Guardian threat vs other classes.

[Gymertron]

So I'm finding that threat (certainly initial threat anyway) is a real issue for me right now. Once its built up everything is fine, but I simply cannot compete right now with any other tanking class I encounter.

My focus (as a fairly new druid) has been on getting my priority right, and concentrating on positioning when I have a mob pack or boss on me. When it comes to initial threat though I get eaten alive by our Paladin, or at the top of the fight when our boomer spikes huge damage from procs and I just can't get the boss back on me (talking Stone Guard here btw). Taunts don't even seem to be working, though we have noticed a lot of taunt failures recently where the ability goes on cooldown and nothing happens so I don't know if thats a bug or...

You'll see on my armory that I am not currently hit or expertise capped, but I got a new head and neck today and haven't visited the reforger yet. I was capped on both during the raid that is linked below. Also, regarding the logs, we're not progressing quickly on MV and are stuck at Stone Guard, but we believe that is a mana issue for healers, as we're noticeing that with the boss down to 20% or so healers are oom, probably from healing avoidable raid damage, so don't judge us on that (we were 7/8HC DS so this is quite the pain in the butt being stuck on Stone Guard with no progress )

So, any suggestions on threat or dps, Guardians?

Link to Armory.

Link to World of Logs for last night.

[exochaft]

Well, just from quickly perusing your logs, I don't think your issue with MV is your healers, but let me address your initial question.

Whoever gets the higher Vengeance first usually wins the threat battle in single-target, AoE situations I've seen some discrepencies. While our snap threat ability (aka Mangle) does hit hard, it pales in comparison to say Shield Slam for Prot warriors. Our threat is more balanced around several abilities, which can be good or bad depending upon the situation. However, threat shouldn't be an issue after the first Stone Guard taunt swap, since threat should be sufficiently high that your tanking partner's threat won't exceed the 10% threshold. I've had issues where taunts "fizzle" on that fight, and while it's extremely rare, it happens enough to notice. I think it can happen if a boss is hard-casting something and you taunt during the cast, such as Jasper Chains, but I cannot confirm this.

Alright... since you brought up your MV progress, I feel the need to comment on it. Looking at what killed your group, I see two big, reoccurring problems:

1.) Your Prot paladin dying to Cobalt mines quite a bit (appears to be when there is not Cobalt petrification). I can understand that due to bad positioning that Cobalt mines need to be popped early, but if the damage will not be reduced by boss mechanics, as a tank I feel it's my responsibility to either be prepared to heal up the damage on my own or use a cooldown to minimize the effect (both of which did not seem to happen). Or, worst case, your tanking counterpart is just not paying attention to where he/she stands and is accidentally blowing up on multiple attempts.

2.) You're having overloads that do not correspond to your current petrification. While you can live through this damage on normal, it's unnecessary damage and likely the cause of your healers going OOM. Previously taunt issue aside, I have a hard time believing that taunts fizzled all those other attempts. If it's just trying to figure out what to taunt, my simple rule-of-thumb I use is "If the dog I'm tanking begins petrification, taunt the one that just overloaded." You might be having an issue where the energy of multiple dogs are very high, and the delay of the fight picking a petrification causes some tight situations that lead to explosions. The start of the fight will make-or-break this situation from occuring, however a likely cause is your Prot paladin dying to Cobalt mines. If one tank dies, all the adds run to one tank and gain energy together, and there's very little/no chance of recovery without unintended Overloads.

Issues aside, your threat/DPS while being Guardian are not the issues at hand. You may have some slight gear modifications/improvements that can be made, but those are not causing the problems your experiencing. Initial threat is always a bit wonky until Vengeance is established, and it's up to tanks to work it out and be considerate when necessary.

[Gymertron]

I'd have to double check but more often than not our prot Pally dies to the mines when we decide to wipe it (his gear is a little worse than mine and I can soak several mines comfortably as FR heals me for a shit tonne). It is rare for him to not pay attention as he is genuinely a great tank.

Overloads happening that we don't want is an issue we're working on, and often comes down to a bad pull, or (more often tbh) being massively out gunned if peoples trinkets all proc at once at the pull. were battling at me having 99% threat and the boomer or another dps just edging ahead and without popping everything I can't claw it back until the energy levels are a bit out of whack which casues the bad Overload order. Definitely an issue we're aware of.

Threat on Stone Guard is only ever a problem right off the bat, and we have had some great attempts when we get a really good pull, but we are honestly hitting mana issues by 50% which is troubling. But back to the initial point of this thread, I am well aware of the Vengence issues, but it's good to know that other people have had similar problems right at the start of a fight.

Any further suggestions on how I might improve that part of my bearing? For example, is it worth popping Beserk right on the pull to get those mangles flowing?

[Bloodrayne of Lothar]

Overloads happening that we don't want is an issue we're working on, and often comes down to a bad pull, or (more often tbh) being massively out gunned if peoples trinkets all proc at once at the pull. were battling at me having 99% threat and the boomer or another dps just edging ahead and without popping everything I can't claw it back until the energy levels are a bit out of whack which casues the bad Overload order. Definitely an issue we're aware of.

Threat on Stone Guard is only ever a problem right off the bat, and we have had some great attempts when we get a really good pull, but we are honestly hitting mana issues by 50% which is troubling. But back to the initial point of this thread, I am well aware of the Vengence issues, but it's good to know that other people have had similar problems right at the start of a fight.

Any further suggestions on how I might improve that part of my bearing? For example, is it worth popping Beserk right on the pull to get those mangles flowing?

Easy fix for Dog aggro and wrong overloads.

Lets say you have Cobalt, Jade, and Jasper (Don't remember what side they are on but you would adjust for w/e side has 2)

You set it up pre-pull so it this is what happens

Tank A pulls Cobalt by it self and if his is the one that starts doing Petrify he taunts Jasper off Tank B
Tank B Pulls Jade and Jasper focusing his primary threat on Jade and standard AoE threat to keep off healers on Jasper, all DPS should be attacking Jade ( The 2 dog tank primary target)

Once you have them set up its just make sure DPS all ways switches to the one doing petrify.

After pull but before the first overload who ever is alone will pull the one doing petrify at 40 power then the other tank will take it back at 80 power, this will space them out enough that you wont get an extra overload.

If your alone and starts doing petrify all ways taunt the one with the lowest power aka the one that just blew up. This is easy to monitor with the DBM power tracking window.

All your tanks should have 4 macros:

/target XXXXX Guardian (make sure they spell out the full name of all 4 dogs because if not it can go after traps/Mist weavers statue)
/cast (Name of taunt)

For me i have mine set up with icons of 4 different color shirts

Amethyst (Purple)
Jade (Green)
Jasper (Red)
Cobalt (Blue)


Tanks keep an eye on the power bar and be ready to hit the macro ASAP.

Also the tank who has 2 on them for ex Cobalt/Jasper, once Jasper has done its overload the tank should switch immediately to Cobalt to prepare of that one to start petrify but also to make it easier for the other tank to taunt if off him if needed.

[Arielle]

Regarding initial threat:

You start with tanking a single dog. That's fine. Your threat on that dog is going to suck until you get two of them together. When that happens quickly land some attacks (I like to use Berserk at that point) to build threat so DPS suddenly don't catch up to you while you're attacking the dog you just taunted.

Other than that you look ok. You're spamming FR with almost no overheal which is great. Holding off on the Mauls and not using Savage Defense either. You look like you're doing fine TBH.

[hexaq]

My bear usually starts single tanking and our pally 2 tanking, no special reason for it, we just settled into this routine.

Initial threat on stone guards is indeed a challenge, in our raid we impose a 'no dps until the boss is in melee range of the tank' rule. Besides having issues positioning, it may lead to wasting a taunt and being unable to do a switch when needed, thus leading into a wipe later on. Educating dps is hard -_-


Other things that help is to announce the dog you will pump threat on. If you taunted over 1 dog then keep pumping threat into it.

Also I'm sure you saw that on some occasions when you taunt over a dog, it stops mid way and goes back to the other tank, especially on first switch with a lightly threat-ed dog. This is caused by dots or ground effects that continue to build threat after the prev. tank has stopped attacking it. Taunt effect wears off and the prev. tank has back the aggro. Not fun.
To offset this, throw a faerie fire after that taunt, I saw that baby do 100k hit (or was it a crit..?) once, not too shabby for a ranged spell.

Regarding your healers, we 2 healed this fight last nite, while 9 manning it, logs here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1499&e=1857 (and yes, wulf and tim are the tanks)
The fight hinges on initial pull and the first dog switch. If not done correctly it will lead later on to a situation where a big explosion is nigh unavoidable, remember to do initial switch at ~35 energy, by the time the dogs have been swapped (remember they cross paths while the switch occurs), that 35 energy becomes 45 or so.

After that we use the swap strategy described by Bloodrayne, in not so many words: if the dog ur tanking is 'exploding', make sure you also have the lowest energy dog on you.


Things to make it easier: put icons on the dogs, we use blue square=cobalt, green triangle=Jade, purple diamond= amethyst, red X=jasper. Refer to the dogs by their icon color, easier to keep track since it uses a more efficient information pathway in the brain, and have the tanks announce over coms which is the dog with the lowest energy (both tanks should do it, talk over each other, it helps to keep track). If single tanking and your dog explodes, make sure to taunt over the dog that has just been announced.

for instance, blue exploding and you single tanking it, purple was announced to be lowest energy, just taunt over the purple one.

Also I'd advise against the taunt macro, I tried to make use of it but I found it had a high chance of taunt fizzle. Instead you can select the dogs from the right side portraits that pop up on the default UI and use your normal taunt hotkey.

[Canaslan]

Nice post, I'd like to fit a question of mine in here as well since it's about threat and it's funny because I'm the Guardian Druid and the offtank is a Prot Paladin.

>

What do you do when you are the first to tank and your threat is way up there and your vengeance as well. Then the offtank taunts the boss and if you would just continue your rotation, as if you were tanking the boss, you just get aggro back immediately.

My armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Lufia/advanced
Not sure If Imallowed to link his, so Ill just say his tank gear ilvl is ~469.

Now I understand vengeance and the level in gear (483 to 469) plays a big role here.

Last night on Feng for instance I was the first to tank and the at 2 stacks of lightning, the offtank taunts and I'm kinda forced to auto attack or attack really slow. I tried flipping to catform a couple of tries, but I kinda "miss" Shred, TF and Savage Roar for instance in my rotation. I guess he could use Hand of Salvation, but that has a 2 min cd?

Obviously it's not a big issue as I can keep continueing to slow my attacks and watch my threat, but I feel that we're losing dps and just prolonging phases and thus the fight. Maybe not my much but still it could be critical at certain parts. It's still frustrating though

So, please fellow Guardian Durids, I'd like to know what you do about this particular situation.

[Kioga]

@ Casa
You already know the answer and that is back off your DPS. Take the time to toss a heal if needed or Innervate a healer. The other suggestion is make sure your Pally is doing his openers correctly to establish maximum threat. Or you could let the pally get initial threat since it will be easier for you to keep aggro once you have to taunt.

In 10 mans most of the fights so far require 2 dedicated tanks so MT and OT are synonymous to me. My co-tank is also a Prot Pally and we have no problems switching threat. We switch up who is tanking first and on Spirit Kings we alternate going Dps each week. The only time our Pally has threat problems is on AoE packs, but I chalk that up to me having a 489 weapon and a lot of AoE spam attacks + I steal his consecrate through Symbiosis.

@ OT - I would suggest looking into the crit tank build as I see you are not hit/exp capped so, if you are missing at critical times then your snap aggro will suffer. Here is a lengthy post going into details on the pros and cons of the tank crit build for Guardians.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ty-Please-help

[hexaq]

well yes.... it is normal to slow down a bit or autoattack when a new tank taunts over, it's common tanking practice, that's why you got omen addon there with you to manage threat and to tell you when you can resume full rotation.
There may be a lil' dps loss,however tank dps won't make or break the encounter, but you ending up with 4 stacks of debuff on feng certainly will cost the raid a lot more than a few k dps loss on a switch.

[nerfmagesffs]

Get atleast all your blues from heroics (463 i lvl), and go for 7.5% hit and expertise (which is softcap for melee), reforge for crit, dont go dodge at all

And you will be fine

[Gymertron]

Get atleast all your blues from heroics (463 i lvl), and go for 7.5% hit and expertise (which is softcap for melee), reforge for crit, dont go dodge at all

And you will be fine

40 runs of Heroic Jade Serpent and still no Shoulders, hence the depressingly shit itemisation. 30 runs of Scarlet Halls too so still no decent wrists. I'm heading to the reforger tonight though...

[ichime]

In our raid we have a 5 sec countdown after the tank pulls the 2 dogs, and only then can dps start attacking. In 5 seconds both dogs have had time to get together and get their buff removed, and the tank got at least one or two attacks without the 90% reduction, so his threat's ok.
Not the most elegant solution, but it beats wiping on an easy boss because threat is completely messy.

[Kujako]

Hit Incarnation or Berserk for the first hit?

[Tibeus]

The only fight I really have an issue getting aggro on as a Bear is Spirit Kings and had a couple issues on Gara'Jal but that just had DPS hitting him a bit to early and/or Hunter not MD'ing myself but my advice is what Kujako said try popping Incarnation on pull