I'm actually using:

Survival Instict
Frenzied

for maximum survivability

and Maul for trash threat.

I really don't find other glyph that usefull, expecially the growl one. I never had an important taunt resisted and actually I can swap 1-2 piece of gear to cap hit without losing too much mitigation. CDs are too much important inside Ulduar and Maul is pure win in many boss fight (for istance you will dps 2 piece of Kologarn and so on).

For me personally, I only have around 140 hit and I would constantly miss important taunts. I don't know if it's just bad luck or what, but I don't view SI as "vital", while missing a necessary taunt (especially two in a row, say) may very well make or break an encounter.

Should be noted that (despite what Bliz said) Growl is on the spell hit table (with FFF and Demo) so swapping a few pieces to achieve 17% hit seems a little off. I have had several bad misses (With the glyph even) and even wiped on Yogg P1 b/c of a back to back resist. Again /w the glyph, so w/o it I could expect it to happen close to 3 times as often.

I use Growl, Maul, and Frenzied - Not that I'm against using SI, but if I did I would drop Maul (and probably will), not Growl. For one thing maul does ([Dmg + 422] x Threat modifier) in threat, but when using the glyph the 422 is divided between both targets, so that's slightly less threat (tho not a huge hit, the vast majority will be from our 5k+ mauls not a small 211 modified).

I think most bears prefer Maul glyph for trash of course, and trash is not that important in the grand scheme of things. Obviously Ulduar trash is not anything like Naxx trash (Faceless Horror's Pre nerf? Ouch) but a missed growl in a progression fight is potentially far more dangerous than OTing two adds which probably don't have the full attention of the DPS. And during trash pulls I'm used to running with 3-4 tanks for speed, making it even less important in my position (and I realize this does not apply to everyone). In 10 man everything hits so light I can afford popping Enrage with King of the Jungle and pushing huge threat on AoE pulls.

The few fights I would miss Maul would be Razorscale trash (tho we run 5 tanks so loss is minimal), Thorim gauntlet, Mimiron P3 (tho this phase is really just a breather phase after P2 nonsense and unimportant), and if I was ever the raid tank in Yogg P1 (tho I almost always end up the sara tank).

Since I Don't plan on swapping glyphs I will probably end up with SI, Frenzied, and Growl permanently in my lineup. Survivability is my number one goal, so Frenzied and SI have a pretty solid place there. Between Growl and Maul? I think its clear I personally am partial to growl. Growl is a raid saver, maul is just very convenient.

Well I think I've been convinced, lol. I love Maul because of it's all around convenience, but as a 25-man progression tank I guess I can't really justify it taking up a glyph spot over SI.

But going back to my post from the last page, is anyone able to give me any rough estimates on the numbers I should be aiming for in regards to unbuffed HP and dodge?

It's perfectly acceptable to be a tank with 0 hit (though you will definitely want to glyph growl if you're doing fights where taunt is important) The only "offensive" stat that anyone is going to put minimums on is Expertise, which you should have at least 6.5%.

Now that we're talking about aggro, for some reason I've been having aggro generation problem and I can't explain why. I've been doing the best I can in Ulduar, but sometimes I find myself only pulling 4k TPS according to Omen. Fights like Hodir Hard Mode and General Vezax's hard mode add tanking (only 10 man though) have been kicking my butt. I haven't been keeping track of our residential pally/warrior TPS, but whenever I glance at Omen they seem to be doing quite a bit more single-target.

I currently have 228 hit, 48 Expertise (12%), 2 x T8.5 (chest/shoulders, I don't like other t8 pieces for tanking). Should I start dropping some expertise and such and go with offensive stats more? For example, would you bears get rid of [Origin of Nightmares] and go with [Twisted Visage] for tanking? Gem meta with [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] over [Austere Earthsiege Diamond]?

I've been looking to get Twisted Visage for my tanking set, simply because of the increase in threat. Another thing to consider if you're having threat issues is throwing in swipes even on single target fights. There is some downtime between having to reapply mangle and lacerate that you can swipe for a bit more tps.

I my self have been having alot of Threat Gen problems as well. I even respecced to 55/16 (Going into Master Shapeshifter for extra TPS) however still seeing my self fight to keep Agro. It's even come to points where I'm having to taunt ever time it's up just to hold the agro. I've started regemming also into more TSP as seeing I don't have much problem with survivability. It's just keeping the boss where I want him. However the biggest help I've found with keeping Agro is with out a doubt greatly increasing my Hit/Expertise (250/32 This is however with me having to use Hit Elixer and Hit Food) But in doing so I have seen a noticable increase in TSP. I've started regemming also into more TSP, with the use of some 8 Hit/8 Agil and such. But it seems that me improving hit has taken over from other stats just to do my job as a tank. It's almost frustrating! (Almost like I'm a rogue... Yes I went there)

Your numbers make me wonder what you are using as a rotation, more so then what your gear is.

Personally, I am still stuck in solely Naxx gear and gem and gear pretty much full stam ( Im feral dips main, I have my secondary spec as tank, thus no upgrades from Ulduar for it yet ), yet i can clear 5k dialing in my rotation, so I would more look to that, rather then a re-gear.

Now what I do may not be ideal, but.....

Pre-Engage: shift to proc furor --> enrage

Engage = FF + Growl

Rotation = Mangle every CD ->

FF every CD ->

Keep Lacerate @ 5 stacks ( i generally apply it twice every 15 seconds, due to my +hit on my gear being quite low, generally at 5 seconds and then keep trying to reply if @ 5 it hit or not, this can eat threat, so feel free to toss mangle and ff in there if you dip too low on tps) ->

Maul with enough rage gen ( hardly ever an issue ) ->

Swipe with excessive rage gen if everything else is true, however excessive means constantly gaining rage even when I am Maul spamming, aka if all the above is working fine and I am still going up on rage I swipe spam between cool-downs.

That should get you on a typical fight around 5k TPS or better, depending on what crits etc, even with using demo roar ever time it would wear off etc.

Note: this is 25, where I have just about every +threat buff imaginable ( might, kings, toties, etc ), but not counting ToT, Misdirect or the like

Heck, if you don't have imp mangle and aren't too worried about having the most optimal rotation, you can simply do mangle-FF-lacerate-swipe as your rotation. As long as you're mauling every time you can, this should be more than adequate threat.

My suspicion about anyone who has threat problems is that they either are not mauling enough or they don't have rend&tear.

My generic rotation in the middle of a boss fight is usually just Maul constantly, Mangle when it's up, and in between Mangles I have time for two GCD abilities. If Lacerate has a sufficient amount of time on it, I get two swipes in, otherwise I get one Swipe in and refresh my Lacerate stack. Pretty simple I guess.

I recommend macroing swipe and maul together at the least. Any time your swiping, your gona have enough rage to maul or the mobs aren't attacking you. I also throw it onto lacerate; I would hate to have to keep mashing a button for an ability i want to use every time thats not on the gcd.

I have a mechanics question. Hopefully someone can explain the maths behind what I'm seeing.

Last night in Ulduar, I was OT and on the bosses where tanks had to taunt off each other, my taunts seemed to act as if I never used them. I look at recount and it shows, with my current hit rating just over 200. That on all my attacks, my misses are around 0.6-0.4%. Except taunt. Taunt is showing a full 35% miss rate. Why is that so extremely different than my misses for my white and yellow hits? Is taunt based in something other than hit rating now and I missed that announcement? I appreciate any help with this.


BTW, I did not have the glyph of growl last night. I do now. Not convince that's going to make a huge difference with such a high miss %.

Well is you do 6 taunts and you miss 2 your hit rating is indeed only 65%. So it is important to know how many taunts you did. If you did 60 taunts and you missed 20 that is really high and something else is wrong, but 2/6 is possible. Unlucky, but still possible.
Also it might be good to look at what kind of miss. It might be the target at that time was immune to magic. It might be counted as a miss but is something else.

[edit]
See next post. Indeed I experienced that too. It said: "Immune". So it was not a miss. I had that on Thorim. If you are taunting and switching him from 1 to another tank you best do it with 2 tanks. If you have 4 tanks at which point 3 tanks start taunting him each switch, fighting for the agro, he will become immune soon.
[/edit]

Taunts now have diminshing returns, and if you taunt too often in a short period of time (I believe it's 3 or 4 times in 20 seconds) the mob becomes effectively immune to taunts.

At least that's the theory. In practice there may be a bug that's causing taunts to outright miss more often.

7 growls, 4 immune 3 missed. None landed. Only taunt that landed was challenging roar. To me that seems very wrong. This was during the Thorim fight. Not all the taunts were on Thorim, I was in the arena for the first phase and had to taunt off healers. Yes we were tank switching on Thorim himself.


Edit for grammar.

It's been my impression that both trinkets share the same internal CD of 45 seconds, and cannot proc at the same time.

that's what i was thinking but just want to make sure. thanks

Wouldn't that macro reset back to mangle after 3 seconds, therefore never reaching FFF or even swipe (depending on lag).

I don't currently use any castsequence macros or combination Maul/instant macros, but lastnight i specced out of imp mangle to pick up imp demo roar. It is nice being able to FFF after every mangle instead of having to keep track of FFF timer, so I am thinking of making my mangle button a castsequence mangle -> FFF to make it a little easier for me to maul (currently Maul is 2, Mangle is 4, FFF is A; pressing A and 2 is kind of awkward)

"reset=3"

This doesn't actually reset from when you first press the macro. The countdown from three only starts from when you last pressed the macro successfully.

3 is probably a bad number though. If you wanted to substitute a demo roar or any other ability you would either need to not touch this macro for three seconds, or push everything back one gcd. reset=1~2 would be better, you would be able to substitude a new ability for the last gcd and the macro would reset in time to coincide with your mangle. (probably better to put FFF earlier, since it does have a higher threat/priority).

Ah, that explains why I was confused with my macro:

expecting the tooltip to return to mangle 3 seconds after the mangle being more like 4.5 seconds when i followed up the mangle directly with the FFF.

I don't really think it's worth putting lacerate or swipe in there, unless like you say Nightcrowler, you are watching tv and dont mind your suboptimal rotation. I suppose you could put Swipe, Swipe after the FFF and just bail on the macro for that cycle if lacerate or demo roar needs refreshing.

ps. Hi there fellow Jubei'Thosian

What about considering Savage Defense? If your attack misses, it doesn't matter how good your crit is, you'll have a 0% chance to generate a shield.