Training The DPS!

[Ravensbane]

So I have mulled this thought process a few times in the past and figured with the ae tanking being a common complaint atm with 4.0.1 I figured it might be a good time to start training the dps for cata in LFG dungeons and was curious what the forum has to say. So here's what I like to do in heroic randoms as a healer. I basically will heal as normal for the first 5 seconds of a pull. If a dps player pulls or still has aggro at that point on a mob I stop healing them completely until either the mod dies or threat is dropped. Think of it as letting a child touch the flame to learn the lesson that fire is hot... Now I've been doing dungeons as all specs (Tank, Heals, Aggro Pulling DPS) for awhile now and I generally know the difference between a bad tank, regular damage and when a dps has pulled aggro and keeps it. I am talking about the latter of the three. When a hunter pulls aggro, and doesn't feign or md, etc... I know most if not all classes have something to drop or mitigate heavy damage from aggro, it's time to start teaching them again how to do it correctly. Anyways, what's your thoughts? Maybe start a list of what your class has to drop aggro, or how dps can effectively not pull aggro. Most of us know the basics, but we just don't do it all the time. I'll start with what I know, feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong. Anyways, am I too cruel?

Hunter: Feign, MD, Deterrence
Feral: Cower, SM (Least for NE)
Mage: Invis, IB
Rouge: Vanish, ToT
Warlock: Shatter Stone(Not sure of Correct Name)
Priest: Fade, Dispersion
Pally: Two Pally "Hand of..." and personal bubble
DK: Don't know
Boom/Resto: Don't know besides maybe SM
Sham: Wind Shear
Warrior: Don't Know

[professorn]

shamans wind shear is just an interrupt, shamans got nothing unless they glyph stoneclaw totem.

[pixartist]

shamans wind shear is just an interrupt, shamans got nothing unless they glyph stoneclaw totem.

not true, we got ankh!!

[Ravensbane]

Wind Shear - Disrupts the target's concentration with a burst of wind, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. Also lowers your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you.

[Netherwolf]

Yeah, that doesn't mean it's useful though. A feral druids Cower (the older version) decreased threat by 2k. My autoattacks generated more threat than that. So just because there is a threat dump somewhere doesn't mean it actually useful unfortunately =/

[Naus]

DKs: Stop attacking. We have no actual threat dump.

[Rexxr]

I totally agree with the idea that dps has to be retrained. Tanking random on my prot pally the first day after the patch, after the third random i gave up. The overall dumb comment was "Dude use consecration. You are bad!" ... sigh people have to READ patch notes or PAY ATTENTION. Let's review Consecration now has a much longer CD, over double now. I can't spam it and hope for the best. I use judgment, hammer, avenger's shield, and tabbing through the mobs to make sure i am hitting them all I also taunting the main target. My solution to the dumb dps is if you pull it you handle it. And big surprise the dps are learning fast, i figure in 2 weeks all the bad dps will quit try to do randoms cause they don't fing understand why the have so many repair bills. It like the old 2 sunders rule, or count to 5 hold your dps than you can blow your load and face roll till your blue in the face. This week ICC was a breeze tanked and no one pulled threat cause the dps has already learned to calm down we back to BC / Classic tanking (thank god).

[Deleted]

I do agree though that someone who overaggros a lot deserves to die in return of learning that he/she is doing something wrong. When I heal, i usually heal them in the beginning even if they overaggro, but if they continue build threat and makes no attempt to lower/drop threat, I will stop heal him and also tell him why...

[ungar]

Though I can understand your intentions, I doubt this will work. seems more liekly to piss people off and not want to run with you. if you intentionally don't heal and let them die on purpose to make a point, it doesn't help the group, and increases the chances of wiping. if the fight doesn't matter and you aren't likely to wipe then a dps dies and no big deal, but they would have probably dies for pulling aggro anyway. it's not the healer's job to save the dps instead of the tank if the dps makes a mistake, but saying you wont do your job right because the dps isn't doing his is childish and really makes 2/5 of the party fail.

I agree if you're training them, tell them what to do and they won't listen, letting them die can be convincing whereas they wouldn't know how many times they could have died but you saved them. ultimately though the healer not healing and the party dying doesn't help anyone, gear gets broke, have the stop to raise the dead, possible wipes.

I just see this causing more trouble than its worth, and not actually making anyone better, just causing resentment. its not as if a dps just doesn't care enough and wants to die or thinks "I won't die because the healer will heal me" the dps is just bad and makes mistakes, you're better off just not running with him rather than hurting the party. basically if the dps sucks because he makes mistakes and doesn't reduce threat or avoid pulling aggro, and then you intentionally let him die, depending how obvious you were, you're probably going to get blamed, and if it happens frequently, you'll get resentment. as much as you think that dps is bad, people will think you're bad heals.

yes the dps need to learn, but if they're unwilling to listen that would just make them intentionally mess up which is only as bad as the healer intentionally messing up. eye for an eye makes us both blind. I think there's very limited benefit for this and for as much as you think you're helping, you're hurting the party even more.

goodluck and hope it works for you, come back and post your results and people's reactions. maybe this is a good idea and fixes the problem of people being bad, I don't think so though. sometimes the party will side with you, "yes that dps sucked" sometimes they'll get mad at you for not doing your job

[Debiru]

i play a fury warr as main,and i usualy whait the 5 sec rule or 2 sounders b4 i start dps now,tho 1 WW or 1 vleave and i got aggro..SM has 2 min CD so i usualy stop dps.

tho it takes sevral seconds b4 tank can get the mob back or he dont even bother to.
so i got enuff plate and HP to just nuke it,but belive me i real yrealy try not beeing a agrro bish.

did tank now 1 HC a day on my druid,and i got no problem holding aggro or getting back a runner and my tank is T9 geared so not super geared.

[ItachiZaku]

Wind Shear - Disrupts the target's concentration with a burst of wind, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. Also lowers your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you.

We know, we know, but you don't know that wind shear is shit. It is something like the above cower, it will not deter something that is pulled, only something to spam from the start if you are a pull agro type.

[Cluck]

Shamans clearly have the option to die and use Reincarnate to drop threat.

[phantomlink]

Warriors have no threat reduction skills besides dieing and getting ressed ( I claim I feign death whenever i'm killed in a raid )

[Maeleena]

Considering it has been just a little over a week since a major content patch, I wouldn't be so harsh on dps yet, as most classes are re-learning their class from the ground up.

I would start sometime around mid-November, as that is plenty of time for people to re-learn things, and if they still fail, then they are baddies and deserve their fate.

[Desirie]

Threat dump for a warrior: Hope there's a paladin in the raid/dungeon and scream for Salvation.

[Ravensbane]

Just an addition in comments, yeah I have been telling the group before hand the purpose and reason for doing this before the first pull and generally no one seems to mind at all, actually most are perfectly in support of the concept. Some people have just rage quit right at the start, dps is easy to replace. Every tank loves the idea so far. Only had a few deaths so far, and each time the dps said "yeah my bad."

Regarding Wind Shear and Cower, yeah I know both are crap, but I was simply trying to list every threat reduction spell I could think of, nothing more.

Also, as a tank myself on my bear or pally, I have been consistently marking up my targets before each pull and this works very well and is a breeze to do, since I hot keyed my target marking. Maybe we need to train the tanks too.

[Maeleena]

Also, as a tank myself on my bear or pally, I have been consistently marking up my targets before each pull and this works very well and is a breeze to do, since I hot keyed my target marking. Maybe we need to train the tanks too.

Just to note, but they also added the marking of targets as skull, X, star, etc. to the keybinding section, so it would be a good idea for people to use those at least for Skull. That way you can mark skull and once it is dead, you can use your keybind to quickly mark the next skull and so on and so forth.

[ihsanm]

So I have mulled this thought process a few times in the past and figured with the ae tanking being a common complaint atm with 4.0.1 I figured it might be a good time to start training the dps for cata in LFG dungeons and was curious what the forum has to say. So here's what I like to do in heroic randoms as a healer. I basically will heal as normal for the first 5 seconds of a pull. If a dps player pulls or still has aggro at that point on a mob I stop healing them completely until either the mod dies or threat is dropped. Think of it as letting a child touch the flame to learn the lesson that fire is hot... Now I've been doing dungeons as all specs (Tank, Heals, Aggro Pulling DPS) for awhile now and I generally know the difference between a bad tank, regular damage and when a dps has pulled aggro and keeps it. I am talking about the latter of the three. When a hunter pulls aggro, and doesn't feign or md, etc... I know most if not all classes have something to drop or mitigate heavy damage from aggro, it's time to start teaching them again how to do it correctly. Anyways, what's your thoughts? Maybe start a list of what your class has to drop aggro, or how dps can effectively not pull aggro. Most of us know the basics, but we just don't do it all the time. I'll start with what I know, feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong. Anyways, am I too cruel?

Hunter: Feign, MD, Deterrence
Feral: Cower, SM (Least for NE)
Mage: Invis, IB
Rouge: Vanish, ToT
Warlock: Shatter Stone(Not sure of Correct Name)
Priest: Fade, Dispersion
Pally: Two Pally "Hand of..." and personal bubble
DK: Don't know
Boom/Resto: Don't know besides maybe SM
Sham: Wind Shear
Warrior: Don't Know

Won't work. Any 1/2 competent dps can easily kill 1 or 2 heroic non-boss mobs these days. Wing clip kite, frost shock kite, frostbolt kite, or even just stand toe to toe and burst them down. Really no point in using those threat dropping skills right now. I know i never use em.

Might work for you on a boss fight though /shrug.

[theddevilinme]

EDIT: Apparently UNGAR above stated my feelings of this as well... =P

I do think you are a little harsh in your assumption OP. It is with due respect that you know the way things are, but I am a pure damage dealer and all I know is my warlock. Soul Shatter is that term you were looking for. I do know that if a tank can't hold my aggro, it is neither of our faults. A) I pwn hard and fast, that's just how I roll, but I do give the tank time to get a few shots off first; B) If the heals stop healing, a dead dps is a waste of your time and mine.
Let's just assume that the tank can't hold my aggro and I did my job on waiting, but I still rock at damage and have already used Soulshatter. I have no other abilities other than to stop dealing damage but have one or two enemies attacking me and pushing my face in. You're gonna stop healing me for being retarded dps that doesn't know what the hell he's doing, yet I've done everything in my power to avoid getting aggro. If I die, it would then be your fault for not healing me. You would be the one to hold up the group and therefor be the baddy =D

I can not help the fact that I could quite possibly "be" the tank for some of the fights. Just heal through it and stop complaining about people who get aggro. Your job in any given period as the healer is to make sure EVERYONE stays alive, including people who gain tankdom by accident xD It's apparent that you wouldn't need to heal the tank if someone else perhaps becomes the tank, so just heal whoever is getting dealt damage. Just my opinion, but you asked for it lol

[Maeleena]

I do know that if a tank can't hold my aggro, it is neither of our faults. A) I pwn hard and fast, that's just how I roll, but I do give the tank time to get a few shots off first; B) If the heals stop healing, a dead dps is a waste of your time and mine.

This is where you are 100% wrong. If you 'pwn hard and fast' then you need to learn how to tone it down and adapt to your current situation. This is what separates the baddies from the good players. Situational awareness is the key here. You will need it in Cata, so improve it now.