Rate my tanking, and why am I always OOM nowerdays?

Koln wrote:For heroics I just use seal of wisdom.

Edit: Dasphunk beat me to it.

This is terrible advice. Tanking with Seal of Wisdom is a huge threat nerf. From the Ability Damage/Threat Analysis:

Seal of Vengeance procs is a huge component of our threat, and Holy Vengeance is a solid contributor.

You gain 1519 threat per SoV proc. That means that by dropping SoV, you lose out on 1.1k TPS from melee attacks and 250 TPS from HotR and ShoR, as well as 168 TPS from Judgement. So by using SoW, you gain around 1200 TPS from being able to maintain Consecration at the loss of 1.75+ TPS from your seal.

In fact, if you include the Holy Vengeance damage, you lose more TPS by switching to Seal of Wisdom just from auto-attacks than you gain by being able to maintain Consecration.

TLDR: Don't use Seal of Wisdom to tank.

Well with that, stick with vengeance.
But, I was referencing more if he was still having mana problems after not using concecrate in his rotation and not being able to use ShoR, HotR and having to wait on mana...

It might help your mana if you wouldn't use sacred shield on all pulls.

That way you save 500ish mana every minute, and you take more damage which will result in more mana as well.

ulushnar wrote:Unless your AoE DPS insanely overgears you, you can probably drop Consecrate after the second cast until new mobs enter the fray.

I love to try to maximize my damage and TPS all the time, but try this for an experiment:

1) learn to tank without the macros, so you can selectively choose which skills you are using. Drop Cons as soon as you can.
2) try putting the MINIMUM amount of threat on a target and still hold aggro.

If the mob has 50k health left, and you have a 40k threat lead on the DPS, you could just /dance the rest of the way and keep aggro. Learn how and WHEN to build threat, and heroics will be easier. I'll burn shield, hammer, cons, etc on a pull, but unless people are AOEing the whole time I can usually slack off later in the pull.

Another trick I learned is, pop Divine Plea before a pull, and pull when it has a few seconds left: the cooldown ends sooner, relative to the life of the pull. (And, of course, Pull Moar Mobs.) I still drink quite often (I'll grab 80x mage food, and use 40 in an evening sometimes), but when it's free I care less.

As others said, I think that learning to exercise fine control on what skills you use and when (and when you skip them) will help you out the most.


edit:
For what it's worth, I try to minimize my damage taken in heroics. I try to keep sacred shield up, and I tend to have 3.5-4k BV. I use a DPS weapon. Knowing when I can throttle my mana expenditures does more for me than trying to take more damage. I also roll with 40-60 drinks in my bag at all times, and am liberal with using them pre-pull if I don't have Plea ticking (and sometimes when it is), and am even more liberal with mage food. Because I'm taking relatively little damage, my DPS tend to go AOEing quite often, so adds stay up and hitting me (and proccing Sanctuary) longer, too. Your mileage may vary, I have very nice block value gear.

Tirion_Azuremyst wrote:Hey all,

Here's me: http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azuremyst&n=Tirion

I've been farming heroics since 3.3 along with everyone else and their dog, and I'm beginning to get to the point where I am just constantly oom. I have to drink after every pull.

I use:

- Retribution Aura
- Righteous Fury
- Blessing of Sanctuary
- (Trash) Seal of Command
- (Boss) Seal of Vengeance

Just before I pull with the Holy Frisbee, I hit:

- Sacred Shield
- Divine Plea
- (Boss) Avenging Wrath

I've been reading these forums for a very very long time but I've never posted but thought this was a worthwile topic to add to. On heroics I typically ignore Avenger's. Its a mana hog and taunt does the job just fine. I taunt hammer shield consecrate once judge hammer again then let the mobs die. Divine Plea refreshes itself for massive mana gains. One thing I saw on your armory you are hitable which will also cause mana issues.

On a side note your spec is very odd as is your gemming. Improved Demo Aura > 3/5 Divinity healing not to mention (depending on armor levels) its about .5% more DR from the armor. While you are hitable I would avoid str gems at all costs. Also you are a BS without the extra sockets and no belt buckle.

Dasphunk wrote:Well with that, stick with vengeance.
But, I was referencing more if he was still having mana problems after not using concecrate in his rotation and not being able to use ShoR, HotR and having to wait on mana...

Then he would be doing something terribly wrong.

60% of the 969 can be maintained without any heal intake, from DP, JoW and Sanctuary alone against a single target.
Consecration, while not 40% of the mana output, is the biggest expense, and, as I showed up there, a cast you can dismiss on most cases.

Epimer wrote:

Dasphunk wrote:When doing bosses and your still having trouble with mana... use SoW. It's not as much threat or dps but you will always be at full mana using a full 6969 rotation.

I've bolded why I think this is bad advice. Warriors, Druids and DKs make sure they're never capping out their resource, because it should be turned into TPS/DPS. We are no different - if you can finish a boss fight without going oom, while contributing a not insignificant amount of damage, you should probably do so.

Well unlike the other classes, we don't have a resource dump (heroic strike, maul, deathcoil, etc.). Our rotation is pretty much set with only a little variation. We don't really have a way to "use" that extra mana when we have it.

That said, I have noticed a harder time in 5 mans keeping mana. I don't know if I am just imagining it yet or if something changed, but right now I am siding on "I am imagining it" until I get something more concrete.

jere wrote:
Well unlike the other classes, we don't have a resource dump (heroic strike, maul, deathcoil, etc.). Our rotation is pretty much set with only a little variation. We don't really have a way to "use" that extra mana when we have it.

Very true, and that's why it's a poor analogy on my part What I mean, though, is that if you have the choice between using SoW and sitting on full mana at the end of a boss fight, or using SoV and contributing a non-trivial amount of DPS but having to actively manage your mana to do so, you should always do the latter.

I have gone back to "Seal Twisting" I wait until I have a 5 stack of corruption, then I switch to Seal of Wisdom, then I switch back to renew Corruption. I know it is probably a little bit of a threat loss but I don't get pulled off of too often.

So I asume that using socom and dropping conc would be the best for 2+ targets in heroics?

Now I just have to figure out if my str gemmed block gear has more dps then my high ilevel tank gear.

Oryanadin wrote:I have gone back to "Seal Twisting" I wait until I have a 5 stack of corruption, then I switch to Seal of Wisdom, then I switch back to renew Corruption. I know it is probably a little bit of a threat loss but I don't get pulled off of too often.

No, don't do that.

Awyndel wrote:So I asume that using socom and dropping conc would be the best for 2+ targets in heroics?

Not exactly... see Theck's post here for details.

more then 2*

2/2 in Spiritual Attunement
but if you still got problems with mana use SoW in HC's , it's not hard to hold threat without Sov (SoCu)

I don't think there's anything wrong with using SoW in heroics. The majority of the runs I do I overgear the DPS by a wide margin. The only time you switch back to a threat seal is when you're running with at least similarly geared DPS to yourself, like my guildmates. Or that threat happy warlock.