Threat, Pulling, Positioning and all.

[Bradius1974]

I posted in another thread that I am returning to my passion, Warrior Tanking, after taking almost two full expansions away from it.

I tanked a guild Heroic Grim Batol run last night. My party consisted of Frost DW Death Knight DPS, Demonology Warlock DPS, Survival Hunter and Paladin Healer and myself (Warrior Tank). We used a Freezing Trap, Wyvern Sting, Banish (where appropriate) and Fear (glyphed to fear in place) for crowd control. Everything was marked.

In reflecting on the run, I notice three specific areas where I had control issues and I would like some help from tanks, specifically Protection Warriors, on how to overcome these specific challenges.

1. The first problem I had with threat and rounding up multiple mobs would happen after trap launcher initiated the pull and the hunter didn't follow it up with a multi-shot + misdirection to me.
2. The second problem I had with threat and rounding up multiple mobs would happen when the Death Knight would open up with Howling Blast or, to a lesser extent, the Warlock's Felguard would charge in and start whirlwinding/cleaving.
3. The third problem I had (only twice) would occur after I used Heroic Throw to pull the two pathing npcs that summoned the twilight drakes to assist them and the group would open up a can o' whoop ass before I had either the initial mob or the drake in position with sufficient enough threat to hold onto both as I moved out of the shadow flame patches the drake would initiate.

In every case, I would be able to taunt off and intervene enough so that no one died, but both our healer and I were working much harder than either of us should have needed to work. Without resorting to a "guys, pull your heads out of your asses", how can I impress on them that they need to wait a second or two longer for me to nail down the same amount of threat as the Death and Decay + Blood Boil or Avenger's Shield + Consecrate that they are used to?

[Reev]

The easiest way is to just let them die a couple times.

But in response to your threat problem areas, the easiest way to pick up initial threat after a trap pull, for example, is to hit Commanding/Battle shout immediately after the trap lands and the rest of the mobs aggro the group. Commanding/Battle shout generate a very small amount of AoE threat, but unless people open up on the mobs before they reach you, it's plenty to get them to focus on you as the tank. If you then heroic throw any caster, and TC/Shockwave when the mobs arrive, you should have no trouble holding aggro off of silly dps. If the DPS simply won't stop attacking before the mobs reach you, let them die. It's their fault and they should pay the repair bill.

[Mammoth]

Feral druid so I feel your pain. Given a moment I can hold a groups attention but I do need that moment, particularly if we start the pull with a hunter trap or other CC. Start by telling your DPS you need a couple seconds to gather up the mobs before you can focus on the first kill target so they all need to hold off damage for a moment. For me it's literally 3 seconds assuming somebody didn't do something dumb. Then get your healer on board to not heal any DPS that pulls aggro early in the pull. Then when (ok, I'll be charitable and say "if") they still jump the gun on DPS and pull aggro, let them tank their mob sans heals. If they die, they die. Lesson (hopefully) learned.

[Sirloinsteak]

Best way I have found to open up after a hunter trap or MC pull is (if your group insists on cc'ing) ... commanding shout, zerker rage ... then charge, cleave (I'm assuming there is more then 1 mob coming in yeah ?) ... cleave hits so hard now that if you fire this off and it hits the mobs they will be glued to you ... then just kite them away from cc a little while cleave/revenging then start normal rotation. Most of my time spent aoe tanking is cleave, revenge, thunderclap Keeping up BnT), shock wave then firing off any shield slams I get when there is a window in that. If you have 3 points in war academy and 2 points in thunderstruck cleave hits super hard, TBH I win dps in just about every trash pull pulling around 16k -20k dps. Hit a record last night on the dwarf trash before Atramedies pulling 23k ... then continued to jokingly call my dps a bunch of terribles for getting out dps'ed by the tank in a raid lol.