Prot Mythic Krosus tank threat issues

[Menox]

Hey guys,

I am noticing a fairly large difference in threat generation between myself and our druid, I am having to hamstring my rotation in order to not pull aggro during the times where he is active tank. I am using Indom which reduces my dps/threat even further than if i were to use deva, although I am not sure I would want to use devastator on Krosus progression, the extra HP just helps pad the damage intake a bit. We have not experienced a threat issue prior to Krosus, but it seems to be really prevalent on this boss, when he taunts I more or less drop to auto attacks only and just use IP@ 60 rage because I cannot shield slam or revenge to get some vengeance weaving in without risking aggro. He is looking to maybe swap some survivability for DPS next time we go back, is this common among warriors working on/farming mythic Krosus? Any tips?

A side note, what personal/externals do you find works well for each slam? Any tips to help mitigate some damage besides spell reflect, I am struggling with living around add set #2, it may be due to having more adds than wed like but the damage intake at that wave really starts to ramp up (people die too and thats generally where we are at on our pulls currently so it may not be a real issue once we get the mechanical portion cleaned up a bit).

Here are some logs to look at if that helps, keep in mind my rotation is weak and dps low due to the rotation hamstringing I am doing to avoid overaggroing (we also 4 healed for most of the night just to see further in the fight, on kill attempts it will likely be 3 heals)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...iew=analytical

[Deleted]

In order for you to actually overaggro your co-tank after him taunting you need to be either using your burst or steadily doing like 100k dps more than him. Neither of this seems to be the case. The culprit is most probably that he is going out of melee range of the boss, which causes Krossus to switch back to you. Although during our progression our tanks were also complaining that the boss would switch back to the previous tank within the first 3sec of the taunt (during which time he should be normally fixated on the taunting tank). Maybe there is some sort of a bug or something we are missing?

It is certainly undesirable for you and your whole raid for you to be doing such low dps and take increased damage due to reduced rage gain.

In terms of improving your playstyle you need to do maximum damage - pick devastator. Heavy Repercussion does nothing for you on this fight, you need to spec into full blown magic mitigation - pick Anger Management and Booming Voice (although I expect some people on these forums to disagree with me on this one :P).

[paoani]

So first things first, I'll focus on you because it's the class I actually play.

I would very strongly recommend using Devastator for Krosus. Even barring the extra rage generation (Which *is* significant even on a high damage fight like krosus), the extra dps is very important for the fight. In an ideal world both tanks are doing a combined ~610k. Secondly, I found AM+BV to be the best option for our group for this fight. It's a small net survivability loss compared to vengeance+AM, but is a significant amount more dps. Heavy Repercussions is doing practically nothing for you on this fight, so AM is the clear choice regardless of Vengeance or BV.

With regards to cooldowns: Tank swaps are approximately 25-30s apart throughout the entire fight, so you can always use SR on every swap. Personally this is my biggest area that still needs improvement, but it should be used during the last 6-8s of your stacks before you taunt, when both tanks are taking very high damage. Similarly with AM you can use Demo shout for every other tank swap. If you're not using BV, you should demo shout every other time your co-tank taunts, as it will last the entire duration until your stacks fall. If you are using BV, use it close to on cooldown for maximum damage output. For the slams I was able to alternate Shield Wall and Last Stand for each slam that needed soaking, with a Sac from one of our paladins on every bridge break.

On the note of your bear:

I can't comment too many specifics as I don't play guardian, but the biggest things that helped us were having our bear use Rage of the Sleeper after getting the first stack after on the very first tank swap. Rage of the Sleeper will deal damage on every single tick of the dot, and provides an incredibly significant amount of burst threat.

On the note of healers and tank coordination:

I would very strongly recommend using 3 healers from the outset. The fight gets mechanically easier at it progresses, so practicing the later phases is of comparatively low value against gaining realistic healing experience for the harder portion of the fight.

On the very first tank swap, you can have your paladin BoP you at ~8s left on your dot to cover both the first slam and allow you to go full dps on the boss without worrying about threat.

You and your co-tank need to make sure that your are swapping as often as is possible. The dot is extremely significant and even a single extra stack can be fatal at the wrong time (during bridge break for example).


I apologize for being a bit all-over the place, I was mostly just laying out my thoughts as they occurred to me. For reference, here are the logs of our Krosus kill: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

[Menox]

I have indom mainly due to the threat issues, i feel if i take dev theres no way i wont just overaggro to hell and back, if we get close to kill/enrage I will swap to dev if that damage is the make or break point, the extra health from indom works well with prydaz and the bracers, each gives me a % of hp benefit and IP is the best active mitigation for the fight so the stronger IPs from indom again work pretty well against the hellish magic dot. With the stacks renewing issue indom just feels better for progression and letting me live longer during the fight, dev may be the kill talent though, I will keep an eye on that as we get in deeper consistently.

I will try experimenting with a couple of these talent suggestions next night we are in there.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Soilx3]

In order for you to actually overaggro your co-tank after him taunting you need to be either using your burst or steadily doing like 100k dps more than him. Neither of this seems to be the case. The culprit is most probably that he is going out of melee range of the boss, which causes Krossus to switch back to you. Although during our progression our tanks were also complaining that the boss would switch back to the previous tank within the first 3sec of the taunt (during which time he should be normally fixated on the taunting tank). Maybe there is some sort of a bug or something we are missing?

It is certainly undesirable for you and your whole raid for you to be doing such low dps and take increased damage due to reduced rage gain.

In terms of improving your playstyle you need to do maximum damage - pick devastator. Heavy Repercussion does nothing for you on this fight, you need to spec into full blown magic mitigation - pick Anger Management and Booming Voice (although I expect some people on these forums to disagree with me on this one :P).

I'm sorry but this is horseshit - overaggroing is absolutely an issue right now for us. I'm tanking with a druid who parses 90th percentile or over steadily, and overaggro very easily unless he spams frenzied regen.

To OP - yeah it's common, it's not your fault, it's not your co-tanks fault, and right now there's not much you can do about it. Then again if you're not experiencing it on other fights, maybe he is indeed moving out of range or something else is happening. For me (and many others from what I've heard), overaggroing is a problem across the board.

Regarding Dev vs Indom, Dev is simply better in every single scenario except if you're literally getting oneshot and the extra hp would save you. The increased rage generation from using Devastator results in more (and thus bigger) IPs than the Indom IP increase.

Survivabilitywise, don't soak puddles unless you're absolutely safe, the damage intake is high enough.

[Deleted]

I'm sorry but this is horseshit - overaggroing is absolutely an issue right now for us. I'm tanking with a druid who parses 90th percentile or over steadily, and overaggro very easily unless he spams frenzied regen.

To OP - yeah it's common, it's not your fault, it's not your co-tanks fault, and right now there's not much you can do about it. Then again if you're not experiencing it on other fights, maybe he is indeed moving out of range or something else is happening. For me (and many others from what I've heard), overaggroing is a problem across the board.

Regarding Dev vs Indom, Dev is simply better in every single scenario except if you're literally getting oneshot and the extra hp would save you. The increased rage generation from using Devastator results in more (and thus bigger) IPs than the Indom IP increase.

Survivabilitywise, don't soak puddles unless you're absolutely safe, the damage intake is high enough.

As someone who has tanked war and guardian I can say the problem mostly stems from Guardian. The threat generation is pretty terrible in comparison to the other tanks but hey - gotta be bad at something right?

I always had threat issues on Guardian, have never had threat issues on War (unless it's another Druid I'm tanking with).

[paoani]

To OP - yeah it's common, it's not your fault, it's not your co-tanks fault, and right now there's not much you can do about it. Then again if you're not experiencing it on other fights, maybe he is indeed moving out of range or something else is happening. For me (and many others from what I've heard), overaggroing is a problem across the board.

I'm going to be a bit crass here.

Threat issues are absolutely the fault of both you and your co-tank. Understanding how threat works and properly using cooldowns to maximize your damage without pulling threat is a skill for everyone to learn. Using dps cooldowns without regards to threat will cause problems, but using them intelligently will not.

Using my own log as an example: On the pull our druid is holding a mangle to use during the 200% threat window from taunting to gain a snap lead. Knowing that he's also using major dps cooldowns (legendary trinket, Rage of the sleeper) and that I have the 8 second window from BoP when I can't be meleed, I can freely use my DPS cooldowns during this time (often allowing me to get a second battle cry into my old war potion). On the second tank swap, raw threat on the boss is still comparatively low, so the damage differential between us means I will pull threat quickly. On this swap I hold cooldowns until just before I need to get aggro anyway and play more defensively so that I will not pull threat off the bear. Later the in the fight, I use DPS cooldowns timed purely for optimal dps because the raw threat value on the boss from both of us is high enough that I will not generate enough threat to pull aggro.

Toward OP, my bear co-tank managed only 10-20% (it looks like your bear's damage is falling off significantly on longer pulls?) more dps than yours, but I was able to do over double your damage without threat issues by understanding how threat works and playing around it. Can you go ham at all times? No. Can you run a high dps setup without causing threat issues? Absolutely.

If I can manage 95th percentile with a low-threat co-tank who is in the ~50th percentile for damage, there's very little excuse for threat issues.

[Soilx3]

I'm going to be a bit crass here.

Threat issues are absolutely the fault of both you and your co-tank. Understanding how threat works and properly using cooldowns to maximize your damage without pulling threat is a skill for everyone to learn. Using dps cooldowns without regards to threat will cause problems, but using them intelligently will not.

Using my own log as an example: On the pull our druid is holding a mangle to use during the 200% threat window from taunting to gain a snap lead. Knowing that he's also using major dps cooldowns (legendary trinket, Rage of the sleeper) and that I have the 8 second window from BoP when I can't be meleed, I can freely use my DPS cooldowns during this time (often allowing me to get a second battle cry into my old war potion). On the second tank swap, raw threat on the boss is still comparatively low, so the damage differential between us means I will pull threat quickly. On this swap I hold cooldowns until just before I need to get aggro anyway and play more defensively so that I will not pull threat off the bear. Later the in the fight, I use DPS cooldowns timed purely for optimal dps because the raw threat value on the boss from both of us is high enough that I will not generate enough threat to pull aggro.

Toward OP, my bear co-tank managed only 10-20% (it looks like your bear's damage is falling off significantly on longer pulls?) more dps than yours, but I was able to do over double your damage without threat issues by understanding how threat works and playing around it. Can you go ham at all times? No. Can you run a high dps setup without causing threat issues? Absolutely.

If I can manage 95th percentile with a low-threat co-tank who is in the ~50th percentile for damage, there's very little excuse for threat issues.

Never did I say it's something that can't be dealt with, that doesn't mean it's not a problem though. If you're saving cooldowns or "playing defensively" whatever that means, you're holding back and doing less damage. Threat hasn't really been a thing to worry about since.. Vanilla? Which makes me think this isn't what blizzard intended.

Good tips nonetheless.

[Llarold]

Both of you should use Omen and be hyper-vigilant about inadvertent threat changes. Nothing more to it.

[paoani]

Never did I say it's something that can't be dealt with, that doesn't mean it's not a problem though. If you're saving cooldowns or "playing defensively" whatever that means, you're holding back and doing less damage. Threat hasn't really been a thing to worry about since.. Vanilla? Which makes me think this isn't what blizzard intended.

Good tips nonetheless.

Absolutely, it's still a problem. My point is more that failing to accommodate difficulties like threat issues is a failing on the part of all involved. Is bear threat comparatively low? Absolutely. Is it something that can't be played around? Absolutely not. By virtue of how threat works, it's a very dynamic problem that involves efforts from both tanks. While, as you mention, threat has been a very minor concern for multiple expansions, it's still a mechanic that requires understanding as a tank to properly succeed. I was a bit blunt because your comment hit on a pet peeve of mine, but the intention of my comment is too educate on the nature of the issue. Threat is a balancing act between the tanks to squeeze out maximum performance; one that requires knowledge and communication between both parties (and to an extent your healing core).

A very large number of tanking issues that I come across in this forum are best solved by simply communicating with your raid members.

Tanking is by its very nature an extremely cooperative role, and my comment was aimed at illustrating that.

[Lysozyme]

Have your druid read this: http://pastebin.com/txMNQrvh

Also, a new 'threat' page was just released on Warcraftlogs, and it might help you out with checking when you lost threat due to overaggro / if someone was out of range / etc. Unfortunately it doesn't have much more information than that because threat isn't stored in the combat log (something WCL can't do anything about)