Snap AoE threat?

[Runicblood]

So, lately, especially in Icecrown, i've been noticing that it's really hard to pick up unpredictable packs of mobs for the first few seconds.

For example, i'm tanking a single target mob, doing my thing. When someone triggers a giest trap.
I can't drop a DnD for quite some time if i just got done burning my runes.

What i find works best to overcome this is hit blood tap, blood boil, and then simply do what i can until i have a B F U rune up.

Does anyone else have the same issues? or anything similar?

[gruxxar]

If I to were to be in that situation , I'd also use BB first, just to not make 'em go for some other ppl straight away.

Then i'd use Pestilence on the target u were hitting before the aoe pack came, then BB all the way.

at least it's presumable you have some Death runes on your main target since you were tanking it, hence Death striking it

(You can also throw a Empower Rune weapon in between )

[Runicblood]

If I to were to be in that situation , I'd also use BB first, just to not make 'em go for some other ppl straight away.

Then i'd use Pestilence on the target u were hitting before the aoe pack came, then BB all the way.

at least it's presumable you have some Death runes on your main target since you were tanking it, hence Death striking it

(You can also throw a Empower Rune weapon in between )

That's pretty much what i do. but this does take a good 5-10 seconds to perform if i just got done burning all my runes.

That first 5-10 seconds is what i'm talking about. =)

[Zao]

Yeah, that's a huge problem DK tanks have. Blizzard already said they wanted to fix that, perhaps by adjusting Blood Tap to affect DnD somehow.

There's really not much you can to except to be aware of those situations before they happen and keeping your runes off cd.

[Runicblood]

That's a problem I always had when blood tanking. If my D&D was on CD, and someone added an extra pack (or the boss spawned adds and my OT was busy with something else or not close enough) then it was chaos trying to get those mobs on me, unless my DPS gave me a few seconds. If they were willing to be patient and let me get aggro, I'd just BB to get them on me, then my dps would wait to do any AoE until they saw D&D on the ground. The BB would keep healers from getting aggro.

In my opinion, unfortunately, when tanking as blood, you have to have the dps in your raid understand that if they don't see D&D they need to _not_ do AoE damage. Anyone that has a problem waiting until your CD is available to do that, is harming the raid. Our dps were always very understanding of this, and would just keep damaging the boss and let me just eat the extra damage from the adds with defensive CD's while the healer had to do a little extra work for a while. Not optimal, but we found that the alternative was adds I couldn't possibly hold :|

Of course, if you go frost then it's easy to deal with packs like that, but that makes your survivability suck a nut in raids (and I assume this question is being asked from the standpoint of a raid tank, not a faceroll-heroic tank). It's sort of a lose-lose situation.

I'd suggest talking to your raid leader so that he can help you spread the understanding that in most (if not all) scenarios, if adds pop into the fight, they need to continue to focus on the target they were already damaging, rather than immediately switch to AoE. At least, of course, until they see the red bubbles. That was the solution our raid came up with to mitigate the shitty blood-tank AoE snap-threat, before we just switched me back to DPS when we recruited a bear tank.

Most of my guild is aware of this. however, it's still a pain. and i'm sure they're all eager to start seeing yellow numbers spam their screens. hehe

[rathok]

Only thing you realy can do is what you mentioned and tab+single target tps them all in addition to your AE dps rotation.

[jazx]

one thing that i do for trash myself (if i know theres a possible trap, or pats around somewhere) is to never really touch my RP besides my runestrike macros so that if a trap pops i can instantly turn and pop off a Dcoil so i have SOME threat on them then once they get close either BB, spread diseases onto them or hit them with a heartstrike or something.

another thing that people dont seem to realize atleast for 1 or 2 adds that are coming in or just spawned(doesnt rly work with more than that only DnD solves that) is to just heartstrike or Dstrike without diseases up its not going to kill you and its going to gen more threat than spreading diseases wld in the 1st seconds of it coming in(since it doesnt do anything till it ticks anyways) now dont get me wrong after that u shld try to spread from your main target mainly to make sure the 20% atk speed slow is up

again these are all for blood tanking, we cld all go frost and be "LOLOLOL KM/HB LOLOLOL"(fml i hate frost now) and never have problems again. there just small things but iv been useing them bak wen it was 3d sarth with some crazy pickups u had to do all the way to 3 trees freya were it was the same thing.

PS. these are the kinds of questions that should be asked in the sticky tanking guide so they dont come up again