To threat or not to threat, that is the question.

Ok, after spending WAYYYY too many hours shifting through all the great information some of the posters on this site have assembled, I have come up with what I view to be the two optimum talent specs:

1. The threat build

2. The pop a CD and live longer build

Has anyone ever REALLY had a threat problem when you're Naxx-25 geared and gemming str/stam in red slots? I mean, I'm ok with the other guildie protpally out tpsing me because i'm the one called on to tank the bosses. I spec/gear to tank bosses, not trash and I have never had a dps pull off me and I've got some serious dps who've tried.

IMO blizz has tried to give a pally the ability to tank some dragon breaths in keeping with their whole "bring the player" mentality. So why are so many pallies talking about threat? I honestly have never even been concerned with it.

Thanks Dorvan!

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For example:

1. The threat build

2. The pop a CD and live longer build

Go do 6 minute malygos and if you still come back asking whether anyone has threat problems I'll give you an answer

To be blunt, yes. You can have threat issues on some occasions. Fully 25man decked warlocks/shamans/etc CAN do more TPS then a fully decked tank. I however gear/spec for more threat (means less survivability) just so I can give my DPS the opportunity to go all-out on said fight. HoS is still your shamans' best friend

Id be so interested in gear/spec of those shammys

but yeah locks are annoying ;(

Aurora is the most annoying of the bunch when it comes to threat

Not much he can do about it, to be honest. He could do less DPS, but that isn't helpful. Salv him.

slickesq wrote:Ok, after spending WAYYYY too many hours shifting through all the great information some of the posters on this site have assembled, I have come up with what I view to be the two optimum talent specs:

1. The threat build

2. The pop a CD and live longer build

Has anyone ever REALLY had a threat problem when you're Naxx-25 geared and gemming str/stam in red slots? I mean, I'm ok with the other guildie protpally out tpsing me because i'm the one called on to tank the bosses. I spec/gear to tank bosses, not trash and I have never had a dps pull off me and I've got some serious dps who've tried.

IMO blizz has tried to give a pally the ability to tank some dragon breaths in keeping with their whole "bring the player" mentality. So why are so many pallies talking about threat? I honestly have never even been concerned with it.

Thanks Dorvan!

Unfortunately, improved Lay on Hands can't function quite like a normal cooldown since it's reactive, not proactive. IF you surive the Sarth breath, THEN you can use it. Even talented and glyphed you'll generally only be able to use it once per fight, so I don't personally see the value of it. The armor bonus is nice, but our problem isn't with physical damage at the moment, it's magical.

The honest truth is that once you spec the baseline required talents to tank, we're getting quite a bit more freedom than we've ever had. If the ILoH/AM spec turns out to be helpful against bosses in Ulduar, I think we'll see a shift towards it. However, given how tight Malygos and the drakes on Sarth push DPS to perform, I think we're going to see the threat gap narrow considerably as we scrap out the extra threat and dps we can to stay ahead of them on the aggro table. Plus, damage talents are just plain fun. Bigger numbers are fun.

It's very helpful, since it's a 25% armour increase.

trellian wrote:Go do 6 minute malygos and if you still come back asking whether anyone has threat problems I'll give you an answer

I'll let you in on a little secret - I quit having any sort of threat issues on Malygos a few weeks after we started working on 6-minute Maly.

The trick? I now wear my trash-tanking set, with extremely high STR/BV, with DMC:G, and use a 50 STR Battle Elixir. I stumbled across this because we weren't hitting the DPS marks I wanted, so I decided to try my highest dps gear set. Turns out that even in that set, I have enough health do survive Breath+Melee, so while I drop to 20% life once in a while, I don't die very often. My healers are already spamming me with Holy Light since it's such a short phase anyway, so it's never become a problem. I think I may have died once or twice from Malygos in the past month or so of 6-minute attempts.

Not fair to expect the tank to have DMC:G

Majiben wrote:Not fair to expect the tank to have DMC:G

No, but the general idea still works. DMC:G doesn't make or break the threat generation, it's just a nice boost.

it's counter-intuitive to wear block/str gear for Malygos as far as mitigation/avoidance goes, because it's not a fight that you would normally approach that way. But it turns out that when you're at the gear level to attempt 6-minute Maly, you can afford to do so without overstressing your healers, and it solves the threat generation problem.

Just saying that it's roughly a 5-10% increase in str and a smaller but similar boost in threat. It's a significant difference. Similar to the difference between speccing and not speccing crusade.

I do agree that gearing for threat is something that is needed on a fight like that.

Well, we really have 18 points to mess with, and weather you go ret or holy, I doubt it's make or break. Play the flavor you think synergizes best with your raid and play-style.

That said...I'll be getting 5/5 convic and 3/3 crusade with my 18 (ret, obviously) points. That's not the end tho'. Everything changes when you go live, and we'll all come back with our personal experiences and go from there. All the worthwhile conversation's probably been said on the subject. ^^

theckhd wrote:The trick? I now wear my trash-tanking set, with extremely high STR/BV, with DMC:G, and use a 50 STR Battle Elixir.

Do you still gear for +hit a bit? Cuz if those first 2 or 3 spells miss, then that's really bad. My BV/Str set only has about +50 hit
I have since I posted this made some changes to gear though and am now comfortably tanking 6min runs with nobody being close to pulling. I now tank the fight expertise capped, hit capped and have some 1400BV unbuffed. Add to that strength food/elixer and a potion of wild magic before and after the pull makes it quite trivial...