I will work my ass off on a tank, maintaining every ounce of threat I can on every target I pull. If you pull threat off of me, be it by aggroing more enemys, or focusing fire on a non-priority target, I’m going to let it eat you.

DPS is a dime a dozen, I’ll replace and summon a new one before I deal with some meters spamming retard wanting to stroke his e-pein.

The stupification of wow over the last 2 expansions has caused an overubundance of DPS class players, a shortage of good tanks/healers (a DK who doesn’t know how to tank and ‘has a frost spec’ isn’t a tank, any more then a healing geared pally, or damage geared warrior). And it is this stupification of wow which has encuraged the ‘death of cc’ and ‘death of threat responsibility’

Bitching about the old days doesn’t solve anything, and generally I don’t… but I refuse to accept that responsibility for ones OWN THREAT is transfered to the tank. Threat is a joint responsibility.

Granted, it should only happen once (the first air phase) as the tank has not had a large enough lead on threat. By the second though, there should be a large margin between the tank and the DPS.

plz could someone help me plz cus i realy wana level 80 tank but find that i level very slow so could some someone plz help me… my lvl 80 hunter is called stoneyoo and my warrior is called willstonee- i am on the realm ghoastlads…. if you want email me….. my email is will400@fsmail.net

many thanks all
Will

These days, however, it’s different. Tanks CAN pull out *enormous* TPS. Most DPSers don’t even come close to the TPS that a tank that knows what he’s doing can generate on a boss. That theoretically means that you can ignore speccing threat reduction, thereby freeing some talent points that can, say, boost your crit damage, thereby increasing sustained DPS and helping with burst damage as well.

The comment about not speccing threat reduction came from a warlock subforum of my realm’s unofficial realm forum (don’t be surprised, it’s huge in comparison to the official ones). I don’t know how it applies to other classes and their respective DPS specs, but that part was enough to get me thinking. Our own raid DPS does not behave that way.

I did pull Sapphiron on two occasions due to outtpsing the tank. So yes, it was my fault that I did not check my threat values and slow down as a result. However, that’s not my point. My point is that I *shouldn’t* be outTPSing the tank. I know of several tanks that can keep Sapph’s attention while the raid DPSers, which are FAR better equipped and knowledgeable about their classes (meaning better rotation usage => more DPS) can nuke to their heart’s content. Are you telling me it is acceptable for the tank to pull off 2k TPS on a 25 man raid boss, with support, when my guild’s tanks could pull off twice as much? Consider also that there was *not* a significant difference in equipment between the tank I had an issue with, and the state of our equipment back when we first downed Sapph.

Comparing DPSing without aggro reduction to tanking Malygos with a trash set is not the same thing. As a tank, you are not there to do damage, you’re there to stay alive and to keep the others alive.

I am not advocating DPS to be lazy. This is a tank forum, not a DPS forum, and I am definitely not going to go around into DPS forums and post that they should make life difficult for tanks I expect most, if not all the people to read this, to be on the tanking side, and not on the DPS side; I would be very surprised to see someone say “oh great, he told tanks they should build more threat, now I can respec to a spec without aggro reduction and do more loldps, and the tank has to work harder!”. The purpose of this post was to make others aware that such a mentality DOES exist, and to be ready to deal with it should it arise during a raid.

Also, I saw your Help Wanted link but it brought up a blank page for me, as did the Contact Us link. I’d like to speak to you about contributing as a death knight tank, but could not find means to contact you other than here. Please drop me a line if you have the time; I would love to discuss this further. :)

-Rhys

1) It would be extremely stupid for a full T7,5 equipped DPSer to use his max DPS while a low geared tank is tanking, especially if said tank is playing the class only as an alt. What made me snap was that the tanks during this particular Naxxramas raid were all well equipped (Naxx10, heroic and one even had Naxx25 equipment), and my warlock was still wearing level 70 items (Karazhan quality, not Sunwell, mind you). But if the DPSer vastly outgears the tank, then yes, problems can and probably will arise.

2) Rage starvation is hardly a problem in Wrath, as far as I have seen. I’m thinking of dropping Focused Rage and the Glyph of Heroic Strike, because usually no matter what I do my rage bar is always full to the brim. These are at least my observations, it varies from case to case. I myself opted to include some threat options in my gear to keep TPS high, even on low end bosses.

3) As soon as you exceed a certain equipment “line” (don’t ask me exactly where this line is, I’d figure about 1/2 of your equipment being Naxx10 quality and the rest Naxx25 quality) where any additional survivability is useless because you simply will not die, you spec 15/5/51, which maximises threat.

4) Whenever in doubt about how one item compared to the rest I followed this linK:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/39462-wotlk-tanking-gear-list.html

It lists items in terms of survivability granted. I took survivability over threat because I’m quite happy with my threat and I don’t really feel like building additional sets for tanking, since everything is on farmstatus for us except for Sarth 3D (where I need all the survivability I can get. Working on a block set for add tanking duties as well).
The only real threat boost I deliberately applied to my gear were a few 8 expertise/12 stamina gems, which I plan to replace with 8 dodge/12 stamina as soon as I get some Twilight Opals.

In general, if you act smart when rolling on new gear and you grab stuff that provides a survivability boost as well as a threat boost, you’ll be able to keep up the pace. An excellent example would be Malygos’ Legplates of Sovereignty (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40589), which are an upgrade with respect to pretty much any other legplates available as an all-around performer (T7,5 might be better for situations where you need pure avoidance).

1. Gear gap versus dps is huge. This is more critical, IMO, in wrath as warrior threat mechanics have drastically changed. I entered MC with pretty bad gear but could still hold aggro well against epic-clad guys. Props to warrior tanks who can still do this in wrath.

2. Rage starvation in cases where you are tanking content that you have “outgeared” coupled with the fact that you forget to press/poorly time rage boosts.

3. Talent selection does not maximize good threat talents, although this is really dependent on what kind of content you tackling.

4. Gear selection/enchanting/socketing. Don’t blame anybody if you lose aggro if you socket stam all over your gear forgetting expertise (better dps and prevents parry gibs) and +hit. Dont get me wrong, stam is great but socketing and enchanting should be there to balance what you lack.

Just something to think about as i get ticked everytime I see a guildie say “this tank suxxors cant hold aggro lol” without figuring out why.