Defensive Stance

[Roland]

Part of the problem is that nobody seems to know or care how to fight with a warrior. A warrior is supposed to pull and hold the mob, allowing spellcasts and ranged attacks to provide heavy duty dps from behind. 

What actually happens is that rogues and hunters assign to themselves the glamorous job of pulling. This takes the mob behind the warrior, who has to run back, reposition, retarget, work up rage, and start swinging. The fight is usually half over by then. The heavy dps is scattered, and directed in front of her where it is not useful to her.

I play a Rogue. I have done several instance runs as a Rogue. I consider it my duty to scout and pull, and I do both VERY well. That you say a Rogue should not pull, that a Rogue who does will make it 10x harder for a Warrior to get and hold aggro, that you automatically put ALL the blame on a Rogue is not only insulting, but utterly foolish and misguided.

First off, A Warrior's job IMHO is NOT to pull. A Warrior has minimal ranged abilities and virtually NO crowd-control abilities, both of which are ESSENTIAL to proper pulling. A Hunter is probably the best puller, combining exceptional ranged attacks, strong HP, decent armor, and a pet to make the easiest pulling possible. A Rogue, OTOH, comes in second, FAR above any Warrior. We have ranged attacks (Thrown most notable, but Bows and Crossbows we can use, as well), Stealth (aside from a Mage casting Invisibility on someone, there's no one else who can move around undetected), and a plethora of crowd control and aggro REDUCING skills. As such, we are fully equipped to deal with pulling a mob, and then losing the aggro.

Now, let's analyze your observations, one by one. You state that a Warrior's job is to stand there and get beat on while everyone ELSE piles on the damage. This is wholly absurd. First off, Warriors are DPS machines. The only ones who can compete with them are Rogues and Mages - the former not being able to stand up to long fights due to medium Health, and the latter having to cast spells from afar. Warriors are specifically engineered to not only dish out damage up-close and personal, but also to absorb it all the while, taking the brunt of the abuse in any given fight. So your response that it is everyone else's job to dish out the heavy damage while a Warrior just stands there like a brick wall is patently absurd.

Secondly, you state that whenever a Rogue pulls (maybe ones YOU'VE played with, and if that's so then you have some BAD playing partners), the Warrior has to run backwards and attempt to peel off the mob from the Rogue, thus making his life that much more difficult. If a Rogue is played properly, there is NEVER a time where this will happen, period. The battle plan for ANY group involving a Tank and a Rogue should be to set up a safe zone (refer to the Hunter analysis at 8-Bit Theatre for more on this), clear of monsters and with enough room for everyone to maneuver around comfortably. You set up your Tank(s) in front, with your Casters and Healers in the far back, about 10 or so yards behind the Tank(s). This whole party remains about 20 - 30 yards behind the Rogue, who is up ahead scouting around while Stealthed, attempting to find the best target, and waiting for the proper timing to pull.

If the Rogue can pull a single mob, without worry of attracting any further attention, he should do so with a ranged Throw attack, and then run back to JUST behind or beside the Tank(s) (but NOT any further, as you do NOT want the mob getting close to the casters). He then should perform a Feint, while maintaining NO offensive action towards his target (a quick left-click while running from the mob will remove you from attacking it, thus allowing you to stand still while the Tank attempts to get aggro). The Tank(s)'s job is to sit tight while the Rogue does this, and once the mob gets within range, IMMEDIATELY pull out all his aggro-inducing skills and start whailing on the mob. Casters should, obviously, wait several seconds before unloading any heavy damage, as should the Rogue, although most Rogues can handle a few beatings without trouble AND can use Feint, Gouge, or Vanish to remove themselves from harm.

Now, if there are multiple mobs within aggro range of one another, the Rogue should wait patiently and observe their movement patterns. If it can be determined that they will wander outside of one another's aggro radius, then the Rogue should wait and attempt to pull whichever single mob it can. Otherwise, the best course of action is a quick Distract at short range, maneuvering close for a Sap on the secondary target (generally the target that poses the biggest threat overall, i.e. a Healer or Caster), and then turning and running back towards the party, following the same battle plan as laid out above. Should anything go wrong (it's VERY rare, but it happens), there is NO reason why a properly functioning group can't handle two or even 3 mobs, even with just ONE Tank, especially set up in the way I described above.

Spangles has no way of convincing the dps monkeys to support her at point, so she has decided to take her place in back.  There she can deflect the mob from the healers, who seem to have a special attraction for enemy AI.

Stop right there. Your first sentence says it all - you can't "convince" your PARTNER to support you. You're playing with a bad crowd, which is skewing your view of other classes instead of pushing you to find skilled players to group with. That's your first mistake. Your second mistake, and it's a HUGE one, is where you say that you move back to where the casters are to try and pull the mob(s) off of them. That has got to be the most homocidal thing I have ever heard.

As a Tank, your job is to stand put and maintain aggro. If for any reason a mob breaks off from you, you are NOT to break combat with your current mob to engage the other. You ARE supposed to attempt to use your short-ranged aggro-inducing skills (you have Shouts for a reason; use them), while holding your ground and keeping your original target on YOU. If your original target was the only target you were facing, then and ONLY then do you EVER move to where the casters are, at which point you pull the mob off, and then THEY back off to a safe distance once more, while you stand still and hold the mob's aggro. But if there are multiple mobs, and one should break off from you and head for a caster, it is the ROGUE'S job to pull that mob off, NOT yours.

A Rogue has a wide variety of skills all geared towards controlling the flow of battle. It is our ONLY advantage, so we as a class are geared entirely around it. We may be known for being DPS machines, but it is our crowd-control abilities that any SKILLED non-Rogue player relies upon us for (I learned this the hard way in an instance run that ran into a small snag; I'll get into that later). We have Sprint to aid our movement, Gouge or Vanish + Sap to stun a target (provided no other targets are currently Sapped, as only one mob can be Sapped at any one time), Kick to interrupt casting (and potentially silence, with proper Talent investment), and a plethora of damaging skills that will very quickly pile aggro onto us. The only thing the caster has to do is STOP CASTING. Don't heal, don't cast damaging spells, don't do anything. Wait for the cavalry to arrive and pull the mob off you. A Mage firing off a Frost Nova, a Warlock casting Fear, or a Priest casting Psychic Scream are about the only exceptions to this. The overall goal is still the same, however: keep the casters in back, AWAY from the Tank, and let the Rogue control the flow of combat.

Once the Rogue has pulled aggro off the casters, it is up to HIM whether or not he can handle that solo mob by himself (and Healers come into play here; a Rogue is not nearly as sturdy as a Warrior, Paladin, or Bear-form Druid, so we may require at least some healing to survive). If he can, then by all means he should do so. The battle has already gotten way more complicated than it should have; no need to make things any more complicated and risk making matters worse. If, however, the Rogue cannot, for any reason, handle the mob solo, he should then quickly decide how best to handle the situation. If the target was Sapped (see above), then the target will be taken care of for at least 25 seconds, provided no one else does something stupid - like damage the mob. Otherwise, the Rogue's best option at this point is generally the same as the process for pulling. That is, the Rogue should draw the monster back into the Tank(s)'s melee range and then STOP inducing any aggro. Feint is specifically designed to do nothing BUT reduce aggro, while the Tank(s) has skills geared towards GAINING aggro which he should use.

She has worked out routines for arms and fury stances, but this job seems to call for defensive stance, and this is a mystery to her.  She would greatly appreciate an explanation of how to set up an action bar for defensive stance, and how to use it for this specific mission.

I can't help you with that, as I have virtually no experience playing a Warrior, but hopefully my above comments will help you enough so that you don't have to dedicate yourself to any one style of play. A Warrior has three stances, each designed for specific instances and each designed to be used THROUGHOUT the career of a Warrior, not just in sparse patches.

I hope I wasn't too harsh, but I HATE it when some cocky Warrior automatically assumes not only that he is the God to pulling, but that whenever a battle goes sour, it's always the Rogue's fault. I'm not saying that, in your experience, the Rogue hasn't caused his share of problems, but that is ENTIRELY due to you playing with apparently horrendous players, and not due to any inherent weaknesses within yourself or any other class. That you actually bought into all that BS is just all the more saddening, so pardon me if I'm out of line in inviting you over to the Alliance Lurkers guild on Stormrage. I have a level 26 Rogue there, as well as a couple alts I play when I want something different, and our guild over there is quite strong and exceptionally friendly. Except for off-peak hours, it's rare that you won't be able to find someone to group with. I even have a couple Rogue builds I want to try out, so I could start up a brand new Rogue to help you out in getting started on the server. But, that's up to you, and I'd understand if you didn't want to move. Just try to find some better people to play with if you don't move, because your play experiences are just awful and depressing to listen to.

As a mild aside, I spoke earlier about a bad patch in an instance where I learned the hard way that it's up to the Rogue to pull mobs off a caster. We were going up against Van Cleef, and everything was going fine. I had thrown a Distraction in the room, attracting the attention of Cleef and his henchmen. I pulled the big VC with a Throwing knife to the face (he was none too pleased with this, and came out to tell me as much), the Tank (a Paladin, IIRC) immediately pounced on him and took aggro off me in a matter of seconds, and I was busy chewing him and his minions to pieces with my attacks. Where everything broke down was when he summoned up more minions, and they almost immediately went after the casters. I, foolishly, thought I should stay on VC, as I had always heard that the Rogue was a DPS machine and as such felt my place was at the Tank's side. This cost us one of our Priests (we had two), and the second was close to joining him, along with our mage. It's worth noting that the second Rogue in the party was almost useless throughout the instance run, and indeed caused more problems than solutions, but more on that a bit later. I think it was about then that we all decided to ditch and run, breaking for the edge of the boat so we could dive off into the water. I think it was this time that I actually made it to the water, but somehow miracously died upon hitting it (I didn't hit the ground, so no, it wasn't that - it was just some random bug, I think). Our Paladin survived, to my recollection, and one of our priests may have survived, but everyone else died (the other Rogue somehow lasting a full 30 seconds longer before biting the bullet; I have no idea where he was or what he was doing at the time, further testament to how bad he was), myself included.

A couple minutes later and we were all resurrected and getting ready for another swing at old VC, with one notable exception: it was my job to watch for his minions and keep them off the casters. Being that they were little more than Stealthing, beefed-up versions of mobs we had already fought on our way there, they didn't last long at all under my onslaughts, so our Priests and Mage survived quite nicely, leaving me to finish off VC with the Paladin and other Rogue. But it was a great learning experience for me, teaching me just one more place a Rogue has in the battle.

Contrary to popular belief, a Rogue's job is NOT to stand there and be a human buzz-saw, but instead to watch the battle as a whole and keep track of the flow of it so that I can interject myself to bring it under my control. In battle, the Rogue controls the flow of battle, letting everyone else play the more specific roles. Think of a Rogue as yourself while playing an RTS - the Mages are your heavy artillery, the Healers are self-explanatory, and the Tanks are the bulk of your offensive arm - while also adding in your own bit to the offensive front.

Oh, and one more thing: two Rogues do not make a Right, generally speaking. Unless you have to Rogues who can work in perfect concert with one another, controlling the flow of battle in unison like a well-oiled machine, it's generally better to have only one Rogue in any party. It's not that you can't have two Rogues together. It's just that, given the highly sensitive and micro-managing (or would it be macro-managing?) nature of a Rogue, having multiple Rogues in a party can very easily cause large, bumbling conflicts. It's all too easy for two Rogues to clash during a battle, especially if they have differing playstyles (personel-wise, not character-wise). A misplaced Throwing Knife, a poorly-timed Sap, a badly chosen Stealthing route, all of these and much more are just waiting to spring out on a party to ruin their day, and it's all amplified while doing an instance run due to the higher stakes. So, unless you know your group well or can trust that they will work well together, it's generally best to limit your party to one Rogue per, if at all possible. This rule bends somewhat when the Rogue IS your Tank, however, but that's a story for another day. ;)