Bad Tactical Memes

[bonemage]

I have learned that Taunting with an empty rage is kind of pointless. If you don't follow up with some kind of aggro generating move it goes right back to attacking something else.
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I completely disagree here. Yes, the target often will turn back to who it was attacking before, but it's FAR from pointless. 1) It gets you hit which gets you rage, 2) It gets you hit instead of the (likely) squishier target the mob was on first, and 3) It gets you hit so you have a shot at using Revenge. If you're low or empty on rage, that is a good time to use taunt if they are on someone else. You hit them, they hit you, hopefully that gives you enough rage for a bash, or if you're lucky, Revenge will trigger. Waiting to use taunt until you have enough rage to reclaim aggro for good is a very bad idea, as it hurts your ability to get said rage. If you're behind on aggro and out of rage, you're unlikely to get yourself back at the top of the list without getting abused/hit (unless you dual wield and go into battle stance which you often can't safely do). Also, though only gimpy warriors rely only on taunt (sadly, that's all some do), it is vital when used right. At higher levels, 1 or 2 seconds equals dirt nap for a priest, and taunt will give you 6 seconds to regain aggro or have the mob die.

Example: In BRD there are 5 elite humanoid pulls, which as a 4 man group at appropriate level, are really quite dangerous pulls. We used multiple priest Mind Control casts for CC/healing with the medics. We would kill the entire pull except for the mind controlled mob. After 2-4 Mind Controls, that one mob HATED the priest with a furious passion. That is a tremendous amount of hate to overcome. It is much easier to kill that mob than to reclaim aggro. Even without ANY rage, though, a warrior could keep his priest alive by spamming taunt as soon as it came off of cooldown (improved taunt helps a lot) if the priest moved away from the mob when it was taunted, and the warrior chased well. In practice what we did was taunt, conc blow, taunt, which gives 17 seconds of complete priest safety (should be enough time to kill one of those mobs) without the warrior ever truly reclaiming the top of the hate list.

However, in WC, the game plays a lot differently, and you could probably tank better while dual wielding in battle stance and using only sunder from all that rage. Plus, at that level, warriors can do great damage just with decent weapons and just regular attacks. The game changes a lot as things go in. When I was in WC and RFK, I didn't think defensive stance was any good, because I could not get rage fast enough for sunders unless my teammates sat around for a while. At that level, revenge doesn't trigger enough to be very useful, and the cooldown on shield bash makes it tough to lock down 3 mobs with just that, so sunder is really all you have. So when I was a warrior in my 20s and early 30s, I was convinced that battle stance dual wielding was superior at locking down multiple mobs than defensive stance. I still believe that's the case... but only in WC and the early game. It is just not so later in the game.