It seems that my guild always runs in difficulty with anything involving mob packs that need to be AoEd down. We are currently clearing all of SSC including Vashj and are working on Solarian. Solarian is the reason that brings me to the forums with my questions.

We are having a hell of a time on the trash before Solarian as well as controlling the AoE packs of Solarian herself, and I know the reason is poor execution on our part in terms of controlling the AoE. Usually the sequence of events is that tanks go try to pick them up as good as we can (Thunder Clap, Swipe, Etc..) AoE DPS starts and rips all of the mobs off of the tanks in which they begin to run around one rounding all of the different AoE classes. This is normal for any situation that involves AoE.

Since we kill Vashj we obviously kill Morogrim, but we use a protection paladin alt, that just comes specifically for that fight to control the murlocs. We are also considering phasing out that protection paladin in place of a holy paladin, and from what I've read on most other topics, is that that is what most other guilds opt to do.

We gave brief thought on the topic of possibly implementing the protection paladin as a full time tank in our raids, but the brick wall we run into there is that we are only interested in bringing two tanks that are gimped to be able to "only" tank (Protection Warrior, Paladin) to each raid. We fill in the rest of the tanking slots with two feral druids, and a fury warrior, if a 5th tank is required. So in order to use that protection paladin he would have to fill the shoes of one of the protection warriors and I'm really not sure if the itemization is there for a Paladin to step up to the plate.

It seems to me that the only class capable of truly holding threat on mobs that will be AoEd seems to be the Paladin. As druid and Warrior abilities just don't hit enough of the targets to hold solid threat on all of them. I could see possibly using AoE taunts, but the long cool down on the ability makes it relatively unreliable. Theirs also always the option of snaring up the mobs, and having whoever gets threat kite them, but it seems that they can split up between multiple people and things sometimes get nasty. I may just flat out be wrong, and warrior and druids are able to hold threat through AoE for other guilds. I really am just unsure and thus is why I come here.

I know there is good information about AoE, in other threads on this forum, and I have dug through a lot of their pages and came up with a lot of good finds. As AoE seems to be a nasty subject for my guild, and I'm sure many others I decided to try to create a thread to generalize ideas in.

It's probably unreasonable to expect to get/keep aggro via tclap and consecrate and that like given how long you have to AoE the adds down.

The only "tanking" done during aoe phases is where the tanks basically generate more threat on the mobs than the healers in order to group the mobs up for the aoe to start. Once aoe starts, tanks won't be able to hold much threat on anything. Aoe should happen something like this:

A) Tanks aggro mobs, pulling them close together while generating more threat on them than the healers.
B) Aoe starts.
C) Mobs die.

The only "trick" that I could think of is to minimize the time between B and C. The only way that can be done is to make sure as many mobs have seeds in them when the mages start putting frost novas and blastwave/flamestrike/arcane explosion...etc. I don't think it's possible to a non protection paladin to hold aggro over mobs being ae'd down (and he'll need a good head start). And I'm not too excited about having a prot paladin in my raids.

One thing that helps us a lot is to have one of our mages go spec imp blizzard, it helps at times. He does that pretty much every week for Solarian/Tidewalker if we have less than 6 aoe classes.

Also, on the trash leading to Solarian, there are two Squires per pull that need to be tanked by tanks. Otherwise the squires will start one shotting your aoe classes.

We're pretty terrible at AoE fights too...that's why we have our resident warlock tank, Unstoppable, just spec soul link and hellfire tank everything. It seems to work well enough and he's mostly already specced that way for arenas.

I can't really speak to the rest of your post, as we don't encounter any of those problems being that I myself am a Protection Paladin. But as for this portion, you may want to check out this thread for information on Paladin tanking benefits and pitfalls. In my personal experience, you're going to find that the following hold true about Paladin tanks:

1. They offer superior AE control to any other tank, and have the highest potential threat cap of the three tank classes as they gear up in their Tiered sets.
2. Paladins take next to no crushing blows, ever, even on dual wielding targets. This makes them optimal tanks on fast hitters. Their threat also ramps up dramatically on fast hitters, because of the nature of Holy Shield.
3. They have less health than a comparably equipped Warrior; anywhere from 1200 to 2000 less, depending on how they choose to gear up. This makes them suboptimal tanks on hard hitters.

You can absolutely make a Paladin tank work on any of the content I've encountered so far in SSC, and in many cases they provide unique benefits that other tanks don't do nearly as well. For example, on Karathress I tank both the Hunter and his pet effortlessly, rather than having a fifth tank; this frees up a DPS Warrior, and I generate enough threat that they can freely Cleave / Whirlwind / Blade Flurry / Sweeping Strikes / Swipe Tidalvess and Sharkkis to death together. This gives us an enormous amount of bonus time to work on Karathress himself, since Sharkkis is down 20%+ health by the time Tidalvess dies.

Protection Paladins probably don't make the best lead tanks, but they are certainly a compelling number 2 tank.

P.S. Best Practices: A Beginner's Guide to Beginning to AoE

We have Frost Nova as the signal to unleash AoE.

All the Warlocks Seeds of Corruption on the pull. Slowing down on the pull is also useful, with Earthbind Totem being very powerful. Warriors try to clump the early ones and pick up a little bit of aggro to keep them in place. Then a mage casts Frost Nova. All the other mages drop their Flame Strikes then do Dragon's Breath/Blast Wave. The seeds go pop and things fall over dead.

It is also a bad spiral that forms quite often. AE is poor so early (actually, on time) AEers get killed, leading them to get gunshy and AE late, leading to worse AE performance and more people dying.

To me the safest non-controlled AE (no full tanking and no full frost nova rotation) is where there is a bit of pre-seeding followed by a co-ordinated burst phase. If you time it right then pretty much anything that is designed to be AEed in that manner will explode fast enough as to not be a threat the the AEers themselves. Small things like adding in traps or other snares obviously help where applicable and tossing an earth shield or the like on the AEers themselves often inspires confidence.

Make sure all of your AoEers start at the same time. If one starts before the others, chances are he'll pull aggro and die.

Visual representation:

Basically, #1 will have mobs on him for longer, and he'll pull all of the mobs rather than having them spread out among all of the aoe, if that makes sense.

We AoE basically everything that is possible to be AoEd, starting with SSC trash (like packs at Six Platforms, where we AoE all) ending on Kael'thas weapons / Hyjal trashpacks (where we aoe 90% of mobs).

AoE is all about good control, tanks knowing how to tank the mobs during and before starting the AoE, and AoE classes knowing how to do their job (when to start, when to hold back for a sec, when to nova, and where to stand/run in case of overagro).
We never used a paladin/caster to tank, its always warriors/druids, rarely they use aoe taunts.
Getting some practice in it, saves lots of your time.


As for the Solarian packs - try gathering up in the very middle of the blue circle, will help you to control the adds.

First off, I'd recommend changing the thread title if you want this discussion to go somewhere other than the Dung Heap (Kaubel said some time ago that all "Best Practices" threads will be insta-heaped).

That being said, a holy paladin in tanking gear works wonders for control on fights and pulls that require AoE as long as you give them ample time to establish aggro. Frost Nova rotations and the like don't really seem to afford the control of paladins easily keeping several mobs firmly glued to them.

Also, someone mentioned in the Morogrimm thread to have your warlocks seed mobs before your mages blow their Flamestrike/Blast Wave/Cone of Cold/Dragon's Breath AoE combos, as this frontloads a majority of the damage and seems much more controllable than the standard "everyone go" AoE tactic.

For the record I changed the title (for comedy reasons)

It basically comes down to skilled Mages. You need to teach your Mages to AE whilst out of melee range - its not that hard. Any AE based fight will have you with a min of 3 Mages which gives you 3 Frost Nova's.

Taking Tidewalker as an example - your Paladins RF heal to bring them together, Warriors do their best with demo+TC+piercing howl, but in essence all this is for is to make sure they converge on the one point.

Have your lead Mage open with his Frost Nova and then have the rest follow - while your Locks seed everything. Either your Mages are fire spec with blast wave or frost spec with cone of cold - either way they have some form of snare to slow mobs.

On Tidewalker my rotation consists of Nova then back up for a flamestrike as I am normally the second Mage, then dragons breath+blast wave and IAE spam. By this stage seeds have gone off all over the place and the agro is firmly on the Locks who are at max range because they dont need to be in melee range for their AE. We then wipe up the remaining few.

They key is your Mages learning how to AoE properly as to not get hit. It used to be easy with 5 piece NW bonus, but its still not all that hard without it.

The key to AoEing is to jump around. This improves your dodge and parry considerably.

You're right, though, AoEing from a distance saves healer mana (and consequently, the AoEer's life more often than not). The range on Arcane Explosion is a bit larger than most people assume, you really don't need to be in the middle of the pack of mobs if they're grouped.

If they're grouped.

Flamestrike has the nice advantage of range, but Arcane Explosion has the edge of 40% threat reduction on top of Salv. And yes, it's about experience on the part of your AoErs. In general, there are AoE mobs that you can get hit by and AoE mobs you're not supposed to get hit by. Tidewalker adds are the latter, they hit just a little too hard for clothies to be taking hits (contrast to Solarium Agents, who hit for nothing). Letting Warlocks get most of the aggro is a good idea, but so is assigning healers to minimize the risk of death. Shamans are great for this, as they can spam Chain Heal on the Paladin tank(s) without losing much volume as opposed to HW. Any AoE that get hit will be pummeled with Chain Heal jumps, and Ancestral Fortitude procs will be flying all over the place.

Am I the only AoE'er here that doesn't care for frost nova on AoE packs? Here's my reasoning:

Almost always, a warlock will take aggro over a mage. I've got -40% threat on Arcane Explosion, compared to a warlock's -10% on SoC. Add in the fact that warlocks can front load a few Seeds into the pack, to balance the fact I'll throw a Dragon's Breath and a Blast Wave. So the mobs start moving after the warlocks, but because they can seed from range, the mobs have to move over there, and they should be frost trapped, piercing howled, blast waved, whatever snare you are using, so I can keep jumping along spamming AE. But if they get Frost Nova'ed, and have happened to move into melee range of me and out of the tank (if the tank even still has threat after a few salvos of AoE), I start getting eaten alive. Most of the time I should be able to stay out of range the whole AoE phase so this doesn't happen, but sometimes that's not practical if the pack is getting spread out, or if other things are going on, like Tidewalker's watery globules.

Yeah, I HATE Frost Novas for AoE. If you want a solid way to NOT control their aggro, forcing the AI to attack anything in range is the way to do it. I haven't been able to break our mages of this habit, since at least one person per Tidewalker kill (usually 3-4) gets raped by mobs nova'd on top of them. HATE.

The way we time our AOE has been very effective for us. Using Tidewalker for an example, the RF healing paladin and most of the raid group stand right behind Morogrim and pull the aggro on the approaching murlocs. The warlocks and hunter stand at max range from Morogrim (hunter so he can dps without hitting dead zones) and tab-seed the murlocs as they begin to converge. Once the first seed explosion goes off, the first mage hits their frost nova and gets the hell out of the way and Blast Waves > Dragons Breath. That causes 8-12 seeds to go off simultaneously and well... there's really nothing left at that point.

Mages die when they Nova too early or if they hit their IAE button before the Seeds go off. Seed of Corruption is simply an amazing spell for killing lots of mobs really really fast.

Frost Nova has its uses, but there are certainly times when it's a bad idea.

On Morogrim, we don't use FN at all (but this is strategy-dependent; in fact, I've categorized Morogrim strats as being defined by either FN or non-FN). On Hydross, we FN every Nature transition, as I imagine most people do.


The other thing to remember when setting up an AoE strategy for any fight is divided healing threat. Healing aggro is incredibly small when a lot of mobs are present, which is especially significant when you're attempting any sort of heal-based aggro control (like many people do on Morogrim).

I absolutely hate Frost Nova for AEing but quite like Frost Nova for controlling the result of AEing. What I'm getting at is I never like to nova in place and then seed/flamestrike/ArcExp while I do quite like to postition, seed, flamestrike, AExp and then nova them from the side if they are heading to kill a warlock. Even then though you need some communication or you end up with three mages novaing a pack that would have just died if all three had IAEed instead.

I do prefer a frostnova because there's not more annoying than missing a flamestrike because all mobs run away.
Frostnovaing on non "tanked" mob is suicide though, always fun too see a rogue run through a frostnovad pack of elites

You are saying you don't like using Frost Nova because it will then ignore its threat list and attack anyone in melee range?

Wouldn't a simpler solution be to keep people out of melee range?

It took us a while to teach everyone this on Tidewalker, but we have a "no go zone" where the AE is set up. We basically AE on the ramp so no one is allowed on the ramp at all. The Paladins RF Heal on the far left side of the ramp and the Locks set up on the far right. Mages Nova rotation when they converge on the Paladins (they get heals and then run towards the Locks) and after all the nova's break they make a beeline to the Locks. Everyone knows where the mobs will be Nova'd and just stay the hell away from there - you have plenty of room to stand as a healer/ranged DPS that ISN'T on the ramp.

Frost Nova rotation between 3-4 Mages keeps them ALL together and stationary for a good 5 or more seconds (depending on too many factors to consider). Throw in a Shadow Fury or War Stomp and no one gets hit.

On Solarian we have a AE taunt rotation for each add phase. Our DPS warriors just slap on a shield and AE taunt once all the adds are grouped in the middle.