noxiousdog

I was running herioic Slave Pens last night and doing such a poor job of holding aggro that one of the other members decided to give me helpful advice. I would have blown it off, except he cited a pretty good source.

I checked around here and found two relevent threads. One is the threat generation thread. The other is the lacerate threat measurement thread.

From those, it seems that the appropriate priority on threat generation would be mangle>lacerate>maul on bleedable targets while you should use mangle>maul>lacerate on bleed immunes.

Is that accurate?

 

Malazaar

Assuming you don't have rage issues, you should be doing Mangle = Maul > Lacerate keep alive > Swipe. Replace the last two for Lacerate spam on bleed immunes. If you got about 1900 AP, Swipe becomes the better alternative. Mangle surpasses Maul rage/application at about 2000 AP (depending on mob armor and critrate).

In a rage limited scenario you wanna go for Mangle > Lacerate keep alive > Maul > Swipe. On bleed immunes it's Mangle > Maul > Lacerate spam.

If you maintain this priorities and still lose aggro in a single target scenario you can either switch to a more dps oriented equipment or yell at your dps to be more careful.

 

Quasar

I try to avoid using Maul unless I'm
a) desperate to get aggro
b) above 40-50ish rage

Even on bleed-immune mobs, I go for Lacerate if Mangle is down. Also spamming FF every time it's up. Up-front Lacerate is still 400+ threat, isn't it?

JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?

 

Solstice

Personally I never use swipe on a single targets as I figure that the threat per rage generated by lacerate is superior. Swipe is ~200 damage for 15 rage and even with the bear form modifier it feels like a waste of rage. I prefer to mangle + maul for snap aggro at the start, then spam lacerate, maul on every swing and mangle whenever the CD is up. Spamming FF doesn't seem worthwhile to me either unless I'm rage starved as it wastes a GCD which I could use for a lacerate.

 

Gibbles

The DoT from lacerate actually has a threat reducing multiplier associated with it now, if I understand correct, point being: don't worry about the stack. If you need threat, its the second best use of your rage for threat, behind mangle, even on bleed immune mobs. Maul is for when you have rage to spare.

 

Quasar

That's what I intended to say. I mis'spoke.'

JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?

 

Boevis

Until Swipe passes due to AP scaling that is.

I always favor Swipe over lacerate since I tend to run with High AP, and in general the extra 75 DPS Swipe provides is more important than the extra 10 TPS I'd get from lacerate

 

Kazanir

Doesn't it take around 2300 AP for that to happen?

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

Malazaar

If you are sporting Idol of Brutality, it's about 1900 AP. A high crit rate is in favor of Swipe of course.

Additionally, Swipe can't be fully blocked, while Lacerate gets blocked quite often.

The Lacerate DoT is not worthless, just not so significant anymore - in many cases it's better to swipe spam and just renew your lacerate stack every 9-12s.

 

Thelyna

One point of note ... I don't think exactly *what* you're doing (as long as you're not swiping and doing nothing else) really matters, how much mangling/mauling/lacerating/swiping you're doing matters ... make sure you're doing something every time your GCD comes up. And if you're rage-starved (v. unlikely in a heroic) drop some dodge and wear some more sta/armor or (if you're not in any danger of dying) some more DPS-ish gear.

 

Northerner

Do consider your dps in the equation as well for 5-mans. Although I'm a little shocked to hear you are having threat issues (I tend to relax with a druid tank and honestly, I push our MT warrior pretty hard in heroics) the delta in dps is not trivial.

Your results will vary of course but if you are losing contact on single or double pulls I'd have to wonder if your dps has some bad habits. I'm doing pretty well for gear and I can still open full burn on most pulls with out resident bear tank. It's possible he's a savant but damn do I doubt it! (Hi Tytal, much <3 )

 

roquer

I try to maul every attack, and alternate between mangle and lacerate between mauls. I seldom have problems with dpsers stealing aggro, but when I'm tanking 2 mobs in a heroic, usually the healer gets healing aggro from the 2nd guy after 8-10 seconds, and if the dps isn't careful, they catch up to me in aggro on the main target, which is bad for them since my growl is now on cooldown. Am I unreasonable to ask them to wait 3 seconds? How do you deal with this? Lately I've been pulling the off target with starfire, moonfire, bearform, faerie fire, 1 maul on main target, then a demoralizing roar. You would think that 1 lacerate every 6 seconds on the 2nd target would be sufficient, but it isn't always.

Using my dodge trinket at the beginning of the fight has seemed to help with the healer aggro, but lowers my initial threat per second by a fair amount too.

 

Marwel

I working by the principle that it's my job to stay above healers in threat, and it's the dps job to stay below me in threat.

That said generating as much threat as possible on the dps target is a plus, but keeping the healers safe have to be the top priority.

 

noxiousdog

It was healing threat, not dps threat. I just didn't have enough mitigation to be there. We were fine until the double champion pulls that don't respond to CC.

And thanks for all the responses.

 

Malazaar

I suggest only tanking one defender. While they are immune to CC, they are very kiteable.

Edit: Defender ofc, champions are cc-able.

 

Liar

I assume you mean the double Defender pulls because the Champions (those that can Fear) are very much CCable. From my experience, losing aggro there is nothing to be ashamed of because those pulls can be quite tricky on aggro. The reason being is that these mobs can shield bash stun you basically right after they are in melee range. And as we all know, stunned tanks generate zero threat but healing just can't stop just because you are stunned (on top of that you cannot dodge while stunned adding even more healing aggro).
That being said, I generally don't lose aggro on these mobs anymore unless a Rogue thinks it's a good idea to pop BF just after the pull; but he'll find out the hard way that you can't Taunt/Bash when you are stunned.

A big advantage Druids have over Warriors is the pull. Wrath one mob, MF both while sidestepping (reju up if you feel like it), pop Barkskin and go Bear. That will take care of the initial healing aggro, then Maul the mob the DPS is NOT attacking once to ensure he will not break through and attack your healer. Mangle and Maul the other Defender the DPS is attacking once, then Mangle the other Defender again and you can pretty much focus on keeping aggro on the Main Assist target with Mangle --> Maul --> Swipe rotation on the Defender that is being killed first with Swipe ensuring that the other Defender you are not actively attacking will not break through in the later stages of the fight.

In the case that a trigger happy DPS has gotten aggro by the time you were building aggro on both mobs (can happen if you get stunned right after the pull), you have two options: Either Taunt right away or Bash then Taunt. Both work really and they got their respective advantages and disadvantages:

Taunting has the advantage that you can use your Bash for damage mitigation purposes later on (Bash the Defender that is not being DPSed down for maximum effect because you can generally be sure that there will be no Diminishing Returns for stuns on that one).

Bashing it, then taunting just as the Bash duration runs out has the advantage that you basically get free threat from your DPS that pulled aggro AND since you don't have to build aggro on the stunned mob (since you will taunt it anyway) you can use the time to build even more threat on the mob that is not being attacked. The obvious disadvantage is that won't be able to use Bash reactively anymore in case you drop low on Health.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Corrected the rotation from Mangle --> Mangle (doh) --> Swipe to Mangle --> Maul --> Swipe.

 

noxiousdog

Yes, defenders not champions.

Liar, I notice you don't use lacerate in that explanation while the consensus seems that it is the better threat generator. Am I not understanding everyone else, do you disagree, or is there something subtle I'm missing?

And why a wrath pull and not a starfire -> moonfire -> bark -> bear?

 

doul

isn't diminishing returns something that only applies to pvp?

 

• Chicken

Stuns have diminishing returns in both PvP and PvE. Probably a few other things as well.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Zeln

Easy to test with cyclone. Just try keeping a mob train cycloned and eventually you'll see the "immune" tag pop up.

 

Nezralix

I've encountered many tanks with this philosophy, and they're usually terrible and just throw that out there as an excuse for sucking. So use that particular line with extreme caution.

 

noxiousdog

Cyclone is diminishing for sure. That was a strategy we tried with Morose when we were short of priests. I don't recommend it unless you want an early wipe

 

Liar

Lacerate is indeed better for single target threat but in the situation of tanking the Defenders you already secured initial aggro on the two Defenders and Swipe on 2+ mobs is just better TP/S and TP/R than Lacerate on one mob. If there is only one mob I tank my priority is: Mangle --> Maul --> Lacerate --> Swipe. That usually means that I don't Swipe at all if TP/R and TP/S is all I cared about but I usually drop Lacerate in favor of Swipe at some point just to add more damage done (so the mob dies faster).

The only reason I ever use Wrath is because it has a travel time of roughtly 1.5-2 secs when cast at max range. That way you can actually get a Regrowth or Reju on you just when Wrath hits the mob. Basically, use Wrath over SF whenever you need that 1.5-2 sec more time before the mob reaches you (i.e. Wrath, Reju, MF two mobs, Barkskin then Bear).


And yeah, Stuns do have Diminishing Returns in PvE (unfortunately the same is not true for stuns applied to you by mobs ).

 

Crowbite

"Mangle --> Maul --> Lacerate --> Swipe"

I take it that this is in a endless rage situation? I normally prioritize lacerate above maul because a normal hit still builds threat with the added bonus of building rage. Lacerate on the other hand just uses a GCD. Now that maul doesn't have the threat multiplier it use to have, I find it's moved to 3rd on my list.

Is auto attack + lacerate greater threat then maul? Does anyone know what the threat for maul is right now? The only threads I could find were ones discussing some PTR numbers a while ago.

 

Jini

The threat numbers I am using now with my particular gear are:
Maul: 1,000
Mangle: 1,500
Swipe: 250 per target
Lacerate: 430 for initial application, 20 for each element of the stacked lacerate (if that makes any sense)

For a 5 stack of lacerate, each additional lacerate is 'worth' 530 threat. Given that a full stack of lacerate only adds around 100 extra threat I completely ignore the stack's existance and lacerate when the GCD is available and Mangle is on cooldown.

I am almost never in an unlimited rage situation, even on Prince. There are often times where I will find myself dry on rage. For limited rage situations on a single target I prioritize as follows:
Mangle -> Lacerate -> Maul

On Multiple targets, swap Swipe for lacerate.

I'll toss in a FFF if I am low on rage and the GCD is up.