5-Man Rage May Never Matter Again

[Ciderhelm]

Jump To Patch 3.0 Preparedness Guides: Paladin / Warrior

I'm sure many of you have been getting into Heroics the last two days, and those who haven't will be trying to do so soon. If you're geared for the content you're doing, here's the new rule:

If you're not pulling faster, you're doing it wrong.

If you're still having serious rage issues then you're not pulling as fast as you should be. Your gear now scales your speed. Shockwave, Thunder Clap, and Damage Shield, in that order, now allow your DPS contribution to scale proportionately to the number of mobs you can take at a time. The complaints of down-gearing or class imbalance should no longer be taken seriously.

That's not to say we won't ever have rage issues. I can see potential issues with 25-man raids while tanking single targets. I can also see some potential Heroic bosses where rage will be problematic in Wrath -- but by the time you're having rage issues with them, your DPS will be higher anyway thanks to the raw stats on gear.

Right now, I'm finding myself in Heroics where I'm in an "infinite rage" scenario -- that is, I have 100% Heroic Strike uptime on top of my standard rotation. This is on single target elites in 5-mans and 10-mans, while I'm wearing T5/T6 gear.

If you've missed the last three posts on the subject, Glyph of Revenge is a must-have.

[Arold]

Cider, what do you think of Revenge/HS macros with that glyph?

[Ciderhelm]

Cider, what do you think of Revenge/HS macros with that glyph?

Probably one of the better macro ideas I've heard. I'd have to test it out to make sure it worked well, but I don't see what would be bad about this.

[Krete]

Tyriall (prot warrior) and I went into Heroic Ramps on patch day just to check out our new hotness. We took a boomkin, mage and holy priest.

We both encountered exactly what you're talking about (blue rage for me) and BoSanc contributed heavily to this as well. We were pulling like mad, group after group after boss after group...it was insane! I think we were done in around 30 minutes and afterward we were both feeling like we were screwing up our new cycles and could've done even better with more practice.

So, yeah. Nuts.

[Zelgius]

The revenge heroic strike macro is a good idea. A good way to guarantee you activate it every time you revenge.

Just make sure you keep Heroic strike on your bar for rage plentiful situations, you'd want to be able to cast it a lot more often if you can afford to.

[Lore]

All I have to say is welcome to being a Paladin.

[Seph]

I ran ZA yesterday. Seemed like Ramparts. Regular. =O
I just couldn't wait for anyone, just kept pulling like there was no tomorrow heh
By the time the real DPSers came close the mob were halfway down.

Whoa, I never thought I would say it but, can't wait to play some heroics ;D

[Anu]

I've not ran any instance's yet and you guys are making me jelous ;D

Mainly because our EU server had alot of latency troubles then my UI was buggered. Oh BT tonight tho

[Moonfanor]

Its just crasy how easy the new patch makes heroic instances feel. I am with Seph, I just kept charging into the next group half way through the first one.

Welcome to easy mode... and my rotation was terrible,, kept trying to see if shield slam popped back up.

Thank you blizzard for making tanking alot a fun at the moment. I have one fear that we get nerfed...

[Cavall]

I ran heroic black morass last night. The time after the boss portals was greater than the time it took to clear the six portals. Overall instance time = 13 minutes. And as for the adds, we only ever had one spawn. Our healer got bored and moonfired most of the time.

Afterwards, my guild raided black temple. I was kinda dissappointed with Reliquary. Solo tanked the first phase, then our interrupts didn't work on the second, but deadens don't seem to be necessary anymore.

[Seph]

All I have to say is welcome to being a Paladin.

Thanks for saying this Lore, but I was thinking about it yesterday and don't know if it's a good or a bad thing...
See, I did a quick ZA/KZ run yesterday and my buddies were like "zOMG Warriors can tank like pally now!!! NUKENUKENUKENUKENUKE!!!"
Seems like EVERYONE was on extreme trigger-happy mode hahaha

It's funny because these same people would wait for aggro of our Pally tank on Hyjal, but somehow they think I can outthreat everything by chargin one mob (when I'm running to him, I mean). Those bastards. I did the best I can but couldn't avoid a couple of deaths of the Ret Pallies

But seriously, we're a bit behind on this AOE thing (seems like Paladins are somehow more 'snappy'), but I'm pretty happy with it, it's a whole new world. People just have to get the feel and the pace of it

[Lore]

Paladin snap AOE and Warrior snap AOE are two different beasts. Warriors actually seem a little better at picking up a ton of mobs at once, as long as they've got enough advance notice to have Thunderclap or Shockwave ready. Paladins can keep a Consecrate down, but if a mob happens to run around it or a healer gets too much aggro before the mob gets there, it's not always enough. I think the "snappiness" of Paladin AOE tanking mostly just comes from the sheer sustained threat output that Consecrate gives once the mobs are actually on us, so we're less likely to lose aggro if DPS starts right away (especially if the Warrior can't get everything lined up for Shockwave in a hurry).

I think Warrior AOE tanking has some serious advantages in some serious situations, though. Felmyst skeletons in particular seems like a great place for Warrior and Druid tanks, as the amount of mobility the fight requires makes things hard on Pally tanks (we don't get to just let them sit in a Consecrate often). I suspect that Druids would have a slight edge on Jan'alai (Dragonhawk boss) in ZA as well; the dragonhawk adds have a tendency to run across Consecrate without grabbing aggro, and a Warrior might not have TC/Shockwave up for every wave.

[Bullwerk]

Tanking is a whole new game now for sure. I hit up my first run last night, a fun little jaunt into KZ. I have never had more fun tanking I don't think. With practice to get past the learning curve of the new rotation things could have gone much better, but it was still the fastest clear we have ever had. IT was no longer about mark mobs, pull, kill in order then move on. I marked 2 to 3 targets pulled a group TC, shockwave, SS a few things then off to the next group. Despite me pulling 2 or 3 groups at a time my healers barely even needed to do anything even with me in my BV set which is just shy of uncrittable.

There is no longer a need for an OT in there either. The poor feral druid we brought spent all of his time in cat except on Netherspite. It was way too fun to mark up the Moroes fight, charge in and tank all five of them.

Oh but the run did result in me hearing the first ardent crys of NURF! NURF! as the log parse and all the damage meters reported me as 3rd in damage. And no I was not running with guild rejects we had some respectably geared people in there. After posting the parse vent was filled with "OMG", "WTF" and "No ways". Talk about a great feeling.

[Clyde]

So, is player skill more or less gone? Not entirely sure how happy I am if the "gathering aggro" part of our responsibilities is now so trivial as to be uninteresting. I guess we'll have a better feel at '80, though.... the "between" time waiting for the new expansion but having the talents is probably a terrible time to make assumptions.

[Lore]

So, is player skill more or less gone? Not entirely sure how happy I am if the "gathering aggro" part of our responsibilities is now so trivial as to be uninteresting. I guess we'll have a better feel at '80, though.... the "between" time waiting for the new expansion but having the talents is probably a terrible time to make assumptions.

See Cider's other news post, "Damage Is A Tanking Responsibility"

Bad tanks can hold aggro, no problem. Good tanks can hold aggro and top the damage meters.

[Caulle]

I never played my warrior in Beta, so I only knew of all the changes and never put them into play. Last night a few friends wanted to test out new specs, in Heroic Shattered Halls no less. I was a bit wary because I hated that place (I remember having to complete it before the original attunement nurf), but I havn't had that much fun on my tank since I can't even remember when. I was almost giggling half the time at how easy it was. We ran through the whole thing in about 30 minutes, it was fantastic.

Going to do a Karazhan run this week, I can't wait.

[Caulle]

So, is player skill more or less gone? Not entirely sure how happy I am if the "gathering aggro" part of our responsibilities is now so trivial as to be uninteresting. I guess we'll have a better feel at '80, though.... the "between" time waiting for the new expansion but having the talents is probably a terrible time to make assumptions.

See Cider's other news post, "Damage Is A Tanking Responsibility"

Bad tanks can hold aggro, no problem. Good tanks can hold aggro and top the damage meters.

^
The class has changed, the player skill hasn't.

[Shivan]

I hope my server is "stabilized" by tonight. My gang is hoping to run Kara tonight as the first test of the new talents. Last week we used an ARMS warrior as the off tank and it was not a problem for me to keep mobs off me but it was a little rough on the healers. We should be back to our standard Warrior (me) and Pally tank combo. I am sure he will still have better aggro with the AoE mobs but I am going to give him a run for his money on those pulls.

On the Revenge Heroic Strike Macro, I am looking for more testing on this as well. I am not sure that I am not getting charged for the rage via the macro right now but stuff is going down too fast I cant evaluate. Some elite mobs should help make that determination.

[Kromzul]

I definitely think that rage is less of an issue now, but I still did encounter times in beta when the RNG worked against me and my performance suffered as a result (and that was even with low-avoidance gear). I still think they can benefit from smoothing out the "worst-case" scenarios, probably more for DPS warriors than tanks, and probably still more beneficial for PvP'ers. And *definitely* when you're leveling (i.e. from 1 to 60), where rage is absolutely awful.

And that's why I wrote this gigantic post on the beta forums that I pimp from time to time!

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> RAGE, and How to Fix It

[Horacio]

Yep...threat isn't an issue of 'if' so much anymore but 'how much' Need more rage, pull more mobs. That's what charge in combat is for