Am I Doing Something Wrong?

[shuuhei]

I understand many things are a work in progress at this point, but after recently running a heroic 5m dungeon with a Dual Wielding Frost Deathknight I can't help but feel threat is still lacking and grouping with Frost DKs like Mikatan only further exacerbated my concerns.

The armory profile of the deathknight in question is right here:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Quel'dorei&cn=Mikatan

Needless to say his performance was quite impressive, he literally carried the group. He did 50.2% (2.57m total) of the entire groups damage which turned out to be around 5.13m, but that was not the problem. Regardless of what I did I could not keep threat off him. Even being in my "AE" spec he was constantly pulling 2-3 mobs off me per pull. So I abandoned my standard AE rotation which would normally consist of:

Charge, Thunderclap, Shockwave, Shield Slam + Shield Block, Revenge, Devastate, Cleave

and just tried to tab target each mob using heroic strike, revenge, & shield slam on each individual target. With sadly the same results. Regardless of what I tried he would still heavily pull threat even after a taunt or challenging shout. Was I doing something wrong, was he doing something wrong or is something so under / overly tuned that AE tanking is just borked right now due to the CC model being implemented in Cataclysm?

Was it because of how the Rime ability buffed Howling Blast and its free proc allowing Frost DKs to always use it? Should tanks just let the Frost DKs who abuse this ability die and hope they learn their lesson?

I never have had this issue prior to patch 4.0.1 and never come close to this issue while tanking bosses in 10/25m Icecrown Citadel Post 4.0.1 patch.

[Nehama]

As said everywhere, yes, blizzard means this to be the new tanking model - hold agro on 1-2 mobs, have the rest CC'ed. It doesn't matter now, since mobs die within seconds, but at Cataclysm, DPS that won't adjust to the new style of DPSing on assist, will simply die.

Another reason why 5 man are the main problem is damage income that directly effects your damage %'s [and thereby, effects your threat]. In ICC, you get decent damage, usually staying at 10% of your HP as AP boost. [With 60-70k hp, you'll end up with a boost of 6-7k AP. Almost double your normal AP? :D] This in turn, will result in SS's of 30k while shield block is active.
In 5 mans however, with my gear [which isn't end game, but close enough] I manage to stack max 1k AP. This, ofc, effects threat and it's greatly reduced comparing to raids.

[Møønbøøt]

To be brutally honest with you lot: I think the frost DPS numbers just don't add up. I've seen frost DK's critting between 15.000 and 17.000. Think you sort of said it yourself: "work in progress". Don't think that what you're seeing here at the moment is realistic. Just as with the Mage / Warlock DPS, I'm guessing that Frost'll be nerfed when most of the people ding 85. Or it'll scale properly and numbers will turn out the way they should.

My advice? Lay low on the tanking for a while, or just deal with the fact that some DPS will just die due to over-aggro'ing.

Regards,
Møøn

[PatrikL]

I did PoS as a frost dps with a warrior tank and we had huge problems also. I dont think he was a bad tank (well he wasnt the best either since he kept losing single target mobs to me also) but because of the changes to the rune system our abilities hit so hard that we do a lot fo damage on short fights. I think I ended the dungeon with closer to 9k but the few groups we did AoE down (tunnel for example) I was well over 20 and I doubt I was doing things optimally.
The changes to the rune system should affect unholy as well but I havent heard them having much problems but as you already said, HB resfreshing so often does make our AoE attacks a bit too powerful to use early on in fights. Dont fret too much about it I'd say and let them learn to single target stuff down a bit more.

Not totally related to your question but I think many tanks have threat issues since the patch. Never tanked as a warrior but when I tanked with my DK just after the patch hit I lost quite a few mobs before I put RS back on my bars and I'm sure other classes have things they need to change as well.

Edit: Added last comment