Rookie tank needs advice - Vig

[JayM]

So I was OT on Kolo in 25Man...

I have been tanking for 6 months, and generally put my Vig on a high threat DPS'r like a lock. I screwed up and could not taunt the mid section off the MT in time and he died and wipe - that was my fault wrong body part targeted.

While running back to the boss i get a tell from a caster to put Vig on the other tank. I am pissed at myself already and don't respond well.

The MT in this case was a DK and on Omen we were separated by only a few hundred TPS. Shoudl I be putting Vig on the DK MT? Would this cause the DK MT to have issues getting back to the top in Omen?

Thanks for your help.

[Thaak]

I'm not sure why you were unable to taunt off the MT, i'm guessing you had used your taunt previously on rubble, otherwise i have no idea why it wasn't available. We typically run 3 tanks in 25, so we have 2 who only worry about Kolo and 1 who just does rubble. Regardless of that don't forget you have mocking blow and challenging shout. But of which can be used to stopgap a misses taunt. Also don't forget you can change your vigilance target during combat.

On a side note, if you were OTing(i.e. not getting hit to generate rage) it seems VERY odd to me that you were almost with the MT on threat. It sounds to me as if he may have some TPS issues, unless of course you meant that you were way below him on total threat, but seeming maintaining the same TPS. Some tanks get lazy when they get a huge lead and slow down their threat gen. On Kolo though, unless you are going for the achievement where you don't break the arms, your DPS will spend a decent amount of time off the body, so there shouldn't be aggro issues. Vigilance will also reduce the MTs incoming damage by 3%, so thats helpful as well.

EDIT:
Apparently i missed the part where you stated you had the wrong part targeted. You could make a macro to prevent that.

/assist tanksname
/cast taunt

That will put you on his target and then taunt. Assuming he in on the correct target it will work.

[uglybbtoo]

I got the whole miss target bit but I am with Thaak why didn't you mocking blow this can't be the first taunt resist or miss you ever had and you have to be in melee range or else BIG BANG coming to a place near you?

[Petninja]

It sounds like you just made a mistake, that having been said, so long as you don't pull agro from the DK with Vig on him there shouldn't be a problem. When he taunts off you his threat goes right up to where yours is anyway (at least I think).

[Skaggi]

Hi there!

Don't put vigilance on another tank unless you need the taunt-reset feature (strictly speaking Sarth 3d and nothing else). Almost always there'll be another DR in place already (disc-priest, shammy, pallybuff, anything I can't remember right now) and so it is wasted threat reduction since that trigger-happy lock is thread capped now.

If you miss-taunt in some way, just use another one and you'll be golden as stated above.

And don't be to worked up because of one wipe... correct answer for wipe-winers is "Blizz invented dailies to counter the gold loss of this happening to us"... After all even tanks are human beeings and can mistakes sometimes...

Cheers!
Skaggi

P.S.: You might consider dropping your block trinket for something more down the avoidance / EH road.

[Gumurak]

Simply put to answer your question. They wanted vigelance on the other tank for the damage reduction. Which just seems silly, I'd ask them straight up, but I bet this was thier reasoning for it. i've been asked to do it before for that exact reason. But it just screws with the balance of things.

[JayM]

Thanks for the input guys.
In this case there was no time for the Mocking Blow(befreo MT went down).
The tank had two stacks of crunch armor on him, when he called for the taunt he received his thrird stack, I messed up missed my taunt, realized it, was switching targets, when he went down. I did hit Kolo with a Mocking blow got the aggro, popped SW and Laststand, and Laventhor's trinket, but one of our healers was dead, and a few of the dps, then I got hit for 21K back to back, and my laststand was expired, so i went down.
The caster who asked me to put vig on the MT was a pug, but a friend of the GM, and the GM is now upset with me for my responses to that caster, and has asked me to respec to arms and drop tanking all together. He says that my tanking is shit and I am putting folks at risk. Just last week he was saying my tanking was great.

I have tanked Freya, Thorum, the lady with the cats, Kolo, OS and nearly every Boss in Naxx without complaints, and I really don't want to be dps. I am a rookie yes, but my TPS on progression nights in 10man Ulduar is 4.2K TPS, Dodge is over 25%, and Block is over 23%, my wow-heroes score is 2244, I do not really want to start over as a dps warrior (of course Bliz has warriors crippled). I may need to change guilds to continue to tank.

What do you guys think, dump this guild to continue to tank?
THis is my first toon, so I really have been playing for only 6 months, the attitude of this GM and the way he be-littles people on Vent is enough to make me want to sell this toon and stop playing all together.

Thanks again for the feedback on the vig item.

[orcstar]

Kologarn basically is a no-aggro fight so the drawback of putting vigilance on the other tank (him getting less threat) isn't there, so only the benefits of vigilance remain: damage reduction and taunt refresh.

So yes, the caster was right and putting vigilance on the other tank on that specific fight isn't bad. And the refresh on taunt might have saved you.

The other thing: don't have the other tank shout for a taunt: KNOW when the other tank gets 2 stack yourself and taunt Kologarn.

[Hengist]

Why you change on 3rd stack anyway? Wouldn't be safer to taunt after 2nd?

[Moridin Of Galakrond]

I'd say start looking for another guild in my opinion. If the GM gets upset after one bad night, the GM has got problems. I mean, our GM or RL will give people crap over vent for messing up, but in good fun. Nothing mean, usually makes the person want to do well, he also never yells at people, that doesn't work at all. That kinda attitude doesn't sound like something I would stick around for though, and if you love to tank, don't give it up for anybody else.

Now, I'm not sure what you said to the caster, but it never helps to fly off the handle at people in the game. Cause, to be honest, it doesnt' solve anything, people stick to their opinions in the game and it's usually pretty hard to change them.

Good Luck. Don't let the GM get you down.

[JayM]

All I siad to the caster was - 'your smoking crack"

Nothing bad at all.

[JayM]

Someone please explain the taunt reset feature.

I don't know what that is.

[JayM]

Hengist

He called over vent for the swap on the 2nd debuff stack, and picked up the thrid stack directly after he called for the taunt.
Sorry for the confussion, we were swaping on 2 stacks

[orcstar]

If you put vigilance on someone and that person gets hit, the cooldown on your taunt instantly finishes and you can use it again.

[JayM]

Damn that is nice... I did not know that. Thanks
Maybe that is why the caster wanted it on the MT, so my Taunt CD woudl be refreshed? Who knows at this point.

[JayM]

Moridin

This GM is, well... during this 25man for some reason i was his target... He was basically reading me th riot act thru the entire raid. I got a thick skin and all, but damn I got to hear enough of the crap at work, this is supposed to be a dang game where folks are to have fun. I am a tank first and foremost, and have no intention of respecing, I plan to stay a tank.
I thought that this is what progression was all about... yea so it took me a few trys to get the Council fight down... but once i got it, I put 17 interupts on that bastard in the back. BTW the videos on this site are great.. with one exception, the teams are way to overgeared... there is no way my group could heal through an overload, so if I follow the video we wipe.
Does anyone have good experience with a Guild that raids only a few nights a week? In the earlier time slots? My wife's toon will most likely come with me. She has a Druid healer (lvl80) and a Rogue(lvl80).

[orcstar]

Damn that is nice... I did not know that. Thanks
Maybe that is why the caster wanted it on the MT, so my Taunt CD woudl be refreshed? Who knows at this point.

So you basically said to the caster that he was on "crack", while he might have known the mechanic of your own ability better then you did.

[JayM]

Yes you are right, and I should apollogize, if I knew his name.
You woudl think that someone who is in a caster role just might say..."hey I have a warrior tank - try this" not just demand you do something...

Hindsight is 20/20, and I guess I am the ass in this event, well at least I can admit it.

[Silveronfire]

props for admitting it. It can be hard to control the anger when a dps questions a tanking mechanic, but somtimes** they know whats up.

[Karisita]

Ditto to the above, I'm sure he said what he said because of the taunt refresh, but the other thing to remember, is DPS is busy nuking the boss. They don't see your screen, they don't see the tanking mechanics at work. What this means is that the dps'er didn't know you'd mis-taunted, didn't know that you tab targeted to fix, and didn't know that the mocking blow came, it just came too late. Ultimately as a warrior, it's a rare case where the taunt refresh is really worth it because as stated, we have Taunt, Mocking Blow, and Challenging Shout. Now if I were you... I would have CS'ed while swapping targets the second I realized my taunt was miss targeted. Yeah I'm gonna pull everything in the area (never been to uld so I don't know if there's anything else to pull.) but it was my fault in the first place, and there's a chance the second OT can rip whatever's on me off, but without a MT we're screwed.

So in the end, while he may have been right in a way, it wouldn't have prevented the wipe. The wipe was due to mistake, human error, not a mechanical failure to tank. Your decisions were sound, your targeting was off. It's like saying "Well our F22's dropped a bomb on arizona instead of nevada when we were testing it's accuracy..." "You need to replace the bombs with nukes." "Yeah that's.. wait what? You're smoking crack!"