Stumped about threat

Alright guys I'm stumped about my threat... not really sure what is going on maybe I'm missing something.... I've got a solid 969 rotation and I have NEVER had a problem with my threat...

Now that the dps in my guild has been getting alot of gear they are doing 60k to 90k tps.... I however am only pumping out 50k to 75k tps.... this is terrible and frankly shameful.... when in naxx I can pump out 80k to 100k tps... yes I understand they are undead but throwing in the occasional ex

At first I thought it was because I was well below hit cap, but that doesn't seem to be the case.... don't ask me what my stats are cause I can't see them at work, I do know I currently have about 1250 bv.... sorry I cant be more descriptive like I said I'm at work...

Looking for suggestions, thanks guys

I think you need to take a 0 off of the end of all those numbers.

Rachmaninoff wrote:60k to 90k tps....50k to 75k tps.... 80k to 100k tps...

Wut? I honestly hope you left one to many 0's in there

As long as you are doing a solid 9696 rotation, there's not much you can do, if you have a lot of movement to do your rotation might be a bit off and you won't get the full benefit of your consecration. Tell them to learn to play and use their abilities (vanish, soul shatter, fade, etc.)

Are you missing any raid buffs/debuffs? Just about everything on http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/ helps us out, I feel we're pretty dependent on having a good raid composition to do our absolute best. Try and move a draenei in your party for a raid, the 1% hit bonus is party only and is worth having since it's "free."

If you are doing the proper rotation (don't sub in Exorcism, generally not worth it), there isn't much else you can do other than look for more gear upgrades. Make sure of Avenging Wrath when it is safe to do so, generally using it early on is good, the ability is off GCD so you can activate it when your rotation is underway and the boss has a good set of debuffs applied to it.

If the healers aren't having a problem keeping you alive through a fight, consider switching a trinket to the Darkmoon Card: Greatness or another slot to a more threat oriented item.

Str will do more for your threat than either hit or BV.

Gamingdevil wrote:

Rachmaninoff wrote:60k to 90k tps....50k to 75k tps.... 80k to 100k tps...

Wut? I honestly hope you left one to many 0's in there

As long as you are doing a solid 9696 rotation, there's not much you can do, if you have a lot of movement to do your rotation might be a bit off and you won't get the full benefit of your consecration. Tell them to learn to play and use their abilities (vanish, soul shatter, fade, etc.)

its something like that but you get the idea....

I agree that they should have some control but it is our job to put out the threat and lately mine has been sub-par to their threat...

what confuses me is WHY is there such a gap between threat in naxx and threat in ulda.... I thought it was because I was well below hit but now I'm having second thoughts on that...

DPS can have some high TPS spikes, and there are a few encounters where they get some big buffs like Hodir and General. Are you having an issue across the board or just some fights? There shouldn't be a threat gap on your end, that is to say you should be doing more threat as your gear gets better, but yes the DPSers do scale a bit faster.

fuzzygeek wrote:Str will do more for your threat than either hit or BV.

Will adjust.... thanks guys

Fridmarr wrote:DPS can have some high TPS spikes, and there are a few encounters where they get some big buffs like Hodir and General. Are you having an issue across the board or just some fights? There shouldn't be a threat gap on your end, that is to say you should be doing more threat as your gear gets better, but yes the DPSers do scale a bit faster.

I haven't been "allowed" to tank alot of fights, but that's a whole other drama, but from what I've seen it has been across the board

Armory link:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... chmaninoff

You might consider changing your spec a bit to go for a slightly higher threat build with the 53/18 crusade builds. Conviction and Crusade would give you more threat than the 4/5 in Seals of the Pure and 5/5 in reckoning I believe. I'm not quite as well geared as you are and find that I can use a spec geared around threat with out survivability issues, I'd guess the same would be even more true for you. I'm not sure exactly how much threat it would gain you, but if you are struggling with threat every bit can help.

Now, other ideas for what you can do to 'work around' 5 to 6k tps. First if you are tanking single tank encounters, no reason that you shouldn't be getting misdirects and Tricks of the Trade on cooldown. Don't believe it is a particular dps loss for the hunters/rogues to do it. Additionally, time your Avenging Wrath for when Bloodlust is used, if its done at the beginning of the fight. If it isn't, then use Avenging Wrath as soon as you have done the pull and are in a position to get the most from it.

Check to see if your dps is taking threat reducing talents and using threat reducing abilities appropriately. Mages that like to do 7k dps and higher, with burst at the beginning of a fight, should be using Invisibility as soon as they are coming close to pulling off you. If they are not, then part of the TPS issue you are having is theirs too. Same goes for hunters and Feign Death, Locks and shatter, etc. The abilities are there to be used and while using them burns a gcd on non dps, it will allow them to get more dps in the long run.

Check what abilities you are using in what order. My snap threat was much better when I swapped to dropping a consecrate in the Bosses path pre pull, hitting Holy Shield, hitting DP, then pulling with Av. Shield and exorcism, then using Judgement, Shield of Right, Consecrate, Hammer, then holy shield again. Loading the high instant threat moves in the beginning gave me a nice lead on things and I find even on gimmick fights, as long as I get a nice initial lead on the dps, they don't catch up.

Corpsicle wrote:Armory link:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... chmaninoff

You might consider changing your spec a bit to go for a slightly higher threat build with the 53/18 crusade builds. Conviction and Crusade would give you more threat than the 4/5 in Seals of the Pure and 5/5 in reckoning I believe. I'm not quite as well geared as you are and find that I can use a spec geared around threat with out survivability issues, I'd guess the same would be even more true for you. I'm not sure exactly how much threat it would gain you, but if you are struggling with threat every bit can help.

Now, other ideas for what you can do to 'work around' 5 to 6k tps. First if you are tanking single tank encounters, no reason that you shouldn't be getting misdirects and Tricks of the Trade on cooldown. Don't believe it is a particular dps loss for the hunters/rogues to do it. Additionally, time your Avenging Wrath for when Bloodlust is used, if its done at the beginning of the fight. If it isn't, then use Avenging Wrath as soon as you have done the pull and are in a position to get the most from it.

Check to see if your dps is taking threat reducing talents and using threat reducing abilities appropriately. Mages that like to do 7k dps and higher, with burst at the beginning of a fight, should be using Invisibility as soon as they are coming close to pulling off you. If they are not, then part of the TPS issue you are having is theirs too. Same goes for hunters and Feign Death, Locks and shatter, etc. The abilities are there to be used and while using them burns a gcd on non dps, it will allow them to get more dps in the long run.

Check what abilities you are using in what order. My snap threat was much better when I swapped to dropping a consecrate in the Bosses path pre pull, hitting Holy Shield, hitting DP, then pulling with Av. Shield and exorcism, then using Judgement, Shield of Right, Consecrate, Hammer, then holy shield again. Loading the high instant threat moves in the beginning gave me a nice lead on things and I find even on gimmick fights, as long as I get a nice initial lead on the dps, they don't catch up.

I actually did try the crusade however most of the bosses in ulda are giants, couple few are mechanical, and a few are humanoids... I did just as much threat with crusade as I did without it, so really there wasn't a difference for me... and there also is a ret pally in all our raids so there is no need for me to go into convection... also the only reason why I'm going 4/5 with seals is cause I want the extra heals coming in, but I may go back and get rid of that talent all together...

But if someone can do the math an prove me wrong I'll go back!!!.... (RIP 40/21)

Not terribly worried about snap aggro, mines actually the best of our 3 tanks, but my problem lately is sustaining it... I'm going to swap some gear and re-gem for extra strength

Thanks Corps!

Crusade works on all mobs, it just works double on some others. Crusade + Conviction > SotP and Reckoning. The math is already done in the advanced tanking forum, check the big matlab thread by Theckhd. Conviction increases your crit (so another ret pally being in the raid is irrelevant) and SotP doesn't increase your healing that's Divinity.

Consider something like this, http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZA0xA0uMusIufdts0x0c

Rachmaninoff wrote:... and there also is a ret pally in all our raids so there is no need for me to go into convection...

Pally in the OVEN !!

Fridmarr wrote:SotP doesn't increase your healing that's Divinity.

I used to run 5/56/10.... but I want to throw some points into divinity so I dropped 1 pt from SotP, 1pt from SA, and 1 from the ret tree (the mana reducing one) sorry I wasn't clear about that...

I will defiantly check the spec out when I get home but its blocked at work...

Selgar wrote:

Rachmaninoff wrote:... and there also is a ret pally in all our raids so there is no need for me to go into convection...

Pally in the OVEN !!

there is some other ability next to imp judgments in the ret tree forgot what its called, increases crit by 3% for the whole raid or something while judged... I know I go into it as holy but ret's will judge more often than holy's will

Rachmaninoff wrote:

Gamingdevil wrote:Wut? I honestly hope you left one to many 0's in there

its something like that but you get the idea....

Well, to be doing 75k TPS, you'd need to be doing 28k DPS. I'd definitely like to have you in my raid in that case!

Dropping a 0 puts you back into the realm of reality - a reasonably geared paladin tank in Ulduar can expect to put out a sustained ~7.5k TPS just based on 969 alone with full raid buffs. Adding in Tricks of the Trade / Misdirect / Special boss mechanics (i.e. Hodir) will push that value somewhat higher.

Gear-wise, you seem fine. Could use some upgrades from Ulduar, but you're not doing anything particularly wrong that I can see. Your expertise is at around 11 and hit is 163, both of those are acceptable values. More hit wouldn't hurt, but again, don't bother gemming for it. Accuracy on your weapon would be a fair upgrade though. You could move from Dodge/Stam gems to Agi/Stam gems if you wanted to; you lose a little bit of dodge to gain armor and crit by doing so. There's a thread discussing it here.

More importantly, I'll echo the suggestions about your spec. You may want to read over this post, which analyzes the threat per talent point of most of our important threat talents. It shows that Crusade is our third-best threat talent by a pretty wide margin (One handed weapon specialization and Touched by the Light are #1 and #2). Conviction is tied with Seals of the Pure for 4th place, and Reckoning is distantly in last place.

As such, any spec with 5/5 reckoning is going to suffer compared to a Conviction/Crusade spec. In addition, you have 4/5 SotP - you'd actually get better returns going with 5 in SotP and 4 in Reckoning.

Since you're already 3/5 Benediction, it would only take one more point to unlock the third tier of ret talents. If you moved the 9 points in Reckoning/SotP over to Ret, you could take 5/5 Conviction and 3/3 Crusade, which should give you a considerable increase in threat (roughly 250 TPS is my estimate).