Hit Rating and Expertise

[Meloree]

@Theck: We count down our pulls, so that ranged spells (and the MDs, to be fair) land when my exorcism lands. Double-miss on Exo/AS has not yet caused a threat pull.

We do too, but.... we're not very good at it? The other tank has a reputation for being impatient. As in,
Tank: "5, 4, (pulls boss), 321."
DPS: "Dammit, there goes our pre-pot."

And he's not always consistent; sometimes it's 3, sometimes it's 4, sometimes it's 1 or 0. When the DPS tries to adjust by casting at 3, they run the risk of pulling preemptively if it's a "1" pull. As a result, many of our DPS have just given up trying to micromanage that first second or two.

/rw Pull Incoming in 5
/in 1 /rw 4
/in 2 /rw 3
/in 3 /rw 2
/in 4 /rw 1
/in 5 /rw Spooooooooooooooon!

[Arincia]

Thinking about it wouldn't the only current fights for a tank need to be hit capped to interrupt a lvl 88 mob for Omnitron council and possibly Twilight Ascendant Council or Moloriak (depending on raid composition). I can understand both council fights but outside that there is 10/11 other bosses that don't need hit cap for interrupts from tank (normal). That being the case its probably best to just have a specialized hit set to swap into. (Fluid death+ret T11 legs+pyrium chain(on soul blade)+ BS boe shield= 773/820 to hit cap)

Id think that only swapping legs+trinket+weapon+shield for 2/12 (or 2/13) raid bosses shouldn't change any way we gem/reforge/enchant its just a specialized set as tanks as have always had.

Also if you want to be clever for more threat on the pull just use a exp elixir for first 20-60 seconds with SoT then go back to your normal seal and flask/elixir. Heck you even have BoP and salv if needed for really bad culprits.

[Reejin]

What would be the minimum hit/exp to shoot for, for a non-raiding tank, i.e. regular/heroics, considering the mechanics involved and the unpredictabilty of your pug companions.

[Senador]

Interrupts are pretty important on:

Omnitron Defense
Maloriak
Nefarian
Halfus Wyrmbreaker
Twilight Ascendant Council

For all of those, except Nefarian, you would need 8% hit to reliably interrupt (Nef only requires 5%, but 5% is still a pretty hefty hit rating investment).

On 10 mans, many guilds put these roles on a tank, due to both not having a guaranteed Shaman DPSer to handle every interrupt, to avoid splitting DPS, and because the tank will reliably be on that target (Or in the case of Nef, because having 3 short cool down interrupts that aren’t on tanks in a 10 man isn’t very common.)

When nearly half of the current content has required interrupts, and spans from “First bosses” to “Last bosses” in standard progression, having tanks gear for it is definitely a strategy some guilds use for 10 man. Note, this should only really apply to 10 man raids. 25 man raids should have enough redundant interrupts to not require tanks to handle them, and thus makes the gearing moot….unless you are my 25 man that keeps trying to make the tanks do full interrupts because the melee/shamans can’t be trusted to do it.

[Yelena]

If the engineers want style points, you'll use the Bolt Gun to interrupt. Amusingly enough I resorted to doing that on Maloriak once in a green phase, since I tend to pick off both interrupts during that phase and I put AS on cooldown right before it without thinking. I keep a rogue handy as a backup in those phases, but my reaction times are fast enough I can usually snipe most interrupts.

I RL/MT for a 10-man guild, and I haven't found a need to stack hit or expertise, even with me finding myself often times in a position where I need to interrupt. In all honesty, I find Rebuke gets blocked more often than it misses, but that's just my own experience. If I know I need to be interrupting, I still tend to sit on an off-CD AS out of habit from before Rebuke was baseline. With the current state of Vengeance, it's not like one has to follow the rotation with absolute rigidity to maintain a healthy threat lead, so it isn't a huge deal to sit on an off-CD 'filler' mid-fight if I find it to be ideal or a necessity to use it elsewhere.

[Darus]

Ive been pushing my avoidance all along but with the last build ive gone to get the threat caps on a couple of fights. Basically the ones with early heroisms like valiona and atramedes hc, using 3 fury warriors ripping aggro with 90k critts if I get misses, just taunting wont really suffice in every case when its a melee stealing.

Personally it felt beneficial to drop 5% avoidance for those encounters, I prefer being able to spotheal whoever is being low after a blackout or before a searing flame with solid holy power gain. On most other fights I dont think its a great idea to push hit/exp but it defenitley has its benefits.

[Siral]

if threat is the problem, why dont use the same tactics we are using for "magic" fights?

Switch trinkets.

I've an off spec as retribution so im thinking to buy License to slay. With only one trinket u gain +321 hit (1/3 of 961 hit rating required to cap) and +380 str (and also 95 parry rating with str!).

[halabar]

While I understand the 0/0 for raids, esp 25-man, what about for us shmucks doing heroics? My biggest problem is missing and that extra mob goes and splats the healer, or I'm in an AOE mess and the misses combined with not being able to see the mobs causes the healer to get ganked. Some hit (and threat in general) should help there, no?

[fuzzygeek]

While I understand the 0/0 for raids, esp 25-man, what about for us shmucks doing heroics? My biggest problem is missing and that extra mob goes and splats the healer, or I'm in an AOE mess and the misses combined with not being able to see the mobs causes the healer to get ganked. Some hit (and threat in general) should help there, no?

Yes. I wouldn't recommend someone just breaking into heroic 5m content to be gearing for hit/xpt cap, but my tanks all have hit/xpt gear that they put on for 5m content because DPS is lazy and impatient and doesn't like waiting one goddamn GCD before aoeing the world.

Admittedly you can't outgear the criminally stupid, but you can try to mitigate the effects.

[Dem]

For everything that you have easily on farm i.e. regular one shot you should be considering capping expertise and pushing hit towards the cap i.e. 5%+. If you're also working on progress encounters then you likely won't be reforging for this - it will come from alternate gear pieces, including hit trinkets.

You can alternate hit and mastery elixirs and food to fine tune this for easier or harder encounters.

Gearing for heavy survival in farm content is sub-optimal.

[theckhd]

Gearing for heavy survival in farm content is sub-optimal.

Er.... no? Farm content is farm content, but you can still die. Unless that extra DPS somehow makes or breaks a farm kill (it shouldn't), there's no solid argument for shifting to DPS-oriented gear other than "it doesn't matter anyway." You'd be hard-pressed to convince anyone that it's truly sub-optimal.

[Blackharon]

Gearing for heavy survival in farm content is sub-optimal.

If gearing for heavy survival in farm content lets you drop a healer for a dps then it certainly isn't sub-optimal.

[Dem]

Gearing for heavy survival in farm content is sub-optimal.

Er.... no? Farm content is farm content, but you can still die. Unless that extra DPS somehow makes or breaks a farm kill (it shouldn't), there's no solid argument for shifting to DPS-oriented gear other than "it doesn't matter anyway." You'd be hard-pressed to convince anyone that it's truly sub-optimal.

Actually yes. There are plenty of arguments for shifting away from heavy survival which is what I actually said and I think it will be quite easy to convince someone that it is in fact sub-optimal to gear for full survival in instances where the dps doesn't 'make or break' a kill.

Perhaps our definitions of farm content differ? Or optimal?
As I've mentioned before, our first responsibility is survival but our second is clearly threat.

Take a fight where your chance of dying is zero. I assume you would have no issue with gearing all out for threat/dps?
Now take a fight with a 1 in million chance of dying. I'd suggest that most if not all reasonable people would say in this case gearing towards dps was sensible.

On this basis, we could assume that there is a point at which most tanks should consider gearing towards dps. The point at which this happens will obviously differ depending on personal preference and situation but as chance of death tends towards zero, gearing for dps should increase.

This is not an all or nothing change from full survival to full threat. It's more likely to be a gradual shift in emphasis.

Even if gearing changes don't make or break a fight, they can save time. As we all know time is money, and for some raids it can make the difference between killing that last boss at the end of the night and getting that extra gear this week.

Perhaps it's just more fun, perhaps you needed that holy power from the attack you just missed, perhaps your rogue is eating the floor and you missed an interrupt which wiped the raid. There are plenty of reasons to start gearing for threat but few for full survival gear in an encounter that you wipe the floor with every single week.

[lythac]

Gearing for heavy survival in farm content is sub-optimal.

Er.... no? Farm content is farm content, but you can still die. Unless that extra DPS somehow makes or breaks a farm kill (it shouldn't), there's no solid argument for shifting to DPS-oriented gear other than "it doesn't matter anyway." You'd be hard-pressed to convince anyone that it's truly sub-optimal.

Actually yes. There are plenty of arguments for shifting away from heavy survival which is what I actually said and I think it will be quite easy to convince someone that it is in fact sub-optimal to gear for full survival in instances where the dps doesn't 'make or break' a kill.

Perhaps our definitions of farm content differ? Or optimal?
As I've mentioned before, our first responsibility is survival but our second is clearly threat.

Take a fight where your chance of dying is zero. I assume you would have no issue with gearing all out for threat/dps?
Now take a fight with a 1 in million chance of dying. I'd suggest that most if not all reasonable people would say in this case gearing towards dps was sensible.

On this basis, we could assume that there is a point at which most tanks should consider gearing towards dps. The point at which this happens will obviously differ depending on personal preference and situation but as chance of death tends towards zero, gearing for dps should increase.

This is not an all or nothing change from full survival to full threat. It's more likely to be a gradual shift in emphasis.

Even if gearing changes don't make or break a fight, they can save time. As we all know time is money, and for some raids it can make the difference between killing that last boss at the end of the night and getting that extra gear this week.

Perhaps it's just more fun, perhaps you needed that holy power from the attack you just missed, perhaps your rogue is eating the floor and you missed an interrupt which wiped the raid. There are plenty of reasons to start gearing for threat but few for full survival gear in an encounter that you wipe the floor with every single week.

There was an argument for time saving gearing for TPS/DPS on farm content in Wrath when there was a lot of trash. Not the case in Cata.

If your chance of dying is zero through overgearing then it is far more advantageous to reduce the number of healers you are using increasing the RDPS by far more than you would compared to maximising personal tank DPS.

[Hokahey]

There was an argument for time saving gearing for TPS/DPS on farm content in Wrath when there was a lot of trash. Not the case in Cata.

If your chance of dying is zero through overgearing then it is far more advantageous to reduce the number of healers you are using increasing the RDPS by far more than you would compared to maximising personal tank DPS.

Not to beat a dead horse, but this. Even if gearing for all out threat literally doubled your personal DPS on a given boss, it would still probably not be equal to having 1 less healer swapped for one additional DPS, even if said DPS fell somewhat "under par" on damage output.