Fury--Aggro Concerns with a DK Tank?

almightypancake · #1 11-07-2009, 09:08 AM

Over the past few weeks, I've had the privilege to raid with a few highly skilled DK tanks. Unfortunately, I'm either constantly on their heels in aggro OR I don't pay attention and pull aggro.

I'm not referring to the first few seconds of the fight, as I'm careful to always give them a little time to establish aggro. Once I get the ball rolling, though, I'm pumping out around 4-4.5k tps and averaging between 5.5-6k dps. I initially thought it was me using heroic strike too much, but the same thing happens in cleave situations as well.

Is this a common problem, or should I be being more careful?

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**Legionodeath** · #2 11-07-2009, 09:28 AM

Happens to me as arms or fury all the time. You just have to ensure you give the tank time to pick up and get an aggro lead. You can start by auto-attacking and just debuffing, demo shout, sunder (threat producing so watch out) etc.
When he's got aggro, unload.

To help him get a good lead rogues need to be tricking and hunters should MD. If they aren't doing this they're wrong. Especially if you or other dps is pulling.

You should also learn how your meter reacts to your attacks hits and crits. You can watch your meter when you land a huge crit, it will jump. Learn how much it will move because its pretty consistent. With that learn to dps under him. Do half your rotation, then wait a second. Do your first attack, pause, second attack, pause, etc. Figure out what works for you.

Outside of that maybe you should take a look at your tank. Do you outgear him? Is he specd appropriately? Is he in frost presence? What is his rotation? Is he receiving trick/MD?

-LoD

almightypancake · #3 11-07-2009, 09:44 AM

Source: Legionodeath
Happens to me as arms or fury all the time. You just have to ensure you give the tank time to pick up and get an aggro lead. You can start by auto-attacking and just debuffing, demo shout, sunder (threat producing so watch out) etc.
When he's got aggro, unload.

To help him get a good lead rogues need to be tricking and hunters should MD. If they aren't doing this they're wrong. Especially if you or other dps is pulling.

You should also learn how your meter reacts to your attacks hits and crits. You can watch your meter when you land a huge crit, it will jump. Learn how much it will move because its pretty consistent. With that learn to dps under him. Do half your rotation, then wait a second. Do your first attack, pause, second attack, pause, etc. Figure out what works for you.

Outside of that maybe you should take a look at your tank. Do you outgear him? Is he specd appropriately? Is he in frost presence? What is his rotation? Is he receiving trick/MD?

-LoD

His gear is mostly better than mine. I think part of it is I just recently switched from Wrathstone and Vengeance of the Forsaken to DMC: Greatness and Death's Choice. My tank pointed out that I'm not used to charging into a fight with both procs up.

**Legionodeath** · #4 11-07-2009, 10:31 AM

That could be it.

Are other dps'rs having the same issue with this tank? If so its less likely to be and your gear and more him.

-LoD

anthrobtafoya · #5 11-07-2009, 01:21 PM

i am having a problem drawing all agro from tank even though im in blood or unholy presence, not useing death grip,dark command,D&D . I wait a considerable amount of time before i even attack ( 1/4 of tanks health gone) and i still pull it away from them. any ideas?

**Legionodeath** · #6 11-08-2009, 01:36 PM

Read my first post in this thread. If you ougear there isn't much you can do beyond waiting.

If your tank sucks which sometimes is the case then you just have to watch out. Be careful how and how soon you dps.

If you're dpsing as soon as or before the tank has aggro then theirs no one to blame but yourself. As much as dps blame tanks for not holding aggro its often thev dps fault for having no regard and going balls out as soon as the tank gets a white attack on target.

Analyze what you and your tank are doing and come up with the best solution that's mutually beneficial to both parties.

-LoD

**Squirrelnut** · #7 11-16-2009, 11:28 AM

Personally I think it seems to be the underlying fact in this thread... you have bad tanks. I fail to see how you can call the tanks 'highly skilled' when the #1 priority as a tank is to NEVER let DPS pull aggro.

I am a Prot Warrior so my arguments are a bit skewed but the issue remains the same. Pulling 4-4.5k TPS would never pull threat from me, I deal with DPS doing 7k+ TPS at times (considerably more depending on gimmick fights) and it still is not a problem.

Obviously you can't control what other people do so it is in your best interest to pay close attention to omen and control your threat however the real issue is your tanks not doing what they should. Ideally get them to come spend some time on TankSpot doing some theory crafting to improve their spec/rotation/cooldown use & timing.

EDIT: For example purposes, we had a DK tank that wasn't doing enough TPS and after posting a log here on TankSpot found out from other DKs that he had an ability that should be macroed to most other main abilities and used every time it was up... he pressed it twice the entire fight and it STILL did 14% of his threat lol. Lot of things get overlooked unless you take the time to learn all the ins and outs of your class with a great resource like TankSpot. Get those tanks over here! lawl

Oranuworu · #8 11-18-2009, 11:24 AM

What spec are the DK tanks that you are referring to?

I am currently a frost specced tank, I have enough avoidance and EH that allows me to use a dps sigil (sigil of awareness). This has massively increased my threat generation. I have also done some time as a blood tank and agro was always an issue for me. one of the problems with blood is the physical nature of Heart Strike. In order for it to hit hard enough, the tank either needs to stack a bit of arpen or sunder and a debuff like imp faerie fire need to be up. When I was tanking as blood these debuffs weren't up as our 25 man raid didn't consist of any warriors.

Talho · #9 11-18-2009, 11:40 AM

Maybe msg the hunters and rogues in the raid to throw MD and tricks of the trade to the tank at the pull? Or maybe even have another dk throw hysteria on the tank...Its probably the tank, either his gear/rotation if its happening constantly...maybe even ask a paladin nicely to hand of salv you hehe...

Also...if your tank has good reflexes like they should, they should have a taunt immediately incoming anyways when they watch their threat meters...

tribute · #10 11-19-2009, 06:31 AM

Source: Oranuworu
What spec are the DK tanks that you are referring to?

I am currently a frost specced tank, I have enough avoidance and EH that allows me to use a dps sigil (sigil of awareness). This has massively increased my threat generation. I have also done some time as a blood tank and agro was always an issue for me. one of the problems with blood is the physical nature of Heart Strike. In order for it to hit hard enough, the tank either needs to stack a bit of arpen or sunder and a debuff like imp faerie fire need to be up. When I was tanking as blood these debuffs weren't up as our 25 man raid didn't consist of any warriors.

On a single target a Blood-Tank out-TPSes a Frost-Tank easily, same gear and correct specs on both provided.

Frost = bunch of multi-target aggro
Blood = bunch of single-target aggro

And macroing runestrike isn't the root of the problem (better than doing no runestrikes, but l2p and using it by yourself, will make you a far better tank..).

Is it in every fight, that your DK tank tends to loose aggro? Or are these only special fights (e.g. the worm in toc that shoots, no runestrikes there, so it will be very hard time to sustain aggro)?

Generally said, DK Tanks aren't aggro machines nor they can take in the most hits of all tank classes. If it won't get better with them, let him be 2nd tank or offtank and use a paly as MT, you won't ever get aggro from him...