Doesn’t the whole “DPS needs to watch threat, not the tank” thing just enable bad tanks?
A BiS affliction warlock, with full raid buffs (except ICC), does about 13000 DPS. That’s a requirement of 10,000 threat per second. At what gear level does a tank generate that?
Hahahahaha. (I have the 277 Cryptmaker–want mine? I still have the 277 Bryntroll in the bank I could replace it with. :p)
We’re not talking about hardcore raiding, Palooka. Yes, it *is *the tank’s job to pump out as much TPS as they can to enable the damage-dealers to pump out as much DPS as they can, but if the plain fact of the situation is that one of your tanks can’t out-threat one of your DPS, and you’re not running up against enrage timers, the DPS needs to back the fuck off. Anybody who whines about the MEEEEETERRRRRRRRRSSSSSS QQQQQQQQQQQ doesn’t deserve to be in the group. If a tank has a threat issue, that can be addressed *after that raid *(or during it, *if *there’s a tank available to swap in, which for a casual group or a PUG there won’t be).
Heh. It was kind of funny–it dropped last week and the applicant tank won it–it didn’t even occur to me to bid for it (if I had, I’d have won it). I felt a little like ‘d’oh!’ afterward, but he needed it more than I did, and it’s not like it won’t drop again.
Bryntroll…ah, yes. The weapon I would very much like to have mostly because I love the way it looks…I’ll get it someday, but I can’t justify taking it from anybody who really needs it. I think I’m about at the point where I can get it for a song now if it drops again…unfortunately it drops far less often than Cryptmaker does.
Yes, exactly. Although even in raids it is the DPS’s responsibility to keep at least some eye on their aggro. Certain DPS classes (like my friend the hotshot fire mage, who makes it his mission in life to try to pull aggro off me–it’s a point of pride lately that he usually can’t do it!) can do spikey damage that will rip aggro off the tank if they’re not careful–even a good and well geared tank. My mage used to have to worry about it too. Yes, the tanks at that level should be putting out massive threat, and the DPS should usually be able to go all out. But if you’re worried about pulling threat, just wait a few seconds and let the tank get a head start, then go nuts. It’s really more of an issue for melee, because they have a smaller margin of error (110% vs. 130).
I’ve been discovering all over again how hunters aren’t meant for tight spaces…
I’ve come up with a couple hunter questions:
Does Arcane Shot have some sort of built-in, extra miss chance? I’m am completely baffled by the way it misses so often, even against mobs five levels lower than me.
Is there any skill or command to allow a Ferocity pet to get and keep the attention of multiple mobs? It’s getting aggravating when I send my cat into a group of approaching enemies, and the specific mob I sent him at stops to fight him while the rest of the group comes right at me, even when I haven’t fired a shot yet. You’d think the cat would at least aggro the others via proximity
Hunter/Leatherworking question: Everything I read about Leatherworking specialization said that hunters would get the most benefit from Dragonscale Leatherworking, but the only reason I can see for that is that Dragonscale teaches mail patterns, while the other two just teach leather patterns. But all of the Dragonscale patterns appear to me to be aimed at shaman, with all that +INT, MP5, and SP. Sure, there’s also AP and Crit on some of this stuff, but no +AGI anywhere it seems. Is the problem here that these patterns were created back when +INT, MP5, and SP were really important to hunters?
Are tanks a protected class in the politics of MMOs or something?
If it hadn’t gone to me, it would have been sharded. And it wasn’t that much later that I picked up Cryptmaker–which pushed me to finish my Shadow’s Edge, since Bryntroll makes such a shitty offhand (ohai procs) that I had to put Cryptmaker there. Still couldn’t bring myself to vendor it, so it’s sitting in my bank.
ETA:
No. You just got shot down by two people who tank ICC hardmodes for giving a hardcore raiding answer to a casual raider. Learn and move on. (That would be a good lesson for you to take from this thread, period. You seem to have a lot of disdain for people who don’t want to play the game the same way you do.)
It’s not consistent threat that is the issue (typically) - it’s threat at the start of a pull (or on adds during a boss fight). During the first 30 seconds of the Sindra attempts (10-man heroic, so not hardcore, but not casual pug stuff either), every DPS was well over 15k, with the mage and warlock hitting 18-20k (popping CDs, pre-potting, and whatnot). That takes some pretty serious threat ramp-up, and even 4 back-to-back Icy Touches plus Misdirection didn’t cut it on the one attempt where I lost aggro. You get a miss (Icy Touch is a spell, so isn’t hit capped), get unlucky with Rune Strike procs, the fire mage gets a hot crit streak, and it’s not too difficult to need a salv or need the balls-out caster to cool it off a bit.
The 30% buff doesn’t seem to help threat output nearly as much as it help DPS burst.
Maybe that makes me a bad tank, but I’m not convinced that it does.
Is it missing, or getting resisted? You might be up against a mob with high nature(?) resistance.
Ferocity? No. The Tenacity pets have Thunderstomp for AoE aggro. Your best bet is to wait for the mobs to aggro on the pet (or run up to them) and then do a Misdirection + Volley. That should stick them to the pet while you single-target them down (making sure to target the one your pet is attacking/growling at). And of course make sure Cower is disabled.
Can’t answer that since I never specialized in either. All of the high-level WotLK patterns are specialty-agnostic AFAIK.
How does asking two questions equate to a hardcore raider answer?
Because the only time that this:
is true is for hardcore raids where every ounce of DPS is critical.
For anything outside of ICC 25 hard-modes (and Halion heroic), where you are more likely to have a range of gear levels and enrage timers are not an issue, threat is much more of a shared responsibility (although I would argue that it always is - any long-term threat issues should be handled after the raid, not during, either by instruction or replacement of the tank).
Unless you were referring to tanks that can’t hold threat on anything, against anybody, in which case we would all likely agree with you even though it has nothing to do with what we were discussing. But since you then mentioned BiS warlocks (for some reason) it seems you weren’t addressing casual players.
So either you were being elitist and condescending (which the “enable bad tanks” comment supports) or you were being irrelevant.
He does. But if you’re healing the pet at all, that creates aggro on everything attacking him. (1) Don’t pre-HOT a Ferocity pet with Mend Pet before sending it after more than one mob, and (b) tab-target each mob in the pack and switch the target the pet is attacking if you plan on using any abilities that will create aggro on more than one of them. The healing aggro *may *also apply to the BM talent that heals you and your pet while the pet is active–I’m not sure. (I do know that heals from that talent on me on my Hunter show up as being from my pet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the reverse were also true.)
Well, then the question becomes, does the Agi on the leather you could craft with another specialization outweigh the AP/Crit on the Mail you could craft?
Question two, would you actually use any of this gear or replace it right away, i.e., is the whole discussion academic?
Because threat management is equally a job for DPS and the tank. The tank needs to put out as much as they can, but the DPS needs to balance around what the tank can put out. Encounters are not always designed with the intent that the DPS should be able to offload 100% of the maximum damage they can do all the time without needing to use personal or external threat-reducing cooldowns and/or just stopping their DPS for a few seconds.
Maximum TPS is a focus for hardcore raiders. Telling DPS to watch their threat, especially in the first few seconds of a fight when they outgear the tank, is not enabling bad tanking, especially not in a casual or PUG environment.
And, as **Jas09 **has observed, DPS has scaled much higher with gear in this expansion (especially with the advent of the various ICC buffs, now maxed out at 30%) than TPS has. Many tanking abilties produce static threat versus being damage-based, which has actually completely thrown some tanks’ priority lists completely out of whack from what they were at lower gear levels or in raids other than ICC. People who run spreadsheets will figure this out, but your average casual raider won’t, which makes it even harder for them to figure out their optimal TPS rotation.
ETA an example:
Shockwave now outweighs Devastate (even glyphed) for threat for me on a single target. That’s completely counterintuitive.
Because the equation is very different for the Kingslayer on Im-frakking-possible mode raiders than it is for the guys runing RDF heroics to get their frosties. My mage has decent-bordering-on-good gear. 5300+ gear score. If I’m feeling froggy, or otherwise get a couple big crits right off the bat, I’ll yank aggro off at least 80% of the guys tanking heroics. They’re geared ok for heroics, and doing the things tanks are supposed to do, but if I drop 30K damage in about 4 seconds, they aren’t holding aggro. That’s not their fault, it’s mine. I need to back off, maybe not pop icy veins and a trinket immediately.
Seems to happen on trash mobs more than bosses, and more so with certain warrior tanks. Even on boss fights, when I get the red border on my screen and hear the sound of doom, I need to either back off, or burn the mob down on my next cast if it’s feasible.
Hmmm, I see. Thanks for that info also. I will make it a habit of asking before spamming my shield button should I find myself with an unfamiliar pally tank. 
I understand that because of gear disparity, even the best played tank cannot hold aggro. I’m sure that a level 15 warrior can’t hold over a level 80 warlock. That’s why I asked what gear level is required in order to hold against a BiS DPS. If it’s ilvl 200 blues, then it seems like holding back does enable bad tanks. If it’s ilvl 284 epics, then holding back is basically required.
I don’t know why you all are getting upset at me for not accounting for the very thing I asked about in the first place.
Hey, is this new?
http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/lakeshire_divingboard.jpg
Never noticed it before.
And hmmm… just got a letter from High Tinker Mekkatorque asking me to come help out with Operation: Gnomeregan.
Gotcha. For some reason I thought the question was rhetorical (probably from hearing too many similar questions from geared out DPS qq’ing over meters after pulling off their tank).
Quite frankly, AFAIK, in ICC, you at the very least need a 264/277 tanking weapon to generate enough threat to hold off a BiS DPS. Even then, from what I’ve heard, it’s not uncommon for high-threat classes to need Salvs or for tanks to need MD. Some of our ICC25-HM raider can answer that.
A poorly geared tank (even one in full 251s, likely) simply cannot hold off a 264-geared DPS with the ICC buff, in my experience. In this situation I had roughly comparable gear to the mage, and still had a relatively difficult time. Maybe I just suck… but I don’t think that’s it.
Yes, Rik the Operation:Gnomeragan and Zalazane’s Fall events launched today. Looking forward to checking them out tonight. 
So is Operation:Gnomeragan kinda like a battleground? I’ve never done of those, but this is what it looks like it’ll be. I’m excited! Waiting for current battle to finish.
It’s like taking the Undercity back after the Wrathgate. Or the final battle at Light’s Hope in the DK starter area. Don’t get out of range of Mekkatorque’s banner buff like I did – I got completely stomped