Over Taunting isn’t just Bad Manners anymore
If you’re somewhat aged in the craft of Warrior tanking, you’ll remember that Taunt isn’t what it once was. Once you had to stand beside a mob and then suddenly, unexpectedly, you didn’t. Which, of course, led to abuse and is why now we’re forced to deal with this lovely term known as Diminishing Returns.
Diminishing Returns is unfortunately the logical solution to anything abusive in the Warcraft world. What’s confusing is how it diminishes things seems to differ from one ability to the next.
What does Diminishing Returns on Taunt mean?
It means that if you Taunt a mob too many times in a particular period of time that it’ll become immune to Taunt. To be exact, if you Taunt a mob 3 times in 18 seconds, it’ll become immune to all following Taunts until 18 seconds have passed from the last Taunt.
Which is impossible to do on your own, but far less than impossible with a friend or two around.
From Bad Manners to just Bad
Taunting off a fellow tank used to be something forgivable and among tanks not used to each other it was often frequent, but now that frequency very well could be fatal to your raid. Clearly, making a mob immune to Taunt is a bad thing especially if it’s a boss that you need to be Taunting back and forth.
The Importance of Defining #2
I’ve come to realize though that the mistake is not in the tanks themselves, but more so in the raid leader for not stating who’s 2nd in line specifically. (Of course, now that you know this it’s your responsibility to ask :p )
By defining who is #2, we know that if the Main Tank dies exactly who is expected to Taunt. Last week, I made this mistake as an unorthodox raid flooded with tanks walked into Ulduar. I died, chaos ensued and many a dpser died to a Taunt immune mob. I knew who I wanted to Taunt the mob, but the other tanks didn’t. As the leader, the mistake was mine.
The 4 Quick and Ugly Steps
If you’re not the one assigned to Taunt, don’t. You may think you’re helping, but you’re not. This scenario turns ugly in 4 quick steps:
- A bunch of Tanks taunt.
- The wrong person gets the mob.
- The healers don’t know they should heal them and they die.
- No tank can Taunt anymore and DPSers start dieing from aggro.
It all comes down to trust. You have to trust that the people who’ve been assigned to do a task are going to do it. You have to be willing to accept that if they don’t do their job, you will wipe. If you can’t accept that, you’re going to wipe your raid more times than you’re going to save it.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:24 am
“It all comes down to trust. You have to trust that the people who’ve been assigned to do a task are going to do it.”
I really like that, and am really trying to get into that habit myself. I’m a healer and I have a problem. That problem is when the green bars drop I want to fill them. As a shammy, I’m usually on raid heals, and it gets very difficult to watch the tanks health drop and to not do anything about it. It was very difficult to get used to trusting the other healers and not try to solo heal every encounter.
The things that best helped me with this I think are like the Naxx fight (forget the boss name) where you split live and dead sides, so I can’t heal the other side, and the other healers keep them up just fine. Also, I’ve found running 10 Naxx and VoA with 2 healers helps too. Since we don’t have extra people on heals, both of us have to stick to our assignments and trust the other to keep their assignments up.
Another good way to get out of this habit is to die, and the rest of the healers pick up for you and the raid does fine.
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August 5th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I died on Freya last week. I was tanking her. My healer’s job was to heal me and me alone. As I watched my health drop slowly to zero over fifteen seconds or so without getting any heals, I wondered to myself what exactly my healer was doing. It was quite calming, in a way, and I reached some kind of state of zen as I waited for the boss’ next melee swing and my inevitable demise.
After the wipe, I asked my healer why she hadn’t healed me. It emerged she’d been out of range. When I asked how the hell I could have been out of range when I was standing slap bang in the middle of the raid, she told me that she’d had to move to heal her husband. He (a holy paladin) had taken the Ancient Conservator’s AoE debuff and had decided to preserve the raid by running away. Very very very far away. So far, in fact, there were no mushrooms to stand under so he couldn’t heal himself, and so his wife (not trusting the assigned raid healer to save him) had decided to do so herself. She had to run over 40 yards away from me to get him, and then couldn’t get back to me in time to heal me.
Sigh.
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August 5th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Our DPS have a tough time understanding this phenomena on Yogg Guardians. When they spawn and are to be burned down, you have to rely on DPS that get Sarah’s Favor to not go ballistic. The main issue is, if you taunt 3 times to keep the mob from destroying some stupid DPS, the Tank taking the mob in the middle can’t taunt it. It becomes immune and chaos ensues. Usually if that happens, we just swap and I take the mob into the middle. It is annoying though, and the tanks get blamed, when the fault sits squarely on a DPS that can’t moderate their damage. Most DPS think that losing threat is a tank’s problem, but not when a Buff is involved that allows a DPS to fly by the tank on DPS, and when you involve movement + clouds.
I hardly have any DPS pull a Guardian off of me, but if it does happen, it’s when I am ferrying the mob towards the taunt range of the Tank in the middle near Sara.
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August 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
We have a warrior tank that uses taunt in his threat rotation…. he also has glyphed mocking blow and uses that when off tanking for threat… he also happens to be our best geared tank and shows up to every raid. I can’t even count how many wipes he has caused due to taunt immune targets.
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August 5th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Excellent suggestion Vene.
To Cleaved:
We had similar problems on Yogg for a while, what helped us out the most was using two tanks on that encounter…lot less taunts get tossed around then and things generally are a bit smoother. So we just call out who gets the first one and it sorta works itself out from there. If someone trips one accidentally, then we just call out who picks up the extra. It works ok.
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August 5th, 2009 at 11:28 am
It’s a long way from having five tanks chain taunting the Lava Surger/Annihilator (I always forgot which) because it dropped aggro every second or two, eh?
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Valalvax reply on August 11, 2009 4:05 pm:
…. What?
…. We just stacked on the Annihilators, and burned…. I hate my guild
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August 5th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
This isn’t impossible while alone if your slamming taunts on a Vigilance’d target, right? Never done it myself, just thought of it.
I can’t say I’ve ever ran into this issue. I trust my fellow tank (who is also a RL friend) entirely. The only time we use taunt is when goofing around on trash and purposely toss mobs back and forth.
When I’m with a tank I’m not used to that feels the need to taunt every piece of trash off me (if I’m off-tanking), I just let him go and do it and save mine for his mistakes.
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Veneretio reply on August 6, 2009 12:29 pm:
Good point, you absolutely could do this by yourself with enough Vigilance procs. I should also note that this really isn’t as big an issue in 10 man. In 25 man though it definitely can be if things aren’t organized properly.
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Chet reply on August 7, 2009 6:03 am:
yeah, isn’t this kind of a nerf to Vigilance? I haven’t been able to play since the patch, personal issues, but it seems like DR on taunt pretty much eliminates one of the biggest advantages of vigilance. I suppose you could also say it makes us use it more as it was intended though, since I doubt using it on another tank for taunt spam was really an intended use for it.
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Veneretio reply on August 7, 2009 7:19 am:
Keep in mind, the DR on taunt has been around since 3.1. Vigilance is still very useful for picking up multiple different mobs. You just can’t perma-spam taunt on a single mob.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I agree with this topic!
On another note, Vene! how are you finding the new patch? Personally I’m amazed, first thing I did was went to WG where I dominated for once. After that went to ulduar where I did 2k dps - WOAH WHAT?! yeah I know I was stunned! I was pulling 9k tps on some fights.
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Sephirawth reply on August 6, 2009 8:54 am:
Hell I went into the new 5 man heroic and was doing 8k tps on the trash at some points. I was amazed. I hope they don’t nerf us……..
We downed the Beasts of Northrend Encounter last night on 10 man and it was the same. BTW a guy in my guild is calling that fight BoNe……..
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Shadamehr reply on August 7, 2009 11:01 am:
Oh, I fully expect a nerf. In block heavy kit (2500 BV) with the 2 pc from T7.5 and T.8, specced DW with Broken Promise (huge devastates, big DW ticks), I am hitting 2300-2400 DPS over the course of a 5 man heroic, and 3k dps on some bosses. I’m also hitting 10-12k Shield Slams pretty frequently, which I thought was going to be a thing of the past.
In the new 10 man raid, I’m hitting 2200 dps in *Effective Health* kit. Those are DK type numbers.
So yes, I fully expect the nerbat. Meanwhile it’s making the EoT farming fun, but I don’t expect this to last. Either they made Devastate too strong, or they didn’t really think the change to BV through properly. Or Broken Promise is just OP with these changes. Not that I’m complaining!
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August 5th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Reading some of the comments I was quite interested and amazed by this.
I’d never really fully considered the mechanics and consequences of overtaunting!
When I first learnt to tank, some of the first words of “advice” from an experienced tank was that “A good tank should never have to taunt”. Obviously this was a bit over simplified, but during any normal encounter, that’s the motto I ran with. My job was to hold threat on all my assigned marks, providing the DPS weren’t being stupid. And if they were, well… I let em die…
Anyway, that served me pretty well. But thinking about my tanking now, I’m often needing to taunt (by design or otherwise). Is it just the way tanking is going now?
And now that I understand the DR on taunt… makes me think.. might have to get my offsider tank (does anyone else feel that MT/OT are terms no longer valid most of the time?) to settle back on his taunting habit.
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Zalgosh reply on August 6, 2009 1:28 am:
I agree w/ what you said about the terms. A lot of times its more like Boss Tank(s) and Add Tank(s). In a lot of fights, its harder to tank the adds than the boss, and is better suited to be tanked by the better geared, or “Main Tank.” At least, that’s my opinion.
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Valalvax reply on August 11, 2009 4:10 pm:
When I first started tanking, I was told that taunting wasn’t real threat, which, at the time it wasn’t, but I came up with the oversimplified motto: Real tanks don’t taunt.
And I stuck to it, even when I was chasing down a mob shield slamming it and not getting anywhere near the DPS that pulled’s threat… yes, I had a few rough instances
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August 6th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Presumably the DR on taunt doesn’t affect mocking blow, since that’s a fixate effect and not a taunt. Is that right?
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Rak reply on August 7, 2009 7:49 am:
Back when working on Thorim hardmode, a resisted taunt into a commanding shout into a mocking blow followed by another taunt showed him immune to taunt. This doesn’t prove that they all share DR, but it’s all the experience I have with it.
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August 6th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Good point, nothing makes me more frustrated when it seems like taunt is bound to every key on their keyboard.
The only encounter i find it genuinely useful to “over taunt” is Archavon, taunting just before the stomp to get the OT & MT at first and second place works like a charm.
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Darren reply on August 6, 2009 3:52 pm:
I agree here. its amazing how many tanks don’t taunt until hes thrown
you up on his back. At that point, the other tank is neck and neck
with the DPS and then the overused taunting comes into play until he
becomes immune and the unlucky DPS gets clobbered.
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Valalvax reply on August 11, 2009 4:12 pm:
Meh, Archavon hits like a pansy, I’ve taken a few hits from him on my mage… of course, I’m generally really close to the DPS anyway on threat, I generally start off tanking at first, let whoever is with me tank second, then when he gets thrown I pick back up, rarely need a taunt other than the offtank picking up
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August 6th, 2009 at 6:11 am
I have a good relationship with my offtank for this.
What we generally do it i make the pull and start the innitital threat, he then taunts lower down the killing order mobs off me depending on how many he think he can take, usually about 1-3. This tactics makes the pulls more controled and makes sure the DPS don’t go too mad overagroing too early, though I admit it’s rubbish for instant AOE damage but makes pulls alot safer.
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Bhig reply on August 10, 2009 4:43 pm:
When I first formed my raid group I did something similar. My companion tank was not particularly skilled at that point (boy has he improved like 10000x!). So I would get him to pull all but the first target in the kill order. With a bit of shuffling I would move the first kill aside and force the DPS to single target it down (I was better geared than the other tank too allowing better threat gen). Then I would taunt the second target and at the same time move in to allow max AOE. Taunting successive targets as they went down.
For this (at the time) unproven group it stopped many a death due to poor threat management (AOE over threats etc).
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August 10th, 2009 at 1:33 am
This is so big issue that I’m thinking about getting NECB again up for taunt/stun DR tracking…
Taunt is great tool in aggro climbing on hodir and several other examples… However DR is kinda bad…
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August 10th, 2009 at 10:23 am
A good article — the necessity of knowing who is next in the rotation is something my raid team has also learned the hard way.
One strategy I didn’t see mentioned is the “taunt swap” to pull the offtank up in threat. If there’s even the faintest chance of a tank dying on a tauntable boss, I try to call a taunt swap at 2 minutes or so — the offtank taunts, I taunt back. Of course, if there’s dps riding the main tank in threat, then a dps aggro in the next 18 seconds will make the boss taunt immune.
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August 12th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Overtanking, and now this?!?
When will you warriors learn to use things in moderation? Like say… polymorph? ^__^
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Bhig reply on August 12, 2009 3:32 pm:
ha ha…
It seems to me that the days of CC fights are gone. Seems to me that Blizz has removed 95% of the times when CC is usable, and useful.
I did use it a bit as I levelled, much to the disgust of my mage mate (wasting that one GCD on a CC instead DPS).
Now the problem is DPS who like to go hell for leather the moment the tanks engage. My DPS love the challenge of topping the dps meters, and to heck with the chance of pulling threat. I’ve let a few of them die now… I think they’re slowly learning…
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