Addendum on Hit

Kamani — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:29:37 GMT

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 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.

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Addendum on Hit