Retribution aura

[Prinscharm]

Hey everyone,

I am having a discussion (big word though) in my guild about the retribution aura. The warrior tank thinks that the retribution aura pulls aggro from adds in ICC (10/25). I'm talking about the Saurfang and Rotface encounters here.

So my questions are:
- if a pala in our raid uses Retribution aura and the add attacks someone else, is the aggro being added to that pala then? Or just to the person being attacked?
- If aggro is indeed redirected to the pala, is it really that much aggro/damage to actually be a problem? - Would it be wise to not use retribution aura on fights that involve adds?
- Does it make a difference (aggro wise) if a prot pala or a retri pala uses the retribution aura (in other words, is this retribution aura affected by righteous fury)?

A lot of questions about this simple aura but I'm looking forward to hear what you have to say.

If this has already been answered somewhere else, could you pls provide a link then because I searched and found only outdated info about this topic.

Thanks in advance

[Vindicatar]

The aggro get added to the person who got hit. however in fights like saurfang and rotface the dps shouldnt really be getting hit. saurfang adds should be left for the ranged to take down. if the melee are cleaving saurfang, they are doing it wrong and need to hold off using cleave abilities until the adds start moving towards the ranged. as for rotface, the little slimes arent really an issue, they do minimal damge, and cannot be taunted, so any ret aura proc on them isnt a worry. As for the big slime, if ur dps are getting hti by him, they will most likely be killed, and/or ur add tank needs to do better.

as for the threat component, rets dont really need to use ret aura. it does minimal damage/threat, and there is usually a better option for auras to be used; frost aura on sindragosa, or using shadow resist if u dont have a priest. etc

even if ur ret pally uses a diff aura, the raid still gets the damage/haste bonuses, as they are applied just an aura being uses. they are not tied directly to ret aura.

lastly, if ur warrior tank cant get aggro back from a dps affected by ret aura... yer... u might want to have a sit down with him and have a chat.. even direct him here

Vin

[Airowird]

* Reflective Damage buffs (Retri Aura, Thorns, talents, ....) are coonsidered damage from the player being attacked. Easiest test, get a paladin to give you ret aura and body pull a mob. If it is his threat, the mob should immediately go for the Paladin.
* RF only applies if the Prot Paladin is the one being attacked, as it is his damage, thus threat. The daamge done by Retri Aura is based on the caster though, so a Retri Paladin giving the Aura to a Prot Pala will usually give the max threat.
* Nobody should be getting hit by the adds anyway. Most likely your Prot Pala pulls aggro through Consectration, HoR or any other multi-target ability.

[jere]

Consecration won't be pulling aggro on those adds. They take reduced AoE damage. What I typically find is that either a tank or a DPS hits an add with some multi attack ability:

Ret Paladin - Divine Storm
Prot Paladin - HotR
Fury Warrior - Whirlwind
Blood DK's - Heart Strike
etc.

None of those are considered "AoE" so they do full damage. Once they are on the target, ret aura will add threat to them, but not at tank levels.

The real problem is people not paying attention to the timers. They need to hold off abilities like the ones mentioned above until the adds are clear.

[Bosk]

Many ret pallies I have met believe that Retribution Aura is required for their max dps, but they have not carefully read the tooltip on Sanctified Retribution very carefully. If I only have one pally in the group i get them to give me Devotion.

[Angriff]

Consecration won't be pulling aggro on those adds. They take reduced AoE damage. What I typically find is that either a tank or a DPS hits an add with some multi attack ability:

Ret Paladin - Divine Storm
Prot Paladin - HotR
Fury Warrior - Whirlwind
Blood DK's - Heart Strike
etc.

None of those are considered "AoE" so they do full damage. Once they are on the target, ret aura will add threat to them, but not at tank levels.

The real problem is people not paying attention to the timers. They need to hold off abilities like the ones mentioned above until the adds are clear.

Actually Whirlwind, Heart Strike, and Divine Storm are considered AoE and are reduced by the aura. Hammer of the Righteous however is not, because it is a ranged attack and ranged attacks for whatever reason elude the AoE flag, even when they hit multiple targets. Multi-shot and Avenger's Shield both work the same way. But any actual melee cleave attacks are actually reduced by the AoE reduction aura.

Edit: Combat log examples:

[23:13:32.453] Angriff Heart Strike Blood Beast 48
[23:13:37.609] Athryn Divine Storm Blood Beast *315*
[23:13:38.515] Meiem Whirlwind Blood Beast *474*

[jere]

That's certainly news as both our ret paladin's DS and our fury warrior's WW both pull the adds while my own consecration does not. It must just be a damage level thing. Good to know.

[Molecule]

I wouldn't bother using Retribution Aura at all on Saurfang. If everyone's doing everything perfectly, it will give you about 30000 extra damage over the course of the fight (out of however many million HP he has). If people are messing up, it might cause a wipe.

The first night I tanked Saurfang 25 (I was Blood), I kept getting beasts stuck to me. At first people (myself included) assumed that I was heart striking at inappropriate times (if you aren't familiar with DKs, heart strike has a cleave effect). It turned out though that what was happening was that my heart strikes were fine (I did zero damage to beasts with them), but my death strikes (which heal me) were generating a small amount of initial threat (but since the healing on that fight is pretty minimal until a mark goes out, it was enough that I was on top of the threat list), and then the beasts were sticking to me because of the threat from retribution aura times frost presence.

So yeah.

This shouldn't be an issue for rotface though. The little slimes are going to be attached to whomever they spawn from no matter what, and the big slime shouldn't be attacking anyone but the slime tank.

Edit: Because I didn't really answer your question. The aura damage generates threat for the person being attacked, not the paladin providing the aura.

[vine]

Many ret pallies I have met believe that Retribution Aura is required for their max dps, but they have not carefully read the tooltip on Sanctified Retribution very carefully. If I only have one pally in the group i get them to give me Devotion.

This. You wouldn't believe how many ret pallies tell me to stfu when I inform them they can in fact use any aura, one's more useful to the party/raid.

[jere]

Ironically enough, all I ever see are people who complain about having crusader aura up. I have remind them it still works with the talents, and perhaps the 7th paladin in our pug VoA doesn't need to swap to any specific one for the group to benefit.

[proudmoore]

Consecration, WW, DS etc can pull DBS' pets if they land in the right time frame, despite being reduced significantly in damage. However, the player would have to be actively DPSing them to then hold the mobs against healing (I seem to remember working out that one tick of Consecrate as DPS would require something like a 1000 point heal used by a healer to pull the beast off me - 1 HoT tick).

The abilities you have to watch out for are Cleaves/Chains, which do inflict full damage - Hammer of the Righteous is the prime offender that I know of, since it does full damage and will have the full weight of RF to back it up. Stunning a mob on an RF boosted Consecrate can also be bad if its one of the last to be DPSed. This is the situation Divine Shield was made for, thankfully (since you're unlikely to need Divine Protection until Frenzy, at which point pulling a mob for a short period may not matter anyway)

For Rotface's adds, the small Slimes are to all intents and purposes Fixated onto the target that dropped them. Large Slimes should never be in range of attacks by DPS.


If Retribution or other Thorns types effects are holding aggro, however, you should be looking at a player's other abilities and asking why they pulled the mob in the first place.

[Molecule]

If Retribution or other Thorns types effects are holding aggro, however, you should be looking at a player's other abilities and asking why they pulled the mob in the first place.

While I agree with this, there's still no good reason to use them on Deathbringer Saurfang. They're never going to turn a wipe into a success (they just don't do enough damage) but they can occasionally turn a success into a wipe if you have someone that pulls a blood beast onto themselves.

[swelt]

Presumably you also need to consider positioning. If an add spawns on top of a player and he does damage to him at the instant he spawns, he's going to suffer the melee-vs-ranged threat bonus, i.e. someone at range needs to get above 130%. This is where your reflective damage might prove to cause problems - your first hit was only small but enough to get the thing attacking you. Now your reflective damage is making things worse.

From what I understand, hard mode means beasts pretty much 1-shot whatever they hit, so it won't be good enough to say "I probably won't get agro if I holy storm when the beasts spawn", you'll want specific care and attention to ensure survival.

[Prinscharm]

Thank you for the quick replies

I'll be sure to redirect them to this post so they can see for themselves :-)

/cheers

[Feanorr]

The abilities you have to watch out for are Cleaves/Chains, which do inflict full damage -

Like Angriff said, it's not true for most cleaves. You still better wait that the add is taken by a dps, but as soon as it's done, you wont pull agro with heart strike, Divine storm, etc., even if they are still in range.

HoR and Seal of Command are different though.

[KnThrak]

The biggest "danger" to the adds at Saurfang are Heart Strike, Divine Storm and Glyph of Maul. Especially the last and first since tanks use them and they produce so much bonusthreat.
(Hint: If you're a tank, please don't fire Heart Strike / Howling Blast / Maul / Thunderclap around the time the adds spawn, they're always dead on time so it's no big loss)

The biggest "help" is a well times Multishot or Chain Lightning. CL can even be precast 0,5s before the timer expires.

[Zaethius]

After seeing so much confusion on where threat goes after doing a bunch of reading, decided to test it myself. Partied with pally in my guild and had them ret aura. i walked within aggro range of mob and just stood there. I have a mage and no passive damage abilities other than from ret aura. Omen showed me gaining a bunch of threat and the pally none. All threat was given to me. That settles that.

[bling581]

It settles what? If you're in a 5-10 man group then the Ret should be using something more useful to the raid. However there's nothing wrong with having it on in a 25 man if the other auras are covered. Threat from it shouldn't be an issue at all if your tanks have the slightest clue what they're doing and would actually be a minor thread boost to them.

[Satorri]

Uh? >.>

It settles the point of the thread where the OP was trying to find out if Ret Aura was giving threat to the Pally or the person being hit. Which was also answered in the first response, but Zaethius tried it out.

[Rennadrel]

No, Retribution Aura does not generate enough threat on adds, it is a passive ability that deals damage to any creature or player that attacks whoever is under the effect of the aura. If you get hit by whatever adds, it may wind up generating some form of threat, however the amount of threat is minuscule compared to what even a single melee strike would generate since it only does what, 500 damage or something? On a boss like Deathbringer Saurfang, people need to remember that Consecration ticks until about 3 seconds after the animation has vanished from the ground which is visible at high resolutions, you see white cracks of light on the floor. This is what causes the most amount of threat for a paladin on the adds, you can train yourself to time Consecration right so it ticks on the boss only, but it takes a bit of work since it is also based on how fast your ranged are killing the Blood Beasts.