Our druid OT overtook our MT on Gruul the other day, without even trying too hard (he saw he was catching up in threat, backed off, and managed to still take it from the last tick of his lacerates).

Druid OT threat gen is insane -- it quite simply does not even come *close* to comparison with a warrior or paladin OT. Paladin OT is useless -- if they aren't being hit, they aren't generating any reasonable threat amount (at least, this is what I'm told - confirm/deny?). And warrior OTs have the classic rage-starved issue, at least on fights that are not Gruul/Patchwerk-style (i.e. Hateful Strikes as a source of rage generation).

Primal Fury = OT lovin'. I can easily see this being THE niche for a feral druid -- ability to OT effectively without any direct damage being handed out for rage generation.

As far as warrior threat scaling, I concur that there currently seems to be a "cap" of sorts, where warriors are quite simply maximized in terms of TPS, based entirely on the GCD. Removing one or two warrior abilities (specials) off the GCD may help with this. It won't make warriors OPd (I think?) since they will still be limited by the age-old rage issue, but it will allow for warriors on rage-rich fights to increase their TPS, which is what we really care about anyway.

Last time we went to do Patchwerk (for kicks, few weeks back), our MT was chugging along at around 1000 TPS, and had lots of rage to burn -- limited by the GCD. Our druid was OTing as our primary HS eater ... and chugging along at 1100 TPS. The only thing that kept him from becoming the new MT was a quick Salv a couple minutes into the fight. :s

Thoughts?

As long as a paladin has mana, his treath generation will be decent. Without being hit though, we dont get heals and without heals, we dont get mana.
Might you be more interested: [Paladin] Spiritual Attunment Nerf (For Tanking)

I'd assume that your dps is probably not going full out or isn't quite as well geared as mine Maybe you dont stack your lock groups (Shad Priest/Shaman/Moonkin) to optimize thier dps as much as we do?

Our raiding locks can exceed me even in a rage-rich fight if they pile on the dps too soon and I'm too conservative in gear choice leading to a streak of misses/dodges which my AP/crit can't make up for. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen - the Priest in Gruul's Lair is a prime example where I pile on the +hit and str/agi gear (sacrificing sta but maintaining +def) so the dps can nuke with impunity. On this guy my AC sucks and I'm a couple of thousand HP short on what I would normally wear, but he doesn't hit that hard and the speed we can down him when the dps can go full-out virtually from the pull without having to worry about pulling aggro from me is pretty impressive. Obviously it also helps for the other bosses that Catform dps is pretty good in this gear too.

I'm not saying the problem is huge, but it is something that you have to take into consideration, especially when your raid dps classes really start to get good gear. Having said this I agree that BLizzard have done a reasonably good job so far at balancing so that +hit is not yet a required stat for tanks. As mentioned elsewhere, this will probably change when the instances ramp up and tank gear with +hit will then start to show up regularly.

On a side note, I'm surprised you say 5mans are short on rage - due to Swipe I never have rage issues in 5man normal mode and in heroics the trash mobs hit so hard it's akin to fighting bosses anyway. Uncontrolled mobs in 5mans for me are usually down to lack of CC in the group rather than because I can't keep them on me due to rage-starvation.

I think we're getting a bit far off the topic but anyway. What you're trying to do is compare different classes and different players which hardly proves any point. I mean no offense but I've seen leading guidls MTs that can hardly touch the 600 tps while others sustain 1,2-1,5k tps (yes, read that again). In our raids we have classes capable of sustaining over 1,5k dps and I dont recal ever any of them holding back, they struggle to reach 80% of my threat with salvation on them. Comparing different raids/players/guidls must be done under the absolutely same conditions in order for anyone to be able to say "we do/dont have threat issues". Different raid setups, party buffs, healing, tank gear etc etc plus the difference in player skills lead to results that vary from "I must hold back alot" to "I will need Tier7 to beat that tank in threat gen".

It was mentioned above that blizzard's intention is to make threat and aggro management much more important and hard to control. What this means is that we will rarely see fights where you sit and n00k for 10 mins (i.e. Morogrim). Most of them are stages based (nightbane, hydross etc.) where bosses clear threat based on a predictable pattern or the old school BWL Broodlord threat race due to threat reducing knockbacks (ala Void Reaver) or, god forbids, aggro careless mess like Sartura. To make such fights controllable blizzard gave us the "instant" tools to either buff the tank threat or knock out the dpsers threat - missdirection, invisibility, soul shatter, vanish (when it works lol) etc. etc. Salvation, proper party buffs and a capable tank is all you need atm (SSC, TK) to provide comfort for both your healers and your dpsers in raids, crucify me if you want but me and many others do it on practice. Warlocks with 1500+ sustained dps that cant reach 80% of the MT treat and the 3 tank healers ending up with over 50% of their mana (not paladins) is enough proof for me that atm warrior tanks (and I speak precicely of warriors) can be threat sufficient and healing efficient with the support of the raid (which is the whole idea of raiding).

I read it again and again. And now I would really like to see some proof of 1.2k-1.5k sustained TPS by a warrior on a boss where you actually have to use Shield Block every cooldown (ie not Hydross/Solarian).

I would like to see some proof of this as well. I've hit 1.2k TPS, but on level 71 trash, never a boss, and ONLY when a get a large streak of hits. Remember the key word here is sustained, not "I just landed my last 20 abilities and hit 1k TPS!".

Yes it should be possible with those four, and really only TF+WF. But I'm asking for unassisted.

Nope i am indeed talking casters who doesn't care if they fire up the engine completely. While my guild casters aren't that much decked out i frequently do heroics with some mages that are sporting over 1k spelldamage and 20-25% crit unbuffed and who doesn't mind taking a few pots for more damage. If i have the rage available from being hit i can keep agro from anything (assuming no unlucky misses in the start). Its pretty much all about maul. Mangle, 3 x Lacerate rotation might sometimes lose agro, but if i have excess rage to chuck mauls in between constantly i never lose agro. If my casters have salvation i never lose agro either.

Druid threat is scaling fine tbh. Agility = crit = more threat and primal fury procs = more rage = even more threat. Im at 24% crit in tanking gear atm, expecting some gem replacements soon that will grant me more dodge and more crit as well.

Just to clarify, i do lose agro often to early nukers, but if i have rage available i never lose agro to substained DPS classes going all out. Im very satisfied with my substained agro generation in rage rich enviroments, and as other said in this thread i frequently pull agro as offtank even.

Battle shout, Wf, Str totems, no TF, Kings and Might blessing, no missdirection, no feral druid in the grp, using second warrior to provide Tclap and Demo shout. Without pots 1,2k tps sustained with ease. Read again where I said "with the help of your raid". If you want to push it even further then get a dps warr in your grp to battle shout you and a feral druid (even a hunter with TS aura) and of course some +hit gems. Its a matter of playstyle - some guilds/raids prefer to play it safe and provide the tank with agi totem and self buffed commanding shout, others dont see a point buffing the dps grps if they cant actually dps with the 500 tps MT. For me personally anything below 1k tps sustained is not satisfying or at least not making the raid dpsers feel comfortable.

Could anyone give some sort of analysis for Mallet of the Tides vs King's Defender? It's mostly the hit vs weapon skill I'm trying to justify in my head and I've never seen anything that made a whole lot of sense or specific examples.

Blizzard stated that each weapon skill point above your base pool of 350 grants you 0.2% vs targets above your lvl, the mallet provides you with 3,9 extra wep skill which is displayed in the skill panel as +3. So just as a theorycraft it should give you 0.6% extra hit. I cant recal of anyone doing tests to prove the point (or if the 3,90 counts as +4 or +3 skill). The +7 white dps is not to be ignored though

A wws link to a fight it happened in would be wonderful

Do warriors with thunderfury find threat generation to be better or worse with it than a regular 80+dps weapon? I used to have it, but rerolled so I no longer have it, and am curious on this.

For the 1,2k tps I can only provide guild movie on hydross but the quality is so so, you tell for yourself if you can see the 1,1-1,2 tps. For the 1,5k - thats a peak you can reach in the rage rich fights (enraged kazzak), sustained is perhaps a bit exagerated but anyway I dont fraps so cant provide a link. I know this way my statement sounds like jerkoff talk without proper links but I've seen the 1,5k on my ktm more than once so I know its possible (not only as a peak but semisustained).

http://files.filefront.com//;7288221;/

No way you can go above 500-600ish tps with no party/raid buffs at least from my experience. The numbers I care are the numbers while buffed to the can, thats how raiding is done anyway.

TPS I've found it's really hard to say what you sustain. Standard raid buffs with Bshout I would usually say I'm between 850 and 1100 by checking periodically, it goes up when I crit a shield slam or something, goes down when I get a parry streak, can even fall to 600 if I'm unlucky.

With a good weapon (read I have THC, so even kings defender would help) you should be able to go above that, if you really start feeding in using all of the self heal things people can put and misdirect when it's up you can put out some surprising numbers.

Well, that sounds more like it. Sometimes you can get good streaks, I had 17xx myself earlier today, but of course that only lasts for a few seconds.
On Hydross you have a lot of rage and don't ever need to Shield Block, that helps TPS a lot.

Who receives threat from improved LoTP?

They balance you guys out with getting Crit to death, not being able to use pots, block, parry, or have any abilities like shield wall or last stand. That being said, it is a source of extreme annoyance to me that many times, as the raid group increases in power, my job gets harder, not easier, as least as keeping agro goes.

I'm actually terrified of the revenge change. Right now, revenge outputs a more or less useless amount of damage, plus a fixed innate threat. With the change, its being given a higher damage, and supposedly has a percent-based additional threat component that has been set to make the threat generation approximately equal to current threat.

Innate threat is good. It sucks that it doesnt scale, but it also doesnt get nerfed by mob armor. It doesnt get nerfed when we upgrade a our tanking gear by a tier and find ourselves with 250 less attack power.

If its set to (fixed damage + attack power bonus), with a percentage modifier to threat, then threat from revenge is going to scale in the wrong direction. Attack power is going down on tank gear, and mob armor is going up. The stronger we get, and the harder content we are it, the less threat revenge is going to produce.

And, it doesnt look like its going to have any component for weapon damage... meaning it wont scale with improved weapons either.

I'm very concerned that Blizzard is making this change as a nod to protection warriors who want more damage output, which is all well and good... but not when it nerfs threat generation. We are specced to generate threat. Reducing the threat generation of a core ability is not an acceptable tradeoff for anything, especially for something we arent designed to do... dps.

The recipient of the heal.

from the 2.1 patchnotes:

- "Improved Leader of the Pack": This ability will no longer generate
threat.