Some advice on Expertise?

[markbfw]

Hi,

Since i've joined my first 4/7 day raiding guild ,i've actually started to look into what is required from a MT or OT depending on each encounter. Its clear that as there is a difference between what sets you need for a bosses, trash and MT/OT slot.Im still trying to understand the mechanics behind how your total avoidance works with relation to your main set and expertise for your threat set.

If I understand it correctly, I have my main set which i should be using on all bosses that gives me 31K before buffs, 553 def and + 65% total avoidance. Key here is the HP, armour and SS/SW bonuses retained by 4/5 T7.5 set. I'm kinda getting used to wearing this set on 25m bosses and encounters where i generate good threat.

I've struggled with threat in intial raids with the guild where i wasnt not generating enough to control aggro and it was asked what by expertise was and back then it was only 19.Now i belive that expertise is the ability to 'lower your target's chance to dodge or parry your attacks by' there by increasing your threat level. So the higher the expertise, they better. But as a prot tank, despite having a high expertise level, I still need to keep the standard high stats as a MT/OT.

I believe i should be using my 'threat' set on trash, aoe tanking and perhaps bosses where threat is relevant but not as OT as i dont want to take the threat away from the MT.

At the moment, i think my threat set is getting there.

Retaining my defense (540), i've managed to get my expertise upto 42 but this has been at the expense of reducing my HP by 1k and my total avoidance by 7% (58). I've also lost my 2nd bonus on my tier set, which was +3 sec on shield wall but i dont see this as being a problem as i would only really need SW on bosses where i would be wearing 'main' set anyway.

My DPS sets puts out 3K AP & 22% crit but I havent really been working on that too much and I aslo have a frost res set that puts out 355 frost res (unbuffed) and 32K unbuffed health (i double this up as a stamina set).

So i guess my questions are is there a cap on expertise? Is it right to focus on increasing expertise for a threat set and is 42 expertise enough?

I also understand that i need to have different sets (main, threat, dps, frost & stamina) but apart from the obvious comments above (threat = trash, main = bosses & dps = no OT), does it come from experience where you need to use each set?

[Optimoos]

While building different sets of gear is part of being a tank, at the current level of content in wow it's not generally required. Personally, I feel that as none of the current bosses threaten a moderately geared tank, it is best to gear and gem for threat. Two pieces that will help are Grim Toll and Mark of Norgannon, giving you a ton of hit and expertise for two trinket slots. As a warrior you should be over the defense minimum easily without Repelling Charge or another +def trinket so the aforementioned would be my choices there.

In terms of 4 piece t7, it is underwhelming for current content. It may be more useful in progressing through Ulduar, but right now you are better off taking the best threat pieces from the T7 set to keep your 2piece bonus and then mixing in off-set threat pieces. Remember, for threat priority is along the order of:

#1: Expertise to soft cap (26 expertise)
#2: Hit (8%) and expertise to hard cap (56 expertise)
#3: Strength and Shield Block Value

Below the expertise soft cap, expertise is most valuable as it is removing both dodges and parries, whereas hit or expertise past soft cap only removes 1 form of "missing" a boss.

In the end, you need to make sure you are geared well enough to survive encounters - this not only means how you are geared but how well your healers are geared and how comfortable they are keeping you alive. More threat means you are doing more damage and that your dps has the opportunity to do more damage, so perhaps the boss dies quicker and your healers don't have to heal as long. Conversely, if your dps is not up to par, then while your threat is higher you may be taking more hits in a threat set and causing your healers more trouble.

Lastly, switching pieces depending on encounter will definitely come with experience. For instance, while I crafted the frost resist gear, my guild found sapphiron easy enough that I have never equipped it - it was more important for me to generate threat to keep above warlock dps than it is to resist some of the incoming damage. FrR aura/totem seems to be enough to keep healers happy.

Hope that helps.

[markbfw]

thanks for responding m8, it helps loads.

M