How to Get Initial Agro in World of Warcraft

 

There is nothing more important than getting initial agro on a group of mobs, without agro you gain less rage, which makes it harder to get agro. Here are the steps you can follow when agro:

Start with a charge if you can. This doesn't just give you rage, If you can't start with a charge (like if you have to pull mobs towards you) then blood rage is a good skill for getting you some much needed rage to start throwing out the agro building moves.

Follow up with a demo shout. This doesn't just reduce their attack power; it allows you to get a little agro on each of the mobs so they are less likely to take an immediate interest in your priest.

Try to fit in a Whirlwind - don't overlook this skill. It may be in berserker stance, but attacking 4 mobs. This should take around 5 seconds, and then and only then should the rest of the group attack.

Once you have the initial agro on each of the mobs you're going to want to keep increasing your threat so as none of them come off you and attack someone else. Luckily as a warrior you have several key skills that are useful for building threat.

Sunder armor, Revenge, Shield bash, Disarm. These are the 4 key agro building tools you have available to you, and you should have everyone on your hot bar in easy to use positions.

Sunder is our spammable skill that builds a fair bit of threat, you'll find yourself using this a lot as it has a low rage cost, and builds a nice amount of threat. All the mobs that you are tanking should have sunder on them.

Revenge is a great skill that builds a lot of threat. It can only be used after you dodge, block or parry, but after a couple of revenges Ragnaros himself won’t be able to pull a mob from you. This should always be used on the main target when it's available. It'll make them stick to you like glue.

Shield bash doesn't just interrupt spell casting, it makes them hate you as well! It builds threat on non-casters just as well as casters. This is another skill that you should be using mainly on the main target; it'll keep them on you even when you're building up threat on the other mobs.

Disarm is great for reducing the amount of damage you take, but also for building threat. There are a lot of mortal strike speced mobs out there, and we all know how nasty mortal strike is, disarming them stops them from using it on you, and also makes them hate you for it.

To make sure you keep enough agro on the main target you need to spend most of your time building threat on that. However, you cannot ignore the rest of the mobs.

Between each threat building attack on each of the mobs not being attacked, you should do at least one on the main target. That means no matter how many mobs are on you, you still need to spend half your time making sure you can keep the main target on you, and the other half building threat on the others to ensure your priest doesn't pull agro with a heal.

If you are not sure how you will keep track of which mobs you've been building agro on and which you've let slip, you can use sunderthis add-on. It allows you to show the currently sundered value above a mobs target box. That way if every time you cycle through a mob to build agro on it you sunder you can keep a count on which mobs have had more of your time than others, and keep your threat level pretty even on each of them.