they use all their tricks.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I go Sporeggar Shield + Shield Spike, I have EZ-Throw Dynamite, the trinket from Sunken Temple, the trinket that you can click to have attacks heal you, and a high block rating set. If I have a druid healer or a warlock, I have them give me thorns/shield as well.
I pull the whole room (or as much as I can get of it in a single pull), tell the group to not heal me until I’ve healed myself back up, use my poison trinket, throw the dynamite, spam shield block / TC / Demo, when I’m low on health I click my trinket again to get healed up, then call for them to burn. The AE’ers burn hard all at once and rarely take damage, and I’ve pulled like 50 mobs.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
1. Grab Sporegar shield
2. get a set of gear that puts u at 40%+ block chance
3. shield spike the Sporegar shield
4. Figurine of the Collosus and Dabiri’s Enigma are your trinkets
5. Demo, thunderclap and tell the healer NOT to heal you.
6. if low on HP use both trinkets at once, you’ll be at full in no time at all
7. PROFITZ
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June 3rd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I tend to use a standard shield (the S1) with felsteel spike, the Vengeance card, and whatever SBR and SBV gear I have. Then I ask the DPS to please focus-fire on one marked target first. It helps if the pack includes one elite, such as the elf mage in Botanica or the warlock in Auchenai Crypts. Usually, by the time the DPS kills the marked elite, I’ll have gathered enough aggro to hold the first 1-2 AoE attacks, and yes the AoE will get aggro after that but also kill the mobs.
Tempted to take my figurine, Sporregar shield, and cloak of fire out of the bank and see if they make a difference, though. I’ve vendored the yucky poison trinket from Sunken Temple. And what about Oil of Immolation? It was a fabulous item at low level, but I haven’t seen anything new like it.
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June 4th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I tried the the retaliation with my glave of the pit (2h polearm from Mags) on the mana worms at the end on Mana Tombs. It worked great I held all 8-10 of them off the frost mage (blizarding) and the Warlock (Seeding)until I died because the Holy Pally that was healing was laughing too hard to heal me.
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June 4th, 2008 at 10:43 am
a couple things come to mind and I am not sure if it came up there are a lot of posts. Rogues/Shamans/Dps Warriors/Pallies. What I am saying is that all of these classes and maybe a few more could be effectively use to tank a few or all of them. I’ve seen Holy Pallies tank all the ads on panther boss in ZG and even the adds to eagle boss in ZA and on dragon hawk. An enhance shaman could start with a chain lightning, DPS warrior could WW, Cleave, Never leveled a rogue but i believe Slice and Dice is multiple targets. Either way these classes have higher avoidance and armor than a mage or lock aoeing. So you can spread the damage out a lot more for heals and reduce it significantly. Earth elemental also might be useful.
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Blithlyle reply on June 4, 2008 12:00 pm:
Slice and Dice just makes rogues attack faster. If the rogue is combat they should have blade fury and can pop that and take 2 of the mobs but that likely won’t help too much.
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June 4th, 2008 at 11:06 am
One other thing you can chip in is Whirlwind. With 1050 AP and Innuro’s Blade, you can land WW’s that hit for 280 on average. You lose a bit of threat but its still fairly efficient. This does require you to have 3/3 TM. Personally doing 5 man’s without TM drives me nuts and I would normally recommend people to take it (unfortunately raid tanking forces you to skip it).
For those who like to stunt tank AoE pulls, T4’s Blade Turning works wonders. Normally, a source of mockery it becomes pretty overpowered whilst taking on 10 or more mobs. A definite must for the Ata’mal Terrace, Arlokk or the Magister’s Terrace.
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June 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I’m pretty new to tanking but for the worms in Hmgt I just tell all the dps in the group to pick one target and dps them down. I find that I can hold all agro by spamming TC and Demo shout. I bang a few devistaes, revenges and sheild slams around on different mobs and it always goes smooth. I have to say I’m too fail as a tank to do all this intercept, stance swapping stuff. I’ve tried it and I get rather panic stricken and endup with chaos instead of a nice smooth pull. Each of your dps will be fine to solo an eel or two. Grab a renew from the healer or what ever and they will be fine.
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Hao reply on June 6, 2008 9:34 am:
Really? I went in there once as a mage and a handful of times as a tank. If teh mages start to go apes**t with arcane blast, they will almost certainly pull off you if you pull 2 groups of wyrms (and most likely you will even if you are careful).
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June 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am
The last time i ran heroic magisters terrace.. I had 3 mages and a pally healer. Oh yeaaaa… They swapped aggro betwn themselves (ice blocked) and the wryms went down fast.
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Hao reply on June 5, 2008 10:02 am:
That was a double grp pull. Then , they decided to pull the rest of the wryms… That wasn’t cool… luckily i had one aoe taunt left.
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June 6th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Multi Mob tanking is no problem if:
- you use bloodrage after the “in combat” message
- the damage will be focused on one target
- the healer uses heals that will help the tank to build up threat
If there is a caster in the pull its perfect. Let the damage dealers take him out. Don’t care about him.
This is a plus, you have one mob less to tank and you have more time to tank the other mobs.
If there is only melees, no problem use the taunt-stun-taunt technique to make him stay next to you without actually tanking him. Instead you start tanking the second mob while thunderclapping the rest.
I cannot aggree with Veneretio that tabbing is useful while AOE-tanking. Thunderclap is far enough to hold as much mobs as you like (demo shout only once to debuff).
Tabbing makes you freak out, just focus on the second mob on the list and tank reaguarly while thunderclapping every 4.5 seconds and cleaving when possible.
You will have a huge threat lead on the seconds and you can swith to the third before the seconds dies. And so on until every mob is down.
The most important part is that you do not “tank” the first mob, have the damage dealers do it or taunt-stun-taunt it. If there is no focus damage you will not stay a chance, as said we are no paladins.
Thunderclap is enough to hold up against healing threat. If your casters want to AOE our only way to hold the mobs is to AOE-taunt inbetween.
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Spaz reply on June 6, 2008 11:44 am:
By your post, I’m not sure you’re differentiating between multi-mob tanking and AOE tanking.
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June 8th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Sporregar shield, Fel Iron shield spike, Figurine of the Colossus, Dabiri’s Enigma, high defense, high block rating gear.
Demo shout, shield block, trinket up, shield block shield block shield block.
Back to the wall, healers heal me with pom only until the trinkets get me back to 100%. The mage, warlock and rogue take a smoke break.
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June 8th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I think I sold my Dabiri’s Enigma because it was ‘only a blue’ and it’s a quest item and i’ll never never never get it back now … AARRRGGGG
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June 9th, 2008 at 2:13 am
AOE tanking is not possible without giving the tank ~30seconds gathering the mobs using Sporregar Shield with spike and Figurine of the Collossus (for self heal and threat).
There is only one situation where I do that:
When I am soloing hordes of dual wield mobs or in Magister’s Terrace when I pull all the fishes at once and we AOE them down at once.
DPS has to wait forever until you have enough threat.
We are not meant to do AOE tanking, so don’t do it until you have to. It will make you freak out easily :).
Well there is one Item in this game that allows warrios to AOE-tank, its the force reactive disk. It blasts every mob in an area everytime you block but damages the shield. But the shield destroys itself pretty quickly.
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July 10th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I love you and I would marry you if my husband would not object so strenuously. I am going to buy the Sporregar shield right now. And I am going to stock back up on bombs.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I am really a bad tank in disguise, but helpful websites like yours make it easy for me to camouflage my disability.
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July 21st, 2008 at 10:12 am
I used the tips describe in here and my Magister’s Terrace wyrm pulls are great now. My thanks to all of you.
I put on my maximum mitigation gear which puts me at about ~70% combined dodge, parry, block and miss. I tell the healers and the AoE to do nothing until I am about about 30% health. I start the pull, bloodrage, demo shout, thunderclap, cleave, tab, cleave, devastate, etc. Tab is a great option because you’ll only end up with mobs in front of you. When I’m at 30% the first heal lands and the mage or lock steps right up to me and starts the AoE. The mobs all die. The healer takes no damage and the mage or lock takes a little bit depending on their +spell damage. Once the AoE starts the healer switches to the AoE caster.
I don’t burn any long cool downs and everyone moves on to the next bunch happy.
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August 12th, 2008 at 5:05 am
I currently have an “AOE” set of sorts on my warrior which uses the Sporeggar shield with a felsteel spike, I also have Honor’s Call with Battlemaster on it (infrequent proc rate, but helps when it does all the same), using demoralizing shout, thunderclap and an Oil of Immolation on pulls similar to the one you describe in Magisters’ Terrace
With speedy tab targeting/devastate once each on the mobs then rotating through again, I usually put up 2 focus fire targets to start with, then by the time they’re down enough threat is built for AoE
Same method on the packs before Vexallus
It works out quite well for the most part, obviously greatly more effective with Salvation on the healer/DPS
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