I'm intrigued with the emergence of paladin and druid tanks in Burning Crusade, but as I was pondering the tanking abilities of a paladin, I realized I have no clue what skills a pally would be using while tanking. For example, would a paladin use seal of righteousness or would seal of command produce more aggro? And what aura and judgements to use? And for druids, how imperative would keeping bleeds up?

So I figure it'd be good to discuss what rotation of skills would generate the most aggro, either per second or per mana/rage for new the new tank classes (pallies and druids).

Judgement of Crusader for a paladin, more holy damage = more threat. You'd probably be using Devotion or Sanctity Aura if you had it for more holy damage again. I think using SoR is the better, as you can judge it for a holy blast. Although I suppose you can with SoC , too...

... thinking on with the extra hits SoC would generate more aggro I expect.

But paladin tanking is more about the prot talents. Holy Shield, Redoubt, etc.

Oh and of course Blessing Of Sanctuary

Without having access to Beta on my Druid, I think I can still tell you about when I would Lacerate primarily:

- Mobs that reset aggro often (Sartura, and post-Emps trash, Naxx trash)
- Bosses that fear you (I believe they will go after you even if you are feared then instead of ignoring you, but not 100% sure).

Since we already got this thread running, anyone got threat values and modifiers for Lacerate available?

Currently Bears hold aggro with a pretty simple "cycle" (it's more of a priority list, from most important to least important): Maul, Swipe (if you got the rage to spare), FFF (if you are running out of rage or need the rage to spam Maul).

You might want to rename this thread such that it reflects the feedback you want (bears/paladins).

For a Paladin, the spells seem to be:
Consecration
Seal of Vengeance (SoR for Horde)
With a Judged SoCrusader
And Judging and Resealing (using /castsequence ^^) for the aggro seal (which would be Seal of Vengeance / SoR)
And ofc, Holy Shield

Ofcourse the Horde for maximum dps (and tps) output, could use Seal of Blood, but seeing that causes damage to themselves, it's a bit of a choice to make.

Mana regen from Spiritual Attunement, was shown to easily cover the mana output of a Paladin with minimal regen on his gear, allowing him to focus purely on mitigation and threat increasing gear.

Basically, for a fully specced tankadin, a pull would look like:

Captain America's Shield
[
Seal of Crusader -> Judge
Holy Shield
Consecration
SoVengeance / Righteousness / Blood
]
Holy Shield
Consecration
Holy Shield
Judge/Re-Seal

And rinse repeat. Not much more they can do really. Alot less button mashing than a warrior, due to their "heroic strike" being automatic.

Druid: Switching between Mangle, Lacerate, using Maul as the primary rage dump, and Swipe if absolutely necessary. (ensuring Faerie Fire and Demo Roar are up, as well)
edit: I don't think now, with Mangel and Lacerate, a Druid could ever take enough inc. damage to have the Rage to Swipe. So Mangle / Lacerate when needed, and Maul in between. If rage is building, you can Mangle / Lacerate a bit early.

However in both cases, for both aggro and dps reasons, Sunder Armor (or if you have a Rogue happy to, Expose Armor) should definately be applied.

To be honest, just for that extra aggro boost, I'd have another paladin run in and Seal of Crusader -> Judge first, then the shield. As it's Holy Damage, every bit counts. Could give that initial boost that sometimes helps on booses. (Vael for instance, so the DPS can start straight off the bat)

It'd also allow the tanking paladins first judgement to be an aggro attack, like a SoC, or a SoR, or the others listed above, faction only.

Honestly, the aggro generation of paladins isn't bad; that'd probably be a little unnecessary(except on, as you mentioned, a fight like vael). On live, my usual offtanking would go
Judge Crusader
Use SoR, Holy Shield
Judge every 10-20 seconds, depending on how long you have for the raid to mark your target.

If I am grabbing aggro from a squishy on a loose add, if the target is stunnable and I have SoC:
HoJ
SoC (use ZHC if you need to)
Consecrate
Holy Shield
SoR

Otherwise just open with a JoR. Consecrate is only sometimes necessary (if you have only a few seconds between establishing aggro and when the raid opens up dps). On beta the coefficients are so much better I can't imagine having aggro control problems as a paladin, especially considering your virtually unlimited mana pool.

Well it may not be needed of course, but the OP said maximising the aggro. So I think that'd be the best kind of opener.

Um, Misdirection -> Aimshot Multi-Shot, Steady Shot etc, will handle those needs now.

Yeap, and add those to what we've said above, and you've got a pretty awesome aggro opener.

Misdirection Aimed-Multi-Auto coupled with Avenger's Shield-Judgment of Blood-Consecration-Holy Shield-seal of righteousness/autoattack, and DPS can go full blast from moment 1.

Oh how I remember that happening back in the day on Nefarion.

He'd drop, tank would have a string of Parries / Dodges (on both accounts, so no aggro / no rage) and a Druid or some such would end up pulling aggro due to them healing the dps still killing the spawns.

Misdirection ftw.

According to some hunters, the real beauty of misdirection is that you can cast it on a gnome and cause a big ugly monster to go run over and eat them.

Anway, I reckon we'll see misdirection playing a really important role in raiding going forwards, regardless of the class taking the actual hits. Hunters get to be involved in controlling the flow of the battle in a really important way - basically threat control becomes a little more of a collaborative activity.

I don't think any druid specced for tanking is going to have problems with TPS, a 5 stack of Lacerate (assuming it follows the same damage:threat formula as the other bear abilities) is 405 Threat per tic, 527 if you have Mangle up. Since Mangle increases Shred, Rip, Rake, Rupture, Rend, and Deep Wounds as well as Lacerate there really is no reason to not use it unless dealing with a very threat sensitive but low Rage fight and you NEED that threat from Maul. I'll look at numbers of RAge:Threat after dinner (sorry, food is always first)

unless they nerfed JoR recently, the coeef makes it so that it does more damage than JoC unless the mob is stunned, depending on how much +dmg you have.

with my experience with a paladin in full judgement as full prot, you can basically hold agro on 4 mobs easily in 5 man instances. mitigation on the other hand, could use a little work.

Holy shield is insane for aoe agro generation.

Fully Talented at 70.

Mangle 20 Rage ((Base Damage * 1.3) + 175) * 1.2 * 1.1) * 1.3 * 1.15 = Threat
Lacerate 15 Rage (155 * 1.75 * 1.3 * 1.15) * Stacks = Threat over 15 sec.
Maul 7 Rage ((Base Damage + 176) * 1.2 * 1.1) * 1.75 * 1.3 * 1.15 = Threat
Swipe 12 Rage ((84 + (AP * .05?)) * 1.1 * 1.2) * 1.75 * 1.3 * 1.15 = Threat

At 1540 AP, Bearform base is ~450 average damage (before talents)
Mangle: 1003 damage = 1500 threat, 75 TPR (can crit)
Lacerate: 155/310/465/620/775 damage = 405/810/1215/1620/2025 threat over 15 seconds, 27/54/81/108/135 TPR (ignores armor)
Maul: 826 damage = 2162 threat, 309 TPR(can crit)
Swipe: 212 damage = 556 threat, 46 TPR (can crit)(can hit 3 targets)

Crits increase damage and threat by x2.15

Maul has an 'added' rage cost because it's an 'on next swing' thus preventing rage gain. If I understand the new rage formulae(which I barely do), hitting for 450 gives roughly 9 rage so Maul actually 'costs' 16 rage, making it about 135 TPR just like Lacerate.

Mangle (75 TPR) increases Lacerate by 30% to 175 TPR, giving an average of 125 TPR once you have the full Lacerate stack already up, not quite as good as Maul + Lacerate.

Unless Mangle has an increased threat bonus, or Lacerate's bonus isn't the standard +75%, I'm pretty confident that the order of abilities would be: Maul > Lacerate > Mangle > Swipe > FFF > Demo. Taking crits and Lacerate's buildup time into account, it's too weak to replace Maul as the primary ability, BUT it works excelently combined with Swipe when tanking multiple targets.

Well, Warriors aren't all about aggro now are they.

As a Holy Paladin who has had to do an emergency tank grab ("Oh, that mob spawns 3 more. CRAP!") I've found switching to Retribution Aura and Consecrating once helps yank the aggro to you and hold it.

Once the mob starts hitting you with Ret up they get stuck in a loop as not only does each time you hit them with a Holy damage seal increases your aggro but each of their hits increases their aggro on you (albeit by a small bit). We actually played with it and had me stop doing anything after a full Judgement cycle (JotC, Consecrate, SoR, JoR) and it took 30 seconds before the healers could pull the mob off of me.

Interestingly, they have changed the spell descriptions for Righteous Fury. I've bolded the word that got changed.

Live: Increases the threat generated by your Holy attacks by 60%. Lasts 30 min.

Beta: Increases the threat generated by your Holy spells by 60%. Lasts 30 min.

Looks like we can out aggro other healers via heals again.

Yeah, that's simply due to how bear tanking works; all of our threat comes from some multiple of damage done, between 2 and 3 points of threat per point of yellow damage, and we scale stupidly well with gear. My threat generation right now compares equally to a warrior with defiance or a warrior with a TF but no defiance and it's only going to scale up more as things go.

Of course, this is also a liability in hardcore resist fights as stripping a bear of everything but +Sta/+Resist/+Armor gear completely gimps our threat generation whereas a warrior still does pretty damn well.

Wouldn't that bring paladin heals up to ~about~ normal threat per point of healing compared to their current value between 33% & 50%? I mean, that's more than it was but I doubt you could quite tank with just heals.

Why would you even be using Righteous Fury when healing?

Having tanked the first 5 instances on my MC blue Druid I can comment on druid aggro. Druids shine in groups with little or no CC. I can maintain aggro on 4-5 targets with tab/swipe better then any warrior can. The other huge benefit of druids in lower level instances is they do really good DPS while tanking. A warrior in defensive damage does laughable DPS. On my druid I am in the top 2 for DPS regardless of group make up. I was tanking with a high warlord warrior in my group (1 level lower then me), and I nearly doubled his DPS. About the only class that can consistently keep pace with me are rogues with good PVE builds.

When I play on my lock, I also prefer druid tanks (assuming they are geared for that instance) because it allows me to dot everything that moves and not worry about aggro. A druid with a significant amount of the aq40 and naxx tanking gear up to the heroic mode instances will probably be the preferred tank. Once you get into the harder instances ala heroic mode dungeons and kharazan the mitigation benefits of warriors will once again bring them back to fore front of tanking.

Usually you wouldn't but I could theorize a few times when you might want to. Of the available healing classes, having a paladin get aggro (and/or die) would probably impact the healing of the group/raid the least.