05-24-2005, 04:34 PM
My group experience is largest with a healer druid, a warrior, and a hunter who usually ends up as main tank.
You'll have to ask my mages (I've grouped with Sabramage and Littledude a lot) how often they can go all out when I'm tanking, I really don't know. I know I've seen pyroblasts in instances a few times and I've seen a mage fireball pull, which I took as a compliment to my aggro grabbing abilities. I also know there are AoE situations where I don't bother trying to hold anything that isn't elite except to keep it for the first blast if I can. I've managed to hold multiple elites through AoE and I've failed to do it as well.
Misses will kill a warrior for aggro control though. If you hear or see a few misses from them you need to hold off for a sec or. Treesh does this I do believe and it probably helps a lot with her rarely taking aggro for a heal. I also have the luxury of having her in the same room so that I can know what she is using to heal me. I'll stick with my dual wield in defensive stance a lot of the times on mobs because I'm only getting healed with a renew, I don't need more damage mitigation. There have been times after a fight where there is a "what happened?" question and the answer is usually, "I missed about 5 times in a row". DPS classes should try to pay attention to that.
Mages and hunters at times are what I generally lose aggro to. I generally only lose to hunters when I'm switching targets a lot and they stay on the primary or if they get a long crit string. I don't see a peel to my healer (Treesh) very often. Most of the time when they go to her it seems to me they are peeling because she healed someone other then me. Maybe I'm not watching the battle that closely though. Hunters worry me the most in an AoE situation where there are a couple of mobs I want to keep off the AoE caster because if they don't switch I pretty much lose a mob to them or lose one to the AoE caster.
As a druid it's just a heavier reliance on the HoT's to spread the aggro generation around. I'm in trouble when I cast a big heal early. I generally use my HoT's and a smaller healing touch to keep people healed. I hold 3 ranks of regrowth and healing touch on the bar. I aim for 80-90% healthy when using regrowth, or healing touch if there is a HoT on them already, let the HoT finish the heal or keep them up through it. So if someone is at 30% health and my biggest healing touch would put them at 100% but one 2 ranks lower would put them at 70-75% they get the lower rank and either a regrowth with more front end heal if they are getting hit hard still, or a rejuv if they aren't getting hit that hard to finish the heal off. Regrowth is also fantastic to top off a rogue or someone else who had aggro for a bit but won't have it for awhile. You give them a big pulse and then let it heal them up over time. Healing like this keeps aggro off me in most cases. I still have problems watching my own health at times so I can run into trouble if I pull aggro. It's worse that most of the time I pull aggro is when I'm really low on mana so I can't shift into bear form if I wanted to. Barkskin helps some with this though. So I don't think it's that bad as a druid, just different. I do miss PW:Shield though. I can't really help AoE casters. I only have natures swiftness as an oh #$%& button and that is only once every 3 minutes. Innervate also allows me to use some less mana efficient spells to help with aggro control since I can get my mana pool back when I need to.
I think my mages are waiting a bit, or just doing wands at the start of focus fire pulls. I see a lot of arcane missles but I think those are generally getting fired after a clearcast shows up. I see the fireball dot on the mob a fair bit. Now there are times when we're dealing with stuff that I just don't even bother going into aggro hold mode for and I don't always let the group know but it doesn't matter sometimes and there are times I expect aggro to be taken from me because I'm not trying and I know things will die quicker if I do it this way.
Just some poorly organized thoughts.
You'll have to ask my mages (I've grouped with Sabramage and Littledude a lot) how often they can go all out when I'm tanking, I really don't know. I know I've seen pyroblasts in instances a few times and I've seen a mage fireball pull, which I took as a compliment to my aggro grabbing abilities. I also know there are AoE situations where I don't bother trying to hold anything that isn't elite except to keep it for the first blast if I can. I've managed to hold multiple elites through AoE and I've failed to do it as well.
Misses will kill a warrior for aggro control though. If you hear or see a few misses from them you need to hold off for a sec or. Treesh does this I do believe and it probably helps a lot with her rarely taking aggro for a heal. I also have the luxury of having her in the same room so that I can know what she is using to heal me. I'll stick with my dual wield in defensive stance a lot of the times on mobs because I'm only getting healed with a renew, I don't need more damage mitigation. There have been times after a fight where there is a "what happened?" question and the answer is usually, "I missed about 5 times in a row". DPS classes should try to pay attention to that.
Mages and hunters at times are what I generally lose aggro to. I generally only lose to hunters when I'm switching targets a lot and they stay on the primary or if they get a long crit string. I don't see a peel to my healer (Treesh) very often. Most of the time when they go to her it seems to me they are peeling because she healed someone other then me. Maybe I'm not watching the battle that closely though. Hunters worry me the most in an AoE situation where there are a couple of mobs I want to keep off the AoE caster because if they don't switch I pretty much lose a mob to them or lose one to the AoE caster.
As a druid it's just a heavier reliance on the HoT's to spread the aggro generation around. I'm in trouble when I cast a big heal early. I generally use my HoT's and a smaller healing touch to keep people healed. I hold 3 ranks of regrowth and healing touch on the bar. I aim for 80-90% healthy when using regrowth, or healing touch if there is a HoT on them already, let the HoT finish the heal or keep them up through it. So if someone is at 30% health and my biggest healing touch would put them at 100% but one 2 ranks lower would put them at 70-75% they get the lower rank and either a regrowth with more front end heal if they are getting hit hard still, or a rejuv if they aren't getting hit that hard to finish the heal off. Regrowth is also fantastic to top off a rogue or someone else who had aggro for a bit but won't have it for awhile. You give them a big pulse and then let it heal them up over time. Healing like this keeps aggro off me in most cases. I still have problems watching my own health at times so I can run into trouble if I pull aggro. It's worse that most of the time I pull aggro is when I'm really low on mana so I can't shift into bear form if I wanted to. Barkskin helps some with this though. So I don't think it's that bad as a druid, just different. I do miss PW:Shield though. I can't really help AoE casters. I only have natures swiftness as an oh #$%& button and that is only once every 3 minutes. Innervate also allows me to use some less mana efficient spells to help with aggro control since I can get my mana pool back when I need to.
I think my mages are waiting a bit, or just doing wands at the start of focus fire pulls. I see a lot of arcane missles but I think those are generally getting fired after a clearcast shows up. I see the fireball dot on the mob a fair bit. Now there are times when we're dealing with stuff that I just don't even bother going into aggro hold mode for and I don't always let the group know but it doesn't matter sometimes and there are times I expect aggro to be taken from me because I'm not trying and I know things will die quicker if I do it this way.
Just some poorly organized thoughts.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.