H. Scarlet Halls: Armsmaster Harlan (for tanks)

[hung]

So those who have been running MoP heroics are probably already familiar with this guy as the 'spinning light-blades top of death'. Yesterday we wiped a couple of times to him in part because the tank had difficulty grabbing aggro on the adds. I was seeing an 'absorb' msg when hitting them, so I was curious. It turns out that the adds have a heavy armor buff:

Scarlet Defender – Scarlet Defenders feature heavy armor to protect them from all damage.
Heavy Armor – While a Scarlet Defender wears their Heavy Armor, they take 40% less damage until their armor breaks from taking 60000 damage. Defenders also take 90% less damage from area effect damage.
Unarmored – Scarlet Defenders who receive sufficient damage lose their Heavy Armor and take 150% additional damage.

What this means: healer aggro is especially sensitive when we jump down (to avoid the spinning top), and tank AoE threat is going to have a hard time latching on until after the armor has popped off. I'm not sure if cleave style atks count as AoE for this purpose.
Regardless, even though armor says "absorbed" as dmg, i assume they still take threat/hate based on the amount their shield takes.

I think the bottom line is: tanks need to be prepared to lay down single-target threat on fresh adds, and not rely on aoe threat. Shockwave/thunderclap are clearly AoE for this purpose. I can confirm that they will NOT deal enough aggro to grab them off your healer when they still have armor on.

I expect higher gear will trivialize this like everything else, and the general AoE dmg the party throws out will be enough to de-armor the adds right away, even with the 90% resistance.

[Pocky]

Hi, I'm the tank that sucked that night! >.>

Yeah, I looked it up, and now that I know that, I can go back to spamming tab-heroic strike for a while.

I'm guessing Revenge counts as AoE for it, too. >.<