Thread: Swaping threat help

Hi all.

I've recently made it to lvl 75 on my guard. I admit i've rushed through the content and haven't got much experince tanking. I know the Healing and dps roles in my rk main.
I've been getting some experience tanking, now pulling off Foundry t2 and draigoch without trouble but, i can't swap aggro. I've tried last night in a ToO lightning kin run swaping aggro with a medium geared, well played warden and swapping aggro was so painfull.
Is there any other way to drop aggro other then turning off threat stance and doing only auto-attacks? What's the best way to get aggro fast from a warden other than challenge ou litany? (engage and fray the edge alone don't do it)

I have 2nd agers with good legacys, only missing on the relics, just that threat swapping is just a pain.

Ty

I've done aggro swapping with a warden back in OD (poison boss) and it is a bit tricky. Basically what you need is for the warden to have main aggro so you can just copy his aggro with engage or CtD. Then when you are tanking you pop threat stance and go easy. When the warden needs to be tanking you drop threat stance and he should have enough aggro to make up for the 28% perceived threat from threat stance. In general wardens have better tools to build up loads of aggro so as long as the warden is generating enough aggro you can do the swapping with the skills given to guardians. Takes a bit of practice but once you have done it a few times you know how far you can go.

It looked like we we're both loosing way to much threat in the swap. also the dps group didn't helped, gaining aggro during the swaps. I guess me and my kin warden will be spending some time at the turttle working it out.

BTW, has anyone done this with 3 tanks? I know it has been done with one, but that guy had twice my morale pool.

Some aggro-swapping tips/basics below. Folks may find some of the 'donts' obvious but I wouldn't mention it if I haven't seen them being done before. Hopefully this is helpful.

Engage+Threat Stance is the easiest way to grab aggro in a swap on a guard. If you're swapping with a Warden then dropping aggro should be as easy as dropping threat stance, for your part. Keep the Warden and guard in separate groups so they don't end up leaching each other's threat.

I'd not recommend going easy on building threat, even while the other guy is tanking, because you need to ensure you're toward the top of the threat list for the raid. Keeping pace with heavy-hitting DPS classes will be problematic if you choose to only do auto-attacks, and makes you completely dependent on Engage not missing. If the Warden is in the DPS group then there will be plenty of threat for him to leach and the DPS classes will be less likely to outpace the tanks. Remaining toward the top of the threat list means if Engage misses (and it does on these bosses sometimes) that TS alone may be enough to get you through to the next swap (or the next minute while Engage is on cooldown).

Also, do not use Engage at the beginning of the fight. The threat copy will be copying an inconsequential amount of threat. It will do next to nothing for you. If you find you absolutely have to use it on an open because DPS is front-loading the best you can probably do is throw out Challenge and toward the end of the force taunt effect issue Engage so you can hold the boss for at least a little while the threat table fills and you now actually have some threat for Engage to copy. The real solution, though, is to have the DPSers think about what they're doing and allow threat to build up on the tank before really laying into the boss. Teamwork is a huge key when it comes to threat management in this game.

Belts with +PT passives are a help, as is traiting Litany Master for the extra +8%PT on Threat Stance.

Overall swapping aggro should be fairly easy, as long as misses on Engage aren't plaguing you. If they are you can trait Challenge the Darkness for an emergency threat copy (long cooldown so you're probably not going to be able to use that more than once in a boss encounter).

One last thing, when you swap to take aggro, do not be sitting in the group. Move to the side or front of the boss so when you pull aggro off the other tank the group isn't getting any frontal AoEs.

Good luck and happy swapping.

I disagree with the part about keeping the Warden and Grd in separate groups. I've run this boss many times with a Warden, and we share the same group, and his aggro leach off me when the time comes is very effective in maintaining a smooth and swift aggro transition.

Occasionally the Threat cycle does get screwed up, but more often than not we complete the fight without too much trouble. When I'm not the aggro target I stand at 90 degrees to the Warden on the boss's left shoulder, in Block stance. To take it back I run in front and toggle Threat stance, FtE and Engage is nearly always enough to get him. To drop him I toggle off Threat, wait for the Warden to get it back, and then move off to his left shoulder again.

One other suggestion I may make, if for some reason you have engage miss or something of that nature have the warden use their deflection gambit to drop aggro. Assuming you are second on the list it should go right to you.

Your biggest mistake is bringing a warden to aggro swap in the first place, bring another Guard or champ or maybe a captain and your life will be so much easier.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to stand there (I even turn my auto attacks off) while waiting for the warden to get aggro, all the while the debuffs are ticking upward. Add to this the chance that the warden will be one shotted, and there is no reason to bring them.

Bring a Guard and presto the swap is made, same with champs. wardens as an off tank maybe, kiting ok, but co-tank, no thanks.

Originally Posted by Gwyndor

I disagree with the part about keeping the Warden and Grd in separate groups. I've run this boss many times with a Warden, and we share the same group, and his aggro leach off me when the time comes is very effective in maintaining a smooth and swift aggro transition.

While you may disagree (and I can see why you may) it's perfectly viable and is how we run it every week without a hitch. I agree if you're suffering some kind of a problem solely between the guard and warden swap putting them in the same group will make it easier for the warden to grab aggro from the guard, but it will occur at the expense of the guard's threat level which means it's also potentially at the expense of raid DPS and also aggro stability between DPS vs tanks. We choose to put the warden with the highest non-tank threat classes (DPSers) to facilitate warden threat building without subtracting threat from the guard.

To the OP, I'm sure either setup would work fine. Definitely pick whichever works out better for your particular group.

Originally Posted by Gwyndor

To take it back I run in front and toggle Threat stance, FtE and Engage is nearly always enough to get him.

This made me curious... why FtE and then perform a threat copy? Wouldn't you rather Engage and then FtE? It seems to me that FtE -> Engage will negate FtE in the event you're not on the top of the threat table.

Originally Posted by Jatayu

Your biggest mistake is bringing a warden to aggro swap in the first place, bring another Guard or champ or maybe a captain and your life will be so much easier.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to stand there (I even turn my auto attacks off) while waiting for the warden to get aggro, all the while the debuffs are ticking upward. Add to this the chance that the warden will be one shotted, and there is no reason to bring them.

Hmm... I can understand how it's easier in U5 to bring a heavy guard than a warden; it takes a more geared out warden than a guard to address survivability. Regardless, bringing a warden is perfectly viable in both the threat and survivability aspects. With the threat tools available to the warden currently in U5 I don't understand why a warden would lag so far behind in the threat list; an aggro swap shouldn't take any long period of time and certainly doesn't for us. Also, if anyone is being one-shotted in the raid perhaps a mechanic is (unintentionally or otherwise) being ignored?

To the OP, all I can say is, for what it's worth, a warden can tank this boss both reliably and repeatedly, performing all the aggro swaps, etc., needed. If your particular playerbase means you're bringing a warden to the fight it is still completely achievable and, in my opinion, not a mistake in and of itself.

Since you are mentioning ToO lightning, here are a few tips on this fight that I have not seen mentionned above:

• The faster you go, the better : you need to build tons of aggro to let your DPSers kill the troll as fast as possible
• This means that you should not hold back from building threat to let anyone catch up to you

Since you are running with a warden, the easiest way is to leave the warden in the heavy DPSers group, to leech as much aggro as he can from his group. The second easy trick is to slot "grim challenge", "litany of challenge" and "challenge the darkness". Fire off challenge as soon as it is up, and if you get a resist use challenge the darkness as a backup challenge. Try to reach at least 400 agility and 4000 finesse to reduce misses and resists. Stay in block stance (this will reduce the amount of static you get) and leave all the hard work of being first on the aggro list to your fellow warden.

I used to play the normal way until I had a night with massive lag. Then I discovered this easy mode. Makes you wonder why we always try to be at the top of our game...

I agree with Jatayu.
True, wardens can do the job, it just makes things worlds easier if you swap aggro between two guards. One of my warden friends (top geared, very well played warden) says its easier with two guards than the guard/warden team.

Considering you aren't a very experienced tank, I would go with little steps. Learn how the fight goes at its easiest (two guards in this case) then once you get really comfortable tanking the boss try with a warden. By then you'll learn tricks to the boss (like timing pledges/fortitude/pots etc). I would suggest practicing swapping aggro with your warden friend too. Since the Turtle raid is now a 24 hr lock period instead of a week, you can try practicing there.

Also, what actually was the problem with the threat swapping?
A few posters have assumed that the warden couldn't pull off of you, but from reading that engage and fray the edge didn't get you fast aggro, I'm assuming it was the other way around? You can trait Challenge down to 30 secs and hit that when you need to take aggro; follow it up with Ignore the Pain (if it isn't on cool down) for the block responses so you can use a litany. If Ignore the pain is on cool down, follow challenge with your normal threat building rotation.

if engage and fray the edge isn't doing it, you should be hitting engage -> guardian's threat (or vice-versa). if you're not pulling aggro with both of these up, there's something very wrong. either engage missed or someone else has +~30% perceived threat

do you have threat generation up legacy on your belt and are you traited 5 blue with the capstone along with a decent amount of crit? (i have about 17-19% with buffs, plus a 4-5% bonus from shield spikes).

losing aggro in the swap is tough. you both should be building threat from the beginning, regardless of who the first tank is

swapping between guardian's defense and guardian's threat stance is the most effective way for you to boost and dump aggro. it's a very useful tool for guardians since they can both build a lot of aggro then one can simply boost his or her perceived threat. i'm not sure if wardens have a way to do something similar to this, but i know they have an aggro dump skill.

also engage is very important (when it's available) in lieu of challenge since it makes your threat level the highest rather than force taunting something to you for 10-13s (and then goes back if your threat level isn't the highest)


challenge is a good skill to use so that you can have 10s to hit engage, threat stance, etc. to make sure you keep aggro, but don't think that it's an effective swap skill on its own


putting protection on the other tank is very important so you can up their avoidances and start spamming your reactives right off the bat

Originally Posted by oaceen

challenge is a good skill to use so that you can have 10s to hit engage, threat stance, etc. to make sure you keep aggro, but don't think that it's an effective swap skill on its own

You seem to have missed my point, so I will try to be clearer here. In this particular fight, you do not need to keep aggro for a minute each, in fact the sooner you start switching aggro, the lower the initial static buildup by the other tank will be. With the traits I mentionned, challenge is not 10s as you say, but 13s. With the reduced cooldown to 30s, this is a single skill which will grant you the boss complete attention for 43% of the time while enabling your block stance (more blocks = less static on you, and less heals required). The complete fight should not last very long, if your counterpart is building aggro as much as he can and the DPSers are doing their job of being just a step below this aggro threshold.

Since you are targetted for 43% of the time, the other tank will build a bit more static than you, unless they are a warden as in this situation, since warden have more avoidance and hence less static. But even when playing with a fellow guard, you can simply use challenge the darkness and you pledges to bring static back at the end of the fight.

This strategy relies on being able to land challenge almost each and every time, which is why I mentionned finesse and agility. But the important thing to stress here is that I used this simple tactic during an evening when I had a full second of lag. Queuing challenge every 30s is all it takes, no need to mash buttons as fast as possible to build an aggro lead and pacing your aggro so you naturally switch every thirty seconds or so. With lots of lag you cannot build aggro as you cannot fire skills fast enough to stay on top of the aggro list.

It is also much easier on the healers, who can time their heals knowing that aggro will change extremely regularly, when challenge gets off cooldown and when it wears off the boss. It is of course very simple to follow your challenge with an engage to make sure that you are not too far behind on the aggro list, in case the other tank dies from crits.

Swapping aggro on OD fear wing, or at the start of the fight against the blind one is a whole different matter. But for lightning wing, if you are doing differently you are just not taking the best course of action. It's switching fast, reliably, and more important: predictably.

Originally Posted by Maelendil

You seem to have missed my point

i think you missed mine. i read the OP and not much else of this thread, so i wasn't really responding to you or anyone else but the OP

The other tank in my group is a Warden and we run Lightning T2 every week. And we've had problems from time to time with the whole agro balancing thing. Because of the way guards and wardens get agro its more problematic than a straight Guard/Guard mechanic, as people have said. With a Guard/Guard it goes simply...Guard 1 gets agro when its time to switch Guard 2: Challenge -> Engage -> FtE -> etc and then when time Guard 1 does the same thing. it goes very simply and easily. With a Warden its a balancing act. Does your warden leach too much threat or not enough? Are you building your own agro too slow, too fast? Is your DPS cranking out the DPS so quickly that they become 2nd on the threat chart? All these questions factor into things with a warden/guard makeup.

That being said, once you and your warden get used to each other you'll learn how to swap effectively. Also for that fight we've come upon a way to make the issue much more of a nonfactor. Right now when we fight this boss we switch maybe 3 times total, sometimes less. The group stands right behind the boss, the tank stands in front and we never move. The Warden starts the fight since with Engage I can instantly take it; i just step in front and pop E and its mine, and if I have to drop agro and let him have agro to finish off the boss I just go into Block and it usually snaps right to him.

Well, we go with gurd/warden duo beacouse as off a couple weeks ago we lost our main Guard who was the kin leader and the most experienced tank in the kin. I had to rush up my guard to cope with that. I think the problem was my lack of tanking skill and some comunication issues. when was the time to swap aggro i droped TS and just stood, the warden then had to gain aggro, wich taked abour 3/4s, then i moved to the back.

We were in diferent fellowships, we'll give a try with the two tanks in the same fellow, so it comes up to the warden(most experienced tank) to manage aggro.

My first error: when i was at the back i didn't gained any threat, just dps'd, I'll try to keep gaining aggro.

my second error (wich came from the first): i get back in front of the troll, pop TS, FtE -> Engage.... Nothing! didn't have enough threat to start with.

My third error: as all failed, i poped Challenge. Get's me aggro, the warden moves out, all is good but... I have aggro form the light thingy. -> explosion, I'm dead!

The couple of times we managed to get good at it, we both we're gaining up static, I used pledge, I got it to drop to 0 at some times. But still a slight mistake from one us us and we got killed with the boss at half life.

I think it's beacouse my lack of gear/skill at raid content. Foundry t2 I pull the two bosses ok.

Originally Posted by Zebs

my second error (wich came from the first): i get back in front of the troll, pop TS, FtE -> Engage.... Nothing! didn't have enough threat to start with.

Your Engage quite likely missed. There is no dependency on having any threat to begin with.

If Engage hits the mob your entry in the threat table will have the same amount of threat as whoever else is at the top of the threat table. Note: this means if you're the person at the top of the threat table then Engage didn't do anything, threat-wise.

Now you're at least tied for first on the threat table... but we're not done. A mob actually acts on perceived threat, not raw threat (i.e. your number on the threat table). A player's raw threat is multiplied by their perceived threat modifier. This is 1.00 by default for everyone. If a Guardian enters Threat Stance their perceived threat modifier changes to 1.20 (1.28 for LM-traited Guards).

Example time:

During an encounter an LM-traited Guard has 0 threat and a Hunter has 10,000 threat on a particular mob and the Guardian performs TS, FtE, Engage while the Hunter stops all attacks. Note this whole time the Hunter's perceived threat modifier is 1.0 so his perceived threat is 10,000 for the duration of the example.

1. TS - The Guardian's threat is 0, so 1.28 * 0 = 0 PT. He still doesn't have aggro (not by a long shot).
2. FtE - The Guardian lands FtE on the mob and generates, say, 1000 threat. 1000 threat * 1.28 = 1280 PT for the Guardian. The hunter still has aggro: 10,000 PT for the Hunter vs 1280 PT for the Guardian.
3. Engage - The Guardian lands Engage. Now both the Guardian and the Hunter have 10,000 threat. 10,000 * 1.28 = 12,800 PT for the Guardian. The Guardian now has aggro, and his threat margin is 2,800 PT over the Hunter.

Hopefully the above explanation helps you understand how threat works in the game in general, how you can maximize your rotations, and perhaps also explain some oddities you might see during some of your encounters.

I still think you'd want to modify the rotation to be: TS, Engage, FtE. Otherwise you are quite likely wasting time and power on FtE.

Originally Posted by Zebs

The couple of times we managed to get good at it, we both we're gaining up static, I used pledge, I got it to drop to 0 at some times.

This is a good trick for this boss if a swap is not doable at that time and you need to tier down.

another thing to try is having you and the other tank stand at a 90* angle with the boss.

we go into the close right corner of the room. someone's back against the door, the other's back against the wall. kalbak makes a box with the corner of the room and the two tanks, and all the melee goes in at a 45* angle from kalbak, ranged out a bit further away.


that way, when lightning shatter (or whatever it's called), won't hit them.



when the lightning comes up, a champ should be single-target taunting it back to the group or something. it can NOT hit the tank under any circumstances, but that's less to do with you and more to do with the group knowing what to do.

Originally Posted by clappi

This made me curious... why FtE and then perform a threat copy? Wouldn't you rather Engage and then FtE? It seems to me that FtE -> Engage will negate FtE in the event you're not on the top of the threat table.

Lol of course. Engage is always first (a typo, my bad). But yeh Engage and FtE is nearly always enough to win threat. Additionally, the reason we run this fight with Grd/Warden is that the Warden is the kin leader, and the other tank is a Guardian (myself or one other). Guardian/Warden is our common setup.

With it we have done it all, including all of the OD Tier 2 Challenges at lvl 65. So we know our stuff and work very well together...