Threat is something every tank should understand. I have been writing this blog for level 70 warriors so I am assuming that everyone knows what threat is. While other classes like rogues/hunters worry about dps and priests worry about how much healing they do, we us protection warriors worry about threat. A protection warrior should know how to generate enough threat to be able to hold aggro. There are several guides already out there but I just want to make this post simple.
I came upon a rule called 100/110/130 that pertains to pulling and holding aggro:
Tank (Baseline) _____________________ 100%
Melee Range Aggro Gain _______________ 110%
Ranged Aggro Gain ___________________ 130%
This simply means that a player in melee range will need to generate 10% more threat than you the tank to grab aggro. A player who is far and ranged will need to generate 30% more threat than you to grab aggro. A very useful addon to measure threat generation of your party is KTM. BRK wrote a very good guide about this so I won't elaborate anymore.
There are some points to remember about this: (I have to give due credit to the forum topic I got this information from)
"1. It gives you breathing room to miss a few attacks and not instantly lose aggro -- that seems to be the purpose of the 10% rule."
"2. It means that ranged classes take a heavy risk by moving into melee range with a large amount of threat built up -- the mob will instantly change targets to a ranged target who moves into melee."
"3. This means that tank switching can be difficult in some cases. "
From the looks of it, positioning also plays an important part in threat generation. As tanks, we want to be aware of where we are tanking the target. We want to make sure our melee players have space to attack the target. I run with Doomilias alot and as a rogue he will always remind me to give him space to attack from behind. For our ranged party members, we want to make sure that they have enough space to be at max range.
So as a tank how do we generate threat? As warriors we have specific abilities that maximizes our threat generation. First and foremost, we want to look at a list of our abilities and how much threat they produce when used. We have to remember that the list only list the threat generated by using the ability itself and doesn't include the damage it does. We want to take into consideration that damage produces threat also so we want to add it to the innate threat values of the abilities listed
Shield Slam _________________________ 307
Revenge ____________________________ 200
Devastate ___________________________ 101
Sunder Armor ________________________ 301
Heroic Strike _________________________196
Cleave ______________________________ 130 (Split)
Mocking Blow ________________________ 290
Demoralizing Shout ___________________ 56 (Split)
Battleshout __________________________ 69 (Split)
Commanding Shout ___________________ 68 (Split)
Disarm______________________________ 104
Hamstring ___________________________ 181
Whirlwind ____________________ 100% Damage (Unaffected by Stance Multiplier)
Execute ______________________ 100% Damage (Unaffected by Stance Multiplier)
Thunderclap __________________ 175% Damage
Spell Reflect __________________ 100% Damage
Based on this list, Shield Slam is the highest and will generate more threat. Always remember that shield slam will also do damage and that would add to the 307 threat it generates.
So what abilities make up your threat generation cycle? I am going to assume that we are talking about tanking a single target. I am sure everyone has a different cycle for tanking multiple targets.
I have Improved Bloodrage, which guarantees that I can pull of a Shield Slam on pull. Here is the complete list of my cycle for a single mob:
Bloodrage
Shied Slam
Sunder
Shield Block
Revenge
Sunder (Try to get 4 more sunders in to get to 5. At this point depending on the damage I am taking and depending on the type of mob I am dealing with, I would try to spam shield block/revenge too).
After I get 5 sunders in, then I will try to use different abilites in no particular order:
Thunderclap (if no cc will be affected)
Devastate (as much as possible with extra rage)
Rend (at least once if target can bleed)
A lot of times, I try to adhere to my cycle but at the heat of the battle I would end up switching it around depending on the situation. Again, I believe that being able to adjust to the situation quickly is what differs a decent tank to a good tank.
I'll cover tanking multiple targets on my next post.
5 days ago
14 comments:
I don't have improved Bloodrage, at least I don't think I do, so I'll use Bloodrage to have the rage to land a sunder as the first thing I hit them with.
I also use a Revenge/Shield Block macro that seems to land Revenges and put up Blocks pretty well. And the 45% chance to stun seems to stun enough targets, not bosses, but trash mobs and outside in the real world.
And certainly 5 sunders. My MetaHUD puts up sunders like combo points so I am very aware of how many there are.
Once there's 5 I'll then Shield Slam when available, Revenge/Shield Block when it lights, and otherwise Devastate.
Some people use Heroic Strike instead of Devastate as their rage dump.
I don't add a Rend because I'm out of buttons.
1 Auto Attack
2 Sunder
3 Shield Block/Revenge
4 Devastate
5 Shield Slam
6 Taunt
7 Intervene to my targets target
8 Heroic Strike (was disarm)
9 Spell Reflect
0 Shield Block
- Shield Wall
= Shoot (for pulling)
So the fingers dance over 2 and 3 for a while to build up sunders. Then over 3, 4, and 5 to keep the hate up. And 6 is there when you need it. And 7 is there too, mostly for the Inciter fight at the moment.
I've got Thunderclap over on a sidebar.
I'm using Omen as my threat meter. It's an Ace based replacement for KTM. It'll work with KTM as well.
Last Shadow Labs run, I went with 4 clothies. We one-shotted all the bosses, and had only 1 death the entire run. Shadow Priest, Holy Priest, Warlock (replaced later with Mage), and Mage. Lots of healing and crowd control and DPS. Vorpil teleported us once. I was pretty pleased with that run.
Great, great post Brig. Threat Generation is the essence of Tanking, really. We wear all this really cool tough, shiny armor so we can take the hits while our less-dressed friends can dps the snot out of them. Lord knows we as Tanks are sorely lacking in damage output compared to our dps buddies, so if we are not getting hit and the clothies are, bad show.
Your Threat Cycle is pretty much like mine. I also have Improved Boodrage which I feel are talent points well, well spent. Being able to open up on a boss with a Shield Slam after popping BR gives you a big leg up on locking him down from the get go in my opinion. Shield slam, shield block, alternating sunders, revenge when up. Shield Slam, SB when up again. Throw in the TC's, the HS's for rage dump, keep yer shouts up, rinse repeat, watch boss die, collect phat lewtz. (or not, in my case, lol)
Trash mobs, well, usually if the pull is controlled and everything is CC'd as marked, they die so fast I usually only get a couple sunders in. The big-boy trash mob single pulls like the big demons in SL and the Patrollers in Mech etc, those I'll pretty much use the same Threat Cycle as for a boss, since they tend to last a bit longer than the average trash, heh.
Great point about positioning also. I tend to flip the mob around so his back is to the rest of the party. That way I can see what the heck is going on with them, watch for broken cc's, make sure the hunter is paying attention and not playing jump rope with his kitty, give them room to be at max range as well as any rogue room to do his stun cut-cut thing.
Looking forward to your multi-mob post.
Keep up the good work Brig!
For purposes of discussion- are shield slam from the original post and then shield block from the comment followup the same thing? Do you really generate threat from a simple block move? If so, what threat does it generate?
Also=- do you have the numbers on what amount of threat 'Taunt' generates?
Does Intervene and Spell Reflect also generate threat or are those 'nice to use' abilities if you've really sunk agro and have rage to burn?
Thanks much.
This is a somewhat complex topic, but here's my current understanding of what you should be doing for maximum threat.
When you're not using your abilities that cooldown / need something special to be happen to be activated, use sunder up to 5 and activate heroic strike for all hits. When sunder is maxed, switch to using devastate.
In addition to that, always use shield block when it's possible to remove crushing blows. This isn't a threat-ability at all but essential with the really hard-hitting bosses. It also is the primary way to enable revenge which you also should be using always when it is lit up.
The highest threat-generating ability warriors have is shield slam and that should also be always used when available.
That's what you should be doing if your rage is permitting it. I don't have any data on the effect of the sunder armor's armor-lowering effects though, 2500 off the mobs armor has some implications for melee damage that affect your raid's melee dps as well as your own threat generation.
If your devastate hits less than 300 and you're rage-starved switching to it from devastate is an option but you will lose the damage you did with devastate. If your damage is >300 devastate is more rage efficient. If that's not enough, dropping the heroic strikes should greatly add to your threat generation...
Starting combat with a high threat ability like shield slam is probably a good idea although in a full-guild run your dps should know better than maximizing their dps from the start. Getting a bit of rage from charge & bloodrage definitely help in getting the cycle started, though.
Thunder clap and demo shout are both important as well (esp. thunder clap) but don't contribute so much to threat, mainly to mitigation. In fact, demoralizing shout is practically useless as a threat generation too, thunder clap does do a fair amount but is not comparable to sunder.
The primary sources I've used when trying to figure this out are these:
http://evilempireguild.org/guides/kenco2.php
http://evilempireguild.org/guides/devastate.php
something to add to what I said a bit. Here's what the Nihilum tanks are using (read from their forum) and I've tried now as well. Threat generating abilities -rotation:
Shield Slam
Revenge
Sunder/Devastate
Sunder/Devastate
(repeat)
You could also use Heroic Strikes paired with the Devastates if you happen to have the rage generation for that. This one seems like a pretty nice way of doing it. Shield block comes additionally of course unless not needed and you can do some stuff like thunder clap, commanding shout etc. instead of one of the devastates if you want to get them up.
Exactly as Slux said.
SS
Revenge
Devastate
Devastate
Rinse and Repeat.
If you find yourself over 50% rage then heroic strike (which can be queued so it doesn't effect your cycle) in addition to the cycle.
If you have a good shield block % (over 25% unbuffed) you will find there is no reason to spam shield blocks in order to maintain the cycle.
On fights that have high crush rates, however, (think Prince) the definitely spam shield block in addition to this cycle.
Burn through heroic strikes after a shadow nova (provided you don't resist it'll provide you tons of rage) or through the frenzy phases.
Knowing the bosses helps you to decide when to spam heroics but never use it if it will break the cycle.
I've been able to maintain well over 800 sometimes over a 1000 TPS using this cycle consistently.
Misses obviously hurts your TPS but that's where +hit and +expertise will help.
I would really advice you to not mash buttons randomly, but do so in a controlled manner.
The threat you put out from a Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate cycle is far superiour to random clicking as they lit up.
To whoever using 0-9 as keybindings...thats just stupid. Binding to 9 is no better than clicking, I only bind 1-4 , for the rest I use q, e, t and similar. You need the buttons handy.
If you have rage, use heroic strike. Only if you have abundances of rage though, which you will only start noticing at few bosses in Kara, namely often Nightbane and Prince Malchezaar. Those fights usually let me spam all out. Else, just stick to the cycle and throw in an heroic once you got over 40-50 rage.
Remember to keep shield block up! It's not on the GCD, so make a routine to click it as soon as possible. A crush from attumen is neglible and even good for rage, a crush from Nightbane or Malchezaar is bad. 6.5k hp gone in a split second can quickly produce awkward situations on both of these bosses.
Last and not least I would like to add that Tim is wrong about shield block. All bosses (lvl 73+ mobs) has a 15% crush rate. Each crush is 150% more damage. On most bosses in Kara, this isnt bad. Curator might be big, but he hits for 1.5k and crushed for 2.5k. However, on any boss that hits for over 2k per hit, you will want to keep shield block up. 2k is enough to leave you with rage, so make life easy for your healers and keep that revenge lit up. Always use shield block when fighting a mob marked as (boss).
For threat, try getting a shaman to drop windfury for you! Really helps.
Oh and sorry, for reference:
Taunt produces no threat at all in itself. It puts you at the same threat level as the one highest on the threat list (which should be you), and if it is you, it won't make a difference. Note that if a caster has 129% of your threat (and this means he haven't pulld aggro, as we learned), I don't think it will help at all.
Dont get used to taunting, bosses are usually immune ;P Teach your dps not to overaggro, it's their repair bills.
Oh and devastate is all but a rage dump. It produces superiour threat to sunder armor after 2 sunders. If you want to be picky, the first 2 sunders do more threat than one devastate will, but from then on, devastate is better. Unless you're striving for absolute perfectionism, there's no reason to use the normal Sunder Armor. Speced correctly, devastate is only 9 rage, too, making it easy to spam.
"It produces superiour threat to sunder armor after 2 sunders. If you want to be picky, the first 2 sunders do more threat than one devastate will, but from then on, devastate is better." - Erlâk
If you still have the 'Sunder Armor' button anywhere but in your spell book, you need to uninstall WoW and never again consider playing. Dev Sunders armor, use it.
Also, Heroic Strike whenever you can; save enough rage for a shield block but HS OFTEN. Spec for it also, get the Imp HS, Imp Sunder and the other talent that reduces rage cost of offensive abilities. Heroic strike has been grossly underestimated as a threat tool. Once your gear becomes better and you know fights more take off Morose's Pocket watch and what ever other def trinket you may be wearing and put some threat trinkets there. I use the poison vile and auto blocker atm but Shard of contempt is also a good choice, perhaps even better depending on how much expertise you already have.(Stacking expertise is as much for threat as for survivability. The less the boss parries the less his swing time resets the less he's likely to hit you more than twice in 6 sec.) If your Def gear is good but you don't have the vile or shard or even the blocker, put in a crit or ap trinket. The reason I say switch trinkets first is that alot of your other gear provides more than just dodge rating and may also have some block value on it as well so is also good for threat. If your serious about starting a "threat" set (as you should be) then 2.4 has brought you the most awesome addition possible: the new meta gem , it gives 12 def and 10% BV. Get it, its amazing. I've started to ramble and the servers may actually be up now, if I see fit to post more I will do it later.
Servers aren't up yet...
In addition to what I said above, spend the five points for the crit in the fury tree. Doing so will add 2-3% threat. It saddens me to see a raid tank doing crap TPS. I took a healer with me to SMV, put on a level 3 shield and sword but was otherwise naked and took on some elite fire breathing demon. If i can maintain 600 tps with 850 spikes naked you can surely do that and more with even the crappiest of greens on. I'm not even claiming to be good, tho I try to stick to the 6 sec cycle I often stray but what I don't get and what I'll never understand is why, when I stand back and watch another tank on omen in a raid, they're struggling for 600 tps while having a half a rage bar. It just shouldn't happen. Or if you're in a 5-man and you're tanking a single target and realize you're only doing 300-400 tps check to make sure you're not just auto attacking. Stack Hit, Expertise and Block for threat; if you can afford it throw in some dips gear too (I'm using the vindicator's band at least until I can replace it.) When pushing new content, it's obviously not the best idea to not stam it up and whatnot so make sure that you are working on multiple sets of gear: Pure Def set, threat set, or resists too (nature and frost for SSC, Shadow for BT). Oh No Iss
have a question. since devastate apply a sunder armor each time do we have the threath of sunder armor plus devastate togheter? or should I put sunder armor instead of devastate to build more aggro?
thanks in advance
about the devastate/sunder issue. Some of these posts were made back when devastate didn't automatically add the sunder effect. When the 41 talent tree was first released devastate was only an instant attack, with no sunder proc on it. So ignore the posts about using sunder armor first and then devastate. Sunder should not be on a protection warrior's action bar.
Hi, while thanking in Black temple BOSS #5 with a warrior i saw that my tps was much lower than the other 2 warriors even with similar gear. I didn't start as MT but even the other thank could generate much higher threat than me. I wonder whether the rotation not using at all devastate can be the problem.
I normally use:
Shield Slam
Revenge
Sunder
Sunder
(repeat)
of course heroic strike in between ..
Shall I alternate devastate to sunder ? if yes why and when ?
Could you give me some hints..
thanks
Alessandro
Hi, while tanking with a Warrior 70 in Black temple BOSS 5, I have found out that my tps was much lower than the other 2 Warriors. I was not the MT, however also the other warrior could generate more threat than me even with similar gear. Could you give me some hint on how can I increase my tps. I have a doubt that I am not using the right sequence..for instance I don't use devastate..
My order is :
Shield Slam
Revenge
Sunder
Sunder
(repeat)
..and I always use heroic strike in between..
is ok ? or is better to alternate devastate from a certain point of time ?
Post a Comment