long time reader, first time poster.

http://ctprofiles.net/5377536 trash set

http://ctprofiles.net/5377538 boss set

i recently hit level 70, roughly a month ago, and have begun grinding the level 70 instances rigorously. i've read the "threat gen tips" thread numerous times, trying to maximize my TPS and rage efficiency wherever possible, but i seem to have trouble maintaining 700 TPS in normal-level 70 instances.


On trash mobs my TPS usually hovers around 550-650 (edit) for both singular and group pulls. however, in some cases, i am able to achieve 700 to 800 TPS for both singular and group pulls.

I have a standard threat cycle of which im sure you are all familiar with, but i'll list it anyways incase i am wrong.

shield slam, revenge, sunder, sunder. with heroic strikes weaved into the rotation if threat allows.

Im not completely sure as to why i am able to obtain 700+ TPS in some fights, most of which involve trash mobs and finite rage situations. Are there some minor details i should be aware of that drastically affect my TPS?

A few questions for the forum.

1. Would using heroic strike ocassionaly in place of sunder, as opposed to using it as a rage dump, noticeably increase my TPS without drastically affecting my rage efficiency?

2. In multi-mob situations (3+) is spamming improved thunderclap an "bad" way to maintain aggro? I often spam it once as my first skill to ensure i have a solid hold on aggro and then begin focusing between the target being dps'd with a heroic strike, revenge, shield slam combo, and then tabbing to one of the targets not being dps'd and adding a sunder armor and heroic strike. and then another thunder clap. i rinse and repeat as many times as i can until something ruins my rhythm and things start to get off more hectic or all the mobs have a confident number of sunders on them. would it increase my threat by not using thunderclap so many times, since almost has the same threat generation as a sunder, and using the saved rage to generate more threat on the main target?

3. Are the 2-3 global cooldowns wasted on thunderclap be better used for another skill to better maintain aggro?

4. In multi-mob situation, how does a good tank hold aggro? Is it possible to perfectly tab through the mobs one-by-one, alternating between sunder armor and heroic strike to create initial aggro on each mob? for example, in a 4 mob pull, would it be possible to sunder the 1st mob, heroic strike the 2nd mob, sunder the 3rd mob, heroic strike the fourth mob within 3 to 4 seconds, assuming a <=1.6 speed weapon?

5. if so, is this a common technique used or is it too difficult to time on a normal basis?

sorry if my questions are a bit vague, i can further clarify if needed.

It's usually a combination of low mob armor and a fair amount of non-physical damage you're taking. In a 5-man, your attack power and tanking weapon will have a measurable impact on your threat generation. Be also aware of how KTM calculates your TPS, which can sometimes generate misleading values.

In a regular 5-man? No.

Improved Thunder Clap on 2+ mobs is excellent threat/rage.

Probably not. Single target Improved Thunder Clap tends to be only a little worse than Sunder Armor.

While it's probably possible, Improved Thunder Clap is really all you should need to offset healing aggro (barring resists, and with the exception of certain pulls in heroics/Karazhan). The problem with Tab + Sunder (or other aggro generators of choice) is that you take too much time away from the focus-fired mob. I still use it if it's necessary to not break CC, of course. With two mobs to be tanked and one or more CCed at my feet, I tend to use "Target Last Target" for more precise retargeting (just be aware that it turns off your auto-attack).

Also, a mouseover Sunder macro can be helpful in such a situation:

updated with tank gear + better explained question number 2.

I would definitely recommend a new weapon.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31071

Or any of the plethora of 71.x dps weapons from the 5-mans.

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but group buffs make an absolutely monumental difference in TPS. Windfury is far and away the biggest factor, but even less significant buffs - using battleshout instead of (or in addition to) commanding, getting lotp...heck even having might instead of kings makes a difference.

Mob abilities make a difference too. It only takes one or two mobs in a pull with knockdowns to seriously cut into your TPS...and of course, for a warrior, if some other DPSer pulls agro the pull can easily spiral out of control. He pulls agro, you're forced to taunt and build more single-target threat, one of the adds agros a healer because you had to cut improved thunderclap out of your rotation for a bit, you switch to that mob, DPS steals agro on their mob again...before you know it, the entire pull is out of control, your rage gain has gone to shit because nothing is hitting you any more, and you curl up into a quivering ball of tears on the floor.

Of course, that never happens to me. I'm just saying it could happen, you know? To some warrior.

Post removed.

for holding threat on multiple mobs use demoshout, thunderclap and cleave. when multiple mobs hit you will have enough rage to do this. you just have to beg they got no knockdown cause knockdowns suck!

other then that just have a priority list of abilities and click them accordingly.

enemy dodge, parry, block and your miss is a big problem in raid encounters though.
~15-20% of your specials will never hit.

Just pointing out that citing TPS numbers is somewhat useless without specifying the conditions.

Just the type of mob you are tanking can have some serious consequences on yout TPS. Starting with his armor mitigation, special abilitites (knock down, stun) ...
On some mobs you have to upkeep your mitigation skills (shield block, shouts sometimes), on others you can concentrate on your threat.
You get the point.

In 5man instances it also is heavily dependant on your group members. Sometimes 500 is enough, and sometimes even cruising at 800 TPS one loses aggro.

The only advice I can give you is to stress to your group that keeping aggro is a group effort. First control the pull, THEN start DPS. This really sounds trivial but it makes the difference between wiping on the multimob pulls in heroic SH/SL (the 6 mob pulls e.g. before Blackheart) and being able to tank them half asleep.

As for a typical threat cycle:
On multimob pulls I start with Demoshout (to grab the attention of all mobs, so they beat on me and rage starts flowing), TC (unless in CC range), shield slam, then the usual cycle of high aggro instants and heroic strikes/cleaves as rage dumps. If you have piercing howl use it too ... very helpful on mobs which can (temporarily) aggro wipe (fear, stun, sleep, ...) as it gives you time to react to these effects. I'm always the group leader and put a symbol on the mob to be focused down (usually the skull ^^) once the pull is under control.
This can be further automated e.g star for sheep, triangle for MC, circle for fear, square for banning ...
Yes such trivial tools really help and to put it in a catchy phrase:
Aggro is nothing without control

thanks for all the helpful comments.

a little off topic, but how much TPS can most of you achieve while tanking the level 72 elite dragons in Black Morass (Normal). I'm just trying to get some comparisons so i know how much more i need to work on my tanking.

My personal advice would be to ignore your TPS for a while (as long as you're not having serious problems holding aggro, and even then I'd start analysis elsewhere). Like healing, tanking is very difficult to measure by a single metric. I pretty much ignore TPS numbers on KTM these days. I devote as much rage as is reasonable to threat generation, use a threat rotation that I know to yield optimal (or near optimal) results for the encounter I'm tanking, select the right gear for the instance/fight, but that's really just mechanics. It's far more important to have combat awareness, to be able to make the right judgement calls, and to understand the encounters you are tanking.

For a simple example, when I'm tanking one of the mage type dragons in BM, and our healer is still drinking, then I will make darn sure to reflect the first Pyroblast. That is a ton of threat down the sink (25 rage for reflecting the spell -- which generates zero threat -- , about 25 more for not taking the damage), but I buy the healer time to fully mana up. Screw TPS, I'm here to beat the instance, not an imaginary highscore.

(I'm assuming here that your group doesn't outgear the instance by a large enough margin that the fights are trivial for you.)

And yes, in the end TPS will matter, but: with a given set of gear and a given set of abilities, there's not going to be a whole lot of variety in what you can accomplish.

TPS is so very relative to your group composition as well, as you may have gathered by now from the above posts. Are you focusing on your TPS because people are pulling aggro from you? Cases you want to look at are if people are pulling aggro off you from single mob pulls, or from multi-target pulls.

If it's the former, you may intuitively look at yourself, but never forget the hilarity that is ranged dps'ers who open up with poorly chosen initial spells (infamous pyroblasters). If it's multi-target mobs, then a simple suggestion for DPS to wait a moment or two for you control the pull is absolutely essential. The measure of stress I see in my usual tanks ramps up considerably in 5-mans like Shattered Halls when dps simply does not wait for him to control the pull. And controlling the pull can take bit more effort when you start mixing in ranged mechanics with LoS pulling and such.

The summary is, never discount the rest of the variables in the circumstance you're observing. Single metric TPS is nice to boast about, but ultimately not very useful unless you're purely theorycrafting, and even then ... very difficult to truly gauge. Much like healing, as long as everyone is alive at the end (or at least the healer? hehe), then you've done your job.

As an aside, nothing is more funny than a dps warrior starting a 5+ mob pull in Shattered Halls with a whirlwind.