Breakfast Topic: A week with new threat
by Matthew Rossi 
Aug 25th 2011 at 8:00AM
As a DPS player, I'm fairly bored with ZG/ZA. I've seen the inside of these places pretty much every day since patch 4.1 dropped, and while they're well-designed instances, that's too much. (I've made these feelings plain already this week.) But now that threat's been increased across the board, it is actually fun for me to queue up for one of the random heroics from launch and go full tilt. I still have a nasty habit of counting to three before I open up, but aside from that, I'm ripping into mobs as fast as I can and having a ball with it.
So now I ask you: Are you tanking again? Are you queuing up to DPS or heal, secure in the idea that you won't pull threat? Or have these changes turned you off? How are you handling our glorious threat overlords?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Soeroah_the_second Aug 25th 2011 8:08AM
I can still pull threat off Mandokir by Simulacruming his Bloodletting (leve 90 DK ability, please) and using it the very first time he uses it. Sometimes even the second time.
On an unrelated note, today I found out that Bloodletting used on Mandokir by a Death Knight still appears to work if Mandokir kills the Death Knight mid-channel. He Decapitated me, but was still taking 150,000 damage per second or whatever it was, with the red line pointing at my corpse, feebly trying to heal me.
Nina Katarina Aug 25th 2011 8:11AM
I've been queueing as deeps and not pulling threat, it's been great. I've actually had a couple of tanks come through claiming this was their first ever ZA/ZG, and all of them have been quite good. I'm having a scary-good run of PUG luck for the past few days; I hope it's not setting me up for a really rotten karma equalizer.
Last night, though, I was having the worst time swapping threat. I double checked several times to make sure that I had Righteous Fury on, I even swapped to ret aura, but the DK I partner with was still ripping things away very easily on early tank swaps before I had vengeance stacks.
Sharlatan Aug 25th 2011 8:52AM
Yes. its retarded this change. For noob dps who cant watch omen or control their threat on the pull its easier. For decent tanks its a nightmare on tank swaps. As a bear tank I have to catform > cower, on a tank swap or I will rip aggro back, even if I stop using abilities.
Again its Bliz catering to the noob dps (not all dps, just the vocal noob section) and messing stuff up for tanks.
As a tank, I just no longer use LFG, its too boring. Now I dont even have to spend any attention keeping aggro on mobs which dps are nuking diffent targets on whilst I have no vengance or rage, its boring. I'll just run guild groups to get in and get out asap.
Total fail change Imo.
Mortenebra Aug 25th 2011 9:01AM
Yeah, we've bumped into the problem on fights like Occu'thar and other such fights where tank swapping is necessary. Our tanks (a warrior and a bear) learned that they had to be completely hands off during swaps or even run away.
On the bright side, it forces me to be smarter about applying MD mid-fight at crucial points instead of just using it from the onset (which usually gives the other DPS the excuse to go all out from the get-go)!
MattKrotzer Aug 25th 2011 9:20AM
Sharlatan:
For tank swaps, there's a very simple method, but it's surprisingly unpopular.
STOP HITTING BUTTONS.
It works. Really.
With the fast-Vengeance in place, and threat being what it is, taking 3-4 seconds to just not hit the buttons for your attacks should make a swap 100% reliable. And if your raid relies on tank DPS to have 100% uptime, then the DPS should all crawl in a pit of shame and die.
brain314 Aug 25th 2011 10:02AM
@MattKrotzer
"STOP HITTING BUTTONS."
Ironically, that should have been the same solution to the "DPS is pulling too much threat" problem.
Bellajtok Aug 25th 2011 10:40AM
@brain
I see this a lot, and I really dislike it. Adapting the UI so even new players can tell who the tank's target is should have been the very first solution, or giving them a tutorial on better ways to do so. When dps are attacking the right target there's less of a problem. Always. The second solution is to give more dps specs threat management abilities- most classes that can perform another role don't have any, while mages (for example) have two. Then increasing threat for tanks. But telling the dps to stop doing their job, because that is just wrong on so many levels. You don't ask a healer to stop healing or the tank to stop getting threat (except in the case of tank switching noted above).
Sorry for the block of text. Just venting some pre- threat change RDF grievances.
Bellajtok Aug 25th 2011 10:43AM
@brain
I see this a lot, and I really dislike it. Adapting the UI so even new players can tell who the tank's target is should have been the very first solution, or giving them a tutorial on better ways to do so. When dps are attacking the right target there's less of a problem. Always. The second solution is to give more dps specs threat management abilities- most classes that can perform another role don't have any, while mages (for example) have two. Then increasing threat for tanks. But telling the dps to stop doing their job, because that is just wrong on so many levels. You don't ask a healer to stop healing or the tank to stop getting threat (except in the case of tank switching noted above).
Sorry for the block of text. Just venting some pre- threat change RDF grievances.
Bellajtok Aug 25th 2011 10:46AM
Curse you comment system! Downvote the spare to oblivion.
Natsumi Aug 25th 2011 10:47AM
@brain314
A DPS that isn't "hitting buttons" isn't doing their job.
A tank that is not tanking doesn't NEED to push any buttons, they are doing their job by letting the other tank take the boss. If they don't hit buttons for a few seconds you're losing minimal DPS that likely won't make you hit the enrage timer. Having your top DPS stop is losing significant DPS, making it much more likely that you will hit the enrage timer.
MATH TIME!!!
Tank DPS is around 8kDPS, so if you stop hitting buttons for 5 seconds to let another tank take the boss that's a loss of 30k damage (barring crits). Not many boss fights are lost by 40k.
Your average DPSer does about 25k DPS, so if they stop hitting buttons for 5 seconds to let a tank get ahead on threat again, that's a loss of 125k Damage (barring crits) AND they'll likely have to do this several times over the course of the fight because they are outpacing your threat, meaning the loss is likely somewhere around 400k damage lost PER DPS THAT HAS TO DO THIS. I've seen MANY wipes with a boss at less than 400k, and several enrages hit due to not enough DPS on the boss, all because I, and other DPSers, paid more attention to Omen than I should have to. I play a Warrior, I have no threat dump, so how am I supposed to manage my threat other than to put the kill at risk by stopping DPS or get murdered by the boss and hope that I can get a Battle Rez?
ahsanali Aug 25th 2011 11:25AM
You can also click off the vengeance buff if you want to lose aggro... it does not take very long to build up again anymore.
vendeurfrancais Aug 25th 2011 12:22PM
dps stopping dps to lower their threat and not die has been a part of wow since its conception. most of these threat drops are relatively new and recent additions. previously, tank threat was even worse, and dps had to wait til 5 sunders to start dps, or wait 10 seconds, or similar ideas. the job of dps is to kill the boss in a timely manner and not die in the process. most of the time they don't have to break dps chart records in order to do so, and taking threat from the tank is unnecessary. the tanks job is keeping the boss attacking him, and the healers job is keeping the tank alive and at a secondary level, keeping dps alive. no one asks the tank to stop tanking the boss because thats his job, but being utterly blind to your own survival and doing 655% of the tanks dps is rather stupid and suicidal and will get you killed, and not dying is part of the dps job. (655%, tanks now have a 500% ratio of threat to damage, and you have to do 131% of their threat to pull off of them.)
vendeurfrancais Aug 25th 2011 12:38PM
I see many more fights lost because a dps pulled aggro and died and lost the couple million they would have done if they'd not died. also, make friends with your fellow warriors and paladins and get them to intervene/hand of salvation you. salv is a 20% threat drop over 10 seconds, or just 10 seconds where you don't generate threat if glyphed, and intervene is a 10% threat drop. it doesn't sound like much, but in multi tank fights, i often intervene the top threat targets on omen many times over the course of a fight. that 10% is more powerful than you'd realize.
math time! if a tank is doing 8k dps(and thats a bit low for tanks now) you have to do over 44000 threat per second to pull of him under the new improvements.
brain314 Aug 26th 2011 6:29PM
A number of these comments complaining that a DPS not doing anything isn't doing his job are forgetting that these threat changes are mostly due to undergeared tanks PUGing with overgeared DPS. If you have an overgeard DPS in a 5-man dungeon, you do not need to eck out as much DPS as possible to win because that would be overkill, and your overkill may wipe or seriously disrupt the group.
In a guild or raid group, people are more responsive to everyone else's ability and gear, and adjust accordingly so as the not pull aggro.
Calicia Aug 25th 2011 8:12AM
I haven't noticed much of a difference as a rogue. Then again, I always ToT the tank before a pull. I'm sure the threat change has prevented me from drawing aggro here and there when I pop Adrenaline Rush with Blade Flurry active, but rogues have enough threat mitigation that I rarely had a problem before the change.
MusedMoose Aug 25th 2011 8:12AM
I haven't had a chance to run many dungeons over the past week, as my WoW time has been taken up by other stuff. But I did take my ret paladin on a few runs last weekend, and *damn*, I could tell the difference. The tank was just plowing through stuff, pulling groups and holding them even as he went to pull other groups. I did get aggro a time or two, but the group as a whole kicked enough ass that it wasn't a problem. ^_^ The way things were before, I'm certain it wouldn't have gone as well.
What I've been doing is leveling a Horde-side paladin alt to practice tanking on, since I want to tank with my paladin and leaping in at level 37 with little practice doesn't seem like the best idea. But the threat change, and the promise of more changes to come, has really gotten me interested in tanking again. I doubt I'm the only one. Kudos to Blizzard for the change.
Bellajtok Aug 25th 2011 9:54AM
While leveling my beloved resto druid from 80 to 85, I have also noticed a lot of 85 tanks and tanks stating that they haven't tanked in a long time, so I like to think that these are former non-tanks who are now willing to give tanking a shot and are trying to practice. It gives me a good deal of hope for healing heroics, although I shudder to consider people trying to learn to tank in those heroics. I do feel like this change has made tanking less of a job for them, which is nice. And hopefully less of them will drop group the one time I get tunnel vision.
MattKrotzer Aug 25th 2011 8:16AM
I SHOULD be hitting the RDF, but despite still needing the Valor Points, I've only capped them once since 4.3 hit. I've just seen all of the instances so many times, that it just feels too much like a grind, despite being able to nearly solo some of them. (Which comes in handy, with some of the groups I've gotten.)
Gendou Aug 25th 2011 9:02AM
That's pretty much the way I feel, which is sad.
MattKrotzer Aug 25th 2011 9:06AM
I know. I feel guilty about it, because I could certainly be helping my guild more if I got a bit of gear from VP... but I just can't find the time or motivation to do it.
Instead, I try to provide exceptional levels of performance, which usually is more important than the gear, anyway.