Threat Generation IssuesFollow

Could be a couple of things:

A) That 80 fury warrior (though how on earth is he only pulling 900 dps)?
B) The new WotLK move is spam swipe and maul with glyph of maul while tabbing around. That way you lay a maul on everyone and swipe spam keeps aggro while your dps uses its cool aoe abilities. Mangle and lacerate are generally reserved for single target. Maul and swipe can put out a lot of threat nowadays.
C) Out of ideas.

I don't use bear much while leveling. Mainly cat. So I only put what I felt was absolutely necessary to tank.





Back in BC I had read by many sources that maul was junk as far as threat. It was a skill you used for damage and only when you had 50+ rage. Was this changed in Lich King?




I'm only level 71. Its far better than the majority of the drops I'll find until a good 3 or 4 more levels. Its not really "caster" version. Its the feral merciless set. Which had a few of its ilevel points distributed into a few caster stats for pvp viability (although this was changed in Season 3). And actually in BC was far superior in threat generation than the cleft hoof set which lacked strength and agility.




I believe I have glyph of shred and glyph of rip.






My problem for the most part was not AoE threat, but keeping threat on the single main target.




He's never played fury...ever...and was on the phone half the run.

Threat is more based off of damage now.

They redid threat a great deal. Feral Instinct used to buff Swipe threat now just damage. Maul gets a 1.75 modifier off damage and a static boost. Other attacks work similar, Maul does a lot of damage.

Forgot the old merciless had SP. Been awhile since I had any of it around.

Single target you want your Lacerate stacks and Mangle, Maul as allowed by rage. Which is what your were doing.

Sidebar: Swipe eventually equals and then surpasses Lacerate but only after AP reaches 6250 AP. (Source )

I don't know why you would have an issue. Was it just the warrior or all the DPS? Maybe he was using Heroic Strike, it is a high threat attack as well. What did Omen out your TPS at if you can remember.

I'll give it another run tonight and pay attention to my TPS. I'll see if I can get some numbers. Maybe I was just slow or sloppy. I am quite out of practice tanking.

Also, I'll check out glyph of maul. Soloing I've found I don't even need to use rip. Things die too fast. So I was already considering replacing it. And I have found myself doing more AoE rounding up in bear (being a skinner its pretty nice in Borean and Howling). So I'll give it a go. I'd rather not have to do the stupid tab and lacerate thing anymore.



While soloing my rotation is

Pounce > Shred > Shred > (if clear casting shred again else) maim > Mangle > Shred

By the time I get to the end most mobs are dead. With the new maim its pretty easy to keep a mob stunned the majority of a fight.

Just a warning as well - make sure you have actually trained all the new ranks of your abilities!

Our guild MT last night found out she hadn't trained the last few ranks of abilities. I don't think she had visited the trainer since pre-WotLK and found out when she went to respec deeps to muck around in BG's for the night :) Threat hasn't even been an issue in any of our raids! Will be interesting to see if anybody notices the difference as she hasn't told anyone else I think!

If I suddenly stop posting on the forums it will be because she found out about this post and she has killed me :) :) :)



Edited, Feb 14th 2009 1:01am by RareBeast

Something I'm rather surprised that nobody has caught on to...good dps reduce their dps so as not to pull threat, and warriors are an extremely difficult class to ride the threat line with. It's entirely possible that 900dps was the highest he could safely go without creating threat issues. I don't see it as a case of "lol 80 warrior can only do 900dps" so much as a case of "warrior was doing 900 dps because they had a level 71 tank."

That's not to say the OP was barely pushing 900tps, but a couple hundred tps is a safe margin. I know when I first showed up to Northrend in a mix of T5/badge epics, I was in the 1200-1400 single target tps range on my druid...which quickly ramped up as I geared up in Northrend through the 75-80 stretch. Feral druid single target tps often works out lower in Northrend than it did in TBC because more GCDs go to AoE threat generators which leaves Mangle, Lacerate, and frequently even Maul less room to function. When I was tanking on my druid, single target goodies were something I threw in after multiple swipes because I knew that if I focused too long on one/two targets, I was going to be left with only...one/two targets on me in short order.

Keep in mind that in TBC, 2k single target tps was enough to get a raid group through BT. That's T6 geared and raid buffed. If the warrior was pushing 900 dps safely in a 5 man with a level 71 tank, I'd say that single target threat wasn't too huge an issue.

With your pally, yo throw a shield at the pull and that by itself gives you a pretty sweet threat lead right off the top. Mobs get to melee range and somewhere in your rotation, most paladin tanks will drop a Consecrate. The thing to remember with feral tanks now is that their Swipe can put up threat numbers more or less on par with a Consecrate, but you're using your yellow attacks to generate that threat. A pally uses 1 GCD to drop a Consecrate and for the next 8 seconds they're using the rest of their yellow attacks to build threat above and beyond the Consecrate threat. HotR, SoR, another Avenger's Shield in a long fight, Holy Wrath on undead pulls...all kinds of goodies you can throw in, many of which are 3 target attacks, and then when your Consecrate effect fades, you drop another one. Repeat. Mad threat generating goodness.

Meanwhile, the feral druid is busting his bawls just trying to get some single target high-threat moves in between Swipe spams. He's already fallen behind after your first HotR.

I loved tanking with my druid through TBC and I tanked every reg Northrend dungeon and several heroics with her before I set her aside of my pally. If you enjoy tanking with your druid, I would highly recommend you save her for all-guild runs where you can educate your guildies over time that you're still a highly viable tank, but you need them to be a bit more patient off the pulls.

@AureliusSir:
Maul does not share GCD with the other abilities.
So u can make massive thread while putting all other threat-abilities on the mob.

But yes. Pallies do nice initial-aggro.

I know at least in my own case it's not a matter of undervaluing Lacerate so much as wanting to be sure I have enough rage for higher priority attacks. In an infinite rage situation I'd definitely be throwing Lacerate every GCD between Mangle cooldowns, but between Maul and Lacerate the rage drain adds up fast. I would much much rather make sure I always have rage for Maul and Mangle than continually throw Lacerates, because I've found that I generally maintain higher TPS even just with Mangle/Maul than I do when I toss Lacerates and then get spurts of rage starvation.

Strawberry Swipe has been turned into a shotgun compared to chocolate Swipe.



Keeping up a stack is always a good thing but Swipe spam is better than tBC Swipe.

I think many druids can get good snap aggro with Swipe especially if the mobs are reasonably near each other to start. Other wise it becomes a matter of corralling them using the rest of our tool kit so that we can begin Swipe spam.

Even the new H VH mob split on the elite packs is easy. Just FFF the single guy and charge into the other, he will follow. Resume Swipe, Maul and Mangle rotation. Throwing Lacerates in on random mobs while the pack is big to increase Maul damage.

Single target the rotation is more the standard Laceratex2 -> Mangle with FFF and Demo Roar as needed. If you get the buffs and/or gear to break the 6250 AP threshold then Lacerate is only needed to keep up the stack, with a higher concentrations to start as the stack needs to be built up first.

Maul if have the rage has been replaced with always Maul unless you're doing content you are over geared for and in that case either pull more or take off your pants.

Lacerate didn't get nerfed, Swipe got injected with steroids.


edit: spelin is gud

Edited, Feb 17th 2009 1:55pm by Horsemouth

I wouldn't call even 1500tps good snap aggro. Good snap aggro is a 3k Avenger's Shield. Good snap aggro is a 2.5k HotR smack. Really good snap aggro is a 9-10k SotR crit. Good snap aggro is a Mangle (even better, a Mangle crit). I'd even take a mocking blow/death grip style attack over 1500 tps for snap aggro. 1500 tps (ie. zomfg nice AP Mr.DroodTank) is adequate to hold mobs through most AoE, but if the AoE has already started and you're starting to lose control, 1500tps is not going to cut it. The trouble doesn't seem to be with a druid's ability to generate threat...it has to do with the way in which druids generate threat relative to other classes that dps can't wrap their head around.

And I'm not approaching this from the point of view of trying to convince anyone that druids are poor tanks...not at all. When I was first learning about threat management as a dps, I was always told to wait until the tank had aggro, count to 5, and then go. Then, due to the enormously disproportionate number of warrior tanks relative to other tanking classes, it became wait until the third Sunder. Then it got even more refined to, "know what you are capable of, check Omen, and when the tank has a sufficient threat lead, start up the dps."

Lately, it has turned into, "The mobs are moving towards the tank! GOGOGOGOGO!" Out of all four tanking classes, druids are the least capable of responding to that sort of dps mentality. Ultimately, it's a problem with the dps, not the tank(s). The difficulty is that Blizzard would have to hugely revamp existing content to force dps out of that mentality. There's already talk of Ulduar being tuned to make that sort of attitude towards dps a glaring liability, but that doesn't do any good for people who stick primarily to 5-mans because they lack the guild/connections to be raiding second tier expansion content when it's released.

The difficulty I had as a druid tank in 5-mans was that I didn't have another tank next to me to compare my threat to. As I got into raids with my druid, my single target threat capability started to stand out, but it was also the least consistent threat out of the (at the time) two other tanking classes because expertise on feral tanking gear was non-existent.

I've spent the majority of my time in WotLK in a raiding guild, and the majority of my time in groups in raids with my pally. I get to see first hand on a regular basis what the other tanking classes are doing in terms of threat numbers and, to a lesser extent, survivability. If a druid has a threat lead on a single target, they'll have it for the duration of the fight. If I arrive to an AoE pull at the same time as a druid (or even a few seconds after), they might as well go kitty because all of their mob are belong to me. If it weren't for the shift to mass AoE style play that we've seen thus far, I'd say it was just the nature of a pally tank compared to a druid. Blizzard says they don't want to homogenize the tanking classes any more than they already have, which I think will ultimately hurt druids in anything short of advanced WotLK raids.


Edited, Feb 17th 2009 1:11pm by AureliusSir

After being horrifically under-geared when I first hit Northrend and failing at tanking UK I went away, levelled, got some better gear and better ideas and tried again last night... did so much better and even coped with a damn DPS DK repeatedly stealing my pulls with death grip... Overall had a great time.

Interestingly two of the three pallys in the group mentioned they had bear tanks and said although they had enjoyed being bears, once they made their prot pallys they could never go back and pally tanking was "way more fun".

I've looked at the prot pally stickies and to be honest it doesn't look like they have much to do while tanking - but I could be wrong. By comparison I never have a spare GCD on my druid and I'm always pressing buttons.

Didn't get a chance to ask those pally's during the run (bit busy haha) but why would they feel this way? Is prot pally tanking ezy mode, is bear tanking too frustrating at heroic/raid level, or is pally tanking genuinely more fun?

edit: or is it just that pally tanking was probably more their flavour? :)


Edited, Feb 17th 2009 8:27pm by apothik

Heh, the other night on 10man Patch I was Hateful tank and I was right on the MT's threat and we had a significant lead over DPS, so I announced i'd BRB and went and got myslef another scotch. Came back and was still well ahead, popped beserk and caught back up to the MT :)

After all, you can't expect me to tank without a drink!

I probably didn't explain myself clearly... I meant I'm always constantly hitting buttons to do something when I'm bear tanking, as you mention trying to weave demo roar, growling, FFF, mangle etc in between my mauls and swipes. Its frenetic and I love it. :)

I usually ended up healing 5mans in vanilla and TBC so only recently getting some good time as a tank, am enjoying it and (as of recently) getting complimented on it.

I just have this impression (right or wrong) that even though pally tanks have all of these extra abilities like aurelius mentions, if things are going well they actually use less keystrokes than us bears... if you get what I mean.

I was just intrigued that two random other players, who were more experienced at end-game content than I was, had both walked away from bears in favour of pallys. And on my server anyway, while I have been levelling I can count on one hand the number of bear tanks I've grouped with in instances. So I was getting a little concerned. :)

Edited, Feb 18th 2009 7:27pm by apothik