Hello druid fans!
I’m in a bit of a pickle and was hoping to get some help here. I’ve been a Boomkin for all my WoW life and had recently had to change to tanking. I’ve amassed a lot of decent gear from Kara, Badges and a few Heroics and I think my stats are ok to OT Kara, but I’ve been in there a few times with our Pally MT and have the hardest time getting enough rage to pull off his consecrates when needed, I just don’t know how to pick them off, by the time I’ve used my taunt, my rage is gone, and I can’t get in a hit. I’ve been practice tanking in Heroics and have no issues with rage/aggro, but throw in a main tank and I suck. Please realize that I’ve only started tanking well into level 70 and have not had much practice at it, so be nice  I’ve read the WoW threads and, well.. some people just get nasty for simple questions, I’m sure Druids are more understanding. Here is my armory link, http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Misha&n=Sabines (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Misha&n=Sabines) I’m working on CE rep for the Earthwarden, so no worries there. Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated!! Thank you in advance,
Sabines

You're a bit heavy on defense in your gear and a bit light on agility. You should never enchant +armor, ever; armor enchants don't multiply when you go to bear form, so they're much worse than anything else. For your cloak, go agility. You have the SSO pendant, so you can get the glyph of the gladiator for your head - which would allow you to get rid of even more defense stuff. Enchant your chest with all stats, your wrists with stam or def, your hands with agility, your legs with clefthoof and your boots with agi.

On pulling aggro from a consecrate - it really depends on the situation, but in general you should be able to taunt + maul and take the guy away without any problem, especially in your gear. You should be beating on the mob with white attacks only to build your rage or shift to bear and hit enrage to get rage. Because you have Furor you gain 10 rage when you shift to bear. Between that and intensity you'll have 40 rage when your enrage hits. That should be more than enough to peel off any mob. Essentially you should do the following:

powershift to bear
enrage
wait for enrage to be done
hit maul and hit your taunt
hit mangle
start lacerating

Hallo new druid :>

It's important to get the mob out of the paladin's consecrate quickly, or it might decide to go back to him.

Try to use taunt (Growl) as the first thing you do to the mob. Growl increases your threat level to that of the paladin (assuming the mob was on him), so any moves you do after that are over and above the paladin's aggro.


-Annikk

I have a bit more time to respond to you now than I did this morning. First of all welcome to our druid grove :>

Now about this whole offtanking thing. You're against a paladin in Karazhan. Paladin tanks get loads of aggro in Karazhan because all the mobs are undead, consequently their consecration spell (holy dmg aoe) does a lot more damage and thus a lot more threat. I too have problems in these situations with holding aggro.

So here's my top tips for being a good and effective offtank in this situation :>

1.
Don't bite off more than you can chew.
Accept first off that the paladin will have the majority of the mobs on him the majority of the time, and there is basically nothing you can do about that. Paladins are just particularly suited to tanking Karazhan.

2.
Since you can't take them all, focus on a single elite mob. For example supposing you are clearing the hallway just after Opera, which has packs of 2 elites and several non-elites. You could tank an elite, leaving the paladin to take the other elite and the non-elites.

3.
Learn about Taunt mechanics. As I said in my post above, Taunt doesn't simply give you a lot of threat, it makes your threat on the target equal to whoever has the most threat on it. Here's a little example to demonstrate what I mean:

Paladin aggro: 100
Your aggro: 20

Growl is cooled down and ready to use, so is Mangle.
Here's what happens if you mangle first:

Paladin aggro: 100
Your aggro: 50

...and then taunt:

Paladin aggro: 100
Your aggro: 100

In short, your mangle increased your aggro by 30, and the taunt brought your aggro to be equal with that of the paladin.
A better order to use your abilities would be thusly:

Intial threat levels:

Paladin aggro: 100
Your aggro: 20

You use GROWL first this time:

Paladin aggro: 100
Your aggro: 100

...followed by Mangle:

Paladin aggro: 100
Your aggro: 130


As you can see, using Growl as your first action will mean you get higher on that mob's threat table.


4.
Now that you have aggro on the mob, pull it out of the consecration - otherwise it will just go back on the paladin =P


5.
Intercept stray mobs. Since you're only tanking one mob, once you are satisfied that it isn't leaving you any time soon, look around the rest of the battlefield and try to spot any mobs peeling away from the paladin and attacking the dps or healers. A quick feral charge followed by growl will be sufficient to save day. :>


6.
Conserve rage. I noticed above you mentioned you were running out of rage quite quickly. The best tip I can give you to avoid splurging all your rage in the first 5 seconds is to avoid using Maul whenever your rage is low.
Maul is basically a rage dump. Use it if you have loads and loads of rage and want to generate extra threat. The rest of the time stick to lacerate, mangle, swipe, demo roar, etc. Those abilities generate more threat for less rage.

I see some bear druids who run in with their 10 rage from Furor, and the first thing they do is a Maul. Then for the next 2.5 seconds they have no rage at all, and can't even roar. :< It is always best to open with Growl (if the mob is aggroed to someone else) followed by / or Mangle (if it's comin' right for you !).


I hope that this helps. Do let us know how you get on :>


-Annikk

Thank you guys so much for the help!
I have a Kara run tonight, so I'll let you know how it goes. I really think this will help me, I didn't think to pull back further to get the mobs out of consecrate (big 'duh' moment), but I'm sure that will help out. I've always been careful to use Maul only at full rage, but I believe my issue was that I found myself pressing Lacerate/Mangle without giving me time let my rage grow.

Finally, thanks for the gear review, I'm so concerned with getting my crit chance to 2.6% that I got carried away (I got the Caverns of Time head glyph before reading this post, but I figure that gives me more leeway to do agility and stam gems and enchants to the rest of the stuff).

I'm printing this little beauty of a page and sticking it on my desk! :thumbsup:

One more quick question; I've heard that 'Primal Tenacity' is not worth putting points into for PvE only content (which is what I'm focusing on), do you guys agree, because it is tempting...

Sabines

I thought Growl(taunt) gave the same ammount of aggro as the person currently tanking + 1.. Else you wouldent get the aggro :P?

Is the pally tank geared to the point where there really only needs to be 1 tank on the majority of the pulls? If not it might make sense for you to initiate the pull depending on the trash. That might be a hard sell if the pally has been MTing for a while. One easy trap to fall into regarding rage is spamming maul. Maybe throw one in at the beginning but then wait a bit. The other thing that will help is make a macro for mangle that also starts your auto attack. Nothing worse than sitting there looking at a mob with 0 rage, not gaining rage and wondering why you aren't (if you aren't attacking). I want to say it is as simple as

/cast mangle (bear)()
/autoattack

but am doing that from memory. Other than that make the pulls play to your strengths. Before and after Mores for example you pull the singles and the pally pulls the groups. That sort of leapfrogging helps move the pace a bit. On the other hand the pally should be the one with initial aggro on the 5 ushers on the way to the Opera. It might also help if the group doesn't think of you two as a MT/OT as much as primary and secondary tanks in relation to who initiated the pull. The same thing is true on the typical skull and cross markings. They are more for the designated kill order vs who is tanking which - at least that is how my kara runs generally break down. Sure one tank is usually the skull or cross tank but if you guys can work as a team and both are given the raid assist so you can both mark mobs chain pull when possible /shrug.

Edit: In terms of growl - just count on it not working in Kara. It can, but there is a good bit of trash where it doesn't work at all.

I have macros for swipe, lacerate, mangle and FFF (I don't typically reach for Maul as my first move). All of them follow the format....

/startattack
/cast XXXX

Where XXXX is Swipe, Lacerate, FFF, Mangle, etc.

You can mash /startattack, but if you mash /autoattack I believe it will toggle attacks on/off with each press.

These macros keep me from looking like an idiot when I target a new mob and don't have the rage to perform the actual special attack. At least I start my white damage attacks.


And as mentioned by Taiglin, Growl doesn't work on some of the trash, or boss adds, in Kara. You have to just start hitting them and hope you can peel them off the other tank.

And remember avoid Maul while you are trying to pull agro unless you have 50-60+ rage.

Yeah it probably is /startattack vs auto.

Dude - how do you have enough macro slots available for 4 macros like that? That is my main request for LK - more macro save slots.

Don't you get 40 marcos? I have maybe 10. How could you run out?

Thank you guys so much for the help!

No worries :>


I thought Growl(taunt) gave the same ammount of aggro as the person currently tanking + 1.. Else you wouldent get the aggro :P?

We as players have no direct way of knowing what the threat tables are at - there are addons that attempt to estimate it for us but nothing is truly 100% accurate. From observation this isn't the case though - if you growl at a mob it will stay on you regardless of all other factors until the growl debuff on it fades (or until another taunt effect is used upon it - whichever comes first).


-Annikk

Well, I was all ready to tank, purchased my flask, got all the crawdads I could fish, but at the last second, our more experienced OT came on and did a great job. But, I have to say, I really missed being a Moonkin, but I did get a little bear action trying to interrupt Juliette's heals in opera (we had CD issues, so I pulled up my gear and hit bash like a crazy person). I'll still be switching to my other fuzzy self when a group needs a tank for heroics, and may need a second OT in ZA. I wont lie though, being close to #1 on the damage charts felt good.

Thank you all, again, for the help and advice, I'll still work on my tanking, and start socketing my resto set (this is why I love being a druid, it's like 3 great alts in one!, and bashing other's people stereotypes about how well druids perform is a an added perk).

I feel a lot more prepared to kick some bum!! Thanks!
Sabines

The way all taunts work is the following:
You get 100% of the threat that the top character has for that mob
The mob must change its target to you

In addition, most taunts force the mob to attack you for some amount of time afterwards anyway.

The trick about taunts is that it takes 110% of the current top threat to change targets and gain aggro if you're melee, 130% if you're ranged. So in the above case, when you taunt the paladin still has the same amount of threat on that mob as you, but they need 110% of your threat to take him back. A maul or mangle after you taunt should pull him off just fine.

We as players have no direct way of knowing what the threat tables are at - there are addons that attempt to estimate it for us but nothing is truly 100% accurate. From observation this isn't the case though - if you growl at a mob it will stay on you regardless of all other factors until the growl debuff on it fades (or until another taunt effect is used upon it - whichever comes first).



What i mean is.. If Person_X has 100 threat on the target.. you will need 101 to gain the aggro over him. If you use growl you get aggro(as growl is taunt pretty much) Then it kinda has to be a calculation like "Person_X(tank)'s threat +1" to get you as target instead of person_x?

Kinda hard to explain it better.. English isent my first language :P

What i mean is.. If Person_X has 100 threat on the target.. you will need 101 to gain the aggro over him.Wrong. If person X has 100 threat on a target AND has aggro, you will need 110 threat if you are in melee range or 130 threat if you are out of melee range.

Taunt is special in that it gives you the threat of the highest person on an aggro list if you do not have aggro, AND it forces the mob to attack you.

Note that we already have a taunt that does not give you extra threat but forces mobs to attack us - challenging roar. Taunt works vaguely similarly to this except it gives us threat equal to the threat of the person with aggro.

Wrong. If person X has 100 threat on a target AND has aggro, you will need 110 threat if you are in melee range or 130 threat if you are out of melee range.

Taunt is special in that it gives you the threat of the highest person on an aggro list if you do not have aggro, AND it forces the mob to attack you.

Note that we already have a taunt that does not give you extra threat but forces mobs to attack us - challenging roar. Taunt works vaguely similarly to this except it gives us threat equal to the threat of the person with aggro.

This is exactly correct. I try to sit at between 100% and 120% aggro on Omen on my Lock so that my DPS stays as high as possible while still not pulling aggro. On that note - Omen is a kickass threat meter that shows the aggro threshhold, and from my experience is really accurate.

And each character can have something like 20 macro slots... I cant imagine running out of them

3x heroic seth fight (could do w/o I guess)
Cat form + prowl
remove curse/abolish
gotw/motw
mangle cat/powershift
mangle bear/start attack
mouseover swipe
bear pot
rip power shift (could probably get rid of I guess)
restance (break cc)
shred powershift
taunt in bear/cower in cat
travel seal/cheetah
pop trinkets
2x open slots

General tab has 6 open macro slots. The rest are taken up by things like a Vashj macro, general hit raid kara stuff (demon chains, SSC totems, etc), group messages (pulling and holding for mana), healthstone, uncritable script, button name script, turn on powershift, etc. Generally things that apply to more than one toon.

You should see my spriest

/derail off (sorry)