Guardian Damage & Threat

[Coro]

I'm also having problems keeping threat off my pally 'off tank'. I am very low on artifact power, as this character has only been 110 for like 3 weeks now so pally has me beat there.

Anyone mind looking at my logs and tell me what I might be doing wrong or should be doing better to increase my damage / threat?

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/xAH3jm4yMPFDwnct

[lotj]

I'm not perfectly itemized which may be part of it, and I don't have any legendaries either which could also be part of it. I feel like I am pushing the buttons correctly, but maybe not.. I keep Moonfire up, Mangle and Thrash on CD, and swipe whenever I don't have anything else to push. If I'm really overflowing on rage maybe a Maul or two.

Anyone have any grand wisdom here? Am I missing something fundamental or are we just not in a great place damage wise?

There's one thing possible going on, and another thing that is definitely going on.

The "possible thing" is your gear, rotation, or spec might be lacking and that's something you can fix. For gear get versatility if you're lacking, have some haste, follow the relic guidelines (essentially max ilvl -> certain ones depending on need). For rotation make sure you're hitting the procs and prioritizing your abilities correctly, and no matter what anyone says it's not Maul. Read up and work on it.

The "definite thing" is the paladin has to back off when he's not the one eating the hits. Tanks need to cooperate. If he has higher threat than you, then he gets the pull but he needs to back off during the swap. Every single expansion since tanking was extended beyond Warriors has had one tank with ridiculous threat and one tank with pitiful threat, and that's never going to change. No matter where a tank sits on the threat scale, they all need to learn to maximize their threat when they're actively tanking, and not pull threat away from their cotank when they're not.

Not being able to scale back when they need to is the tank equivalent to standing in a breath and fire and not even attempting to move. It's one of the few core mechanics tanks really have in a raid setting. Having tanked while on top before (or with less-than-great cotanks), it can be boring to back off but it's necessary to kill the boss. There are a few fights where it's okay to fight for control (Butcher and now Guarm), but there are more fights where it's absolutely not (Helya) and will wipe the raid as a result.

[exochaft]

The "definite thing" is the paladin has to back off when he's not the one eating the hits. Tanks need to cooperate. If he has higher threat than you, then he gets the pull but he needs to back off during the swap. Every single expansion since tanking was extended beyond Warriors has had one tank with ridiculous threat and one tank with pitiful threat, and that's never going to change. No matter where a tank sits on the threat scale, they all need to learn to maximize their threat when they're actively tanking, and not pull threat away from their cotank when they're not.

This was originally why Vengeance was implemented for tanks back in MoP, to have the active tank generate more threat than an OT. However, we abused the crap out of it, Vengeance changed to Resolve for defensive scaling purposes, and now we have neither in Legion.

Regardless, most of the issues will occur at the start of an encounter or upon initial adds pick-up. As was stated in the quote, tank cooperation is key. If your job is to pick up an add or boss, your co-tank shouldn't blow DPS CD's and go nuts on it immediately unless they know you can handle it. As the initiating tank, front-loading as much damage into your Taunt window goes a long way towards keeping threat. Over the course of an encounter, exceeding 10% of a co-tank's threat gets harder, and threat loss should only occur if a tank is very under-geared or doing something wrong in terms of rotation. If threat loss can't be avoided, then it's the job of the tanks to coordinate taunts and throttle when necessary if maximizing damage is required.

On an anecdotal point, I have observed that pally tank threat does seem to be higher than their damage output should generate, however I haven't had threat issues against a paladin... therefore, I didn't care to look too closely.

[rated]

When I lose threat it's usually because I did something wrong or my co-tank did something wrong.

[teddabear]

It's the healing, I am quite surprised so many Bears don't know this.

Bears do a little more damage 5-15%, but they are way behind some specs in healing. DK's do 100% more healing and Warriors aren't far behind then.

I believe I read the healing component of threat is being removed or heavily modified in 7.1.5.

As for threat bugs it wouldn't be the first time but I haven't heard anything about that.

[Deleted]

@teddabear: A lot of tank selfheals are flagged as "no threat". For example the death strike heal. Curiously though Light of the Protector isn't, which is god damn atrocious. My initial idea of countering this with Frenzied regeneration doesn't work, since it is flagged, because that was necessary or something.

[Protozoa7]

There is a known bug where a tanks healing is transferring to huge threat numbers. Since druids currently do not heal in their normal rotation we are at a disadvantage on this. I tank with a DK cotank and while I can do approx 20k for ST DPS than them it does not equate to higher TPS since the healing he will do squashes that damage margin.

The base spell for Death strike is flagged but the Unholy/Blood version is not. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=49998/d...trike#comments

[Deleted]

The spell you are linking to seems to be the damage component of the ability, since it can crit and I think the heal of DS can't.

[GT4]

Aside from healing, if omen is correct, the DoT portions of Thrash and Moonfire aren't generating any threat either. That means roughly 30% of your total damage doesn't result in any threat generated.

[teddabear]

Ugh, it's atrocious that threat is in such an unfinished state this far into the expansion. They will never understand how much more important class design is.

[Hyttis]

Aside from healing, if omen is correct, the DoT portions of Thrash and Moonfire aren't generating any threat either. That means roughly 30% of your total damage doesn't result in any threat generated.

Using skada's threat meter, and those dots DO generate threat. Moonfire initial does not, even with GG proc.

[NoTriggerFinger]

I have had 0 issues with threat or damage thus far in this expansion. Most logs I see of druids complaining about threat show that they arent prioritizing abilities correctly.

[markos82]

I wanted to ask the same question, I had so much trouble tanking +9 2 days ago that it was driving me mad. I know its mostly because of skittish modifier but it was pain in the... On each pack of adds I would lose aggro on at least 2 mobs ( there was a ilvl888 DH in the group ) but it drove me mad. On boss its not a problem, you can taunt off, but on adds i find it crazy. Is there anything I need to do, or tell them to wait 2sec to build up aggro, or something. Guardian is not my ms so I might be doing something wrong.

[Protozoa7]

I wanted to ask the same question, I had so much trouble tanking +9 2 days ago that it was driving me mad. I know its mostly because of skittish modifier but it was pain in the... On each pack of adds I would lose aggro on at least 2 mobs ( there was a ilvl888 DH in the group ) but it drove me mad. On boss its not a problem, you can taunt off, but on adds i find it crazy. Is there anything I need to do, or tell them to wait 2sec to build up aggro, or something. Guardian is not my ms so I might be doing something wrong.

That is just what skittish does. Your best bet is to hold taunt and use it on the target with the highest HP then throw a mangle into the 2nd one to try and get threat back. Be prepared to taunt during skittish. Alot.

[Selerian]

I have had 0 issues with threat or damage thus far in this expansion. Most logs I see of druids complaining about threat show that they arent prioritizing abilities correctly.

Guardian has aggro problems (in comparison to other tanks) and that's a fact. I can't imagine what abilities you're referring to that are not used correctly by the plebs, care to elaborate?

[NoTriggerFinger]

Guardian has aggro problems (in comparison to other tanks) and that's a fact. I can't imagine what abilities you're referring to that are not used correctly by the plebs, care to elaborate?

Even just looking at the logs posted on this thread earlier on ursoc he only had 19 mangles. Every fight mangle isnt being used to max efficiency. If a paladin is pulling off of you with wings when you are tanking you need to prioritize rage+barkskin for this time. If its a DK time it with dancing rune weapon. And then press the right buttons.

[Selerian]

Even just looking at the logs posted on this thread earlier on ursoc he only had 19 mangles. Every fight mangle isnt being used to max efficiency. If a paladin is pulling off of you with wings when you are tanking you need to prioritize rage+barkskin for this time. If its a DK time it with dancing rune weapon. And then press the right buttons.

I am constantly at the 98-99% of dps performance and still sometimes have aggro issues. Not that frequent obviously, but even those rare ones are ridiculously annoying based on my damage.

[NoTriggerFinger]

I am constantly at the 98-99% of dps performance and still sometimes have aggro issues. Not that frequent obviously, but even those rare ones are ridiculously annoying based on my damage.

As am I, I know on my 99% parsing DK that as a DK I can pull more threat then on my druid but people arent going to run into nearly as many problems if they play correctly. Yes a winged pally with a shit ton of avengers shield procs or one that drops 6 sotr right away is going to pull threat. But if you are parsing low you are going to have threat and damage issues because you are playing incorrectly. Just a little bit of communication will fix the little issues that can pop up. Any tank played like shit can have threat pulled off of them by a tank performing correctly.

[Selerian]

The thing is, it's not a matter of tanking mechanics, since the other tanks don't have any issues at all, regardless of playing well or not. Threat generation is problematic with guardian druids. It's not gamebreaking but it's annoying af, they should address it and "l2p answers" to the OP are unfair and incorrect, since the issue is real.