Advanced Tanking: How to use Enraged Defense

[Vaidinah]

I wanted to do a guide on using Enraged Defense in PvE as it's a overlooked and complicated skill that most players don't utilize much if at all. To begin, let's look at the skill, but I do want to warn that using Enraged Defense incorrectly can destroy your DPS and kill your team. It's a skill that requires a great deal of practice and understanding.

 

Enraged Defense

Rage Cost: 4

Cooldown: 45 seconds

Effect: Immediately reduces threat by a moderate amount. For 10 seconds, taking damage spends 1 Rage to heal you for 3% of your maximum health and reduce threat by a low amount. This effect cannot occur more than once every second. This ability can be used while stunned or otherwise controlled.

 

Now let's break down how the skill works. This is a % threat drop that can cause you to lose aggro on the boss by itself, thus it needs to be paired with a single target or AoE taunt if you need to hold the boss. There are many times you do not need to hold the boss or are tank swapping, which are listed later and are the ideal times to use this skill. You can use it at times in other situations, but I don't recommend it in general.

 

Enraged Defense lasts 10 seconds, but in situations where you want to hold aggro the entire time, I don't advise having enough Rage to trigger it for every second as you will lose a great deal of damage due to a lack of Rage. If you do use it in general, you don't want more than 8 rage when using it since it costs 4 Rage and the extra Rage you'll gain while getting hit will continually trigger (1 Rage every second) the heal and the threat drops every second. This can occur as long as you have Rage.

 

The reason this amount of Rage is mentioned is that you will have Enraged Defense triggering for about 6 seconds straight (using up 1 Rage each time for 0 Rage at the end) and then likely only once after until it ends at 10 seconds (due to Endless Rage giving you back 1 Rage every 3 seconds for getting hit). This works out great since if you taunt right after using Enraged Defense and then use your AoE taunt at 6 seconds (4 GCDs), you are guaranteed to hold aggro. Enraged Defense won't be triggering unnecessarily and you will still get a 18-21% heal (6-7 procs). Once Enraged Defense ends, you can recover your Rage by using Sundering Assault/Enrage.

 

Skills to pair with Enraged Defense are the following:

1) Taunt (Single Target Taunt)

2) Threatening Scream (AoE Taunt)

3) Enrage/Sundering Assault (6/7 Focus)

4) Endure Pain (30% extra health works with the health returned)

 

Of these, our AoE taunt, Enrage, and Enraged Defense are all on 45 second cooldowns. Endure Pain is on a 90 second cooldown.

 

The optimal times to use Enraged Defense require the following:

 

1) Plenty of Rage/Focus (you really want Enrage/Sundering Assault up for extra focus or to recover after)

2) No need to hold aggro (or both taunts are available)

3) Take consistent DoT-style damage

 

These conditions are available in many fights like the following:

 

1) HM/NiM EC - Zorn and Toth's red circle phases

2) HM/NiM EC - Kephess's Savage Wounding DoT after he comes down into his red circle

3) HM/NiM TFB - Dread Guard's Lightning Field

4) SM/HM/NiM TFB - Kephess the Undying's final phase

5) SM/HM S & V - Dash'roode's "Lost" mechanic (only if you happen to get lost twice)

6) SM/HM S & V - Titan 6 final phase (if your other defensive cooldowns are gone)

7) SM/HM S & V - Styrak's AoE Lightning (after you get Force Pulled away and the other tank taunts)

 

Beyond those situations like listed above, you'd only really want it use it as a last ditch measure if your team just needs a little more time to finish a boss off and you have both your taunts up.

 

Another poster named Elzen mentioned that Lots of Missiles is another good place on the Titan 6 fight. The first one wouldn't work since you need to hold aggro, but I'm fairly sure he meant the 2nd one right before Launch since you don't need aggro on HM/NiM at that point. Enraged Defense can also be used while stunned unlike almost every other defensive cooldown so it's worth mentioning even if it's not applicable in the vast majority of situations.

Edited July 13, 2013 by Vaidinah

[UncleOst]

I appreciate well written threads like this. I never have, nor ever will tank those pve instances, but your info is beyond superb. Excellent, professional, bravo.

[Vaidinah]

Thank you very much. I don't PvP much, but from what I understand, Enraged Defense sees a lot more use in PvP since aggro doesn't really exist. I assume its uses there are very different from PvE. Personally, I find this skill fascinating to use and only dislike it as an aggro drop when DPSing in PvE since all other ones are free.

[Marb]

Thanks for posting this. Very useful info for all those curious about enraged defense. It was a much more relevant, yet still risky skill to use before 2.0 for hybrid spec juggs, but it still has a niche role in the situations you mentioned. I would still say most would be 100% fine in taking it off their bar completely for tanking. Great skill in pvp though, no matter your spec.

[ssfish]

I haven't yet tanked any of the NiM content yet, and HM content really never did require extensive CD usage to where I ever even considered using ED. So, how does the threat gain from Saber Reflect / Intimidating Presence work in conjunction with Enraged Defense?

[Vaidinah]

Thanks for posting this. Very useful info for all those curious about enraged defense. It was a much more relevant, yet still risky skill to use before 2.0 for hybrid spec juggs, but it still has a niche role in the situations you mentioned. I would still say most would be 100% fine in taking it off their bar completely for tanking. Great skill in pvp though, no matter your spec.

 

Yes, I had a note somewhere in my original post discussing how effective Enraged Defense was pre-2.0, but apparently I deleted it. With the old hybrid spec, you would gain 15% damage reduction while Enraged Defense was up thanks to Deafening Defense, but of course back then, Rage was more difficult to come by as well.

 

I haven't yet tanked any of the NiM content yet, and HM content really never did require extensive CD usage to where I ever even considered using ED. So, how does the threat gain from Saber Reflect / Intimidating Presence work in conjunction with Enraged Defense?

 

You really don't need to ever use Enraged Defense, especially now that we have our awesome Saber Reflect. I find it just helps the healers out in difficult situations, especially if they are not experienced players or to allow them to DPS more since I need less healing. I find that helping the healers do more DPS pretty useful since they can do a lot more damage than us due to their gear having Power/Surge/Alacrity with high main stat and ours being Shield/Defense/Absorb with high Endurance.

 

For Saber Reflect/Intimidating Presence, that gives you a static 8592 threat every time it is used on everything. Every time you get hit with Enraged Defense up, you lose a % of your threat (from what I understand, it's 20% initially upon using it and a much smaller one for each proc after). The extra threat you get from Saber Reflect would only be effective in keeping aggro in the very beginning of the fight and there aren't any good times that I know of to use Enraged Defense that early on. The threat we gain at any point after establishing aggro (usually 15-30+ seconds) would be more than lost with Enraged Defense.