Need help with my TPS, or am I good?

[Vaalin]

Hi guys, pretty new to these tanking sites, although I have taken away a good deal of info from them so far, ie effective hps and exactly how important ss and revenge are.

My armory:
The Armory

My topic today is my tps. Usually vs a raid boss(kara and gruul), my avg tps is only about 630ish, so the warlock i role with usually holds back, the hunters deffinently have to fd(duh i know), and on a lucky fight, some of the mages occasionally have to hold back. All the time around here I've seen others talkin about holding 800-1000 tps, though I've never actually seen their armory page to gage their gear, but I was just wondering if people might have a few suggestions on specific gear changes I could try, or maybe even talent changes.

I do have a 30 and a 32 defense trinket in the bank, and I also have the Madness card and violet eye(36 stam) trinket for the high hp fights(toss madness on for prince, when my new guild goes to gruul i'll probably use both.) Vs bosses I always make sure to use SS and revenge when their cd is up, otherwise i'm spamming deva, and when i get above 30 rage I use hs. Except for Prince ph2/3, and later half of gruul fights, I tend not to use shield block simply cause I barely have enough rage to hold my tps above 600 w/out using it.

So, my question is with my givin gear and raid level, is 630ish tps doing pretty good, is it merely avg, or disappointingly sub-par? At the moment, the only thing that I can think to change, which I just read about while browsing these pages tonight, is to respec slightly, I guess out of imp sunder to 1h spec, since apparently that increases damage on revenge/ss. I am also starting to ponder exactly how nice imp demo shout is, a lot of tanks I look at don't even have that! Other than the 1h spec talent, the only other thing I can think of to help my tps is simply waiting for additional +hit items to drop. Hopefully when I get back to Gruul I'll have a better ratio than 1 in 15 kills on the Aldori Legacy Defender. And I'm still waitin to see my first bracers off Attumen, annoying since i've been killing him since late march.

[Nicki]

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (im a paladin you may disagree with some choices but 1h spec is a must)

Anyway that will probably up your TPS slightly..

On topic, 1000 tps in karazhan->SSC would be insane considering in black temple warriors are doing 992 TPS ([Warrior] Sustained TPS / WWSed - Elitist Jerks).

If you are doing 630TPS your DPS can sustain about 900TPS if they have no threat reduction but salvation, so obviously they can go much higher than this, 1000 TPS may pop up on peoples ktm when they crit shield slam and revenge and they are like ZOMG I DID 1000TPS on gruulz!! the hard cold fact is that ktm and omen measure it in 15-20 second intervals so its not sustained.

A few things; maybe pick up night banes shield in the mean while or coldarra (its ugly but its damn nice) and try to get a feral druid/shaman in your party for more TPS .

Other than that i dont know hopefully you get some warrior feed back. ^.^

[Horacio]

Well, you have a little better gear than I do so....630ish seems a little low but not enough to where at that content, it should be causing problems for you if you can sustain that. You've got some + hit, that's a large amount of threat alot of tanks bypass....Those wasted misses on SS hurt.

I was in Gruul last night with a very "green" raid (sigh, long story, lets just say its the 2nd 25 man group in a large, casual guild) With a virtually endless supply of rage, I keep my SB/Rev rotation up, SS every 6 seconds and spam HS/Dev to unload excess rage inbetween.

Sharpening stones help. Maybe an AP or STR elixir....you have the mitigation to drop to a fort elixir vs. a flask or hell, get some of them Blade's Edge flasks for free...they have some AGI or AP or STR on some of them. You've got more BV than I do so you're SS's ought to hit pretty hard. Aside from getting 1H spec, it appears to me to be a matter of fine tuning your attack rotations which comes with practice. A shield upgrade would help as mentioned above but the difference between the Crest, Coldarra, and Imp. Darkness isn't so massive as to completely change the equation.

Also as mentioned, the group composition could help too...increase crit or Windfury(or GoA) and Strength of Earth totems.

I don't pay too much attention to my threat tbh....I watch Omen for the OT and the handful of melee that push him.

Keep working at it, you'll get there. You have a good idea what you're doing on gear.

Ah, one more thing....On the ground slams, quick switch to berzerker and intercept back to Gruul, get an auto attack or something, anything you have rage for and then switch back. That little bit might not seem like much but it helps.

[MasterWolf]

Ok, I'm no pro at this, especially gear-wise, but here's what I see on your talents:

#1) You only need 2 points max in Imp Demo. Check out the rest of these forums, Cider goes into it somewhere where it's not really effective or worth it past 2 points. (-3 points)

#2) Either remove Imp Def. Stance or Improved Shield Wall for another 2-3 points.

#3) 1-Hand weapon spec is very important, grab 5 points in that.

#4) Consider switching imp Sunder for imp HS. <-- I'm not sure about this one, but if you spam Devestate, then you'll be using HS more than SA in the long fights.

#5) Maybe consider switching KD for SE for more Dmg?

Hopefully this helps a little.... Don't have to take all the suggestions

[Kaldore]

I had this exact problem. What I did for myself was to up my hit rating from nothing to almost 5&#37;.

What a world of difference that made! Now I'm dying to get my hands on the Shield from Gruul and a Freyed Tether from Karathress. I would love to get my Hit rating to the cap Vs. Bosses of 8.6% (136 HR), but I'm not sure I could take such a massive loss of HP

Here is a good page someone directed me too with a breakdown of what every class caps out at for Hit rating.

[Vaalin]

Thanks for your replies everyone. And yeah, I've been planning on getting Nightbane's shield along with Gruul's the first chance I could get. I've never seen Nightbane's drop yet, and Gruul's has dropped once in 15 kills..and my guild gave it to the OT over me(who was MTing), astonishingly, that was the last time we ever did a 25 man raid in that guild.

At the moment, it seems to me that other than my shield, and maybe the cloak from SV, which I'm nearly halfway through revered tryin to get, are my only real upgrade options as far as additional threat goes. Anything else I get probably won't be a real tanking item, and as you could see I'm really skirtin the 490 defense line. If/when I get Nightbane's shield, I was planning on getting the gyro-balanced gun for additional stam, I may still do that but maybe now I'll drop my +hit dps bow that I have in there for tanking normal bosses. As far as the Coldarra shield goes (the badges one), that one would really lower my effective hps, so had pretty much written that off as a downgrade to my current shield.

2 more questions I'm left with. As MasterWolf mentioned, it's possible I only need 2 points in imp demo shout...Are those 2 points even all that important or better spent with 1hand spec and/or imp hs? Also, is there a general set amount of hps that I should be considered good with on the Gruul fight that at which point if/when I die it's merely not enough DPS on the boss? Because my current thinking is maxing my possible hps which would be both trinket spots & also with my gun slot should I get Nightbane's shield. That would leave me with only my sword w/+hit, and put me back down at low tps, unless 1hspec helps a LOT.

[Kazeyonoma]

Like wanderlei mentioned, there are effective healths within a bosses range. If upping your stam more would help you survive another hit, then its worth it. If you're gonna die anyways, you're better off putting those items away to get more threat or more avoidance.

I'd say with your current set up you're already gravy for what you're tanking if not already overgeared for it. definitely get 1hand mastery 5/5 however you wanna do it. I'd say drop imp demo for it and have an offtank pick up 2/5 imp demo for you. Heroic strike is definitely worth it. I think there was an argument about if you have imp Sunder, you don't really need devastate. So its up to you, if you wanna keep devastate, drop imp sunder and get 1hspec from that. Its definitely worth it.

[Vaalin]

Hmm, 2/5 imp demo OR 2/3 Imp HS....That is still keeping 3/3 imp def stance, I can't think of any boss other than Hydross that this is a big talent for...perhaps later eye and tier6 instance fights?