Ok, I started tanking with this expansion, and things have been going well but I have one problem. My threat gen versus druid tanks in the guild. I lose aggro on bosses I have initial aggro on and as soon as I no longer have the rage from tanking I never get it back. I'm comparable in hitpoints with the druids, and I think my gear is better overall. It's pretty annoying and I'd love any tips anyone might have. My basic threat rotation is shield slam, revenge, shield block, and heroic strike whenever my rage starts gaining faster then I'm spending. This is mainly a single mob problem.

I like shield block to guarantee revenge every time I can. It seems like every time I try to stack up 5 sunders that's when I lose aggro. According to threat meter I run about 450tps on trash and about 550-650 on bosses.

I would definitely keep shield blocking, it keeps crushing blows at bay. You might want to consider getting the +threat enchant on your gloves, getting a better weapon, and pick up some parry (you'll get 40% faster main hand swings whenever you parry). Also consider that if you find you can't HS on every swing, you might want to pick up imp heroic strike and maybe give up another point for anger management. This stuff usually isn't necessary though, just saying if you're having that much trouble getting rage...

Edit: Sorry, I didn't read your entire response. Tell your dps to not dps until you get 5 sunders up then. If you're not making use of devistate that's probably where your missing threat is.

Its all about getting that good rhythm down, and having a different rotation for low rage situations vs high rage. I would not be using heroic strike if you're in that lower rage situation, and from that lower TPS. I would use Sunder. I say lower meaning you cant spam everything easily including heroic 2 times with no penalty.

all that being said, without a much better weapon your TPS is going suffer a lot. Going from Gromtor --> King's Defender with Mongoose will be a substantial upgrade. I dont know if they intend for druids to have higher\better TPS forever, but like all aspects of warrior life, once you get 400 SB and an 83 dps 1h, the gap between will not be as large.

Another thing to try if youre having trouble is to get windfury in your party. All an estimate with KTM with WF in my group at the end of a long fight I tend to average somewhere in the 850-1000 TPS fairly easily.

Take an hour at the end of your next night of Aran attempts, clear to the chess event (less than an hour if you've done the trash before), and have some fun It's a good stress relief, and a good way to end the night with a bit of reward.

That is of course, unless you're on the verge of killing Aran, then keep pushing.

Ah, I missed the one night we did chess event, I assumed the chest was from something I hadn't seen. Score.

Been paying more attention, my numbers where a little low, keeping about 600-700 on the last trash pull.

If people are dpsing/building threat as soon as you're starting, don't bother spamming sunder to get the 5 stack, you'll lose aggro, it's not enough threat. My rotation prioritizes revenge/shield slam, then sunder til 5 stacks, then devastate, using heroic strike when I can burn rage. I don't pay attention to threat on trash, but I'd say between 700 and 950 dps is about where I sit, while using The Hungering Cold still.

You want to Shield Slam whenever you can, and Revenge whenever it's up. These are your two highest threat moves. If you're talking about trash mobs, don't bother spamming shield block, especially not inthe first few seconds of combat. Your normal avoidance should be enough to light up revenge just fine. In between Shield Slam and Revenge cooldowns, start stacking Sunders, until 5, then replace the downtime between SS and Revenge with Devastate, obviously. Any time your threat generation really matters, stacking 5 sunders right off is a mistake.

To directly address your question: druids put out fantastic hate even when they don't have aggro. This is *very* different from a tank-spec warrior who puts out incredibly low hate (comparatively) when not actually being hit. Any competent feral can pull a low or even medium damage mob off a prot warrior.

The solution is simple - tell your druid not to pull aggro. As was discussed on a separate thread, being an offtank is a skillful job - pulling aggro means your offtank failed. Just like if dps pulled aggro. Make him use KTM and pay attention to it.

If you meant you were losing aggro to dps classes, well, yeah the same applies - have them install KTM too. It's fairly easy to lose a mob to dps when it doesn't put out tons of damage. Your TPS goes down, their DPS stays constant.



As to actual threat rotation, if you're in a low rage scenario, your goal is rage management. As such, white damage hits are an important source of rage, Revenge is a really good tool, Shield Slam and then sunder or devastate. In that order usually. Skip SB/demo/TC in many cases to improve your rage.

When you're getting hit hard, your goal is GCD management. Your strongest hate tool is actually heroic strike - not because the TPS is high, but because it's essentially 'free hate' due to it not taking the GCD. In such a scenario you should be getting virtually zero white hits. You fill in the GCDs with Shield Slam, Revenge and then Devastate if you have enough time. I.e. if you didn't have to refresh TC/Demo or something else with the GCD.

In real tanking situations you often shift modes due to temporary rage drought or surplus. Knowing your encounter allows you to understand which you have to sacrifice TPS in order to gain mitigation, etc. For example - if you have 15 rage, do you devastate, or shield block? Well, vs Attumen probably you devastate. Vs Gruul at 15 grows, you sure as heck shield block. I guess my point is the rotation is dynamic, but based on the encounter certain abilities become higher or lower priority.
Against Gruul at high grow values, I sometimes find myself using SB, SB, SB, SB because I hit a dodge string and didn't have enough rage to do anything else. I just trust my DPS to not pull and when he finally hits me I turn on the hate abilities again. This kind of thing is uncommon, but it serves to illustrate how different the priorities might be - missing a SB in this scenario is an almost guaranteed wipe.

Does anyone have the math on fast vs slow weapons for tanking with Devastate spam with current weapons? I assume it's different from the 60 math. In high rage situations (gruul) I assume that the extra Heroic strikes with a fast weapon are still more TPS than devastate spam with a slower one, but numbers are always nice.