Threat--a guide

This is a combination of a "Hard and Fast" guide and a fairly in-depth guide. I won't go to Elitistjerks levels, or even some of the more advanced tankspot guides (though I draw on them as a source and I recommend that you all read them) but it will cover more than the very basics.

What is threat? Threat is a measure that the game uses to tell who the mob will attack. If you have high threat on an enemy, the mob will attack you. If you are highest on the "Threat list" and the mob is attacking you, you "Have aggro".

Threat is a bit of a fickle stat, though:
How does it work?
Why is it that a dps class does three times the damage but I still maintain aggro?
What abilities generate a lot of threat?
How can I improve it?


To start, 1 point of damage = 1 point of threat. 2 points of healing = 1 point of threat. This is before ALL modifiers, and the modifiers are so significant, that it should really be taken with a grain of salt.

Additionally, global threat is divided between all targets, direct threat only increases threat levels on specific targets. Now, by "all targets", I mean all targets in combat. If a healer heals, it won't increase the threat on the mobs standing around at the far end of the hall. It WILL increase the healer's threat on all targets in combat with the group, but not by much. You see, if (say) a priest gets off a 10k heal and there are 5 mobs, consider it like this:

10000/5 = 2000 per mob
.5 threat per point of healing,
2000/2 = 1000 threat per mob.

If the priest has Silent Resolve, then multiply that number by .8, so the priest will generate 800 threat on all 5 mobs in combat--which really, is not much at ALL, when you consider these numbers:

I, as a warrior, Thunderclap these 5 mobs for (say) 500 damage each. No crits, no variance for simplicity. Because damage is direct threat, I gain 500 threat on each mob, which is not enough to take them off the priest healer. He dies. Or does he? Answer: No, because I didn't gain *just* 500 threat. I got a lot more due to threat modifiers.
According to wowwiki.com, the threat modifier on Defensive Stance is 2.0735, and the modifier on Thunder Clap is 1.85. This means, 500 damage done...

500 x 1.85 (TC's inherent modifier) = 925 threat
925 x 2.0735 (Defensive Stance's inherent modifier) ~ 1918 threat
Which puts me well ahead of the healer. The mobs attack me, the day is saved.

Many tanking abilities have inherent threat modifiers or additions. For example, Shield Slam causes an extra 770 threat in addition to the threat from the damage done (then multiplied by Defensive Stance). A druid's faerie fire, even though it does no damage, causes an innate 638 threat (which, if in Bear Form, is multiplied by 2.0735). A paladin's Righteous Fury increases threat from Holy spells (their main way of getting threat--Consecrate, etc) by 90%. A death knight's Frost Presence has the same modifier as Warrior's Defensive stance, as does a druid's Bear Form.

*Remember: Abilities that are AoE, such as Thunderclap, Consecrate, and Howling Blast: They do damage, which means they deal direct threat. BUT: Some abilities such as Demoralizing Shout ALSO do direct threat (unlike Battle Shout--which does generate a bit of global threat) even though they have no damage component.

"But there's this one Warlock, right? He does wayyyyy more damage than me, and even accounting for my threat modifier, he should out-threat me. As a matter of fact, if I look at my threat meter addon, he DOES out-threat me!"

-Guy Learning About Threat

This is because Blizzard has cleverly put in another stopgap between those DPSing and those tanking (but which can make your job slightly more difficult). Mobs need a little extra push to actually switch targets. By a little extra push, I mean your Bladestorming Arms Warrior friend has to generate 10% more threat than the target the mob is currently attacking for the mob to actually attack him.
If you've put out 10,000 threat and he's just put out 10,900: you are In The Clear.
This is even more noticable with ranged classes. If the above Warlock is out of melee range, he must do 130% of your threat for the mob to attack him (and he should Soulshatter).

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So real quickly, what have we learned?

1. Damage puts out more threat than healing (So hit 'em hard and hit 'em fast and they won't kill the guy keeping you alive.)
2. Global threat is divided evenly between in-combat targets, wheras direct threat is not. (So, again, do a lot of damage--which is always direct threat--and know what generates the most threat.)
3. Threat modifiers change the game entirely. (You might be doing half the damage of that Frostfire Mage, but you're doing at least double threat, and with talents he's generating only 60% of his damage as threat.)
4. If within melee range, other people need to pass 110% of your threat to get aggro. Ranged allies need to pass 130% (Keep the mobs far away from your ranged friends, and if Bloodlust/Heroism gives them a huge boost in damage, don't worry too much.)
   

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So now we've answered the first three of our four questions, which leaves "How can I improve my threat?". I've got a few answers for that one, because it's a multi-layered issue.

• Tank with the right "buffs"--be it the proper stance (Frost Presence/Defensive Stance), form (Bear), or with the right abilities up (Righteous Fury)
• Stack +Hit (gem for it, enchant for it, and gear for it)
• Stack +Expertise (gem, enchant, gear)
• Know the abilities that put out huge amounts of threat.
  From a warrior perspective, don't Devastate if Shield Slam or Revenge are on cooldown, for example.

>>>As a note, don't put hit or expertise on everything--in the sense that if you're sacrificing massive amounts of stamina by putting red expertise gems into a blue socket, or enchanting your boots with Icewalker for hit instead of +22 stamina. These stats are additions, AFTER you are fairly well satisfied with your defensive pool (health, armor, avoidance).
>>>Some things, though (such as Titanium Weapon Chain and Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers) are things you want regardless (The weapon being BiS until you pass Ulduar-25 hardmodes, and TWC being my enchant of choice)


Now, I'm going to go into the relevant stats more--that is, Hit and Expertise. What do they do?

Hit is related to, well, how often you hit something. In Wrath of the Lich King, you need 8% hit (or 263 hit rating) to hit a raid boss 100% of the time with an attack. You will never get a "Miss", just dodges and parries. Most importantly, all of your "yellow" attacks (abilities that use rage/mana/runes/runic power, that make yellow damage numbers instead of white, and usually generate extra threat) will land. A missed 3k shield slam means about 7.5k missed threat.

Now, you might've noticed that I said your attacks might STILL be parried or dodged. That's where expertise comes in. Every point of expertise (aka every 8.2 points of expertise rating) reduces the enemy chance to Dodge and Parry your attacks by 0.25%. If you have 19 expertise, then that's 4.75% less of the time that you will be dodged and parried--which means you'll successfully land a blow roughly 9.5% more often!
Why roughly? Because there is a cap on how much an enemy dodges and parries. Raid bosses dodge 6.5% of the time and parry 14% of the time--so yes, you'd hit 9.5% more often.

BUT, if you had 29 expertise, then you'd reduce their chances by 7.25% each--passing the dodge cap (reduced to 0, not -0.75) so you'd hit 13.75% more often.


Therefore: Good threat requires use of proper tanking abilities and good gear. This isn't to say that you cannot generate threat without high +hit and +expertise. You definitely can (but not missing on your attacks does help a lot).


BUT HOW DO I KNOW WHAT MY THREAT IS, AS WE SPEAK?
Well, Blizzard has a built-in threat meter, but in my opinion it's fairly low quality.
Omen is a threat mod with the following features:

• Omen tracks everything threat related from fight to fight. This means not just your threat on the mob you're fighting. It means everyone's threat on every mob in the current fight, so you can target switch without worrying.
  
• It tracks what percent of your threat people are at (If you're offtanking at 93k threat and a dps is at 78k and the main tank is at 117k, next to their names it will say "DPS X: 83%" and "MAIN TANK Y: 126%), so you can tell if DPS are passing the 110/130 threshold.
• It tells you what your (and other people's) Threat Per Second is (In a 10man environment I'd say I'm around 5.5k, with vigilance on a high dps it's more like 6.5k+)

Thanks for reading my Threat Guide

-Hyperiom

PS: For further reading, I recommend the following guides on Tankspot.com:
Death Knight Threat Values A quick look at the threat modifiers for Death Knight abilities.
Paladin Threat Values A swift glance at the threat modifiers on Paladin moves.
Warrior Threat Values An expedient examination of the threat modifiers on Warrior techniques.
There is no Druid threat value list on Tankspot :(
Gearing For Threat A handy guide (more warrior-oriented, but valuble for all classes) that covers Hit/Expertise as well as Strength and Shield Block Value.

3.2 For Prot Warriors

Buffed. That's all I can say. I've gone from doing 1200-1500dps on heroics to 1600-2000. This is about a four hundred damage-per-second increase, which is about +33%. That is a HUGE boost (Can you imagine if a 6k dps rogue got a patch that bumped him up to 8k without any change of gear or talents or playstyle?)

1)There has been an increase in AP gained from Armored to the Teeth (which increases the damage and therefore threat of TC, Shockwave, Conc Blow, Devastate, Heroic Strike, Revenge... you get the idea) from 180-Armor-per-Attack-Power to 108-ApAP, which doesn't sound like a whole lot--it adds up to about 70 ap if you have 25,000 armor. 70 ap is only five dps (14 ap = one damage per second), which (with a weapon like my Legacy of Thunder) equals eight and a half damage extra on a swing. It's about +28 a swing with a slow weapon like Broken Promise (more on that particular tank weapon later).
This does not appear to be huge at first blush, admittedly--but that's okay, because trust me, it adds up, and I believe it does contribute (significantly) to my dps increase.
2) Devastate's damage has been doubled.
Now, back in Burning Crusade, *the* warrior rotation was Shield Slam->Revenge->Devastate->Devastate ad infinitum. If this change was implemented BC it would be a glorious boost. Now, though, Devastate is the "GCD filler you want to use to proc sword and board"--but that doesn't mean it's unused. Warriors use it on every single boss, at least five times per boss (3 if you've glyphed for it) to keep 5 stacks of sunder on the target.
Also note that unlike Heroic Strike, it's an instant attack. If you've ever played a melee dps class, you know that slow weapons benefit the most from instant attacks.
This is where Broken Promise comes back into play--the slowest tank weapon in Wrath, I do believe. Because of it's lack of Heroic Striking potential (seeing as my Legacy of Thunder attacks 50% faster, which means up to 50% more heroic strikes) Broken Promise was regarded fairly lowly--below Slayer of the Lifeless from naxx-10 and Red Sword of Courage from Utgarde Pinnacle (two items with a lower ilevel and therefore technically less powerful).
NO MORE. My devastates now do more damage than my heroic strikes. With Broken Promise my heroic strikes hit for about 1300, my devastates for about 1400 (but I can use Devastate almost twice as fast) up from 700. With Legacy of Thunder, HS is about 1100 and Devastate is 1200 or so.
Does this mean that I'm going to drop my Legacy of Thunder and pick up Broken Promise again? Actually, no. I've done some experimentation, and though I feel Broken Promise is better for AoE-tanking-devastate-spam situations, Legacy of Thunder allows me to Heroic Strike more often on bosses--not for the threat per se, but because it's a much more effective rage dump, and wasting rage is bad news.
3) Gaining rage from block/dodge/parry!
Warriors are the class most tied to gear. This is a fact, an irrefutable truth. Blizzard has admitted it multiple times--they've called dps warriors the most difficult spec to scale properly. An undergeared dps warrior is bound to do miniscule damage, wheras one decked in best-in-slot gear is guarenteed to be a raging god of destruction.
It's a double-edged sword though, for tanks. An undergeared prot warrior won't generate much threat, won't take many hits (which is why gear requirements for tanks are much more demanding than for dps--a fresh 80 cannot tank naxx-25). Worse, though, is when a tank is OVERgeared. This was a significant issue at the end of BC, when items from Sunwell had massive amounts of dodge rating on them. This was because IN the Sunwell instance, there was an aura that reduced your chance to dodge by a flat 20%. If you were a Black-Temple geared tank with 30% dodge, it'd drop down to 10% in Sunwell.
However, these Sunwell geared tanks with 40% dodge (outside of the raid itself) had an issue when they tried to run other things. They were bordering on unhittable. 44% dodge and 22% parry means you will not be hit a full two-thirds of the time.
Which means you only get one-third of the potential hits, the possible rage. Which means you can only use one-third of your potential threat generating attacks. Which means you are only generating one-third of the possible rage. The dps pulls aggro, the raid wipes. GG.

BUT IT'S ALL CHANGED NOW. Admittedly, a 20k hit will give you around 60 rage, wheras if you dodge it you'll only get 5. But 5 is infinitely better than 0. You will still have at least enough rage to do your normal rotations (minus the Heroic Strikes) which means you will be able to generate enough threat to stay ahead of the game.

It's funny, I really can't even tell you guys the potential that this has like I did with the Devastate change. Suffice it to say, this is a vastly powerful and crucial change as Protection Warriors get up to the higher tiers of content, because those higher tiers of content will mean better gear with more avoidance, which is now no longer an issue.






Suffice it to say, Patch 3.2 is one of the most important patches to Warrior tanks since... well, 3.0.3, which ALSO was a massive increase to our dps (and therefore tps)

Thank you all for reading,
Hyperiom.