About aggro - all read!

Basically in a raid the rule is:

If you want to wipe - pull the aggro!

Sometimes it may be hard to keep the aggro down as a dps'er - but nevertheless we should try our best to do so. Mistakes may happen even to teh best (like myself ;P) and are of course forgiven, but someone who permanently pulls aggro need to learn things.

Everyone - read this to learn more on how to control your aggro:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Aggro

As both tank and DPS... I know the most annoying thing is this:

Not being given enough time to build aggression.
As a rogue rule i wait: 2nd justice for paladin,
3rd sunder for warrior,
4-5 seconds for druid.

From a tank perspective, Having someone steal agression time and time again is both frustrating and annoying as blame is often put on us. With Righteous Defence it is a little easier, but a well educated DPS shouldn't need this at all.

Omen/KTM is a fabulous help as DPS as well as tank. As my rogue i can deal -insane- amounts of damage fairly quickly... However aggression builds just as quickly. As a DPS rule if you are less than 1k below the tanks aggression you need to lower it (vanish is good for rogues as it wipes agro -completely-)

Yes, and feign death is great for hunters, ice block for mages etc.
I have learned now to wait with my totems until the pull is done and start my dps at first when the totems are down. Or I just wait about 10 seconds until I start damaging.

I am fully aware of the easyness it is to pull aggro from anything but an exceptional tank if one does not pay attention. Been there, done that, wiped the raid and bought a t-shirt (must be said, that was very early in my raiding carriere.

Nowadays i use one of two tactics, depending on logelivity of the mob(s) we're fighting.
1. If the mob is trash: Wait untill the tank've gotten around 4-5.5 k Threat, and then start nuking. Depending on thet abilities of the mobs, I might either iceblock, given an aggro pull, or just chill with my dps before it gets that bad

2. Bosses and mobs with mucho grande HP:
Same as above, but with a little tweak. These have almost always some special ability that hurts bad (f.ex. Moroes' Garotte), so i usually save my iceblock for that. What i do here is when i am about 1k threat from the tank, I pop invisibility, dumping all my aggro. Then it's nuking after my hearts content, since there's a snowballs chance in hell that i might catch up to the tank now

thanks great infromation.

I usually am able to click on Soul Shatter after one of my awesome crits that occured at the wrong time. But sometimes I just die and type "WTF LOLZ GG". Well or something like that. I still have to advance my leetspeaking skillz.

Earnestly, I'll try to better my aggro management but anyways it's always me who's on the ground, not the whole team and it usually happens on trash mobs. Honest.

I would seriously recomend Omen as a threat meter, it's far more accurate when multiple mobs are being tanked and when you get over 90% threat of the target of the mob, a warning comes up and your screen flashes red.

In my fun run of Kara I did a few nights ago with friends there was myself and another lock. This lock was FAR FAR better geared than me (SSC and TK gear), was about 10k damage ahead of me but he kept pulling aggro and dying on bosses because he wasn't using a threat meter to watch his threat. If he hadn't of kept dying he might have been 15k ahead of me on damage.

Long story short: You can't DPS when you're dead.

Even if it means you have to stop DPSing, twiddle your thumbs and wait, don't over aggro.

The amount of times I've seen perfect tries on bosses fail epically at 3% because someone wanted to PEW PEW and be at the damage meter... GAH It makes me mad!

Basically:
If you have a slow computer, and have to chose your addons carefully:
Omen>Damagemetre
ALWAYS

If you can have both, then always look at the threatmetre... not the damagemetre

As a rule i -hate- damage metres... Because as DPS you see you're 2nd/3rd spot and then nuke your ass off to gain the next spot, inevitably drawing agro.

It's quite interesting to tank as a paladin. As we use AoE to tank we hit -every- mob in that fight. As such i rarely see my damage metre spot being less than 3rd. This is completely irrelivant though...

Threat>Damage!

As tak nicely said: You can't DPS when you're dead.

Nuff said

"You can't DPS when you're dead."

I fully disagree with that statement. .P

Well us UDs are the exception because we're freaking awesome! HIGH FIVE!

As for damage meters, I'd recomend not linking them until the end of the raid if you feel the need to show them off.

Yeah sorry about that last time. But I asked before I reported the data and we were havin a break.. ^^ And... I was astonished about how I could achieve 2nd place on the damage meter as a destruction lock. .)

"Well us UDs are the exception because we're freaking awesome! HIGH FIVE!"
Yay! Go us!

If the tank dies, it's the healers fault.
If the healer dies, it's the tanks fault.
If the dps dies, it's their own fault.

Tank sets the speed.
Dps has to keep up with the tank.
Healer has to outlast the Dps.

My philosophy of raiding.

Agali wrote:

Yes, and feign death is great for hunters, ice block for mages etc.
I have learned now to wait with my totems until the pull is done and start my dps at first when the totems are down. Or I just wait about 10 seconds until I start damaging.

Just a note, albeit a very important one. Its a common misconception that ice block dumps threat. It does, while the ice block is up, but as soon as ice block breaks, you get ALL the threat back again. It doesn't work like vanish or feign death as far as threat is concerned, so mages should never rely on iceblock for reducing threat. Its a survival tool and nothing more

Rashkaa wrote:

It's quite interesting to tank as a paladin. As we use AoE to tank we hit -every- mob in that fight. As such i rarely see my damage metre spot being less than 3rd. This is completely irrelivant though...

Paladin threat relies more strongly on actual damage dealt than Warriors and Druids. It's why you're so imba :p