Warrior Threat

This is actually taken from a post I made on my Furious guild forum regarding tanks having to deal with DPS not letting them do their job properly. My companion (McSars) who made the post was completely right about how he felt, and this isn't a rant at him, but more at the fact that warriors are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to threat (amongst other things).

"I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I actually explode into retarded amounts of DPS usually under three conditions.

1. When McSars is tanking.

2. When Marius is tanking.

3. When I'm in a raid.

Number one and two are simply because both of these two people are amazing at tanking, and I actually feel safe intercepting and then popping all of my cooldowns, plus cleaving and whirlwind-ing at the same time. Yes, there is a great chance I will pull aggro, and to be honest, it's okay. Really, it's alright. I say this because nine times out of ten, this happens on trash pulls anyway. Very rarely do I pull bosses off of my tanks (which in my honest opinion, is really what matters in instances), and even when I do give chance for some threat build-up on a group of mobs, sometimes I just pull. I (warriors) have no threat reducing abilities outside of clicking off the mobs and hoping the tank can pull them off of me while I stand there getting my face beat in.

Rogues have an innate 29% reduction to threat, and can Vanish and Tricks. Hunters can Misdirect and Feign Death, as well as have pets taunt for them. Priests can Fade, and Shadow Priests have a passive 20% threat reduction. Paladins can bubble and Hand of Sanctuary. Warlocks can Soulshatter. Mages can Iceblock and Invisibility (Not to mention the 40% threat reduction of Arcane). Shamans can use their Stoneclaw and Earth Elemental totems and Wind Shear. Death Knights have an innate 20% threat reduction modifier, untalented, when in Blood or Unholy presences. They can get an additional 24% reduction in those two presences with the Subversion (Blood) talent. Feral Druids can Cower, and both Feral and Balance druids have talents which gives a 30% threat reduction (and all Alliance Druids can Shadowmeld). Now, Battle/Berserker stances have a passive 20% threat reduction (With Improved Berserker Stance giving another 10%), and this is cool except for a few problems. Heroic Strike generates a lot of threat. Whirlwind is not affected by the passive threat reduction, and neither is Execute. Hell, even shouts generate threat, and I have to do them every 2-4 minutes. As I said before, warriors have no threat reducing abilities. Fury is so very explosive, it can be ridiculous sometimes. As of right now, with rampage up all of the time, I have a near 50% chance to crit, which means half of the time you will hear very loud gushes of blood coming from those mobs, and there is nothing I can do about it. That is without Recklessness, Death Wish, and Paragon.

*breathes*

Number three is really just obvious. A raid tank with full buffs should be able to hold a boss off of me.

Now, I'm not saying this to defend myself (okay, maybe a little), but really to say that I get it. I was a tank in Burning Crusade, the expansion where AoE tanking was a nightmare for warriors, and dungeons were full of AoE packs. (Shattered Halls, anyone?) I tanked heroics till my eyes bled, and I was a main tank for the lower end raid instances. That is actually the reason I switched to Fury, was because I was fed up with tanking.

Seriously though, I haven't seen any better tanks than McSars and Marius. They always seem to know what's going on, and they have eyes in the backs of their heads. They also probably have every possible shortcut to pulling aggro off of people bound to the easiest keys, and they probably know all of them, when to use them, how to use them and even when not to use them. By now, they've probably come to expect me and my exploding DPS, which in some ways I imagine makes tanking things in a group with me a bit easier. "Well, Lycannon's here, time to focus her and taunt, since she will most likely be the one sucking up threat." That's what I seem to notice anyway. When my Omen screams at me, I look over at my party frames and 90% of the time, I'm the only one with a red border. Also, Marius is a doctor.

What they might not know, is if in the rare occasion another party member pulls aggro, especially the healer, I will turn and hit that mob with everything I've got, pummel if I have to, and try to bring it to the tank, or they will pull it off me when they realize what happened. (Which goes with what I said earlier.) I will also Challenging Shout off of the tank if he is about to bite the dust, to give the healer time to get them up. If the tank is dying, the healer usually and should focus them first, and I've noticed that because of this, the concept seems to work. Yes, I might die, but that's okay because the tank might not. Believe it or not, I focus my tank all of the time, and I do my best to switch targets when they do. This doesn't always work when two of my top three attacks on mob groups are AoE abilities (Cleave and Whirlwind), but the fact remains that I do try. Also, as I become more geared because I raid, it may also become increasingly more difficult to hold aggro off me as the gap between gear widens. A tank who only does heroics and has badge gear to reflect that may find it hard to keep me off of the top of the threat meter when I'm sitting in ICC 25 stuff.

Some people really are dense when it comes to instancing (hunters and their pets come to mind), and others, like myself, really do understand what is going on. Yes, it can be annoying, but such is the way of the tank, and of the DPS warrior."

It really got me thinking about warrior threat as DPS, and how we need some sort of ability like the other classes have to drop our threat in those 'oh shit' moments. If I have aggro, I usually pop Gift of the Naaru and sometimes Enraged Regeneration at the same time if I'm taking tons of damage, but then that doesn't help reduce my threat at all. If anything, it just adds to it.