Def Spec -- Should I, Really?

[Treesh]

One other observation, gleaned from a particularly frustrating night staging a guild event raid on Maraudon with a group that had way too many hunters: the most effective tool a tank has to manage aggro, regardless of his talent spec or play style, is the people he's grouped with. 
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This is so true I had to bring attention to it by quoting it. There are some very strange exceptions to it (that I'll tell you about in a minute), but really, how the entire party manages their aggro is one of the biggest deals in the game. Now on to the weird glitch/exception that happened with GG and I in Stranglethorn Vale the other night.

I'm a holy specced priest with no talent points placed into any of the talents that reduce aggro when doing damage and GG's Gnolack is mostly defensive spec. We were fighting the level 40-41 gorillas in Stranglethorn when we were 37 and we were kicking some butt despite them being orange and occasionally red (some 42s snuck in occasionally). We hit 38 while fighting and continued to fight the critters on our way back to Booty Bay without any problems. Got to Booty Bay, flew to get some training (my renew, flash heal, and smite were the only things upgraded), went back into Stranglethorn Vale to continue beating on the gorillas. Gnolack would charge, Aleri would throw on a shadow word: Pain. Despite GG hitting with charge and the next attack, as soon as Pain went off, I'd pull aggro. No healing done by me and I waited until I saw he hit with charge before paining. Same routine as when we were level 38 but didn't go back for training, but now instead of him holding aggro, I'd pull it with just a pain.

More testing. He'd charge, attack until he got enough rage for a sunder, then I'd throw on pain. Even with sunder armor on, the split second my pain did damage, that monkey would come after me. Still never threw out a heal either. Ohhh-kaay. Let's see about a wand shot on the next monkey and no pain, no heals, nothing but damage from the wand. Wait for Gnolack to charge, sit until I see dem shout and sunder on, throw out a wand bolt. Monkey charges me. By this time, I'm telling Tal about this wonderful little encounter; GG's confused, I'm confused, and Tal is confused. On the next monkey I decide, what the hell, the monkey's going to hate me no matter what, may as well just start throwing out as much damage as I can. The 100 health per tick I get back with renew and having shield, I can play tank to one monkey. I start the fight with smite, follow with a pain and then a mind-blast. Little did I know, GG had switched to defensive stance instead of the battle stance that he had been using when the monkeys were acting normally, but had a bad miss streak. The monkey is stuck to GG like glue. So I smite again (which crits), mindblast again (which crits) and follow with another smite. Dead monkey, never even looked at me through all that. So we stand for a minute saying, "Ummm, what?!" GG went back to battle stance, charged the next gorilla, and on that next gorilla things went back to normal - he was able to hold aggro against my pains and heals just like before we went to train, but the monkey would try to get to me if I hit him with a smite or mind-blast.

We have not seen this behavior repeated since then and hadn't seen it before that little deal and we just don't know what was going on. Don't know what triggered the weird behavior and can't get the weirdness to occur again. Just one of those really, weird deals. And so ends my post. ;)