How much TPS are you doing?

[Ariedan]

Just out of curiosity, what sorts of TPS are you guys doing (on both trash and bosses)? Also, please say what weapons you're using, what content you're doing, and other things that might affect your TPS drastically.

[MasterWolf]

How would we track this?

[Ariedan]

Threat meters? Omen's a really good one, in my opinion.

[veneretio]

I keep hearing this Omen talk running rampant... I guess I should stop being stubborn and just try it...

[Groundchuck]

Recently changed a number of things so I'll break this into two sections:

The Old Way:
Socketed for some +hit. Standard mitigation tanking group, warlock with imp imp, GoA, tree druid etc....
I could hit 900tps on bosses by working pretty hard. Not bad.


The New Way:
I got a good deal more gear so me getting killed isn't as much of an issue. Now I stack a feral druid and windfury instead of the more mitigation heavy classes. That change, plus the change in my gear lets me hit close to 1k tps on hard-hitting bosses without breaking a sweat. Give me a lucky string of crits like I had last night and I was hitting 1200tps on Leo. (4 shield slams for 2k each makes life easy, lol)

I'm using a good amount of +hit (57hit rating) both from sockets and things like Blazefury and the Gruul Shield. It's enough that you start to notice.

That helps a huge amount. Stacking a feral druid I can stay around 18% crit, pushing up to around 21% with a mongoose proc.

I also try and push as much block value as possible without giving up too much def/avoidance/stam. My current regular tanking gear has about 600 block value. I put on heavier mitigation on fights like Morogrim, and on trash I put on a full block value set which gives me closer to 800, but I lose some +hit.


Stacking the druid and windfury along with enough +hit and block value makes it pretty much easymode IMO. Things like the neck from Fathom-Lord will only help. (and pants with block value)


Hope that helps.

[Ariedan]

WTB your armory link :O

Mine's around 800 on bosses without windfury and heroism. My shield block is incredibly low (like 300), I have no plus hit, and I still have the Sun Eater. I hold aggro well, but I'm still embarrassed at how low my TPS is, especially since I know the dps is holding back a lot. I'm not sure if it's just a gear issue or perhaps my play style.

[veneretio]

WTB your armory link :O

Mine's around 800 on bosses without windfury and heroism. My shield block is incredibly low (like 300), I have no plus hit, and I still have the Sun Eater. I hold aggro well, but I'm still embarrassed at how low my TPS is, especially since I know the dps is holding back a lot. I'm not sure if it's just a gear issue or perhaps my play style.

600 BV + 57 Hit Rating vs 300 BV + 0 Hit Rating

I think its fairly clear here that gear is making a big difference. If anything 800 TPS given the gear you've just described is very strong. Out of curiosity... do you use a sharpening stone on your weapon

[Ariedan]

It depends on if I'm main tanking, or just doing things like tanking little adds. I very rarely main tank anything beyond Magtheridon, as I'm usually just a primary off tank or a tank for adds.

I can't get the good sharpening stones, though, as much as I've tried looking. I usually just get the dense sharpening stones.

[veneretio]

Adamantite Sharpening Stones are very accessible and if you are a miner then maintaining a good stash of them isn't terribly time consuming either.

[Groundchuck]

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen'jin&n=Groundchuck

There's my armory link. I also heroic strike A LOT. On bosses I have other warriors sunder, demo shout, clap, everything pretty much.

So everything for me is HS/SS/Revenge and shield block. Pure threat all the time.

Also Sharpening Stones (or WF) and Agi pots help threat quite a bit.


EDIT: Reread some stuff. 300BV + 0 hit and 800tps is very good. Just need some gear.

[Ariedan]

Groundchuck, do you use devastate?

[Groundchuck]

sometimes...

I tend to forget about it to be honest. My muscle memory is stuck in sunder mode a lot of the time.

[Ariedan]

It's all right. I have a really bad habit of spamming heroic strike too much when I could throw in a few more devastates. It's just like shield slam, revenge, shield block, hundreds of heroic strikes and then... "oh shit, my sunder debuff's about to expire, DEVASTATE!" I'm working on it and getting a lot better at involving it in my tanking routine.

[windrage]

Hi guys and gals

First post, so starging with BIG thanks 2 the contributers, and others for putting down all this effort.
U are really making a HUGE difference for tanks around the globe !


Which way to go to top TPS?
Get 2 spikes at 900 but usually at 7-800 and i feel im missing out on something.

Assuming BS upp, fully sundered no rage issues...

Shieldslam
Shieldblock
Revenge
Heroic Strike
Devastate
Rince and repeat...

any other suggestions?

[Narshe]

I guess you probably are already doing it but, Heroic Strike should be out of a rotation. It's not in global cooldown and you can spam it if you have rage to spare. For SSC/TK bosses, you will find they hit like a truck and you are gonna have rage to spare like 80% of the fight.

[windrage]

sooo more like...
Shieldslam
Shieldblock
Revenge
Devastate
Devastate

And go HS if rage allows...
As cider mentioned earlier.. love that Signature animation

[Ariedan]

I guess you probably are already doing it but, Heroic Strike should be out of a rotation. It's not in global cooldown and you can spam it if you have rage to spare. For SSC/TK bosses, you will find they hit like a truck and you are gonna have rage to spare like 80% of the fight.

Yup, I always use it while waiting for shield slam, revenge, and shield block cooldowns, and in between global cooldowns (I know, I need to use devastate more :P). I also use it on fights where I have to shield bash so I don't have to worry about not interrupting because of global cooldowns (like the priest on Fathomlord-Karathress).

[Kazeyonoma]

Yeh, one very fast way to check your threat is to use SWStats or any other damage parser, and after doing a few trash/boss fights in a heroic. see the breakdown.

On most good warriors #1 damage (and threat as well) comes from heroic strike roughly 40% of all damage
#2 damage is white hits, as expected
#3/#4 damage is revenge or shield slam
#5 is normally devastate for me.

So the key factor is using heroic strike a LOT. it helps a TON with threat especially against raid bosses where you can sit near 100 rage for long periods of time even mashing every button, queue up that HS and burn down some rage! ;]

One thing i note, to help me with remembering to devastate is this macro

#show Shield Slam
/castrandom Shield Slam, Devastate

Use this macro when you're not using the awesome auto-blocker/4SS one.

just hit this as fast as you can during your rotations, you should squeeze in devastates a lot, and the great thing is, if SS is on cooldown, it automatically does Devastate, so I never have issues with sunder debuff.

[Zamea]

sooo more like...
Shieldslam
Shieldblock
Revenge
Devastate
Devastate

And go HS if rage allows...
As cider mentioned earlier.. love that Signature animation

For me, when tanking raid mobs, I usually definitely have rage to spare most of the time unless the mob is stunned, like those shades in Kara, so rage almost always allows me to do HS. What others have meant, is that Heroic Strike should be spammed constantly according to your weapon speed. In fact, I am hitting my Heroic Strike button all the time while on a mob. This would almost allow me not to miss the 1.6 weapon speed.

Also, you got the skills priority right.

Shield Slam
(if Revenge available then use it, if not...)
Shield Block
Revenge
Devastate (after applying 5 sunders)

However, it would almost never be possible to fill in 2 Devastates due to the global cooldown of 1.5s for SS, Revenge and Devastate, since you want to get off as much Shield Slams as possible and with talents, Shield Slam should be on a 5 second timer.

After 1 Shield Slam, Shield Block(which is not on global cooldown) and Revenge, It should have taken you roughly 3.5s to cast those, Devastate would take the other 1.5s, which would land you nicely back on the next Shield Slam cooldown, but of course, due to the different cooldowns of Shield Slam, Revenge and Shield Block, Revenge may have finished its cooldown first. So there's really no standard rotation.

What I do is I start the fight with

Shield Slam
(if Revenge available then use it, if not...)
Shield Block
Revenge
Sunder Armor ==> Devastate after 5 SA

And then any one of these abilities once they have finished their cooldown, usually with Shield Block as priority, then on low rage conditions I will pull off a Revenge first when available then a Shield Slam, and on high rage conditions I will pull off SS before Revenge. Then Sunder when cooldowns and rage allows.

And I do all of these while continually spamming the Heroic Strike button which has a central position in my key bindings so that I can easily spam it while reaching for the other abilities that have finished their cooldown.

This allows me to hit up to 900 - 1000 TPS in cases when I always have rage to spare with a Block Value of 184 (no devilshark cape yet and after having gone through over 70 epics in kara, I have only received the girdle from Moroes... warrior loots do not drop for my guild. T_T) and 0 hit rating.

All these are assuming conditions where rage is not a problem. Do read up Veneretio's blog post in cases where you're rage starved. Agree with much of her entry.

[nobel]

i usually am pulling in about 800 + with spikes over 1k. Now i tend to use HS and sunder more then dev becuase i am wilding a TF. Dev with a TF won't generate more threat then a sunder will unless it procs. Thats the major down fall of the TF from my experiences.

To push the 1k substained TPS i really think its about +hit, having a high shield block value as well as a high end dps one hander to spam dev.

My ideal rotation would look like (after 5 sunders)

SS,
SB,
REV (if proced)
Dev
Dev
Repeat

I use HS quite a bit since it doesn't use to GCD so you can always toss those in there if you are MTing a boss.

Those are my thoughts anyways