Is there anyway to reduce the distance at which tab picks up targets?
I found this but it didn't seem to work and I searched some more and I found it was removed in 3.0
/script SetCVar("targetNearestDistance", 10)
/targetenemy
/script SetCVar("targetNearestDistance", 41)
It is just annoying to be tabbing around a pack of 6 mobs and end up tabbing mobs in a group down the hall or something that you're not even fighting.
If I can't macro my way out of this, then would positioning be the key? To always face away from the mobs I don't want (keep my back to them)?
Former healbot now a Disgruntled protection warrior.
Blizzard removed the functionality in 3.0. Apparently it was used in PvP and they gimped PvE once again because of it.
Annoying as can be considering when you tab around and get roaches, rabbits, bugs and whatever else there may be. (snakes, NOT Snakes!)
Yeah it sucks they removed. Here's hoping there is a workaround...
Former healbot now a Disgruntled protection warrior.
Sorry to hijack the thread and not answer your question, but tab-devastate is a pet-hate of mine. I have never EVER needed to tab-cycle when AE tanking. Not in BC when warriors could actually AE tank things (despite common misconception), and certainly not now in wrath.
Here's what I i do for AE tanking:
Mark skull on focus target -> Charge -> Tclap -> SS focus target -> step back to group mobs then Shockwave -> queue cleave (pref with the new glyph, but works without) -> Tclap on every cooldown, SS on every cooldown, keep queueing cleave etc. Heroic throw to pull in stray casters, or spell-reflect to range-tank them.
If you are tabbing around you are taking your focus off your main target who might well be getting blasted by a focussed assault rather than AE. A lot of classes focus their dps on a single target then have bouncing or splash damage for AE (eg chain lightning, WW, Fan of blades) so you really want to be directing your party's focus or you could lose the primary mob. As tanks now play a valuable part in DPS as well, you want your marked target (usually the most dangerous or annoying mob) to go down asap so focussing your own damage helps too.
If you really want to throw devastates around use this mouseover macro:
/cast [target=mouseover,nomod,harm,nodead] Devastate; Devastate
You can then keep your focus target and simply rollover the target you want to devastate and hit the macro. I find pressing V to have enemy healths bars up helps a lot so I can see the relative damage each mob is taking.
Trust me on this and try it out... tabbing was wrong in BC and hence hardly any warriors could AE tank. It is still wrong in wotlk. Sure it might work "ok" - but it's not optimal. Heck, you can drive with your feet but that don't make it a good idea.
I kinda have to disagree with Valkira on this one it might work with pugs or when you know the dps isn't all that hot but when your running with 3 dps all doing close to 3k dps in 5 mans your gonna run into a lot of problems especially with fury warriors and ret pally's. Your argument could be that they could hold back a few more seconds before going all out but what's the fun in that.
After your initial Tclap and Shockwave it should really only take a SS maybe two if revenge didn't light up finish with conc blow to have a nice lead on the primary aggro target then just tab through the target's hitting each one with either SS or Revenge depending on which is lit up at the time i tab to him also keeping tclap on cooldown and spamming cleaves. If your awake and tabbing through target's you should never have to taunt a mob off dps during the whole encounter.
I take pride in doing the best job I can do and when your dps can go all out and not pull aggro that is where it really shows.
I'm curious as to how you aoe tanked in BC without tabbing, unless you mean after the target cap on TC was removed and shockwave and damage shield introduced. I agree that multi mob tanking was very doable at least up to 5-6 mobs, but I personally always relied on tabing in addition to cleave + tc.
Our shouts were the only ability I know that caused threat on an infinite number of mobs, and they were never anywhere near enough to hold threat.
Edit: read my post and realize it can sound a bit snippy. Not intended.
You like mouse, I like keyboard. To each their own. Just because you like mouse and have your playstyle doesn't mean us keyboard players should have been gimped because of how target range was used in PvP.Originally Posted by Valkira
People in my guild and pugs i run with love how well i groom a pile (mobs), how fast I have aggro and how quickly that means we move through an instance or trash mobs. They love how a groomed pile of me holding threat means they can DPS at a consistent rate without blowing mana - healers can focus on my being the primary dmg sponge while still putting out 1200-1400 dps and b4 the last dude is down i'm charged off and grooming the next pile in most cases or giving people time to sit down and mana/rest up if we have zerged the first few packs.
I could never do what i do if i have to mouse over name plates. Sure, tab targeting isn't perfect i but its so fast and easy to learn that once you figured it out no mouse over at all could be as quick and exact and if you are mousing to me that sounds like your trying to capture people that you didn't correctly groom in the first place..
And as for targeting and marking... in 5 mans i mark skull for first kill. Doesn't mean i stick on skull and put a kill order on the way down. Even with a kill order the tab targeting is so quick i can see the mob in my target frame and how its marked long before i can move my hand to my mouse and click on it and hope the focus sets on the right mob and not my team mate or someone else.
BTW, I drive with my hands and feet. Stick shift ftw :P
In many cases tab targeting is so good that i can target the mob in the next group and charge without even having to walk to itand have it marked by using my keypad. Certain boss fights this works particularly well in as well.
Sorry, I don't think I explained myself very well... I'm at work so a little distracted ;-) I certainly DON'T prefer the mouse to keyboard. The macro is of course bound to a keybind, so I'm actually using the keys to activate Dev and the mouse just to point at who to target (but not click - its a mouseover macro)... I just point at the mob I want to devastate and press "2". My mouse is only used for lesser-used skills and camera work, so it works nicely and doesn't interupt my normal rotation. I can't imagine how adding another keypress into the equation could be more efficient than this... my left hand is busy enough as it is...
Anyway, my point is that I don't feel devastate is required at all in the rotation - unless something goes wrong (maybe a mob didn't get hit by the shockwave or something so I might drop a dev on them). True I don't run with anyone pulling 3k dps, but I regularly run with people pulling 2-2.5k and have no problems. I am of course Deep Wounds spec which helps enormously.
I do appreciate people's different styles and points of view, and welcome continued discussion. I might do a fraps one of these days... I keep telling myself that and it never happens :-(
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In reference to BC AE tanking, I realised at some point that AE tanking was all about passive damage. Pallys could AE tank so well cause they had Salv and a damage reflect (aura of sanc).
So I would try to stack as many of the following as possible:
1. Stormchops - essential
2. Shield Spike - essential
3. Either a Druid (for thorns) or a Lock (for fire shield) in the group - thorns being slightly better
4. Either a holy or ret pally for Salv (so glad they removed this - it was the most imbalanced thing in the game imo)
It was a bit harder without option 3 or 4, but I could usually still pull it off. I had a skull-marking macro and would get the group to focus-fire the skull down asap. They could start AE after it was down. With a shield spike, stormchops, a passive damage reflect, tclap and cleave... by the time the first mob was down i had a good enough lead on all the others to hold out the AE. I'd still mark up a new skull as the next focus target and encourage DPSers to follow the skull (even pallys did this)
The only class that cause problems was a roflcopter fury war, so I just asked them to not WW until after the 2nd tclap... or just not take them unless there was a pally to salv them.
The rotation was the basically the same... without shockwave of course ;-)
Pull, tclap, SS, cleave, tclap, SS, cleave etc.
AE-tanking as well as a pally in BC felt "special" and i'm a little disappointed that now anyone can AE tank. Still... I'm enjoying wotlk so much that I don't really care!
I love it, this is good stuff. However my original question still standsThough I'm thinking the answer more and more is tank positioning.
@ valkira - Now *maybe* you could hold say 5 heroic mobs with a "kill skull first" order but not pally style with no regard or respect to marking or threat. And even then I'm not so sure healing aggro wouldn't pull. Cleave and tclap were not enough to hold 5 mobs on you in a heroic with dps going retarded on different targets or AOEing. tab-dev was the best skill a warrior could have. 3.0 changed things with shockwave, non-sucky tclap, and damage shield. tab-dev or mouse-over-dev, both are the same thing: cycleing through targets. I do appreciate the comments, the discussion has been better because of your posts.
@blahism - yeah tabbing is way more effective than targeting. Half the time I got the mobs so stuck on me that I can't tell them apart visually so tab is the best option for me.
Both of you guys are lucky - I can't get a pug or guild run where people don't give "grief" for throwing up a mark. At best, I mark pats and healers and don't get too much crap but most people don't even like that. A kill order? No way. Depending on how unfocused the dps is, I might just tab around and throw ss, rev, cb, and sb on everyone and never focus -- or I might focus on a main target and "casually" tab around to keep healing aggro and melee dps safe.
Former healbot now a Disgruntled protection warrior.
Tab targeting does not target critters.
Even snakes lol
Might not target critters but tabbing through mobs down the hall before targeting the 4 right in front of me seems to happen more times then I would like to see. I do hope they address this issue eventually instead of just writing it off because of pvp.
It seems to me that it kinda depends on what your group is doing. If they are going all out AoE dps (which seems to be the trend these days), getting threat on multiple mobs is a must; be that through Tclap, shockwave, cleave, or tab/mouseover devastate. But if your group is actually focusing on one mob at a time, it's more important to keep your threat high on one mob at a time.
But as far as putting devastate onto multiple mobs--usually they are packed on each other so tight it's hard for me to effectively use a mouseover macro. Much easier to tab through. What I find useful when the tab jumps off to mobs in groups halfway down the hall is to use shift-tab to go back the other direction. Then when I get back to the first mob, I just hit tab again. Rinse, lather, dead. I realize it's an extra key, and may not work for everyone, but for me, tabbing/shift-tabbing is much faster than mouseover/keying the macro.
It targets way to much was my point. Especially if you were used to setting the range
Helloooo, back again :-)
So last night I ran Heroic Nexus, UK, Drak then Gundrak all in about 3 hours last night... At first I think I was suffering performance anxiety after reading this thread, as I lost a couple of mobs here and there and had to taunt them back. Then I got back into my usual rhythm and continued as before... but I noticed one thing. My rotation is actually different to what I wrote before. I actually seem to Charge, Tclap, step back and shockwave, THEN SS main target, then tclap is almost ready again so I use it and start queueing cleave etc... If i miss a mob with the shockwave I use my mouseover macro to devastate once on it (it's the one that will still be moving and not stunned). Again, having health bars above mobs is a vital tool for the way I tank so I can see which mobs are taking more damge and adjust accordingly.
I was lucky enough to join a semi-guild pug last night with 2 excellent DPSers. One was a ret pally who was pulling just under 3k sustained throughout the instances. The other was a Rogue who was at about 2.8k. I didn't have any problem holding agro against them. I would use Vigilance mainly on the pally, but occasionally switch it to the rogue if I thought he might get squished in certain fights with AE damage.
Anyway, having thought a lot on the subject last night I am thinking that over the long run tab-devastate *might* contain a more sustained threat up-keep and hold the mobs on you for longer. However this assumes two things:
1. The mobs are going to be alive long enough for AE dps to pass your threat
2. Your DPS is good enough to make it an issue
In the case of point 2, you probably wouldn't have a problem with point 1 as the mobs would be dead faster than with slow DPS. In the case of point 1, I doubt they could ever pass your threat if their dps isn't high enough.
I'm trying to think of a situation where you would need to hold mobs for a really long time against DPS. In the case of raid fights were an OT holds multiple adds, the adds are either DPSed down asap (hence falling under point 1 above), or ignored while the raid focusses on the boss, in which case all the tank need do it stay above the healers which is a cakewalk.
I'm gunna try to do some maths on this issue cause I find it really interesting. I'm rubbish at maths though so it might not be very successful! :-p
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Back on the original subject... I found something on another forum that suggests the new way to do this is:
/console targetNearestDistance 10
/targetenemy
/console targetNearestDistance 41
Or it might be:
/console targetNearestDistance 10.000000
/targetenemy
/console targetNearestDistance 41.000000
Failing this, I think turning away from further packs is the best idea for tab-targetting. When I charge in I usually run through the pack (or slightly sideways if space is tight) and turn around to bunch them up and shockwave. This means you'd be facing your party and wouldn't pick-up the wrong tab-targets... unless you skipped mobs of course ;-)
Very true. Sure it is often easy to turn around so you have your back to any nearby groups but not always possible. I think the best example of this is the first 4 pull back in MgT, tab targeting would often pick up mobs from the lower level, FTL!!It targets way to much was my point. Especially if you were used to setting the range
@thistlefizz - Yeah, most people just want to AOE. I've found that sadly it is easier to zerg-retard-aoe tank things than to use CC...people just don't understand CC any more. (Which sucks with a rep/dungeon/quest-blues tank suitable for entry naxx and a not-so-geared healer)
Former healbot now a Disgruntled protection warrior.
It was very possible, I tanked no-cc Shatt halls on heroic in TBC with TC, Demo, and tab-spam HS-SS-Dev-Rev. Though it were guild runs so the pull was:
Pull X, TC, SS, tab further, on third mob switch to skull and taunt till it burns, keep tabbing like mad with more focusing on current main target.
If your point was it was not doable in pugs, I do agree.
I have same issue as OP and found this macro elsewhere before - but what does it exactly do?
I recall my first MgT heroic this happening - my first nerdrage ever. Kept targetting the Priestess and her adds at the end of the first bridge. Happens to me quite often nowadays too, though pre-shockwave piling up and turning works well against that.
You see, time to time I enjoy "forcing cc" into instances. Yes, it is slower, but at least teaches some people that AoE is not the only way to go and it's quite challenging to maneuvre out of sheep range while tanking stuff like in the old days. Don't want to sound like prick here, but it's tank who sets the pace along with healer - if you don't like my style, feel free to leave. There is handful of other people who will appreaciate the badgers.
I made a thread on the WoW suggestions forums about this . We should all go to it and complain
Squeaky wheels!
I want to see what the have to say about it.
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> PLEASE put back in set tab distance script
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