Who should be the MT.

[Elcolombiano]

Hi guys, I've joined a guild after my own guild fell apart. I've always been considered one of the best if not the best tank on my server, and led a pretty succesfull guild before it disbanded last month due to the hardcore ppl having rl problems.

Anyways, I joined the best Ally guild on the server, they werent looking for tanks, but I applied and got invited because alot of ppl where positive about me. In that month i've climbed up from being queued the whole week and standing besides the instance waiting to help out, to one of the regular raiders and I even lead the trash/bosses they haven't done before in BT/Hyjal.

The thing is, they have this maintank, and he's the typical avoidance gemmed tank. He's always out of rage, his dmg is really spikey, and his threat is very low. In SSC and TK it didnt matter that much, but as we're progressing fast(in a mere month we went from not having killed vashj or kael to 4/5 MH and 3/9 BT) His performance is starting to lag behind.

A great example is Najentus. We had some tries on him and ofcourse, he was tanking the boss. His threat was so low I got numerous whispers from dps in the raid that they had to hold back. Which is not a good thing imo. Later, the raidleader decided we had too many melee in the raid so we switched out the other offtank, and the maintank went on his mage. I tanked the boss, no one had to hold back, and we killed him in one shot.

Same as with Kaz'rogal, we use the 3 tanks take the cleave tactic, and I just overaggroed the MT at a certain point.

So, there is something wrong with his aggro. Its not his rotation because he isnt a stupid or noob tank, its the fact that he's at 30% dodge unbuffed, which can easily lead to 40% fully raidbuffed. He also has only 11 expertise but sports a good amount of hitrating.

Next thing is is that he dies too much. I've observed him and he apparantly doesn't use Ironshield Potions, which in my honest opinion, he should. I pop one every 2 minutes, even if boss is close to dieing.

His gear is his gear. What I try to say by that, is that he doesn't have alot to switch around with. His gear is avoidance heavy, low hp. Weird thing is that I can reach the same kind of avoidance with some gearswitches, and maintain the same or higher amount of armor, more blockvalue, and more expertise. Also, my hp in my avoidance gear is 2k higher than his.

So I'm in a kind of a dilemma. He seems a bit unconfident though and frequently asks me who should tank the boss. I'm not trying to take over the MT spot but I just know this is gonna lead to problems once we get further and further into BT. With the foresight of warlocks going to put out more than 1800 dps, I'm afraid they wont ever reach that number because with 1300 dps they already are threat capped as it is, when he is tanking.

He needs to change his gems, and start wearing more threat oriented gear. Thing is, he's known to be stubborn and touchy, and after all, he is an officer.

What am I to do?

Here's armory links for me and him.

The World of Warcraft Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

[Caudates]

Our MT is a pally but for the first 3 bosses in MH we decided to use our warrior tank. I was relatively new to the guild so I was assigned to tanking infernals on Anetheron. The other warr is another avoidance heavy tank with low threat.

One of the enhancement shammies told the MT that the warr's threat was low and he had to hold back too much. The MT told him to just go ahead and pull aggro to prove to the warr that his threat was too low.

If I were in your position I'd go ahead and just pull threat from him and tank whatever it is you guys are on. If you've told him how to improve and he hasn't taken your suggestions then it's his fault.

[loquatious]

Suggest you want to compare armor sets , how about taking turns on the bosses from week to week. Have him tank supremus week 1 you tank him week 2, and take turns MTing the bosses, so you tank boss 1 he tanks boss 2 etc.

a) It establishes you in the minds of the raid as Co-equal tanks
b) It creates a solid base for comparison - use the WWS logs submitted to Collyo.com and compare threat, healing required.
c) Open up the conversation, bring the healers and dps into the conversation (possibly the RL). I'd phrase it in the most positive tactful way, for ex. "I'm mostly geared for Stam & Threat, do you find me much harder to heal?" and "Does DPS have to hold back, on what fights?" "I have avoidance gear I could use instead, would you prefer that" (Hopefully the answer is a loud HELL NO, which the other tank might pick up on.

d) you are new to the guild, if possible go on runs with the other tank on alts. Get to know him as a person and probably the problem goes away.

[Fayainz]

I agree with Loquatious, the key to solving your problem is communication. Buy discussing the issues you are see'ing and the upcomming content you will learn to overcome them together and progress. If your MT is asking YOU who should tank what boss, explain why that chosen person is taking that particular boss.

As far as his gear goes, it's pretty good. However he lacks stamina, 17k raid buffed (without Kings tho) just doesn't cut it if your going into BT. If he wish's to be maintank going into BT, he should be socketing for stamina and armor to build up his Effective Health. There is room for improvement, for e.g the sunwell badge loot.
I would say bring these points up with him with a constructive approach, if he's more comfortable with his gear, he would make an awesome offtank with that avoidance.

I was in similar situation, and eventually became warrior MT for my guild, however I now have a very good relationship with my warrior OT, druid and pala tanks.

//edited

you have structured your gear alot better for Main Tanking. You could quite easily tank Archimonde and Teron

[Narshe]

Communication is the key. Remember that his gearing is not all wrong, as you would need an avoidance tank for some bosses. It's just that the first bosses in Hyjal and BT favor an EH or Threat tank over avoidance ones.

[Shortypop]

Like everyone else has said - communication is the key. You obviously have a good relationship with the melee dps, and it is possible that he has sensed this and your tanking ability and may be defensive due to worry about losing his tanking spot. Make it clear that that is not what you want (assuming this is true), find an officer who understands threat (dps'er) and next time a melee dps whispers you saying they are badly threat capped ask them to whisper that officer instead (this is assuming you are not an officer).

Be patient, but at the same time set yourself a realistic time limit of trying to work it out without getting too many people involved. If after say 4 raids nothing has improved/changed then speak to your RL/GM and explain why you think he is holding the guild back and give constructive advice on how his gear can be changed.

[Elcolombiano]

thanks alot for all the advices guys. As I said in my post I need to watch out a bit with this guy as he's a bit touchy according to other officers I spoke to. I am gonna try to get a good conversation going on this, as I've asked other officers if I should do it and they all agreed something needs to happen.

"Remember that his gearing is not all wrong, as you would need an avoidance tank for some bosses. It's just that the first bosses in Hyjal and BT favor an EH or Threat tank over avoidance ones."
Ofcourse, his gearing isnt wrong at all (except for his expertise) but gearing is not gemming. As I said in my post I can reach the same avoidance with a few changes of gear, while I can always switch back and forth between EH, threat or w/e whereas he has -just- this set

" It creates a solid base for comparison - use the WWS logs submitted to Collyo.com and compare threat, healing required. "

I know about the threat WWS calculator, you're saying there's a healing required one too? let me know

All in all thanks alot for the comments and I will be bringing this up with him asap. I'll let you guys know how it turned out