[magnuss]

I have been in a bit of a limbo for a pretty good while now in terms of raid progression and have recently found a new guild/server who is making lightning progress. unfortunately im not in their raid rotation yet and am still stuck doing constant and regular 5-man heroics. the more badge gear i start to get and the more i adjust my stats i am noticing that my threat generation is very high.

now this of course would normally never be a problem as you always want to get as much threat on a target as fast as possible BUT at what point does it become more effective to stack stamina or some avoidance stats over something like block value or expertise?

im a tauren warrior and when i start combat in 5 mans i average between 900-1400 tps (because i dont use any CC at all and just rush in and tank everything at once). I have noticed that with this strategy i get enough rage and balance my abilities in such a way that i pump out a ton of threat onto targets. My worry is that when i do get put into our raid rotation where the speed at which i generate threat is not as big of a deal, that i am sacrificing too much possible stamina for threat generation that i dont need.

anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Kavtor]

Are you dieing? Is your healer having a hard time keeping you up?
If not, Pile it on. Some healers like an invincible tank, others are happier with someone who gives them something to heal. If you're not slowing the group down by making your healer drink after every pull, kill those mobs faster.

[sevve]

There's no such thing as too much threat. Survivability will however always take the front seat, meaning that you will sometimes need to swap some gear around.

Sacrificing EH/avoidance for threat shouldn't be an issue, as you should have designated pieces for each purpose. This way you can easily balance your gear based on encounter.

[Foolishness]

IN regards to tanking heavy hitting raid bosses:

Threat comes from skill

Survival comes from gear (apart from shield block, thunderclap, and panic buttons, which a monkey can be trained to use).


This statement obviously doesn't apply to people without skill.

Everytime a tank dies wearing threat stats where they could have had survivability stats, its the tanks fault. Never blame your healers for your deaths. Always blame yourself. Take responsibility for your own survival.

On another note, every time you lose threat, blame yourself for pressing the wrong buttons, not your gear.

[Kazeyonoma]

TY for bringing your bullshit here foolishness and insulting the community we have here by calling 75% of us inept in our threat. I will not take this moment to edit your thread to remove such harsh comments but leave the "meat" of your post as to remove the harsh comments, and keep our environment less like the WoW Forums. Thanks.

[Kazeyonoma]

Now, I'll take this moment to reply to your post.

No, you cannot simply rely on pushing Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate and expect that to be enough threat.

You are spewing out the wrong information. Unless you're "survival gear" happens to also have lots of threat stats on them, you're gonna hold back your raid's dps. This can be proven with simple threat math but I'll leave that for you to figure out. Threat IS a very important aspect to tanking, it's the 2nd most important though. Surviving is your #1, you got it right there. But to claim that Threat comes from pressing buttons, and survival comes from gear is complete horseshit.

[Bonerot]

Threat comes from skill & gear

Survival comes from skill & gear

You can't do well at either without knowledge and no not everytime a tank dies it's his own fault. Sometimes it's a problem on the healing side, sometimes it's a problem from the tank or even someone else in the raid.

People will love you if you can put out around 1000tps around heroic & t4 level, at that point you need to judge for certain fights if more avoidence, more EH or more threat.

Threat though is my default set, you can never have too much of that and if you have the EH for a fight then more threat is almost always the best choice.

I'd consider more avoidance only on fights where my target hits often, fairly hard and the DPS won't be working on killing him right away so I'll have a huge lead no matter what else I do.

More threat from one person lets the entire raid increase their dps. When I get really far ahead of them it's because they aren't trying hard enough at which point I start to taunt them on vent

[Banith]

I think that what would properly prepare you for tanking after heroics is getting used to tanking with CC, not just charging in and trying to pick up everything. With most 25 man raids you simply cannot tank everything at once, you will take to much damage for your healers to keep up with. Therefore you have to become accustomed to only tanking one or two mobs and make sure that you are still able to generate enough threat when you are not dealing with an almost unlimited supply of rage. Review what your guild is currently doing for encounters review what there tanking strategies are, how many mobs will you typically be encountering, how hard / often do they hit. Get used to dealing with the situations that you want to be involved in.

Tanking a single target where you are getting limited amounts of rage from the damage you are taking and having 15+ people unleash everything they have (as they race for top dps spot), is a very different scenario than charging into a pack of mobs and having a full rage bar in a matter of seconds.

[Foolishness]

If anyone missed my original post,(which was edited), i stated that i believe 75% of tanks are unable to build enough threat because of their skill level. For my own amusement i also said anyone who disagreed with me was probably in this 75% (lol).

(Actually the reason i decided i wanted to tank was because i was sick of waiting for tanks to build threat while i was playing my warlock).

In fact, its not only 75% of tanks which i don't think are great, but 75% of players in general who are unable to meet their optimal possible performance, simply because they are not fast enough, clever enough or intelligent enough, or in fact determined enough. And i'm talking about people in hardcore raiding guilds.

I think its a fairly simple concept, that pressing the right buttons at the right time, is logistically what this game comes down to. If someone misses a global cooldown by half a second or uses a non optimal ability for the situation, they have just gimped their threat but massive amounts. I believe that improving in this area, can do more for your threat than any amount of gear.

I am not trying to abuse the tank community or belittle people, i am simply trying to enforce my belief that most people can do more than they think their gear will allow.

All the time i hear people saying: "my threat sucks because of my gear" The sad truth is, even if they had great gear, their threat would still suck. Its about the way they play, not the gear they have. Gear obviously helps, but its not the main factor.

For anyone to become the best player they can be, they need to push themselves beyond their 'limits', which they believe their gear to be responsible for.

As for the maths about 'needing threat gear' and DPS, ill do some maths for you.


From Kara to the end of t5 raid content, most DPS cannot top 1.5K DPS. Taking into account treat modifiers (salv, talents, cloak enchant, non melee range), the threat per second from these players is likely to be about 1k max.

And thats if they are attacking non stop

Most encounters involve the DPS doing other activities, not attacking the boss. Giving you more leeway.

On top of this, most DPS classes can vanish/ soulshatter/ go invis/ feign etc...

From experience, this normally results in 'gun' DPS players doing no more than 500 TPS over the duration of a long fight.

I can Also tell you from experience, its possible to maintain over 800 TPS with no specific threat gear (apart from standard block value and small amounts of hit), on most heavy hitting bosses. Thats with 500 latency and no more than 3 global cooldowns per rotation.

This tells me, that if anyone pre t6 cannot maintain aggro on a heavy hitting boss without specifically gearing for threat, then they are a bad player, because there are so many factors which give the tank so much room to build threat where the DPS is not.

Obviously some T5.5 /T6 encounters are a lot more threat intensive (especially with the increase in gear from the dps classes), and i have had had the experience of tanking a couple of them eg kaz'rogal, but i believe this to be extraordinary, and not your average encounter. On these types of encounters obviously gearing for threat is the way to go.

People might think I'm rude and full of 'bullshit', but the fact is, blaming your gear is the oldest excuse in the wow book. It applies for tanks as well.

In regards to the original post, I'll give you some practical advice:

Whenever you have to tank trash or something benign, wear your best threat gear and impress your team with your awesomeness. But when you have to tank a big boss, make sure you don't die, because if you do, everyone will think your crap, unless the main tank is also crap and dies a lot.

As far as blaming yourself for dying is concerned, its obviously not always your own fault, and the healers are also to blame. However, you could also argue that it is your fault to go into an encounter under geared with the knowledge that your healers will not be able to keep you up. If the healers cannot keep you alive because you have not mitigated the maximum amount of damage possible by doing everything you can to live, then its your own fault. Once you have done everything you can, then you don't need to blame yourself. If you go into an encounter wearing a 2% threat enchant, and an executioner enchant, then the raid wipes because you died, then you did not do everything possible to survive. Everyone keeps saying survival comes first, but not many peoples gear reflects this.

To end my post ill ask everyone 2 questions:

How many times have you not been able to compete an encounter because the DPS was not able to go fast enough because of the tank?

How many times have you not been able to complete an encounter because the tank died?

I am hopping that my contribution to this community is at least more interesting then the same replies i see regurgitated everyday on the same topics. Have a think about it. At least I'll admit everything i have said is only own opinion, not matter how much I think I am right.

[Gwayne]

Good post! And some interesting points that many people don't like to hear, I guess.

I've often seen tanks who outgear me by far, both on EH/avoidance AND on threat, but still perform sloppy. And I've seen n00bish-looking geared tanks who get all the mobs stick to them like glue and survive easily.
Numbers are, in the end, just numbers. Being able to burst 1500 tps (from a quick glance at the highest number you see appear in Omen) does not mean that you have a high average threat-output or that you're good in managing threat on multi-mob packs. It comes down to overview, being aware of positions of your party and all mobs (+pats) and using the right emergency skills at the right times that make you shine in many encounters.

Statistics like the 75% are of course completely made up and have no real added value (except for generating threat among your fellow readers and posters on this board). I dare say that the majority of posters here know about the differences between theoretical and practical threat. And the majority of readers are learning about it by reading and trying to understand the massive walls of text here.

My 2 eurocents...

[Foolishness]

Obviously when i say 75%, i am just referring to a rough perceived number from the top of my head, and yeah, i do like to stir to the pot.

The basis of my opinion, is that my threat is never an issue for me on big bosses despite not wearing any threat gear. However very recently I have been wearing a significant amount of expertise, but primarily for avoiding parries.

If anyone would like to topple my argument, there are 2 cases against me:

The first is that maybe my guild has very low dps.
The other is that my guild is too nice to tell me i suck, and hang behind on the threat.

I doubt both of these are true considering things such as fast kills long before enrage timers, and much open and critical communication between myself and some of the better dps members. Nevertheless they are still possibilities.

As far as omen is concerned, i'm well aware of threat spikes and such, and the inaccuracy of information, but at as a relative tool i still find it to be quite useful. The only times when i have had problems with omen as a relative threat tool, is when hunters feign deaths have been resisted.

Anyhow i think i have had my say, i feel like i'm gonna get banned or something lol.

[Kazeyonoma]

Well no, this isn't the WoW forums is what I'm trying to say, so please, don't Stir the pot for your own reasons, but if you have something to say, please express your opinion, this is a forum meant for the spread of knowledge. Just don't resort to insulting remarks or statements meant just to anger people. This isn't what Tankspot is about, and repeated offenses of that nature can lead to discipline.

I understand what you're trying to say, and it's true that on a lot of raid bosses, you want to ensure your survivability first and foremost, but there are always ways to improve, and sometimes if your healers say you are easy to heal, you can drop some avoidance or hp and grab some threat to help the dps out. If your dps isn't threatcapped then like you said, there's 2 possibilities, who knows what it is. Good for you if you are pushing your threat.

But to generalize statements about 75% of the community, or that threat is button pushing while survival is gear, isn't true. Of course threat involves skill, but survivability does as well to some extent, and likewise threat involves gear too. It's intertwined and you can't separate them with such statements.

I agree, especially on harder bosses, i put on moroes trinket instead of my auto blocker, i wear my dodge rings instead of my expertise rings. This makes sense because a lot of the time on big bosses, you get threat leads anyways because you have so much incoming rage, but some fights are threat based, and you have to push your threat to meet them, and gear is the only way outside of the perfect rotation to do this. Likewise, on farm content, more threat will help overgeared dps push harder on an easy boss. The key is to mix and match your gear for various encounters and various situations. This has always been the advocated ideas here by the administrators and authors.

[sevve]

I have to say that I agree with some of Foolishness' points.
Maintaining the threat required through t5 content is easy with a proper rotation, unless you have too much avoidance. Being aware of when you have too much avoidance for a specific encounter is important.

However, it does take a lot of threat enhancing stats to boost threat significantly, which is definately required once you start t6 content.

[ebs2002]

Maintaining the threat required through t5 content is easy with a proper rotation, unless you have too much avoidance. Being aware of when you have too much avoidance for a specific encounter is important. However, it does take a lot of threat enhancing stats to boost threat significantly, which is definately required once you start t6 content.

It depends on the encounter and the situation. In Karazhan, for instance, there are times where my threat is a little lower than I'd like it to be because of:
1) I'm the only warrior, which means I have to keep up TC and Demo shout
2) If we have 2 healers instead of 3, then I have to swap out some threat for more EH/Avoid on tougher fights
3) I run with a well geared warlock and shadow priest

These three things combined means that, even with a perfect rotation (and assuming I'm keeping up TC and Demo shout), they sometimes hear Omen's duck quacking by the end of a given phase of Nightbane.

Just because Omen shows you spiking at 1k TPS doesn't mean you're consistently keeping 1k TPS up, and maintaining a perfect rotation with 15ms ping isn't always going to be able to keep up with 1k+ DPS classes.

[Foolishness]

Kaz, i was not 'insulting' the tanking community for the sake of it, i was being critical. I seriously believe in what i have said, down to my bones. Theres a big difference between criticism and insults, even if it is harsh criticism.

And my point is that 'I think' too many tanks look towards gear to improve threat in situations before they take responsibility for their own ability and try to improve through means of skill development.

My other point is, no matter how good a player you are, you can't survive bosses you don't have the gear for. Apart from your debuffs block and panic buttons, you have no control over what the boss will do to you.

On the other hand, no matter how bad your threat gear is, you can almost completely rely on your skill (if you are good enough) to keep your head above water in terms of aggro (on most boss fights from t4- t5). You have complete control over what you do to the boss.

If anyone finds this offensive, then its really not my issue.

The idea of a 'perfect rotation' is also flawed in my opinion, due to the inconsistency of incoming rage, and the myriad of possible decisions you have to make at any moment based on which cooldowns are up and how much rage you have and the opportunity cost of every button you press. Sure it might be possible to control this by keeping a 'surplus' of rage but then every time you get king hit and fill your rage bar you have wasted your 'surplus'.

IMO building threat is more than rotation, and its more than gear. Much more.

I would also like to clarify this: I am well aware that omen 'spikes'. If i was quoting my 'threat spikes' on omen i would be giving you numbers like 1700, not 800. When i say 800, i'm talking about the minimum steady number which my threat falls back to after my 'threat spikes'. I also know that trying to use omen quantitatively, is pretty stupid anyway, but the main point is, my dps is most often a very safe distance behind. Thats what matters.

[JayDee81]

Sorry to tell you, but you sound a lot like just trying to provoke for the sake of provoking.

You have said nothing really interesting either, and lots of what you said is either not really the case or maybe just said the wrong way, or maybe I just don't percive your statements correctly.

Building "ideal" threat means pushing the right button. This means using the best threat per rage ability available, dumping rage with HS or Cleave to not hit the rage cap. That's all you can do, it's not easy, but no problem for an experienced tank either. If you think you are in the "Top 25%" how you percieve it, fine.
What makes a tank better than a lot of the average tanks (who in general able to push those 4 buttons) is of course to maximize threat available from the rage you're getting and using your other abilities (shout, stomp, SB if needed, LS/SW). Whatever, I'm not saying it's difficult, I'm not saying it's easy. I think most, not 25%, but probably 75% or more of the tanks I see on my server manage this pretty well, being good means maximizing, but the difference is not that much. Bringing your latency from (as an example) 180ms to 30ms will make a much bigger difference in threat that anything you think you are doing good, or what makes you belong to the top 25% in threat generation.

So actually, threat is only that. Rotation, gear & ping. What else is there to threat in your opinion? What's the "much more"?

Concerning your other point, saying threat gear is not needed and whoever needs it is not good at producing threat, is just plain stupid. Have you actually raided T4/T5 content or just is your information hear-say? If you were in a guild that has actually progressed through this content, you would be aware of the fact that threat gear is just very good in some encounters (or your DPS just really really sux!). 2nd tank on Gruul with threat gear is just so much better. You just get the occasional hit and then have to use that rage in the best possible way, threat gear just makes your threar per rage a lot better. If your DPS in this fight is not threat capped by the 2nd tank something is wrong with your DPS. We still go Gruul to equip newer people, as it's also a quick run and if I'm not MTing (it servers as a good gear check for newer tanks), I put on max threat gear (this doesn't mean DPS gear) and still pop rage pots to let our DPS go full out.

So, back to MY point, saying threat gear is not needed when you know what you are doing is stupid and let's me think you... EDIT... whatever.

Have a good day.
JD

Source: Foolishness And my point is that 'I think' too many tanks look towards gear to improve threat in situations before they take responsibility for their own ability and try to improve through means of skill development. On the other hand, no matter how bad your threat gear is, you can almost completely rely on your skill (if you are good enough) to keep your head above water in terms of aggro (on most boss fights from t4- t5). You have complete control over what you do to the boss. If anyone finds this offensive, then its really not my issue. The idea of a 'perfect rotation' is also flawed in my opinion, due to the inconsistency of incoming rage, and the myriad of possible decisions you have to make at any moment based on which cooldowns are up and how much rage you have and the opportunity cost of every button you press. Sure it might be possible to control this by keeping a 'surplus' of rage but then every time you get king hit and fill your rage bar you have wasted your 'surplus'. IMO building threat is more than rotation, and its more than gear. Much more.

[Foolishness]

Concerning your other point, saying threat gear is not needed and whoever needs it is not good at producing threat, is just plain stupid. Have you actually raided T4/T5 content or just is your information hear-say? If you were in a guild that has actually progressed through this content, you would be aware of the fact that threat gear is just very good in some encounters (or your DPS just really really sux!). 2nd tank on Gruul with threat gear is just so much better. You just get the occasional hit and then have to use that rage in the best possible way, threat gear just makes your threar per rage a lot better. If your DPS in this fight is not threat capped by the 2nd tank something is wrong with your DPS. We still go Gruul to equip newer people, as it's also a quick run and if I'm not MTing (it servers as a good gear check for newer tanks), I put on max threat gear (this doesn't mean DPS gear) and still pop rage pots to let our DPS go full out.

If you had read my previous posts, you would have noticed that the basis of my argument was that i was able to comfortably complete most t4/5 encounters without gearing whatsoever for threat.

As far as offtanking is concerned (in your case gruul), i see more than 75% of offtank warriors, trying to stay 2nd on the threat while holding a shield. No joke. In situations like this i seriously cant put my emotions into words.

Sorry but i cannot help making statements like "i think 75% of warriors cant build threat", when most people are not smart enough to duel wield while offtanking, or even bothered enough to make a macro to change weapons. In fact i would even go as far to say that most warriors cant even be bothered to read the damn warrior guide on the forums.

When i say theres much more to building threat than the rotation, well, most of the time, i don't even follow the rotation. I find that if i actually wait around for enough rage to complete my rotation by the book, i miss every second global cool down and my threat drops a lot, and i can never use HS.

Hell, i will even go as far to say that people probably miss out on threat because they don't press their buttons with their fingers fast enough.

Whatever, my main point is that at t4/5 level its possible to do almost every fight without having to specifically gear for threat, without gimping your raid DPS.

[Shorty]

I didn't really want to get involved with this thread, but two questions/thoughts:

Whats not smart about ot'ing with a shield - personally I prefer the safety of the extra armour, of being able to stay in defensive stance and having access to high threat skills like shield slam while being able to help the MT and keep up thunderclap. I'm not saying ot'ing dw is less smart, just that it is perfectly possible to stay second on agro (and occasionally pull agro) while using a sword and board.

As far threat gearing, why wouldn't you want to if you can. There are many tanks here who completed t4/5 content before the introduction of expertise, so yes it is definitely do-able. But I work on the principle that you should give 100% of effort to anything, and as far as I'm concerned that means gearing for threat when you can, as this directly benefits the other 24 raidiers. Also, no amount of "skill development" will enable you to land hits and specials 10-15% more of the time (with the associated increase in threat), which threat gear allows you to do.

[Hypatia]

I can't imagine OTing Gruul without a shield, at least back when we were doing Gruul—particularly given that the OT's job is to soak giant hits that you don't want landing on the MT.

That's why we used a bear for that position—better able to take the hits and keep up in aggro while not tanking.

But not use a shield for OT? Hell—I can't really think of a fight where you have an OT that needs to keep up with the MT in aggro where the OT can afford to take a hit without a shield equipped.

[Kazeyonoma]

Source: Foolishness When i say theres much more to building threat than the rotation, well, most of the time, i don't even follow the rotation. I find that if i actually wait around for enough rage to complete my rotation by the book, i miss every second global cool down and my threat drops a lot, and i can never use HS.

Could it be possible, you're gearing so much for your "survivability" that you're getting rage starved? I have yet to become rage starved after kara. In ZA I'm swimming in rage and can keep up my rotations while putting out heroic strikes consistently. You say that you put out 800 tps on omen "steadily". You know that this means your overall tps calculated for a fight is probably closer to 500-600? WWS one of your raids, and stick it into WowWebStats Tps Calculator Let us know what happens. I can honestly say that I don't hold back any of my raids due to my survivability, I don't die due to instagibs either, I keep up my rotation WHILE keeping tclap and demo shout up, and i can put up over 800 real TPS, that means over 1k on omen.

Whatever, my main point is that at t4/5 level its possible to do almost every fight without having to specifically gear for threat, without gimping your raid DPS.

Sure, it's possible for a rogue or shaman to tank stuff too. Does that mean it's optimal? No one says to gear specifically for threat. If you look at most threat gear that we recommend here, it's conveniently also great EH pieces, or great Avoidance pieces too. Case and point [item]Unwavering Legguards[/item] Awesome threat from sbv, but equally awesome EH. Or [item]Girdle of the Fearless[/item] Great EH piece with sick threat itemization. Or even [item]Chestguard of the Warlord[/item] Hit? Dodge? Eh? WOW?!