I am aware that attack power has a considerable impact on white damage threat generation. There have been threads discussing the specific percentage of overall threat generation contributed by white damage on the warrior class forums and probably even this forum. However, my question is a little more case specific.

What impact does a small amount of attack power (say ~250) have on tipping the 10% scale during initial threat build?

The answer is too exact, I think, to spark a worthwhile investigation in response to just this thread. I am looking for more of an opinion based on a situation I'm having.

I'm MT of my guild, which is currently working on beating Karazhan. Never before have I had consistent issues with aggro until attempting to tank in Karazhan. Now, I am often finding myself losing aggro to offtanks during the initial threat build on trash mobs and in some cases boss mobs. In most of these cases, this happens during a single critical strike of a shield slam by the offtank despite 2+ sunders, a revenge and a shield slam on my part.

As for my method of aggro build, if I have the rage I am waiting on a global cooldown 100% of the time; meaning at all times I will have a mitigation or threat ability triggered. Generally this begins with a sunder, shield block, sunder, revenge, followed by a shield slam.

Sound contrete, right? It doesn't prove so solid lately. My offtanks, when engaging at the same time I do, will pull AND hold aggro from me using just shield slams and devastates while in defensive stance. Both are protection spec'd warriors with points in Defiance.

Regardless of what I try, if they keep up this method I am unable to regain aggro from them 75% of the time (minus taunting). If I ask them to build offtank aggro in battle stance, all is copacetic. Otherwise, I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out why, if a lesser geared tank with almost mirror spec can pull aggro easliy and hold it, why am I unable? PEBKAC error? Possibly, but I doubt it.

The only difference I can find in spec or gear between myself and my offtanks that would give them an upper hand in threat generation is, you got it, attack power; 250 in one OT's case, and over 500 in ther other's. The situation occurs much more often with the 500 attack power difference.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ammer&n=Noxeus

If you don't care to click:

710 attack power
45 to hit rating
6.25% to crit

Low, to some, but up until now I was only ever concerned about mitigation in tanking gear.

While some of you may consider this a post a waste of your time, and even as something that doesn't belong on these forums, I would just ask you to consider that this has become a problem for me to the point that it seriously affecting my will to continue as MT for my guild. And aside from you guys at this forum, I have no where else to gain knowlegable feeback. Any input will be appreciated.

If they engage at the same time you do, with threat moves, it's only normal they pull agro off you. That's like DPS engaging at the same time as you.

The first few seconds of your cycle (probably) contain quite a few mitigation moves on top of your agro moves, meaning your not pumping out 100% of your potential threat. Hell, if they go all-out agro moves throughout the fight, they'll pass you by at some point, because you'll be using shield blocks, shieldwall, and whatnot.

I assume you're already letting your OT do all the debuff moves?

On a sidenote; does any use Berserker Rage before the pull? I always use BR, then Bloodrage before a pull. This will definitely give me enough rage for a Shield Slam after my or the mob's first hit.

As for the question, I agree with Moogul. 250 AP in threat is nothing compared to the innate threat of warrior's abilities. If you use every GCD on abilities and still lose aggro, maybe you should prioritize the abilities that gives most threat. This means Shield Slam > Revenge > Sunder while having Heroic Strike up.

I always do BR going into the pull, its awesome. I love getting hit for 4k and almost filling my rage bar from it to immediately throw in HS spam in addition to my regular threat cycle.

The only aggro issues I have is off long avoidance strings, which still piss me off as you should not be penalized for improving your stats. A good string of dodges at the start in a DPS intense fight is really not cool.

When I was prot I would always open up with a shield slam and HS. I'd strongly suggest picking up imp HS instead of something like imp charge. SS + HS = 26 rage, just as much as you'll have after Blood rage is done. I always use Berserker rage on the pull also, it can make a big difference in how much aggro you can build in those first few seconds.

My pulling sequence goes like this. Sit in zerk stance, shoot/throw, hit berserker rage, def stance, bloodrage, Q up HS, hit SS when mob gets in melee range. You should be able to Q up another HS immediately and hit SB so revenge will light up.

And of course, if after that you're still having issues in critical situations, Misdirection is always there (assuming you have a hunter in the raid). With only a 1min cooldown you can generally get a misdirection on a large proportion of pulls.

Ignoring the fact you obviously didn't read all of his post... I will second the mention of having your OTs handle Sunders. Since you're fighting the GCD for abilities, sunder does so much less threat than Shield Slam, Revenge, HS, that it's honestly not worth using if you have OTs to do it for you. The same can be said about Demo Shout and TC, on pulls the only defensive ability you should use is Shield Block.

If you fall behind threat to your OT on aggro-reducing mobs, always remember you can intervene the current tank to take the hit and thereby give you a nice chunk of rage to spend on SS'ing or HS'ing. Sometimes it's all you need to get back in front.

I don't think more AP will help you at all for initial threat. As other have stated, you should change your opening. Always start with Shield Slam and keep prioritizing SS and Revenge over Sunder Armor. In those cases where you should Shield Block before the mob even hits you once (like Maulgar), have a hunter Misdirect the mob to you. Also make sure your offtanks don't Shield Slam right away or it will mostly be luck who ends up tanking the mob.

While I think your question is a worthwhile one, I have to say that I doubt it will be answered because the tacking on of additional AP for threat is one that probably trades off mitigation or survivability, something that tanks simply won't be willing to do on non-trivial content.

With that said, the answer to your question is to simply change your ability threat cycle. You are using Sunder Armor to open while the other tank(s) are using Shield Slam to open. Are you really wondering why you're losing aggro when these tanks are generating more threat than you in those first few seconds? Additionally, AP does not affect the damage/threat of Shield Slam - block value does.

I would highly recommend you brush up on the threat values associated with Warrior abilities first and foremost - this is not a question of gear, this is a question of your methodology of building threat being flawed.

Apologies in advance if you take me as being too blunt, but this is your answer.

Your offtanks are hotdogging. Listen to Suesse-- "Have them start with demo shout, then thunderclap, then assist in building sunders stacks so you can both devastate. "

Also there is little reason why they would be in defensive stance, imho. Once their support skills are used they should be doing max dps.

They really ought to be ashamed of pulling aggro off of the MT. When I offtank, I always apologize if I do it, just like when I am any other dps.