[threat] how to compare between tanks

[lirael]

Hi
My guild has 7 tanks and there are huge variations in threat output between individuals. Stuff and class is not the problem has most tanks have a similar ilvl, with small differences in reforging and gemming.

DPS are complaining that they have to gimp themselves too much with some of the tanks.

The threat issues arise both at the beginning of the fights and in course of boss fights. The main culprit have chatted with other members of the tank team but i would be nice to have values to compare one to the other.

I wanted to find out a way to compare all the tanks in terms of threat output.
Could the dummies be used or would that be an issue for bears and warrior because of lack of rage?
Should we all go to see Argaloth with a few heals and generate aggro, then die then start again?

Any advice is welcome.

[Scotteq]

FWIW - I play a Warrior (main) and a Deathknight (1st alt), both primarily spec'd and geared for tanking. My experience is that although the playstyles are quite different, threat output is easily comparable. This, with the same guy pressing the buttons on the keyboard.

Also - though I don't play one, I am almost always paired with one of our Paladins: Again, my threat output is comparable to theirs.

If threat really is a problem, (rather than lazy DDs not assisting, etc), then you can ask your tanks to pay attention to their melee stats. If that doesn't help, then it's a matter of your tank's skills.




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[Uranos7]

Is this AOE, Single Target or a mixture of both?
Because I play Warrior, DK, and Bear tanks Warrior and DK tanks can spec to specialize in AOE or ST so may do well in one situation and not as good in others. While Bears are about the same at each. So you should either match up thier specs with the roles or have them change thier spec to the role needed, but just throwing a tank at whatever might work but it is not the best strategy.

[thecrazyman]

Measuring a tank skill of obtaining and maintaining agro is hard and only felt by the dps that push the limits of your tanks. We don't value threat stats unless we can out gear content or our healers are out-gearing content to make up the difference. If the healers aren't having a hard time keeping a tank alive then consider telling the tanks to start pushing threat stats within reason of course. I personally try to balance the stats for the fights by using trinkets to obtain near hit cap and expense dodge cap but that just me.

[Reev]

A lot of dps "feeling gimped by certain tanks" comes down to specific encounters, specific tanking assignments, usage of misdirect/tricks of the trade.

So I guess the questions are:

1) On what encounters do the threat problems show up?
2) AoE or single target threat?
3) Are your Hunters/Rogues misdirecting correctly? They may think one tank has better initial threat than another because the other tank habitually gets Misdirect, while the "bad" tank generally doesn't.
4) What classes are pulling aggro?

[lirael]

The threat problems come on several fights (the last few I can think of are Omnitron and Chimeron and Maloriak - mainly the adds). We have a lack of hunters and rogues; only one of each and they are not available for each raid.

The threat problem comes from a number of things that we are slowly ironing out.
- wrong spec
- wrong prioritisation of techniques
- DPS being overexcited too early

My question was to find out if there is a way to compare threat out from tanks other than having to pull a boss, work out the TPS then reset and again until all tanks have done it.?

[Reev]

The threat problems come on several fights (the last few I can think of are Omnitron and Chimeron and Maloriak - mainly the adds). We have a lack of hunters and rogues; only one of each and they are not available for each raid.

The threat problem comes from a number of things that we are slowly ironing out.
- wrong spec
- wrong prioritisation of techniques
- DPS being overexcited too early

My question was to find out if there is a way to compare threat out from tanks other than having to pull a boss, work out the TPS then reset and again until all tanks have done it.?

I don't think so. Most tanks' threat is related to having mobs beat on them, so without that damage intake, it's hard to demonstrate how much threat output you can deliver.

What I would do if I were you is to start logging your raids on World of Logs or something similar, and you can look historically at all your fights and see how the different tanks compare in DPS during the opening moments of a fight.

[lirael]

Ok.
we have been logging our encounters...

it is going to be painfull^^

Thanks for the advice

[Loganisis]

Well, theoretically, DKs ought to have the highest initial threat since tend to have more hit/exp so they make sure their deathstrikes land, so they will have fewer misses in the first few seconds. (or did they change it so deathstrike no longer misses/can be dodged/parried while in blood?)

In reality - the quality of the player behind the tank will determine threat and it is ALWAYS DPS' job to watch their own threat. "Hand of Salv didn't prevent me from pulling threat" isn't an viable excuse.

[truculent]

Well, theoretically, DKs ought to have the highest initial threat since tend to have more hit/exp so they make sure their deathstrikes land, so they will have fewer misses in the first few seconds. (or did they change it so deathstrike no longer misses/can be dodged/parried while in blood?)

In reality - the quality of the player behind the tank will determine threat and it is ALWAYS DPS' job to watch their own threat. "Hand of Salv didn't prevent me from pulling threat" isn't an viable excuse.

and in a perfect world................

[Gneecapper]

and in a perfect world................

QFT... I remember back in the days of BC good DPS knew this, threat since then has been a joke for the most part so now that I outgear heroics and stuff to the point where my vengence never stacks or I get rage starved DPS all goes "wtf gnee?" I tell them "it's DPS's responsibility to watch aggro". I bout drove over my friends house (boomkin) last night to smack him during a ZA run because he kept pulling aggro on EVERY mob and then would wonder why... well the bastard was multi dotting on the pull everytime. I told him if he didnt start waiting for at least 3 GCDs before doing so in the future I'd let him die. That fixed the problem.

If DPS oversteps their bounds and refuses to watch their aggro, dont be afraid to let them die. Threat can be very finicky for high avoidance, low threat stat tanks during the first parts of a fight just due to how vengence works, if your tanks can't hold threat w/ capped vengence... they're likely doing something VERY wrong.

[Gneecapper]

Also... if you have an Arcane mage dont bother holding his aggro. The one I raid with can pull upwards of 80k TPS in short bursts. I just let him pass me on threat and then taunt once the mob starts to turn using him as essentially a misdirect since he'll usually invis right after wiping his aggro and then never come close to me again.

[lirael]

In the case of my particular guild problem, we have 2-3 warriors tanks who dish out lower than acceptable threat despite have a reasonnable stuff. The issue is clearly game play but having a means to quantify the difference in threat will help pinpoint the issues and sort them out.

on a more general note, DPSs with very high TPS, usually have a good gameplay and know when to use CD to reduce threat (invisibility for mage...etc). The average player who AoEs like an idiot 0.5 sec into a fights deserves to tanks the mobs they pull. Doing it once or twice early on in an instance is usually sufficient to get them to pay more attention to what they do.

[Bigbad]

Tell your warriors to experiment with pulling with recklessness (combine with shieldblock to be save, should use SB asap anyway), prepotting golemblood potion and make sure they use innerrage as soon as they got the boss in potition and their rage gets to 50+.

I usually stay ahead of the fury warriors and arcane mages, but make sure to watch omen for when your mds fall off and be prepared to taunt after that if needed or if the mages pass me with images on make sure to taunt of the images before they fall off to get an extra boost in threat.

Once vengeance is stacked threat shouldn't be an issue if tanks are having problems they either not using shieldblock enough, not enough inner rage or enough heroic strikes or not prioritizing shieldslam/missing SnB procs. I don't really bother with concussion blow or shockwave even though concussion blow is a tps gain just get your rotation tight.

[Rystrave]

^ This.

I have much better luck with AOE pulls then single target. I'm just glad our hunter knows to MD if that a stupid mage decides he wants to burst when doing single target. Inner rage is a warriors BFF. HS hits hard, and the more you can hit it the better.

[Scotteq]

In the case of my particular guild problem, we have 2-3 warriors tanks who dish out lower than acceptable threat despite have a reasonnable stuff. The issue is clearly game play but having a means to quantify the difference in threat will help pinpoint the issues and sort them out.

on a more general note, DPSs with very high TPS, usually have a good gameplay and know when to use CD to reduce threat (invisibility for mage...etc). The average player who AoEs like an idiot 0.5 sec into a fights deserves to tanks the mobs they pull. Doing it once or twice early on in an instance is usually sufficient to get them to pay more attention to what they do.

In addition to the above

Your Warrior tanks can/should use Vigilance on the other tank in their group: While it no longer transfers threat, when (you) put it on someone it does stack Vengeance as if (you) were taking (20%?) of whatever damage (your) target takes. Plus, Taunt gets refreshed every time (your) target gets hit.

I.e. - When I put Vig on my Pally partner, I gain Vengeance as if I were taking 20% of the damage he eats, plus my taunt is constantly refreshed. My Pally partner is not affected at all.

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[Reev]

In the case of my particular guild problem, we have 2-3 warriors tanks who dish out lower than acceptable threat despite have a reasonnable stuff. The issue is clearly game play but having a means to quantify the difference in threat will help pinpoint the issues and sort them out.

on a more general note, DPSs with very high TPS, usually have a good gameplay and know when to use CD to reduce threat (invisibility for mage...etc). The average player who AoEs like an idiot 0.5 sec into a fights deserves to tanks the mobs they pull. Doing it once or twice early on in an instance is usually sufficient to get them to pay more attention to what they do.

That's what World of Logs is for.

See how often they're heroic striking. It should as close as possible to half as many heroic strike/cleave usages as all the other ability usages together, since HS is on a 3 second cooldown, and everything else is on the 1.5 second global. Obviously, you can't use HS all the time, but maximizing its usage should help a lot if threat is lacking. So for example last night, I had 93 Devastates/Shield Slams/Thunderclaps/Other abilities used, and 39 Heroic strikes over 4 minutes of a fight. So I used HS 42% as often as other abilities. While not ideal, that's a reasonable number. If someone is only using Heroic Strike/Cleave 20% as often as other abilities, you may have the culprit right there.

Check their Shield Slam usage. Shield Slam should be occurring around half as often as devastate. If it's happening less often than that, the player is either not noticing Sword and Board procs, or he's using too many Devastates with comparison to other abilities.

[Eddytheone]

From my experience playing a Warrior as my main and a DK as my alt, DK has vastly superior threat to my warrior generally speaking of course this might be in part due to my vengance stacking high pretty early on as a DK but generally speaking as a warrior the first 10-15 seconds of any fight are pretty dire until you have any vengance, and if your DPS such as arcane mages want to nuke from the word go you are going to have to work pretty hard to keep agro
One thing I might recommend is watch the bosses swing timer, as soon as hes done a melee hit, pop shield block, stance dance to battle and pop recklessness with a collosus smash then back to def stance and get a nice big shield slam
Combine it with a golemblood pot if you are really tight for threat ; )

[Toriator]

It depends on how much dps the dps are doing, but me as a palatank, I get around 40k tps at the pull, with md ofcourse. Our dps are over 20k+ dps. If you are progressing in normals and your dps are pulling around 15k dps, 25-30k tps should be fine for most tanks to keep their aggro. Especially when veng is stacked up. If tanks have really threat problems, with a good priority/rotation, they should try to get a bit closer to expertise cap, or like me get expertise capped. You may take a bit more damage, but the dps can go all out without taking aggro. You will lose some avoid/migation, but the fights will be a bit shorter due high dps and the healers can keep it up.

[Reev]

From my experience playing a Warrior as my main and a DK as my alt, DK has vastly superior threat to my warrior generally speaking of course this might be in part due to my vengance stacking high pretty early on as a DK but generally speaking as a warrior the first 10-15 seconds of any fight are pretty dire until you have any vengance, and if your DPS such as arcane mages want to nuke from the word go you are going to have to work pretty hard to keep agro
One thing I might recommend is watch the bosses swing timer, as soon as hes done a melee hit, pop shield block, stance dance to battle and pop recklessness with a collosus smash then back to def stance and get a nice big shield slam
Combine it with a golemblood pot if you are really tight for threat ; )

Has anyone done the numbers on this? Seems like 4 global cooldowns out of defensive stance without the stance threat modifier using only 1 move that causes damage (without that modifier) probably wouldn't make up for the few seconds of free crits and armor reduction that follows. In that same 4 seconds where you're generating very little threat, you could be using an extra shield slam and 3 devastates. Seems like Shield Slamming and Devastating in that time frame would generate a lot more threat over time than the little bit extra you get from CS/Reck, plus you have the added benefit of not having extra damage from Reck or losing your crit immunity for 3ish seconds.