[threat] how to compare between tanks

[Tengenstein]

You would only be crittable for a little over 1 second if you did it right, changin stance is not on the gcd and as a 1 second Cooldown. Timing would be everything though since you you want to drop into battle stance while the previous GCD is ticking , use colossal smash and then back into Def as soon as the CD on stance change . if done right you would waste any GCDs or delay any of your abilites.

Howevever this would be rather rage inefficient, I'm not sure the loss of a few heroic strikes is worth ~30% damage for 6 seconds.

[klausi]

Howevever this would be rather rage inefficient, I'm not sure the loss of a few heroic strikes is worth ~30% damage for 6 seconds.

Dps wise it looks rather tempting, Alkaizer (http://worldoflogs.com/reports/m5hze...=11561&e=12105 ) still tops me with that playstyle, CS debuff uptime is 16.4% on a 9 minutes fight versus one of the clearly hard hitting bosses. He even use CS on the aherents while i still struggle with my rage to keep them interrupted. But that's only on first glance, he's reforged for expertise and gemmed for stamina -> he's taking 15% more damage on average (including being to lazy to use shield block frequently enough). Stancedancing is only interesting for popping Ret or Reck, using CS often might push some shieldblock numbers but you also waste 3 globals every minute doing a -50% threat style plus the already mentioned loss of rage.

[Reev]

You would only be crittable for a little over 1 second if you did it right, changin stance is not on the gcd and as a 1 second Cooldown. Timing would be everything though since you you want to drop into battle stance while the previous GCD is ticking , use colossal smash and then back into Def as soon as the CD on stance change . if done right you would waste any GCDs or delay any of your abilites.

Howevever this would be rather rage inefficient, I'm not sure the loss of a few heroic strikes is worth ~30% damage for 6 seconds.

He's also suggesting using Reck, which is on the GCD, unless I'm just way behind the times.

[Insahnity]

It sounds like the OP might be comfortable with AoE threat , or can explain it on the DPS side. Also, it sounds like it's the warriors rather than other tanks.

Assuming single target, there's a few messages already talking about spec and single target rotation. I know when I get lazy and prioritize single target moves incorrectly, it makes a HUGE TPS difference on my warrior. Not so much on my DK or paladin because inherently they have fewer TPS buttons to push. And I'm still grumpy about bears, so I won't go there, but they are nearly as bad as warriors in terms of making sure your TPS order is correct. A bear has more buttons than pally/DK but less than a warrior's, but the fix is quite prescriptive.

You shouldn't line up all your tanks and order them by TPS. What you should do is either analyze their logs, or more simply, hold workshops before raid night, review their specs (single vs aoe talents), and ask what their rotation is. I bet if you ask their rotations, you will find variations in them.

[Unger]

My experience (as a warrior tank) is that threat is really only an issue in the first 10 seconds of the pull. Occasionally, a tank that is in full survival gear will have almost no hit and very little expertise, which can sometimes lead to inopportune parrys, dodges and/or misses. There are a few tricks.

I could give you all the pulling techniques but I think what you are asking for is a way to measure threat. Here is what you should do;

Most tanks have a "threat set" that consists of tanking epics from reputation or craftables that have been reforged and gemmed for threat (for example, an alchemist can make 2-3 alchemist trinkets and reforge/gem them differently as needed. They are not expensive). Have your tanks join some of your best dps and have them wear their "Threat" set. You are looking for at least 8% hit and 26 expertise (although 54 would be better, its pretty hard to do). Also, get them some threat food and elixirs for the purpose of your "experiment". Then, pick an event where a tank death is unlikely; BH is a good one, or if that's still shaky, go do Marrowgar in ICC.

Have your dps purposely TRY to take threat from your tank. The only rule I would use is that the tank gets to aggro first. After that, they blow up the boss with pots, cd's, bloodlust, whatever they can throw at them. In a pure threat set, assuming the tank is prepotting and gear is comparable, the tank should be able to hold them off. It would be an interesting exercise for the tanks and would let you know where your team is at with threat generation.

Having said all of this, there is a difference between dps being gimped and them just being stupid. I have an arms warrior specced into blood and thunder that LOVES to rend, tclap and then bladestorm on the black adds for heroic Maloriak as his first three attacks. Took us 1 pull before I told him that everytime he does that, Im going to leave the adds on him until he dies and reset the event.

Other fights have strict enrage timers that need dps to prepot and push the limit. As a raid leader, you need to decide whether dps going crazy is a critical component of your strategy or if tank survivability is more critical. Remember that tanks, when given time, also have abilities that debuff the tank (demo shout, tclap, ect) that dont do a ton of threat. That means, when your dps goes nuts, the tank has to focus on threat. That means the debuffs arent going up until that tank is comfortable that he has the mob.

As a raid leader, you need to make sure that people understand what are the 2-3 ways you are most likely to die on a fight. If one of them is the enrage timer (like Halfus back in the day), then you gotta push the dps. But if the enrage isnt a big deal and the tank is getting trucked, tell the team to give the guy getting his face bashed in a minute to set up the fight.

[Griff]

You could always take a couple of healers and go beat on old Patchwork in Naxx. He hits like a kitten and if you do it on 25, you'd have a decent amount of health to develop some baselines..though it seems like an overly complicated process. As a previous poster said, WOL would be a far better solution.