Priests. Why we are so ..umm.. difficult.

[Olon97]

Even better are mages who know to wait a few beats at the start of a fight to let the warrior build up a little aggro (especially on any elites) and gather the mobs before spamming aoe's.  Just a few second pause at the start of the fight makes a huge difference in the amount that I have to shield and heal.  Also, it allows secondary aoe'ers to set themselves up, too.  For example, shamans can drop aoe totems and hunters can get themselves setup for their volley (after the warrior shouts and gathers mobs to him/her).  If the mage waits a few beats before starting, then all the party's aoe power can fall all at once and kill mobs before they get a chance to beat on the mage too much.  I think the problem with many mages is that they mistakenly think that they are the party's *only* source of aoe and think they're going to pull all the aggro immediately anyway, so they think they might as well start spamming immediately.  But if the warrior has a little aggro built up, then the mage can spam a couple aoe's before pulling aggro, and of course the supporting aoe'ers do make a difference.

I love it when mages understand the benefit of warrior aggro on AoE pulls, but I've found most are convinced they have to start AoE pulls.

Some of the safest "AoE" pulls I've experienced were actually done without a mage or warlock in the party. If the warrior uses a combination of thundercap, demoralizing shout, piercing howl, whirlwind with a slow 2h, quick cleaves on alternating targets (when Whirlwind is not ready), and hopefully a thorns effect (gear, un-goro crystal, or druid buff), and the rest of the party continues to focus fire you can grind almsot any AoE pull down without anyone being in danger.

My favorite is the hybrid approach, where the warrior gets a head start, and then mages unload and end up only stealing the aggro on their final or next to final casts. They can basically let the warrior get down to a near half health and then save him. The healer barely needs to heal the warrior at all in this case. Sometimes to actually make this happen, I end up starting an AoE pull while the mages are still drinking (saying "go ahead adn finish drinking" first), or on a fast afk. :P