The pretty huge difference between not mangling optimally and mangling optimally is really about 2% total threat. Remember, at least 60% of a bear's threat comes from maul. 40% is left to Mangle, lacerate, swipe and FF - and while mangle is good, it's not so amazingly good that a swipe or lacerate or FF instead will drastically reduce your threat.

Well, for starters, Paladins are threat machines. They can pull ridiculous amounts of threat and pull a mob off of you if you're both not careful (you should be maintaining a solid threat rotation and the Paladin should be watching threat meters making sure they don't pull off you). However, pulling off you during Berserk as well sounds like it may just be a simple gear gap issue. Your rotations do seem fine.

As for spec, I would have to advise against skipping Infected Wounds. It is an extremely important debuff, and you will not always have it up on the target you are tanking unless you're always putting it up there yourself. Personally I would also advise against Natural and Master Shapeshifter talents in favor of 2/2 Shredding Attacks and 3/3 Infected Wounds, but that's only because I tend to OT quite a bit. That spec allows me to pop into cat and put out some half-decent DPS even in tank gear, which I do enjoy. The extra threat from NSS/MSS is nice, but really not that necessary so long as you're equally geared as your raid.

For the longest time, I have been happy with my knowledge of tanking as a bear; however, I have recently joined a raiding guild, and acquired a tanking position on their 25 man ICC team. So needless to say, I have started to question some of my gearing decisions.

Although our other 2 tanks (Both Paladins) out-gear me, I still have more health (Because that is what bears do). Also, from what I have seen from our WWS, I take about the same damage on Marrowgar as the other tanks do from Saber Lash, so as far as Survivability is concerned I am very satisfied.

My main concern is Threat. I have a 0/55/16 build. What I have been finding, is that our MT will pull agro off of me on Saurfang. I usually pick up Saurfang first, and have no trouble holding agro until I get Rune of Blood, and our MT taunts off of me. I keep up 5 stacks of Lacerate, and let my rage get to full. When it is my turn to taunt back, I find that it is not long before our MT has acquired aggro again, by simply keeping up his rotation. This is easily fixed by him slowing down his rotation, but still inconvenient. For single target threat in a non rage starved situation:
Mangle at every CD > FFF at every CD > Lacerate Stacked to 5 > Swipe (Maul macroed to all abilities)

Any numbers on which gives more threat: Swipe or 2 T10 Lacerate (Initial Damage)?

So, my first question is: Do Paladin mechanics allow them to do enough TPS more than a Bear to pull aggro, or am I doing something wrong?

He has 122 hit rating
I have 296 hit rating (I also have more Expertise)

That is my main concern; however, I have a few other questions I would like answered.

Assuming that Paladins just do more threat than Bears and that I want to increase my TPS to be more in line with his…

I have read conflicting information as to the hard cap for Expertise: Is it 54 or 56? (44/46 with PP)

Another thing I have been wondering is the importance of Armor. It seems that armor has been given more importance in ICC.

Which of the following stats do you find more favorable for a general purpose tank set?

Please forgive me, as these Stats are in caster form

1) Armor: 8206
Health: 42497
Expertise: 43 (With PP)
Hit Rating: 303

2) Armor: 9550 (All additional Armor over set (1) is unaffected by the Bear multiplier)
Health: 40227
Expertise: 54 (With PP) Again, I am not sure if I need 54 or 56
Hit Rating: 267

All other stats are nearly Identical

Essentially, set 2 is my attempt to get hard capped Expertise: As you can see, this comes at the cost of 2270 health in caster form, which would be even more in Bear form.

Does the extra 1344 Armor (not affected by the Bear Multiplier), combined with Hard Capped Expertise (Eliminating concern for any possible Parry-Haste mechanics) and additional TPS, Outweigh the importance of the extra Health?

Or am I completely wrong in thinking that Expertise is the best Threat stat considering Hit Capped?

Almost done: Last few questions I have are regarding Proc-Rates, and Trinket Up-Times.

1) I have always been a fan of Stamina Trinkets, so when I saw [Unidentifiable Organ], I got excited.
The bonus Armor is amazing, and the Stamina is BiS at 10 stacks. Obviously, this trinket would be very situational based, but my question is: Once you get it up to 10 stacks, does it stay up, or does it fall off quite frequently? Or, do you find it difficult to get 10 stacks at all?

The 60% proc-rate makes me doubt it has a very good uptime, especially on slower hitting bosses.

2) I don’t even know why I am asking about this one, as I see no indication that the up-time should not be very high, but… How has [Idol of the Crying Moon] been working out for you all?

Well that is a lot I know, Thank You all for reading, and any help will be much appreciated.

I believe it has been shown that even with 2t10 it is still worthwhile to maintain a 5 stack of lacerate. So keep doing what you're doing.

I have tanked ICC10/25 on a bear, dk, and paladin, and through anecdotal evidence I can tell you that paladins do generate more threat. If you look at the Wowmeter rankings for TPS, you will see that. Bears are second for single target threat though, so you shouldn't be that far behind.

[quote]I have read conflicting information as to the hard cap for Expertise: Is it 54 or 56? (44/46 with PP)/quote

I believe the cap is 56 Expertise (46 with PP)

Armor is much more valuable than most people give it credit. After the multiplier, it takes about 9 armor to equal 1 stamina. So the armor you're gaining is worth about 150 stamina or 1500 health out of bear form. The value of reducing parry haste depends on how much you prefer avoidance over survivability, but overall if threat is a concern for you its not a huge drop in survivability.


Here is a parse of Marrowgar, and here is a parse of heroic Anub25. The buff is called Invigorated. For both those parses the buff stayed up for the most part, except during Bonestorm and Burrow phases. If you compare the passive benefit of of [Unidentifiable Organ] with [Satrina's Impeding Scarab] you'll find the scarab is a little better, but I find the stacking stamina of the organ to be more useful on most fights than the uses of most trinkets. That said, I would suggest keeping around multiple different trinkets for different fights.

It would be helpful for you to provide us combat logs. Paladins do generate a lot of threat these days, but you should be able to hold aggro after taunting a boss. My guess is that you're either not following your rotation as well as you could be, or (more likely) you're missing Mauls and doing white hits instead. During periods where you're tanking you should have a total of 1-2 white hits. Any more than that and you either had a crazy avoidance streak and ran out of rage or you need to improve your ability to queue Maul at all times.

I've seen tanks (of various sorts) pull off of each other after a taunt, when the now-OT continues his full threat rotation. I don't think it's a just a bear vs paladin (or even X versus paladin) issue. When it's time for a tank swap, the current MT has to stop attacking for long enough that the new MT can out-threat him (usually a few seconds)., if you want a reliable swap.

I've seen this happen a number of times when threat is high enough that it shouldn't have been possible for the old MT to beat it by 10% (towards the end of Gormok, for example). So, my guess is that after the taunt debuff wears off, the boss goes for whichever has the higher threat - that is to say, he doesn't have to beat your threat by 10%, he has to beat it by 1, and the boss will go back to him.

The behavior described in the second paragraph sounds more like Challenging Roar or an AoE taunting mechanic, where the mob will be forced to attack the caster for x amount of seconds, and then follow the threat table as intended. A possible scenario could be a Growl missing followed up by a Challenging Roar to compensate, which appears as a 'taunt', however watching Omen when each spell is cast and you'll see two different results.

The TTT entry on threat mechanics (Threat Mechanics) details the mechanics a bit more in depth.

Also check your rogues aren't using a lazy MT Tricks macro. I was having odd threat issues and realised the MT was still getting tricks of the trade when I was the one tanking.

I have very recently gotten more serious about tanking with my druid. I have decent gear for where I and my guild are in progression and I've learned a ton while reading through this thread. I do have a couple of questions and I'd appreciate any answers/thoughts/opinions.

1) I've been playing around in Rawr and find that it seems to like only four gems for druid tanks: +30stam, +20agil, +10agil/+15stam and +10def/+10dodge. However, I like both the +10agil/+10crit and +10agil/+10haste for the yellow slot (when I want the bonus) due to the increase in threat and small loss in mitigation and survival. The difference (in overall score) between the yellow gem Rawr likes and the yellow gems I like are quite minimal (about 20 points). So, is it generally better go mitigation and survival regardless or is the increase in threat a just substitution?

2) I've noticed in reading and checking out a lot of your tank builds that a stunning amount of you don't seem to care hardly at all about hit rating, choosing to focus on expertise instead. I understand a lot more about the importance of expertise now (and my toon is still a mess because I didn't understand before) but I would think that having your attack miss a mob or boss would be just as detrimental as having your attack parried or dodged. What am I missing here?

Edit: If you go check out my toon, please note that I'm planning on doing some extensive regemming. Since it's going to be expensive, I'm doing the legwork through Rawr first.

Up until the exp softcap (dodge cap), exp is twice as good as hit as it cuts dodges and parries.

Then you have the pary haste mechanic where some mobs next swing will land sooner after a parry, but I am unsure if any of the ICC bosses use the parry haste mechanic.

I thought the tank rotation was:

Mangle laceratex5 to open followed by Mangle, Lacerate, Swipex4 repeat.