Regarding tank classes...

Hey guys, I wonder if you could possibly help shed some light on a situation, or point me in the right direction;

I try to pride myself on being a good tank, I've done it since 2005 prot pally all the way, got our "rotation" down etc.. hit capped, exp capped, well take a look for yourself: Crumplezone granted my gear's not the best, but I'm a father now, don't have time for the hardcore anymore unfortunately, but that's not what's bothering me.

What's bothering me, is that in LFR last night, a Brewmaster was the other tank (gear level 487) and he out healed me, he took less damage or should I say, he took less healing, and out DPSd me by a country mile, which all in all has left me feeling somewhat disconcerted by my paladin.

Even if I picked up the mob first with a wings/Avengers Shield, judge, etc.. he picked the target off me no problem, which led me to believe he was taunting at first, he said he wasn't, (he was actually quite adamant after I pressed him a bit, I got a bit arsey about it when I shouldn't have really) but all in all, it looks to me at this point like Brewmaster is a better tank class than paladin.. please someone say it isn't so.. after reading Thecks Blog religiously and keeping up as best I can using Mr robot and general logic, I can't see a way to come close, let alone beat this other Brewtank, (link to the char: leiwo)

Am I doing something wrong, or is there a bug that I've not come across, like I say, if there're already threads about this I've missed, please be good enough to point me in the right direction instead of explaining to me.. like you have done with so many other people.

by the way, the tool I used to see this data was recount, and while I've read damage taken isn't collected properly, healing taken is more accurate.. even so.. I took twice as much healing as him. sigh.. it hurts.

thanks for your feedback guys.

Nevermind, found a pretty good post on MMO-Champ that explains a hell of a lot, reckon it's going to be fun to try, seems like Brewmaster is a class which lets good tanks shine through a little more than other tanking classes, or to put it another way, it's a class which needs slightly more practice and precision than other classes, and if you're bad at it, you soon know about it.

I guess I just came across a good one.

Who generates the most threat gets hit by the mobs.
Who gets hit by the mobs gets the vengeance.
Who gets the vengeance generates the most threat.

Paladin AoE burst threat at low vengeance levels is not up to par with the other tanks. Our sustained TPS is fine, we just can't frontload it without a lot of help from vengeance -- hopefully the consecrate change in 5.2 fixes a lot of that problem.

You also have every tank trained to generate as much threat as possible in the opening 10 seconds of every pull. In my opinion this is thanks to the double threat of DPS that "never need to worry about threat because of vengeance" and the fact that you don't feel like you're contributing to the raid without the high DPS numbers provided by vengeance. So you have the perpetual cycle above that means you are forced to chain taunt as an OT or just sit there twiddling your thumbs if ever the other tank gets a significant threat lead on you.

I really hate vengeance in case that's not already obvious

Yup, I'm feeling that come through more so last night than ever to be honest.

I severely doubt the slight increase in consecration TPS will help drastically, especially with the vengeance model still acting in favor of high front end dps/threat generation. After all.. we're not going to open up with consecration.

am I wrong?

It will certainly help you establish threat in the opening seconds of a pull, which is the only time it matters.

My DK co-tank has a running joke where he spams a macro that whispers me "can I start DPS yet?" any time I'm pulling something. Usually I just salv him off the pull so he doesn't have to worry about it. For 5-10 seconds at the start of any pull he can just about pull threat off me at will (even when I charge in with wings and a pre-pot rolling), but once vengeance takes hold it's fine. It's annoying but that's the name of the game these days.

ooh salvation, gotta make sure Sag remembers that.

Sounds a bit stupid to need Salv, but w/e

I tank on a monk, dk and warrior and when I am on my monk unless I am with another monk I will out threat any other tank even if they pull first. Unless I give them 15-20 seconds, my experience has been mainly in LFR on my monk, but I have tanked a guild MV run and the feral druid who is usually my co-tank get's pissed at the threat I can pull off him and my ilvl is 17 lower then his. Perhaps he is doing something wrong or slacking but he will pull off my DK who is better geared then he is on our normal HM clears.

I'm guessing the problem for AOE, at least, is that Keg Smash is both the main move for single target AND aoe, which gives it ridiculous damage on AOE? And then add an excellent spammable AOE filler (SCK).