Warrior Threat?

Hello all,

Has anyone noticed an issue building threat, particularly against a Druid? I seem to have the most trouble on tank switch fights where I have little vengeance built up. For instance, I am noticing this on the second boss of HoF (I forget his name off the top of my head). It seems that I am constantly fighting the druid for threat while tanking, even when he "backs off". It has been an issue the entire raid tier. Is it just an issue of Druids being able to build threat faster, or am I not building threat fast enough? Once I get vengeance built up to a decent level, I seem to be able to hold things better. We are both equally geared. Link to my armory:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ohelric/simple

Intervene can help a little bit, to grant you some vengeance off the start. Capping expertise would help as well. I also use the glyph of heavy repercussions and hold the line in place of heroic leap and bull rush for some fights. I realize having a leap/charge with extra rage every 30 seconds is really nice but if you really need to catch up that badly it might be something to try. I'd like to see what others chime in with. Have to also consider druids are build around crit and AP, so the odds are a bit stacked. When you taunt switch he might just want to stop attacking for a few gcds.

Yeah, anything you can use to reduce his threat or steal some of his vengeance will help. Having said that, "backing off" is a relative term.

I tank on a pally. Early in the tier I was tanking with a monk. I was able to continue using holy power generators even on a taunt swap. Laying off the rest of my rotation was enough. This was nice for extra word of glories or just to have a full stack of holy power when I re-taunted.

As I got more gear, however, I had to be much more careful to the point of running out of auto-attack range or turning my back so that I would not re-pull threat even though my co-tank was staying even with me on gear. He started to have to do similar tricks as well at at times.

The tank losing aggro needs to watch and react to Omen as much as the tank who is taunting. No single tank is failing on a taunt swap that doesn't work unless someone just taunts the wrong mob.

Edit: Also, tank rotations matter much more than they used to. Make sure that you have your priorities correct. Shield Slam on cd and quickly on SnB procs, etc. It's amazing how many logs come here and show prot warriors using nearly half the shield slams they could be.

What me(war) and my co-tank(DK) have found works very well is when we swap we drop our vengeance immediately after we're taunted off of. Either by right clicking the buff off or creating a "cancel aura" macro would probably be much more efficient. Not exactly sure how you would write that as I usually just stance-dance to drop my vengeance. I think it would be /cancelaura: vengeance I'm sure somebody here is a little more skilled in Macroneering than I am and can verify that.

it's just /cancelaura vengeance

That sounds like an awesome trick to make the swap easy. I'm surprised I didn't think of it because really...it should have been a simple idea =(

Having said that, any idea if a moderated rotation with vengeance decaying or a full rotation with 0 vengeance is technically better from a damage done point of view? Is it maybe a small enough difference that it doesn't matter?

Devastate/HS should be sufficient damage without pulling threat, it's those shield slam crits that will get ya.

Honestly, I don't know that much about DK snap threat, but I've never had a problem holding threat against any other tank if I just taunt and immediately shield slam. Maybe throw in an HS for good measure, you should be rage capped before the taunt anyways.

Yeah, I use the pally version of that. HP cap. Taunt + Shield of the Righteous, Crusader Strike, Shield of the Righteous. I rarely had issues unless the other tank is still going full bore.

As a warrior who outgears my co-tank, if he is tanking and I taunt and he does not do something, he will pull it right back off me. This is with me at hit/exp caps, with full rage, hitting shield slam and hs on after I taunt. Fact is, druids/monks gear is mainly DPS gear, except they tend to gem a bit different then if they were dpsing. For example: druid co-tank is at about 50% crit chance on his attacks. If he has a full vengence bar, thats an insane amount of threat to hold off him. It's not that I am doing something wrong, he has had to learn to back off when I taunt. Then again, when I am tanking if I just keep my rotation going I will either pass him and pull off or ride his back so hard it makes him/healers nervous.

50% Crit? Dang. I want to see your druid's Armory now. :D I'm pushing 41% at the moment and depending on who I'm tanking with, I do have to back off sometimes on a taunt, especially on Feng when it's really critical for the other tank to hang onto the boss after a taunt.

A druid who is oriented around snap aggro threat (crit + exp/hit cap) and doing their rotation right is going to be high threatgen, but they should know to take their hands off the keyboard if they're continuously pulling off of you, including hitting Esc to stop attacking for a few seconds.

One thing I noticed is that your weapon swing speed is 2.57, so your white swings are going to be slower than an average bear's at 2.5 before their haste comes into play. You're also using River's Song (+Dodge) and my guess is that your bear is sporting Dancing Steel (+Agi) on their weapon, which when it procs is going to give them some more monsterbear spike damage. There are a lot of RNG based differentials that can come into play, many of which are not under your co-tank's direct control.

(Caveat: I do not know warriors very well. So this may be okay, but I can say that I outthreat my not-so-good bear co-tank that is using Colossus and is reforged to Dodge -very- easily.... )

We do need the high crit, though, since it gives us better rage gen and makes us less squishy, and something else you should check is what the damage differential between the two of you is. If the bear is doing 2.5-3x or so your DPS, then he's going to pull off of you -- which means he really does need to back off a lot.

The /cancelaura Vengeance is a trick I hadn't even thought about, but I'd hate giving up all the free bonus damage I get while I'm not tanking if I can keep it just by keeping my paws off for a few seconds or watching the threatmeter.

-Tielyn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tielyn

The /cancelaura Vengeance is a trick I hadn't even thought about, but I'd hate giving up all the free bonus damage I get while I'm not tanking if I can keep it just by keeping my paws off for a few seconds or watching the threatmeter.

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It's not necessarily something that you use 100% of the time you're tank swapping, as another tool in the toolbox for touchy situations where under no circumstances do you want aggro bouncing back and forth. Which in some circumstances can be caused by something as simple as high-vengeance DoT's critting at the perfect time. But ideally yes, both tanks are watching Omen during a swap and choosing ability usage accordingly, and thereby maximizing damage output whilst keeping aggro where it should be.

I will add though to address the OP, the second boss of HoF can be a bit of a pain for swapping. It's mostly due to the fact that he moves around a lot, and therefor is liable to be taunted and, maybe less than 2 GCD's later jump to a ranged DPS, and by the time he get's back to you your co-tank's high-vengeance DoT's have taken aggro back. I believe that boss is actually the first boss of the tier we found it extremely helpful to cancel vengeance from time to time to ensure a smooth transfer.

Get Expertise capped.
Get Dragon Roar.
Get BloodBath.
Get Heavy Repercussions.

Dragon roar On taunt swaps makes life easy, armour ignoring auto critting snap threat button. its on a 1 minute CD which means on Feng it'll be there every other taunt swap, on Tayak it'll be there every taunt swap. Bloodbath is a superior DPS CD to avatar, it is alo there every minute so can be alterneated on Feng with dragon roar, and synced on Tayak for, you're not going to see the big numbers you will with avatar, but it does end up being alot of little numbers in the background. Glyph of Heavy Repercussions is your best DPS improving Glyph; on a damage break down you should almost always have shield slam doing more damage than Revenge, you should have shield block up for majority of the time whilst tanking( on feng, you might wind you can near 90% uptime whilst tanking I would drop bullrush since its kinda poo.

when not tanking you should be letting SB and zerker rage recharge so when it comes time to taunt you have DR+ZR+SS+SB all in the first 2 GCDs and are nigh rage capped.