Yet More on Threat

[friznit]

This has been done to death already in several threads and as far as I can tell there's no conclusive answer. I'm a warrior tank. I have been for a couple of years and I like to think I know what I'm doing. But since 3.0.8 my relative threat compared to the DPS in raid has suffered so much that I've had to revert to the old school Kara 'wait for 5 sunders before opening up please'.

I had respecced to 15/5/51 and regemmed some Expertise before 3.0.8, and noticed an increase in both threat and dps, although it wasn't much of an issue at the time it was nice to have. But since then the drop in relative threat has been alarming and everyone in raid has started questioning what I've changed. I know DPS gear has got better, but then so has mine.

In almost all but the hardest hitting bosses I now have to tank in my TPS gear alone. I've tweaked my threat priority list ('rotation'), and stacked more Str/BV/Exp etc to try and improve things but there's a only a finite amount I can do.

It's certainly not helped that I habitually tank alongside a Paladin, and although he has to work at it as well he's not failing to hold mobs like I am and it's clearly obvious that despite having similar gear levels his threat output is significantly greater. The AOE of course gets used to this then all hell breaks lose when we switch over. It is frankly hugely demoralising.

For the record, today's armoury currently shows the latest iteration of my TPS gear. I'm aware the gloves need an enchant and I need a new wep - tell that to KT. Other than that the only thing I can think of is to bump Exp over the dodge cap, and somehow stack str and/or hit without losing too much stam and def.

The World of Warcraft Armory (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Emerald+Dream&n=Friznight)

[OnourisofRavencrest]

On trash, you *might* consider glyphing Sunder Armor and Cleaving (not having heroic strike or revenge glyphed shouldn't really matter with a prot pally in a raid) but most of the time if you just keep thunderclap and shockwave on cooldown as well as spam cleave making sure to keep up some semblance of a rotation in between you should be fine.
Are you pressing Shield Block as soon as shockwave wears off on the mobs?

If you're current armory is your threat gear on bosses you would probably get farther using the hit trinket from, I think, Heroic Nexus (It's icon looks like red liquidy bubbles, 55 hit some amount of ap on use). Maybe even put a weapon chain in place of your 20 str on your weapon. And, of course, upping your expertise (which you know about).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any Emblem of Valor gear on you and you've earned 127 of them, you should definitely consider buying the badge ring.

Also, what changed with 3.0.8 that made your threat go down?

[Truhjek]

Like Onouris said, you need hit. Your expertise is good though I'm not entirely sure what you're doing with 30% block. I keep mine at around 20% just because I like the number but am never actively stacking it.

I'd agree that SBV will help with threat but the 55 hit trinket with 40 hit food will get you alot further. Also I would ask if you are keeping Heroic strike qued pretty much every swing? If not, that's a huge boost in threat for you.

[friznit]

Thanks for the tips. Rotation stuff is as you suggest so not alot to change there. I do have all the Emblem gear, as well as most of the dps stuff too now. That armoury set isn't quite what I'd use normally for hreat but not far off - it's Lavanthor's Talisman giving the very high block there, for max shield slam lols. I was tinkering last night with ideas.

I think the way to go here is a bit more exp and lots more Hit. Trinket/rings and some dps plate might help there. I'm going to drop Devestate Glyph since apparently the second sunder doesn't give threat (at least, that's the latest theory) and put in Cleave or Sunder again.

Not sure it was 3.0.8 that caused the loss of threat, or just something that happened around then, but I'm not the only one to comment on it. Either way, in recent weeks holding aggro has been a lot harder than it was and it's not just due to DPS gear being better. Whatever it is, it's my job as a tank to try and fix things.