Addendum on Hit
Posted 08-06-2008 at 11:29 AM by Kamani
Addendum on Hit and Threat
I'm writing this because I am very opinionated when it comes to gearing/geming for hit/threat throughout the course of a tanking career. A majority of the questions that this site receives are related, in one way or another, to hit rating and/or threat. And, unfortunately, a lot of feedback is incorrect(in this cow's opinion.) Also, I would much rather just respond to the daily influx of "I R NID HIT RAITGN" threads with <Link to this post> rather then an individualized response.
The first thing I want to address is that threat scales rather favorably throughout BC. When you are starting Karazhan, heroic strike is superfluous. Warlocks generate something like 1 threat per 1.6 damage. And Warlocks are generally the most threat capped class, so they will be what my comparisons focus on. So, theoretically, if a Warlock is putting out 500 DPS then he is putting out 312 TPS. Now I haven't done the math, but I'm pretty sure you can white hit with an occasional Shield Slam and put out more then 312 TPS. Scale it up, 1000 DPS = 624 TPS. A bit higher, but still very easily passed by a tank who knows what he is doing. That also doesn't take into account the fact that most classes, including Warlocks, can drop their threat somewhat. And even then, a Warlock can ride at 129% of your threat and not pull aggro. So putting out 624 TPS given a 1000 DPS lock is much more then required.
It starts to get rough as your Warlocks start getting half/full BT gear. Think Teron Gorefiend. A Warlock that does 2000 TPS puts out 1250 TPS. Keeping up with that Warlock is basically impossible without intentionally gearing for threat. At this point, threat gear is important. You should (cough*self advertising*cough) download the lovely tanking spreadsheet that models TPS for you via (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/theor...readsheet.html.) Use it, or your own calculations if you don't want to DL it(/cry), to figure out the most effective and efficient way to increase your threat.
Effective and efficient... that brings me to my next point. How should one build their gear for threat? I won't get into the intricate details because that has been done in multiple stickies on Tankspot. I will go over a few infrequently mentioned ideas.
First thing I want to say is that your best in slot piece should focus on survivability. IE if you get T6 chest, it should be gemmed with three 15 stam gems(or avoidance, if you so desire). Granted this rule varies at time, but I'd rather tell my DPS to slow down a bit since chances are they will listen to you more then if you were to ask a boss to stop hitting so hard.
Now..what items specifically. Moreover, which stats. The value chain is: Expertise > Hit > BV > ArP ~ Haste ~ Crit > Strength > Agility ~ AP. Your primary goal for your threat set should be to reach 5.6% expertise. After that, hit = expertise for threat, but still choose expertise in a tie due to it's damage reduction value.
Something I want to address is shields. I see alot of people talk about switching out shields for threat sets. Something that should be done rarely. A shield is BY FAR your most valuable piece of armor. It scales much faster then every other slot. Downgrading your shield one tier is comparable to downgrading 5 or 6 pieces of armor one tier. One example is going from Illidan's shield to Kaz'rogal's shield for the 21 hit, a half tier downgrade. Basically the smallest jump you can make in shield switching. You still give up 500 or so armor and the 2000 armor proc for 21 hit. There are plenty of other ways to get 21 hit for alot less of a trade off then 500 armor and the proc. The first example that comes to my head is the BT gun vs the GBKD. Going from ilvl 141 to 95(?). You trade 1 stamina and 20 dodge for 10 hit. So going from the beginning of BC to the end of BC in itemization on a gun provides a better upgrade then going from Hyjal to BT. Do the math before switching shields.
The last thing I can think of to say at the moment(I had more, but I'm drawing a blank) is in response to tanks feeling the need to gear for threat to make up for their own deficiency. If you aren't in BT and are having problems holding threat over your DPSers, the problem is your ability, not your gear. Xavastrasz wrote an incredible guide on how to generate threat (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/tanks...ng-threat.html). Study this guide if you are having problems holding threat over anybody not doing 1500/1600 DPS. Study it even if you can hold threat, the more you know the better.
I'm writing this because I am very opinionated when it comes to gearing/geming for hit/threat throughout the course of a tanking career. A majority of the questions that this site receives are related, in one way or another, to hit rating and/or threat. And, unfortunately, a lot of feedback is incorrect(in this cow's opinion.) Also, I would much rather just respond to the daily influx of "I R NID HIT RAITGN" threads with <Link to this post> rather then an individualized response.
The first thing I want to address is that threat scales rather favorably throughout BC. When you are starting Karazhan, heroic strike is superfluous. Warlocks generate something like 1 threat per 1.6 damage. And Warlocks are generally the most threat capped class, so they will be what my comparisons focus on. So, theoretically, if a Warlock is putting out 500 DPS then he is putting out 312 TPS. Now I haven't done the math, but I'm pretty sure you can white hit with an occasional Shield Slam and put out more then 312 TPS. Scale it up, 1000 DPS = 624 TPS. A bit higher, but still very easily passed by a tank who knows what he is doing. That also doesn't take into account the fact that most classes, including Warlocks, can drop their threat somewhat. And even then, a Warlock can ride at 129% of your threat and not pull aggro. So putting out 624 TPS given a 1000 DPS lock is much more then required.
It starts to get rough as your Warlocks start getting half/full BT gear. Think Teron Gorefiend. A Warlock that does 2000 TPS puts out 1250 TPS. Keeping up with that Warlock is basically impossible without intentionally gearing for threat. At this point, threat gear is important. You should (cough*self advertising*cough) download the lovely tanking spreadsheet that models TPS for you via (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/theor...readsheet.html.) Use it, or your own calculations if you don't want to DL it(/cry), to figure out the most effective and efficient way to increase your threat.
Effective and efficient... that brings me to my next point. How should one build their gear for threat? I won't get into the intricate details because that has been done in multiple stickies on Tankspot. I will go over a few infrequently mentioned ideas.
First thing I want to say is that your best in slot piece should focus on survivability. IE if you get T6 chest, it should be gemmed with three 15 stam gems(or avoidance, if you so desire). Granted this rule varies at time, but I'd rather tell my DPS to slow down a bit since chances are they will listen to you more then if you were to ask a boss to stop hitting so hard.
Now..what items specifically. Moreover, which stats. The value chain is: Expertise > Hit > BV > ArP ~ Haste ~ Crit > Strength > Agility ~ AP. Your primary goal for your threat set should be to reach 5.6% expertise. After that, hit = expertise for threat, but still choose expertise in a tie due to it's damage reduction value.
Something I want to address is shields. I see alot of people talk about switching out shields for threat sets. Something that should be done rarely. A shield is BY FAR your most valuable piece of armor. It scales much faster then every other slot. Downgrading your shield one tier is comparable to downgrading 5 or 6 pieces of armor one tier. One example is going from Illidan's shield to Kaz'rogal's shield for the 21 hit, a half tier downgrade. Basically the smallest jump you can make in shield switching. You still give up 500 or so armor and the 2000 armor proc for 21 hit. There are plenty of other ways to get 21 hit for alot less of a trade off then 500 armor and the proc. The first example that comes to my head is the BT gun vs the GBKD. Going from ilvl 141 to 95(?). You trade 1 stamina and 20 dodge for 10 hit. So going from the beginning of BC to the end of BC in itemization on a gun provides a better upgrade then going from Hyjal to BT. Do the math before switching shields.
The last thing I can think of to say at the moment(I had more, but I'm drawing a blank) is in response to tanks feeling the need to gear for threat to make up for their own deficiency. If you aren't in BT and are having problems holding threat over your DPSers, the problem is your ability, not your gear. Xavastrasz wrote an incredible guide on how to generate threat (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/tanks...ng-threat.html). Study this guide if you are having problems holding threat over anybody not doing 1500/1600 DPS. Study it even if you can hold threat, the more you know the better.
Total Comments 15
Comments
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All I gotta say to this thread is:
C-A-N-E-S CANES!Posted 08-06-2008 at 11:52 AM by Leytur 
- =P
Posted 08-06-2008 at 02:30 PM by Kamani -
:PPosted 08-06-2008 at 02:34 PM by Kazeyonoma -
Listen to the cow, kids. Never gem for hit as a tank. Ever.Posted 08-06-2008 at 04:56 PM by Satrina - Agree entirely with shields. While gearing for avoidance, I decided to downgrade my shield for one that had dodge on it and several hundred less AC. Bad idea. When a boss hit me, I took an extra 1000+ damage. So sure, I dodge 2% more, but for the whole fight, I ended up taking something like 50k more damage. ><
Posted 08-06-2008 at 07:55 PM by Elyvern - I disagree with satrina's comment about NEVER gemming for hit. I however will come to a compromise and say ALMOST NEVER gem for hit.
There are times when it is appropriate and times when it is not. If it detracts seriously from survivability then it is a bad thing. If it is needed/desired and survivability is not much of an issue (e.g. tanking the priest on IC to interrupt wrath as much as you can) or if you totally outgear the instance in terms of EH and Avoidance (should effectivly never happen anyways with sunwell and sunwell radiance)
I guess what I am trying to say is - gem for when it is appropriate. if you only ever do kara, you will have all the badge gear in no time and maybe hit gems will be more useful and appropriate to you compared to someone tanking sunwell. If you do sunwell, then hit is not as important as mitigating the incoming damage.
Very very nice post anyway Kam. you are by far my favourite cow! <3Posted 08-07-2008 at 09:20 AM by Sanelora 
- Never is a strong word. There are occasional situations where hit gems can be used, IE horrible luck with hit items dropping.
But 99% of the time, you will be stuck choosing which item not to use because of the 6% hit cap (imp FF). So using hit gems is normally out of the question.
And thanks =PPosted 08-07-2008 at 09:36 PM by Kamani - hehe Much love Kam!
keep the thoughts coming! they are quite valuablePosted 08-08-2008 at 06:24 AM by Sanelora - I think one of the common lines of thought on this site is to always give advice as if you're talking about boss encounters. The problem is the threat set is generally for trash, not bosses. The list of bosses where a threat set is adviseable over an EH set is small. The list of trash, however, is large, especially when you're talking about heroics and Kara level. As for almost never gemming for hit, the reason you have different sets of gear is so that you can acheive different outcomes in that gear, i.e. gem for hit in your threat set! Why not? I use mine for fast trash kills, so dps can open up, and quite a few bosses in heroics that hit like chumps, because hey, might as well just burn them down asap if survival isn't really an issue any longer on those guys.
That being said, if you have a mod like outfitter, having a threat set makes a lot of sense. I routinely use mine, keeping just above crit immune, while stacking tons of strength, hit, etc. I swap out trinkets for extra dps and hit, too. I've learned which trash mobs in heroics hit hard enough to toss on the EH set and that list is small compared with the ones where more threat = faster kills, quicker badges, and a happier group overall. When I need to swap out for EH, I push a button and I'm done. After that pull is over with, I push another button, and I'm back to threat. One last thing, I eat lots of buff food geared towards threat, either the hit food or the strength food depending on if I'm capped on hit for the level of mobs already, and I toss on sharpening stones always. Every little bit helps imo.Posted 08-09-2008 at 02:58 PM by Desmurick - The thing with trash is that one DPS dieing due to him pulling aggro is a very minor problem.
What has a very high tendency of happening is your healers falling asleep and not noticing you pull.
I've seen a lot more problems on a pull like an Arcane Sentinel in SWP where I pull and get three shot without a heal.
I always wear my survival set on trash.Posted 08-09-2008 at 06:53 PM by Kamani -
There is certainly a place for hit gems. That place is your threat gear. You want several sets of gear though, not a "one suit fits all" deal. Max stamina/EH, max avoidance, and max threat. Then you can swap pieces in as needed. Hit gems in your strong threat pieces only make sense, to make them even stronger threat pieces. Look at destroyer chestguard. It screams threat. You may as well socket that for more hit and thus threat, and then use the badge chest (if that's the level of content you're at) for your survival/mitigation chest. It only makes sense.
I always wear max threat on trash (without wasting stats, I don't go much higher than 7% expertise on trash and 6% hit), because people are even less careful with aggro on trash, when they can just as easily die, so I want as much threat generating potential as possible.
If I die for no reason (like on a sentinel) I bitch at the healers. That's the best solution. They know that if they want to stop being yelled at, they need to play better. It works great.Posted 08-09-2008 at 10:22 PM by Xav -
Agreed that if you're dying because your healers are asleep, you need to fix your healers, not your gear.
As far a threat gear goes, I think the most important thing to remember is that your very best gear should always be the gear that allows you to survive boss fights. Any new piece of loot that's a significant upgrade to your survivability should be gemmed and enchanted accordingly.
Item that you gem and/or enchant for threat, whether for trash or bosses, should already have solid threat stats built in, otherwise you're just wasting an item slot. The fewer items you use to reach your target threat potential, the more slots you have left to keep a good mix of survivability stats.
Gemming and enchanting for threat is ok as long as you're using threat gear intelligently so as to not make yourself impossible to keep alive.Posted 08-10-2008 at 12:01 AM by Armstrong - A couple things:
A. Late Sunwell gearing follows it's own rules. Very low amount of hit on gear and you get to a point where survivability gear becomes surplus. This thread was more so pointed out to the Karazhan geared players who try to tell other Karazhan geared players to use hit gems.
B. This is why God created Boomkins. I only need 6% hit. Improved Fraerie Fire is lovely. I have 5.9x hit in my threat gear without using any hit gems. And I have some extra hit pieces that I can't use do to the cap.
C. I'm not sure how my current guild's healers will do as I haven't raided with them yet, so I'll reserve judgement. But if you are a standard member in a guild then yelling at your healers isn't really an option. Also, if you are in some run of the mill guild then your raid leader might not care about healers sleeping. (IE my last guild)Posted 08-10-2008 at 10:17 AM by Kamani - I think Xav and Armstrong summed it up nicely. My personal belief on gear is that one should have at least 3 sets, all of which are specifically designed for threat, Avoidence, or EH, and gemmed/enchanted accordingly. This gives you great flexibility. Right now I have an outfiitter setting for Raid trash which tosses on about 70% EH and 30% threat gear. For my current gear level and the gear of the players I run with, this seems to work out well. But the simple fact that I have some peices that are only going to be good for threat, allows me to swap out 1 or 2 individual things in my EH set to suddenly get that extra boost in TPS to keep the DPS from pulling while still keeping me alive. But, as said before, having a mod that lets you switch out between gear sets really comes in handy.
You can switch as needed for trash. About to face those ugly guys in kara just after Chess that suddenly hit like trucks? Toss on EH set. Say over vent, dps, just so you know, I put on EH set for this so give me a few seconds before you open up.
As far as the healers falling alseep thing goes... When I, as a tank, do something that is obviously just poor tanking, or me spacing out (pulling a pat at the wrong time and grabbing 5 extra guys because of it) everyone knows it was the tank who screwed up. Conversly, when I pull a pack of 4, hold agro great, and die in 3 seconds from no heals, everyone knows it was the healer who suddenly didn't do their job. In those situations, you can either toss on your EH set after your resed for that pull, or give it another go and hope your healers woken up. 9 times out of 10 it's usually just them lagging suddenly. But most people don't like messing up repeatedly where it's obviously their fault. So, healers asleep once will usually wake up. As for what to say to them, I usually let the first time slide. They'll often explain it themselves anyways since they know it was their mistake. In either case, once I know my healer can comfortably keep alive on the trash in progression content, I swap on more threat gear. Once they're doing fine when i'm in a mix, I put on even more threat gear. Eventually, it's all threat gear because hey, once you're not dying while they're doing their best to heal, then you may as well help out all the slow dps out there who forget how to read Omen.
Posted 08-10-2008 at 02:55 PM by Desmurick - Basically what i was trying to say was pretty much summed up by xav - who i might add, has the most awesome threat set with quite a few hit gems!
Posted 08-12-2008 at 03:05 AM by Sanelora
