Threat and TAnk Classes

[Mordekhuul]

How is threat for everyone on the few fights it matters (TPS tanking drakes in Sarth+3, Malygos)?

I find my threat as a paladin leaps and bounds higher than the other classes I tank against and wonder if that is a class difference, a gear difference, or a playstyle difference (kind of hard to tell when looking at the microcosm of a single guild with only 3-4 regular raid tanks).

I'm guessing that my having an easier time on malygos is partially a result of being able to pop wings when the dragon first lands and build a good lead, but...really I've noticed threat is a lot higher for me than for prot warriors in particular.

Small example: Naxx25 on Wed, tanking alongside someone I consider a well played warrior. He is main tanking Faerlina. I go and round up the adds. We DPS down the two odd-man out adds and then DPS moves onto Faerlina.

I stay and build a solid enough threat lead on those 4 remaining adds that I don't have to pay attention to them for the rest of the fight, and then start DPS on the boss myself (infinite mana thanks to the 4 of them bolting me, just as if I was main tanking).

Faerlina is only down to maybe 60% and my threat is leaping up to just under the warrior, and I have to flip righteous fury off to avoid ripping aggro.

Druids and DK's I have less experience with, but I'd love to hear from warriors, druids, DK's and other paladins on their experiences.

[Tal]

I'm guessing that my having an easier time on malygos is partially a result of being able to pop wings when the dragon first lands and build a good lead, but...really I've noticed threat is a lot higher for me than for prot warriors in particular.

Druids and DK's I have less experience with, but I'd love to hear from warriors, druids, DK's and other paladins on their experiences.

My feeling is that threat for a warrior only 'works' if you're spamming all of your skills. I also feel that if I have to keep Thunderclap up on the boss that my threat slowly whittles away compared to other tanks. So for the most part once I have a lead I can generally keep it from our regular ferals. We don't have a full time raiding pallytank.

[bonemage]

My experience is the same. Even without mana pouring in from taking damage, I can come from behind and overtake other tanks with a lower threat rotation than what I usually use. I'm not sure about a full feral druid tank, though, as Sham is our only regular druid tank, and he's partially cat. With Frag's warrior, if he has a head start I rarely catch him before the thing is dead, but I do steadily decrease his lead.

[Concillian]

I think the main issue with warriors is that in order for them to maximize their threat, they need to be hitting at least 2 buttons per GCD and that plus moving Malygos, can get hairy. Newer warrior tanks are generally not used to the need for such extreme button pressing, and often require a little coaching.

Though mostly anytime 2 tanks are competing it's in Naxx where most everything is undead, so pallies have an inherent advantage with the exorcism mechanics. However I get that even without that, pallies are able to overtake warriors if they're equally skilled and geared.

[Mordekhuul]

I kind of exacerbated the issue in our last Naxx25 run, I admit (when I was quickly overtaking the warrior on Faerlina). I had just the week before put together a lower effective health/avoidance, higher block value set and used it pretty much all night.

A bit over 2k raid buffed BV (plus greatness procs from my darkmoon trinket and use of lavanthor's coupled with AW) and I did 3177 DPS while tanking patchwerk....not high compared to what someone with a truly strong BV set can do, but still more DPS/threat than I do in my high avoidance/EH set I'm sure.

[shoju]

I kind of exacerbated the issue in our last Naxx25 run, I admit (when I was quickly overtaking the warrior on Faerlina). I had just the week before put together a lower effective health/avoidance, higher block value set and used it pretty much all night.

A bit over 2k raid buffed BV (plus greatness procs from my darkmoon trinket and use of lavanthor's coupled with AW) and I did 3177 DPS while tanking patchwerk....not high compared to what someone with a truly strong BV set can do, but still more DPS/threat than I do in my high avoidance/EH set I'm sure.

While I'm not a tank anymore, I can say as a DPS monkey, I can (and have) caught up to tanks in threat. I normally don't notice it on movement fights (maly, grob, Heigan, etc) but on Patch, Sarth, Ras, or any other fight where I don't have to move much, I know that I have caught several tanks in threat. I have yet to catch a paladin tank, but I have had to peel back on a Druid and a Warrior, and I have only had one DK OT experience in raid content. This has happened more so with any warrior/druid tank in the guild not named Tiga. That isn't a knock on the other warrior tanks, more of a HOW THE HELL MAN!? question for Frag. (I would assume he says experience as a warrior tank)

Now, in naxx, it's understandable why I wont catch a paladin on most fights. Fury + Wings + any 1 undead smashing ability is a ton of threat. I know with the 969 rotation there isn't a lot of room for those abilities, but I know they can be tossed in there every so often when you have an open GCD (every 18 seconds? 21 seconds? I don't know, I know that there is a gap).

Maybe catching a warrior and druid is a byproduct of the same thing. With Sense undead + GLyph of Sense undead + Talents I have 4% bonus damage against undead. Could 4% extra damage really be enough to catch them?

[TheDragoon]

On my Death Knight I have seen two modes of play. If I experience a lot of misses early on, I have seen DPS or other tanks catch me on threat. If I can execute my standard rotation more-or-less on time, no one has shown they can catch me. When I was just starting out, I often saw more of the former, but now that I can gear up to ~180-200 hit rating and 18 expertise I usually see more of the latter.

I haven't tanked a whole lot on my pally so far (we've tended to have enough tanks when I'm around so I just DPS), when I did, I did not really have any threat problems. However, I do need to remember to turn on Sense Undead when I got to Naxx since I don't think I have managed to remember to turn it on yet. :)

[bonemage]

The 96969 rotation without exorcism, wings, or sense undead + glyph of sense undead is still going to output more threat than an equally skilled/geared warrior. I am basing this on the fact that I out threat Frag, who does have better gear and skill, without me remembering all the extra tricks. This is single target threat. It should also be noted that the higher threat of the pally takes less skill, as it's just GCD management. Super hardcore pally tanks likely use Hand of Reckoning every 8 secs too. It's very little damage, but it is holy additional threat that is not on the GCD. Next time Frag and I tank Patch together, I'm doing it with Vigilence on me. I want to be the hateful soak.

[Taelas]

Tal, Improved Thunderclap is more single-target threat than Devastate (though less damage). (That ignores the possibility of S&B procs, of course.)

Shoju, a properly executed 969 rotation has zero free GCDs. In order to accomodate Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Hammer of Wrath or Avenger's Shield, you have to drop something else first.

Personally I haven't raided yet in Wrath, but I have found absolutely nothing that can catch me on single-target threat when I go all-out on my warrior. Again, limited experience, but there it is. I imagine hunters, Fury warriors and warlocks are the classes that would have the best shot, though.

[Lissa]

Paladins are the best tanks for threat limited fights. No one can touch a Paladin if they get threat started first. I routinely can start a fight with Angelique and reach 50k threat before any of the DPS break 20k threat. The only downside is, that while a Paladin can keep a pretty high threat even without being the main target, it they are not the main person being hit, the lose a lot of threat potential from not blocking with Holy Shield. Pretty much, if you're going to have a Paladin tanking, they really do need to be the main tank as their threat suffers without Holy Shield being used effectively.

[Mordekhuul]

Paladins are the best tanks for threat limited fights. No one can touch a Paladin if they get threat started first. I routinely can start a fight with Angelique and reach 50k threat before any of the DPS break 20k threat. The only downside is, that while a Paladin can keep a pretty high threat even without being the main target, it they are not the main person being hit, the lose a lot of threat potential from not blocking with Holy Shield. Pretty much, if you're going to have a Paladin tanking, they really do need to be the main tank as their threat suffers without Holy Shield being used effectively.

I'll be curious to find out how true that is anymore when we reach any fights that are more threat sensitive regarding off-tanks (remembering how it used to be with Moroes, when we first learned him).

The only fight in Wrath requiring off-tank threat right now is Patchwerk, and he boosts the threat of off-tanks every time they take a hateful, so I'd imagine any tank can do the off-tanking. I only tried once though, and passed the warrior MT before I knew I was close and ended up main tanking the rest, so I don't have any real experience trying to balance my threat as an OT on patchwerk even.

[Frag]

7k TPS on Patchwerk on Wednesday, completely stopped attacking at one point for around 30s to let aggro fade a bit, then went back at it and around 8% I ripped him off of the MT and ended up MT'ing him through the end.

My threat is strongly related to how much damage I take, it's the warrior paradox version wotlk. The better my gear gets, the less damage I take, the more my threat suffers, and that's how it's always been. The new paradigm is even worse, as now in wrath since they built up our threat by having larger self-dps, but did nothing about having our main tps/dps move then remove any rage gain we'd have gained by hitting harder.

As things are now though, being a warrior tank is rather irritating. Same tps issues as always (static threat on most abilities) and thus the lowest threat potential in 'regular' gear, having our aoe threat moves on relatively lengthy cooldowns (adds coming into an ongoing aoe situation are a real issue, and I've had wipes this week where if I was on *any other tank class* would not have been wipes and the 'best' way I've found around the TC/SW cooldowns involves 1. a raid situation and 2. 'creative use of game mechanics' (that will probably be fixed soon)), and finally the lowest EH of the four tank classes (Not to mention the inability to currently main tank the hardest raid content, and from GC's comments today, seems that they feel that's fine).

Bleh,
~Frag;)

[Mavfin]

I'll be curious to find out how true that is anymore when we reach any fights that are more threat sensitive regarding off-tanks (remembering how it used to be with Moroes, when we first learned him).

The only fight in Wrath requiring off-tank threat right now is Patchwerk, and he boosts the threat of off-tanks every time they take a hateful, so I'd imagine any tank can do the off-tanking. I only tried once though, and passed the warrior MT before I knew I was close and ended up main tanking the rest, so I don't have any real experience trying to balance my threat as an OT on patchwerk even.

Skill is definitely part of it, though, Morde. On Uldum, I have yet to raid with a tank of any class that can catch me, and I've had to back off of a few on my warrior to keep from overtaking them. Closest any Patch OT has been was 90%, and that was a better-geared (than me) paladin. Most have been at 70% or so. (The paladin said he was trying to catch me, too.)

Equal gear/skill, it looks like paladins will win, because of the holy modifiers to threat, and the fact that holy ignores armor.

TL;DR: Skill is a factor. Bonemage could catch me on his pally, Frag probably could with his gear, but average Joe tank hasn't got a chance vs a skilled tank. I was hitting 6K TPS in a *normal* I ran last night for a guildie. Heroics I've hit 7K in places. Frankly, on Patchy, I haven't looked. I just know no one but that one paladin has even been close, and he couldn't catch me. He started out right on top of me at 95%, and was losing ground.

[Tal]

Tal, Improved Thunderclap is more single-target threat than Devastate (though less damage). (That ignores the possibility of S&B procs, of course.)

Personally I haven't raided yet in Wrath, but I have found absolutely nothing that can catch me on single-target threat when I go all-out on my warrior. Again, limited experience, but there it is. I imagine hunters, Fury warriors and warlocks are the classes that would have the best shot, though.

yes it is - but I'm not maintaining my threat lead with either by themselves.

[Concillian]

The only fight in Wrath requiring off-tank threat right now is Patchwerk, and he boosts the threat of off-tanks every time they take a hateful, so I'd imagine any tank can do the off-tanking.

The Hatefuls are also a considerable amount of damage, which means you can keep rage / mana for threat without too much difficulty.

The problem I always had as (a non-prot spec) OT on Moroes was that you were in a state of trying to maintain threat without any rage, then suddenly you were tanking and needed to use rage for both threat and defensive skills. Then you were back to starvation. It was the hardest fight for a warrior OT in all of the TBC content IMO.

[Frag]

It was the hardest fight for a warrior OT in all of the TBC content IMO.

That's why we'd leave an add to beat on them.

~Frag:blink:

[Mavfin]

The Hatefuls are also a considerable amount of damage, which means you can keep rage / mana for threat without too much difficulty.

The problem I always had as (a non-prot spec) OT on Moroes was that you were in a state of trying to maintain threat without any rage, then suddenly you were tanking and needed to use rage for both threat and defensive skills. Then you were back to starvation. It was the hardest fight for a warrior OT in all of the TBC content IMO.

Yeah, I'm sort of not looking forward to eating hatefuls on Patch, as i *know* I'll have to autoattack some to not take over from the MT. So far I've been tanking it with that one better-geared paladin, and a couple of druid tanks who of course were eating hatefuls due to health pool. When the other warrior comes to the raid that I now outgear, I'll have to be careful.

[Tal]

7k TPS on Patchwerk on Wednesday, completely stopped attacking at one point for around 30s to let aggro fade a bit, then went back at it and around 8% I ripped him off of the MT and ended up MT'ing him through the end.

My threat is strongly related to how much damage I take, it's the warrior paradox version wotlk. The better my gear gets, the less damage I take, the more my threat suffers, and that's how it's always been. The new paradigm is even worse, as now in wrath since they built up our threat by having larger self-dps, but did nothing about having our main tps/dps move then remove any rage gain we'd have gained by hitting harder.

As things are now though, being a warrior tank is rather irritating. Same tps issues as always (static threat on most abilities) and thus the lowest threat potential in 'regular' gear, having our aoe threat moves on relatively lengthy cooldowns (adds coming into an ongoing aoe situation are a real issue, and I've had wipes this week where if I was on *any other tank class* would not have been wipes and the 'best' way I've found around the TC/SW cooldowns involves 1. a raid situation and 2. 'creative use of game mechanics' (that will probably be fixed soon)), and finally the lowest EH of the four tank classes (Not to mention the inability to currently main tank the hardest raid content, and from GC's comments today, seems that they feel that's fine).

Bleh,
~Frag;)

When you OT on Patch do you put on a high block set Frag? I'm usually the MT on our Patch kills so I go with my stam/mit set. One of the few times I was HSB I ended up dodging or parrying quite a few hits and was too rage starved:P

[shoju]

Shoju, a properly executed 969 rotation has zero free GCDs. In order to accomodate Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Hammer of Wrath or Avenger's Shield, you have to drop something else first.

Well, if you mean that you wait the second to use your '9''s on 9, sure, you will have no free gcd's. The fact is that it's not a 969 rotation, it's a 968 rotation due to the length of consecrate and the ability for HOly Shield to be refreshed at 8 seconds with a duration of 10. You can properly execute the rotation and you end up with 1 gcd every 18-21 seconds where everything is on CD. These CD's are used for Divine Plea, Exorcism, Hammer of Wrath. This becomes less of an area of importance with 3.1 and the ability/desire to keep Divine Plea up constantly.

While for most tanks, waiting the second on Consecrate/Holy Shield will get you a very smooth 969 rotation that means that you can even macro your tanking into 2 buttons ( I wouldn't macro it personally ), it's not the end all be all of how to execute the rotation.

[Kevin]

I haven't raid tanked as prot (I did some taunting on Gluth as ret spec) in wrath, but I have run a few normals on a prot spec warrior and ret spec pally and it was easier and higher threat (as long as I turned righteous fury on) to tank as a ret pally than a prot warrior in the early 70's. :)

Of course I've ret spec tanked a few heroics (though I've got a couple of Naxx pieces and mostly heroic ilvl 200 blues (and a purple or 2) for tanking now so solid gear). Though my last ret tanking of UP did not go so well, of course it was being healed by a ret pally as well. ;)

I've pulled aggro from DK's, warriors, and druids in heroics on single targets. I've not pulled from a paladin while doing ret DPS and I would say that the pallies were not always more skilled than the warirors or druids.

So like everyone else has said given equal skill and gear I'm pretty sure pallies rule the roost on threat right now.

The problem I always had as (a non-prot spec) OT on Moroes was that you were in a state of trying to maintain threat without any rage, then suddenly you were tanking and needed to use rage for both threat and defensive skills. Then you were back to starvation. It was the hardest fight for a warrior OT in all of the TBC content IMO

I never off tanked his as anything but prot, but I tended to use my DW to 1H with Shield macro a fair bit on him as an OT. It wasn't hard to DW and stay def capped so even if I didn't have the shield on when I took over the tanking it usually wasn't too bad.:)

But of course in TBC devastate/HS "spam" in def stance did better threat than it would now. But since it was lower rage the DW helped with generation and I think it did better threat than keeping the shield on and using shield slams when I didn't have aggro (or 70+ rage) would have. I didn't seem to have an issue staying #2 on him.

Of course I didn't get to tank as much in TBC as I wanted to even when I was running Kam as my main. But I kinda liked prot DPS back then. It was boring but could be OK at least. Now prot just can't do DPS.