Warrior and DK threat bug hotfixed
by Eliah Hecht 
Jan 14th 2009 at 8:00PM
My own Death Knight is not quite up to raid tanking yet; I've got a few more levels to go on that one. However, some players have noticed that DK threat, especially on single targets, seems a bit low - significantly lower than the other three tank classes, to the extent that the tanks were having trouble keeping threat against high DPS.
It turns out that there was a slightly complicated bug involving Frost Presence, the foundation of DK tanking. It went like this:
- Some aspects of Frost Presence don't go away when you die, and some do (this is the bug).
- Part of the threat boost, however, does go away when you die.
- When you res and come back without changing presences, the game doesn't reapply Frost Presence, because it sees that you already have some of the effects of it.
- However, you still don't have all of the threat boost.
So potentially, DKs who die and come back without switching to another presence (Blood or Unholy) and then back to Frost were missing out on 15% of the 45% threat that Frost Presence brings. This has been hotfixed now, so there is no further need to worry about it. If you saw your DK threat go up a lot yesterday, that's probably why.
Ghostcrawler adds that "it is likely" that Defensive Stance was also being affected by this bug, although I haven't seen any prot warriors complaining about their threat since 3.0 hit.
Filed under: Bugs, Raiding, Death Knight
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Chris Jan 14th 2009 8:08PM
I haven't noticed it with defensive stance, but I'll try shifting stances after my next wipe and see if I notice anything.
Drakkenfyre Jan 14th 2009 10:46PM
Chris, if you mean test out to see the drop, it would be kind of hard, seeing as the hotfix has already gone in, lol.
Kurt Jan 14th 2009 8:33PM
This might explain why sometimes threat generation has felt variable on my warrior. It will be interesting to see if it seems more consistent now.
Moody Loner Jan 14th 2009 8:22PM
This explains why everyone was getting away from me in HoL yesterday.
Osi Jan 14th 2009 8:25PM
Might want to read what you posted .. it was not hotfixed .. it will be hotfixed ... huge difference.
Eliah Hecht Jan 14th 2009 8:25PM
GC said "by the time you read this, the bug should have been hotfixed." His post was yesterday. Therefore, I assume the hotfix is in place already.
Osi Jan 14th 2009 8:27PM
It would of helped if I could read .. dang nabbit. It turned out his first sentence was over-written by a later one . go figure :P
wes Jan 14th 2009 8:25PM
Wow, i might actually re-roll tank again after hearing this.
I gave up tanking because I just assumed i just didn't "get" the mechanics of threat or something. Oftentimes i'd do alright tanking and have zero problems holding threat, but when it rained, it poured for me. Either i had no problem with threat, the group did alright, and we flew through the dungeon, or once i died once, we kept dying because of threat going everywhere.
This makes a lot of sense now. I'm glad its fixed. maybe my DK will live to see a life of tanking once again
Cyanea Jan 14th 2009 8:31PM
You know...that would answer why we did fine in CoT until we wiped...then we couldn't make it through a single pull.
Sean Riley Jan 14th 2009 8:42PM
I can see why warriors might not notice though -- I understand Death Knights aren't NEARLY as prone to stance-dancing as warriors are. With my warrior it's a constant hopping around, so even if I lost a bit of threat for a while, it wouldn't last long.
jbodar Jan 14th 2009 10:34PM
I thought Warrior tanks were done stance dancing, with Warbringer, Berzerker Rage in any stance, and our new AOE threat abilities? Are you not Prot-spec or am I missing something? I can't think of any good reason I'd want to switch out of Def stance ATM.
Sean Riley Jan 14th 2009 11:33PM
Beserker can do what now?
Holy cow you're right.
OK, so first reason is ignorance. (By me.) Heh.
Eldoron Jan 14th 2009 10:02PM
perhaps they havent, but I was complaining about prot warr threat as enhancement shaman, overaggroing them by single dps...
Tushar Bharadia Jan 14th 2009 10:04PM
Just tanked a Sarth-10 and an Archie run and aggro tonight was all over the place.
People whose threat I can normally double were suddenly pulling aggro left, right and centre., without any major DPS increase (in fact, we brought a couple of recently-dinged guildies along)
Thing is, I can now use this to explain all our silly wipes in Naxx last night :P
Dylucke Jan 14th 2009 11:12PM
"Ghostcrawler adds that "it is likely" that Defensive Stance was also being affected by this bug, although I haven't seen any prot warriors complaining about their threat since 3.0 hit."
^ This is because prot warriors, on the whole, don't complain nearly as much as other classes/specs.
Geiss Jan 14th 2009 11:12PM
you should visit the tanking forums some time - there's an insane amount of QQ from the warriors that they dont meet up to prot pally TPS output.
Matthew Rossi Jan 15th 2009 4:24AM
That's because they don't. Ask a geared prot pally how much threat he can put out, then ask a geared prot warrior. Hopefully the fix to JoL will make it up some.
comradesean Jan 15th 2009 2:34PM
Now compare all that QQ with every other class and you'll understand why warrior's aren't usually the first class to get the public's attention.
You also gotta remember that they're a class that's been stuck with the latency-induced glitchy mechanic called charge since the game came out. I'm fairly certain it's set a record on how long somethings been buggy. ;)
Horixon Jan 15th 2009 6:10PM
Your buggy Charge ain't got nuthin on my broken Vanish
Geiss Jan 15th 2009 6:54AM
The crutch that is JoL and double SOTR threat isnt used by all of us - and those of us that do not use those see a much more comparable DPS and TPS output to prot warriors than those pallies who do abuse those bugs.
Not to discount the fact that the hundreds of pages of discussion revolving (correctly, IMO) around the prot warrior lack of rage regen from avoidance... But that's another matter altogether.