So the guild I am in is not by any streach a serious hard core raiding guild. We do silly stuff. We do stupid stunts. And we do crazy things. However we are a PvE raiding guild regardless.

We have run into a issue because since 2.0 our guild size has tripled and instead of once weekly raids we are doing daily raids...leading to more gear than before and better skill at what we do.

We have easily cleared both 16man and 8man of all story modes of the new ops and want to go to HM but we keep hitting the same problem.

Agro pulling.

No matter what we do our DPS pull agro non-stop - sometimes for example I will fire a TM and a HS right after another and will be 15k+ instantly and I'll pull agro. While sometimes our tanks can taunt it off othertimes its less forgiving. For example we simply can't beat golden fury because the second we pull agro the droid hits each of our DPS twice for 16k each before our tanks can react.

We try guards but it doesn't do anything...we just pull anyways.

It only happened once but somehow I once pulled agro on a HM GF run through the tanks taunt....we were baffled as to how this happened.

So long story short I wanted to know since there are obviously guilds out there with a million times better DPS and tanks than ours...what do you guys do to stop agro pulling?

Thanks for the info and every possible solution possible would be great! Thank you!

The easier fix is to tell your DPS to hold off for a short while at the start so the Tanks have time to generate aggro. This isn't favourable when you have an enrage timer to consider, but it's a simple implementation. This doesn't necessarily mean don't attack the boss, just don't do anything bursty (i.e. pop relics, insp, high damaging abilities).

If it's still an issue, then maybe you need to have your Tanks look at their rotation and see if they're actually generating enough threat. If they aren't then have them read around on how to generate threat more effectively.

SSo long story short I wanted to know since there are obviously guilds out there with a million times better DPS and tanks than ours...what do you guys do to stop agro pulling?

From reading your description, I'm pretty sure one of three things is true: either your tanks are *absolutely* terrible, you're conflating randomly targeted attacks with aggro loss, or your DPS are simply being cleaved by standing in the wrong spot.

If you're not having any problems on *other* content, running with the same people, I'm pretty sure that the first isn't likely to be true: your DPS and tanks are probably in line so that you're managing similar levels of optimal damage/threat so one isn't really outpacing the other. The only way this *might* be possible is if your DPS is opening up *really hard* before your tanks have had an opportunity to generate baseline threat. For that, you either tell your DPS to hold off on going absolutely nuts until 10-15 seconds in or teach your tanks to generate better opening threat vis-a-vis optimized opening rotations.

My guess is that the problem is your confusion between randomly targeted attacks and aggro loss. There are some attacks that are designed specifically that, regardless of the current aggro state (i.e. whether they've got the taunt debuff on 'em or are just targeting you naturally), they'll either swap targets or outright attack someone completely different. They're a natural part of raiding. If the boss is behaving in a manner that absolutely perplexes you from a threat standpoint, it's generally a randomly targeted attack. I know for a fact that Golden Fury has a randomly targeted attack in Satellite Strike.

As to the cleaves, on HM GF, the damage the Fury deals is so high you pretty much have to have the Isotope-5 buff to tank them effectively even as a tank when you're packing more mitigation than any DPS could ever hope to achieve in their lifetimes. If your DPS are standing in the cleave area, they're gonna get *rocked*. Hard. Even a single cleave is gonna make 'em have a bad day.

1. Give the tanks a few seconds to hit the enemies/bosses to generate some threat along with their taunt.

2. DPS make sure to use their aggro dump.

3. After that, make sure the tanks are appropriately geared and competent.

And what I mean by the last part, a lot of bosses drop aggro and need to frequently re-taunted after certain phases, leaps, etc.

The adds on SM Golden Fury will destroy DPS if they don't have a tank on them. The tank should immediately be on them taunting them and getting threat.

1. Give the tanks a few seconds to hit the enemies/bosses to generate some threat along with their taunt.

2. DPS make sure to use their aggro dump.

3. After that, make sure the tanks are appropriately geared and competent.

And what I mean by the last part, a lot of bosses drop aggro and need to frequently re-taunted after certain phases, leaps, etc.

The adds on SM Golden Fury will destroy DPS if they don't have a tank on them. The tank should immediately be on them taunting them and getting threat.

Biggest thing for DPS to remember in HM and NM operations is to use your aggro dump and don't open with your hardest hitting attacks.

Most of the HM Operations mechanics require the DPS to do more than just stand still and hit their rotations, for instance Withering Terror on TFB, each DPS has to take turns on the flowers (actually the tactic we use is the off tank picks up the last flower) but the point stands.

The tanks should be guarding the 2 highest DPSers most of the time, in certain fights the healers need guarding as we pull a lot of threat now post 2.0. Also, tanks for the most part should not open with a taunt, open with their hardest threat generator that is not a taunt, i.e. Wither for sins, Force push for jugs (most bosses cannot be pushed). The tanks should only use their taunts as part of their threat generation rotation or if they are very good only if a bursty DPS (i.e. one who gets several crits on high dmg skills) manage to pull off them.

My 2c

Possible that the tanks are losing aggro to ability delay. You'll see a lot more of that in 16s than 8s or 4s.

One thing I did way back when when I would lose aggro (before several rebalancing patches) is pop a rakata relic of boundless ages on cooldown, while using a tank, at the beginning of fights. Another thing that can be done is to incorporate taunt into your rotation, though I'd be careful about doing this, as it can burn you on aggro dumps or swaps, if the fight has any of those.

Also, you'll want to make sure that the DPS aren't treating the first 10 seconds after pull as a burn phase. If you've got the DPS to finish the fight comfortably, you don't necessarily need to max like a parse to complete the fight. Also all DPS have a threat drop now, so they can start using it if you still have problems, though this idea is problematic for a pyro pt. Good news is nobody in their right mind uses those anymore.

Repeating some of the advice here:

1) High opening threat moves from tanks, then blow one taunt on top of that, a few more high threat moves, taunt again

2) To the extent you can, have tanks taunt off each other so after the above rotation second tank comes in and taunts on top of that. Just make sure your taunts will be up for add phase on GF

2) DPS put one full rotation in and then drop aggro (e.g. Leap, Zealous, Precision Slash, 3x Blade Rush, Blade Storm, then drop aggro)

3) If you have guardian dps have them leap to your aggro generators or sage pulls (but this shouldn't be necessary)

I'm going to distill Kitru's answer, since he was pretty much spot on: either your tanks are terribad or your DPS are attacking the wrong target / standing in the wrong place. The latter is rarely an issue on bosses, so I'm going to set it aside for now. Really, this comes down to bad tanking.

There is no tank class right now that should have any trouble holding agro. Vanguards have the lowest threat of the three, but they aren't too far behind Guardians. Shadows are hilariously OP in terms of threat generation when played correctly, so that certainly shouldn't be an issue (my co-tank still has a 66 hilt and he never loses agro to our DPS, who are rocking full 72s and pushing 3.5k+ openers). So, don't let your tanks tell you that it's not possible to hold agro with their class/gear. :-)

Work with your tanks to optimize their opening rotation. If they're a shadow/assassin, the opener should look like the following:

Pull (Sprint) > Slow Time/Wither > Project/Shock > Force Breach/Discharge (single taunt) > Double Strike/Thrash or Shadow Strike/Maul (2x or until proc) > Project/Shock (AoE taunt if no procs) > (Force Potency/Recklessness) Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning (AoE taunt here if you got the procs early) > Double Strike/Thrash or Shadow Strike/Maul until proc > Project/Shock > Slow Time/Wither (single taunt)

It's essentially impossible for your DPS to pull off your during this cycle, even if they open up with adrenals, relics, cooldowns, lucky crits and no guard. After this cycle, your threat is so obscenely high that you simply need to maintain your rotation to hold agro for the rest of the fight.

Guardians have a similarly high-threat+taunt rotation that they can use (though I'm not as familiar with it, so I'll leave it alone), and Vanguards have enough front-loaded burst due to their energy mechanic that they should be able to generate a sufficient amount of snap threat. Basically, there's no excuse for your tanks to lose agro.

Your DPS should not have to hold back. As a tank, I certainly appreciate the consideration, but telling the DPS to hold back is a crutch used by bad tanks. The DPS are supposed to beat the enrage timer, and the tanks are supposed to manage boss mechanics (including agro) to streamline this process. Asking the DPS to hold back is a failure on the part of the *tank*, not the DPS.

Apart from an actual taunt ability both single and aoe taunt in this game are both the largest threat builders in the game and should be used even if the tank already has the attention of the boss. Each use sets him to 130% of the currently highest threat value.

At the end of any given encounter taunt woll be the highest threat building ability every time because of this.

ps: Obviously increasing your threat by a certain portion of what you already have is going to do nothing right at the start, but within the first 10 seconds it will be a huge deal.

pps: Guard does in fact help a lot ... 25% threat decrease for it's target is noticable.

ppps: Some classes have very effective threat dumps ... particularly Marauders and Assassins. The others have a rather crappy one that can be very pretty to look at while highly ineffective sadly.

 

My guess is that the problem is your confusion between randomly targeted attacks and aggro loss. There are some attacks that are designed specifically that, regardless of the current aggro state (i.e. whether they've got the taunt debuff on 'em or are just targeting you naturally), they'll either swap targets or outright attack someone completely different. They're a natural part of raiding. If the boss is behaving in a manner that absolutely perplexes you from a threat standpoint, it's generally a randomly targeted attack. I know for a fact that Golden Fury has a randomly targeted attack in Satellite Strike.

 

As to the cleaves, on HM GF, the damage the Fury deals is so high you pretty much have to have the Isotope-5 buff to tank them effectively even as a tank when you're packing more mitigation than any DPS could ever hope to achieve in their lifetimes. If your DPS are standing in the cleave area, they're gonna get *rocked*. Hard. Even a single cleave is gonna make 'em have a bad day.

We know about cleaves and random switches. Golden Fury switching to me and almost one shotting me for about 25k 6 seconds into the boss fight i don't think is a random switch mechanic. We never stand in cleaves either.

But it seems the others answered it being that we are starting off too strong. We normally pop relics, adrenals, and blood thirst at the beginning to try and get a good first burst. It appears that seems to be a bad idea.

Thank you for the information!

We know about cleaves and random switches. Golden Fury switching to me and almost one shotting me for about 25k 6 seconds into the boss fight i don't think is a random switch mechanic. We never stand in cleaves either.

That's definitely fail tanking then. Your tanks *can* fix it, you just need to work with them a bit to tighten their rotation. I find (as a tank) that my threat was helped IMMENSELY (~20%) by rolling a DPS class. Just getting into the "maximum GCD usage" mindset really helps a lot. Also, I know the burst timings of all of the DPS classes, which helps me finesse my taunt timings depending on group composition.

But it seems the others answered it being that we are starting off too strong. We normally pop relics, adrenals, and blood thirst at the beginning to try and get a good first burst. It appears that seems to be a bad idea.

Honestly, I keep coming back to the fact that it's the tank's *job* to keep the boss off of you, even in the face of a really hard-hitting opening. Because of CD timing and differing rotation cycles, if you *don't* pop Bloodthirst+relics+adrenals+CDs early, then you're nerfing their net effectiveness by a LOT. It's not like you can just delay it and get the same effect. Obviously, if you guys are clearing the enrage with ease, then holding back might be the easy way to fix the problem, but if it were me, I'd slap your tanks around a bit. :-) (this coming from someone who mains a tank) It's better in the long-run too, since it forces your tanks to learn from the problem rather than shuffling it under the carpet.

We know about cleaves and random switches. Golden Fury switching to me and almost one shotting me for about 25k 6 seconds into the boss fight i don't think is a random switch mechanic. We never stand in cleaves either.

 

But it seems the others answered it being that we are starting off too strong. We normally pop relics, adrenals, and blood thirst at the beginning to try and get a good first burst. It appears that seems to be a bad idea.

 

Thank you for the information!

You may want to get creative with your threat drops and Taunts if your tanks are still having an issue. I can spike my dps up into the 5-6k range on an initial pull. As a result I can guarantee threat from the boss no matter what. In this case, a good thing to do is to have the tank watch the "Target of Target" (If he doesn't know what that is, he should be flogged). Once I pull, the tank taunts. I wait to see the taunt buff/animation and then put my threat drop in. What happens is the tank gets the threat I generated and adds on more to that, I then reduce my personal threat which will in turn widen the gap between the tanks threat and my own. Typically I will use my aggro dump after this once more and should NEVER have a problem again. If I do, I know the tank just can't tank.

You may want to get creative with your threat drops and Taunts if your tanks are still having an issue. I can spike my dps up into the 5-6k range on an initial pull. As a result I can guarantee threat from the boss no matter what. In this case, a good thing to do is to have the tank watch the "Target of Target" (If he doesn't know what that is, he should be flogged). Once I pull, the tank taunts. I wait to see the taunt buff/animation and then put my threat drop in. What happens is the tank gets the threat I generated and adds on more to that, I then reduce my personal threat which will in turn widen the gap between the tanks threat and my own. Typically I will use my aggro dump after this once more and should NEVER have a problem again. If I do, I know the tank just can't tank.

Agro dumping immediately *after* the taunt is definitely ideal. Most DPS (and tanks) miss this subtlety. As for initial TPS…

• Pull: 8592 threat
  
• Slow Time: 7k threat
  
• Project: 5k threat
  
• Force Breach: 5k threat
  
• Taunt: 7.65k threat
  
• Double Strike: 3k threat
  
• Shadow Strike: 4k threat
  
• Project crit: 6.5k threat
  
• FP + Telekinetic Throw: 14k threat
  
• AoE Taunt: 18.195k threat
  

Total threat: 78845. Total time: 13.5 seconds. TPS = 5840

Note that the majority of that 15 second interval is also debuffed such that a DPS *cannot* pull, and if they somehow manage to put off more threat than the tank early on, then the taunt will give even more threat than it otherwise would have (the above chain is a minimum).

In other words, I think your tanks are fail, Fenrir. :-) I have absolutely no doubt that you can put up the numbers you listed, but a good tank is going to be able to keep ahead of even that monstrously high burst (and it's *easy mode* if they guard you).

Note that the majority of that 15 second interval is also debuffed such that a DPS *cannot* pull, and if they somehow manage to put off more threat than the tank early on, then the taunt will give even more threat than it otherwise would have (the above chain is a minimum).

My threat opening is a bit wonky since I focus on trying to get my first TkT in as soon as possible. TkT is pretty much the point where no DPS is *ever* going to pull off of me, so I race to it as soon as possible:

Pull>Proj>ST>FB>Proj>TkT

I don't even bother to use taunt at any point in that and never have *any* threat problems. Going by your own numbers (my gear loadout is a bit more focused on threat generation than yours so I'll be higher; my guess is by ~5-10%), that 10.5 sec chain right there will generate 44.5k threat (8.5 + 5 + 7 + 5 + 5 + 14), and that's discounting threat generation from self healing (which should add another ~3k). With that, DPS have to exceed 6k DPS on their opening to pull threat off of me and that's without me ever having to taunt fluff.

My threat opening is a bit wonky since I focus on trying to get my first TkT in as soon as possible. TkT is pretty much the point where no DPS is *ever* going to pull off of me, so I race to it as soon as possible:

 

Pull>Proj>ST>FB>Proj>TkT

 

I don't even bother to use taunt at any point in that and never have *any* threat problems. Going by your own numbers (my gear loadout is a bit more focused on threat generation than yours so I'll be higher; my guess is by ~5-10%), that 10.5 sec chain right there will generate 44.5k threat (8.5 + 5 + 7 + 5 + 5 + 14), and that's discounting threat generation from self healing (which should add another ~3k). With that, DPS have to exceed 6k DPS on their opening to pull threat off of me and that's without me ever having to taunt fluff.

Going for Project first absolutely gets you your TkT sooner. The danger is that you have slightly lower snap threat. Whether or not this is an issue depends on the DPS you run with. I run with a Focus sentinel who will be hitting an 8k Force Sweep in the second GCD, followed by a 2+3+5=10k Master Strike and a 4k Blade Storm in the second, third and fourth GCDs (and that's assuming no crits). That's 22k damage in 6 seconds, or 3.6k DPS. That's well below your threshold, but they're hitting it much sooner than you expected. Weighing this against your opener:

Pull (8.5k) vs Leap (2k)

Project (5k) vs Force Sweep (8k)

Slow Time (7k) vs Master Strike (5k)

Force Breach (5k) vs Master Strike (5k)

Double Strike (3k) vs Blade Storm (4k) (you forgot to include this GCD, which you need due to Proj CD)

-----

28.5k vs 24k

Thus, said sentinel is just 7.35k off of the threshold where they rip agro. All that they need is a crit on two ticks of Master Strike and they have the boss. Taunting following Force Breach helps, but you have to be pretty quick about it. There might be a partial GCD in which agro is taken by the last tick of Master Strike and has yet to be restored by the taunt. It depends a bit on your own crits weighed against the roll which determines Force Sweep's base damage.

And that's a Focus sentinel. Combat has an even harder-hitting opening (their final Master Strike tick is 7.5k *without* critting):

Pull (8.5k) vs Leap (2k)

Project (5k) vs Precision Slash (2k) + Master Strike (7k)

Slow Time (7k) vs Master Strike (8k)

Force Breach (5k) vs Precision Slash (2k) + Dispatch (5k)

Double Strike (3k) vs Blade Rush (3k) + Blade Storm (8k) <---- due to faster GCD from Zen

That puts the combat sentinel at 37k, or 4.9k TPS. The threshold for agro rip from your rotation is 31.35k, which means the agro war is lost even without the combat sentinel needing to crit.

This is why I taunt. :-) Guarding would also resolve the issue, giving the sentinel just 27.75k threat, but if they get lucky on their crits, they're back to facetanking.

 

In other words, I think your tanks are fail, Fenrir. :-) I have absolutely no doubt that you can put up the numbers you listed, but a good tank is going to be able to keep ahead of even that monstrously high burst (and it's *easy mode* if they guard you).

LOL... Or maybe you just play with a fail group of players, when grim says lose aggro he doesn't mean the boss turns and attacks him, he means it targets him and then it immediately gets taunted back, I don't know what guild you're in or what you're level of experience is, but my guild has at least 6 of our 10 dps that can pull that 5-6k burst dps. There aren't 6 guards that can go out in 16 man, but you're obviously all knowing, I mean you told Vanguards to all stack defense because the numbers support it.

LOL... Or maybe you just play with a fail group of players, when grim says lose aggro he doesn't mean the boss turns and attacks him, he means it targets him and then it immediately gets taunted back, I don't know what guild you're in or what you're level of experience is, but my guild has at least 6 of our 10 dps that can pull that 5-6k burst dps.

If the boss turns and targets grim, it's fail tanking. Full stop. I am not, under any circumstances, challenging the caliber of your DPS. I run with some extremely good DPS, and I know what is possible in terms of burst threat and unrelenting sustained damage. What I am saying is that all tanks are capable of holding agro in the face of any burst, as long as they aren't under-geared to the point of hilarity. My cotank has a 66 hilt and holds agro in the face of unguarded DPS who burst 5k-6k and sustain over 2.8k. If he's able to pull that off in the gear he has, there's absolutely no excuse for a well-geared tank in any DPS group.

There aren't 6 guards that can go out in 16 man, but you're obviously all knowing, I mean you told Vanguards to all stack defense because the numbers support it.

Vanguards have been rebalanced, as have all the tanks in the game. I can walk you through exactly *why* the numbers say what they say, and why it's valid. Holding onto pre-2.0 gearing philosophies does not demonstrate your level of elite-ness; it demonstrates that you're blind to evidence.

I What I am saying is that all tanks are capable of holding agro in the face of any burst, as long as they aren't under-geared to the point of hilarity. My cotank has a 66 hilt and holds agro in the face of unguarded DPS who burst 5k-6k and sustain over 2.8k. If he's able to pull that off in the gear he has, there's absolutely no excuse for a well-geared tank in any DPS group.

I usually to have no problems with aggro (except some trash fights but that is easily recovered usually - aggro dumps are really important there). On boss fights my opening rotation is exactly the same as you posted. But with my 66 hilt I sometimes run into problems with one guardian DPS and one gunslinger I do ops with. I know the guardian does a bit over 2.8k DPS on the dummy. I tend to think it may be just gear issue. Of course it can just be used as opportunity to build more threat and if they pull on particular fight consistently I will just let them and re-taunt when boss changes targets (some bosses are a bit slow about it).

On the other hand I joined other guild's run into TFB HM yesterday as they were short one tank. Their main tank was a shadow with full underworld/verpine gear (72 MH and OH) and he lost aggro more times I can count during that run even though we cleared bosses without much problem. So it definately is skill/rotation dependent far more then gear as I didn't have that much problem with aggro in the same group.

From PUG runs I took part in and stuff like that I can also say the problem can be caused by DPS actually attacking before the tank, then the tank HAS to taunt and if he cannot use AOE taunt for some reason later it can get tricky.

To the author of the thread I'd say just ask some other tank to run with you once and check if problem persists. There are a lot of experienced raiders out there who have ALT's or couldn't run particular week with their guilds. At least on my server there are quite a few.

 

• Pull: 8592 threat
  
• Slow Time: 7k threat
  
• Project: 5k threat
  
• Force Breach: 5k threat
  
• Taunt: 7.65k threat
  
• Double Strike: 3k threat
  
• Shadow Strike: 4k threat
  
• Project crit: 6.5k threat
  
• FP + Telekinetic Throw: 14k threat
  
• AoE Taunt: 18.195k threat
  

 

Total threat: 78845. Total time: 13.5 seconds. TPS = 5840

Are you trying to say that your AoE taunt causes 18.195k threat?

Your DPS numbers are low in comparison to what "Elite DPS" do. Go look at torparse.

I've spent a very significant amount of time researching and watching the DPS numbers in the game right now. 2.8k is excellent. There are some classes doing a lot more (e.g. 3k+ parses from some gunslingers), and there are a few classes doing less, but 2.8-2.9k is about the range of geared, competent DPS in the current game.

And yes, I've looked at Severity Gaming DPS on torparse. You do not have a full DPS group doing 3k. As far as I can tell, if you guard your highest DPS, then 2.8k average with 5k-ish burst is the worst you have to deal with from your unguarded raiders.

Also solely looking at time to kill as a tank isn't the end all be all solution. Being a truly great tank is about minimizing the amount of damage you take but also about being able to be reliably healed, aka removing as much spikiness as possible. With the bonus' to shield/absorb you receive as a vanguard to completely ignore absorb and stack defense is asinine.

Read the tree. Vanguards get an enormous boost to defense. Furthermore, defense has a much more lenient rate of return than it has in the past, relative to shield/absorb. That is why it is such a priority for vanguards until the Underworld tier. The Vanguard bonuses to shield/absorb aren't what they used to be, and are generally quite overrated. They're good, but the shadow bonuses are far superior (which is why shadows start valuing shield/absorb at a much lower stat budget than vanguards do).

As for defense, it doesn't make you as spiky as you seem to think. Defense doesn't behave quite the same as dodge in most MMOs. The reason for this comes down to content design: nearly all "big" physical attacks are split into multiple hidden components, which smooths out the RNG for defense. In other words, defense is not the "all or nothing" stat that it would initially seem to be. If it were, then guardians would be completely unhealable.

Ignoring defense in favor of shield/absorb is gimping your mitigation by a VERY significant margin. That's your choice, and if you really want to play the game in that way I have no objections, but dispel any illusions you have that it is optimal in any sense of the word.

Are you trying to say that your AoE taunt causes 18.195k threat?

It does. Add up the threat that I have at that point and then multiply by 0.3 (assuming an average boss, where you're actually standing outside of "melee range" as defined by the game engine). That is the threat granted by the AoE taunt.

Since when does a taunt generate threat? The taunt itself does the following:

When not being targeted:

Puts you on top of the threat meter and forces the target to attack you for 6 seconds

When being targeted:

Forces the target to attack you for 6 seconds

If you look at a combat log and see threat gained, it's due to being put on top of the highest threat. Not due to the ability causing the threat.