Woo, finally got my Loremaster title tonight. Getting it for Cata was trivial, and then at 85 I was powerful enough to go back and solo the 5-man quests I was still missing in Icecrown because it’s a pain in the ass to organize enough people who are phased correctly…
And now that I’m basically ‘done’ Cata, I guess it’s time to start that Worgen.
As someone coming back to tanking after not having done so since TBC, I’d agree this is the main problem. I feel like I suck because I don’t have the muscle memory and reactions for the mechanics I have in place now (nor the macros, which is an entirely different problem). I’ll get there, but there’s no real way to get there while levelling other than taking 2x as long to run random dungeons. So I end up at 85 wanting to develop tanking skills and being either:
a) Thrown in with random puggers who don’t really know how to work as a team and in whom I generally don’t have faith to work as a team
or
b) Waiting for dungeon runs with guildmates where I know if we hit a setback we’ll work through it, and knowing that they know if they pull aggro and overestimate their ability to handle the monster on their own, they’re not going to be bitching me out for not maintaining aggro.
I chose b. But it’s not a particularly available option for a lot of folks (including those who are in guilds that just aren’t as laid back as mine).
Paragon (World’s best guild right now) on melee in Cata raiding:
Also, a big thank you for the melee DPS’ers who play in the guild. They had to pass up spots again for alts, simply because the encounter design is incredibly punishing for any melee. It’s a pretty glaring oversight when bringing in more than one or two of them results in ridiculous increases in damage taken in the last phase due to non-stop chaining chain lightning. Dropping out melee characters in favor of ranged ones has been a recurring theme throughout this whole raiding tier, but we hope that it’s over now with only the end bosses and Sinestra left.
Here’s to hoping next tier of raiding won’t favor ranged by design. Maybe even go wild and give some incentive to bring in melee, too.
Fuck you Blizzard for making me shelve my rogue!
Better get some talent back to WoW instead of sending everyone at least partly competent on the development of the new MMO…
The ability that Paragon mentioned was actually made more melee friendly in the last hotfix after Paragon’s kill. Cutting edge raiders facing unbalanced content is par for the course since, uh, Ragnaros or C’thun, and at least Blizzard is keeping an eye on how they’re doing now. Don’t let that stop you from raging, though!
[quote]
It’s a pretty glaring oversight when bringing in more than one or two of them results in ridiculous increases in damage taken in the last phase due to non-stop chaining chain lightning. Dropping out melee characters in favor of ranged ones has been a recurring theme throughout this whole raiding tier
[/quote]
They talk about the whole raiding tier available right now.
As they are kickass players if they struggle as melee in Heroic it’s safe to assume lesser people (like myself) will struggle in normal raiding.
Yesterday in a LFD run the healer said “thank god only 1 melee!”
And in general:
Why the hell does Blizzard have to “hotfix” this?
Don’t they have some QA running raids as melee or they all ranged and watch the tank(s) dance / eat aoe in melee range?
Ranulf
4426
Just from heroics and the robot bosses in BWD, its blindingly obvious melee are a hinderance. My guild leader just before Christmas stated he was gonna switch from his DK to his hunter and hit 85 on the hunter 2-3 days ago. Nothing too new with blizzard and early content on expansions. Even at the 30% buff, the lich king fight 10man was much harder with more than 1-2 melee dps .
Definitely, as I do with any other attempts to label and divide the population into the worthy and unworthy. It is my hope these Atlas Shrugged-thumpers will grow out of it.
Andrew
4428
You could also try queueing for the lowest level dungeons you can PUG. As a level 85, you’ll make the run much easier for everybody. Plus normal dungeons are much less hard than heroics.
Another less conventional approach is to find an area with infinitely respawning enemies, and just tank a bunch of them, picking up new ones as you go. This is basically the equivalent of a training dummy for a tank. You’ll probably die eventually, but it can be useful for practicing your rotation while moving around. I did this in Wrath before I started tanking 5 mans. There must be a similar kind of place in Cataclysm.
Appreciate the suggestions. The main problem I have at the moment is figuring out how to open a fight and grab aggro on 4-ish dudes when I’m at my lowest amount of rage and relative threat levels are closest. Unfortunately, I can’t really practice corralling four monsters going in 3 different directions while trying to taunt/build threat against misbehaving DPS in any meaningful way.
The combination of reducing AE attack effectiveness, clamping my AE attacks to a timer, and rage normalization for tanking really is rough on me after a long absence. If I shift into bear and pop enrage, I have 30 rage which begins to instantly decay. If I pull with FFF (which I do) I have aggro on one guy, and three unaggro’d running at me. If they show up together I have -just- enough rage to swipe/thrash and hopefully get them glued to me long enough to build aggro. However, if someone is AEing, or the healer drops a HoT on me proactively, then they get unclustered and I’m screwed. I can’t really believe that the design is to have packs of 5 monsters with 2+ CC’d, but maybe it is. That’s a fairly tedious way to play for competent, geared players, but maybe it’s intended. So far I tend to only lose DPS if there’s a heavy AE mob, but that will get worse in heroics I’m sure. Maybe I need to poke my DPS to actually CC/focus fire, but I didn’t have to do that as much during TBC, so this stuff feels a bit like a step backwards in that case.
RickH
4430
???
You are obviously free to insult fans of Ayn Rand (internet!), and show off that you have read a book or two (internet!), but would it be too much trouble to have the insults make sense? Are you trying to equate someone using the term “bads” with calling them a parasite? Not getting it.
I can’t really believe that the design is to have packs of 5 monsters with 2+ CC’d, but maybe it is.
That is the design, at least until everyone is over-geared for 5-mans we go back to the facerolling AoE style of WotLK heroics. If a pack has five mobs, I suggest using CC on two (or three if you have that option), make sure the dps only attacks the skull, and focus building threat on that target. Maintain control of the other mobs through incidental AoE attacks like Swipe. As long as your dps aren’t idiots and only attack the designated kill target, holding aggro shouldn’t be too hard.
Arguably we’re getting to the point already where we can AoE certain dungeons Wrath-style. I ran a H-SFK guild run on the weekend where we didn’t have anyone in the group who could CC undead mobs, so we brute forced our way through. Every pull strained the healer’s mana reserves and using tank/healer/dps cooldowns was necessary just to beat some of the trash packs, but we pulled it off with no wipes. With better gear, it would have been a breeze.
I had a hard time yesterday cc’ing a mob with my glyped fear on the warlock (mobs will cower in fear and stand still instead of running around which rocks) because tanks mainly ran in and aoe’d everything (damage breaks fear).
That hunter type mob in HoO cc’d makes pulls much cleaner and doesn’t strain the healer so much (his aimed shot thing is brutal and on fast cooldown).
Oh and pretty please pull shit off the healers!
I was the only one that did cc mobs on the healer at the 4 bosses at the end. The rest (tank + 2 melee) were happily whacking on the boss ignoring the spawning adds…
If you care about adds you instantly are better than 1/3 of the tanks I had to so far in LFD and the healer will love you = keep you topped! :)
This is not correct.
I just did that quest and although I’m unsure about the 100% drop rate I definitely got about two “Toxic Hellboar Meat” or whatever it’s called when I attempted to purify.
Still much better than it used to be, but definitely not 100%
Andrew
4434
As Marchhare said, you need to CC a couple of mobs, and mark a skull and an X. Nobody should be DPSing anything aside from the skull on packs where it matters if they pull aggro. I suggest you bind a key to skull and X. (I use shift-Q for skull and alt-Q for x.) For CC, assign people marks and get them to mark their own mobs. The purpose of this is so you don’t have to learn all the many restrictions on CC that the different CCs from different classes have.
With just a couple of mobs active at any time, and the DPS only hitting 1 mob, it should be fairly easy to maintain aggro. If healing aggro is really a problem, just tab over to the other mobs now and again. As a bear, your big problem is not having a ranged silence. You may want to CC casters whenever possible. The meleers will run up to you, away from the casters, then you can start tanking them. (You can also do a LoS pull if there is the appropriate way to break LoS, but this requires the DPS and healers don’t just start doing whatever in LoS of the mobs.) A single AoE ability should keep off most healing aggro for the initial bit. Focus on building up a little threat on the skull target, then tab around a little to stay ahead of healing aggro.
Weird. I guess thinking back, I think the first character I did it on had 0 failures, but the second one had a few.
You can also check with dps if someone could range silence pull that specific mob (be ready to pick it up from said dps fast though).
Rogues can kick a caster and sprint back for example.
Mages have silence and can blink away to get some additional range after the pull (if the trash mob hits like a truck).
Warlocks could use their shadow ward which will make shadow based casters run to them (as they are immune from their magic for a couple of seconds).
DKs can use death-grip or Mind Freeze to get the mob to the tank.
A general thing: I would really wish that tanks listen to some advice / offers a bit more.
For example as lock I have an instant “pull” ability for patrolling mobs that could pull additional adds if pulled at the wrong moment. From experience I know that the global cooldown of ranged weapons to pull can make this tricky as there is some delay until the shot is fired.
Curse of Elements doesn’t damage / tick and does generate very little aggro once a tank took over and it is instant.
Just stand in the beeline the mob will make to the lock and get aggro when it passes.
Cat druids have something similar with this debuff thing that does keep rogues out of stealth etc. (forgot the name).
Also a miss-direct on the tank from hunters can be very useful at tricky pulls.
Again death-grip can be quite useful as well even if it fails as the mob will aggro and run to the dk in a beeline.
Lorini
4436
Yay!
Tailoring
Tailors with 400 skill or higher should now receive additional cloth drops 50% of the time from anything that drops cloth, up from 25%.
Additional hot fixes here. There are some hot fixes pertaining to the issues under discussion I believe.
Cat druids have something similar with this debuff thing that does keep rogues out of stealth etc. (forgot the name).
Not just cats, but all Druids have it. The spell is Faerie Fire, and it applies the same debuff as Expose/Sunder Armor in addition to the “preventing the target from entering stealth” effect.
Ah I only used it as cat while leveling to 60,70,80.
Was too busy healing 5 mans after that to see if I had it as resto, too. :p
Now that the holidays are over, my guild is ready to start raiding. We’re heading into 10-man Bastion of Twilight for our first Cata raid (not counting the easy Tol Barad boss) tonight. Has anyone here tried it yet, and if so, do you have any tips? Is it as harsh on melee dps as I’ve been reading, or does that only apply to the heroic version?
I was in a raid there briefly the other night until my connection got too sucky for me to continue, but my impression of the first boss is that he’s entirely doable if you are geared appropriately and read up on the strategies. There are youtube videos over at tankspot to look at. I believe we did it with 3 healers, but since I wasn’t involved I’m not 100% sure (if not 3, then 2). I have read the whining about melee dps from some of the top raiding guilds, and though I play melee I didn’t notice any specific problems making melee worse than it normally is. I would say read up on the encounters and you will have a shot at it.
