Guard AA Related Threads

[salle]

Well in my own groping spec I've gone for STR 446, AGI 448, STA 447, INT 48822. That's what I think works best for me. But that's because I'm geared and play the way I play. What's best for you I do think only you yourself can figure out.

To find out what that is I would suggest ask yourself a few questions of what most often goes wrong when you tank, and try to see the reasons behind why something happened.
(Like if your problem is you're dying alot is it because you don't have enough defensive gear, or is it because the mob or some of the mobs in an encounter gets lose and starts hitting on other people in your group making the job for the healer way more difficult as the groups incoming damage goes up...)
When you then have come to a conclusion about your biggest shortcomings then try to use the AA specc (or gear, casting order or whatever) to correct it.

The problem I have with Exe Anger is that sure you gain threat so you hold aggro better, but you do gain thread if you increase your DPS as well. and the mob dies quicker which is better than just gaining threat. But if you can gain more hate from it then sure it might be the better option for you.

and I guess you were in Wis line for the DPS mod, there's a crafted Strength ring that procs a DPS buff that's up almost constantly as long as you keep fighting.
I don't know if reversal is really worth to put any points in, I don't usualy see any impressive numbers from it on my parses atleast, but agian if you do then sure spend some points in it. it's better than putting points into STR endline or base values, for increasing your dps atleast.

And if you want to impress people they can still see the hate meter... alot of the time when my DPSers talk about if a tank does something good or bad they refer to the % they can achieve rather than the DPS the tank had.

[Atavax]

thx for the wise words. i think i'll keep my current spec at least for now. i find that doing executioner's wrath, then staggering charge, then belly smash is doing alot of snap threat on single targets, that people havent been pulling off of me in the very beginning which i think is the most common problem i have with tanking is the burst at the beginning. do people really cast sw before the fight, what i find working is after bs, i do reinforcment, then when reinforcment is up, if theres dps 80 or above or when they get that high i pop sw, and then once sw is done, wont be much longer until reinforcment is up.

almost every time i group theres at least 1 dps that is mythicaled, so im solely concerned with threat, trying to keep the boss off someone doing 12-18k depending on how good they are.

[salle]

Yes, Sentry Watch, Fortify and Stone/Sentinel Sphere can and be cast before pull whenever possible, you increase survivability of everyone in your group and get aggro before even pulling, it's not much and it's only noticable when you body pull. But still, better than nothing. most of them also have ways to increase survivability for the rest of the group though and that's really why you want them up before a pull, so if one does get lose they're not gonna kill your group member with one swing.

I think most of us start our melee combat with Decimate, its the highest hit chanse and ontop of that it debuffs mobs defensive skills so our hit chanse goes up of landing the next few hits, (spending point in EOF for it is smart), then it varies a bit more, some uses exact strike as it's the 2nd best hit rate of all of our CAs, I preffer to do Accel, Exe and then Mar, to land my biggest hit quickly, (and also increasing Auto Attack damage as it's way more than CA damage) giving me as much hate as possible as quickly as possible, depending on if people usualy peel quickly I can chose to keep on just hitting the biggests hit in order of initial damage or if people arn't peeling as much I do shortest recast first. (as they have the highest DPS for me)

Remember in EOF Subclass tree we have moderate increase although you have to spend a few "unessesary" points to get it, might be worth it if there's just one person who's peeling.

[Atavax]

i save decimate and acel strike for right after i pop reinforcment, because every attack i get off with reinforcment up gives me 565 more threat then it normally would, so during reinforcment attacking quickly and having a high chance of hitting is very important imo.

[Steelbadger]

Originally Posted by Atavax

i save decimate and acel strike for right after i pop reinforcment, because every attack i get off with reinforcment up gives me 565 more threat then it normally would, so during reinforcment attacking quickly and having a high chance of hitting is very important imo.

Unwise.

Acceleration strike can be kept up 80ish% of the time even with only 4 points in it and you lose a lot of benefit by "saving" it, keep it up and it should be up whenever you use reinforcement and you get the additional benefit of having it running at all the other times too.

"Saving" Decimate for proccing Reinforcement is also a poor move, the time the higher hit rate is most beneficial is on the pull while the mob is completely undebuffed, by the time you need to cast Reinforcement most of your CAs will have a 90+% hit rate thanks to liberal application of debuffs and the smaller faster recast abilities still give you that extra 565 hate.

[Atavax]

Originally Posted by Steelbadger

Unwise.

Acceleration strike can be kept up 80ish% of the time even with only 4 points in it and you lose a lot of benefit by "saving" it, keep it up and it should be up whenever you use reinforcement and you get the additional benefit of having it running at all the other times too.

"Saving" Decimate for proccing Reinforcement is also a poor move, the time the higher hit rate is most beneficial is on the pull while the mob is completely undebuffed, by the time you need to cast Reinforcement most of your CAs will have a 90+% hit rate thanks to liberal application of debuffs and the smaller faster recast abilities still give you that extra 565 hate.

i cast reinforcement shortly after pull, i only do dungeons, so the boss fights are relatively short, i do the executioner's wrath, staggering charge, belly smash, reinforcement, then decimate, acceleration strike, ect. and then after i use it the first time, i dont wait to use acceleration strike again, just use it whenever its up.

[Steelbadger]

Originally Posted by Atavax

i cast reinforcement shortly after pull, i only do dungeons, so the boss fights are relatively short, i do the executioner's wrath, staggering charge, belly smash, reinforcement, then decimate, acceleration strike, ect. and then after i use it the first time, i dont wait to use acceleration strike again, just use it whenever its up.

Acceleration strike does not take effect immediately, it is applied after you use 3 CAs. Using it as you are means you only get the benefits of it for half of the reinforcement duration.

I also don't use Reinforcement like that, the benefits of the extra 500 or so hate per hit are tiny compared to the benefits of the positional increase it provides in emergency situations.

I'm also wondering why you're leading off with some of your lowest damage attacks, assuming you don't tell your dps to give you 5 seconds to establish aggro you would want to hump out as much aggro on pull as possible (especially on short fights as people are more likely to jump the gun to get that extra nuke in).

[Halbarad]

I think he is going for the extra hate that the stun effects of staggering charge and belly smash provide...

For me Decimate, Acceleration Strike, Mar, Exact Strike, Retaliatory Strike is the preferred opening sequence.