What about GoA + stones? I've heard complaints that WF is too streaky.



Also:

Is there a way after a fight is over to see the average TPS? I know KTM shows the rolling TPS, but it's a short timeframe and it wipes it out when the fight is over. No matter how many times I try to get a last-second screenshot I always miss it.

Something changed in the last week with our tank's threat, or with my dps (I haven't gotten new gear, although I did make some changes in my casting to better keep on top of the global cooldown) -- it's sort of hard to pin down what the change is, despite us talking a while. (I'm the highest dps in the guild on gruul by a pretty big margin.) I got caught flatfooted on Gruul this week by the tps difference, screwed up and reflexively shattered early, and ended up just soulstoning and hellfiring down to drop threat -- it was all in all a rather unpleasant experience.

But if there were a way to easily see, post-fact, the average tps of a tank, it'd be easier to discuss such things and figure out what the variation is.

Some bosses really require the maximum stm and mitigation you have available while others don't. I'd be surprised to find a main tank that doesn't have a few different sets setup in itemrack (or equivalent mod) for different bosses/trash/etc.

There are too many critical variables that depend on the encounter to make any accurate mod for this. Key variables would be for example base damage, swing speed, instant attacks, abilities that reduce mitigation like sunder, stuns...
A tank with loads of evasion for example will be less vulnerable to a fast attacking mob with a sunder ability (like Prince phase 2), whereas a tank who stacks armor and hitpoints will do much better against a mob that periodically stuns (like say Chromaggus).

In addition, there is a difference in survivability between taking secondary attacks like Hurtful Strike and taking regular hits. Since every encounter is different you cannot categorize all eventualities unless you make a survivability mod per encounter, and even then it would be practically useless.

Even if you use a mod with loads of option like Tankpoints, choosing and comparing gear is not as easy as: more points means it's better.

It's a 20% chance to get a free attack on a hit for MH dmg with 445 bonus AP. The extra attack is white damage so it generates rage. WF will also proc on devastate attacks, which reduces the effective rage cost of the ability and increases the threat output. You may get a streak where it procs a fair amount or not at all, but through a sustained fight it will even out, just like any other RNG effect. It's considerably more threat than 2.5% crit on GoA for a warrior (GoA is more of a mitigation/avoidance totem for us, we shift to it at 5-6 grows on Gruul).

TPS is streaky, sometimes your shield slam hits on a pull, sometimes it gets parried. The point is maximize your threat over time and get as much as you can out of a 6 second window for a warrior.

I really hope shamans aren't dropping stoneskin for your tanks. That totem is worthless. It's 43 damage before armor and it means you can't drop a +86 str strength of earth totem (which will add at least 4 block value and 172 AP, before talents and other modifiers). When unmitigated hits are for several tens of thousands of damage, 43 damage is horrible.

Does using a stone with GoA offset the threat loss though, perhaps resulting in a higher total threat? The idea was GoA + stone, not just GoA.

This is just talking with our tank and ideas there, sorry if these are dumb questions, I R not a tank, just a high-dps lock.


Nope.

400 was the mark that TPS should never fall below. I was saying that's the bottom end. I have seen TPS drop to 156. That's an issue.

A tank can do around 150dps overall, which includes threat moves that actually do damage like HS and SSlam, that should result in about 200tps just from damage.

But if you get a really bad avoidance string on either you or the boss target then DPS/TPS can still pretty much bottom out.

As a tank, I usually can output around 800 TPS - then again I am also keeping up Thunder Clap, Demo Shout, and Sunder Armor (via devastate).

For manging those 3 debuffs, I think that's pretty darn good - but then again sometimes I wonder if I'm playing the piano again.

My druid alt just hit 70 yesterday, has about 1100AP in bear with greens (~17500AC, 23% dodge, 11000HP) , and in 5-man instances my low is 500 tps (rage starved), high is 750tps (swimming in rage, low AC target). --- http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...&n=Funkenstein

The best threat tank I know (Druid friend) pulls 900 -ish with very good gear in some situations. Only tank my enhancement shammy friend can go all out on in a heroic and live.


Druid tanks should be able to do 500tps on a single target once they have enough rage to spam mangle every cooldown + lacerate at least twice between cooldowns at abolute minimum. 700+ should be normal.

700 tps doesn't seem like that high of a goal to set. I am often around 800-900, with the rare spike puting me over 1000tps while tanking karazhan. (I haven't yet moved into 25 mans)

Strings of parry/block will drop me to around 500tps, and picking up trash mobs can start slowly, but once you have enough rage to cycle mangle/maul/lacerate, 700 tps should be automatic. Maybe I'm underestimating the gear I've collected, but half of it is still blue. You should be using an earthwarden, of course

With all due respect to anyone having issues with threat, 400 TPS is absolutely abysmal for any protection warrior worth his salt and presumably that holds even more true for paladins and druids. For some perspective, Morogrim Tidewalker (SSC) periodically uses a frontal cone ability called Tidal Wave that decreases weapon speed; this aforementioned ability took my 1.6 speed weapon and reduced it to 8.0 seconds. Despite that I was putting out around 500-600 TPS with the debuff up and I am a fan of Heroic Strike, so I felt especially gimped. If a protection warrior is putting out 400 TPS, then I'd suggest he look at his weapon, gear selection and most importantly his cycle; there can be a huge difference between the various techniques. In my opinion, 700 TPS is a good starting point and accessible to people in blue quality dungeon gear.

(I'd say my typical cycle puts me at 900-1000, spiking to 1200 when I get a good string of Shield Slams with the Auto-Blocker active. Naturally this drops significantly if the RND decides to spit on me with a bad avoidance string).

As someone mentioned in a previous comment, the other prot warrior in my guild and I have multiple gear sets designed for varying circumstances; for example, we both have an alternative block value/+hit set for encounters where vast amount of stamina isn't urgent, but threat is (think Void Reaver or Leotheras). This gear set also helps a great deal on trash clears.

Aren't most bosses in SSC and TK immune to thunderclap? There's your Thunderfury usefullness. It's no accident that most of the vids of top guilds killing those raid bosses include Thunderfury. This from a tanking feral druid. /sigh

As a paladin, I know I would literally kill for a thunderfury for tanking heroics.

Sure, my threat gen would be a bit lower from not using a spell damage weapon, but it's not like we have thunderclap to fall back on...

Seems to me that your dps warriors are trying to skive off of TC duty. I don't blame them, having to apply TC every 30 seconds (it's a spell and so resists often) is rather detrimental to one's dps.

No, I honestly heard that they are IMMUNE to thunderclap but not TF. Is this false?

In all of SSC and TK, I haven't encountered a single mob that is immune to TC.

Thunderfury is just still so ridiculously useful. Sure it can make a mediocre tank look good, but to an already really good tank can make them insane with threat generation. When your sunder, revenge, devaste instant attacks have a chance on hit to do 270 damage + debuff threat, you really can't go wrong -- it takes devastate to the next level of threat gen.

Simply put, Thunderfury still does a shitload of damage. I generally sit around 260-300 dps while main tanking and 350+ if I steal a shaman for my group.

Also don't downplay the utility of it. Not having to thunderclap will either A) Prevent MT threat loss because he has to do it, or B) Prevent making someone your TClap bitch, nerfing their dps or whatnot.

Honestly, I'm pretty tired of using thunderfury myself, can't wait till they make something better -- I am eyeing those BT/Hyjal tank weapons

So u would take a TF just to get rid of TC duty?

While u are missing out on lets say a Blazeguard with much more stamina and rare hit rating on a tank weapon. Or a mace from lurker with even more stamina and some defense rating.

Cause I doubt that u can't get the same tps with a blazeguard compared to a TF. Since the dps is getting boosted even more on TBC tanking weapons. (in 2.1).

Correct me if I'm wrong ofc, but our guild has never had a TF tank and we are doing fine as it is. We did get a new warrior with TF last week tho, so will be some nice testing. Since he is OT'ing and i'm MT'ing with my Blazeguard...

Considering most of a warriors threat abilities aren't damage based, or have damage based on something other than AP (Revenge is static, Shield Slam is based on Block value) stones really don't do much at all for tanks.

The big deal with Windfury is that warriors are making ~4 attacks every 3 seconds (auto+instant offensive move) so it really will proc a lot. Windfury has no competition when it comes to increasing threat unless they decide to add a +Hit stone or +threat to the Flametonge Totem's effect or something.