Should I do better than 5K DPS as a Tank?

[Taralocke]

I guess this is a taboo post. Haha, I hope....and I know it is not always the case, but I hope that tanks understand that threat and mitgation and survivability is of highest concern. I may be completely off my rocker on this one.....probably am seeming I don't own a rocker........but I'm just trying to take my playing level as high as possible and if it is a good idea to pop army of the dead when I have a 10 second timer when I can't hit a boss for whatever reason, or if there are certain other options that I should do that could boost the DPS and keep from enraging or keep healers from running out of mana or just help ensure that extra little bit to win instead of fail? (You can't tell me there have not been many times that you got a boss to 1 or 2 percent and wipe) Maybe that extra little bit could have been the difference between a wipe and a win. That is all that i'm looking for is if there are any tips and tricks that DK tanks use to make sure they are doing everything possible for their group, and/or raid.

[Viertel]

Your job is a tank is to hold threat and mitigate and self heal as much damage as humanly possible, not do damage.
If you do that well while doing 700 dps, more power to you.

Wrong.

Go back to playing Vanilla WoW or The Burning Crusade if you're going to foolishly hold onto that mentality. I'm sure you'll like it where you do maybe 300-500 DPS and pump out hate via nothing more than abilities ruled by modifiers. Hey, you'll be useless outside of a group when trying to kill something, but it'll fit in with your viewpoint!

Anyone that states damage isn't another part and parcel of your job as a tank post-TBC is a complete moron. Holding threat and staying alive are trivial; all it takes is two brain cells to rub together to keep debuffs up and migitate damage as much as you can. All that makes you is a standard, average tank. Being able to contribute more to fights via dishing out more damage yourself in addition to the above is what sets apart the great tanks from the average ones.

An average tank is content to just hold hate; a great one realizes he can also help to contribute to kill the monster(s) faster.

[Taralocke]

Well now that we somewhat established that we should be doing things to help with DPS, nobody has given any tips on how they are doing that. What are things (again besides the obvious) that we shouldn't do. Is there ever a time to cast army of the dead as a tank? What are some other tips and tricks.

Speaking of Army of the dead, I have found that when all hell breaks loose, casting army of the dead to go around and taunt and attack adds helps keep me and the healer alive long enough to try and sort things out, that is more of a survivability thing than a DPS booster, but lets now talk tips and tricks if possible.

[Forfeit]

Your first priorities are aggro and survival, equally.

Once you have those down, you should be trying to pull more DPS, and interrupting every chance you get.

Now that that is over with, can any experienced DK tank tell the OP if he's on track, and if not, how to improve?

[Speshuled]

Speaking of Army of the dead, I have found that when all hell breaks loose, casting army of the dead to go around and taunt and attack adds helps keep me and the healer alive long enough to try and sort things out, that is more of a survivability thing than a DPS booster, but lets now talk tips and tricks if possible.

I try to have my gf (DK tank) use army if things start going south, such as if I go OOM and need to regen some mana to heal or if the boss is very low HP and we're about to wipe, those few seconds of army could allow the dps to finish him off.

***As a means of comparison*** my druid does between 6-8k single target and I can muster 15k+ on aoe pulls (berserk + mangle spam is nasty...for now)

I haven't leveled my DK past 83 yet and probably won't tank with him, blood just doesn't seem interesting to me, but that may change, who knows.

[Avatar Killer]

Your first priorities are aggro and survival, equally.

Once you have those down, you should be trying to pull more DPS, and interrupting every chance you get.

Now that that is over with, can any experienced DK tank tell the OP if he's on track, and if not, how to improve?

Everyone should reread this post that you made and use that knowledge

now to answer your request yes he is on track. his damage is low for a tank but its not solely his fault. once you get better gear and make sure your "rotation" is on key dps will gradually come up naturally to where it should be which is still below all the other types of tanks currently. once the PTR patch goes live it should correct that deficiency.

[Avatar Killer]

not sure how his question about damage as a tank got so misconstrued to a threat issue vs survival. he merely asked if his dps seemed low.
he clearly stated he has agro and is in no real danger of dying. he wanted to know if there was a way to maximize his damage during quiet subtle events to help the raid get the boss down faster. please read what he originally posted. helps prevent confusion.

[Avatar Killer]

He has little hit and expertise. Those explain any dps issues he might have.

point well taken but you definitely were not the true target of my post though sorry it seemed that way.

[Crosscut]

If 5k DPS is enough to hold aggro then I wouldn't worry about my own damage if I were you. I'd rather worry about the "DPS" people in your PuG doing less damage than you single target:<

[summons inc]

Top dps on Omnitron is 10k for a dk tank. So if you are within 2k of that in heroics you are doing good, but no one says, "kick this tank, his dps is too low."

[Holywraths]

Your job is a tank is to hold threat and mitigate and self heal as much damage as humanly possible, not do damage.
If you do that well while doing 700 dps, more power to you.

You wont do well while doing 700 dps cuz you wont hold aggro for crap

OT: You should normally do around 8-10k dps depending on if its Single target or aoe tanking.

[Desminn]

The big question is - are you holding aggro? if you are holding aggro easily at those numbers then you are doing what you need to do as a tank. higher numbers is nice but the big thing is making sure all mobs LOOOOVE you the mostest

^this

a tanks dps is irrelavant (for the most part) so long as you are holding the aggro. you do your job let the dps do their job.

[Riathy]

Really, as a tank DPS is your last worry.

Aggro > staying alive > dps

I do not have a DK, nor have I seen any (good) dk's lately, both dps and tank.
As for me, when im tanking my dps is between 5-10k depending if I can be bothered. (druid)

Tho I have to say, that my top dps on trash can go up to 27k
Berserk <3

[Navene]

I average around the 5k mark normally as well, but that's primarily due to me only RSing when I have full runic power stacked. I'd rather be able to pop lichborne in an important moment than add a couple of k damage to the group.

[Shamb]

A tank who worries about doing DPS is the tank that usually dies due to not using CD's not holding aggro etc etc.

Holding aggro is directly linked to dps done ... you might wanna think before posting.

@op: I am doing 6.5k-7k on boss fight with weaker gear then yours and that's an average. Not crap gear mind you ... but weaker. ( around 339-340 ilvl as tank )

First of all verify what kinda fight you do that on, many boss mechanic can affect your dps, so it'll varie.
Then verify your rotation and keep a close eye on your runic power management. I've seen quite a lot of DK tanks waste runic power by being capped and still using runes... that's bad for dps/tps.

---------- Post added 2011-01-13 at 12:29 AM ----------

I guess this is a taboo post. Haha, I hope....and I know it is not always the case, but I hope that tanks understand that threat and mitgation and survivability is of highest concern. I may be completely off my rocker on this one.....probably am seeming I don't own a rocker........but I'm just trying to take my playing level as high as possible and if it is a good idea to pop army of the dead when I have a 10 second timer when I can't hit a boss for whatever reason, or if there are certain other options that I should do that could boost the DPS and keep from enraging or keep healers from running out of mana or just help ensure that extra little bit to win instead of fail? (You can't tell me there have not been many times that you got a boss to 1 or 2 percent and wipe) Maybe that extra little bit could have been the difference between a wipe and a win. That is all that i'm looking for is if there are any tips and tricks that DK tanks use to make sure they are doing everything possible for their group, and/or raid.

About army, you should not use it on boss that needs to be kited (obviously). Aside from that, most ppl tend to forget that it's actually survival cd. When you pop army, you have a bonus damange reduction equal to parry+dodge, which is not so little !

I usually use my army as my last survivability cd, or as soon as my healer dies (that last one applies to heroics only).

---------- Post added 2011-01-13 at 12:33 AM ----------

Really, as a tank DPS is your last worry.

Aggro > staying alive > dps

I do not have a DK, nor have I seen any (good) dk's lately, both dps and tank.
As for me, when im tanking my dps is between 5-10k depending if I can be bothered. (druid)

Tho I have to say, that my top dps on trash can go up to 27k
Berserk <3

Druids don't count ... my friend does 30k and even hit 34k on a pull in SFK with berserk ... It's stupidly moronic.
That's why bears are getting nerfed like that, they are ridiculously ahead of any other tank in the dps/tps department.

[Nyanmaru]

I'm sporting some 350 ilvl on my tanking gear and I rarely do more than 6.5k single target in a 5m heroic.
The main culprit for the low DpS is... Vengeance.

After I got from 320 -> 350 ilvl my DpS got lower by about 1k. It's kinda rare to be above 6k AP from vengeance on an average hc Bossfight.
I could easily swap some gear for some crit based DpS gear and increase my DpS in cost of Survivability, but I'm a lot more comfortable to clear a heroic safe, instead of rocking the DpS meters.
Looking at the DpS stats I acquired while switching from questing gear to tanking gear... Wait... what DpS stats? Oh yeah, a bit of STR and some weapon DpS... Great. The loss of vengeance outweighs the gain of STR/weapon DpS by quite some.

Let's see how much of the PTR buffs stays alive until it gets live and how these affect our DpS.

And don't compare yourself with druids... I'd love to see a STR -> Parry conversion that's as good as a druids AGI -> Dodge conversion. Remove parry from gear and make dodge the only 'rating' stat, so that STR could be increased, we would be buffed by ~15-20% in terms of our damage output. I'd just wish for parry to be somewhat more meaningful than just 'dodge v2'. But let's not discuss this here...

[Navene]

Do you find you have to use Lichborne often in unexpected times? I'd think that you could prepare lichborne+DC spam for expected damage and use a different cooldown for something unexpected. You still get the same effect without sacrificing so much threat. I think that vampiric blood is a much better oh-shit button than lichborne is, as long as the oh-shit moment does not involve your healers being incapacitated somehow.

Fair question. I tend to do many of the dungeons now without CC, but with heavy chaining of my available cooldowns. This means that at any given time, many of my CDs are unavailable. I keep lichborne available as my real OMG button. The main reason for this approach is that the only times there are real problems, it's usually because of a CC'd / out of range / los / dead healer, and a complete lack of heals. In those cases I'd rather be able to self heal than simply reduce damage.

Regarding the issue of sacrificing threat, I don't usually find to be an issue. I do use glyphed DRW when ever it's off cooldown which is probably assisting, but even on pulls without it there are no problems. There are of course exceptions to every rule, such as fights were I know I will need to generate early threat (forgemaster on GB for example).

[Garibaldi]

DPS is everyone's worry. ...erased useless nonsense...Do you still think a tank should not worry about dps?

Yes. Definitely. 100% yes. But congratulations on the name you picked for yourself. It works. A DK tank does about 30% to 50% as much healing as he does damage. I've seen my HPS go up to 4-5k in heroics. That's heroic dungeons -- not raids. Normally, my hps is around 2-3k though. Healing generates threat. Threat modifiers apply to healing as much as they do to damage. If you have 2 dk tanks, you shouldn't need 3 healers. That's your extra dps spot in a 10 man setup. If you glyph vampiric blood and pop it strategically (right before you can do 2 ds and rune tap), you generate huge threat by healing. If you think the actual healing done is not that large, I've had healers in heroics go afk during trash then come back and start pondering if they should go shadow for a few pulls because their absence wasn't noticed.

But hey, that's just why you are a nimrod. Everything I said, while correct, isn't the reason why tank's dps doesn't matter. Tank's dps doesn't matter because that's why there is a separation of roles. I don't come in to do your job. I come in to irritate the mobs. How I do that is my business. Shaving off their life is dps'. Period. If I have to help out, you are not good enough. If I chose to help out, you should be embarrassed because it means you are not good enough, but I am not in a mood to bother explaining it to you. If I want to dps, I just switch to a dps spec and do more damage in 50% tanking gear than most people do in their dps gear.

Here's what you haven't learned yet. LK is over. Rotations are a thing of the past. The game is supposed to be more interactive now. This is why there are so many random procs added to the game -- to force people to make on-the-spot decisions and to prioritize what's most important in a somewhat hectic situation. For tank, that means moving more and picking up more adds, etc. Do dps and healers have to pick up non-elite adds on occasion? Yes. Just as tank has to prioritize self-healing vs avoidance vs interrupts and dps. This is also why healers have to move more now than they ever did before. You have failed to understand not so much the mechanics of the game (I am assuming you mastered them by now), but the philosophy of game play that bliz is trying to encourage. Game mechanics are there to get you to move and to look at the screen. The game is supposed to feel more like a car race than a cockpit flight (with people spending most of their time staring at nothing but bar-chart indicators).