Hello!
Welcome to my un-authorized and previously un-discussed counterpart to Brokentree’s post on Pugging as a Tank. Yes, I’m riding on your coat tails.
Anyway, this post is mostly inspired by an altercation I had over the weekend while pugging away in the LFD system.
You see, I teamed up with one of our Pally tanks to acquire my EoF’s for the day. No worries! Having a tank in group = no waiting! The loading screen fired up and we were presented with Oculus. No problem! Two more EoT’s and a chance at a funky mount.
Of course, the start of the instance is arguably the worst because of all those stupid whelps. But you usually manage. I find as DPS it’s usually best to just target one whelp and blow the hell out of it. Sure, you get zapped once or twice, but it’s only one whelp so it isn’t so bad. Anyway, we go into our second pull with a couple of the dragonkin and the DPS Death Knight gets a ton of aggro and dies. Smarmy words ensued.
I was initially going to detail the argument, but it detracts from my point. Short version is that the DK blamed the tank for not having aggro and I defended the tank, suggesting that DPS stealing aggro is the fault of DPS.
So, I’m going to provide you with a two very simple tips to help you share a healthy balance of threat with your beloved tank:
- Read THIS. (Hooray for more coat tails!)
- Learn what your tank’s AoE ability looks like and wait for it.
Otherwise, my DPS brethren – pulling aggro is indeed YOUR fault. Have some situational awareness. Adjust to your surroundings and your tank, whether it be their play style, gear, or inexperience.
Thank you, that is all.
In my experience, only a DK with Glyph of Pestilence can possibly gain and hold aggro on the entire set of whelps. All other tanks can do is make sure most of them are not on someone else.
It is most likely that the DK had that glyph and managed to disease every whelp within a few seconds of the fight starting while also dropping Death and Decay, which has bonus threat built in.
So yeah, DPS who do that should expect to die.
Maybe they should add a loading-screen tooltip explaining how Thunderclap, Swipe, Consecrate and Death & Decay work and what they look like.
In this particular case, it was mostly the DPS not waiting for Consecrate. He just went in trying to blow the bajesus out of things.
Maybe the tank could have/should have used it earlier, but the fact remains that the DPS should wait for that sort of thing before they open up with their own AoE attacks.
Hmmm.. BT I think you’ve found a brilliant idea for the next post! Tanking Threat generating AEOs Screenshots! The real reason why Pallys seem to throw glitter at the enemies they first engage!!!
[…] 15, 2010 by Brokentree After some comments on a recent Regis post I thought it might be useful to put out a brief guide for DPS on how to know when it’s okay […]
[…] The subtext goes back to a recent post there by another of the multitude of Wayward Initiative bloggers, Pugging as DPS. […]