We have a lot of trouble with Vaelastrasz, we beat him once two weeks ago with a lot of luck but never since.

Besides unlucky BAs our biggest problem seems to be the transition between the tanks after a BA. I never played a warrior so I don't know that much about generating aggro, but if a rogue gets aggro after the first tank dies, then it should have been possible for the second tank to generate more aggro - right?

My question: How important is heroic strike in this fight? And since it depends on your weapon speed, does the speed of the weapon matter at all for a tank in terms of generating aggro? Our tank uses the Spineshatter (2.60 Speed). Would a fast weapon help with spamming heroic strike? And would that effect aggro in a meaningful way?

Also, our tank often has a bad internet connection, sometimes even with packetloss. Is it ok to blame lag for some wipes or should this not be an issue ?

[SPOILERS]
Yes, but your thinking/planning is flawed.
[/SPOILERS]

Isn't that right, Kassil?

Kaubel once flex'd and killed 10 men.

11, but who's counting?

stomped we haven't killed Vael yet so take this advice with a grain of salt.

If the rogue all vanish before the first tank transition that should take care of them getting hate instead of tank #2. But yes as you said in theory MT2 should be able to stay above the rogues, its just difficult to do that while staying below MT1.

You answered your own question here, if HS is base on weapon speed ( rather its an on next attack ability that doesn't trigger the global cooldown) then yes the speed of the weapon is a factor in how much hate they can generate. But is it a big enough deal that that alone is determining the outcome of your fight? Probably not.

Thats something you need to decide as a guild/raid, a bunch of Jerks can't for you.

How in the world, somewhere along the line, did our alliance fanboys become intelligent posters? :o

Elfan pretty much nailed all the answers. A few things to add:

The transition from MT1 to MT2 is the most important part of the fight. Once you hit execute range and Vael is on a tank, he's not going anywhere. Have every rogue vanish and hunter feign, right before the first tank blows up. From there, you're on your own.

Heroic strike. Yes, a faster weapon is better. Alcor's Sunrazor is basically the best weapon in the game for tanking Vael. Crazy, huh? As long as you have excess rage (and on Vael, you obviously do), you can increase your aggro generation by switching to a faster weapon to allow for more HS. That said, it's hardly necessary for Vael. Spineshatter is a damn good weapon.

If you have one tank with a bad comp/connection, just make sure he isn't your #1 tank on Vael. People tend to freeze up for a bit as the lightning animation plays, and if your tank locks up at the start of the fight, that's a bad thing. Beyond that, blame wipes on whatever you like. I'm partial to hunters, personally.

So is curse of agony. For max effectiveness, cast before the MT has time to start autoattacking.

I like how EJ has become the one-stop-shop for aggro information of all kind. Or maybe it isn't, and I just don't read other guild forums.

Quoted for personal applicability.

I would just like to give Elfan a :jerry: for such a good post. Bravo good chap.

We read too much. I just have to type better and edit my post. Or I can keep Elfan looking really good and type crazy shit with no punctuations!!!!!!!


ps since we are on the subject. If all the warriors have the same one handed weapon (or at least the 1st tank and the 2nd tank) and spec, shouldn't the second warrior be able to kind of fight for aggro in battle/defensive stand if he just starts 10second,or after the 5th sunder, and not be able to pull aggro off the first tank.

I need to post more. 2 goomba's isn't enough

In theory, yes. In practice, it's a bit more complicated. For example, you can't use Revenge when you aren't actively being attacked by Vael. That's one slight difference. But yeah, you should be able to give Tank #1 a brief head-start, then have Tank #2 go all-out for aggro after that. If he can pull it off Tank #1, then Tank #1 needs to suck less, and maybe you should switch their order.

A big part of the Vael fight is just all your warriors getting a feel for each other, and for how much aggro they can safely generate at each stage of the fight to make the transitions go smoothly. It just takes practice. After enough attempts, you'll know who Vael is going to turn to next just based on prior experience.

So do you guys use heroic strike at all ?
I asked our tanks about it and they said they never use heroic strike at Vael because they are busy spamming sunder. They also said that they would't be able to sunder as fast when they would use heroic strike.

I always thought heroic strike is not on a timer / different timer. You activate it and your next melee hit becomes a heroic strike so you don't gain rage at that attack ?

I am a shaman so I have no idea, but it looks like I have to start a warrior twink.
The tanks also said that when they click on heroic strike so it glows and then they sunder, that heroic strike would go away or wouldn't have any effect or something like that.

So...

should I forget heroic strike and let our tanks do their stuff

or...

should I start looking for new tanks ?


I know the encounter is pretty random but I spent more than 200g on repair cost just for this fight and I would really like to find the problem here.

Heroic strike is one of the most efficient mechanisms for generating aggro, period. Tanks who don't use it are making a mistake.

Basically, to be an optimal aggro-generating tank, it's a simple recipe:

Use shield bash, revenge, shield slam (if applicable) whenever they're up.
Make sure every melee attack is a heroic strike. HS is on its own timer. It used to lock out other actions until your next swing, but I don't believe it does anymore (right? I need a warrior to confirm this. In any case, even when it did, you could just get your timing down so you did your sunder or whatever, then hit HS right before your swing, then did other stuff, then HS right before your next swing, etc.)
Sunder in the middle of all this other stuff.

If you still have excess rage while doing all this, you can enhance your aggro-generation by switching to a faster weapon for more frequent HS's.

I'm never one of the first two tanks. I MS, Whirlwind, and Slam between cooldowns.

i thought slam was useless for warriors since it has a casting time.

edit YES my third goomba, i knew i could do it!

FoH has good stuff sometimes too, CQ is rather dead now.


And yeah, HS is very useful in this fight.

Slam is not useless if you are trying to *get* hate but the mob isn't on you yet. Its rather good at that.

not shield spam nub, slam.

That's it....someone is getting his ass kicked when he gets home.

On the other hand - that was so embarrassing. :(

Confirmed

Stomped, your tanks are newbs.

I didn't know this until we started doing blackwing though so I can't fully blame them for not knowing. But yeah, if you want to be a pro tank just keep mashing/clicking your heroic strike button to make sure it's "queued" and then mash revenge/shield bash and sunder when those are on cooldown.

It actually builds quite a bit of aggro. The first time I was at Vael I went all out with this and got splatted when I was the second tank.

Thank you so much.
I just played a warrior to lvl6 , so I don't have sunder yet, but I got rend which I think works just the same way. And I can see now how heroic strike works with an instant ability and mashing the buttons is really all you need to do.