Here's some light reading for your workday. I read this a few months back and it really helped me grasp what being a tank was all about. I hope you guys will get some value out of this too:
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Threat should not be looked at as an arcane, mysterious entity that can not be understood or put into real terms. It is based on real and understandable concepts and numbers.
Let's say that 1 Damage is equivalent to 1 Threat. For the purposes of this game, this is the best way to quantify threat, as 1 Damage will produce the equivalent of 1 Threat before any modifiers come into play. The Warrior who is tanking will always want to make sure their threat is at a higher level than the Threat of their party or raid members. Following this, the Warrior can make use of specific abilities which maximize his or her Threat potential. This is done by the intelligent use of abilities, gear, threat-producing talents, and basic positioning in relation to party members.
While 1 Damage is equivalent to 1 Threat, it takes 2 points of Healing to amount to 1 Threat. Also, Threat is only produced by effective healing -- overhealing produces no Threat.
Threat does not decay in combat. It can be reduced through the use of several mechanics such as Knockback. However, under normal circumstances Threat will never decay.
Pulling and Holding Aggro (100/110/130 Rule)
Tank Baseline _______________________ 100%
Melee Range Aggro Gain _______________ 110%
Ranged Aggro Gain ___________________ 130%
The above chart represents the balance of when a player will pull aggro from the tank. To get aggro, a player in melee range must exceed the total threat of the current player with aggro by 10%. If the player is at a range, they would have to produce 30% more threat to fully gain aggro.This has some important implications. First, it gives you breathing room to miss a few attacks and not instantly lose aggro -- that seems to be the purpose of the 10% rule. Second, it means that ranged classes take a heavy risk by moving into melee range with a large amount of threat built up -- the mob will instantly change targets to a ranged target who moves into melee. Third, this means that tank switching can be difficult in some cases.
This is where Taunt comes in. The Warrior Taunt immediately places you at 100% aggro of whoever the highest-Threat player is on the target list for that creature. It also bypasses the 10% rule and does not require you build immediate threat. When tanking, it may be helpful to remember that you can let any player you want build Threat for you on a mob -- all you have to do is Taunt the mob to get everything they worked for and make the mob yours. This is also a good argument for Improved Taunt.
One important note about Threat gained from Taunt is that you will only gain the Threat of the current target of your creature. For instance, a ranged class such as a Mage may have 120% of your accumulated Threat, but due to the 100/110/130 rule has not pulled aggro. You would not receive the Threat bonus from that Mage for using your Taunt prior to him actually being targeted by the creature. If a creature is applying a Secondary or Random-Secondary ability where he temporarily changes targets to someone else -- disregarding his normal Threat table -- you will not gain the Threat of the player he is targeting.
Taunt, as well as Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout, also force your target to attack you through a debuff placed on the creature. This debuff can be helpful when the creature may be in danger of immediately moving to or harming another party or raid member. For instance, some mobs will randomly Intercept nearby players, wiping or diminishing their Threat list. A well-timed Taunt or Mocking Blow can cause a creature that may otherwise not return to you to immediately do so. Challenging Shout can be useful as a six-second buffer for an AOE class to safely damaging several nearby targets at once; it can also be useful in temporarily capturing the attention of one or more creatures that may otherwise kill a nearby player.
Aside from the debuff, Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout are dissimilar to Taunt and will not give you a Threat gain in relation to another player. Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout are six second targetting debuffs; Taunt is three.
Taunt falls under the rules of Spell Resistance. For the purposes of this game, if there are any critical Taunt fights such as the Four Horsemen of Naxxramas, getting 5% Spell Hit will minimize the chance of resists.
This chart shows multipliers to Threat values that affect the amount of Threat players produce.
Ability Multipliers Percent Multiplier
Defensive Stance / Bear Form ________ 130% (1.3) Multiplicative
Defiance / Feral Instinct ____________ 115% (1.15) Multiplicative
Fury / Battle Stance ________________80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Rogue / Cat Form Druid _____________ 71% (0.71) Multiplicative
Blessing of Salvation ________________70% (0.7) Multiplicative
Tranquil Air Totem ________________ 80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Druid (Subtlety) __________________ 80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Priest (Silent Resolve) ______________ 80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Mage (Frost Channelling) ____________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative
Mage (Burning Soul) _______________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative
Mage (Arcane Subtlety) _____________ 60% (0.6) Multiplicative
Warlock (Destructive Reach) _________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative
Warlock (Imp. Drain Soul) ___________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative
6 comments:
Understanding threat is far more important than a lot of people realize and it's what separates a good DPS'er from a great one.
You have to remember: Most DPS'ers can out damage a tanks threat generation. This means that threat is the limiting factor in damage, not crit rating and attack power. If a DPS get's aggro from a boss it usually means they're dead. And DPS when you're dead is always 0.
Just remember this when I toss on salvation. 30% less threat means you can do 30% more damage without dying.
An example would be Grommet. I always tend to give him might because it's what he wants, and it does make sense to do more damage. But he also draws aggro frequently and we all remember the running gag of this death counter from a few weeks back. I REALLY should be giving him salvation, so truthfully his deaths are also partly my fault. Especially because I should know better. In my guilds raids, DPS'ers would get salvation first and the rest of the buffs only if we had more than 1 paladin. So I'll probably be doing that a lot more in the future. Especially now that people are becoming better geared and threat will be more of an issue.
But to the point: DPS'ers, do yourself a favor, download omen or ktm and USE IT.
"DPS when you're dead is always 0."
I laughed when I read that.
Melime loves busting my balls...
I bust everyones balls. Don't go thinking you're special now.
Plus if you read, I accepted part of the responsibility for your record breaking :)
So in a sense, I am also tied for most deaths.
yeah..salvation is great. 30% less threat = 30% more dps potential, which is huge.
-2% threat to cloak (subtlety enchant) is also a nice think to pickup to help out with threat.
I've been watching my KTM numbers pretty closely the last couple of days. Seems like I can't get it to sustain over 600 threat-per-second with any regularity. Some of the tanking guides talk about sustaining over 800 to 1k per second. Perhaps I need to consider some spec-tweeks. Or perhaps I need some gear from Black Morass.
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