Now that most people are starting to group up and run 5 mans in Cataclysm it's pretty obvious that things have changed very drastically from Wrath of the Lich King. If you guys weren't around for The Burning Crusade or Vanilla you may not be aware that dungeons and heroics weren't always about who could do more aoe damage the fastest.

Crowd control is once again more important than the dps meter which I think most people will find a welcome change.

I'm going to post Ghostcrawler's post about tank threat which is a pretty great summary of what people should be thinking about in groups.

If anyone has any helpful tips feel free to add them but basically try to remember that:

- Breaking CC is a huge problem unless it's the tank doing it
- Healers cannot heal through aoe groups anymore
- DPS WILL die if they are standing in the wrong place (Healers can't save you)
- Not everyone is familiar with Crowd Control tactics so help each other learn

Threat Needs to Matter

A tank’s job is to protect the group. A big part of that is controlling the enemy. A big part of controlling the enemy is staying alive. Tanks have a lot of tools to stay alive, and mastering those is a major component of learning to play a tank. On the other hand, some of these tools are on long cooldowns, and on some encounters they are intended for use at specific moments in the fight. Furthermore, staying alive isn’t the sole responsibility of the tank, because there will always be one or more healers present whose job it is to keep the tank alive. As such, staying alive can’t be the only thing tanks have to focus on.

So, let’s back up a moment to controlling the enemy. “Control” includes things like positioning the boss, or doing specific things at specific times, such as swapping with an off tank. It also includes making sure the boss doesn’t attack anyone else. That’s where threat generation comes into play.

If threat generation is too easy then the entire risk of the encounter drops. Newsflash: we don’t actually want encounters to be easy. We want encounters to be fun, and for most players, that includes both rewards and risks.

We want tanks to care about the buttons they hit instead of just relying on auto-attacking to control their target. We don’t necessarily want very complicated tank DPS rotations, because as I mentioned above, tanks do have other things to keep track of. But we want their combat abilities to be engaging. Good tanks should be those who control, survive, and generate sufficient threat.

On the other hand, when threat is too hard to maintain, it can be exasperating. Tanks get understandably frustrated when the game is asking them to do something but not giving them the tools to do it. The non-tanks in the group also become frustrated, because they feel throttled. It’s one thing when overcoming the boss is challenging. It feels worse when you know that another player is standing in your way, keeping you from achieving your top performance.

We don’t usually want DPS classes to have to stop attacking in order to keep from generating too much threat. We do want players to pay attention. We don’t think it’s too much to ask for DPS and healers to wait a couple of GCDs for the tank to get the enemy under control -- we’re not asking for five stacks of Sunder Armor these days. What we really mean by proper threat management is knowing things like when it’s time to go all out, when it’s appropriate to use a threat-reducing cooldown, and most importantly, which is the right target to be attacking. I’m not trying to bash pugs here, but I am amazed at how often a nuker will pick a random target instead of the one being tanked, then blame the tank for not holding aggro (and then blame the healer when they die). In short, if threat is too easy, the game is boring. If threat is too difficult, the game is frustrating.

How then do you guys (and the developers!) know when threat is a problem? Here are some handy guidelines.

-- If a tank is trying to generate threat on a single target, and it runs off to kill a DPS class, that’s a problem.

-- If a tank is trying to generate area threat on a group, and the tanked things are running off to kill healers, that’s a problem.

-- If Vengeance falling off causes the tank to lose threat, that’s a problem.

These problems can have a couple of causes. It could be a problem we caused, meaning that even an expertly-played tank has low threat generation because our numbers are undertuned. Or it could be that only an expertly-played tank can generate threat because you’re asked to manage too many abilities. Or it could be that Vengeance is the only thing allowing you to generate enough threat because the size of the buff is masking low threat generation from your abilities. It could also be a problem you need to fix on your end: if someone is nuking or cleaving a random target on a group pull instead of assisting the tank, that’s not the tank’s fault.

Now, there are things we don’t like about threat as a mechanic. It’s fairly gamey as game mechanics go and we think there are probably better ways to communicate it to players. There are some mods that do a very credible job given the limited information we provide, but overall we’d like to present threat better since we’re asking you to take it seriously in the PvE game.

-Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and the skipper of a very nice ship where they serve cute sandwiches with the crust removed. And gin.

If you find any helpful guides for players that may only be familiar with Wrath dungeon tactics, please post them here as well!

Depending on the group composition it won't always be the tank that pulls.

There are some Crowd Control (CC) abilities that can be easily used in combat. These are generally not dependent on where the mob is. Abilities such as sheep and hex fall into this category. As long as you have line of sight of the mob, either sheep or hex can be used.

Other CC abilities depend on positioning or other factors. Sap and hunter traps fall into this category. Sap requires the target be out of combat, so you must sap prior to the pull. While traps can be used in combat, it is difficult to aim and ensure the correct mob is trapped after the tank has pulled. Therefore one simple method of ensuring mobs are CC'd properly is to perform a trap-pull. The basic idea here is that the pull happens by having the hunter initiate combat by trapping a mob. There all other CC abilities may be used this way as well.

Thanks Jaannaa :)

Thank you for posting this, Fox. Here are some things I've observed from the point of view of healing.

Unlike Wrath, where mana was plentiful, the days of spam healing are over. This means that if you're standing in poo, you die. If you steal aggro from the tank or break CC you die. After combat, your healer will probably be drinking and will not have the mana to top you off. Eat some food.

Our heals did not increase in proportion to everyones insane health pools. If you're a DPS sitting at 50%, this means you still have more viable HP than you did in Wrath. Don't panic, you're okay. Your healer will get to you when it is safe to let the tank sit for a bit. Don't be afraid to whip out some bandages in a fight. Most of these fights are survival fights rather than DPS races. Patchwerk does not want to play, he has taken his toys and gone home.

I have learned a couple things through some experience as a DK with these that might help. I think maybe all the classes have abilities that are under utilized.

Mind control is awesome as a CC if we have a non-healy priest. The pugs I am in seem to ignore that a lot.

(Disregard this bit as Dondoh corrected me.)

I have found some good opportunities to use deathgrip on casters (with the tank's permission of course.)

I try to apply interrupts and silences intelligently on trash on my own, but I find on most bosses that interrupts are required my school of magic lockout allows me to interrupt every cast (if I am in melee range.) If we have overlapping interrupts it might be wise to figure that one out ahead of time. On bosses that require a lot of movement it may be better to have someone with a ranged interrupt handle it. We had trouble in Throne of Tides when moving out of floor damage when Kae went one way and I went another. I bound my middle mouse key to interrupt since I use it so often now.

I have an AOE 10 second root/ice block (I think most people don't know about that that don't PVP a lot.) This came in handy in H HoO when someone died since there wasn't four people to drop off the platform.

A lot of this is probably kind of basic stuff, but I figure if it helps one person it is good enough for me.

Your talking about when Rime procs (that proc applies to both Howling Bast and Icy Touch). Use Icy Touch instead of a glyphed Howling Blast (it's not a cone attack but rather an AoE around your targeted mob). Icy touch natural applies frost fever anyway thus providing your dps bonus and not breaking any close by cc. Most of the time in a run you'll not use AoE bombs like Howling blast. you'll also get out more single target dps when you drop the Glyph howling blast for Glyph of Icy Touch (Your Frost Fever disease deals 20% additional damage.)

I think some of that has changed. I can't get to it at work right now to test but I will check into it.

What I have found is that mobs directly behind me will not be hit by howling blast if there is one directly beating on my front, but mobs to the side will be. If it were a flat AOE based even on the guy in front of me it should be within the required 10 yards to be hit by it. Maybe one guy was further in front of me and one further behind me at the time, I will check it out tonight.

I don't believe that Icy Touch applies the actual melee debuff to the target it is a different debuff than Frost Fever. FF is the DoT, but HB applies a debuff as well. I forget what the name of it is off the top of my head, but will update this later. The melee debuff applies to all melee, not just me.

I think some of that has changed. I can't get to it at work right now to test but I will check into it.

What I have found is that mobs directly behind me will not be hit by howling blast if there is one directly beating on my front, but mobs to the side will be. If it were a flat AOE based even on the guy in front of me it should be within the required 10 yards to be hit by it. Maybe one guy was further in front of me and one further behind me at the time, I will check it out tonight.

I don't believe that Icy Touch applies the actual melee debuff to the target it is a different debuff than Frost Fever. FF is the DoT, but HB applies a debuff as well. I forget what the name of it is off the top of my head, but will update this later. The melee debuff applies to all melee, not just me.


Icy Touch has always and still applies Frost Fever

Howling Blast does Frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards regardless of your orientation to them. Mater of fact you don't even have to face a mob to hit them with Howling Blast and if glyhped for it you then give FF as a bonus to all the mobs hit too. kinda bad for a cc fight

Brittle bones is the passive ability that gives you the damage boost when a target has FF

Basically replace HB with IT in your rotation and you should be good (Don't forget to change the HB to the IT glyph from even more dps)

I know IT applies FF. For some reason I thought it didn't apply Brittle Bones.

I admit when I am wrong, maybe my aoe observation was a weird positioning fluke. The only times that it failed me angles were weird and it must have been a coincidence. Frost is a new spec to me from this expansion, I will remove that section!

what is the easiest way to cycle targets, if there's a lot of them? i normally have a few /assist macros with the names of the tanks in there - if i assist one and there's no target, i click the next to see where they are, and attack that mob. i definately have targeted the wrong enemy before by tabbing and spelling too quickly without thinking. is there an easier way?

guess i'd better start remembering how to heal again...

You can <tab> target but you have to be very very careful with that method. Often you'll target something in the next group and it can be very easy to accidentally pull something extra.

I play melee mostly so I don't often have too much trouble clicking on the target I want to go after. Maybe another caster can give you better advice.

The days of trap pulls and chain trapping have returned. God help us all.

For any hunters out there who want a refresher on trapping mobs, or for any non-hunters who just want a better understanding of the tools hunters have at their disposal, this is a pretty great guide to the ins and outs of trapping mobs.

You can <tab> target but you have to be very very careful with that method. Often you'll target something in the next group and it can be very easy to accidentally pull something extra.

I play melee mostly so I don't often have too much trouble clicking on the target I want to go after. Maybe another caster can give you better advice.

So, I'm someone who played a hunter in vanilla and remember quite a bit of the early days of CC (and is glad it's back). Hell, I remember when traps weren't so good and my main way of CC was turning my pet into a second tank.

I tend to <tab> target enemies. What helps is not casting right at the start of the fight. I tend to wait a couple of seconds to be sure the tank has adequate aggro and just to be sure that I don't run the risk of pulling the target away somehow.

As ranged DPS (that's about all I play), having a tank that knows how to mark targets and say which ones they want sapped/hexed/sheeped/whatever is incredibly useful and I can't emphasize enough how often I want that to be used.

I would much rather a dungeon take ten extra minutes to finish so that targets can be marked than wiping every five battles because of terrible CC and aggro management due to an overzealous group.

With Cata comes a lot of changes to the tanking part of the game.

First, combat ratings require much higher values for each percent. So your dodge and parry percentages will likely start out very low. At the time of writing, my average iLevel is 344 but my dodge and parry is only 11.4% each. If you have any leftover Wrath gear at 85, replace them as soon as possible.

Second, my understanding is that all tank classes should have at least 1 short cooldown ability to mitigate damage. For paladins, this is Divine Protection. It is a 20% damage reduction ability that lasts 12 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown. USE YOUR COOLDOWNS! They are no longer strictly "Oh POOP!" buttons. For example, you may want to use this at the beginning of a pull where you know the mobs hit hard.

Third, stacking only stamina is no longer the best route.

~Effective Health~
In the past, one yardstick by which tanks measured themselves is a concept called effective health (EH). For example, tank A has 100k hp. Tank A's armor grants a reduction of 50%. Therefore tank A's effective health is 100k / 50% = 200k. Since tank hp is already so high and bosses generally do not kill tanks in 2 or 3 melee hits, some argue that EH is no longer useful as a measurement of tank survivability.

~DTPS~
There has been suggestions that the rate of incoming damage (let's call it damage taken per second, dtps) is a more useful measure since it produces a time that the tank is able to survive before being killed. For example, tank A has 100k hp. The boss melee hits tank A for 10k damage per hit. Assuming the boss does a melee swing every 2 seconds, the dtps is 5k per second. So, at most, the tank will survive 20 seconds without being healed. Let's assume that the tank has used an item or ability that grants a 20% damage reduction. The dtps is now 4k per second. The tank's maximum survival time is now 25 seconds. So, the goal is to lower dtps as much as it is reasonably achievable.

~Gearing~
For paladins, the choice at this point of the expansion is quite simple, maximize mastery to get the maximum block %. The reason is that paladins can block 40% of a melee hit (standard 30% + holy shield's 10%). However, keeping a reasonably high health pool (higher than 140k self-buffed) and having some avoidance (dodge and parry) should not be ignored.

For other tank classes, you will need to do some research for gearing strategies. From what I've heard, mastery is also the premiere tanking stat for DKs (please correct me if I'm wrong). In any case, the point here is to gear in such way keeping the above 2 concepts in mind.

PS... If anyone has questions or if what I wrote doesn't make sense, speak up! I kind of wrote this on a whim while tired.

Ghostcrawler posted an awesome blog post about Heroic and Raid difficulty. It's longer than the first one that I copied so instead I'll post an excerpt and link it for those that want to read the rest.

If you just can&#8217;t make progress and you are literally wiping on trash pulls over and over, it may be time to analyze your gear. The Dungeon Finder's Heroic item level requirement should be considered a minimum -- and remember, it doesn&#8217;t look at enchants or gems or even if the gear is appropriate for you. We are assuming an entry-level Heroic player has a lot of item level 333 gear from Twilight Highlands, normal dungeons, or any of the reputation vendors. These 333s are probably mixed in with a few 318 quest greens, but offset by a few 346 items. If you finished the Hyjal quests, you are probably Revered with Guardians of Hyjal and have access to their 346 items. Questing might only earn you Honored with some of the other reputations, but that is easily rectified with daily quests or dungeon tabards (and don&#8217;t forget the Tol Barad reps). There are some nice crafted items. No, the weapons aren&#8217;t purple, but when you look at their stats, they are quite competitive.

The item level requirement is intended only to keep out players who have no idea what is appropriate content for them. We know you can game it by getting PvP gear or hiding off-spec gear in your bags. Congrats on being sneaky! If you&#8217;re sophisticated enough to try and game the item-level requirements, you should be sophisticated enough to know if you can actually handle the content.

Don't be stingy and decide you aren&#8217;t going to mess with gemming, enchanting, or reforging until you have epic gear. Note that you don&#8217;t have to always apply the most expensive enchants or gems. Gear matters a lot. It increases DPS, survivability, and mana sustainability. Healers who get, say, 1750-1800 Spirit notice that they can go a lot longer without gassing out. Go ahead and get enchants or gems or reforge to get a lot of Spirit. Some DPS specs who don&#8217;t reforge hit at those gear levels would struggle a lot as well. The new Cataclysm flasks are fairly expensive, but the Lich King ones aren&#8217;t, and there are elixirs and food consumables you can use as well. Archaeologists can even unlock small bonuses in the new dungeons.

Furthermore, once 4.1 comes out, you will have access to more powerful gear that will let you then revisit the content you couldn&#8217;t do before. Your Justice points will let you purchase epic items at that point, and Heroics that were challenging will become a lot easier. Players who have raid gear currently are already starting to burn through the dungeon content again, which is totally expected. You&#8217;ll get there too. In Lich King, the content patches tended to completely invalidate the previous tier of content. We don&#8217;t want players to feel like they need to farm Naxxramas when Icecrown Citadel is out, but at the other end of the spectrum, it was unfortunate that we largely killed Ulduar raiding when Trial of the Crusader came out.

You can <tab> target but you have to be very very careful with that method. Often you'll target something in the next group and it can be very easy to accidentally pull something extra.

My best Uh Oh I pulled What story, and cautionary tale I guess, would be UBRS. Remember that Chamber where all the dragonkin come in in waves with their little whelp pets following behind? I thought I'd be lazy one time, and pull a whelp to me with my crossbow of uber awesomeness. So I looked at the pretty whelp, and tab targeted. You remember the dragonkin sitting on the walls, supposedly watching us get our butts kicked? Yeah, you guessed it. I targeted one of them by mistake, and pulled all four walls worth of aggro, on top of the third wave. We died. I was reminded I wasn't a hunter, and I learned to never, ever tab target unless I actually pay attention to my screen icons. Which means, I never, ever tab target in an instance anymore...or really, anywhere where I don't want to die an ugly death.

I did the exact same thing. Probably my most embarrassing WoW moment.

Question... Hit rating and Expertise are still needed if you want to keep yourself at the top of the aggro list right?

Cause, right now my 85 Blood DK tank, has +8% Hit rating (0% miss chance) & 22 expertise which bring the dodge chance to almost 0%. I ensure when i pull to put both diseases on all my targets, use Blood boil to apply the 10% dam reduction to the mobs & use the remaining blood runes to gain my 10sec 6% dam reduction.

Question... Hit rating and Expertise are still needed if you want to keep yourself at the top of the aggro list right?

Cause, right now my 85 Blood DK tank, has +8% Hit rating (0% miss chance) & 22 expertise which bring the dodge chance to almost 0%. I ensure when i pull to put both diseases on all my targets, use Blood boil to apply the 10% dam reduction to the mobs & use the remaining blood runes to gain my 10sec 6% dam reduction.

It's true to some degree. Right now tanks generally rely on the vengeance mechanic to help with threat. As such, you shouldn't need to specifically gear for hit and expertise to hold threat. My understanding is that it is much more beneficial to gear for survival (generally stam and mastery) instead.

Ok, some of my gear have Hit and Expertise on it but i'm not looking for that specifically. But i am reforging stats like haste to get more hit and expertise rating. The rest is divided between STAM, MASTERY, DODGE & PARRY.

At least so far,i haven't tried any heroics... kinda dreading it but i think i might be ready for it.

This reforge calculator might help some people

http://wowreforge.com/

That looks pretty robust, but I think I'm happier with the addon I'm using right now.

I looked at that add on too. Allegedly, the website optimizes better according to the wacky guys at elitist jerks.

Frankly, I am not as serious as they are though and have been considering reforgenator for the ease of not having to log out and then import my character from the armory.

Ya. That's how I felt about it.

I don't need this stuff to be perfect yet.... just need some guidelines that will max my caps and put other stuff in generally the right area.