[Tauff]

I tried to tank Emalon's adds once months ago and failed. I charge challenging shout thunderclap and start cleaving and it isn't enough to hold aggro on all of them. I have glyph of cleave so my cleave hits 3 targets, but I don't think that and tc are enough to hold the four adds. Most of the time when I try to join a voa group they want me to tank the adds and I decline or say I will try. I will try to tank anything at this point but that isn't good enough for most raid leaders. So I just wanted some advice from warrior tanks that can do this np.

Thanks

[Dragaan]

If you running in with thunderclap+cleave isn't enough to grab their attention at the start of the fight, whoever is pulling aggro off of you does not know what the hell he's doing (or he's trying to pad the dps meter). No one should be touching the adds except for the add tank at the start of the fight. The only time anyone should be dpsing those adds is when one of them gets overcharged (and even if they do a bit of aoe on the adds, by this point you should have plenty of threat from the gigantic lead you have by now).

A warrior is just as good as a paladin/dk at holding threat on the adds during this fight. Sure a paladin might be able to out-threat a warrior on the adds, but there is no reason for super-high tps on them. You run in, hit them with TC/cleave/shockwave/demo, and they should be stuck on you. Your only job after that is taunting new adds, which any class can do.

There is only one guess as to what you could possibly be doing wrong here. If you are relying on aoe taunt to grab them at the start (and not hitting every single add at least once or twice), then they will leave you after 6 seconds. Challenging shout is not a normal taunt. It only holds their attention for 6seconds, then they run to whoever is highest on threat. If you failed to smack one of the adds and only had challenging shout on them, they will run to either a healer or a dps who might have cleaved on the way to emalon once the challenging shout debuff wears off.

[Karlhungus]

Are you tabbing between targets, and building threat on them individually? If not, you should be. After thunderclap and shockwave, the next thing you should be doing is to target each add, hit them with a few devastates, shield slams, revenges, and so forth.

[Rafus]

what i do to get initial aggro as a warrior is to charge the left add on the front, strife into the mittle of the bunch of mobs and thunderclap. after that i strife a little bit back and shockwave - enough aggro on all the mobs.

just make sure you're the tank who runs in first and pleaseeeeeee... use spellreflect. i mean seriously... in all the pugs i've been - warrior tanks never used spellreflect neither on adds before the boss nor on the adds on emalon. it really reduces the damage taken by a lot.

oh concerning pickung up respawned adds. make sure you watch them and taunt them + shieldslam. the only thing that is a little bit hard is if the add spawns ontop of the mt of emalon and sticks there, but it just takes a little bit longer to target it.

[Bluepepper]

Being the off tank on Emalon's adds as a warrior tank is relatively difficult primarily in the opening phase of the encounter. The opening phase-in which the adds and Emalon are split apart-is one of the key critical phases of the encounter and because it's such a critical phase it has to be approached in the most balanced and controlled way possible.

Some of the problems I noticed with your opening attack sequence:
1.) Charging in: If you charge in you can quickly get out of range of your healers. If you are out of range from your healers you won't be getting heals as quickly as you should or even at all. Heal cast time + Healer reaction time + Latency + Out of range tank(distance = time to be traveled) = Bad

2.) Challenging shout: Challenging shout is a fixate which focuses all attention on you for 6 seconds. If you charge in before the tank who is focusing on Emalon and then pop challenging shout you're going to have the attention from all four adds + Emalon for 6 seconds. That's a good amount of spike damage collectively from these five sources attacking you. Also, challenging shout doesn't add any threat at all to the threat table. Aside from that it also triggers a GCD.

3.) Lack of Global Cool Down (GCD) sensitivity: GCDs are very important especially in the opening phase of any encounter. Reason being, for abilities on the GCD an additional time factor, aside from those abilities CDs if they have any, is added inbetween your attacks (1.5 seconds in most cases). This can add up to alot of unused time that could've been used for other more proactive purposes. And in the opening phase of any encounter you have a very limited window of oppurtunity (3-5 seconds) to transition from Initial aggro to control aggro. Using challenging shout that early in an encounter cuts down that window to 1.5-3.5 seconds. Once you trigger this ability you have to wait to use other abilities that share a GCD-Shield Slam being one of them-which further factors in with threat production and establishing a threat lead. Might as well be rage starved.

4.) Cool Down usage: Now, to nullify most of what I said above and take a few steps back, you can use your current opening sequence and get away with it. If you're going that route it's imperative that you pop Shieldwall/Last stand/Shield block (i.e., all your oh sh*t CDs). That combination of CDs used collectively will give your healers some breathing room. Also when you do get hit if you do get hit by the adds you'll do some passive damage with damage shield if you're spec'd for it which helps out with aggro production. Although if Emalon hits you the passive damage you do to him will add to your threat on Emalon making the Emmy tank's job alittle more difficult (More threat needed to attain and maintain aggro).



Now here's how I'd OT Emalon's adds ideally. First I'll start off by saying what abilities I think are important and can be important for OTing these adds.

Important abilities for the opening:
Thunderclap
Shockwave
Cleave
Demoshout
Comshout
Challenging shout
Blood rage

Reason:
To Off tank these adds you need to put more emphasis on AoE abilities rather than single target abilities. The abilities above are AoEs with Thunderclap being the most important out of all them because of it's consistent burst threat (every 6 seconds).
Shockwave 2nd for the addition to AoE threat it can provide with it's damage component every 20 seconds (sometimes it bugs so beaware). Cleave for it's role in maintenance aggro. Demo/Com shout because of their soft pulling capability and debuff/buff. Challenging shout with it's 6 second fixate which can help to further augment my group control. And lastly Bloodrage because of it's ability to instantly give me 20 rage and then generate an addtional 10 rage over 10 seconds.


The pull:
I like to run in to emalon and his adds vs. charging in because as I stated before charging in can very quickly lead to you being out of range of your healers. Although, because I'm not charging in I'm not gaining any rage so in order to counter this I pop bloodrage. As I'm running in I make sure I'm slightly ahead of the Emalon tank so I can get inital aggro which is enough to catch the four adds attention for a few seconds with out me using any abilties from the onset.

After inital aggro is attained I apply a demo shout or commanding shout. This is dependent on the heals I'm getting. Solid healer reaction time, demo shout, Poor reaction time for heals commanding shout. By applying either shout, a threat lead foundation is being established even though it's not as great as what other abilties could do but it's start. After I see that the Emmy tank has control of his target I then Thunderclap and if I have enough rage I shockwave immediately afterwards. Total rage cost: 7 + 13 + 17 = 37 (spec'd into improved thunderclap 3/3 Focused Rage 3/3). The key is to make sure you atleast have enough rage for a Thunderclap (13 rage talented, 20 rage untalented).

That combination of Thunderclap+Shockwave should be sufficient for getting enough threat on the adds to hold them and pull them apart from emmy to your desired tanking position. You have to be careful though because you don't want your TC or SW to overlap and hit Emalon. After I postion them to the desired location I then transition to the maintenance/Survival phase (Apply debuffs, use CDs when needed).

When a new add spawns, I like to use Heroic throw to pull the spawned add to me from afar. If heroic throw is on CD, I taunt the add and begin to move forward towards the add. Once the add is close enough to me I thunderclap rather than Shield Slam because of the range advantage I have with Thunderclap vs. Shield slam (8 yards vs. melee range, 10 yards vs melee range if you have glyph of Thunder clap).

[Dragaan]

Source: Bluepepper Being the off tank on Emalon's adds as a warrior tank is relatively difficult primarily in the opening phase of the encounter...

How is it any more difficult for a warrior as opposed to any other class? No one should be dpsing the adds at the start of the fight. You only need to build ~2-3k threat on each mob in order for them to stick to you until u can pull them out to the side and begin actually tanking them. That's 1 thunderclap, which will then probably lead to some damage shield threat. That's all you need. If you hit emalon with your thunderclap or shockwave or whatever, that definitely should not matter. The other tank only has 1 mob to grab and he should be able to grab it's attention easily. There is no real secret or strategy or whatever to get initial aggro on a few mobs when no one else is touching them.

[Skaggi]

Hey there!

There might be a silly simple mechanix working against you. If you charge in on that first mob and fire away all your AOE aggro generation moves, you might have just missed the two mobs in the back because they were too far away to be hit.

Happened to me the first times I didn't realize the range of my abilities to clearly...

Go ahead and charge in if you like. Give the rist mob a nice big slap. The one to the right (or left depending on the side you like to start with) gets a happy cleave and then away you go with all that shouting and clapping that we pallies smile at (isn't shouting and clapping rather for the cheer-leaders? )

Works like a charm if I can convince a warrior that he's actually better suited for add tanking than my 'light in a can' tanky thingy.

Cheers!
skaggi

[Rafus]

due to spellreflect, a warrior tank is the best choice for tanking these adds. use blockgear if you have and the only damage you are going to take are some shocks, when your reflect is on cooldown.

[Tauff]

Thanks for all the feedback. I have a few new ideas to work on during my next attempt at this. Was thinking of changing my os to prot so I have a single target spec and a better aoe spec w imp demo shout and cleave but I don't know. Not a huge fan of arms dps atm.


Thanks again.


::EDIT::

After reading suggestions I tried a 10 man and successfully tanked the adds on the first attempt. Was not that hard at all, I think, as long as you get aggro on all 4 initially.

[Bowen]

If you are tanking the adds, make sure you get the pull, have the other tank do a single hit or something on the boss, and you can run into them all thunderclap and move them, popping shield block will help whilst moving them.

[Daavos]

The pull and the postition of your camera angle after you move the adds are the hardest part.

Heroic throw add #1, charge add #2 at the same time.
Thunder clap, demoral shout all adds (and Emolon) and start moving backwards to wall, (Main tank will taunt off you) tab targeting and starting your rotation. Have taunt ready just in case an add peels off you.

Once I'm in postition I find the hardest thing is have a good camera angle to see the new adds coming after the enrage bit. The new add will most likely target someone else so you have to be johnny on the spot with a taunt, heroic throw etc.

Don't challeging shout at the pull because it's a 6 second force taunt. The Main tank won't be able to pull off you and most likely after 6 seconds Emalon will drop a nova in the centre of the room, killing half the raid.