Tanking - clicking and keybinds

[crowdx]

Hi again,
so I was messing a little last night with my new 5 man team. I am currently just doing some of the clean up 5 man quests (Amphitheater of Pain etc) and in the process I was thinking how viable it would be to have all the dps casters on keybinds and the tank and healer using mouse clicks using regions in ISBoxer?
Anyone doing this or is it not a good idea?
Thanks all for your continuing input

[Shodokan]

Tank can tank with 1 button (easiest with pallys) just like your DPS can do their rotation with 1 button. Leaving all mouse clicks for your healer.

[crowdx]

Well I was using my fresh 80 DK as the tank just to gear him a little more. I am think my Pally tank will be easier to manager aggro than the DK but I really would like some better gear for the DK :)

[Ualaa]

Using repeater regions, is probably the best method to heal especially with IS Boxer.

Your tank is free to click away.
I mouse click on Divine Plea and Avenger's Shield.
You'll still need to spam something for the DPS, doesn't hurt to have the tank on the same spam button.

If you want, you could bind a mouse button to your Click DPS Spam button, or the scroll wheel.
Just copy an FTL DPS Keymap, for the correct assist keymap.

[crowdx]

Yes, I think using a spam with the tank combined with the dps would make sense and then any special aggro spells (Blood boil or Death and Decay) used as a click.
I am thinking I will probably run a lot of the dungeons on regular first to refresh my memory and get the achievement before moving on to doing the heroics, hopefully that way I will also get the odd gear upgrade. Is the blues in the heroics the exact same as the blues in regulars? Or are they higher stats?
Thanks again

[Multibocks]

DK click sequences are extremely hard to get right. often they require rune power for the second part of your rotation and it ends up being a mess.

I now use a straight up castsequence for the rune building abilities and then I manually use up the rune power. It's really annoying.

[crowdx]

So what is the best spam macro for a DK tank? I have been messing with tanking and I am finding it challenging to hold aggro :(

[Mosg2]

I have Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Pestilence, and Death Strike all macro'd with Rune Strike. I never have to worry about runic power this way and mobs stay glued to me. I open with Death and Decay, IT/PS and Pestilence to everyone and I have no issues whatsoever with aggro.

I guess you could make it into a castsequence but I prefer manual control for the DK.

[crowdx]

Well I played a little more early this morning and swapped out some more gear on the DK. I think his aggro issue was that he was undergeared compared to the rest of the team and so the locks were blasting them after a few seconds of blasting a boss. I upgraded his defense to now close to 518 (not doing heroics yet until I get him a little better geared) and so I did not open fire with my other toons for about 10 seconds and then kept a close eye on Omen to watch his threat, this worked fine. I also noticed a huge ooppsss, I had him specced unholy and so will respect when i get home :o

[Fursphere]

Tank can tank with 1 button (easiest with pallys) just like your DPS can do their rotation with 1 button. Leaving all mouse clicks for your healer.

This is inaccurate and misleading.

[Zzc2]

This is inaccurate and misleading.

Thats what ive been doing. I have a cast random macro on my pal and it pretty much takes care of everything. Though, sometimes you may want to cast cons early or need to taunt off your people but it works about 85% of the time.

[Fursphere]

yes, your main tanking rotation may be one button, but there are 5 - 10 other buttons I use every time I tank for various tools / abilities that shouldn't be macro'd into a "dumb one button rotatoin".

But hey, what do I know. Keep spamming.

[Drommon]

I agree with fur here. I play with a warrior tank and a paladin tank. I have a spam clicker for both and utility keys and macros as well. I am at least using 3-8 keys everytime I pull instance trash. For PVE you can get away with one button spam. For instances you need more. For PVP, I use every thing my toons can provide. So build a basic spam rotation and add utility to it as needed. Sometimes I spam 3 keys, one with the rotation and the other 2 with high cooldown abilities like spell reflection. If you have foot pedals you can spam the rotation with your left foot to leave your hands to address whatever needs come up at the moment.

[Ualaa]

On my Paladin tank, I have my 96969 "spam" macro.
In addition to that, I manually cast Avenger's Shield to pull, and Divine Plea when there are several mobs to kill.
Other then those two buttons, that's about it for the tanking aspects.
I do have 3-4 panic buttons, which are almost never needed, but they are separate clicks too.


The Feral druid is a whole other story.
My tanking keys are split into three keys.
One is Mangle/Maul, for single target threat, another is Faerie Fire then Lacerates, and the last is Swipe.
So three keys to tank, vs the Paladins one.
Then there are incidentals - Feral Charge, Enrage, Berserk, AoE debuff... similar number to the Paladin.
And the panic buttons, which aren't needed often - Growl, AoE Growl, Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regen.

[Oswyn]

yes, your main tanking rotation may be one button, but there are 5 - 10 other buttons I use every time I tank for various tools / abilities that shouldn't be macro'd into a "dumb one button rotatoin".

But hey, what do I know. Keep spamming.

Could've sworn you made several replies to people asking about pally tanking macros. You provided what I think was a simple cast sequence you used and you implicitly mentioned it worked well enough for you to clear most instances.

[shaeman]

I think the point is you can't tank well with just 1 button (unless your gear makes the content trivial).

If all you are hitting is your tanking rotation button then you will struggle when stuff happens that your spam macro doesn't care about. Taunts and damage reduction abilities being an example.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I would say my 969 macro button is used 99.65% of the time. If im 5 boxing, I can control the agro and using taunts and the oh crap buttons are rarely used because I dont have to worry about some DK/Rogue who thinks I suck because I cant hold agro after their 10k dps burst one global cool down after I pulled. And I know my healer is not sleeping on the job so LOH and Bubbles are rarely if ever used.

Clicking divine plea every 3rd or 4th pull when it drops or poping wings for a boss is hardly internet argument worthy, Yes Paladins are one button wonders, thats what makes them so easy to play so you can spend more time healing, dpsing, and not standing in the fire.

[Ualaa]

As far as my pally goes..

My one button covers almost everything.
The only thing I really do without it, is start Divine Plea.

Granted I do have emergency buttons like Divine Sacrifice, Hand of Protection, Single Taunt, AoE taunt, but if the pally pulls, the other toons have never managed to take threat, so I've not needed any of these. I do use taunt, to take aggro if I pull something at range with 4x shammy nuke.

If I put Divine Plea, into my master click macro, which calls my 96969 macro (purely for space reasons), and manually ran my pally into groups.. ie, paladin is getting initial threat, my one-button would be fine.



Cannot say the same for my Druid.
Have never had a Warrior beyond 40th, but they were a lot more things to click.
And a DK would likely need to most clickable buttons.