Ah I see, thanks!

@turbo Guard is a threat reduction; if a DPS is doing a ton of damage, esp if they also don't know how to threat drop (or don't want to T_T) a guard helps keep their threat lower, making them less likely to rip off the tank.

It's the same reason tanks often guard healers, esp in GF pugs where there's a lot of trash and you can't trust the DPS to hit everything so that the adds don't aggro on the healer right away.

I've seen other tanks place a guard on a dps rather then a healer. Why?

@TheMarc3 More often, it's indicative of a tank taunting early, and/or not following with a second taunt.

We still guard good DPS (barring a fight that needs healers guarded), and super bursty DPS do still sometimes pull off us early on, but knowing to hold taunts means we'll eat all their aggro ( which doesn't rip until it's 10% over ours), multiplied by the taunt. Also, spec doesn't always correlate with who will rip, since so much depends on the player. A far better way is to watch threat in starparse (excluding DPS with rotational stealth-outs) and acting accordingly (though that's not possible in pugs, where reactionary guarding is more likely required).

By NiM level, the DPS also know to hold aggro drops for after the taunt, meaning right after we eat all their threat, they further reduce theirs.


The tanks who think people taunted are usually fairly new, as by HM/NiM they should know to check for the taunt debuff first :P

2/2
I know some good tanks for NiMs and they still have to guard ppl so they not only take less damage but also reduce the amount of threat they generate so they can hold the boss better.
I myself have pulled a hand in Brontes HM off of a tank who then sat and tried to figure out who taunted without taunting back, then asked who taunted off.

This isn't a new thing or uncommon, this is just good practice to guard someone who might pull off you, generally being pt's and sorc's. So generally, if you have one in your group, guard them.

To go off of what Antydoom said, depending on the spec they are playing, it is very easy to take aggro away from the tanks as a dps, like any vanguard/powertech dps spec now and same with lightning. The tank's job is to also find those that can potentially pull off them with their openers and guard them so they generate less threat.

Losing aggro at the beginning of a fight only means you as a tank did not guard who you needed to guard, OR you can't guard them at all.
1/2

Thanks!

@antydoom - Well, that means your tank was not doing a great rotation, not using their taunts well, or that you were not using your threat drop well or got a series or lucky crits.

... it could also mean you are a Vengy Jug/Vig Guard slamming away on a group of adds; holding threat in that case is a tightrope of coordination, as your threat just skyrockets.

As a DPS I managed to surprise a tank by producing more threat than them even though i didn't even use my taunts.