This Thing You Call Aggro.

[kandrathe]

Interesting you posting this. I was going to post something due to feeling frustrated with my warrior after a couple bad group experiences. My Bryn is a 1h+shield defensive warrior, and two times in two days I partied up randomly and found that the large DPS's in the group were heedless of whether of not I (main tank) could keep aggro control, and then due to (their) reckless pulls we had multiple adds. Which, of course, eventually resulted in chaotic and lethal encounters. They were the types of groups that you pray would break apart, and then are grateful when they do, but at the same time you regret still needing to get the job done and now you go back to organize all over again.

On the positive, this toon quested successfuly with some Lurkers recently, which has been fun. I think it is helpful for the tank to say "wait for the sunder" or give some visible sign to know when phase 1 is done. Focus fire on the mob the tank(s) have aggro locked down with low threat at first and then in "phase 3" as described above, let loose the big guns. I really like that phase 1, 2, 3 description.

In general, unless it was discussed by your group before hand, as tank I would prefer to be given all the mobs to let me be the sole damage sponge. This makes the healing more efficient and allows for better crowd control. If an add happens, I don't mind if another harder shelled toon peals it off the squishies, but they should then try to hand off the add to the main tank. Sometimes there is a sticky boss fight or too many mobs for one tank to handle, so then you need to discuss a split pull and having an off tank (Yay Pets, Paladins!) to keep some mobs busy. But, there is no one formula. What I like is when people play intelligently and not recklessly, and if the mobs get systematically destroyed in an orderly manner I am happy.