As long-time reads of the WHU probably already know, I’m a big fan of paying yer dues. In PUGs that often means doing less dps than you could be doing to avoid pulling aggro. The new Dungeon Finder has more people than ever grouping up for randoms, which means we’re seeing more bad tanks than ever.
But I have to say, I am really, really sick of everyone blaming the tank for everything. Tanks don’t lose aggro, dpsers take it from them. And while bad tanks may not generate much threat, dpsers can always, alwayse choose to do less threat.
Anyhow, another pet peeve of mine that made its way to a WoW.com article. Note that this is written from a generic dps perspective rather than specifically hunters — which is why I didn’t bring up proper use of MD and FD 
However, it’s often far too easy for us DPSers to blame the tank for losing aggro. After all, holding aggro is their job! What is strangely easy for us to forget is that not pulling aggro is our job. It’s time for DPSers to take a long hard look at just how good a player we are before yelling at the tank. … Read More.
It seems like every other pug I’ve been in lately (I’m running 3-4 a day, trying to get a battered hilt from the new heroics, plus the daily for the frost emblems) has a ranged DPS who just needs to go big with AoE right off the bat, and then ends up dying to a trash mob after drawing aggro. (Thankfully, most of the time its because the tank decides to let them die as a learning exercise, not because the tank didn’t notice and taunt)
Makes me glad that I’m a hunter and can MD+Volley right off the bat
U must be pretty unlucky when it comes to tanks, most of the tanks i get when i do hcs have 36-44k life and aggro all the trash in the dingeon, the healer dies and there is a near whipe and the tank and 1 dps finish the trash off (and the tank has lost about 1/10000th of his/her health)
i built a tanking set for my druid about a week and a half ago. im pretty set now thanks to the abundance of gear and emblems. this article is very timely.
until i got the hilt, i had threat issues especially on 4+ targets (1-3 im usually good with). i try to mark enough to get the fight going. but ive learned that people want to ZERG everything. they forget heroics werent designed for zerging, they were designed for gearing. they expected me to pull half the room while im in blues, or im a “fail tank.” i like that, a gearing up tank is a fail tank.
as a dps, i learned that i went at the pace the tank established, whether it was to my liking or no. as a tank, i learned that i pull at the healers pace since, well, i die without him. in theory, we should, as a group, work together to establish this pace, but nope. ive seen X die before skull, ive seen unmarked die before any, ive seen warriors charge before i ever get to the mob, ive see hunters never use MD (i have an addon that lets me know who popped it on whom)… the list goes on and on.
as a tank, i try my best to keep the healer from getting his face eaten. as a dps, i understand its my job to kill the targets before the healer runs out of mana. as a dps, i would also stop dpsing if i saw that i would out threat the tank. i would wait a few seconds before i started, as a hunter i always misdirected, i feigned whenever i needed. whether or not one likes the advent of easy epics, i believe it has only made the “WE WANT IT QUICK NOW FAST YESTERDAY!” mentality worse. teams that are just learning to tank or learning raids or learning period, even though they are in content appropriate gear, are not tolerated and labeled noob. i enjoy zerging, but im courteous enough to pay attention and understand im part of a group, i dont own it or run it even if i can flex 7k dps on a heroic boss (as if that has any significance whatsoever).
this may make me a bad tank, but i get sick of it. if people wont listen and slow down and give me at least a chance to hit the mob, i let them have it and make little effort to pull the mob off. bladestorm two seconds into a 5 mob pull and youll get what you want, high numbers on the meters but a repair bill to go with it. theres common courtesy and if they refuse to observe their end, i sometimes skimp on mine.
I agree completely that it’s the DPS’ job to watch their aggro…or at least try to. I have a friend who normally plays a tank and has just leveled his hunter to 80. To my shock, he never uses Misdirect on the tank. I asked him why, and he said “the tank shouldn’t need it.” I was stunned, and I had to stop even asking before I got enraged about how irresponsible and senseless this opinion is – heck, you cast it before the pull, it doesn’t even interfere with your rotation!! Sigh.
THANK YOU!
This kind of behavior is exactly why I’m considering turning my prot warrior into a bank alt. He’s level 76 and every single pug I get into has had dps zerging in REGULARS [I once had 3 dps, each on a different target while I was tanking skull with much screaming about WTF isn't the tank tanking? And that was AFTER I warned them twice to attack skull first].
Now I already have a pally tank, a dk tank and a druid with a tank spec I don’t use because her threat is low [and I have nowhere to really practice with her]. I don’t need to fight the same fights to get another tank geared yet again. I’ve already withstood the cussing and heckling and yelling and screaming despite my ‘you yank it you tank it’ philosophy. Heck, my blog is having a weekly column on bad pugs because there is THAT much material out there with just what I am running.
I have dps toons as well, and I’ve had to hold back before on a new or low threat tank. And while we didn’t get through in record time, it didn’t take much longer. I’ve also seen dps pull on purpose and cause a wipe… running back two or three times certainly adds to time spent in the instance.
DPS constantly complain about wait times. Maybe if they are more patient with undergeared tanks or new tanks, they might have more to work with – hence, shorter queue times. I’ve had guildies with alts pondering building tank sets, only to be scared off by how they see other new tanks get treated. [There is a difference between BAD and undergeared/inexperienced].
But I have to say, there are good dps out there, who will back off, who will MD, who will cut their threat and who will openly tell other dps to watch their aggro, as I had happen this morning. To those DPS: Thank you!
quiv – I think the proper course of action is to delete your druid and stick with TMNTank full-time.
But MD is part of my random dungeon finder rotation these days. I find things are much less smooth without it.
Yeah, and the problem is only going to get worse as gear gets better. I have a DK alt who I didn’t dare take into a heroic without 25000 health and a 531 defense (with some resilience items to breach the cap). Doing 1200 dps in frost presence, there are STILL times when I can barely hold threat and I don’t dare step out of heroic UK until I have fewer blues because people are craaaaaaaaaaaaanky.
PUG = DPS contest. Everybody is in a huge rush to do as much dps as possible so they can post their recount score at the end of each boss. Nobody cares what your DPS is as long as you’re doing more than the tank. It’s not a raid. Let the tank build aggro for two seconds, then start your rotation.
1. It is the tank’s job to hold aggro (provided he’s had a few seconds to build aggro, and dps using a normal rotation, i.e. not having every trinket/ability/CD proc at once)
OR
2. It is the dpser’s job to make sure they don’t pull aggro, period.
Let the debate begin.
I have a tank alt, and believe me, it’s hard to hold aggro on 4 mobs in my <4000 gear score gear with 5000+ gearscore DPSers decked out in full epic raid gear doing AOE's.
Truth is PUGs are a group effort, not a DPS race. Another truth is a lot of players are dicks.
@Melenaus: I agree with both. I’ve dpsed, healed, and tanked. The best groups I’ve been in are those that just recognize the threat of the tank and adjust their style. If you have an imbatank, let loose. If you have a freshly geared tank, throttle it back a bit. The only ones that deserve shit are the ones that are geared to the hilt in T9.5 and still can’t maintain threat because they can’t do their job.
There was this one time where I was pulling about 3.2k in gundrak and we were all pulling aggro from the tank like mad (and wiping like made) and he WAY outgeared any of us. We all held back, started to not wipe, and he started chain pulling entire rooms. This, of course, wiped us and he started blaming the wipe on our not doing enough dps!! We were all whispering each other saying, “DO YOU BELIEVE THIS GUY?!” Seriously. We’re playing with 12 year olds that had their gear practically given to them by guilds. Some pugs are just going to suck.
In short, if the tank isn’t doing his job, we’ve gotta not pull aggro or leave. That’s it.
I’m sometimes shocked by the rush mentality in a lot of PUGs. It’s almost like there’s a gold star for finishing fast. For a newer player like myself it’s rather disconcerting. I mean I don’t want to drag my feet either, but whether it’s the tank racing his way to a wipe by leaving all the DPS behind or the DPS pulling aggro then blaming the tank I always find myself wondering why it seems like everyone is so impatient to finish. I see PUGs as a chance to build the group skills I’ll need later for raiding which can’t be done if every time is a rush job, but then again maybe I’m the only one without a lvl 80 alt.
Ah, the life of a confirmed PUG/Emblem Farmer…
I got all the top gear, can/do DPS in the 5-7K range. But you get the tank that thinks he’s a MechChopper late for a beer at the bar…Leaving DPS/Heals behind, complaining that he needs more DPS/Heals, we can’t do our job, etc, etc, ad naseum. Got to love it when, after a few “sprint fights”, your mana is low, so you sit and drink, looking at the pretty scenery, and even though you’ve told the tank to hold up a sec, he’s already started the Boss fight. If you’re lucky, you can show up late, and still not wipe.
What I’ve taken to doing is going in with Aspect of the Viper on. That cuts my DPS a TON, but my mana never gets low. Then, when/if needed, Dragonhawk.
So earlier today, I’m in DTK, doing my thing, cruising along, near the bottom of the DPS recount, when the Tank complains I’m not doing enough damage, and wants to try and boot me. So, I switch to Pack, and AOE a CRAPLOAD of those little raptors near King Dred…Then FD, watch while the tank almost dies, then Dragonhawk, send in the pet, AOE like mad, and do 7K DPS for the “short fight”.
Told the Tank, either watch that mouth, because I was doing low DPS because of his HORRIBLE aggro holding, or I’ll leave and take the party with.
He was rather well-behaved after that.
I’ll admit, my attitude in new Dungeon Finder isn’t the greatest. I usually don’t talk so I’m not dissing anyone, but I don’t mind pulling aggro and taking damage. Usually if I pull aggro the trash is in red and dies before it gets to me.
Most of the time I’m grouped with similarly geared players so don’t experience any problems. The only problems I experience is when I random HoR and the tank and healer aren’t good. In my mind, you can have crappy DPS, but in HoR you need a good tank and healer.
It was a pretty decent article. And you’re right. DPS pulls aggro from the tank. But at the same time different DPS classes have different abilities to help Tanks generate or maintain threat. Not mentioning these as part of your options just seemed to present a somewhat limited viewpoint.
But all in all it doesn’t really look like you had any serious trolls (well besides the grammar/wordchoice nazis.) And look at it this week. You’ve only done 2 other posts and you already have one with over 15 pages of comments. The editors will love you for that.
Don’t let the trolls getcha down.
I pretty much run around doing chim shot and steady unless MD is up as Aimed shot is instant aggro on anything.
One thing im having problems with now and i know i shouldn’t is in raids i keep pulling aggro on bosses when they are at like 40-50% if I’m not watching my aggro at that stage of a fight. I know I can FD and set up my aggro meter to give me propper warnings but ive never had this before as a MD at the start of any fight used to be good enough for any tank. Ive done this on Ignis and on Rotface last night. I know its bad of me to get aggro and its poor but is any 1 else having this problem?
My number 1 rule for all time is if you pull aggro from the tank that mob is yours to handle, and the amount of hunters that don’t use MD on tanks is amazing its like they haven’t heard of it and same goes with FD the amount of hunters I have seen while tanking FD then just lie on the ground for a few seconds is just weird
Im not saying I don’t MD but its a total waste of a GCD unless its at the start of a fight, aggro reset or fresh add as the tank should only need help getting aggro at the start. These are not random pug tanks im talking about as well they are some of the best tanks I have played with and generate aggro with the best of them. What im saying is ive never had this problem before with getting aggro so late into a fight it caught me unaware twice and I wanted to know if any other hunters are having this problem.
I am having this problem as well. Most of the time, tanks always blame us pulling aggro from them and let us die. I do MD ,FD everything that help not to pulling aggro, but what I see from them is they always do the same thing. I think at least they should adapt themselves to this situation, try different way to tank….
I agree with this post for the most part, but when I use my MD at the start and still pull aggro on the tanks target with just autoshot, I draw the line.
good article; i don’t talk much either, but i agree with doing MD + Volley at the start, and if i notice i am pulling aggro, i do like one poster above, and just switch to AoViper. glad to know i wasn’t the only one.
I am sorry, if you pull aggro off your tanks in a progression raid because you can’t be arsed to use a MD or two to help the tank out you have a complex. Gearing a tank correctly is much more complicated than a dps. They have to worry about being crit immune, having enough health; passive expertise and hit and hard cap expertise and hit, and balance their avoidance stats.
Tanks might not have enough expertise and hit coming from ToC gear while maintaining adequate defensive stats. Therefore they will be down on threat generation. Suck it up and use MD in your rotation. Losing a global cooldown to keep aggro on the tank is far better than pulling aggro, FDing and wiping a some dps or heals before the tank can regain control. Also remember that in certain fights tanks need to have their taunt off cooldown for a phase transition or to pick up the boss to let debuffs drop off the main tank. By pulling aggro you are compromising the group’s chances of success.
“but its a total waste of a GCD” That statement is total BS and is some what egocentric. It can be a raid saver, it brings utility our class which at the moment is lower on the charts than some hybrids. Not using MD is basically saying I don’t care if we wipe I just care that I am on top of recount whenever the boss fight ends.
“Do as much damage as possible without pulling aggro” thats a nice motto
Hehe… This reminds me of a time back in 5 man ToC… Now, this was right after the “jumpshot kitting” tutorial came out, and I thought that I was getting pretty good at it. Unfortunately, while my kiting might have improved, a couple of upshot guildies had surpassed my gearscore and were threatening to top my dps, and I couldn’t have that, could I? The three of us happened to find ourselves running 5-man ToC together, and I decided to put them in their place. I’d go all out, and if I pulled a mob, I’d just kite it back to the tank using my new awesome hunter skills, right? I thought it best to forewarn everyone. Unfortunately, the other dps seemed to think I was issuing a challenge. 5 seconds after the pull, each of us was “tanking” a different mob, the tank was trying to figure out what he had done wrong, and the healer was casting like a crazy person trying to keep us alive.
Bindura, PLEASE READ WHAT IM SAYING. Its that yes i dont want to waste GCDs if i dont have to like any sane dps would but to pull off a tank at that later phase in a fight is insane and im only wondering if any 1 else is having the same problem. Of course its worth me to FD so the tank has aggro all the time and with me and another hunter with MDs up his getting over 20k TSP so its like 120k aggro start on us but to catch up that much is insane. And for your information MD is totally shit to use midfight unless its on a aggro switch or reset. You should always FD or its a waste of mana for some aggro that you will catch up with when you do your next chim and aimed(taunt) shot.
Thats your opinion.
I thought I gave an plausible reason of why tanks may have low threat generation coming out of ToC.
I wish aimed hit that hard that it could catch up four seconds of no threat coming from you and double threat generation coming from the tank.
I prefer MD because (unlike FD) it can’t be resisted and if your having threat problems its likely that the rest of the raid dps will catch up. Helping the tank keep ahead of the curve can save others from “wasting” a GCD and some heartache down the track.
This is a great article as a rookie to wow I’ve recently started to encounter this problem and have been trying to figure out what was going on. This really helped me see things. Thanks.
I do agree to some extent Frost we had a tank the other night that could not hold any agro at all i put a md on him and by my 4 shot the agro was coming my way so i feign death to drop it, got back up 2 shots and bam agro again , some tanks are just useless . I think its more dpsers getting sick of waiting and decide they will tank instead even had 1 tank the other day who had no defense rating at all and asked why the healer could not keep him up lol .
In HCs with a bad tank its a very good idea to avoid using aimed shot unless you have MD up.
I have 2 tanks, a paladin and a druid that I run semi-regularly for random dailies. I seldom get problems with threat, unless the DPS outgears me severely, and if that is the case, the mob is probably almost dead by the time it starts running to the DPS guy. I think pug players who manage to hit 80 either knows to attack my target, or if they are too dense and are nuking a target I’m not spending much time on, they’re likely doing too little DPS to pull threat anyway.
Now, on my leveling warrior tank, who has just hit Northrend, I’m wearing a green gear set, scrabbled together to make use of short queue times for tanks. Coming in at this level, I found tanking instances like UK and Nexus a nightmare. Very often, the target I mark as skull is the last mob left standing in a trash pull. The mage goes full out single target nuking on a secondary target and pulls threat before I even position the group. Meanwhile, as I’m trying to taunt the mob back, the shadow priest promptly blows what DPS she has on yet another mob, and fades before the mob reaches her. The mob promptly runs to try to chop our healing tree down.
Sigh. So yeah, if you’re not watching your aggro, at least assist the tank, please.
Oh i assist the tank MD multi shot pulls or volley if more than 3, I freeze trap the adds if the healer pulls threat , i know its a team sport that what makes it so fun, i use volley also to take out smaller adds if they pick on the healers especially tree ones as they cant defend or fight in tree form.
Using MD and the multishot is sort of a waste as you can switch between the 3 targets and do Aim, Chim and arcane on each target and this will stick enough threat on the tank to give them a good chance
Good article. In my guild I have a very good tank that I typically run with. But now with the dungeon finder I’m often doing runs without him and I’m realizing I’ve developed some bad habits.
The usual tank is REALLY good at holding threat and I very, very rarely ever pull anything off from him. Now I’m having to get even better about watching AoE and giving the PUG tank time to get threat and then using MD as needed.
It’s been good training for me and has made me want to practice even more as I realize it is my error and not the PUG tank.
It is my belief that the dungeon finder has raised the perceived value of the hunter class. With a MD and good DPS even a poor tank can hold agro enough for the others to open up. Of course this requires us as hunters to really work to play our class that much better, and that includes as you mentioned learning how to manage our agro.
So these items help us continue to learn how to play our class better, but what I have observed is that it does nothing for the tanks to learn how to tank better. In some ways we are actually enabling tanks to not pull their weight as we become a crutch for them. It concerns me there is little incentive then for tanks to learn how to play THEIR class.
If we make a mistake or not do our job, then we pull agro and we die. If the tank doesn’t do their job, we either have to correct it (and are the few who actually can) or else we die. How many of you have sacrificed yourself to save the healer who pulled agro merely by healing to prevent a part wipe?
I don’t have a problem working with tanks to gear up… I just wish many would learn that there is more to the job then just getting better gear (at the expense of my repair bill)
greythron – PuG tanks aren’t who you’ll be raiding with, so I don’t see it as an issue that we can give them less chance of failing. I spam MD like it’s my job in Pugs, good or bad tanks included, because I really just want to get through my random….not worry about whether or not a tank is learning his class.
Bowya, I do get what you’re saying. However — I had this crop up a few times in randoms, and now that I have MD pretty much in the rotation, it simply doesn’t happen. It may be a waste of a GCD in a good team that’s handling threat well and it certainly may not be the best choice for all situations — but as an insurance policy on unknown PuG tanks, it gets the job done. And getting the job done is more important than the damage you gain from not wasting the GCD.
I pulled from a tank in LFG yesterday and have zero remorse whatsoever. The (expletive deleted) tankadin did not use a weapon. Shield, yes, but no weapon. “I’ll switch once I get my unarmed skill maxed out. Just need two more points. I can hold threat, don’t worry.” Yeah, I pulled aggro even with MD on every boss. He probably could hold threat without his weapon in most pugs. But I’m well-geared and I’m not gonna hold back, especially when the tank insults the dps like that.
I only blame tanks for not holding aggro when I’m reduced to Volley+Auto Shot even with MDs. I like playing, I don’t like standing around for 10-15 seconds every pull while the tank does all the work. If I pull, let me die. It’s my fault if I do.
Lol I have such an amazing experiece at the whole Tank fiasco and how stupid players can be sometimes. While levelling my DK, grouped up with a bunch of levellers and it so happened there was an amazing shammy in there who took an attachment to the concept of tanking and before I could actually put threat on the boss I would see a couple of wolves hapily gnawing at the boss and the very enthusiactic shammy trying to kite the Boss’s resulting pursuit. Dont even ask abt the trash. After repeatedly asking her to not go all Boom Boom Bang Bang, she would simply say, “L2P” !
Miss Pagle i was asking about in raids, no one really cares about DPS in a HC so ofc my MD is on CD all the time
I never pull aggro in a pug; however, when I am running 5 mans in my guild I do it for fun. Partly for we have some really good players. Most people say if you pull it you tank it and oh do I. I ran around PoS kiting a skeleton and LMAO the whole time. My tank was standing there watching me and I was having a blast kiting that skeleton. Feigning and Mding to my pet the whole time. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have practice. But most importantly this is a game so have fun.
I try to make sure my MD is on CD mid-fight as well most of the time. I want to point out you are giving threat. If is see a mage or warlock creeping up on the tank I MD. I may use a GCD, but allowing the other person not to break rotation is actually better overall then me wasting a GCD.