Threat on Mage sheep

[Arees]

My main is a mage that I've been playing for almost 2 years since I started playing WoW and I ran him through heroic MgT for the first time last night. In the room leading into the third room I had the same thing happen to me... warrior tank was standing behind the wall off to the left, and I was standing where I could see down the hallway, but far enough back so that the mob would be sheeped in the hallway instead of where the tank. As soon as I sheeped all the mobs turned to me... casters started casting, melee started whacking... I was dead in about half a second.... I didn't have time to ice block (I have very fast ice block reactions... I have bubble in the same spot) or run to the tank...

Had problems with this pulling the third boss too... I needed to sheep the MS warrior... our tank would run up and shoot the priestest, and then I would sheep, but they would all turn to me and kill me as well. If I waited, the MS warrior would charge our tank and he would lose aggro and the mobs run amuck everywhere....

I play my mage very effectively. I think something either changed with how LoS is handled in 2.4 or its these particular mobs. I haven't played my mage much in the last month or two, so not sure if this happens anywhere else now.

[Kelaan]

Interesting. I noticed also that some walls in MgT (er, MrT? ) behave strangely with LOS. Mobs would still cast through the wall and hit me. My solution was to keep running even farther back (e.g., towards the hallway where the first big constructs were, if clearing the next courtyard), so that all the casters would keep running towards me ... and then once they were semi close together, I'd run back to them. Those first walls (near the courtyard) with the cutouts did NOT seem to block LOS, though the ones near the hallway did seem to.

A consecrate in the path of the mobs also seemed to help a little bit... but I think there may be merit in seeing if they have changed how LOS-ing is handled.

[Arcand]

However [polymorph threat] is a significant amount, so if it breaks it will go for the mage.

How sure are you about this? In ZA we sometimes have a mage spam-sheeping a flamecaster, and I believe I've picked them up after that with nothing more than a JoR.

[Arees]

However [polymorph threat] is a significant amount, so if it breaks it will go for the mage.

How sure are you about this? In ZA we sometimes have a mage spam-sheeping a flamecaster, and I believe I've picked them up after that with nothing more than a JoR.

I dont think its a lot of threat.... in SSC and TK there are a couple places where I do nothing but spam sheep because of how often some mobs will break it and sometimes when it does break it will even go for a healer and not me.

[Arees]

I just got out of MH on my mage and I was in charge of sheeping one of the casters in the waves of trash when they came. I was watching Omen and it was reporting my threat increasing by 1 each time I sheeped. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but that is what Omen reported.

[Lorath]

I tell people to never walk infront of me. Ever. No discussion
Frisbee First. Hey that should be in my sig...

Even the most dimwitted of puggged up tools usually get the point after a few deaths.

Basically learned this the hard way from having a semi-blind raid leader (healer) always running infront of tanks and 'accidently' bodypull so many times it's not funny.

[Mastus]

Normally I run MgT on my pally and tank but I did bring my mage in there for his heroic attunement and had this same thing happen to me. Ran with a group that I play with all the time and trust their competence level. Warrior gun pulled and then ran around the wall to LoS them. While the mobs were closing the gap to our warrior I sheeped my target and had the entire pack turn to me and drop me. It happened several times after that but I learned to sheep and immediately blink away and LoS them myself while the warrior picked them up.

I really do believe something was changed in 2.4 because the mechanics of the pull/sheep haven't changed, but the mobs are behaving differently now, unless its just MgT...

[Wyleai]

Today while running heroic Mgt, a mage which i assigned to sheep got aggro and died. This was AFTER (i assume, more below) i pulled. We were on the room where the 3rd boss is clearing the trash. As usual I like to pull then run round the corner in the previous room to LoS them for easy AOE tanking. The mage casts sheep, then the whole group ran towards the mage and just died basically.

Too bad Omen's data is so cluttered and confused at the moment or looking through it would clarify this.

9 times out of 10, 'sheep' only exists as a spell to keep the mage's happy about geting to make funny things happen. At least when a tankadin is tanking. Players get too CC happy after years of meeting the needs of warrior tanks (which start out very low in threat and have to build it up, whereas we can front load but as we get low on mana will eventually be overtaken).

When I see mage's sheep pulling, or hunters or others pulling, I type /sleep and wait till the 'mage-tank' is dead before jumping up to do my job.

This does make me wonder something, all the threat I output at the start of a fight, if a mob has been sheeped, is it not gathering that threat? In other words, when sheep finally wears off, who is that mob going to go after? If all the threat I was putting out before is not on it, am I now competing with the DPS for that mob's attention?

One last thing to note: Some of these instances have intentionally 'cheating' threat tables - or mobs that ignore the threat table, or whatever. I haven't done Heroic MrT, so I'm not sure if anything in there is such. In regular, the tankadin I've gone with can hold aggro on everything, even against my Druid's healspam (which no other tank I've worked with can do - in Kara, our MT is a warrior, and I always have to delay and pause between heals to avoid stealing aggro).

EDIT: On the other hand, the first time we did MrT we tried some CC, and the moment we did it, the mobs went haywire - running in 101 different directions and aggroing everything. Wipe.

When we came back in, the tankadin said "let try something crazy, I'm going to LoS AoE tank the entire pull right here, and we'll see if the healers can keep up. No CC at all."

And it worked. Easy. Without doing any CC, MrT in regular mode was a cakewalk all the way up to Kael. And our group is about half-kara geared. As in, half of us have kara gear or badge equivalent from heroics / PvP in about half of our gear.

I suspect MrT was just designed to be anti-CC.

[Snake-Aes]

I'm fairly sure it doesn't share the other mobs' sight on Global threat(healing, mostly), making them really a "brand-new" mob after sheep is broken(they only keep threat they previously had)

If you're generating threat on the sheep you're breaking the sheep, silly =D

[Wyleai]

Yeah, that's what I thought. And its part of why I've often broken sheep on purpose in the past.

The last thing I want is a fresh with no established threat mob 3/4ths in the fight when my Mana is on the 'potions / Seal of Wisdom' cycle (and even worse if I have a priest that insists on shield bubbling me rather than heal-spamming me).

That's a mob that can go anywhere. I rarely fail to grab it, but why risk it if I can handle it from the outset.

I tell them, only CC the mobs that refuse my pull (because I could not LoS, or LoS was not an option given the staging, or some other failing), after the pull. But as of level 57, it amazes me how many players have no clue how to work with a tankadin, even other pallys, even other prot-pallys.

[Snake-Aes]

It's part of the reason Avenger's Shield has a daze effect. Allows perfect sheeping AFTER the shield hits. <3 my Shield

[Wyleai]

It's part of the reason Avenger's Shield has a daze effect. Allows perfect sheeping AFTER the shield hits. <3 my Shield

Word.

I've met a number of prot pallys in my level range who lack it though - getting the 12 points in ret talents first. My thinking there is, get and learn to use your core talents now, as you level, and not at 70 on your first kara pull; which is the last place you should be making 'learn to play' mistakes.

But if that cast of AS is the only threat the sheep has on it when it comes out, at the later stage of a fight the DPS has a greater potential to pull that critter off of the tankadin.

Anyway, side topic.

I think what we're seeing in MrT is just a special quirk of MrT. Sheeping in some of the old instances hasn't been causing this from what I can see, and since MrT came out I've leveled through ZF, ST, BRD, and done runs of Scholo and Strat on other toons, as well as Ramparts, and some heroics in Auchidon and Coilfang reservoir. Not all of those involved mages, but a number did, and I have only seen 'CC gone wild' in MrT, though that was in regular mode.

I think they programmed it so that on a CC, the threat table gets introduced to the random number generator for a few seconds...

[Moses]

I'm fairly sure it doesn't share the other mobs' sight on Global threat(healing, mostly), making them really a "brand-new" mob after sheep is broken(they only keep threat they previously had)

If you're generating threat on the sheep you're breaking the sheep, silly =D

Actually not true. I used to have a macro as a warrior tank that I'd could click to sunder my focus. I'd set my focus to the sheep mob before the pull then after it was sheeped I'd walk up next to it and click the macro and viola a sunder appeared on the sheep. Never broke the sheep though, when it would break of it's own accord (or cause some sloppy lock dotted it) it would flawlessly come right to me.

Doesn't seem like pallies have anything they can use to "aggro sheep" though as healing doesn't seem to build any. I think I prefer fear anymore though.

[cordelia]

Body Aggro is stronger than Leash Aggro

Your AS stacks aggro on 3 mobs max, that means 2-3 mobs have no aggro for you except for the aggro generated from "leashing." If they come near another target before they come near you, the body aggro from the second target will grab them, and they will pwn that target.

Something I tend to do is cast a Consecrate before I LoS, so they're guaranteed to run into it. I tell my CC'ers to cc before the consecrate, and get behind the consecrate, and me.

[Snake-Aes]

I'm fairly sure it doesn't share the other mobs' sight on Global threat(healing, mostly), making them really a "brand-new" mob after sheep is broken(they only keep threat they previously had)

If you're generating threat on the sheep you're breaking the sheep, silly =D

Actually not true. I used to have a macro as a warrior tank that I'd could click to sunder my focus. I'd set my focus to the sheep mob before the pull then after it was sheeped I'd walk up next to it and click the macro and viola a sunder appeared on the sheep. Never broke the sheep though, when it would break of it's own accord (or cause some sloppy lock dotted it) it would flawlessly come right to me.

Doesn't seem like pallies have anything they can use to "aggro sheep" though as healing doesn't seem to build any. I think I prefer fear anymore though.

Err... sunder is not global threat. Healing threat is. Threat from casting buffs it. Generating threat = breaking sheep is a paladin thing too >.< I never had warrior abilities in mind when I said that.