Noob tanks or ''how to save a noob''

Wonderfull story. I got a flashback on that UK run from Sutardy with ninja pulling warlock!

Q u o t e:
In almost every instance in wow, you'll have at least one noob with you who constantly gets aggro from the mobs. This noob has usually rolled a noobish class like warrior, paladin or druid, and he probably thinks he's some kind of “tank” or something.

Obviously, you must save this noob from the dangerous mobs in the instance. This guide explains how to prevent him from being hit by the mobs, so the party can successfully complete the instance.


Part 1 – The pull

The noob will regularly be the first to aggro a group of mobs, often by using a ranged ability. Such behaviour can not be allowed, and should be stopped.

The best way to stop it is to nip it in the bud. That's why you should always try to attack mobs before the noob does. Hit them with everything you've got before he gets the chance to attack. Using abilities like multi-shot, which hit multiple mobs, will make it virtually impossible for him to get aggro on all of the mobs, and your party will be save.

Should the noob get in an attack before you do, don't worry. Abilities like fireball, charge and cheap shot can still save the day. Just be sure to hit the mobs that are running towards the noob before they reach him, and pull them as far away from him as possible. You get extra points for breaking a dangerous group of hard-hitting mobs into pieces, spreading them out across the area so the noob can not possible reach them all.

Sometimes, the noob will try to pull a caster mob. Realising he cannot possibly win a fight against a caster mob, he will move back around a corner, out of the line of sight of the caster mob. What the noob probably doesn't know is that the caster mob will just run after him, around the corner, and start attacking him again. To prevent this from happening, you should immediately lay the smack down on the caster mob with your ranged abilities. That way, the caster mob will target you instead and stay in place, far from the noob.


Part 2 – The fight

Sometimes, the noob will manage to get aggro on a whole bunch of mobs, who will all start hitting him. Don't worry, not all is lost just yet. You can still save the noob. The most important thing is that you start doing as much damage as you can immediately – don't give the noob a chance to foolishly build threat on all mobs. As soon as the fight starts, use your highest-damage abilities. If the noob misses his first attack or two, chances are that you can still manage to pull aggro away from him.

It is also important that you target a different mob than the one the noob is targeting, since that one will be the hardest to pull aggro on. Use /assist to see the noob's target, then pick a different one yourself. If the group you are in is using marks, never, ever, attack the mob marked with a skull. Usually, the mob you will have to attack is marked with a moon or a blue square instead.

When you successfully manage to get aggro off the noob, make sure to run away from him as quickly as possible. Put some serious distance between him and you, so he doesn't unintentionally use a taunt ability on your mob. After all, it's your mob, not his.

In instances where mobs run away when they get low health, make sure that your party burns down the health of several mobs at once. That way, it will be nearly impossible to stop them all for the noob and the others in your party, so as they run away they will aggro more mobs, which means you will finish the instance quicker.

If you are in a team with a warrior or druid noob, keep an eye on the red bar below next to his name. The more he hits and gets hit, the fuller this bar gets. Your goal is to keep this bar as empty as possible. The emptier the bar is, the less threat the noob can generate, and the mobs will move to more appropriate targets like you and the healer instead.

If the noob is a paladin, he will have a blue bar instead. This bar will be full at the start of fights, and grow empty as the noob does foolish things. If the noob gets healed, though, it will get a bit fuller again. That's why you should make sure you are the one taking damage instead of the noob. That way, his blue bar will go empty really quickly, and he will not be able to do any more foolish things.


Part 3 – Party etiquette

Teaming with a noob can be a frustrating experience. These noobs not only steal your aggro, they also steal the heals that you need to stay alive and do your imba dps. So, the moment you get hit, you should start reminding the healer that you need heals. Spamming “HEAL ME!!!” in party chat is a good way to do this. Even better is spamming it in raid warning. That way, it will appear right in the middle of everyone's screen, and the healer will have no choice but to heal you instead of the noob.

It is also important to keep the noob in his proper place. The best way to do that is to repeatedly ask if anyone has damage meter installed, and ask to have it posted after every fight. Make sure to laugh at the noob and the healer if they're below you in damage, and call them noobs. This will force them to respect your leet skillz.

In some groups, the noob will ask if you have KTM or Omen installed. If the noob does that, be sure to insult him, and tell him that only noobs need addons. If he questions you, ask another party member to post the damage meter stats, and point out how much better you are.

Of course, the real reason you're doing instances in the first place is phat lewt. To make sure that you get the phattest lewt, make sure to loot mobs as quickly as possible, especially when you're still in combat. That way, any greens, blues and purples will pop up on everyone's screen while they're still fighting, which will obscure their vision of the fight but increase their morale.

Also, make sure to roll need on everything you can possibly use, even if it doesn't fit your class or spec or you already have better gear. You deserve it – you saved the party from the noob, so you should get first pick of any drops. It's only logical.

Finally, and most important of all, always leave during the middle of an instance. This will make it clear to the rest of the group just how important you are. For added effect, pull some mobs right after you leave the group. The others will be in awe of your greatness.
[ Post edited by Ikkou ]

hehehe nice, next time we get a guy like that dude on Saturday I'll just not heal him a few times til he gets the idea. I presume as long as he gets whacked the MT will (should?) be next in line on the aggro meter?

What I mean by that is - if I do no healing at all until I see the MT health going down we should be able to save from a wipe?


Edited to add:
One of the benefits of being pretty much a single target healing specialist, is that I pretty much *only* focus on keeping MT alive. Random party deaths I don't consider too much of a failure as long as the dude at the front is standing by the time the dust settles.

Temple wrote:hehehe nice, next time we get a guy like that dude on Saturday I'll just not heal him a few times til he gets the idea. I presume as long as he gets whacked the MT will (should?) be next in line on the aggro meter?

What I mean by that is - if I do no healing at all until I see the MT health going down we should be able to save from a wipe?


Edited to add:
One of the benefits of being pretty much a single target healing specialist, is that I pretty much *only* focus on keeping MT alive. Random party deaths I don't consider too much of a failure as long as the dude at the front is standing by the time the dust settles.

Well aggro on MT after ninja pull is not next in line but yours if you heal if you dont heal depends on the ractions of me and other DPSes. If others are cool enough and dont make a move until I do something than its ok. Sadly this is not the case and whole group goes into DPS race with the notion the more dmg the faster theyll go down and well be safe. Wrong! Best move is to sit tight and wait until Tank grabs them all together in one spot otherwise its insane. Ironicly that kind of behaviour tempers our skills as tanks and healers!
Best example is those 4 mobs in front of first boss in UK spread in two groups left and right. To the right is usualy one caster which i have to pull with heroic order. So i have to be closer to that group which means I cant agrro all 4 at the same time - means I need working space. DPS dude from cited article is ofc not aware of this and he goes and deals dmg on skull before i get TC+shockwave on (just as that warlock did) and it almoust killed you and him. The fight before second boss killed you and him!

So yea no healing on ninja pullers and just let them die. The only stuff there what should be done is tank trying to get aggro, and healer healing tank with EASY touch otherwise hell overaggro last mob in marks!

Teshija wrote: It is also important to keep the noob in his proper place. The best way to do that is to repeatedly ask if anyone has damage meter installed, and ask to have it posted after every fight. Make sure to laugh at the noob and the healer if they're below you in damage, and call them noobs. This will force them to respect your leet skillz.

In some groups, the noob will ask if you have KTM or Omen installed. If the noob does that, be sure to insult him, and tell him that only noobs need addons. If he questions you, ask another party member to post the damage meter stats, and point out how much better you are.

Hehe rules i will start to live by espatialy the last one....

This remaind me what addons are good to use right now i only have DBM.... What ells is good to have Tes you recomended omen to se your threat lvl if im not mistaken but is ther any more...

Yea forgot about it.
Yes Omen is the best there is and easy to use. You can always see visualy the amount of your threat compared to tanks and you can see when it is time to push and when it is time to slow down a bit!

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omen-threat-meter.aspx

Here is da link to it

Cool, I''m not touching a button til I see the MT health start to go down, I can assume anyone else taking heat pulled by accident - I'll start bearing that in mind.

Secondly and something I noticed yesterday when we ere in Naxx that I think I need to watch, when you were running in for pulls a couple of times - I hit you with Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light (two of my new macros). Now - *niether* of these spells heals, and neither of them alters you HP in any way directly - Sacred Shield is, obviously, a shield that *helps* me heal after you've taken damage - and Beacon of Light is a buff which also helps me keep you up after you've started to take damage. Yet I noticed that when I hit you with them whilst you were working up aggro I sometimes got aggro myself..... which seems a bit like a bug to me. Neither spell should generate threat, in as much as say BoM or BoW does..... yet it certainly looked like they caused me to get aggro.

As it turned out on all occasions you snatched aggro back before anything could get to me, but still.... I don't think that should be happening. Anywho I'll try to hit you with them before you start pullling from now on trouble is Sacred Shield is a very short lived buff (30 seconds).

Hhmmm think its like Aka's HoTs. I charge in he put a HOT on me or something when I get to mobs he sometimes get aggro but it usualy never gets past that in 99,9% of the cases. I think we got in trouble only once becouse of it and it was something weird than.
So dont think you should worry about it, UNLESS we are dealing with group of dispersed mobs (for example 4 mobs before first boss in UK, or timear constructs in oculus with those priests or something sorrounding them in wide circle)!

Leanah1 wrote:This remaind me what addons are good to use right now i only have DBM.... What ells is good to have Tes you recomended omen to se your threat lvl if im not mistaken but is ther any more...

Aye omen seems to be the de-facto threat add-on - I have it but tbh I'm normally too busy watching health bars to think about threat - I shoul watch it though cause I have some threat reduction 'Hands' that will help DPSers that pull aggro by overthreating.

Incidentally your mention of DBM reminded me of what I said yesterday on vent. I can use it to set your own timers for cooldowns etc, just make a macro for your spell and put this line in after the cast line:

/dbm timer <time of cooldown in seconds> <warning message>

Thus my Sacred Shield macro looks like this:

/cast [target=focus] Sacred Shield
/dbm timer 30 Sacred Time!

Which casts Sacred Shield on my focus target (MT is ALWAYS my focus target) then lets me know via DBM countdown when it needs to be refreshed! at which point I whack the macro button again.... profit!

Teshija wrote:Hhmmm think its like Aka's HoTs. I charge in he put a HOT on me or something when I get to mobs he sometimes get aggro but it usualy never gets past that in 99,9% of the cases. I think we got in trouble only once becouse of it and it was something weird than.
So dont think you should worry about it, UNLESS we are dealing with group of dispersed mobs (for example 4 mobs before first boss in UK, or timear constructs in oculus with those priests or something sorrounding them in wide circle)!

Indeed but I can understand a HoT generating threat - it's working with your HP and healing you - those two I use don't do that.

Ah well - no worries whatever it does I'll keep an eye out

Gotta work my 'Hand' spells into my repertoir now.......

It is also important to keep the noob in his proper place. The best way to do that is to repeatedly ask if anyone has damage meter installed, and ask to have it posted after every fight. Make sure to laugh at the noob and the healer if they're below you in damage, and call them noobs. This will force them to respect your leet skillz.


Allll about the leet skillz!

But yeah Temple the reason you were getting aggro is because you buffed the target. Tesh runns in, you buff him with beacon of light and unless he's down some AOE, then the mobs he's engaged will proceed to mash your face - Not the tanks

Now the problem i had in naxx was that the OT was pulling the 4 adds on Mexxaena fight and just attacking one add. So i had to lay off healing for a few secs, meaning he nearly died, because i would of had aggro.
Infact i got aggro during the fight because he wasn't attacking them all.

Best way to get over this is to wait untill you see all the mobs gathered around the tank. Wit a few seconds. Then start healing.

As tesh said about the 4 mobs before the first boss in UK - Ones a caster mob so you will get aggro once you start healing anyone, untill the tank picks up the caster.

I usually war stomp near the mob, so that it stops attacking me and gives time for the tank to pick it up.
You could hammer of justice the mob for the same effect.

Akaris wrote:
Now the problem i had in naxx was that the OT was pulling the 4 adds on Mexxaena fight and just attacking one add. So i had to lay off healing for a few secs, meaning he nearly died, because i would of had aggro.
Infact i got aggro during the fight because he wasn't attacking them all.

Well that guy was downright awfull. I was looking him while tanking boss (thnx to max distance camer I discovered with help from you guys) I can see pretty much all raid without any problem! Not only he didnt use AoE tanking he was slacking a bit in positioning them in tight group but he can live with that. The time the Buc got stunned and he couldnt kill the mob the OT just stood there and jumped up and down, looking at the situation it took 5 or more secs before buc regained senses and this guy did nothing. His problem wasnt that he wasnt in nax before he dont know how to Tank properly.