Almost all spells on my priest are of the form:
which will allow you to just have one button for abilities instead of needing separate mouseover macros. This will take your mouseover target first if it exists, otherwise it will use your normal target. It hadn't occured to me to make my druid bear form abilities of this form, but it makes a lot of sense thinking about it.

You may need to zoom your camera out more (if you don't already) and play from a semi-topdown view in order to target mobs more easily. I used to use nameplates a lot, but have got used to not using them recently and it seems easier. One useful thing if you stick with nameplates is that I think you can link Omen in to nameplates (using Aloft), so you have threat shown on the floating bar with the name/health, which would assist in working out which mobs you have threat on and which you don't.

Make sure you always get leader in 5 mans or raids if you're MTing, and set out a schedule of targets. If you always use, say, the skull, and tell people that's always the first target, 99% of the time you'll always get that down first and it makes it a lot easier to get significant agro on the other targets. This also makes it easier to keep track of which mob is which, as you always have targets on them and know that you starting hitting skull and cross first, and the square doesn't have much threat because it's supposed to be a sheep (or whatever). Half of tanking multiple mobs is the tank, and the other half is how other people behave on pulls. Also, remember that thorns will create some threat, and helps however small the amount is.

I haven't used aloft before, but I'm very interested now. A possible solution to your problem: I noticed that aloft allows you to make the nameplates *smaller*. If you make them a quarter the size, they won't jump around much at all.

From what I remember of using Aloft before, there's no need to make the actual bars smaller, just reduce the border/effective size to group them up more and stop them bouncing so much.

Maybe at some point. The problem is implementing the uniquness of gems. For now, just only mark the epic version of the gem as available, don't mark the JC BoP version as available, then after optimizing, switch one of the gems for the JC BoP one.

I've been building an avoidance set lately, due to picking up so much alternate T6 gear. I have a question about agility scaling. In my full avoidance set at the moment, I'm running 85% dodge+miss. This includes all applicable consumable buffs and debuffs on the boss. It does NOT include a grace of air totem.

Anyway, when I add the unimproved grace of air totem (77 agility), my mitigation points jump from 127k to 218k, a difference of 91k. Dodge+miss jumpts to 91%. Also, items with dodge rating, such as the pocketwatch, receive a HUGE value boost over straight defense items, such as the Scarab off hydross (42 defense rating). Why does this happen, if there's a simple answer? I'm not a math pro. Why wouldn't my mitigation points increase linearly based on the flat dodge increase each point of agility provides?

Orbaxlin - it's because each extra 1% dodge makes more and more difference to the amount of time you can expect to live.

At the extremes and ignoring other avoidance sources:
Going from 0% dodge to 1% is almost no difference. You'll still be hit by 99% of the attacks that used to hit you.
Going from 99% dodge to 100% though means that 100% of the attacks that used to hit will now be dodged.

In terms of percentage reduction of the original damage taken both are the same but in terms of 'how long can I expect to live in front of this boss' that last point of dodge is a doozy.

And yes, 100% avoidance can be reached in the live game - it's how a Rogue tanked Grull.

Ok, that makes sense. I can't imagine it being that great for main-tanking, as you'd be rage starved. But on trash it'd be great as long as you're not the first kill target. And multi-mob tanking...swipe spam FTW.

No, you'd be surprised how little rage starvation you get, even at 90+% dodge... During long avoidance streaks you have to drop Maul occasionally, but that's it. The problem is that by the time you're that high on dodge, you're in Sunwell, and everything there has Sunwell Radiance (make sure you check that in Rawr), except for M'uru.

It turns out all the agility you are stacking to get avoidance, also gives you crit. Crit is 5 rage on each crit. For white damage, its double rage generation+5. In short, if you aren't maul'ing your rage bar will never be empty.

You do miss out on throwing maul's a bit. But you pretty much never have to skip any other yellow attack. And your non-maul'ing threat gen is up enough that unless the boss is doing threat decrease moves no one really catches up to you (well except shadow priests in high raid damage situations).

Dodge stacking is also awesome for bosses like Bloodboil who stack up debuffs. I've had his annoying bleed debuff fall off of me while tanking him multiple times in a given fight. And having high dodge means you get to dodge some of his -15% threat hits and take a lot fewer hits of the bleed debuff. If he didn't have the blind-like move he does, I'm pretty certain a feral could solo tank him in dodge gear. Net affect of all this is that dps have a much higher threat ceiling than they'd normally have for the fight.

Caveat: We've been farming BT for about a month or so. I've not really seen much of sunwell.


Edit: wrong boss name fixed.

With all the huge changes 3.0 will bring, will it still be possible to reach very high avoidance numbers, and is it a good idea to continue down that road, if we have the second half of Sunwell in mind?

This was talked about a few pages back.
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16902-f...94/#post868632

Even though I don't remember the thread for KJ tanking gear I have a few hints from what I could find out during the 2 KJ kills I tanked.

From your post I assume you are using 3 tanks for KJ - We use 2 so I have to help with picking the adds with ~20k threat on skull while warrior picks up other 3 from me. This will be much easier with 3 tanks because you virtually don't have to help them, unless say they spawn very close to you.

Back to tps: We use a lot of "physical buffing specs", surv. hunter, arms warrior, imp. expose armor rogue which if you don't have in the raid might be the cause of your lower tps. I also get a BM hunter buff and a battle shout.
It might be advisable to be uncrittable versus lvl 70 but I am 13 def short and I have never died to reflections because I tank maximum of 2, most of the time just one.

Gear: I use maximum tps gear which consists of:

Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm
Brooch of Deftness - For the hit rating mainly because I have Collar aswell
T6 shoulders, bracers, belt, boots and legs - for the 27 hit rating
Crimson Paragon's Cover
Harness of Carnal Instinct
Stanchion of Primal Instinct
Idol of Terror
Gloves of Immortal Dusk
Angelista's Revenge
Band of the Eternal Champion
Shard of Contempt
Berserker's Call - extra threat at start, 1st and 3rd "bubbles" combined with haste buff = sweetness.

which puts me to 99 hit rating and 28 expertise. I use agi food and Flask of Fortification. If you are still having tps issues, I'd switch to agi pot instead.

I am not saying this is the best there is but it has worked for me perfectly. (1700 tps when unlucky with crits, 2.1k on average peaking at 3.3k with haste and trinket)

There is one main difference...I am using Lacerate instead of Swipe because when I tried Swiping my tps output was lower (might have been unlucky 3 tries in a row?)

WWS link to latest kill: WWS Loading...

Edit: I am usually 100k threat above Gazzank (2,5k dps)

For KJ gear, using your entire DPS set with pieces with no stamina swapped out is almost optimal. You want to maximize your offensive stats while maintaining a reasonable amount of hp (17K+ should be good enough). For add tanking, make sure you demo roar off the bat and bash when needed, as you're probably vulnerable to crits in max threat gear.

My guild's second feral went over to using mostly PVP gear to tank (4p T6 included for swipe threating) with DPS pieces mixed in. He wound up with something like 11% DOT reduction and still much more HP than our warrior tank in that role. Chromatic flask and agi food if I'm not mistaken. No need for expertise here if you're not tanking adds (we use three tanks). Not sure what his average threat was, but it was enough to keep a significant lead over 2.8k DPS so that sounds good enough to me!

I assume you're getting the haste buff when everyone else does? We also break out all the debuffs - imp expose armor, expose weakness, blood frenzy, etc.

WWS:
Wow Web Stats

Thanks for all your suggestions. After last night I managed to get to a steady 1800-2200 TPS still using Mangle, Swipe x3 rotation. I did try putting Lacerate in but it didn't seem to help my threat any, as my Swipes were averaging far over 300 non-crit. I switched to full DPS gear only without 2t4 (Twins shoulders and T5 head, socketed with agi) and still managed just above 18k health, which seemed sufficient.

Rawr puts Idol of the White Stag far above Idol of Terror on threat - did anyone try tanking Hands with Terror and then swapping for White Stag for KJ? I tried placing Terror in, but the agility didn't increase, so was wondering if the Terror proc isn't working properly in Rawr and that's why it showed that. I put my gear in and it notes my Unlimited Threat as 2111 with a Mangle-Swipex3 rotation as the best, so it seems I'm doing what I'm supposed to.

Edit: Found part of the answer here: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16902-f...84/#post816338. It answers why it's not listed properly, but not which one is better for TPS.

Can you bash reflections? They were immune to stuns some time back. :|

Ryetoast produced 1747 tps 1747 TPS Foofer

Regarding 1500 tps, a rogue has to do 3018 dps, a warrior 2641, elem shaman/warlock 2381, and because of orbs/reflections they should never get close to your threat on KJ.

Huggme - Your guild has a prot paladin, and I assume he's used on at least Felmyst and M'uru, so why not KJ? The "Tank an add P1 and DPS the rest of the fight" (or at least help control dragons), or "Tank P1 and do insane threat on the Boss" roles just scream use of a Druid, and definitely not a paladin, so why, out of 3 Tanks for 3 roles, did you end up doing the one you're the worst suited for?

Yes, we do have a prot paladin but his gear is/was not optimal for tanking all 4 adds because t5 didn't cut it and he got killed very quickly while tanking 4 reflections.

I don't get this question
Firstly I don't see 3 tank roles on KJ really. KJ tank + 1-2 adds and an add tank. With good geared prot pala this could be fulltime KJ/fulltime adds...
I manage to produce superior threat (to warrior/paladin) so I can help out picking and tanking 1-2 adds while still leading total threat done to boss by 100k.

I do agree that tanking adds+dps on KJ would indeed fit my "hybrid" role/spec more but when I think about it - warrior is a bit better 4x adds tank from 25% -> 0%. When needed he can spell reflect/last stand/SW. I can demo roar and hope for the best...

I meant tanking in Phase 1 and then DPS or Threat tank the rest of the fight. While Warrior, Paladin, and Shaman *can* tank one of the Hands P1, Druids can do it without any gear concessions.

But I had misunderstood that you tank both KJ and as many Adds as you can keep threat on, that's something I hadn't considered before since we went with Prot Pally from the start.

Can you post your KJ gear or possibly a Rawr file of your KJ gear set up? Here's mine:
Uploading.com - The best file hosting service!

I don't have the best item in every single slot (trinket, neck, chest), and some of these items have tanking enchants (shoulders, helm, legs), but I pull 2500-3000 TPS on KJ easily. Raid buffed, wearing the gear in that Rawr file, I have 50% crit, 4k AP, and 18k HP. My raid runs with Imp Faerie Fire, Expose Weakness, Imp Expose Armor, and I always have a shaman in my group, so +str and +agi totems. I don't pick up reflections (our pally tanks all 4). I use an endless-rage rotation; Mangle 1st priority, maul every swing, maintain 5 lacerates, swipe like crazy. Always feral charging back in after a knockback. Knockbacks when feral charge is on CD will really hurt your threat when you've just pulled, but later in the fight you'll be so far ahead that it won't matter.

The other big factor in your TPS is getting the Haste breath from the dragon.. depending on how far into the encounter your guild is getting, you might not be getting breathed yet?

Regarding Idol of Terror vs White Stag, I use terror but I haven't experimented with White Stag since it never dropped for me.

If you want max threat use Idol of Brutality (lol) from Stratholme

I agree with you that multiple knockbacks in a row don't really matter for threat later on, but still ... they are damn annoying

Using your handy little SnareBreaker-Macro removes the slowing part of that Mindflay KJ casts for a second, what, together with lag, will be enough time to get back into meleerange.

(Don't nail me down on the exact spelling of the forms as I don't use enUS client)