Threat Gear and Taunts
Another guest post from Anafielle while Rhidach is gone on vacation! Soon, you will forget this blog ever belonged to Rhidach! I mean, except for the domain name…
I’m working on a true, Wrathy-style threat set.
Working on it. I always say I’m working on it. I’ve been saying this for months.
I keep telling Rhidach I’ll have one soon. That he should live in fear of my threat set because one day, very soon, he will never tank a single trash mob again. The mobs will run away in fear of my threat set. I’ll just look at them meanly and their threatplates will turn from angry red to beautiful, soothing green. Tactician stuns and Vile Spirit silences won’t stop this threat set. Nothing will stop it. His desperate taunts will bounce harmlessly off the omen lead I will have on everything unfortunate enough to be within my melee range.
And so on.
Craving a Real Threat Set
I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill tank set. I have a threat optimized set. Every tank should. By “optimized,” I mean “tank gear gemmed and enchanted for survival that happens to have good threat stats.” This set involves Bloodvenom Blade, DMC:G, and carefully chosen pieces of gear that grant me high expertise and capped hit. I wear it for most everything except progression. Tanking Heroic Festergut 25 in this set “by accident” is one of my favorite things to do.
No, I’m talking about a threat set specifically gemmed and enchanted for the purpose of threat. I want one of THOSE. A real, completely threat-centered set of gear. Wrathy detailed his here, and I’ve had a bad case of tank envy ever since. (This happens to me a lot when I read Wrathy’s blog.)
Look at that badass gemming. Optimized enchants. I want it. I want it badly. I have that post bookmarked. I’ve talked for months about making a set like this.
Yet I don’t have one yet.
I have so much gear, perfect for this purpose. But I … I … I just haven’t quite gotten up the guts to gem with (gulp) strength.
I keep pulling stuff out of the bank, staring at it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can feel everyone who ever taught me how to tank, standing over my shoulder, looking down disapprovingly. I look at a red gem, but then, something inside me says, “You’re really going to put that THERE? Really?”
There’s no reason why I’m reluctant. I’m not using that gear for anything else. I have enough gold to experiment with gems. I am smart enough to know when NOT to wear a set like this.
It’s just so… hard. So against the grain.
That voice, in my ear! “Really. You’re not REALLY going to put that strength gem in that gear, were you? Were you, Ana? Doesn’t that blue one look so much more inviting? Wouldn’t this piece be more useful with stamina?”
I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the guts. I just can’t deviate from my usual gemming practices. I’m not nearly as badass as Wrathy. I don’t have the guts to experiment.
I resign my membership from the Cool Tanks Who Experiment With Gear Club.
Who Needs a Threat Set When You Have Two Taunts?
Rhidach will tell you that I don’t really need a threat set, considering how often I taunt trash off him. Vent is always full of my apologies and excuses, ranging from the fairly reasonable to the completely ridiculous.
“I have a quick trigger finger!”
“I saw that one turn red, and I taunted.”
“I totally thought that one was mine.”
“What? Didn’t you tell me to go left?”
“East? What is this east shit? Wait, I need to get out my compass.”
“Shit!! I hit RD on the wrong mob.”
“Well, I was trying to save that poor ret pally!”
I don’t know what happened. I never used to taunt this much. I blame… trash.
The biggest culture shock, coming to Enveloping Shadows from my old guild, was trash. I went from neatly (obsessively?) marked pulls to AE fests full of aggro everywhere. Half our DPS have never heard of an assist macro and the other half seem to take great pleasure in DPSing precisely the mobs we are not currently trying to hold threat on. I find myself always craving assist so I can mark the mob I’m tanking – and I promise, I am smart enough to be paying attention to the logical next kill target – in the vague and completely misplaced hope that the DPS might find it in their heart to kill that one next. More often than not, I spend a lot of time running around.
So I have, somehow, gotten into a habit of taunting way too much on trash.
I’m particularly bad on Blood Wing trash. I usually taunt Rhi’s mobs off him when he gets stunned, which I feel is Appropriate Offtank Behavior. But then, the DPS will have pulled the OTHER things I was tanking off me. I have to chase THEM. Then the Tactician is free, and I taunt him… oh, Rhi’s not stunned anymore? I totally forgot about him.
I recently realized my taunting had definitely crossed the line between “honest mistake” and “really inappropriate”, and started making a serious, serious effort to be really careful not to RD any of his targets.
We were moving through Blood Wing a week or two ago, and vent was uncharacteristically quiet for a moment or two. Then Rhi says suddenly, into the silence, in a really exasperated tone: “Is Anafielle dead or something? She hasn’t taunted off me in a while.”
Excuse me while I go crawl in a corner and die.
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@Rhidach
10 August 2010 at 4:50 pm #
Awesome post :) My family is giving me inquisitive glances and wondering why I’m laughing so hard.
@AvengingWrathy
10 August 2010 at 6:38 pm #
My blog roll is about 1000 posts deep but I had to come comment on this one before i get to the past two months of blogs I have been slacking on. So I have two threat sets, one which is like the post you linked, called a Max Stam Threat set. This set will not sacrifice any survivability in the name of threat, however I have optimized all the slots with the gear I have to ensure that I am pumping out as much threat as possible.
I also have a “threat” set which is nothing like my most envied set (which Meloree has), because I dont roll on ret gear at all since we have had a high turn over and prefer to keep my healers happy with off set gear, however it holds true to his philosophies of minimum stats (defense capped, 35k hp, and armor minimums). This set pumps out about 7k on bosses and much much more on trash.
As to when to wear it and when not to wear it, I can not answer that question for you because I haven’t been able to raid with your healers. As for me, I wear threat sets for everything but LDW, Putricide and Lich King. Which one I wear is based off of how hard the encounter is and how comfortable I am with taking the hits.
Wrathy’s last blog ..Tanking the Twilight Realm
@gameldar
10 August 2010 at 9:59 pm #
I understand the jealousy… one of my co tanks sports strength gems in his set… and the trash just sticks to him… I religiously follow Rhi’s gemming guide (not that he does) – mainly to keep my hit up (I might just be hit capped these days with food and a space goat about).
However – something I discovered just yesterday that I’ll try out tonight in our raid:
http://tidyplates.blogspot.com/2010/04/threat-widget.html
No more excuses? :)
Gameldar’s last blog ..Tanking- Barriers to Entry
My set:
http://chardev.org/?profile=424400
How well it works:
http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/17108/rankings/players/
Maintankadin post on doing truly absurd tank dps:
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=6&t=29208&rb_v=viewtopic
You should totally do it. Big numbers are fun.
@Anafielle
11 August 2010 at 3:32 am #
Yes! Another example!! Thanks a bunch, Meloree!
Logs…. jeez. That’s terrifying. In a good way.
Post… It’s 4 am and I blame your post for the fact that I’m still awake. A fascinating read. There is nothing I like more than reading tank math.
I want a set like that. That looks like so much fun!
I laughed so hard the neighbors are probably awake! I also have different sets I use for different encounters but no where near as complete as I’d like. The part that made me laugh the hardest though was the…ummm….taunt abuse.
My raiders know all too well by now that if they pull it they tank it if it’s trash because chances are I’m knee deep in GM-styled whispers and largely auto-attacking (it is the function of a good OT to MT the trash right…?)but I expect very few deaths – unless fury warriors and ret pallys count. Do they count?
We had a warrior tank, who shall remain nameless, who was a taunt abuser. “It’s in my rotation!” he said. “I didn’t mean to” he said. “I didn’t taunt!” he said. (WoL ftw) It’s amazing what the right bribes to healers will buy you. He doesn’t abuse the taunt much anymore!
Lark’s last blog ..Raid Bitch Ramblings
Well, Hello there.
After crawling from gaming death (again), and as a former tank (I have not played as a tank since… ToC HM i think), I can tell you I have experienced this very problem (Back in the day I tanked and offtanked for one of the top guilds on the server, and well, they were pulling 7K dps minimum on ToC with ulduar gear while i was trying to hold threat at 3-5 fps) and while a bit annoying, i found that just setting up grid and clique to taunt whatever is not attacking me or the rest of the tanking corps gets taunted with any of our taunts, and if for any reason they are on CD and the loose mob is a physical dmg dealer, place hand of protection. So as a tank i had RD, HoP and hand of sacrifice bound for clique. Maybe that works for you
This is roughly how I handle not stepping on my co-tank’s toes during trash pulls since we don’t mark either; as long as any red dots on Grid are on me or him, I taunt nothing. As soon as a red dot appears on Overzealous Kitty or any another DPS, Righteous Defense the Grid box with clique. Yank a red box if RD is on cooldown, but this is less precise since I may accidentally grab something co-tank has instead. If healer, hand of protection.
LabRat’s last blog ..In Which I Ruin It For Everyone Else- Too
@hazmacewillraid
11 August 2010 at 9:17 am #
“Well, I was trying to save that poor ret pally!”
Does this mean I have a higher “OMG HE’S DYING, SAVE HIM!” priority than the rogues? Because that would be just swell.
@Anafielle
11 August 2010 at 11:38 am #
“… ranging from the fairly reasonable to the completely ridiculous.”
The ret pally comment was there as an example of the completely ridiculous. :)
Since we started working on Hard Modes I swapped my red gems to Agility from Strength. I miss my big yellow numbers. :(
saif’s last blog ..Halion