Elephants

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.

 

Moogul

It might be worth considering what abilities you open with on mobs - I generally find bloodrage->shield block->revenge to be the best opener, or in some cases substitute charge for bloodrage.

In fact, on pulls where you can charge, doing charge->def stance->shield block->revenge->bloodrage->shield slam is a lot of burst aggro, and if you can fit in a heroic strike there, even better.

The times I find I have trouble holding aggro are when I get a couple of missed abilities in the first 3-5secs, so +hit is definately valuable. I currently have far too little +hit, having sacrificed everything for mitigation, and I'm now working on building it back up again.

If it's really an issue, just have your offtanks hold of for a few seconds. I've noticed recently how quickly my dps go after I engage a mob - in Karazhan, it seems that dps starts the instant I've even swung a white dps hit against the mob, which is a far cry from the old MC 'wait for 3 sunders' technique. They say that's fine since I can hold aggro anyway, which usually I can, but those times where one or two of my abilities fail to connect and we can be looking at splattered dps quite quickly (on taunt-immune mobs). Another idea is (if you're not already) to berserker rage before each pull - it'll increase the rage you generate at the beginning and allow better burst openings.

Also, I'd suggest taking a look at your talent spec, particularly the lack of Cruelty. I find that Cruelty is a particularly good aggro talent, considering that critical heroic strikes or shield slams are great for getting immediate leads in aggro. You've take deep wounds and impale (5 points altogether), both abilities that play off crit, without taking the +5% crit talent. Whilst it's personal opinion only, I'd say that's a mistake.

I guess I've just spent a whole while not actually answering your particular question. 250 ap is about 17-18 'character sheet dps' (let's call it 18). 18 dps*0.9 (def stance damage penalty) *1.30 (Def stance aggro mod) *1.15 (defiance) =~ 24tps. That doesnt include crits or misses/dodges/parries, but they'll largely cancel out. That means in the first 10 seconds you're looking at about 240threat, which is still less than a sunder. It certainly all helps, but I doubt it's a deciding factor.

Ijago <Casual Jerks>

 

Pane

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?

 

woo-haa

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.

 

Darkmgl

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.

 

Lodekim

With Focused Rage, a shield slam costs 17 rage, with improved bloodrage you have 17 rage 1 second after using it. I will almost always open with a shield slam, especially if I have any concerns about threat. Exceptions are on fights that can one shot me off the pull (eg. if maulgar crushing's with an arcing smash) I'll prioritize shield block, but either I would let people know I'm starting light or it's a fight where it doesn't matter.

Also, keep in mind, most tanks aren't going to have full +hit right now, so on top of dodges and parries, we've got miss chances, it can suck when it happens at the beginning of a fight, it's worse if people pretend it can't and pull aggro, give the tank at least a few seconds before going in (exceptions when you need an off tank immediately, in which case the OT shouldn't open with a shield slam)

As to why you won't pull off him, at the beginning, everything's equal, whoever bursts more threat will have aggro. After that, tanking comes into a cycle of whoever has aggro will have an easier job keeping it. Having aggro means you take more damage, get more rage, and then can put out more threat than someone not taking damage (exception pally tanks)

So open with your high threat stuff, if you get a shield slam -> shield block/revenge in the first 2 seconds, you've probably got a nice lead. Also, make sure your offtanks are aware they're not fighting you for aggro, they're fighting the rest of the raid (exception aggro clearing fights that take multiple tanks, but there are none of those in karazhan.) They shouldn't be opening up trying to build as much threat as possible, they should be building threat to stay behind you and ahead of the dps.

edit: Yeah, sometimes shit happens, the mob misses you 8 times in a row and you get no rage, you have your first 6 attacks parried, in those situations, it's just bad luck, and annoying, rez up and it probably won't happen again.

 

◊ Zoroaster

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.

 

Moogul

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.

Ijago <Casual Jerks>

 

Boevis

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.

 

Suesse

If your offtanks are shield slamming in the first few seconds of the pull, it sounds like they're trying to pull aggro off you. A 1.2k shield slam crit is a ton a threat. Have them start with demo shout, then thunderclap, then assist in building sunders stacks so you can both devastate. Demo shout, sunder, and thunderclap don't crit (well, thunderclap does, but infrequently) -- this way you wont have any surprises.

I also charge whenever possible. I know it's unpopular among warriors, but it provides a nice amount of rage to start the fight.

 

BigAl

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.

 

Dots

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.

 

Riot

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.

 

Bardus

If your off tanks are pulling agro, get them to do the sundering. Sunder SUCKS for rage vs threat compared to Shield Slam and Revenge. Open with Shield slam unless you proc revenge before you have the rage to slam.

If your OT is pulling agro with Shield slam crits before you can establish agro tell him to stop being BAD. His roll as an OT/backup on a single mob should be to get demo shout and Tclap up on the mob then help you get it to 5 sunders. If he's shield slamming the mob before putting up demo, Tcalp and 5 sunders he needs to rethink his roll as the off tank.

I'd strongly recommend you and ALL your raiders start using KTM. If your dps is half intelligent they will look at KTM before engaging the mob and make sure you have a good 3-4k head start. It should also significantly increase raid dps as people can really push their dps as hard as your agro will allow if they pay close attention to KTM.

Some pulls might require you to start with shield block up, but there are VERY few mobs in the game where an opening crush would lead to instant tank death.

Bloodrage itself still generates a small amount of agro when used (5 per rage point, i.e. 80 agro with imp blood rage) so if you are pulling yourself use your ranged weapon, and as soon as it hits use bloodrage (which doesn't even trigger GCD). Then open with shield slam, revenge heroic.

If you are trying to clear fast you won't always have bloodrage up on the pull, so just call it out on vent for dps to go a bit slower in these situations and wait for you to get a shield slam off.

As for your concerns about AP/crit/hit for agro building on trash, I personally use stacked shield block value for more shield slam damage for my "high agro" set. I try to pump my hit rating up a little on this set of gear also. I don't really worry about AP too much. I also have a non-heroic 5 man tanking gear set that has 12.1k HP, 874 AP, 87 hit rating, 14.2% crit, 443 defence and with an auto-blocker trinket 427/627 block value (I'm specced out of Shield Mastery atm for Hydros tanking). Was using this setup in a non heroic Black Morass the other day and seemed to work quiet well for threat generation.

 

Peekaboo

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.

 

dboi1017

Can anyone give me some advice on "How to Off-Tank as a Non-prot warrior"?
I'm currently a fury warrior and just want some advice from you pros.
Such as tanking skill rotations for raid AND 5-man instance.
Any opinions will be appreciated.
Thanks all

 

Riot

Your job is to shadow shit that breaks free. Get a feel and rapport for taunts with your main tank partner, as you don't to burn taunts unneccessarily.

Some MTs prefer their OTs to keep up Demo Shout and Thunderclap in Battle Stance while DPSing, others may even go quite so far as to ask them to assist them in Sunder as well.

On multiple mob pulls, if your MT picks up too many, you need to be agressive about picking one or two off.

I would actually grade being a good OT harder than being an MT. Situational awareness, quick reaction time and good judgement skills are highly desireable.

 

Nezralix

I wrote a C++ program awhile back to estimate warrior threat under various circumstances. I consider it to be fairly accurate (although it doesn't actually take glancing blows into account, that's a bit of a shortcoming).

Looking at the following skill usage: 1 Shield Slam per 6 seconds, 1.5 Devastates per 6 seconds, one Revenge per 6 seconds, 3.5 Heroic Strikes per 6 sceonds...

...and the following values: 400 block value, 10% crit, 1000 attack power, a 15% for your attacks to not connect, and 25% armor mitigation...

... you're looking at around 864 threat per second, with 158.2 TPS from white damage (prior to Heroic Strike calculations, note that I'm not considering glancing blows which theoretically disappear when you're using HS all the time) and 119 TPS from Devastate. Upping that to 1250 attack power increases that to 890 TPS, with 178.1 from white damage and 125.4 from Devastate.

Alternatively, if you limit your threat to one shield slam per 6 seconds and 1.5 devastate per 6 seconds (do people really have more rage than that while off-tanking?), then you've got 600.3 TPS with 1000 AP and 626.2 with 1250.

 

• Tharas

This combination (Focused Rage + Imp Bloodrage) is really quite nice, opening with a Shield Slam is very, very effective (followed usually by shield block->revenge->sunder, mixing in the HS if the fight allows). I advocate Imp Bloodrage to a lot of our tanks for this reason (among others), especially once you don't "need" the Anticipation points.

 

stampy

o.O dont *need* anticipation?

the 15 and 20 point tiers in prot are weaksauce... its tough to get up to 25 without spending a few points in anticipation, unless you really want to pick up improved shield bash over 0.96% avoidance and 0.32% block.

490 is not a cap to defense... its a minimum requirement.

 

Darkmgl

The more points you have in anticipation, the more AP/Hit/Block Value and Stamina you can add on without worrying about your defense dropping below 490. Personally after 490 defense I only crank Stamina and Threat.

Everything adds to threat, Hit, AP, Block Value.... and eventually your threat will need every little boost it can get. Raising these things without hurting your Armor/Sta/Defense is another story.... thats the fun of managing your gear!

And going back to the earlier notion, DPS warriors are also good for stacking your sunders. No way in hell I can sunder more then once or twice every 6 seconds in my initial rotation, and thats if theres spare rage.

 

Evalara

This doesn't answer your question at all but, why would you have a Prot-spec OT in a 10man? I would never bring two Prot warriors to Karazhan unless I absolutely had to, much preferring the second one be dps or hybrid (<=21 in prot) specced. Your OT is a lot less likely to pull aggro form you if he doesn't even have Shield Slam...

 

• Tharas

I do have imp shield bash, for 5-man / heroics. The silence comes in quite handy, but I can see the tradeoff to grab 2 more in anticipation here instead.

I can move my defense from 494 to 500 to 502 based on gear, and I have exactly 2 Kara drops, and a really mediocre shield still that should be upgraded. My only consideration will be swapping some stamina/def gems for pure stamina gems at some point in the future, thereby possibly needing a few points in anticipation to accomodate. Even at 0/5 anticipation I can hit 500 defense and a combined 33% dodge+parry.

Otherwise, I have found most of the time that the gear with the best stamina is also the gear that gets you crit-immune and gives good "enough" mitigation beyond that. Other than the gem tradeoff above (which honestly, is pretty small fine-tuning and really depends on the specific item and the utility of the socketing bonus), I'd prioritize stamina over defense upgrades.

 

• Tharas

We find this happens for logistical reasons. Say there are 2 "tank" spots in a Kara setup, but 3 people fill them throughout a week. A+B, A+C and B+C at various times. Without a ton of respecs, keeping them all prot is just a bit saner.

 

Bardus

I was very against Anticipation and Imp Defence stance up until we started working on Hydros. For Hydros it's virtually impossible to hit 295 unbuffed Nr/FrR and 5.6% crit reduction without specing anticipation. Furthermore HP is far more important than avoidance for tanking on this encounter.

Since having to spec anticipation I've come to appreciate the versatility the talent gives to my gear selection. It allows me to more heavily focus on stamina or shield block or hit if I feel the situation allows, and also gives me total freedom in trinket selection meaning I can use LGG in a stamina stacked gear setup while maintaining 5.6% crit reduction.