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Swipe and threat
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Post by
MegaVolt
I recently walked through a few lvl70 instances with a fellow Death Knight. Since they were easy we pulled as many mobs as possible and then tried to compete for threat. I was very surprised to see that I almost always won on AoE threat with
Swipe
over his
Death and Decay
.
Now I am wondering - how can this be? Swipe doesn't produce any additional threat except by damage, right? DaD on the other hand is a "high threat" ability. I shouldn't be able to win threat against him, should I?
Generally on paper it seems like it should be very easy to steal AoE threat from a bear tank. Any Blizzard or Reign of Fire should easily out-dps and therefor out-threat Swipe, right? Am I missing something?
Post by
Aurlon
Bear swipe does have a hidden +threat component, also bear form has it's own +threat buff.
Post by
109094
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MegaVolt
Bear swipe does have a hidden +threat component, also bear form has it's own +threat buff.
Thanks for the info ;) I think I have read all the stickies at least twice and I can't remember it being mentioned anywhere. Where could I find more information about these effects?
Actually the opposite is stated in the sticky:
Multi-mob tanking is somewhat harder. Swipe is our main tool for holding aggro on multiple mobs. Swipe spam is good enough to hold aggro on three mobs in some circumstances. Swipe does not generate any extra threat (see Offensive Tanking Math, below).
This means it generates threat purely through damage dealt.
Depending on how hard you're getting hit, this might not be enough to out-aggro your healers.
Taken from
http://www.wowhead.com/?forums&topic=7507
.
Since it stats that threat is purely based on damage it also implies that there is no hidden +threat from bear form.
Post by
109094
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MegaVolt
That sticky is also flagged as outdated and back from the days when swipe could only hit 3 targets and was quite a poor aggro builder. But while things have since changed, its threat still comes from its damage boosted by bear form.
It is true that the sticky is outdated but I haven't found anything in the patch notes (or similar) to indicate a change in threat generation. The wowwiki also doesn't mention anything in that regard, same with EJ. Are there any solid numbers on threat with and without bear form (is it true that bear gives a flat threat increase?) and threat on swipe (is it true that there is a hidden threat increase?)?
Post by
Aurlon
Swipe went through many changes at the start of WotLK. At first it still had the frontal cone limit, then that was removed, then it gained a +threat bonus to reach the stage we are at today. I'll try and find the relevant blue posts.
Edit: Found it!
Clicky
Post by
109094
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
fenom
First of all now that swipe is a 360 attack I have four aoeing much easier (thanks blizz)
But on topic I think there are several flaws with your test one is gear levels but the main thing is that just DnD alone won't outhreat a swipe spam as DnD is a dot with a cd that is ticking and you can spam swipe with all that rAge.
And as far as blizzard/volley outthreating swipe that is what the built in bearform threat modifier is for else DPS would pull threat way more often
Post by
235419
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
109094
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Slimda
The only threat rage affects, is how much you can spam certain threat generating skills. 0 rage = 0 threat. :P
(or ok, some threat, thanks to regular white melee hits and faerie fire)
Post by
Celdhyrean
Easy to test anyway, take a mob, hit it once without auto-attacking (if that's possible), compare damage agains threat and you should have it.
Post by
MegaVolt
So we now have a lot of speculation and about 20 different opinions. Can anyone bring some solid evidence (patch notes, official blizzard post, anything like that) how the situation really is?
The closest thing I could find is this:
http://www.wow.com/2008/12/16/druids-swipe-now-generates-50-increased-threat/
However, it is not an official post so there is no way to know if it is (still?) accurate.
Post by
Aadramelekh
Oh but it is an official post. L2read. A few rows down we have
THIS.
Which goes 288. Re: Ghostcrawler, swipe is not fun. 12/16/2008 10:01:02 AM PST
The change for Swipe to generate an additional 50% threat is now live. Please let us know how it goes.
And anyway, DnD ticks for like 250 damage per second or so. Swipe is spammable and hits for around 300 damage (@5000AP)
and it can crit
. Any respectable Bear has at least 30% crit in tank gear.
Post by
109094
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Afoxi
Although I haven't logged on to Aeiterealle for ages, I can tell you that Death and Decay can in fact Crit.
Death and Decay by itself is not going to hold threat over anyone spamming AoE attacks, it's only there to help build initial AoE threat before you get diseases up for Blood Boil or Unholy Blight.
Next patch however, it seems I will be sending Death Coils (among other attacks) to each individual mob.
Having said that, I don't mind Druids out-threat-ing us via swipe spam because... well, I'd rather do Head + Wall combos instead of having only 3-4 buttons to tank with, so respect is due to anyone who can tolerate Bear Tanking.
Post by
Kaitain
...
and it can crit
....
This is what i was going to say also :-)
In a short timeframe, the crits can give you extremely spiky threat. DnD gives a smooth steady flow of threat.
Having said that, I don't mind Druids out-threat-ing us via swipe spam because... well, I'd rather do Head + Wall combos instead of having only 3-4 buttons to tank with.
I think most ferals enjoy having a non-faceroll DPS rotation when not tanking, so it works both ways :-)
Post by
Afoxi
Feral DPS is hard to get used to, I'll agree with that.
Anyway:
Come to think of it, any bear would have obscene amounts of crit (for a tank), whereas an Unholy specced Tank will typically have a base of 8% crit and likely not exceed 10% anyway.
Also, Death and Decay does not benefit from Runic Focus for some reason, so it only crits for 50% additional damage.
There is an easy way to guarantee threat if you're competing over a Bear though. Throw out a Howling Blast and make sure the Bear doesn't get rage in the first place, though I imagine that this is largely useless advice anyway.
Post by
pelf
Well I guess that answers that question. I must have totally missed that change
That was when it became better to hit Swipe, even on single targets, in free periods between FFF, Mangle and keeping up your Lacerate instead of just hitting Lacerate each GCD.
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