Taunting and why it's more than just spam.

[RageKage]

Greetings all you Warriors, I'm sure you read all the threads on the WoW forums about how we cannot hold aggro vs. Rogues, Mages and even Priests. And I'm sure you've seen the posts about Paladin's being better tanks than us, well I'm going to share my experiences with the 4-5 skills and the Defensive Stance available to manage your aggro and hopefully keep those behind you and behind the mob alive and well. I'll update this thread as more relevant information becomes available by talking with other warriors, and other game experiences.


Threat and the Hate List
I'm sure a lot of you have heard the terms Threat and Hate List, but I've had to relearn what these mean while coming to WoW. A lot of MMO's used to base Threat on the ammount of damage you do, or how much a certain skill causes damage in proportion to the overall health of the mob. WoW has done something that's fairly modern in MMO's by maintaining a Hate List. The Hate List is a separate list of names or Id's of who's made the mob more angry, simply put if you aggro, cause damage or heal near a mob you'll most likely appear on the Hate List. Now the Warriors task is to be the first on that list all the time, although it should be noted that not being at the top is ok and sometimes necessary, but generally our goal is to be at the top. Now how do we do this?

Taunt - Taunts the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you.

Since release, Taunt was changed to generate enough threat for the target to attack you for 6 seconds. What this means in real world speak, is that when you taunt a target, it focuses it's attacks on you for 6 seconds and then focus back to the previous target. That feature of the skill is cleverly missing from the description. So what does this mean? Basically you have 6 seconds to "improve" your hate with the target. How do you do this?

Sunder Armor - Sunders the target's armor, reducing it by -XXX per Sunder Armor. Can be applied up to 5 times. Lasts 30 seconds.

In Defensive stance this skill is the old taunt, does no damage, is an instant attack and generates threat, lots of it, and bonus it makes the mob have no armor (Rogue's love you) Landing this skill with the current miss-rate bug is challenging so you need to know when to use the skill more than once to put you higher on the hate list. Now how do these 2 skills affect your standing on the Hate List.

Basically the principle is this, and I'll use the Rogue as an example. A rogue's primary purpose is to cause damage in the sneakiest of ways. They use fast low damage weapons to apply high damage, dots, crits and combo skills. They're primary method of rising on the Hate List is through melee damage, our job is to combat this rise by using high Threat generating skills. A simple way to do this is the Taunt+Sunder Armor combo. When you use Taunt, you're automatically at the top of the Hate List, your job now is for the next 6 seconds make sure you stay there. Sunder Armor when in defensive stance generates a lot of Threat, usually 2-3 applications of Sunder Armor will keep a mob focused on you well after the 6 seconds. This in turn keeps you on the top of Hate List and opens you up to damage, which in turn becomes Rage. And Rage is a very good thing

This may seem a little short and not as indepth as I may have wanted it, but it'll improve over time. I'll be adding to this thread and I welcome all of you to add to it aswell!

[Aizle]

My own annecdotal evidence is that I have an easier time maintaining agro with dual wield, rather than with sword and board or 2handers. Also, don't forget all your other instant abilities out there as well. Faster weapons, also seem to help hold agro better than slower ones, even if the damage output isn't as good.

[Bashyou]

Sunder Armor - Sunders the target's armor, reducing it by -XXX per Sunder Armor. Can be applied up to 5 times. Lasts 30 seconds

I had no idea you could apply Sunder multiple times on a mob. Just goes to show you I can play a game for 2 months and still learn things.

Great post Rage

[Byer]

Is your sunder armor still stackable with Fiery Fire? I've heard a lot of varying opinions and haven't had a chance to try and prove or disprove it.

[Puc]

i know its not stackable with the rogue armor debuff whatever its called, not sure about farie fire. sunder is pretty much our best way of holding aggro, so if you have a warrior in your group its usually best to leave the armor debuff to them and not take a chance, tho honestly i dont know if it stacks or not.

as for the duel wield argument, imo your rage definatly goes up quicker and you definatly get to use overpower more but i've been more and more using 1h sword +shield in groups and my 2h sword for soloing. i seem to be able to keep aggro WAY more effictivly in defensive stance with a sword and shield, not to mention i can take way more damage. occasionally switching over to a different stance (usually zerker) for whirlwind or pummel or something.

[Dorean]

I've found that shield block + revenge is another great way to generate hate after taunting an enemy. Makes it much easier to hold aggro when using the sword and board.

[Puc]

yeah, usually for the big stuff it's sunder sunder sunder sunder sunder revenge sheild disc sheild slam sunder revenge...etc etc, with taunt thrown in when ever it looks like the mob is loosing interest heheh. with MC mobs i can usually get 2 shield disc/slams in on the bosses its more like 3 lol.

[Donnistar]

so far my ultimate executable agro building combo is:

taunt > sunder > shield block > sunder + heroic strike (the heroic strike can go in there anywhere

(only if you do it pretty much perfectly can you do all this in the status effect duration - and only in this order as far as sunder shield block sunder - some people do the shield block before the taunt but it has a short duration and would not always benifit from the taunt)

it is my experience that the more you can get off while the taunt status is on the target the more effective that time is for building hate so crunching 4 huge agro abilities like these in that small window means that you will build a lot of hate. It is rogue like button mashing but if you can get it going on then the rogues and mages and anyone else in the uper eshelons of DPS can get their grove on and not worry about agro.

sorry if spelling bad :'(

never forget mocking blow - this is much better then taunt for 6 seconds and it can be used with regularity (3 minutes i believe though may be slightly more) mocking blow is one of the most undervalued skills in the game i think

[tonic]

Great post thanks! Im just building up a warrior.

[Donnistar]

The new shield slam ability is absolutely huge and a GREAT way to spend rage

I am back to prot with my warrior main on lightning's blade for MC and I regularily crit with this bad azz skill for 1k ish (wow prot warrior doin huge damage wtf?)

ps sheild slam makes bloodthirst look like gimp tree :'( pity the fury (and they never fixed flurry so it really is the gimp tree relatively)

[Byer]

With all the changes, and given this posts age, I'm just wondering if it still holds. Since getting back from Vegas I've been working on a prot spec warrior since we seem to be short and will give me a tank and healer to use... to get me into instances <insert evil laugh>.

I've been able to hold agro off of Arcaia (she rolled a shammy) but am wondering about higher levels (we're only lvl 21 as of last night).

I've also looked at the warrior forums and didn't see any talent suggestions for prot spec. I've been focusing on the increased threat generation and armor talets in that tree so far. Any template suggestions for tanking at 70?

This is what I'm looking at now: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

[Dirk]

Easiest would be to look up me or Vahl on Armory for specs... there are pleanty of options for Prot spec at that level and it truely depends on the gear you have imo. I like the performance of my spec at this point for both p5 and raiding, but I have very good gear for pre-raiding gear.

[Terekronos]

Byer

With all the changes, and given this posts age, I'm just wondering if it still holds. Since getting back from Vegas I've been working on a prot spec warrior since we seem to be short and will give me a tank and healer to use... to get me into instances <insert evil laugh>.

I've been able to hold agro off of Arcaia (she rolled a shammy) but am wondering about higher levels (we're only lvl 21 as of last night).

I've also looked at the warrior forums and didn't see any talent suggestions for prot spec. I've been focusing on the increased threat generation and armor talets in that tree so far. Any template suggestions for tanking at 70?

This is what I'm looking at now: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

From what I've heard, sunder has kind of diminished in usefulness as a threat-builder compared to Slam/Revenge/HS, so that's kind of a big change.

But then again, I just melt faces.

[Byer]

Terekronos

From what I've heard, sunder has kind of diminished in usefulness as a threat-builder compared to Slam/Revenge/HS, so that's kind of a big change.

HS takes a little while because of the amount of rage it costs and revenge is dependant on a dice roll if/when I get to use it. Really, so far, sunder has been my best option as of lvl 23. If I can keep two sunders on each member of a mob up to 4 lvls above me I can usually keep agro off others.

But spamming one skill gets pretty boring so I'm hoping as I lvl up Draethus more stuff will take place. And I'm sure it gets more complicated/interesting in harder content than lvl 25 gnoles in Redridge Mts. hehe

Thanks Dirk and Terek for the thoughts.

[Byer]

Bleedingduck

Demo Shout is good, especially to gain a bit of hate from a whole group at once. Thunderclap is now more useful than it once was, but it's not something to spam. And once you have strong aggro on one and have switched to another to accumulate hatred throw in some cleaves for good measure.
Although honestly my memory of that low level is all but gone.. you may not even have those skills yet...

I have those. I'm finding that I'm low on rage more often than not and really have been using sunder armor and revenge 90% of the time. Sunder, Sunder, and revenge when available. Shout works for initial agro as long as no one needs healing and/or initial target is the only one getting attacked.

I haven't really found a use for Thunderclap yet. And besides anything else... I'm always so low on rage that I don't have much of anything available "add hock" except for taunt.

Does the rage issue become less of a problem higher in lvls?