Off tanking schemes

[lostsandman]

<DIV> </DIV> <DIV>We having real problems with offtanking in some raids so i would be grateful with any help.<BR></DIV> <DIV>Let me give an example,</DIV> <DIV>Makato (^^^ x 4,  Wizard) and Sakato(^^^ x 4, Warlock) and their four ^^ x 4 adds  in Antonica epic. All of them are linked. <BR><BR>I am normally the MT and this is my grp set up</DIV> <DIV>guard, temp, warden, mystic, zeker. direg/warlock, i am normally around 9k hp (note the direg is lvl 47).</DIV> <DIV><BR>MA setup</DIV> <DIV>Guard, temp, mystic, zeker, wizard, an troub (not all lvl 50 but 48+)</DIV> <DIV><BR>This is what we try to do</DIV> <DIV>MT use one AE taunt on Sakato. Then MA try to single taunt Makato and take agro on him. <BR>MT is left with Sakato and the other adds. Other 2 grps assists MT.</DIV> <DIV><BR>The problem is this, sometimes both Makato and Sakaot are on me so quickly and it take some times for MA to taunt away Makato. But its too late, cos Sakato nuked me for 5k poison damage and makato nuked me for 5k cold damage (i have 3k+ cold and 4.4k+ poison). The adds do some additional damage so I am dead. Then you know what happens after wards.</DIV> <DIV><BR>How can we improve this ? What is the best way to for me to get Sakato and others while MA get Makato?</DIV> <DIV><BR>Are we going about this the the wrong way? Do we need fundamental change in what we are doing? Any help is greatly appreciated.</DIV> <DIV><BR>Many thanks</DIV>

[Pin StNeedl]

<P>If you have a Berserker in your first group, why do you need a second group taking Makuto? The Berserker would be able to take Makuto off you in 2 hits, aswell as completely shut down his casting.</P> <P>Your second group can DPS.</P>

[lostsandman]

<P>the reason is,  the MA in second grp has a wiz to buff his cold resit. Since makto smees to do Ice commet which can do 5k+ dmage.</P> <P>Also it will be easy for the healer. the 3 in my grp just worry about me.</P> <P>you don't think this is right?</P>

[Urglu]

<P>We use 2 groups.  I take Shak and all the adds, a Berserker who can peel instantly takes Mak.  I have the majority of the healing on me, while all the DD take out Mak first.  My group is geared to high PR, Serker is geared to high CR.  Seems to work fine. </P> <P>A way of pulling that may help you is to pet pull the group (easier to gt the mobs where you want them when taunting between 2 groups), then you can single taunt Shak (which brings them all to you), and have your MA single taunt Mak, after which you land your AE taunts.  We used this method when we were first trying to get the instance down. </P> <P> </P>

[Pin StNeedl]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> lostsandman wrote:<BR> <P>the reason is,  the MA in second grp has a wiz to buff his cold resit. Since makto smees to do Ice commet which can do 5k+ dmage.</P> <P>Also it will be easy for the healer. the 3 in my grp just worry about me.</P> <P>you don't think this is right?<BR></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>The Zerk in the first group already has decent cold resist due to the Warden (not amazing, but decent enough), and he can be easily healed versus Makuto by 2 healers in any extra groups especially with the arsenal of interrupts he has to shut down casting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2 separate groups would work, I just think it's unnecessary (and you'd have more people able to focus on dropping Shakuto quickly).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Oh, and if you want to buff cold resist, use a Conj, not a Wiz.</DIV>

[zapc]

<DIV>Off tanking, </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>      Dude when we first started raiding we would off -tank stuff, but the more and more experienced we got we learned that it is innefecient and not needed.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>     For shak and mak, buff yoru poison as high as you can, heat and cold come pretty naturally since a few common classes can buff it, use potions if you need. I always carry as much poison resist gear as possible since poison class's can be hard to come by at times.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>    Anyways moral of the story is do not off -tank them, YOU mt them all, that way healers are only healing you, These guys are pretty easy if you do it right, and off-tanking wont help ya </DIV>

[Pa]

<DIV>Reactives are likely whats causing your problems, just tell your healers not to use their reactives until theyre split and see how that works out for ya. I would keep splitting them until you have it down, not only for the practice but its much more risky to tank both at the same time.</DIV>

[zapc]

Practice split tanking? Dont understand why you would need practice, there isnt one encounter in the game that needs to be split, Let the MT do his job and tank it all.

[Pa]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> zapco1 wrote:<BR> Practice split tanking? Dont understand why you would need practice, there isnt one encounter in the game that needs to be split, Let the MT do his job and tank it all.<BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>Atrius for one, he doesnt absolutely <EM>require</EM> splitting but your chances of success raise 10x if you do split him from the punisher. You cant afford that one or two wipes just because you wanted to be the MT and tank everything. And thats just one example, you should always be open and ready to add splitting to your strat. So, yes, practice is good imo.</DIV>

[lostsandman]

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Paen wrote:<BR> <DIV>Reactives are likely whats causing your problems, just tell your healers not to use their reactives until theyre split and see how that works out for ya. I would keep splitting them until you have it down, not only for the practice but its much more risky to tank both at the same time.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Paen can you please explain that to me? Whay would reactives causing those problems? </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I always get the healer to cast the reactives before the fight.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Many thanks</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>To answer the question why I am trying to off tank,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><BR>I have killed them twice before by me tankign all.<BR></DIV> <DIV>It just that we are not very good with off tanking. Some people posted here that in the future you may need to use more than one tank. So i assumed that meant off tanking. So we are tryign to practice that now.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But we are not good at all :smileysad:</DIV><p>Message Edited by lostsandman on <span class=date_text>06-27-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:50 PM</span>

[Pa]

Reactive heals hate values are calculated as your own instead of the casters. So essentially your AE taunting all those mobs with heals as soon as theyre pulled, which is great in most cases, but not when splitting. This is going to be changed in the combat revamp but until then it's definitely something to keep in mind and plan around when devising strats, especially when splitting is part of the strat.

[ArivenGemini]

<span><blockquote><hr>Paen wrote:Reactive heals hate values are calculated as your own instead of the casters. So essentially your AE taunting all those mobs with heals as soon as theyre pulled, which is great in most cases, but not when splitting. This is going to be changed in the combat revamp but until then it's definitely something to keep in mind and plan around when devising strats, especially when splitting is part of the strat. <div></div><hr></blockquote>Shaman wards are borked this way too..  only droods are working as intended.</span><div></div>

[lostsandman]

<P>Thats explains it a lot.</P> <P>I normally have both a Templar and mystic in group so the minute i got hit, i am generating agro even thou i haven't used any AE taunts.</P> <P>That properly will explains why  the MA is having hard time...</P> <P>cheers for that guys, i will try this next time.</P> <P> </P>

[ArivenGemini]

<span><blockquote><hr>lostsandman wrote:<div></div> <p>Thats explains it a lot.</p> <p>I normally have both a Templar and mystic in group so the minute i got hit, i am generating agro even thou i haven't used any AE taunts.</p> <p>That properly will explains why  the MA is having hard time...</p> <p>cheers for that guys, i will try this next time. </p> <div></div><hr></blockquote> This is also why when playing my Inquisitor if I somehow manage to get a mob on me (usually adds) I do my best to not heal with reactives until I absolutely have to... I want to give the MT every chance to get stuff off me before I end up tanking the mob for the duration... </span><div></div>

[Auberon_Feykin]

As a note, it is possible to tank Atrius with a raidforce that doesn't consist of all level 50's in tons of great gear.  The first time he was killed on Runnyeye server we had about 18 level 50s and a guardian wearing only one piece of fabled gear tanked him and the adds. We find Shak and Mak far worse actually. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Wat it all boils down to is the hate generated on the pull before the other tank has a chance to do anything.  Then you have to live without reactives and wards . . . hrm, also difficult. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  Nobody ever said raiding was completely easy, did they?  (Oh yeah, but they're geared in 75% fabled and wielding prismatics already hehe.) <div></div>

[Pa]

<P>I never said Atrius was hard, the chances of losing agro when getting hit by a 19sec and a 38sec stun on different timers is just not worth trying to tank both at once. You dont split them because theyre hard, you split them so youre not perma stunned and lose agro to your casters, and so your melee can actually dodge the AE's to contribute DPS, otherwise they will get locked in a stun cycle and never be able to back out and subsequently die, poof 10% AQ. I've tanked Atrius and the punisher at the same time before (only because the off-tank died immediately somehow), and won, its just not worth the risk when you have limited resources to work with.</P> <P>I dont like losing, ever. One wipe to me, even in an 18hr instance that I can mend right after, is one wipe to many. I'm a perfectionist and splitting certain mobs is required for that high success rate that makes your guild feel unstoppable.</P> <P>You can tank Shak and Mak at once and hope they dont have nil distortion and ice comet loaded, you can hope that everyone stuns / interrupts them before they cast it even if they do have it loaded, you can hope you partially resist it to an acceptable level and not insta-die if they actually get a few casts off. Thats just not the way I play. Same with Atrius, or any other encounter I feel splitting is the best option, I know I could do it differently. I know I could win with brute force, but if I know I can win with a much lower margin of error and get a cleaner kill with another strat, then thats the strat I'm going with.</P>

[TunaBoo]

<div></div><div></div>Offtanking is cute, but when possible I would rather put it all in my hands. On shak/mak, I just tank it all and suck it up. I mayyyyybbbe have died 1 time in the last 15 times we have done it. If you mess around with offtanking, a LOT more things can go wrong and IMHO is likely you will die more often then I did. SPlitting aggro can be very tricky because of how aggro works, very hard to keep two linked +++ on seperate tanks 100% of the time. <div></div><p>I understand your perfectionist angle, but I prefer to KISS (keep it simple stupid). The more tricks you add in to a raid, the more points of failure. With 1 tank and 1 tank group, very few things can go wrong. <span class="time_text"></span></p><p>Message Edited by TunaBoo on <span class=date_text>06-28-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:01 AM</span>

[Pa]

<DIV>It's not hard by any means to keep mobs split and on different tanks 100% of the time. If you dont want to do it, then dont..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The OP asked for tips on splitting, he didnt ask for anyones opinion on whether he should split or not.</DIV>

[TunaBoo]

Ah, but the point is the best tip of splitting is, don't split unless you absolutely have to... just making it easier to crash and burn a raid. <div></div>

[Pa]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> TunaBoo wrote:<BR>Ah, but the point is the best tip of splitting is, don't split unless you absolutely have to... just making it easier to crash and burn a raid.<BR> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Odd, it works great for us the few encounters we do use it. Honestly I cant remember one bad experince with splitting since the reactives hate issue was figured out, certainly none that even came close to jeopardizing the raid. Ever since then its like, umm, like pulling except someone tags a mob off... </P> <P>We must be sploiting, I'm gonna /report myself when servers come up, hope I dont get banned for it. :smileysad:</P>

[Darkstu]

When my guild does Mak and Shak.  I use AE Taunt to gain aggro of all the mobs and the MA starts to pull off the ^^ while the raid kills them.  I am tanking most of the encounter throughout the entire fight.  We have a few coercers so they are constantly stifling both Mak and Shak.  We also have a stun team established with the swashy and monks that concentrate on Shak.  My group usually consists of Guard(me), Temp, Inquis, Mystic, Dirge, and Wizard(resists obvisously).  All throughout the fight I am spamming AE taunt, plus my single target taunts concentrating on Shak.  By the time all of the adds are down I still have Shak and Mak attached to me.  Mak most usually is OOP by then and Shak is stunned/stifled the majority of the time.  Usually works well.