The question that has bugged me for 6 years.

[Deleted]

Tricks of the Trade and vanish work wonders .

But seriously, I always focus the tank (for my tricks macro) and every 15 seconds or so I click the focus frame and then hit F to target his/her target. I never pull aggro from a tank...ever (unless the tank dies, i'm generally 2nd or 3rd on threat. 2nd in 5 mans, 3rd in raids).

why dont you just use a /cast [target=focus] tricks of the trade macro so you dont have to click the focus everytime and lose your target?

[RoboA]

Alot of people are afraid of getting kicked for low dps, so they do everything they can to stay high even though it causes a wipe.

[announced]

the tanks moving too slow if he cant attack before i can. being on a mage most of the time ill jus be drinking to full mana in every spare second rather than trying to dps stuff ahead of him.

[Smeggles]

I, as a tank warn DPS about aggro time. Yes if there is 6 mobs, I'm going to need a second or two to establish threat on ALL of them.

I, as a tank also let DPS die if they ignore this.

Also my motto when doing any dungeon is - "You pull it, you tank it."

[Deleted]

Well, I can understand both sides in a way.
As a tank who is not that well geared, it can be rather difficult to hold aggro on a big pack of mobs. Having DPS in your group who are only thinking about "topping the meters" usually won't help taking the stress out of the situation.
On the other hand, having good enough gear as a tank, it's easy to "top the meters", especially on overall data (including trash). This does somewhat scratch at the ego of most DPS players and is a challenge in itself to them.

As you see, the situation you address is not a black-and-white one, but can be very different based upon which kind of players are involved. Communication can serve you a long way here. You should also take your healers gear into consideration... more often than not there's no need to worry about these one or two adds from the 6-mob-group hitting the DPS, 'cause the healer got the resources to simply outheal that extra damage, which turns loosing aggro into an issue of your ego rather than group performance.

But I don't want my essential point to get lost within these countless varieties of situations: Communicate!

[Deleted]

Since i play a hunter Misdirect really helps alot but it is just the fight for the number 1 spot on the meters

[Dakara]

Well, in pugs you get:

Tanks constantly TAB targetting for "threat" making them impossible to follow.
Tanks on the wrong target, and the DPS (kept up by the healer) are on the right one.
Tank swaps targets shortly after the pull leaving DPS on an untanked target.

Yes I know there's a lot of bad DPS out there doing their own thing. But there's also a lot of bad tanks.

[Deleted]

As a tank with experience in raids, heroics, 85 and low level dungeons I can say that it's not a problem of holding aggro. That's easy, so feel free to use aoe on packs, hell you can even focus on other than mine target, after around 3-4 seconds you won't pull aggro (and if you do I can get it off you). But when you get dps that feels so overpowered that they pull everything, you get pissed, especially in low levels, in low level instances I basically don't stop. But I still get dps (usually ranged, primarly mages and hunters) pulling additional packs or even bosses which is really annoying. Most of the times (like 95%) I'm able to grab aggro on additional mobs and live through them, but I always ask myself, or if I have time between pulls on the pt chat. "If you love pulling so much why don't you just play a tank?" I get no answer or l2p from a dps that is doing less dmg than me. For me people pulling ahead of tanks just need to read game manual about roles in the game...

[goldaar]

I open with Misdirect, and I've played with the same tanks for years, so it's kind of an unspoken thing. I guess this is really a symptom of pugging all the time and not enjoying the guild aspect of this game.

[Lune]

Cause as a mage I need to top the meters every fight. Who cares about aggro? If you lose aggro you're a bad tank.

[Minti]

DPS players this is to you. I hope that you can clear this up for me.
1.Why is it that you guys will pretty much pull for the tank by opening up on the mobs before the tank is even on the pack of mobs. 2.Also, why does no one ever assist the tank when DPSing the mobs down? Focus fire will clear the place much faster yet DPS is so spread out that the aggro is all over the place.
3.Lastly, when you are pulling for the tank and not assisting him, seriously its default binded to "T", and you pull off him is it the tanks fault that you have aggro?

To answer your 3 questions:

1. Most tanks are slow, I'm not in the instance because I want to savior every moment of the magical place, I'm there to either level up my alt or get the remaining valor for the week that I need. If the healer is full or close enough and everyone is topped up and we are still waiting around while you are running in circles for some reason then I'm going to pull. If you don't want to tank at a reasonable speed, I'll just tank it, I will just throw on a sword and board and tank it, it's not difficult to do that anymore.

2. I'll assist you if there is only 2 or 3 mobs, sure, but if there are 6 mobs, it's much quick to multidot or aoe them down, sorry you are just going to have to learn how to aoe tank.

3.No, it's not the tanks fault, but it is the tanks fault if people start leaving, because if this instance run is suppose to take 30 mins TOPS and you the tank are making it take closer to 2 hours, then yes it is your fault.

It's the tanks responsibility to set the speed of the instance run, if you want to spend 40 mins in RFC or 2 hours in ZG feel free, with your friends or people who don't have things to do.

[Tziva]

Maybe this is an outdated outlook now, but years of tanking on a warrior and DPSing with non-paladin tanks has taught me NOT to assist the tank. The only thing that frustrates me more is a tank refusing to mark or tell kill order is a tank getting mad at me for not attacking the right target when I do assist him -- at the wrong time.

I don't know how other tanks do it, but I bounce around on mobs. I swap to interrupt, I swap when my threat lead on one is getting weaker, I swap to start building up threat on the next kill target when the current focus is getting close to dead. I don't want the DPS to assist me. Depending on when they hit their assist, I could be on a totally different mob at the time. It used to be even worse then my AoE threat was weak and I was constantly tabbing through the group to throw sunders on everything.

Nowadays it doesn't matter so much if they are attacking the wrong target since they probably wont pull anyway and I can probably handle it if they do, but on those cases when it does matter, assisting the tank is not the answer.

Either mark the kill order with symbols (skull, X, etc), give your group a loose kill order to go by ("casters first"), or tell them to assist another DPSer in the group who is smart about targeting if you are having threat issues from DPS laying into the wrong target. Please don't ask them to assist you.

[Hurpdurp]

I have both a well geared tank and a well geared dps. I have no desire to savoir troll heroics. Im there to get it done and get my valor on any toon im in there on. I have done each one hundreds of times. I started out playing DPS, and thankfully a dps with a misdirect. I dont care if they give a 5000% threat increase I am still going to md the tank if im dpsing. I am going to call balls to the wall every pull. Like I said I want it done quick.

As a tank, Im pulling quick (as long as the healer is g2g on mana). If im tanking and there is a class that can md me I tell em I expect that at the start of the run on big pulls. It just makes things easier. Its a speed thing for me.

If dps is full tard and hits something before I do, they tank it. Ill state this at the start of a pug run. Dont want to tank it, dont pull it. Its not hard to md, or give me 2 globals to get my aoe off if no md is present. Im also going to tab through the group. With the new threat increase Ive got the 1st mob I target on lock within 4 globals typically. I will swap to build threat, and I will swap to interupt. If there is something I want dead asap, I mark it. If I dont care what you kill Im just going to round them up and let you aoe.

If your the tank state what you expect at the start of the run. Make a short and sweet macro stating the obvious. Sure some people will be morons about it, but that will happen anywhere.

[Tural]

As a lifelong Ret Paladin, one of my most used buttons is my assist macro.

/assist [harm]
/assist [help]

It will always put me on the tank's target. And then, ideally, I will never have to worry about dying or having to use a defensive cooldown because I'm being hit. As a result of not having to do those, I can perform my role better.