Dungeon Professionals: Aggro Control
by JR Cook - 9 years ago
Aggro, as we’ve already gone over, is the measure of an enemy’s animosity towards a specific target. In a perfect world, aggro will always be directed towards the tank and rarely towards anyone else. Sometimes this is unavoidable due to certain mechanics, but generally the tank’s primary job is to soak up as much damage as possible.
Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes the tank makes a mistake and loses aggro on a target, other times its the DPS that’s simply attacking the wrong enemy. It is common for a couple of targets to get loose during a dungeon run but if it starts to become an epidemic during a specific instance, there are a few things to look for.
Tanking Stance
The most likely culprit of continuous aggro issues is the tank. After all, their job is to control aggro and they have many tools at their disposal. The most identifiable issue, and the easiest to fix, is what’s usually referred to as “tanking mode”, or the setting that tanks have to toggle that cause their abilities to increase aggro output. For example, warriors have Defensive Stance and paladins have Righteous Fury. Druids, death Knights, and monks also have these abilities. These skills will sometimes come with penalties such as lower damage output, but that is a small sacrifice if it means that the dps get to keep breathing. Since it’s just a matter of toggling the ability, fixing this issue just requires a quick comment. Just keep in mind that it’s pretty easy for a tank to forget to turn their tanking ability on, especially if they’ve just logged in, so try to save more aggressive comments for when they continue to refuse to switch to tanking mode. Any other issues are likely due to the tank’s rotation, gear, or general target selection. If it’s the former 2, give advice where you can. If it’s the latter though, it there could be other factors as well.
Stay on Target
In a previous piece, I discussed the importance of making sure everyone is on the same page in terms of target selection. Is the group going to be focusing on single targets, or AOEing entire groups down? Does the tank and the DPS know any special mechanics that might prioritize targets? These are important things to think about when beginning any dungeon run. If you’re the tank, it is important to mark your kill orders and notify everyone else to follow them. If they don’t and continuously pull aggro, you still have to do your job and pull it off of them, but you’ll have the moral high ground if you marked your targets and the DPS player at fault starts accusing you. If you’re the dps and the tank isn’t marking targets, feel free to start out attacking what you think is the most important enemy or throw out some AOE damage, but if you start to pull aggro it might be time to focus solely on the tank’s target.
