Generating "The Threat"

[Bigstik]

Unless you're HSing indiscriminately, keeping buffs and debuffs like shield block and TC up isn't a problem with the rage granted during a boss fight. Also, the additional dodge and AC is a great help.

[Negiva]

Hey, nice guide. Just a question though that I hope you can help with.

Your WWS log is gone now, however, I noticed you had significantly higher hits on just about every ability compared to mine. Check out mine, it's about the same duration as the original WWS you linked for yours...

Wow Web Stats

We MD teron to the doorway, so I lose about one SS/revenge and 1-2ish devastates there. For the most part, we had just about the same number on every ability. I think I did everything near perfect. I had a resto shaman for WF and used one haste potion (could have used a second but I was being cheap =P). The thing I don't understand is how all your abilities are hitting for a lot more than mine. Your HS was hitting for just about double of mine, your SS crits were about 500-600 more, and so on. I checked your buffs and the only difference I could tell was that you had a feral druid.

Could you show me your gear choice for that WWS you linked (unless the link you posted from ctprofiles is the one?) and what buffs you might have had that affected it? Thanks. I want to increase my threat more =(

Oh and one last thing. My shaman was swapped into one of the other groups to give them heroism, so I didn't have it. I doubt that's the reason my TPS is about 300 lower than yours though. HALP!

[Mimas]

Im having a hellava time with this...ha! But hell I'm an old guy...I just can't seem to raise my TPS over 700. And yet I read threads where they're talking about 1500+ HOW IN THE HELL (excuse my french) is that possible?

I've read XAV's thread over and over and actually got some good stuff...I realized I had some buttons reversed. I was SS/devastate x2/and then Revenge...rinse and repeat.
But although I made some corrections...I still can't seem to raise that Treat.

I really really really want to bring that up LARGE...
My current stats
Def = 521
Dodgev= 24.75%
Parry = 18.07%
Block = 19.00%

Anyway I sure would like to know how you raise the TPS at least up to 1200...please please you young bucks have a large advantage over us old farts who in our day played PONG and thought we rocked the world....hahaha

[Nicki]

equip hit/expertise and block value gear.

[Xav]

Extremely hard to figure out what the issue is without any real info given, Mimas.

The best suggestion I can give currently is to re-read the 'guide' and make sure you're using a proper gearset that lends itself to generating better threat, and to make sure you're keeping a tight ability rotation while using heroic strike to burn off excess rage.

Remember, you can queue up heroic strike to burn off excess rage whilst simultaneously keeping to your SS-Rev-Dev-Dev rotation, simply by hitting more than one key at a time ... tanking is a very button-mashy role, just make sure you're hitting the buttons correctly!


Edit: Since this seems to be your character; The World of Warcraft Armory

A few things right off the bat that will help your threat:

Get the Badge neck (Expertise+Hit)
Get the badge bracers (Expertise)
Get a ranged weapon with hit on it (or socket your current one for hit, there's many options)
Get the badge gloves and put 2% threat on them
Run heroic mana tombs for Crystal Band of Valor - Items - World of Warcraft
Get an extra tank weapon and put executioner on it - you may want to put Mongoose on Sun Eater from Mechanar and put Executioner on your KD.
Create a macro or something that uses your Autoblocker trinket every time the cooldown is up, the simplest way to do this would be to make your shield slam activate your trinket in the same macro. If you're doing this already, cool.

That stuff can be your "threat suit" - then stick to a solid, disciplined rotation and don't let your rage get higher than 50, use heroics, and you should easily get at least 1000 tps in your gear level.

[Xav]

Hey, nice guide. Just a question though that I hope you can help with.

Your WWS log is gone now, however, I noticed you had significantly higher hits on just about every ability compared to mine. Check out mine, it's about the same duration as the original WWS you linked for yours...

Wow Web Stats

We MD teron to the doorway, so I lose about one SS/revenge and 1-2ish devastates there. For the most part, we had just about the same number on every ability. I think I did everything near perfect. I had a resto shaman for WF and used one haste potion (could have used a second but I was being cheap =P). The thing I don't understand is how all your abilities are hitting for a lot more than mine. Your HS was hitting for just about double of mine, your SS crits were about 500-600 more, and so on. I checked your buffs and the only difference I could tell was that you had a feral druid.

Could you show me your gear choice for that WWS you linked (unless the link you posted from ctprofiles is the one?) and what buffs you might have had that affected it? Thanks. I want to increase my threat more =(

Oh and one last thing. My shaman was swapped into one of the other groups to give them heroism, so I didn't have it. I doubt that's the reason my TPS is about 300 lower than yours though. HALP!

Negiva, here's the Gorefiend parse for me from our most recent BT clear. The fight duration is approximately the same as yours, ours was a bit longer. I had Heroism and Drums, which is standard in our composition, but the drums thing is only a recent occurance, all of my older logs had no drum usage and such.

(1530 tps) Wow Web Stats

My HS average was only 21 points higher than yours, SS was ~130 higher, Devastate ~20 higher, rest mostly identical.

This wasn't my peak log by any means, but my gear was better - I finally got Kaz'rogal's shield and that let me cap my hit, and I also put a spike on it. [I have obtained 1500+ tps logs in the past though with worse gearsets)

Your gear is probably basically the same since we're at the same level of content, get all the expertise you can, and then get high hit%, too.

CTProfiles.net: World of Warcraft Profiles » Xavastrasz » General Threat is what I am using, I updated it (the 'general threat') one is what I wear for threat on bosses. I *think* for that specific Gorefiend I took off my Moroes for once and wore another block trinket (Sapphiron's) since we were healer heavy and I had timers up just incase.

Are you using Shapeshifter's Signet for more expertise? I use it over the exalted Hyjal ring since the expertise/crit gain is far more beneficial than the block value.

Your ability rotation was pretty good, I doubt you could have done much better there.

The biggest cause of threat loss I can see comparing our two logs here as similar as they are with group comp is overal landed abilities. You had a lot more parries and some misses, I had very few parries and no misses. (I have human bonus + wearing shapeshifter's)

The rest, I guess, is heroism. Although I am not using Haste pots

I haven't actively tried for any especially high threat numbers in ages, that's just a typical Gorefiend for me with the way our raids are done.

[Ciderhelm]

Xav,

I was following a related thread on the WoW forums yesterday. Check this:
Edgewalker - WWS

10 total Shield Slams, on trinket. 1572 TPS on Teron. It's pretty interesting, as he has reached a point w/ gear/buffs where he can legitimately argue Devastate has outscaled Shield Slam.

[Xav]

I don't see anything really special there, wearing some DPS gear pieces, sacrificing avoidance, and using haste potions. Those are all possibilities - what I'd guess he actually did was use Dragonspine Trophy, causing the Haste procs, and a bit of DPS gear - and then got rather lucky, and had a very stacked group composition (Enhancement shaman AND a feral druid)

Also, it was 16 total shield slams, not 10 (10 "hit", 3 "crit", 1 "miss", 2 "parry")

Looks like he had a bit more armor pen than the average, since his Revenges were all ~20 points higher than what I get, using just Executioner.

So Feral + Enhance = ~6% more crit? than average compared to a regular shaman and no druid, most likely used an Agi elixir for more crit, a bit more crit/ap from a few choice pieces of DPS gear, and yeah, you'll see numbers like that. There wasn't THAT much sacrificing of SS/Revenge, it was certainly nowhere near an ideal rotation, but with such a strong group, it will definitely cause your alternative button push (devastate) to be a very strong comparison.

I'm confident with a stacked group and a few DPS pieces and a DST + consumables I'd pull quite a bit higher than 1600 TPS, while keeping a tight SS/Rev-centric rotation.

(My reply in a gist: Yeah with enough buffs you don't really have to do anything special since you are doing so much damage with your attacks)

Edit: I dug around looking for the thread you mentioned, and yes, I was completely right on my assumptions

[Ciderhelm]

Actually I was quoting the numbers used in that thread, hadn't loaded up the parse myself.

However, he's confident he can move up to ~1750 TPS, and I'm sure yours can go up, too. His argument is that our normal melee stats can be as good as tanking stats, and is better scaling than Shield Block Value. He's still wearing enough tanking gear that he can tank the ~3rd most damaging physical boss in WoW, he's just chosen to alternate his SBV items with AP items, etc.

//edit: In any case, this is not good advice for anyone below this gear level. It's just an interesting find.

[Xav]

Indeed, I've considered "maxing out" as well, but it's clearly not even remotely needed, and I don't possess some of the very nice threat-boosting items to put you head-and-shoulders above the rest.

Edit: I've also been well-aware and in agreement that SBV is a poor threat stat, and I always try and put it towards the end of "threat stats" when listing what you look for. SBV is only affecting your threat POTENTIALLY every 6 seconds, often longer than that - as opposed to crit, hit, armor pen, and AP which are going to affect almost everything.

The last thing we want is a tank who's just learning how to maximize his or her threat to start sacrificing gear when it's probably not at all what they need at that point

[Ciderhelm]

Indeed, I've considered "maxing out" as well, but it's clearly not even remotely needed, and I don't possess some of the very nice threat-boosting items to put you head-and-shoulders above the rest.

The last thing we want is a tank who's just learning how to maximize his or her threat to start sacrificing gear when it's probably not at all what they need at that point

But it's threat.

It's like cocaine for tanks. How can you not want to sacrifice raid efficiency for it? Too much restraint on your part, imo.

To be fair, his kill was 2min 51 seconds. His raid beat your time by one second.

[Caulle]

Link to that thread on the wow forums? That's some pretty interesting information.

[Ciderhelm]

WoW Forums -> Warrior tank with 20K HP unbuffed? WHAT

[Xav]

Eh, I stopped going for big numbers when I satisfyingly crushed the other "highest tps" log I had seen at the time, Bland from Drow, who wore almost entirely DPS gear to tank, and pulled 1500 tps. After pulling repeated 1500+ logs (1515, 1530, 1550, 1565, 1540, etc) with my "not maxed out" suit, I was fine This was months ago.

I might get re-interested in going for a max if we ever get a feral druid, right now, pulling 1530 tps, adding approximately 5% more crit would put me at almost 1600 TPS just from the feral's crit alone, nothing else changing.

[Caulle]

WoW Forums -> Warrior tank with 20K HP unbuffed? WHAT

Oh man, some of those people need to calm down.

[Ariedan]

I remember following this topic as well, and it provided some interesting insight. It definitely makes sense but I'm not quite at his level in gear to substitute some tanking pieces for dps items to achieve higher threat.

[Nicki]

Igraine - WWS

found it on wws 1687 tps :O

[chengt]

I find the WWS analysis a bit misleading.
I can only see hit and miss and dodge and parries but no totals.
So if I see SS 22 and Revenge 35 That might just mean that you didn't hit all your SS right?
Does anyone know how to get a total for each regardless of hit or avoided?

[Xav]

Igraine - WWS

found it on wws 1687 tps :O

After looking at that log a bit more indepth, and the players' analysis, this is what allowed that:

Appears to be Darkmoon Buffed with a high %, possibly 10%. Very high revenges, maximum revenge hit is 30 points higher than a standard tank's.

If the rest of the raid was darkmoon buffed as well (dont' feel like checking, but likely, since the tank seems to be), that's also why the fight duration was so short, without stacking out of the ordinary. Shorter fight duration = more hero uptime, etc. Also has or wore perfect threat gear and got rather lucky with crits, 30% crit on SS, and none avoided.

He also had much higher uptime of Earth Shield than most people, which is a compliment on their healers. (I don't know why my shamans dont' always recast it immediately or at all sometimes).

Also was either rather lucky with WF procs, or I'm rather unlucky. (I have the same number of WF procs on my average logs, but our boss fight is almost a minute longer since we're running with a lot of healers and no stacking). Had more procs of Executioner in a shorter fight than I have in a longer fight

Since he wasn't keeping a super tight rotation and missed several revenges, after taking everything into consideration I've this to say:

Decent tank, very lucky run (crits, etc), very short fight duration = magnified TPS average due to heroism.

I unfortunately probably won't be able to tank Gorefiend myself for at least a week longer and then may not have an ideal raid anyway, so I don't know if I'll ever be able to really test my own max after getting the gear improvements I needed.

Anyway, not a bad log, but Darkmoon and the like is kind of silly. Any of my high logs where I had a good group back in the day (with lesser gear, even), affected by a 9 or 10% darkmoon would yeild higher TPS than the log linked.

[Xav]

I find the WWS analysis a bit misleading.
I can only see hit and miss and dodge and parries but no totals.
So if I see SS 22 and Revenge 35 That might just mean that you didn't hit all your SS right?
Does anyone know how to get a total for each regardless of hit or avoided?

Press the tab on your abilities page that says "Columns"

On the left a new row description appears (several, actually), "Nb" "%" "Avg" "Max", etc. Check the boxes under the "Nb" (i believe it's abbreviated for "number") for Crit, Miss, Parry, and Dodge.

That will show the number of Crits, Misses, Parries, and Dodges of your abilities. The "Hits" is on by default, so now you can add up hit+crit+miss+parry+dodge as seen there and find the total number of abilities used. Alternatively, you can just check "All Miss" and not add up the manual misses/parries/dodges, but I'm not sure if that counts blocked hits or not, so that's why I just do it the other way.

I believe this was in my original post, I'll double check.

Edit: Yes, I already wrote all this in the original post, so it's here twice now, but this is a quote from the first post:

"Once you have your page open, hit the "Columns" button near the top of the ability usage, and check the following boxes, under the "NB" section: "Crits" "All Miss". If you want, you can also check the box for Miss, Dodge, and Parry, to further understand where your biggest loss of threat is from.

Now, add up the total number of Shield Slams, Devastates, and Revenges. Just add the number of Hits, the number of Crits, and the number of "All Miss" (Crits are not included in the "hits" column!)"