Threat at an all time low?

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10-17-2009, 03:46 AM
dotJEM

Death Knight - Threat at an all time low?

Hello...

I'm just going to throw this out there...
I have NEVER had threat issues on my Death Knight, usually I Have been able to keep around 6K stable (with the +/- 2.5K up and down)...

That was a few patches ago, since then i haven't tanked much, the other day i returned and now I am struggling with getting 4K stable TPS...

Is DK's just broken in that manor, or what are other DK's experience... and what is your spec/rotation/spell priorities...

Im Frost/Unholy (Frost as mainspec, unholy as offspec, both thanking specs)...
Gear level is most Ulduar 25 and a few Toc 10/25...

Any input is welcome...
10-17-2009, 03:48 AM
Glittersmith

Our blood tank don't seem to have any threat problems at the moment.
10-17-2009, 04:07 AM
Pwnanapuddin

One of the primary reasons a DK starts showing a loss in threat is because you are not keeping up with the DPS with your weapons.

One remedy if you have decent avoidance is to use the DPS trinket instead of the dodge one. While the other is getting a new weapon.
10-17-2009, 04:21 AM
dotJEM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pwnanapuddin

One of the primary reasons a DK starts showing a loss in threat is because you are not keeping up with the DPS with your weapons.

One remedy if you have decent avoidance is to use the DPS trinket instead of the dodge one. While the other is getting a new weapon.

I Know this, but this is not how the drop has occured... it's not in an advance on content, it's the same content where i have dropped 2k tps roughly... without any change at all, except for patches where FS has gotten a nerf for one, then another one... after the patch where FS got the nerf, i haven't keept track of what has happened, since i switched to druid as main...

Thats why I'm wondering... Is it either me who has to switch play style... (Go DW as frost tank, favor other spells/talents ect)...
Or have we as tank taken a hit on threat. (Blood won't be a switch i will make, ultimately I have tried it and i can't get comfortable with it's rotations)

Also, my weapon is one of the better ones i can get from Uld25...
i know that a new weapon can help... but i stopped on content where i can't get an upgrade... you should hardly be required to clear harder content to manage threat in lower content... ?
10-18-2009, 10:19 PM
Salidus

IMO go to blood tanking. I did that on my DK and have little threat issues save my ele shammy liking to pull mobs/boss then ele mastery and lava burst. Depending how I feel I let him die cause he is a friend. Anywho I think that frost tanking atm is really in DW other than that I feel more gimped TPS wise tanking in frost spec then blood spec.
10-19-2009, 07:59 AM
Satorri

Also, one giant factor:

If you haven't tanked in a while, you're no doubt rusty. DK tanking is a thing that improves greatly with practice and experience, and when you stop for a period of time you forget some of your comfort and it takes time to pick it back up.

There's no particular loss of threat that I've seen from a patch or otherwise, nothing but nicks and cuts that weren't particularly without balance. FS got a little nerf, that's true though, but it shouldn't cause a 30% cut in threat.

You said you are 2h Frost correct? What's your methodology (rotation if you like)?
10-19-2009, 08:16 AM
Chamenas

Frost tanking took some hits in 3.2 because of frost dps in the way of Frost Strike, which was a huge threat generator (still is of course). I went Blood, but Frost Tanks should still be able to hold their own with proper gear.
10-19-2009, 08:27 AM
Mert

How are you measuring it by the way? If you've noticed it just from glancing at Omen then I wouldn't worry too much unless you're threatcapping your DPS. Omen's TPS numbers are often a bit twitchy but the total threat is usually spot-on. If you've noticed a dip in terms of your sustained, either in parses or simply by taking total over seconds then it's worth looking into the reasons, but if it's just Omen farting numbers at you I wouldn't worry for now and get some parses done to double check everything.
10-19-2009, 08:34 AM
Bashal

I honestly wouldn't worry about your TPS unless people are pulling off you all the time, or complaining that they are burning all their threat reduction talents and still pulling from you easily.

A tank's threat is really only an issue if it is so low you are significantly capping your DPS's output. If the DPSer's complaint is that they actually have to use their aggro reduction cooldowns, or that they have to spec into threat reduction talents, slap them, please. Slap them hard. ;)
10-20-2009, 10:20 AM
Salidus

Yeah pretty much what these guys said. Though I did notice for maybe a week or so when 3.2(or 3.2.2) that I lost on average about 2.5-3k TPS don't ask me how. Could be I messed up my rotations (Not likely since I had been used to them for about 5 months) to I just had a bad RNG day on my damage. But I ended up trying about 10-15 specs tweaking here and there to figure out what I could do better (Also trying unholy tanking spec) But then we had that little patch come in and I went back to blood and am now back up to 6-8.5kTPS (Glancing at omen of course. I've spiked to about 12kish) But I still hold threat on my DPS. Well except with that damned ele shammy of course. Nasty little buggers
11-29-2009, 04:24 AM
dotJEM

Well it seems that Omen has played a part in the whole mess, or i don't know... after using Skada for a while on the side line, the Threat numbers are completely different, i have still dropped overall, but going back to hit food helped on that part...

i now seems to sit on an overall average of 6-7K TPS (Skada don't seem to show peaks or falls) over an entire fight, what i don't like so much at this time is that there also is a difference in the "total threat" on omen and Skada... (omen may say 200k, skada may say 250k as an example)... so what to trust?
11-29-2009, 04:42 AM
wazdaa

Quote:

Originally Posted by dotJEM

Well it seems that Omen has played a part in the whole mess, or i don't know... after using Skada for a while on the side line, the Threat numbers are completely different, i have still dropped overall, but going back to hit food helped on that part...

i now seems to sit on an overall average of 6-7K TPS (Skada don't seem to show peaks or falls) over an entire fight, what i don't like so much at this time is that there also is a difference in the "total threat" on omen and Skada... (omen may say 200k, skada may say 250k as an example)... so what to trust?

do the numbers matter?

only thing i use it for is to see if dps is behind me, or if the are below 110/130% bk in BC.

if you really so concerned about your threat you better of keeping some logs and do some calculations when you have some free time.
11-30-2009, 01:14 PM
dotJEM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wazdaa

do the numbers matter?

only thing i use it for is to see if dps is behind me, or if the are below 110/130% bk in BC.

if you really so concerned about your threat you better of keeping some logs and do some calculations when you have some free time.

The numbers doesn't matter that much as long as your a good lead ahead... the difference does however... i wanna know what to trust and not to...
11-30-2009, 01:35 PM
Bashal

Quote:

Originally Posted by dotJEM

The numbers doesn't matter that much as long as your a good lead ahead... the difference does however... i wanna know what to trust and not to...

Omen is only gauging TPS over a short interval of time, so it dips and surges all over the place. It does not display average TPS (as an aside, this is how you get tanks saying they can "pull 10k TPS"; they glanced at omen once and saw that number, lol). It does, however, display a reasonably accurate total threat generated value, for the purposes of determining how close someone is to pulling aggro. I have never seen a case (that wasn't eventually explained) where Omen said someone should still have aggro when clearly they did not.

I don't know about skada, but as I understand it Omen is hooked into the built-in threat meter in WoW to determine aggro generation now, rather than using threatLib. If skada uses threatLib still, and if threatLib's data is inaccurate, that could be the cause of the discrepancy.
12-02-2009, 02:12 AM
PatrikL

Quote:

Originally Posted by dotJEM

Hello...

I'm just going to throw this out there...
I have NEVER had threat issues on my Death Knight, usually I Have been able to keep around 6K stable (with the +/- 2.5K up and down)...

That was a few patches ago, since then i haven't tanked much, the other day i returned and now I am struggling with getting 4K stable TPS...

Is DK's just broken in that manor, or what are other DK's experience... and what is your spec/rotation/spell priorities...

Im Frost/Unholy (Frost as mainspec, unholy as offspec, both thanking specs)...
Gear level is most Ulduar 25 and a few Toc 10/25...

Any input is welcome...

Its funny you ask this now because I was wondering a bit about this a few weeks ago. I pugged the daily as a tank with 2 dps doing about 2.6 (hunter and mage), and was struggling to stay ahead of them. I didnt check how much TPS I did unfortunately but after the fight I checked my gear and spec and all was ok. A few days later I did Ulduar10 with some guildies and also pugged Ony and VoA with no issues at all and the top dps there were doing 6+. The only conclusion I can come to is that the dps from the 5 man pug were doing something wrong. My impression in general is that the more dps someone does the lower their tps/dps ratio is (better skilled in other words). I cant say there was a huge difference with how long (or rather how short) the dps waited before they attacked, I'm used to most ppl blasting away from the start.

To answer your question, no I dont think we have a problem with it at the moment. I tank as frost and don't have the greatest gear.
12-02-2009, 04:59 AM
jere

Omen is accurate on the total threat. It uses the blizzard API functions to get threat values. You have to understand that the TPS values are not average TPS (like someone said earlier). Don't rely on those numbers. Rely on the total threat you generate.
12-02-2009, 05:32 AM
Belak

Quote:

Originally Posted by dotJEM

Also, my weapon is one of the better ones i can get from Uld25...
i know that a new weapon can help... but i stopped on content where i can't get an upgrade... you should hardly be required to clear harder content to manage threat in lower content... ?

dotJem - You said you switched to another character and just recently came back to tanking on this char. One other thing to consider - while your stats might not have increased in your absence, did your dpsers? I agree you shouldn't need higher level gear to tank an instance, but if you're fighting against dps who are using higher level gear, you'll definitely notice.
12-02-2009, 07:18 AM
dotJEM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jere

Omen is accurate on the total threat. It uses the blizzard API functions to get threat values. You have to understand that the TPS values are not average TPS (like someone said earlier). Don't rely on those numbers. Rely on the total threat you generate.

I did also look at total values, the thing is if someone was ever closing up or passing me on threat my eyes always glanced at TPS next to see if it was "OMFG stop pulling 10k TPS and never FD stupid hunter" or if I should push my self more.

I would very much like to be able to trust Skada as well because it shows an overall TPS instead of a momentarily.

Why I had those experiences I might explain in the answer below.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Belak

dotJem - You said you switched to another character and just recently came back to tanking on this char. One other thing to consider - while your stats might not have increased in your absence, did your dpsers? I agree you shouldn't need higher level gear to tank an instance, but if you're fighting against dps who are using higher level gear, you'll definitely notice.

I have switched to Resto Druid, but content wise it was a minor difference when I returned as a tank for our alt runs. And since the DPS is also consisting of alts mostly here, the gear level difference was minor.

I have refound-found some stuff I need to watch for (e.g. Hit!)...

Ones my hit went a bit low in a short period, I could sometimes be facing an issue, my conclusion has been that it must have been overall "unlucky" streaks where the misses I had came all together in some unlucky periods from time to time...

That means that the DPS'ers would close in on me very fast in the beginning because I had some more frequently misses, and then if to much, I would on the fly try to compensate instead of relying on my rotation to catch up.

The reason for this conclusion is that it could change from time to time on a boss, so at one week I would be way a head, and the unlucky misses came late, but then not affecting the overall picture as much as if they came sooner, the next week it would seem the other way around and then the "OMG WTF" when you haven't tanked for real in a while...

I have always known the importance of hit, and I was always capped during the Ulduar days (because there was so much lovely hit gear)... TOC was different in that manner.

So in the end, I don't think it is one thing only that made the change, but a whole bunch of things all together. (-90 hit with food included, Frost Strike, absence, not keeping my self updated)...

But this threat in that manner served it's purpose since some of the questions and suggestions made me look at some stuff I would properly have overlooked otherwise... :)
12-05-2009, 11:42 PM
Fledern

You said you were a frost tank. When frost was redesigned for dualwielding, i found my RP generation & general rotation totally fucked up while using a 2h. You may have run into that maybe? Also frost used to be good with a single-disease build & now it isnt. I'm not uptodate on frost, you might want to check out sattori & krenian guides for the latest stuff.
12-06-2009, 04:18 AM
dotJEM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fledern

You said you were a frost tank. When frost was redesigned for dualwielding, i found my RP generation & general rotation totally fucked up while using a 2h. You may have run into that maybe? Also frost used to be good with a single-disease build & now it isnt. I'm not uptodate on frost, you might want to check out sattori & krenian guides for the latest stuff.

Wasn't so much the problem, as bad RNG and not realizing it on top of some minor nerfs and some less decresed stats (e.g. hit)...

I have worked my way out of it more or less... Hit food and replacement of the Deconstructor Sigil to the TOC Badge one, as well as more gear sets aiming for different situations...

The build is more or less the same, but had to take Virulence due to the lack of hit on gear these days... the rotation for my wasn't so disrupting, I have started out as unholy way back... and i hope that we one day can return to that, so the building diseases up was always something i was use to, and i even did it some times as frost out of pure habit... so getting PS into the equation was something i was already rather use to.

For now I am around the 6-8K stable over an entire fight now depending on what buffs there is and what not... (and obviously more on fights like twins ect)...

So things is going ok now... but i had some minor adjustment to make... and realize how important hit seems to be for my spec...