Looking for some help with Prot Warrior threat

[Beress]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a bit of advice on Prot Warrior threat. Normally I tank, but I don't play very much and don't raid. As such my gear cap was 346 with some rep/crafted 359. I've noticed more and more in LFG I seem to be having a problem with threat where before there was none. Tonight it was the worst of seen it, I was tanking BRC (which I've done many times) and there was a DK in the group pulling down around 16K DPS. Every few seconds I would see the dreaded "losing threat" appear above whatever happened to be the skull. The DK was good, he wasn't going crazy doing AoE or ignoring the skull... this problem was all me.

My gear is decent considering I don't do any raids (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...thane/advanced) but all I could think that run was "thank god for vigilance".

I'm using the standard threat priority for tanking skull (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...aclysm-Edition), with TC/SW thrown in every CD on any group pulls. One modification is I also include conc blow over devastate on bosses as IIRC it provides more threat than devastate.

Any advice on what I can do to prevent this sort of thing from happening? I read all the time that "threat is a non-issue if you arn't a terrible tank", so either I'm a terrible tank or these posts are referring to raids where vengeance has a chance to stack high and work well... either way I felt like a total scrub in that BRC run so any advice is very much appreciated!

[Waltzinblack]

Frost DKs pull absolutely insane threat, don't break a sweat.

[CR77]

If youre having threat problems up your expertise, but frost dk's fury wars etc are gonna pull massive threat just gotta deal with it.

[Deleted]

You can try pulling by rotation between Recklessness and Retaliation every other pull. It's not an ideal solution but it should help.

Other than that, if you're pulling a max.-threat rotation there really isn't much else you can do. Are you using Heroic Strike and Cleave as soon as you hit 50 rage? Also make sure you use Shockwave on CD.

[thxyoutoo]

DPS that out gear you are naturally going to be hard to keep threat from.

[Cracka_Bob]

well originally I was gonna blame the DK for not attacking your target but then I kept reading lol :P

first off (and this has more to do with survival than threat) your blue and yellow sockets are fine but I would suggest changing the reds to parry/mastery as well as reforging your gear for mastery > parry >= dodge

back OT: your glyphs are fine (though I would use heroic throw over the tclap one) but your spec needs some work if you want more threat. heres my warrior: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

a combination of deep wounds (of which I only have 2 points in) and war academy should help generate sufficient threat unless you have crazy (and/or overgeared) dps

before I go into priority, are you having problems on AoE or bosses? or both?

[Beress]

You can try pulling by rotation between Recklessness and Retaliation every other pull. It's not an ideal solution but it should help.

Other than that, if you're pulling a max.-threat rotation there really isn't much else you can do. Are you using Heroic Strike and Cleave as soon as you hit 50 rage? Also make sure you use Shockwave on CD.

I hadn't thought of trying those CD's before the pulls, it sure can't hurt to give it a shot... though Recklessness seems like a dangerous one to use.

DPS that out gear you are naturally going to be hard to keep threat from.

Yeah, and I can understand that... but this guy didn't outgear me, at least not by any huge margin. I have iLevel 350, he had 351 so that's pretty darn close. Thats what I was most concerned about is that we are practically at equal levels of gear but I was getting out-threated easily. It wasn't just "hard" to keep threat from him it was darn near impossible. If I didn't have vigilance to spam taunt, I don't know what I would have done. If I was a different class I would have been screwed

---------- Post added 2011-05-09 at 03:50 AM ----------

well originally I was gonna blame the DK for not attacking your target but then I kept reading lol :P

first off (and this has more to do with survival than threat) your blue and yellow sockets are fine but I would suggest changing the reds to parry/mastery as well as reforging your gear for mastery > parry >= dodge

back OT: your glyphs are fine (though I would use heroic throw over the tclap one) but your spec needs some work if you want more threat. heres my warrior: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

a combination of deep wounds (of which I only have 2 points in) and war academy should help generate sufficient threat unless you have crazy (and/or overgeared) dps

before I go into priority, are you having problems on AoE or bosses? or both?

In this case it's fair to say single target. In group pulls it was all focus fire on skull, no AoE, but threat was a problem on bosses to. Your spec looks similar to what I use to have, and I can certainly go back... I speced out of it when they dropped Cleave from War Academy. However, if threat is going to be a problem, then there is no point in my current spec, but man would I miss Piercing Howl

I also actually just un-did some reforging tonight after BRC, to restore a few threat stats but also to bring my dodge back up... it was too far out of line with my parry and I didn't think I was getting enough return from the parry stats anymore due to DR.

[Knirps]

You know, recently my Warrior and my husband's Paladin have been just...dropping threat or unable to keep it. I'm not sure what's happening or if something drastic changed in 4.1 that I missed, or if our bars are just being unresponsive now due to an addon (we both use Bartender and Forte and such)

I'm not sure what it is, or if some other classes just got buffs that mean we need to step up our game, but it happens randomly and without cause, in regular Cata instances all the way down to BC instances, and I feel your pain.

[Cracka_Bob]

yeah if your dodge is that much lower than parry its time to stop reforging out of it lol :P

also I glanced at that post you linked, but personally I think Shield Slam should be top priority in both of the rotations he posted. Single target is self explanitory but the reason I keep it on top for AoE also is because once I have a good amount of threat (on all targets via tclap + blood and thunder + deep wounds) I can start tab targeting shield slam while keeping up the general AoE priority which for me is rend > tclap > SW > SS > revenge > devastate > conc. blow while spamming cleave when I can

for single target it should be SS > devastate > revenge > rend > tclap > conc. blow > SW while spamming HS... even though rend and tclap are lower in the priority, you really only need to tclap to refresh rend (via blood and thunder), the tclap debuff, and thunderstruck. SW is lowest on priority for single target and should only be used after 3 stacks of thunderstruck

also, your rage should be fine so don't be scared to use Inner Rage to get in some more Heroic Strikes or Cleaves

anyways, I'm goin to bed :P feel free to send me a private msg on here if you have more questions PROT FOR LIFE

[Coreva]

First things first, at the start of a pull threat is going to be difficult to keep assuming equal gear, as you wont have much for vengeance. Here my ways for increasing my threats in 5 man dungeons. First of all, if your gear is good enough and wont give the healer a heart attack, run without cc, the more damage your taking the faster that vengeance is going to stack, also the more melee attacks being thrown at you the faster you generate rage, the more stuff i cc the more trouble i find holding threat as a warrior at the 5 man level, just because stuff doesnt hit that hard. Also at the start of every pull i make sure to use shield block and inner rage, if you have the entire group after you, for the first 10 seconds you wont be able to spend rage fast enough to rage starve even with inner rage cleaving, which always helps me immensly.

Okay i see the problem, its all with your talent build. I know you may have your reasons for picking certain talents but trust me these suggestions will give you a definite boost on your threat capabilities. First off you need to remove blood craze, cruelty, piercing howl, and booming voice, they arent exactly as big of a gain as other talents you could choose, ill admit piercing howl is nice but 90% of the time you wont have a need for it. Then id suggest putting those 7 points into war academy 3/3, deep wounds 3/3 and incite 1/3. Now there is also one other change i make to this spec and alot of other warriors ill prob tell me no your wrong, however i also take 2 points from heavy reprecussions to push incite up to 3/3 for the following reason. Heavy reprecussions is a very rng based ability in my book as it only is active 1/3 of the time provided you are hitting shield block on cooldown and that you dont miss with shield slams during a shield block, while you will get constant benefit on your single target threat, having a greater crit chance on heroic strikes which also improves the usefulness of deep wounds. also it allows you to purely save shield block as a defensive cooldown. This is the spec i use purely for threat and i never have trouble holding threat. If you find this to be somewhat excessive on threat and need more survival, you can always switch some points from incite or deep wounds into blood craze, while blood craze isnt very helpful at the raid level, at the heroic dungeon level it can still be quite useful.

Also keep in mind on short fights for single target, i wouldn't bother wasting time on rending if your using cc, you wont be able to do a renew of rend using thunderclap, your best just going for pure damage burst type abilities for threat, considering youll be hurting for vengeance anyways.

[Cracka_Bob]

You know, recently my Warrior and my husband's Paladin have been just...dropping threat or unable to keep it. I'm not sure what's happening or if something drastic changed in 4.1 that I missed, or if our bars are just being unresponsive now due to an addon (we both use Bartender and Forte and such)

I'm not sure what it is, or if some other classes just got buffs that mean we need to step up our game, but it happens randomly and without cause, in regular Cata instances all the way down to BC instances, and I feel your pain.

looking at the patch notes, we didnt get any nerfs (for prot other than spell reflect) but a lot of other classes got buffs :/

[BossManRoth]

if youre not doing too shabby on AOE threat, try a single target spec (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary) (ido realize i'm glyphed for aoe but it helps in heroics)

a little sketchy on some aoe pulls, but just make sure you get there before anyone else

edit: can anyone explain to me the benefit of vigilance outside of a tank rotation scenario? pm would be fine

[Cracka_Bob]

if youre not doing too shabby on AOE threat, try a single target spec (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary) (ido realize i'm glyphed for aoe but it helps in heroics)

a little sketchy on some aoe pulls, but just make sure you get there before anyone else

edit: can anyone explain to me the benefit of vigilance outside of a tank rotation scenario? pm would be fine

other than tank rotation, it only helps if a dps pulls or there is AoE damage, so in most cases, its uses are VERY limited since cata

[turbotuna]

I wwas in a similar situation and ultimately my solution was to increase my threat stats. It goes against the convention "best" min/max setups but for the content I was doing going to 5% hit and 15+ expertise made me more successful which made tanking more fun.

[speehs]

Gear disparity makes a big difference in my experience. I was geared the same as you are a few weeks ago and couldn't hold aggro against our guild's very well-geared fury warrior unless he didn't use cooldowns and I got a lot of lucky hits/crits. Since I've upgraded my gear significantly in the new instances, I haven't had aggro problems from anyone, including said fury warrior. Some of that could also be shaking off the rust, though.

[Bysu]

As others said, gear disadvantage when compared to dps is gonna cause you threat problems, specially if you are the kind of tanks that puts high priority on debuffing target, which means "wasting" gcd's on thunderclap and demo shout while dps peaks out on their burst. Even if you're not that type of tank just take it easy, like you said yourself, warriors have vigilance and it's for a reason .

Also you had some bad luck there, frost DKs have huge burst capabilities as of 4.1, say Outbreak (while closing in) -> Obliterate x3 = insta aggro no matter what. The only way to get some burst ahead on single target threat for warriors atm is having the Heavy Repercussions talent and charging in with shield block active so you can get off the bat with a 12-15k Shield Slam.

Still I think they should give prot warriors the ability to get some snap aoe aggro on mob packs without forcing you to make a decision between spending your little initial rage in either an aoe ability or a solid single target ability (i.e. either shield slam or rend+thunderclap), and no, throwing out a schockwave right after charge is a bad idea, since all you will get is standing there for 4 sec. with all mobs stunned in front of you and 0 rage. Imo there should be some talent in prot tree that allows to blend say heroic leap with charge so when you charge you deal some decent aoe damage (snap aggro) and still have the initial 15/25 rage to either keep going down the aoe or single target rotation (slap this talent up with shared cd between charge and heroic leap if necessary).

[Sly]

other than tank rotation, it only helps if a dps pulls or there is AoE damage, so in most cases, its uses are VERY limited since cata

I disagree a bit. Don't forget it also refreshes your taunt. If you keep it up on the DK, every time he pulls threat and takes a hit, you'll be able to instantly taunt off him. Not a huge boost but fairly nice.

Regarding OP: it also depends on your rotation a bit. If you're on an AOE rotation and someone is doing a single target rather than AOE rotation that might be trouble. I'll typically mark Skull and do AOE rotation and people don't pull off me too often if they're using AOE or single targetting skull. If they single target something else it can be trouble though. After the first mob drops I have so much of a threat lead it doesn't really matter what people attack.

Anything else I'd say has already been covered.

---------- Post added 2011-05-08 at 10:15 PM ----------

Still I think they should give prot warriors the ability to get some snap aoe aggro on mob packs without forcing you to make a decision between spending your little initial rage in either an aoe ability or a solid single target ability (i.e. either shield slam or rend+thunderclap), and no, throwing out a schockwave right after charge is a bad idea, since all you will get is standing there for 4 sec. with all mobs stunned in front of you and 0 rage. Imo there should be some talent in prot tree that allows to blend say heroic leap with charge so when you charge you deal some decent aoe damage (snap aggro) and still have the initial 15/25 rage to either keep going down the aoe or single target rotation (slap this talent up with shared cd between charge and heroic leap if necessary).

I agree, AOE snap aggro is a pain. Especially because an immediate TC is really inefficient, since it won't be spreading Rend. Maybe Warbringer could make Heroic Leap generate rage on use?

[Cracka_Bob]

I disagree a bit. Don't forget it also refreshes your taunt. If you keep it up on the DK, every time he pulls threat and takes a hit, you'll be able to instantly taunt off him. Not a huge boost but fairly nice.

like I said... if a dps PULLS

L2 read

---------- Post added 2011-05-09 at 11:11 AM ----------

I agree, AOE snap aggro is a pain. Especially because an immediate TC is really inefficient, since it won't be spreading Rend. Maybe Warbringer could make Heroic Leap generate rage on use?

this I agree with in most cases. but I"d add to that:

in addition to Warbringer causing Heroic Leap to generate rage, also cause Blood and Thunder to make Heroic Leap instantly apply Rend to each target it hits

this would solve 2 problems: Heroic Leap would be used more by Prot warriors as a pulling ability (versus a getting away ability as it is usually used) and would also save us 1 GCD on AoE for quicker threat (maybe not "snap" aggro, but better than what it is currently)

[shadowkras]

edit: can anyone explain to me the benefit of vigilance outside of a tank rotation scenario? pm would be fine

Even if you dont swap, you will do more threat due to the little stacked vengeance (little is better than none).
If the boss has adds and you are in charge of picking them up (ie: maloriak), you will have a small AP bonus from the vengeance gained from main tank, so when you charge the incoming adds, you will be doing more threat already.

this would solve 2 problems: Heroic Leap would be used more by Prot warriors as a pulling ability (versus a getting away ability as it is usually used) and would also save us 1 GCD on AoE for quicker threat (maybe not "snap" aggro, but better than what it is currently)

I already use it as pulling ability quite often. I keep my healer's mana in one eye and my rage in the other, if both are at desired levels, before the first trash is dead, i stun it then jump to next pack.

I agree, AOE snap aggro is a pain. Especially because an immediate TC is really inefficient, since it won't be spreading Rend. Maybe Warbringer could make Heroic Leap generate rage on use?

It is good enough, you can also cleave for snap threat, wont get all 100 spawning adds, but will keep them off the healer until you shockwave. DPS shouldnt be spamming their hardest hitting abilities on spawning adds either, they need to wait for them to focus on the tank first, otherwise they are asking to pull aggro.
When adds spawn too fast for me to apply rend, i first thunderclap, shockwave, apply rend, thunderclap again, casting cleaves if my rage is pretty good (and it will if you speced on shield specialization, lots of adds = lots of blocks = lots of rage).
If a boss fight has adds, you can keep rend on the boss and when the adds spawn, just thunderclap and apply it to all of them.

[Moggers1990]

Don't beat yourself up about this dude. Some classes do just rip aggro quite easily. I usually have trouble with a guildy of mine, Fury Warrior. And also when i DPS, i completely rip aggro from any tank - i'm Arms. I've mucked a load of ZA timed runs up, just because i'm trying to be quick and over-aggro'ing, it's annoying!

But i looked at your spec, and in my opinion you should drop some points from Fury. Booming Voice and Piercing Howl really aren't needed. You shouldn't be rage starved to need to use a shout more often and especially in 5 mans Piercing Howl would just overwrite, or be overwritten by some other ability - not much point in using it (Can't remember if it's off the GCD, if not, then it's a waste).

I'd take the 2 points from Booming Voice and Piercing Howl and either put them into War Academy. And to be honest, take the 3 out of Blood Craze and put the 3rd into War Academy or transfer all 3 to Incite (try both, just see what happens. But it depends if your comfortable with rage, if your usually low then your not using Heroic Strike much).

eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/hellscream/showb%c3%adz/simple

- Is me, try out that spec (probably in DPS spec/gear at the moment, but my Tank gear is roughly the same). I personally don't have too much of a problem with threat so i kept Blood Craze just for some extra healing. But i'd probably say take those out and fill Cruelty up. Take the point from Safeguard (that was for Cho'gall) and put those 2 points in either Incite or Deep Wounds (Deep Wounds is nice for extra AoE threat with Cleave crits etc).

Play around with those 2-3 spare points - see which you like a bit more. But just remember. DPS will always pull aggro at some point, even if your the best tank in the world. It's not the end of the world if they do, especially as you said you don't raid.

Keep at it dude, alot of people would of just quit and become yet another DPS so good on you