Part 3: Maximizing your Boss Threat
After reviewing just how we go about generating maximum threat, it’s time to take a look at Specs and Enchants.
The Threat Spec - 12/5/44
12/5/44 - It works out pretty amazing that every single point has a purpose to maximizing your threat. This isn’t to say that other specs shouldn’t be used. Just like gear, you should always spec for the encounter. However, if you are presented with a threat intensive fight at your level of progression absolutely nothing beats this spec.
Top Threat Enchants
These are the best tanking threat enchants in each spot, but remember just like gear it’s important to maintain a balance between survival and threat.
Chest: Exceptional Stats (6 to All Stats)
Feet: Surefooted (10 to Hit Rating, etc)
Finger: Stats (4 to All Stats)
Hands: Threat (2% additional Threat)
Head: Presence of Might (15 BV, 10 Stam, 10 Defense Rating)
Legs: Presence of Might (15 BV, 10 Stam, 10 Defense Rating)
Weapon: Executioner (Chance to Ignore 840 Armor for 15 seconds)
Shield: Felsteel Shield Spike (Blocks do 26-38 Damage)
Shoulder: N/A (no threat enchants that are good here)
Wrist: Stats (4 to All Stats)
Back: Greater Agility (12 Agility)
Bonus - Top Threat Gems
1. Rigid Lionseye (10 to Hit Rating)
2. Rigid Dawnstone (8 to Hit Rating)
By far the best way to gem your gear for additional threat is to stack Hit Rating gems. Keep in mind you aren’t going to want to go beyond 142 Buffed Hit Rating because Hit Rating will offer you no additional threat after this point.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Hey! That’s my spec!
These are some very helpful posts Ven. Thank you.
Jess
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March 17th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Folks might want to also consider eating Spicy Hot Crawdad (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33872) to increase your +hit. Simple and cheap way to get a threat boost.
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flyte reply on June 5, 2008 12:33 am:
Seems to be Spicy Hot Talbuk but good idea!
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March 17th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
You forgot the new kick-ass meta gem that will be introduced with 2.4: [item]Eternal Earthstorm Diamond[/item].
And, I was hoping you could go a bit more into detail about the (optional) threat-important parts of the spec. (Cruelty vs. Imp. HS vs. Anger Management vs. Imp Bloodrage)
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March 17th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Damn, how do those item links work again?
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March 17th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Imp Blood rage is nice if you don’t have misdirects for fast shield slams. But you can certainly do with out it. Other than the start of the fight, it doesn’t make a big difference.
Cruelty is awesome. A nice threat boost.
Imp. HS really only comes into play when you already have enough rage to keep HS swinging, at which point you should have pretty good TPS to start with.
Imp. sunder on the other hand can help keep your devastates going when your rage starved, which can make a difference.
Anger management is nice, but really only comes into play if you’re going that deep into arms.
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March 18th, 2008 at 6:23 am
12/5/44 is very good for anyone, especially off tanks. Anything that can reduce rage cost or help gain rage is extremely helpful. Having to maintain secondary aggro on non-tauntable bosses is all about efficient rage management. Bloodrage/Imp Bloodrage can be used for more than just initial pulls contrary to popular belief.
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March 18th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Saying those talents are only ‘nice’ and describing how they are situational is missing the point. The whole idea is that this spec is purely for threat generation and with that in mind, there simply are no other talents you could possibly take in place of those ‘nice’ talents.
On a side note, once you have the gear to easily reach the defense cap you can drop a point out of Anticipation (but not more than one because it will screw up access to higher talent tiers) and put it somewhere more useful for threat generation - I personally put that spare point into Undbridled Wrath.
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March 18th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I also make sure if i do not have windfury to use sharpening stones to get every bit of threat also. either adamantite or fel iron stones
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March 18th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I have been using this spec for a couple weeks and love it. On alar I man the 4th platform. 1 Bloodrage as soon as we engage + anger management has my rage bar full by the time the bird gets to me. Imp Bloodrage is not just for initial pulls its for boss fights as well. I use it every cooldown on VR and soaking Gruul. Quick note on hit rating. 142 is the cap against a level 73 mob. The cap drops to ~96 for lvl 72 (6% i believe). This can make a big difference in how you gear for threat on trash/heroics vs raid bosses.
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March 18th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
This is very similar to the spec I use of 11/7/43. I in fact go 2/3 heroic strike, 1/3 tactical mastery (i love being able to charge, Defstance, Thunderclap in 5mans and never found a use for imp bloodrage where I missed it) and 0/2 imp bloodrage, but took 2/5 Imp Demo Shout to cap out the physical damage reduction of it (something like a 4-5% additional reduction in damage taken for 2 points).
This is definitely my preferred all-round spec after so much time tanking. I really really don’t miss any of the other talents at all, am totally addicted to AM in a tanking build, and the only talent I wish I had at times was Imp Def Stance, but the more I do the maths on how much reduction that’s worth, it just never feels worth dropping what i consider now to be “vital” talents for holding aggro comfortably.
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March 19th, 2008 at 11:01 am
What I usually did to keep a boss or sub-boss to “stick” to me was to throw up a taunt on it when I saw threat just about to overtake me on Omen. I’m at the base 8/5/48 right now, but was gonna tinker it a bit to help my TPS out for Gruuls since my gear is steadily improving. This is now saved. =D
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March 19th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
A) bosses are almost all immune to taunt
B) If someone is ‘about’ to overtake you then taunting accomplishes nothing except gauranteeing focus - which you already had - and making sure taunt is on CD for 10 seconds when the person ‘about’ to overtake you actually does overtake you.
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March 19th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
That’s the spec I’ve been using forever now.
Good stuff!
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March 19th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Something is misleading me then since Omen is reporting (for instance) this hunter is about to pass me in threat, i throw up taunt, he surpasses me in threat and the mob or boss i’m tanking is still stuck on me. He keeps passing me and has for instance, 117k threat when I have 100k and the mob is still stuck on me. : / As for the bosses, i guess i’m talking more of the instance dungeon bosses and not the raid type. The Bog Lord in SP for example. I’m running reg instance runs for ppl who are trying to get gear for kara as well as heroics. We only raid 2x a week atm and even then we barely make it thru kara..
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March 19th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Hao, that sounds like the 110%/130% rule to me. Melee dps must do 110% of your threat to pull aggro and ranged dps would need 130% of your threat to pull aggro. In theory.
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March 19th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
never heard of that rule before Jader. In this case, the hunter wouldn’t pull agrro since he is 117% of my threat. We always told the hunter to lay off dps since he always is about that much ahead of our tanks in DPS. I’m definitely not testing the limits of that theory during a raid, but would be interesting to see in an instance dungeon. Thanks for the info and I am a little more smarter now.
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March 19th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Course I wouldn’t recommend encouraging dps to pass you on Omen threat bars. Something like a miss from the tank and a crit from a dps could quickly change things. Also, you mentioned that “this hunter is about to pass me in threat, i throw up taunt…”. Be careful with that. If he’s “about to pass” and you hit Taunt, you’ll actually go down to his level, his dps will keep increasing and adding threat, and Taunt will be on cooldown.
Then again, I’m a noob. I’ve read lots and try to put it into practice, but I have an awful lot to learn.
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March 19th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Ya, i’m definitely not encouraging any dps to pass the tank.
He always passes the tanks anyways and nothing happens, so i’m wondering why now knowing taunt definitely has nothing to do with it. I only started tanking maybe 4months ago at the earliest myself so any good info i can get will help me out.
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Valdenex reply on June 22, 2008 4:10 pm:
It could be that he’s feigning death and Omen isn’t picking it up. After all, he is a hunter in a raid…if he’s not feigning death when he gets high up on aggro then someone needs to kick him in the shin.
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March 20th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Taunt sets your threat equal to the highest threat on the mob, and gives you focus. In the hunter scenario, his threat can be at 129% of yours, and you will remain the focus, as long as he’s at range. When you taunt, your threat level gets set equal to his, so you immediately get that extra 29% of threat added to your threat. The Hunter now can start building threat again at 129% of your threat, and will not take focus from you. So if Omen is tracking the threat, let them overtake you by 109% if melee, 129% if ranged, and taunt if the situation allows. If the situation doesn’t allow, your dps’s need to lay off and let you catch back up. Great post Vene, quality post.
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March 21st, 2008 at 8:26 am
I would like to retract my statement on taunt mechanics above. I went back to think this through, and this was in a situation where 2 warriors could taunt the targets back and forth between them to quickly build rage. Plus the new post on how wrong I emphasized the point.
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March 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 am
That’s my spec as well. Been using it for months and while I’ve tried some other alternatives, I always come back to this one. The Focused Rage along with the Imp Sunder and Heroic is awesome.
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April 1st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I like my 17/3/41 better. Shuffling 2 from cruelty and 2 from vitality does lose a bit of crit and AP, but I found a huge increase in threat when I picked up impale.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LA0czhbZcZzEtoI0zcxsu
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April 17th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I tried impale for a while.. my problem was Deep Wounds. I’d find that when I needed something to be CCed and I had already hit it, it always seemed to have stupid deep wounds ticking off.
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April 17th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Here’s the spec I’ve been running with for a while.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Li0czZVZfAtoI0zcxst
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May 19th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Vene, wasn’t sure where to post this, but i figured I’d post this here:
I was running on my mage with a warrior who used to be in our guild but left to see more end game 25-man content.
Anyways, he’s decked out in T5/T6 including the unbreakable will. So he’s a rawr I can’t be killed tank. But I look at his gear and he has barely 50+ hit rating and no expertise in his gear.
Recount showed that he was missing/dodging/parrying about 15% of the time. Now my mage only does about 900-1000 dps. But I had no issues pulling from this guy without evening using cooldowns.
I attempted to tell him in vent that he needed more hit/expertise because while it’s great to be indestructible if your threat isn’t very good it doesn’t help.
He replied with: “I don’t really gear for 5-mans”. I said “well yeah but you need threat in 25-mans too”. He replied with “25-man gearing is a lot different from five mans”.
Now this is where my question comes in:
Is there truth to this 25-man gearing is different comment? As in, how is it that in a 25-man raid, this guy can apparently function fine with warlocks who may be doing 1500+ dps? yet he can’t hold off my lonely 900 dps mage. I mean you can claim endless rage, but without hit cap and only expertise from spec, is he not wrong? I actually don’t think he wears any badge gear except the unwavering leguards and the chest piece so that might give you an idea.
I figured maybe this could inspire you to make a post about gearing for both and how a person like me (who USED to look up to this guy when my warrior was startin) can explain to these guys that their threat sucks and that if you hear on vent “watch your threat” cuz you’re gonna pull off the main tank, the main tank is not gearing properly for threat. Thoughts? (long winded post sorry).
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Rochelle reply on May 20, 2008 9:06 am:
There was a really big discussion on one of the other threads about how top of the line raid tanking gear doesn’t work well in 5-mans and the tank essentially has to ‘gear down’ in order to play well. Most of the discussion was whether or not it was a good or a bad thing, but what everyone agreed on was that you can’t wear progression raid gear for 5-man content and expect to perform well.
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Hydrix reply on May 20, 2008 10:03 am:
My thoughts exactly. I haven’t seen much 25-man content beyond SSC, but I know that I still carry around a gear set that maximizes my EH while another set maximizes my threat for 5-mans.
This guy seems to think that one can work for both. And his stubborness is what upset me the most.
But really, do you not still try to get your hit rating and expertise to at least a reasonable level for 25-man content, even if you are progressing? I would think at least expertise should be maximized so you don’t get parry gibbed.
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Maho reply on May 27, 2008 6:37 pm:
“At least” getting expertise maximized will require over 200 expertise rating, which to the extent of my knowledge requires you to be exalted with Scryer and have that necklace from the Shattered Sun Offensive.
Vrathmat reply on May 20, 2008 10:08 am:
My guess is that people in his raid have gotten used to having to hold back due to his low threat output and think that it’s normal for a tank (basically, they don’t know what they’re missing). It’s true that he’s gonna have more rage doing harder content, but I agree with you that if he’s only focused on survivability, he’s not doing a very good job at threat generation and obviously doesn’t realize the awesomeness of expertise.
Good tanks don’t wear their best gear to 5-mans, and they should always carry their 3 sets of gear (threat, avoidance, dps). I personally *hate* that we have to do this, but it’s the way Blizzard decided we would have to roll, so we adapt to the system. I suppose by putting this kind of limit on tanks, it indirectly limits everyone, making content more challenging and slowing everyone from burning through stuff quicker. I’ll keep hoping for some kind of change, though….or maybe some 40-slot bags to hold everything in.
Like Rochelle said, you can look back on some of vene’s older posts to find information on maintaining the various tanking gear sets.
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May 20th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Yeah, for progression stuff, expertise and hit are important but you don’t need much of each to have ‘adequate’ levels. And once you have an adequate amount of expertise and hit, it is foolish to stack them in lieu of other survivability stats. The really nice thing about high end gear is that there are enough points in the itemization budget to let you have lots of stam, lots of avoidance and lots of expertise all on the same piece of gear.
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May 20th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I’ll second the “Gear Bag” suggestion!Threat Set, Uncrush Set, Block Set, EH Set, Avoidance…egads.
As for 5-mans I maximize my Expertise and cap my +Hit switching out for tanking threat pieces and filling 1-2 DPS slots. Hit/Expertise Trinkets being particularly useful *cough* Shard of Contempt *cough*.
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May 27th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Heres my question,
If you hit Defense cap without anticipation on the 12/5/44 Build, would you substitue 2 points out of anticipation? And where would those 2 points be better off spent? Maybe Improved Taunt?
Looking for feedback……
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Speidel reply on May 27, 2008 7:48 pm:
Interesting idea, but I think having max anticipation is the way to go. Cuz then you don’t have to worry about assembling defense rating on your gear so much. You have more leeway in getting dodge/hit/expertise rating on your gear with 5/5 aniticipation.
Improved Taunt is good for learning 5 mans, but I’d recommend not getting it. I used it for a while when I was learning, but speccing out of it really helped me to learn to use my cooldowns like mocking blow and challenging shout, which I think are TERRIBLY underused by tanks.
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May 30th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
If I’m MT spec for 25 mans and doing a heroic my gear will be all threat focused, Maximizing Expertise, Hit, SBV etc. I think the spec put forward by the OP is very solid for 5 Mans, 10 Man OT/MT and 25 Man OT as its very versatile.
The 17/3/41 spec suggested is really not needed, bleeds in 5 mans can cause trouble for CC. If you have chosen your gear correctly and know how to produce good amounts of threat the impale talent really wont make any difference. Remember you have to crit in order for the Deep Wounds & Impale to take effect and your most likely going to have only around %8 crit anyway with 3 pts in Cruelty.
The 11/5/45 spec has too many points in Tactical Mastery, I very really stance dance while I’m tanking as Intervene suits most of my needs. Why would you put points into something that you will use %1 of the time instead of a talent that is useful %99 percent of the time.
Good tanking ability in 5 mans / 10 mans will be more important than a few points here or there so all these specs would be fine most of the time.
Improved Taunt is only useful for a boss when your using 2 tanks to taunt off of each other for threat generation.
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