Threat
In the past week or so two events, and some niggling doubts, have lead me to question my threat-output, the first was having a guildie say on Ony25 (when I lost agro while pulling Ony backwards at the pull) "I never have a problem on my DK" - as he pulled agro off me, causing Ony to turn and flame breath the raid and the second was a DK off tank (normally dps) pulling off me on Beasts 10 (normal). I can't explain how much the first comment affected me, I was simultaneously upset and angry; I'm sure it was just a throw-away comment but still.
At the time I put the Ony-pull down to an inexperienced melee player (he was on an alt) and me reversing too quickly causing problems actually hitting her, I put Beasts down to an offtank who went all out while I was trying to squish in debuffs and shouts. But in the cold light of day I'm wondering ...
I am happy (well, not happy but you know what I mean) to admit that my threat generation is not the best and while I continue to work on it I feel that there are a fairly limited number of places to improve and so I am wondering if I'm not missing something. In our guild misdirects are rarely used (we usually have to ask for them as tanks and even then they don't always get given) and ToT is used somewhat sporadically. I've never played a rogue or hunter so I have no idea what the down-sides are to these abilities (in terms of personal dps loss, mana/power costs), but I'm wondering how often other guilds use them and whether we should be encouraging our hunters and rogues to be more proactive about them. I've always believed that threat is a raid-wide problem and while the dps have scaled considerably throughout Ulduar I feel that my threat output in terms of gear gained has not scaled as well, and as we head into ToC heroic and Icecrown the gap is going to widen even more, and if I have to rework keybindings and macros to make me more efficient I'd rather do that sooner rather than later.
I will say that in general I think I do OK but then I don't know if the dps is holding back (although as some don't seem to notice until they pull agro I suspect that they are not!), some recent problems have been on Acid-worm (knockbacks don't help), Icehowl (immediately after stuns) and while tauntable bosses make neither of these situations wipe-threatening it is disheartening at the very best and incredibly irritating as well.
I have another ulterior motive for potentially bringing misds and ToT into focus, while we are only taking our first steps in ToGC25 I am confident that we will reach Anub before Icecrown and even now I generally solo tank the two adds, with no outside help (it gets messy), so I don't know whether raising the issue now might make our lives easier later.
If anyone has some world of log entries (normal-mode 25man) for a full clear I'd love to have a scan through to see how often such abilities are used, although I guess it depends a lot on the guild (I did try and search World of Logs but found it difficult). PMs with links would be much appreciated as well, as always, any other suggestions.
EDIT: I should perhaps add that one thing I could do is go back to a deep wounds spec.
At the time I put the Ony-pull down to an inexperienced melee player (he was on an alt) and me reversing too quickly causing problems actually hitting her, I put Beasts down to an offtank who went all out while I was trying to squish in debuffs and shouts. But in the cold light of day I'm wondering ...
I am happy (well, not happy but you know what I mean) to admit that my threat generation is not the best and while I continue to work on it I feel that there are a fairly limited number of places to improve and so I am wondering if I'm not missing something. In our guild misdirects are rarely used (we usually have to ask for them as tanks and even then they don't always get given) and ToT is used somewhat sporadically. I've never played a rogue or hunter so I have no idea what the down-sides are to these abilities (in terms of personal dps loss, mana/power costs), but I'm wondering how often other guilds use them and whether we should be encouraging our hunters and rogues to be more proactive about them. I've always believed that threat is a raid-wide problem and while the dps have scaled considerably throughout Ulduar I feel that my threat output in terms of gear gained has not scaled as well, and as we head into ToC heroic and Icecrown the gap is going to widen even more, and if I have to rework keybindings and macros to make me more efficient I'd rather do that sooner rather than later.
I will say that in general I think I do OK but then I don't know if the dps is holding back (although as some don't seem to notice until they pull agro I suspect that they are not!), some recent problems have been on Acid-worm (knockbacks don't help), Icehowl (immediately after stuns) and while tauntable bosses make neither of these situations wipe-threatening it is disheartening at the very best and incredibly irritating as well.
I have another ulterior motive for potentially bringing misds and ToT into focus, while we are only taking our first steps in ToGC25 I am confident that we will reach Anub before Icecrown and even now I generally solo tank the two adds, with no outside help (it gets messy), so I don't know whether raising the issue now might make our lives easier later.
If anyone has some world of log entries (normal-mode 25man) for a full clear I'd love to have a scan through to see how often such abilities are used, although I guess it depends a lot on the guild (I did try and search World of Logs but found it difficult). PMs with links would be much appreciated as well, as always, any other suggestions.
EDIT: I should perhaps add that one thing I could do is go back to a deep wounds spec.
Total Comments 8
Comments
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One thing to keep in mind is that the dirty DK can be using Icy Touch and Death Coils while walking Onyxia backwards and out of range most of the time.
It's sometimes difficult to get hunters/rogues to be more proactive in their tools. I've found it helps to have the hunters make macros and remind them at the start of the raid to update it to the current tank. Working with them 1 on 1 also has good results as well.Posted 10-29-2009 at 07:50 AM by geros 
- We tend to use misdirects and ToT when pulling stuff, I think the rogues use ToT to push each other's dps later in the fight.
If the DPS are constantly threatening to pull the boss off you, then they will end up holding back, however in my experience the only threat meter a dps has is when the boss turns around and whacks them. Tunnel vision ftw.
Threat only needs to be high enough to stay a good 10% above everyone else. I do know that our warrior tank can sometimes have problems with initial threat, probably to do with needing to sunder and perhaps rage issues.
I have pm'ed a log as requested
Posted 10-29-2009 at 08:06 AM by Pyrea - I have had a few interesting threat relevations myself this last week. I run only 10 mans in our guild, and will regularly pug some of the 25s. I usually try to pug as a tank, only because I want to be able to roll on tank gear. My OT is always a feral druid with about similar gear.
On a guild ToC run, I will tank Gormok first, and normally I will open with bloodrage, and then a Shield Slam, then start working on my debuffs and Commanding Shout. Well depending on crits and rage, a lot of times my OT will grab aggro for a second, before I can hit him with a Devastate or another Shield Slam, then I will have grabbed aggro back. It got to the point that in ToGC this week, I had to tell her to just hold off for a couple seconds so I didn't have to worry about holding Gormok from her AND getting all my buffs and debuffs up quickly. But then later in the fight, after she taunted, I would usually wait a couple seconds, refresh my sunder and TC, then just go back into my tanking rotation. Well she would be at the second Impale, and then all of a sudden, bam I'm dead. I was like wtf? Well I pulled aggro from her, and got 2 shot because the healers were focusing on her. But the only threat issues either of us ever really have are from each other, never from the DPS, so for us it's more of a communication issue, than an actual threat issue.
As for the ToT or the MD, right now we have no hunters or rogues in our 10 man, so we do without. As far as I know, none of the dps ever really hold back at all, maybe for the first second or 2 to get bosses into position, but otherwise they just go all out.
EDIT: Apparently some people were reading something that I didn't mean, therefore I deleted it.Posted 10-29-2009 at 08:27 AM by Sheed
Updated 10-29-2009 at 06:44 PM by Sheed -
Sheed, speaking as a healer: I hate you.
Especially when it comes to healyspammy encounters where the healers are on the edge anyway grabbing unexpected aggro is deadly.
Get Omen and better look out.
In Vanilla you would have caused trouble on Huhuran, Vael and othersPosted 10-29-2009 at 09:59 AM by Mačl - We'll MD on the pull in situations where the tank is more concerned with positioning than with frontloading max threat, like while walking Onyxia to the back wall. It just makes sense.. it allows the DPS to start in relatively quickly rather than wait 10-15 seconds for the tank to get all set up.
We'll use MD and ToT for control issues during tank swaps or to help put some distance between the MT and a high-critting DPSer. It's not always needed, but it develops good habits.
As for those tanks who feel that they have something to prove, fighting another tank for aggro proves nothing except that we are nothing more than the tanking equivalent of the DPS meter-whore. Just as high damage meters doesn't always mean that you are a great DPS'er, high TPS doesn't necessarily mean we're a great tank.Posted 10-29-2009 at 04:18 PM by Xaric 
Updated 10-29-2009 at 04:25 PM by Xaric -
I just looked over our last WoL out of curiosity:
Our hunters cast MD 45 times
Our rogues cast TotT 155 times.
It was a mixed batch of bosses over 3 hours - YS+3, NrB heroic (6 tries), Jaraxxus heroic (9 tries) and Anubarak normal.
From a DPS's point of view, MD and TotT are godly - they can start earlier and hit harder to start off with than any of the other DPS, and all the threat goes to you... which means they can hit harder still...
I have to work hard NOT to get MDs on some pulls :P
As well as bringing the hunters and rogues to bear their responsibilities, you might want to look at your initial rotation on a boss, smart use of vigilance, and also (overall) how much heroic strike spam you're managing to pull off.Posted 10-29-2009 at 06:56 PM by Fayre - My main (well, at least for a moment - my up and coming protection warrior is consuming me) is a hunter and I usually open up with Misdirection on every pull. It costs me a GCD (which I more often than not get to use pre-pull) which I'm more than glad to use as I'm able to start my DPS immediately. Also fights like Jaraxxus, Razorscale or Anub'arak are perfect examples where Misdirection and ToTs should be used whenever new adds spawn - tanks doesn't have to worry about loose mobs or possibly missing a taunt/high-threat move and things are smooth from the get go. Our rogues are also ToTing the tank on every pull no matter what the boss is.
So yes, I'd have a serious discussion with your hunters and rogues and would pretty much demand those abilities to be used. That's what they're for, after all. Raiding is team work and if classes are capable of assisting tanks on mob pickups or maintaining threat in general (Hodir HM anyone?), they should do so without question.
Oh, and if they pull out the "But it costs me personal DPS" card, then I'd stop raiding with them as that is completely bullshit - pardon my french. Fair enough, on fights like Anub'arak misdirecting adds to the tank requires you two switch off of your burn target but hey, it's a GCD plus few seconds to get all 3 charges spent. There is no disadvantage for the hunter to misdirect and to be honest, Misdirection is very big part of the hunter class.
/rant.Posted 10-30-2009 at 01:23 AM by agranyoch - Thanks for all the responses, I delved into our WoLs a little closer and think I may have found one of the problems, my HS usage is really poor (I suspect it's tied to a macro I had for revenge & HS not working properly or something so I will have to look into that)
Weirdly my buttons/timers show that I've been queuing it (otherwise I would have noticed earlier).
Last night was 3 hours on Freya+3 (progress kill) and HM beasts (second kill) with 3 hunters and 1 rogue and a total of 4 ToT only, so that's probably still something that can be improved.
As for me I'm installing grid (for a reason unrelated to this blog) and going to investigate my HS problem tonight (feeling rather embarrassed that I didn't spot the HS problem sooner) Posted 10-30-2009 at 03:27 AM by Shortypop
