Stone Vigil

[Adire]

I don't think anyone has addressed this yet, but judging by how you mention provoke, it kind of makes me think you're misunderstanding how the skill works. I apologize if I'm saying something you already know.

Provoke and flash (which is an aggro builder) have two different purposes and function completely differently. Provoke puts you at the top of the enmity list. Beyond that, it builds no aggro.

So lets say a monk is attacking a target and takes hate from you and continues attacking it. Rather than having to try to catch up to the monk in aggro to get the mob's attention back, essentially having to do an aggro race with your skills vs his dps aggro, provoke allows you to instantly catch up to the monk and pass him by 1 aggro point. After that, you have to build aggro on it with aggro builders (such as flash, overpower, your combos, etc) to keep it's attention.

If all you do is provoke it, the monk will almost immediately pull hate off you again, because provoke only puts you 1 point ahead of him. Provoke is an aggro equalizer of sorts.

If you pull with provoke, the same concept applies. If no one has any aggro on a mob that you use provoke on in a fresh pull, you will only have 1 point of aggro on it. So you have to quickly build aggro or else someone will take hate almost immediately.

It's a good practice if you use provoke to pull to use tomahawk immediately afterwards to build decent aggro on the mob, or to use an aoe aggro builder to build aggro on it and the linked mobs that come with it if there are any.

If a ranged or healer takes aggro, it's a good idea to provoke the mob and tomahawk it immediately afterwards. This prevents you from having to chase it down. Provoke + tomahawk will build enough aggro usually to make it come back to you in time for you to hit it with larger aggro builders.

In short, you should NOT be trying to use provoke to hold hate, only to take hate. A skill like flash is to hold hate.