Burst threat with...Mocking Blow? Strange but true!

[Thundercud]

As mad as it sounds... I'm toying with the idea of making a macro to Mocking Blow + Weapon Swap (back to 1h + Shield) after a Charge so that I can Mocking Blow with a Justicebringer for initial threat.

May be too risky, but I believe a weapon swap can kick in after an ability usage nearly instantly. Will test it on some normal creatures first, but I'm tempted by the idea of 40k+ crit initial threat amounts.

This really got me thinking about my heroic tanking... In my normal heroic tanking gear I can push out 3k dps sustained with a good healer and enough damage intake. That's decent, but I've been bored tanking heroics the normal way and have started to try tanking them as fury. I suck pretty badly at keeping threat so far, but with some practice and better itemization I think I could tear up heroics this way. I'm sitting at 5k GS in fury atm.

What do you guys think? Is there a good way to tank in battle stance while going fury? What sort of rotation would it use? What glyphs? Basically this would keep threat by doing very good dps... if that's even possible.

It just sounds like fun to destroy the damage meters while tanking.

PS Don't tell me to roll a DK. lol

[Eravian]

I would probably just stay in Defensive stance and spam cleave... or berserker stance and pop whirlwind whenever it's on CD

[keebz]

Just out of curiosity, with multiple Misdirections able to be used at the same time, if this big a threat lead is needed, wouldn't that do the same job? That occurred to me after I read the post about using a macro to get an initial 2H Mocking Blow off before swapping back to 1h+shield (which, like you said, is risky). Of course, I know the other implications of this if there is no Hunter or Rogue around, and just for self-sustained threat. I'm just curious (I'm a DK tank) - this is some very interesting stuff, and nice job researching it.

[Zo]

Just wondering (Since I'm so terrible at math) how close will devastate be to glyphed mocking blow in terms of threat. I know right now for me at least it's about the same threat as heroic throw. Only about 2000 avg threat per gcd more than devastate. I know it's not going to be close and probably a dumb question but for curiosities sake.

I really digging MB on taunt swaps. Going SW > MB > HT its a nice threat jump after taunt. Especially because my tank buddy is a pally.

[mistersix]

Maybe this tricked out burst mocking blow will be nice to explore since poor revenge is getting kicked to the curb.

[Airowird]

Glyph of Mocking Blow makes it equal to the threat gain from Shockwave or Conc. Blow.
Glyph of Barbaric Insults makes it as awesome as a bomb with guns strapped to it.

[Kojiyama]

Yep, basically what WarTotem said is the TLDR version.

[Fledern]

What do you guys think? Is there a good way to tank in battle stance while going fury? What sort of rotation would it use? What glyphs? Basically this would keep threat by doing very good dps... if that's even possible.

This is basically how we've been doing heroics with my friend for the last month or so. I heal on my priest alt, he goes in fury. We've done everything up to Tyrannus in heroic Pit of Saron and we havent tried Halls of Reflection yet. Having a sympathetic healer is required otherwise you'll get a lot of qq. One very fun PoS run had us going in with 4 fury warriors + priest healer. Blender party :P The ramp of death turned out to be great fun.

On the original topic,

Minor glyphs are underwhelming so i have no problems there. But with my continually dropping blockvalue and the upcoming further nerfs to shieldblock, i'm hesitant to drop the block major glyph. I'm starting to think about dropping shieldwall. Number of fights where i have to pop a shieldwall at reguar, frequent intervals is fast dropping anyway. Despite the nice threat values, it sounds like Barbaric Insults is sort of required if it's to be "the bomb".

[kolben]

Tried this minor/major glyph combo yesterday in an ICC 10-man. As you would probably expect, every time I used Mocking Blow the threat gap widened some - the last 1-2 minutes of a fight there was simply no way for the DPS to catch up.

Like Fledern said, I'm concerned about dropping Glyph of Blocking permanently from my major glyphs since SBV is probably going to end up in the 1600-1800 range once I complete my non-heroic gear set - but more from a mitigation and value of shield block point of view.

[Kojiyama]

Minor glyphs are underwhelming so i have no problems there. But with my continually dropping blockvalue and the upcoming further nerfs to shieldblock, i'm hesitant to drop the block major glyph. I'm starting to think about dropping shieldwall. Number of fights where i have to pop a shieldwall at reguar, frequent intervals is fast dropping anyway. Despite the nice threat values, it sounds like Barbaric Insults is sort of required if it's to be "the bomb".

Actually, that's exactly why Glyph of Blocking is becoming droppable. With lower base Block Value, the value of the Glyph is actually decreasing over time and the implications toward Shield Slam scaling don't help it out much either. Glyph of Blocking has gone from a no-brainer to a nearly trivial increase in TPS/Survival.

[drae]

...Glyph of Blocking has gone from a no-brainer to a nearly trivial increase in TPS/Survival.

I agree, I haven't been using blocking nearly as much recently. The only plus-side to it for me is it brings a bit of mitigation and threat to the table.

But you know what they say, jack-of-all-trades; master of none.

One of the nicest things about imp. revenge was the threat / rage. Mocking Blow is looking to be even better, and since I'm rarely rage starved in new content I doubt I'll be searching for a rage efficient attack more often then once a minute. I definitely not adverse to moving those 2 points now; as it seems revenge has been almost completely replaced (at least with a BQS on).

Thanks for this Kojiyama, props for thinking a little outside the box, it's a valuable addition to my bag of tricks. Now as long as my fellow warrior tank doesn't steal this idea too (*cough* not itemizing for hit cause I have a taunt glyph); I'll have a leg up again... mwuhahahahaha. I mean... share the wealth....

[Hvitserk]

So with both the major and minor glyph would you hit Mocking Blow every CD?

[Ragesane]

As long as you're not off-tanking, yes.

[mistersix]

So with both the major and minor glyph would you hit Mocking Blow every CD?

Or reserve it if there's something you need the boost for obviously. I think on taunt transition fights it's a nice jump to help the off tanks. Or in fights with lots of adds it's great snap agro.

[Airowird]

If you're solo-tanking, use it on the CD.
If you're rotating, best place is straight after a Taunt for the massive threat boost.
It's also viable as opener for DPS race boss fights, as it gives a good threat lead at the start and gives you a couple of seconds to secure your aggro.

[Brage]

Personally i use it as a followup to the opener attack. It's incredibly nice to give that little edge in the beginning of a fight and therefrom, on each CD.

[Naraoth]

I think I'm gonna try this out in a few hours.. I will be dropping Glyph of Blocking and Glyph of Command to get both the major and minor glyph, hope it's worth it.

[mistersix]

I kept command and dropped bloodrage. Command's just kinda handy I find in a raid or party situation.

[Naraoth]

I haven't been using Blood Rage for a while.. I'm currently using Thunder Clap, Charge and Command. Would I be better off dropping Charge, maybe?

[mistersix]

I stopped using charge when it was bugged and never got back into the swing of using it.