Obould

Wasnt Brutallus changed so you really really "rarly" have a taunt ressist, i dont even think i have seen even one since the change.

But for other Bosses and especially the first one "Kalecgos", if i just wear expertise gear and ditch all hit i will have problems with "taunt" + "thunderclap" + "demoshout" so yeah i have to back this up, hit-gear is still something you cant ignore just because of expertise.

 

◊ Penguin

My testing showed that when taunt was changed to be affected by melee +hit, it still retained the 17% base miss chance versus a 73 that a spell has. Although I wasn't testing for it specifically, there seemed be be no change in the resist rate of Thunderclap and Demo during the tests. I had as much trouble keeping it up at 9% hit as I did at 22% hit.

I highly doubt that TC and Demo are affected by melee +hit, and anyone claiming that it does should probably have some test numbers to back it up.

There's not some hidden "but he tries really hard" variable built into the game. -Slake

I always love the "it doesn't fit my style of play" line. There are only two styles of play; Correct, and Incorrect. The only people that ever use this line are people with the incorrect style of play. -Sebudai

 

Jabez

I've done some rudimentary tests on thunder clap vs lvl 70 mobs with 0 hit and cap(100 claps with both). 0 hit had a 6% missrate and cap had 3%. If we are to conclude based on that scarce testing its not based on melee hit, however I am not happy until I have some better numbers(1000 with each) since 100 just isn't enough. Will get to it in a boring moment and post my findings

 

ricked

I have a question about using executioner and what to put it on. I'm just getting into BT/Hyjal content and so I've been building my threat/avoidance/EH sets. I've had the quickening blade of the pheonix from heroic MGT for awhile now and use it as my threat weapon. In addition I've saved up enough mats from running random heroics to be able to put the executioner enchant on a weapon if need be since I've heard its the best enchant for tanking in regards to threat.

At the moment, I still have the lame kings defender but, obviously, my guild is farming most of ssc so I hope to get (at least) the mallet. I'm thinking of putting mongoose back on that or the brutalizer/Unbreakable Will for a main tank set. Should I bother putting executioner on the quickening blade for a threat set or is there a better weapon out there that will last me longer? I'm just looking for a threat weapon that's worth the enchant.

thanks

 

Riot

Note: Awhile back I posted about how I gemmed my Sunwell gear - I put it on last night, so have fun looking at it.

Re: ricked

I'd advise putting Exec on your Mallet of the Tides since you're getting your Human Expertise skill added on top of the bonuses on the weapon. Put a Mongoose on your Unbreakable Will, and congratulations - you've got a weapon that can carry you all the way to Kil'Jaeden as a Human. Sans Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade, of course.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

• Jamor

Ok, so lately I have been seeing a problem, and I am not sure if it's me, or my weapon.

But ever since I got the dragonscale Longblade, my weapon breaks faster than my other gear at an alarming rate. For example, I died twice yesterday -- my total durability 77% --- my weapon, 20%.

I have noticed that it was yellow or red before any other piece I was wearing about 7 or 8 times now.

Anyone else see this as well?

 

ricked

So are you saying that as a human prot war I should use the mallet and unbreakable will and skip getting the brutalizer due to the human racial?

 

• Jamor

Yep.

 

◊ Penguin

Jamor: Durability loss (outside of death mechanics) is a % chance per hit for weapons. With the faster speed of Dragonscale compared to Unbreakable or Brutalizer and combined with the static haste on it, it's hitting faster than you're used to and taking more durability loss.

For example, ask your paladin how fast his shield durability disappears during a Hyjal run, or even a few wipes on Felmyst.

There's not some hidden "but he tries really hard" variable built into the game. -Slake

I always love the "it doesn't fit my style of play" line. There are only two styles of play; Correct, and Incorrect. The only people that ever use this line are people with the incorrect style of play. -Sebudai

 

• Jamor

Not really a fair comparison though -- my sword doesn't hit 20 targets at the same time. The faster attack speed seems plausible, but I was using the sword off mother prior to that. It was faster but never broke as fast.

 

◊ Penguin

It's the only durability mechanic other than the 10% lost to death. There's no other explanation. Maybe you've just had a streak of bad durability RNG's?

There's not some hidden "but he tries really hard" variable built into the game. -Slake

I always love the "it doesn't fit my style of play" line. There are only two styles of play; Correct, and Incorrect. The only people that ever use this line are people with the incorrect style of play. -Sebudai

 

Fellwraith

Did you usually get a windfury totem in the past? That could factor into it too.

Usually my brutalizer and my shield are ~10-30% closer to being broken than the rest of my gear. I don't see anything near a 50% difference unless I'm tanking hyjal trash (then my shield starts to get torn up pretty quickly).

 

Blacksen

Well, I could use some advise from some Sunwell tanks out there. Currently my guild is sitting at 2/6 in Sunwell with 1-2 day BT clears and quickly going through Kalecgos/Brutallus. Arguably I have the best of every available item (with the exception of the legs off Brutallus). However, recently my TPS has just been going down bits in pieces. I have a feeling it's mostly due to hit rating and gear changes. Last week, I got the belt off Brutallus (losing the badge belt), which was 24 hit rating gone. I also got the neckpiece off Brutallus (losing the badge neck) - another 20 some-odd hit rating gone.

I rarely die on Brutallus or Kalecgos, but I'll get within 1k dmg of it on Felmyst, which leaves me to think that I'm at the "perfect" effective health level and I can't sink any lower. However, with this TPS loss, our DPS is getting capped. I'm usually sitting anywhere from 1k-1200. Before I was hanging around 1350-1500. I keep wanting to blame it on gear, but when compared to tanks such as Kungen or other big main-tanks, they never have to socket for hit rating to keep up the same level of TPS.

It's starting to become a huge problem. The DPS in Sunwell just will not stop scaling, while my TPS seems stagnant and almost insufficient.

Wow Web Stats
That's our WoW Web Stats. I main-tank almost every boss.

I'm hoping for any skill or gear based tips that anyone can offer. I've been struggling with this all week. Thanks!

 

Riot

Ugh, that WWS link lagged my Firefox horribly.

Basically, you really need to accept that your TPS is going to start dropping. Get yourself a WF totem if you can afford it, or perhaps LOTP, even better an enhancement shaman. Maybe you also need to work on your rotations or SS:Revev cycle usage.

Consider socketing for more hit as well, and definitely get above the dodge cap with expertise. Balance your gear out a little better - consider for example, using Sunguard Legplates over Onslaught Legguards. Just because Brutallus drops a pair of legs, doesn't mean it'll actually drop.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

Xav

You can always change gear out if you need more threat. I use my executioner sword + Kaz'rogal shield with 10 hit on it for Felmyst, Pepe's, Titan's neck, and Gorefiend gloves with 2% threat, and that keeps TPS output nice and high, with a resto shaman in my group dropping WF. Once I get a nice lead (first 2 ground phases, basically), I swap back to mitigation weapon/shield.

You get too much expertise if you wear all the Sunwell stuff, and so your overall threat output will likely drop. The only boss where I never have to even wear any threat stuff (minus gloves and my threat weapon to start with) is Brutallus, due to the literal infinite-rage scenario. Other bosses will undoubtedly rage starve you at some point, which is why gear might have to close the gap.

And yeah - make sure you're actually using a tight, efficient rotation before you blame gear. Check your SS+Rev : Devastate ratio.

 

Teez

I have a few pieces that I swap in regularly, even outside of my full-on threat set, socketing them for specific usage might be something you should look into as well.

Some examples include a couple obvious things such as Gauntlets of Enforcement w/ a 2% threat enchant (I have a 10dodge/10def gem and a 240ac kit on my Felmyst gloves), Kaz'Rogal Shield (10hit gem), Autoblocker, even a Drake Fang Talisman or the badge/SSO neck.

Two other great pickups are the thrown weapon from Sunwell trash w/ a 10hit gem in it; w/ the Kalecgos Sword and (eventually) the M'uru chest, you'll be down to a 1.4 attack speed, making your Heroic Strikes far more rage efficient.

The other item I've been using quite liberally for threat is my DST (now, I realize I'm incredibly lucky to have one of these and it's definitely not a "staple" in a prot warrior's repertoire, but it is simply amazing for threat output - especially if you have so much expertise that the expertise on Shard of Contempt is basically fully wasted.)

A couple other items that aren't entirely stupid to go for if you're trying to up your threat via minimal gear adjustments: Stormrage Signet Ring (boatload of hit, and armor pen which synergizes amazingly w/ any executioner enchant you may have), Madness of the Betrayer (basically, an upgraded Drake Fang Talisman w/ a pretty useful proc in terms of threat output).

That being said, "downgrading" in terms of avoidance/mitigation, and going back to older gear (even as far as using DPS shoulders, or using T5 shoulders for the Block Value) can come in quite handy at times. Picking up multiple pieces of the same piece of gear (if noone else desperately needs them) isn't half bad an idea either. Definitely contemplating picking up another T6 chest myself at this point, to gem it with 3x10hit.

However, the only fights I honestly feel like I need to wear any sort of real threat gear on are Felmyst, and possibly Twins. Kalecgos it quite frankly doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned, and on Brutallus the incoming rage damage is so absurd that you basically have to bind Heroic Strike to your mousewheel to avoid getting CTS from spamming it so much, seeing as how you're swimming in rage non stop (mind you, I tank Brutallus with ~38% dodge or so buffed up, before Mongoose/GoA, and we run Insect Swarm/Scorpid Sting too, to give you an idea of the avoidance levels.) On M'uru sides, I stack the hell out of avoidance aswell and threat is never an issue; I guess if I were to be tanking Sentinels/Entropius himself I'd be wearing much heavier threat gear, but given the nature of most of these fights, rage is so abundant that you can allow yourself to Heroic Strike on almost every swing - even with low hit, the expertise and added threat from HS should keep your TPS higher than the 1200 mark.


(I think I'm logged out in threat gear by the way, if you're curious. We run with a Moonkin, so I'm only ~0.6% off hit cap in that gear.)

e: nevermind, armory fails. I'll be in threat gear when it decides to update, I guess.

Warrior - Shaman - Priest

 

Blacksen

What exactly should I aim to have this at?

One other question I have really quick is when to re-apply demo/t-clap. I'm aiming for re-casting t-clap around 5 seconds and demo around 2. Where do other warriors do this?

 

Riot

What do you mean? The SS Rev Dev rotation is covered _in this guide_.

Get your Arms Warrior to do Demo. Thunderclap should be done as close as possible to expiration. If it falls off for a second or two, don't sweat it.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

Whiteknight

Have your dps warrior spec into improved demo shout and make them do it - it really doesn't cost them anything. I just refresh TC when it's close to dropping - the longer you wait the less it impacts your threat. However you risk a resist causing it to drop.

For brutallus, for instance, you really don't want TC to drop, so I refresh it right before I taunt, and I'll often refresh it once during my tank cycle - timing is dependent on the stomp timer - I absolutely don't want any chance of it dropping during stomp.


For your cycle, in high rage scenarios, you should be seeing a ratio of 1 shield slam, 1 revenge and 2 devastates per 6 seconds, with a varying number of heroic strikes depending on rage flux. As your rage backs off, you should see heroic strike usage fall, followed by devastate. There are no meaningful fights I'm aware of that you'd ever need to make a decision between revenge and shield slam - except maybe a casting trash mob.

 

Finkill

I was just wondering if there has been calculations for Deathfrost on tanking weapons yet?

Is there an estimated % that it is up, and does it in theory add more threat than mongoose or execuitioner?

 

Blacksen

Ah, see, I try to veer off from this quite a bit due to the fact that revenge is on a 5 second CD and Shield Slam is on a 6 second CD. I feel like it gets more revenges in than the rotation, and thus more threat, but maybe this isn't the case?

 

Riot

The only situation in which you want to do this if you have literally 2 rage. SSlam every six seconds. Do not deviate, even if your dream girl pops up behind your computer naked. Every six seconds.

Edit: The only time when you're not shield slamming every six seconds is if you fucked up your rage generation somehow, or the boss is flying in the air or something (Felmyst, maybe building to 100 rage before a Brut transition).

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

Teez

Well, say if you start with a SS-Rev-Dev-Dev, and then go for a Rev-SS-Dev-Dev on the next cycle, you're effectively pushing back your SS, which is a higher threat/sec ability. That's kinda why the top priority is to keep SS on cooldown, unless you're extremely rage starved in which case Revenge obviously becomes more attractive.

Warrior - Shaman - Priest

 

Fellwraith

Yea, you're not thinking about it in terms of global cooldowns. If you chart it out, every 1.5 seconds you would want to be doing something, otherwise you're wasting valuable time. We're limited by global cooldowns and maximizing our threat is about using those and rage efficiently. Revenge should be treated as a 6 second cooldown on a rage-unlimited fight, otherwise you're costing yourself a shieldslam or a devastate.


You really can't get much worse than demo shout when it comes to hurting your threat generation. It only gives you 44 threat and it gets resisted enough to cause problems. It's a debuff you can't live without in most of Sunwell, so it has to be up. Since we literally have something to do every cooldown (dps warriors do not, if they say they do, they're wrong), that has a threat opportunity cost (for me it's an average of 670 threat to use demo over devastate).

I typically refresh thunderclap at ~8 seconds on Brut, that gives me space for 2 resists if things really go wrong. I'll drop a devastate from my rotation to do it (and since I've given myself enough time, I won't have to drop a shieldslam unless I get more than 2 resists). It's not uncommon to see more than 1 resist and they will get you killed during stomps.


I use sharpening stones if I don't have totems or if I know I'm only going to get GoA for that fight. On Brut, I usually get a resto shaman and I'm in the feral/hunter group. The extra crit and damage is helpful for threat generation. On Felmyst and the twins you really need windfury to function properly.

You can also play with your spec a bit if you get a dps warrior handling your demo shouts for early Sunwell fights. 2/5 demo is really all you need for everything up to M'uru provided the dps warrior is handling demo for the fights where you'd use CoR. You could pick up another 3 points in arms to make your heroic strikes cheaper and get 1 rage every 3 seconds. I know there's differing opinions on that spec, but I find the extra rage helpful during troughs where I'm not getting hit.

 

GuerinGilneas

Although I'm technically a Prot warrior, I often switch to DPS gear for fights that do not require an off-tank, so I try to pull my weight as well as I can given the spec's limitations (9/5/47). I have noticed something odd though during several raids now on the guild's WoW Web Stats reports, which is that the miss rate on my white DPS is substantially lower than it ought to be. I know the standard miss rate for dual-wielding on a boss is supposed to be 28%, and given my current Hit Rating of 170 in my DPS gear, I should be seeing an average miss rate of roughly 17%. Over the course of nearly a dozen boss fights, my miss has never been anywhere even close to 17. The average is approximately 10-12%, with a high of 13 and a low of 7 seen thus far. I am wondering if I'm missing something rather obvious that would explain this.

I am using a Haste-heavy set for my DPS gear at the moment, with Vanir's Fists from the badge vendor as weapons, Hourglass of the Unraveler and Shard of Contempt as trinkets, Aldor SSO neck, with standard raid-wide buffs and food, Adamantite stones, and an appropriate DPS elixir. The stats in Berserker Stance unbuffed are:

Str: 696
Agi: 205
AP: 1944
Haste: 218 (13.82%)
Hit: 170 (10.73%)
Crit: 239 (26.18%)
Exp: 17 (4.25%)
Swing Speed: 2.20 both hands

Over the course of the night DPSing with my dual-wielding gear, I had a total of 813 swings recorded, of which 84 were outright misses (10.33%), the individual fights producing 10.2%, 10.6%, 12.5%, 12.9%, 9.9%.

On a previous night's raiding, I had 427 swings recorded, of which only 39 were misses (9.13%), the individual fights resulting in miss rates of 9%, 12%, and 4%.

I can see this kind of result happening here and there, but every single fight I check keeps showing an abnormally low miss rate given what I would expect with my gear. What am I missing?