WoW

[RaceBannon42]

What makes great pally tanking stuff is not the same as what makes great tanking stuff. Pallies generate threat via spell damage (thanks to righteous fury), and they don't tend to generate much threat via wacking stuff. They also need more defense than warriors because their talents don't provide the same level that a warrior's does. Compare this to the warrior, who doesn't want a super huge amount of avoidance some of the time because they need to generate rage partially by being hit. Paladins love avoidance, even compared to stamina.

From what I've seen, pallys tend to focus on damage avoidance, being uncritable (490 def) and uncrushable (avoidance/block), and then combine that with spell damage and adding as much stam stuff/armor as they can. They can generate a good amount of threat this way but they tend to me more fragile than a warrior, which makes them not as good of tanks as warriors are.

I think that Shaladan focused too much on defense and not enough on avoidance/stam. But then again, it looks like it's kind of academic; paladins don't seem like they're going to be viable MT for anything past kara.

damn.. look at you mr i'm a tanking expert nub!

thats way more than I know about tanking.... All I know is I like them especially the ones that generate enough theat that I can do more than auto attack

[Kalbear]

damn.. look at you mr i'm a tanking expert nub!

Hee.

I read a lot about the pally tanking stuff.

In theory, a paladin can generate more threat than a warrior, though they can't do it for very long without going OOM. In practice the paladins that I've seen that are trying this complain about not having enough avoidance/def/stam gear.

(In general paladins are a lot of whiny bitches, tbh.)

[Arakasi]

Not quite sure I agree with you there Kal on all your points.

1) Paladins don't need any more defence than warriors do. They both need to get to 490 defence to be uncrittable. They both have a talent in their prot tree that gives them 20 defence.

2) Paladins yes do do a lot of threat by being beat on, but it's by no means their main threat move. Sure when AoE tanking it is because of Holy Shield, but against single targets its probably no more than 20%. Look at this following breakdown on threat from a Paladin tanking Void Reaver.

Cathela:

Consecration = 46,576 x 1.9 = 88494.4

Seal of Righteousness = 43,829 x 1.9 = 83275.1

Judgement of Righteousness = 37,282 x 1.9 = 70835.8

Melee = 35 601

Judgement of Righteousness = 24,053 x 1.9 = 45700.7

Holy Shield = 9,816 x 1.9 x 1.35 = 25178.04

Avenger's Shield = 7,877 x 1.9 = 14966.3

Vengeance = 4,111 x 1.9 = 7810.9

Hammer of Wrath = 2 561 x 1.9 = 4865.9

Reflect = 1,128

Prayer of Mending = 31,800 x 0.9 x 0.5 x 1.9 = 27189

Lifebloom = 5,767 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 1441.75

Earthshield = 665 x 0.5 = 332.5

Spiritual Attunement = 37,656 x .5 = 18828

Seal of Righteousness = 44 x 50 = 2200

Holy Shield = 20 x 50 = 1000

Total Threat Generated = 428844.39

Fight Duration = 540 Seconds (there is no log included, this is approximate)

TPS = 794

Holy shield threat on a single target isn't that high. It certainly is dwarfed by consecrate, righteousness, etc.

3) Paladins just don't have the stamina warriors do. Partially this is due to gear available, partially due to I think base stats. Even though their talent gives them 6% more stamina compared to warrior's 5%.

4) Paladins definite strength is with the right gear they can become virtually uncrushable against any single mob. Bump up their mitigation enough so that plus the holy shield makes them uncrushable, especially with the blocking 8 attacks in 10 seconds which is much superior to warrior's blocking 2 attacks in 5 seconds.

5) However once you reach that point of mitigation it is superior to then stack stamina everywhere.

6) And this should be the good part for Kal, Slurk and other prot pallies out there. They can tank endgame encounters and do them well. Their single target threat is theoretically the highest provided they have the mana to sustain their threat. Pallie tanks have tanked Gruul, Magtheridon, Void Reaver, Hydross (in fact many pally tanks can get maxed in both resists with 490 defence and can tank Hydross and his 4 adds at the same time) and I know Paladins have tanked other bosses in SSC. They also do very well in Mount Hyjal because most of the bosses there have huge waves of adds before the bosses as part of the event and Paladins excel in AoE tanking. It also helps that once Paladins move into T5 their gear becomes better and they're more easily able to reach that uncrushable cap, thus allowing them a bit more flexiblity in gear.

Btw here is a good prot pally tanking thread if any of you want to check it out.

Edit: Also think part of the issue is for Kara and pre Kara pallies to reach that uncrushable point, they have to have very specific gear to reach it. And that's gear that doesn't have spell damage, often gear that is more warrior centric. Pallies more come into their own in T5 when there is finally gear that allows them to maintain uncrushable status while having more spell damage, which helps agro tremendously.

[Kalbear]

Paladins yes do do a lot of threat by being beat on,

I don't think I said that, but in any case it's wrong; they can get away with more avoidance because they don't need to generate rage. That was what I thought I said before. I apologize if this was unclear.

My understanding was that warriors get more def in some way - either a stance or via skillups. They certainly get more block% thanks to shield wall, which makes them uncrushable more easily. Warriors also get more stamina naturally than pallies do as part of being warriors. It might be that paladins have to sacrifice more to get uncritable and thus can't be uncrushable - but warriors don't have to really sacrifice anything.

But as Arakasi said, a lot of it is the gear, and the fact that pallys will go oom quickly trying to generate their threat or focus more on spell damage at the cost of mitigation/defense. And it seems like a warrior can have more HP/armor than a paladin and generate as much threat.

[Stego]

Kal, a pally can not generate more threat than a warrior. Perhaps in theory, but not in reality. Purportedly bears can generate more threat too, but I've only seen it it sans rage. All things equal, if a warrior has rage, you can't touch him for threat on a single mob. (Boss)

I still think if you want to tank then you want to re-roll a cow warrior.

[Tobin]

I don't remember hubby going out of mana that fast, but when we were all low he'd announce he was putting that Seal of Blah! on there that gives you mana when you hit the mob.

I want to say that he MT'd Kara for us a few nights when our normal tank decided suddenly it was Fury!!1! time.

Gear is a matter of evolution - there was a list of things he still wanted to get, but he got tired of the game and quit before getting much of it. One thing that always bothered me was that he had almost maxed JC, but was running around with kiddie gems plugged in,

I think I have a few of the Glowing Nightseyes myself, I love them and the Potent Topazes,

[Kalbear]

That's what I figured, Stego. A pally won't be able to get enough spelldamage to outthreat a warrior without sacrificing other things, at least as it stands right now.

I'm okay healing, honestly. At least at the endgame. Tanking is a lot of fun too. If I can figure out how to do both, that'd be ideal. That might have to wait for other patches & stuff.

[Liryn]

My somewhat limited experience with grouping with pally tanks in 5-mans is that threat on multiple mobs is DEFINITELY not a problem, in general threat on a single mob is not a problem, and the only times it becomes a problem is on bosses that have a lot of knockback/deaggro abilities (hi2u Blackheart the Inciter). It seems it's harder for pallies to get back the aggro quickly than for bears and warriors.

Of course, with a pally around you can just give those high-aggro folks *coughArakcough* Blessing of Salvation...

[PhelanArcetus]

Paladins do need to crank the miss+dodge+parry+block more than warriors, just because Shield Block provides so much more avoidance than Holy Shield does for reaching the uncrushable cap. However, while a warrior tank needs to take hits to get rage, a paladin tank needs to take hits so that heals will restore mana. This is relevant not at the start of the fight, but as the fight continues. Meaning it's not an issue on trash, but it means a lot on long boss fights.

Talent-wise, not such a big difference. Toughness and Anticipation are the same. I prefer the reliable aspect of Shield Specialization instead of Redoubt, but that's not a huge difference.

Every conversation I've had indicates that paladins don't need much spell damage to generate threat. A spell damage sword with a spell damage enchant will pretty much cover it. Sure, you can get more, but if you die, you have no threat.

And since warriors have higher base health, the paladin needs to push stamina even harder. Putting anything but a +12 stamina in a blue socket is just not the way to go as any tank.

I won't deny that paladins are shafted on gear for tanking past Kara. The lower base health and the need to have more avoidance than a warrior for uncrushability hurt a great deal. They can only count on 30% block from active abilities, whereas I can count on 75%. Granted, their blocks generate threat and Holy Shield is much better against fast attackers than Shield Block is, due to number of charges, but to reach that 102.4% miss+dodge+parry+block and be free of crushing blows, that means they need miss+dodge+parry+block to be 72.4%. I only need to guarantee 27.4% (while Shield Block remains active), and with enough defense for uncrittable and the Deflection talent, I've got 10% miss, ~10% dodge, 10% parry, 10% block; already there.

This paladin has 161 spell damage on his sword. His total is 221. Some of the rest is from his T4 gloves. But he has a stam/int/spell damage ring, and stam/int/spell crit/healing boots. His shoulders are outdated junk; Warchief's Mantle from the Old Hillsbrad quest. What's more an issue is that he has under 11,000 health unbuffed, as well as less miss, dodge, and parry than I do. 45.03% of L70 attacks do no damage to him. He blocks another 14.61%, add 30% for holy shield. Add some more for buffs. Which actually means that unless Redoubt is active, he can be crushed. (He can get a notable boost by getting to exalted with the Aldor for the better shoulder enchant, among other things, like getting a Crest of the Sha'tar instead of the Chess healing shield.)

On the other hand, I'm currently short 3 def rating from a socket bonus (gems are in my mailbox), so that's either 1 or two more. I have 12,694 hp (add 60 or maybe 70 depending on the 5% bonus and rounding), 51.92% of L70 attacks do no damage, nearly 25% block chance, and our overall gear level is pretty similar. And this is with me starting to try and lower my full avoidance. At this point, the fact that I can survive things he can't is more due to the gear he has equipped than it is due to the class differences. In one case it's a low quality item (the shoulders), in other cases it's inappropriate gear, like the healing boots or spell damage ring, but most of his sockets are wrong. 5 of his sockets contain uncommon gems rather than rares, and I only feel like two of his socketed items are socketed with the right things; his bracers and his pants. Also, I want those pants.

He's capped with Violet Eye, so he should be able to replace his spell damage ring with the Violet Eye ring. Bam, stamina, another 8 defense for 0.4% on each. Tell us that he needs to finish his Sha'tar rep to get the better shield; that's 17 more stamina and another bunch of defense. Put stamina on that shield instead of a spike, perhaps, for another health boost. I wouldn't suggest the exalted shoulder enchant until he gets new shoulders, because Warchief's Mantle isn't worth it. Spell crit is worth virtually nothing; I'm pretty sure Holy Shield and Consecration can't crit, and it appears that Vengeance is more useful than Righteousness on a big guy (except if people are jumping straight on, because it needs a ramp up period).

Paladins definitely do have a lot of complaints, but for the most part those complaints have a valid rooting. Between the available gear, the talent trees, and the encounter design, until BC a paladin had trouble doing anything but healing in groups. The lack of Spiritual Attunement meant that paladins couldn't tank long fights due to running out of mana, and the Retribution tree remains the weakest of the five dps trees between the three hybrid classes.

Edit: Lots of stuff while I was typing. I've seen a lot of pallies using spell damage gear instead of gear with tanking stats. Well, I couldn't take aggro off of them no matter how I tried (though the above guy, I can pull even when he puts Salv on me), but of course they died pathetically easily.

Bears are overpowered. Seriously, while I dodge too much for my tastes on Moroes now, thanks to better rage gen from outgoing damage (I think) and Omen of Clarity for free mangles, a bear can pull aggro off of me when Moroes is hitting me and the bear is taking no hits. That's just stupid.

I think the higher end gear availability is better for paladin tanking than the 5-man, Kara, and Gruul/Magtheridon gear. But there's a lot of issue getting some groups to accept a paladin tank. There's also the issue of many stupid paladins, and the ridiculous ranting on the paladin forum, between the retnoobs, the clerics, the tanks, and the guys who want to be a hybrid.

[Arakasi]

All three classes if getting beat on can generate a lot of rage, certainly enough to tank anything.

When it comes down to pure numbers though on theory, warriors are last in rage generated. Sorry Stego. Not saying they're bad but the reason warriors are taken as main tanks has little to do with their threat. It has to do with their flexiblity and oh shit buttons. Nothing a druid or pally has matches Shield Wall, Last Stand, spell reflect, intervene, berserker stance dancing to break fears, etc. Warriors are by far the most balanced tank. Druids shine on physical mobs or on high single target threat. Paladins excel at AoE tanking. Warriors can do everything well. But they have so many more on use things that save a raid from wipes. They also consistently due to defensive stance and improved defensive stance take the least damage from most types of mobs.

Druids have been higher single target threat than warriors for a very long time. Should be obvious why. Druid threat scales with their damage. Warriors don't. Shield Slam, revenge, sunder, etc are almost all static. Going from full T4 to T6 is not going to make your shield slams that much bigger. Doing the same as druid will mean bigger mangles, mauls, swipes, etc. Paladins scale better because spell damage is a much nicer scaler for paladin threat than shield block value and strength is for warrior threat. Until they make warrior moves scalable with ap/str as well as giving them more tanking gear that has it, that's where they'll remain. Which is fine I think, because warriors just kick ass in so many other tanking ways.

Warriors and paladins get the same amount of defense from talents and need the same to reach uncrittable status. Shield Wall has little to do with block %, its just a purely oh shit button. They do have shield spec and improved shield block which are a must, but even with both its 2 blocks every 5 seconds. On fast hitting mobs like Morogrim or Prince phase 2 a warrior will get crushed on a regular basis. Druids deal with crushes by having higher armor and stamina, and a Paladin can block 8 blows in 10 seconds which means on a single mob a Paladin is pretty much crush immune since no one attacks 8 times in 10 seconds (many do 2 in less than 5 though).

Thus Paladins don't have to sacrifice anything more than warriors to be uncrittable. Where I think you're mixing things up is they do have to sacrifice health to get uncrushable. Without that immunity they will take more damage than a warrior for sure. Which is why a pallie should get uncrritable, then uncrushable, then stack stamina like mad.

Mana shouldn't be that much of an issue honestly. If you are main tanking you will be getting beat on and getting healed a lot. You should be able to turn that into a lot of mana. If you have to down a super mana pot.

An interesting thing is T6 has introduced a number of bosses who can't crush, and using druids as MTs on them has come more into vogue. Among them Archimonde, Shahraz, etc.

[Tobin]

--THREADJACK!--

For us WereWolf lovers, some tastey bits....

New instance or city - Gilneas?Teza, August 1 2007 1:15 pmNew instance or city - Gilneas?

Edit: The new worgen animation were added because of the book " Torment of the worgen" in Karazhan.

Siva of Magtheridon came up with something new and interesting about the Worgen race.

He just noticed that the Worgen have a bunch of new animations. They can now kneel, talk, drown, hold guns and bows, and even ride mounts. With the talk of new expansions and new instances, the <A class=fsbcode_url title=http://www.worldofraids.com/news/expansion/greymane-wall.jpg href="http://www.worldofraids.com/news/expansion/greymane-wall.jpg" target=_blank>Greymane Wall could be opened to access an instance or city, revealing a crumbled and isolated kingdom with a worgen plague so bad even the citizens and the king himself are affected.

Before the new Alliance race for the Burning Crusade was announced there was rumors that the inhabitants of Gilneas have turned into Worgen and that Worgen would be the new race and Gilneas their homeland.

The Greymane Wall could be the entrance to Gilneas, but it is not currently a part of the physical geography of the gameworld. On the other side of the Greymane Wall there is only a small, flat area, bordered by the ocean.

From WoWWiki about Gilneas:

"The Kingdom of Gilneas is a human nation located in the peninsula directly south of Silverpine Forest on the continent of Lordaeron. The kingdom was founded following the breaking of Arathor and is ruled by the Greymane dynasty. Besides the peninsula, the kingdom also included the island of Zul'Dare.

By the start of the Second War Gilneas was one of the most powerful human nations, and because of this the kingdom's ruler, Genn Greymane, was not a strong supporter of the Alliance, believing that his own armies would be more than enough to deal with any threat. Despite this, Gilneas was not neutral towards the Horde. Gilneas did join the Alliance late in the Second War, but very shortly after the Horde was defeated, Greymane pulled his nation's support from the Alliance, refusing to spend his nation's resources on keeping the orcs alive in internment camps or in rebuilding other nations devastated by the war. Greymane's isolationism may have been influenced by Daval Prestor, secretly black dragon Deathwing in human disguise, who Greymane had supported to the throne of Alterac.

Sometime after the Second War, Greymane, attempting to forever remove his nation from what he considered "other people's troubles", barricaded Gilneas behind the Greymane Wall. No one, not even other humans are allowed to enter Gilneas. Even during the Scourge's invasion of Lordaeron, while human refugees came begging to be allowed in, the Greymane Wall remained closed. Because of this, Gilneas was not affected by the Scourge. Although the land connection to Gilneas is closed, ships from Gilneas have been spotted throughout the world, such as the pirate ship Heedless of captain Baron Longshore. Apparently thanks to the latter, Jaina Proudmoore managed to convince a number of people from Gilneas to join her during exodus to Kalimdor during the Third War. These people formed the Gilneas Brigade.

Gilneas' current state is partly under speculation. It is not known if Genn Greymane is still alive and ruling Gilneas. If he still lives, he must be in his 70s. The dwarven explorer, Brann Bronzebeard, speculates that the Naga may have taken Gilneas, though there is no proof to support this.

Gilneas Sparkling Water can be purchased in the Old Hillsbrad Foothills section of the Caverns of Time instance. This water replaces Purified Draenic Water, which wouldn't have been found on Azeroth at the time the instance takes place."

Teza

WoR reporter

--END THREADJACK--

ok, back to your regularly scheduled: "To Tank or Not to Tank" production

[Kalbear]

All three classes if getting beat on can generate a lot of rage, certainly enough to tank anything.

Paladins certainly can't generate a lot of rage

I think Phelan said it best - that getting uncrittable isn't a big deal for either, but getting uncrushable is much harder for a pally than a warrior and they've got to sacrifice quite a bit to get there. And that sacrifice involves (from what I've seen) a lot of top-level gear that is very hard to obtain. Sorry if I made a mistake here and there with the warrior skills.

It actually seems more like a problem of perception than reality in some ways; regardless of whether the paladin will work for the group, people don't want them as tank if they can get a warrior. I guess that makes sense given how good they are at healing and how good warriors are at tank.

[Arakasi]

Well I meant rage as in threat. They can all get good threat and maintain it if being beat on.

Yeah Phelan is right. Uncrittable is easy, uncrushable isn't since you need like 72% or so from gear. Which makes your options pre Kara very very limited to get that gear. If you can't tank very well at Kara level, why are they going to invest T4/T5 gear into you in the hope that you can make it in the future? Which means that a pally tank really needs to prove themselves. And having green gems in your gear doesn't cut it. You gotta min/max like crazy, but if you do it and do it well there is definate tradeoffs you gain. I'd rather have an extra blessing than an in group shout. AoE tanking becomes a breeze.

And yep, its almost perception over reality. There is a ton of prejudice against Paladin and Druid tanks, despite the gains of what TBC has done for them. I remember being a druid tank in MC and getting the hate of warriors/rogues just for me being there. And with Stego in your guild and his fairly well known views on tanking, you'll be constantly be told to reroll a warrior. There are players out there who can make Moonkins, Prot Pallies heck even Ret Pallies do well in raids. But first they need to be in a place they can prove it and be with the people who will accept them. And if you don't have that well than it will be a constant source of frustration.

[Kalbear]

Heh. Well, in our case I knew going in that Stego was the tank for the US people, so I won't be bothering trying to compete with that. If I do raiding it's likely going to be in PuGs or in weird cases where I can make the euro times, but I'm not expecting to do so. Mostly, I liked the idea of the paladin, I liked what it could do well and I felt it had the most synergy with playing with my wife.

I'm not worried about not being able to tank or not; the paladin has a very clearly defined role in raiding right now and it's one that it excels at, and one that is very easy to find people looking for. The pally is also stupid good in pvp right now, and that'll make other things interesting and desirable when I get up there. If I really, truly want to play a tank, I'll figure something out, but I'm cool being able to tank when I need to and heal when I need to.

[TerraPrime]

Oye, I guess I will have to throw in a couple more addons for the crafting and the AH.

Incidentally, the price I picked for my small silk pack is the recommended one from thottbot. Don't know how accurate the thottbot price is, since it varies a bit from server to server.

I've leveled up the gun rather quickly, getting to 196/200 from 6/200 last night. Right now the dmg is very sweet. I am doing regular dmg what I used to crit for. But I do crit a lot less since I fire a lot less frequently. It puts a damper on my pet's mana regen since I have him set on poison sting. That may change in 3 more levels when I can afford to put some points into the BM tree for the pet mana regen.

Right now I am starting to experience mana issue. I have to drink a lot more now if I want to kill fast.

As far as tanking goes, I usually just trust my pet. The big drawback on that is that it doesn't tank mobs that are higher in lvl too well. The Growl tends not to stick and the pet doesn't hit enough to generate real threat. Anything more than 3 levels higher is very difficult for my pet to hold, unless I wait for the threat to build up before firing.

Re: Kal

Yes I will need scopes if I stick with guns. The one I bought came with one so I'm good for now, but if I get more guns in the future I'll let you know.

[Stego]

And with Stego in your guild and his fairly well known views on tanking, you'll be constantly be told to reroll a warrior.

Bear tanks have their place. (As off tanks or fill-ins if you can't find a real tank. )

I have yet to see a Pally tank worth their beans, though it is of course theoretically possible. My only issue with Pally's as tanks is the limitations. Let's be honest, the best Pally tank tank in the world can only be as good as say...a very good warrior tank. Skill and gear being equal, the warrior just has so many advantages over the pally. Hit points, oh shits, doubtless more defense because we can;t fucking shed it fast enough. I can gear up at 552 defense if I so choose. (Not that I'd want to.)

I have 14992 hp with absolute crap gear. I have only tier 4 shoulders and gloves. (I have the pants but I still wear the timewardens leggings.) I am wearing blues on my chest, legs, and feet. I've been exalted with the Violet eye forever, but I only have three items from Kara as of yet. And buffed out for a raid I break 20khp without even using a flask. I break 27k when I pop my specials. And I'm not even a Tauren. A pally can't touch that. And my armor is better.

[Stego]

Our guild has a bear tank. I'd lick him more often but my tongue gets furry.

You just think he's hawt in rl.

[Lyanna Stark]

Terra,

You can fit scopes to bows and X-bows as well

As for Growl, let your pet hit a bit on the mob before you start shooting. Stick to hunter's mark, pet attack, pet hitting, start autoshooting. Use AotH. That should be enough for grinding really. Serpent sting is not really needed, and aimed shot is a PvP-tool, it's far too mana expensive for grinding. I used to slap a serpent sting on mobs back at levl 40ish, but it's really not needed.

Another thing about Growl is that at certain levels, it will be less efficient. You can tell if you are running the KTM threatmeter how much threat your pet is generating, and when you overtake him. Since you are ranged, you have a little leeway before the mob will switch aggro, but still, depending on level, it can be really tricky to make Growl work well. Takes some tinkering, Feigning, trapping and kiting to kill mobs. Especially jsut before you will get a new rank of Growl (like at lvl 59) it can be quite obvious that it is a bit lacking.

One good thing you can try is using "target of target" in the interface, and when your pet loses aggro, fire a concussive shot at the mob. That gives you time to 1) start kiting the mob or 2) fire a few shots more before he comes close to your melee range. If you haven't got serpent sting on, it may be a good time to practise chain trapping.

Shoot mob, mob aggroes you, conc shot, shoot, trap down, mob comes in melee range, mob gets trapped, you run away to range, start shooting, run, shoot, run, shoot, conc shot, trap. Start doing it with AotC on, and then move to AotH or even AotM, if you want to wingclip or maybe even melee the mob. Not needed really but rather good practise.

As for your pet's focus, this depends on your build and your pet.

If you have a BM heavy build, I'd actually recommend to go with only Growl and Claw/Bite/Poison since according to what I read on EJ the pet's white damage will actually be more than the yellow, a lot. Although there are some controversy about this. Also, Bite does more damage than Claw at present, so I slapped Growl and Bite on my cat, and no claw. Plus your pet will never lack focus for more yellow attacks, if you get an attack power buff or something else, you can just make your get do bite/claw/ poison during he buff period.

If you are MM or SV, I'd say go with two yellow attacks.

[PhelanArcetus]

Scratch KTM, get Omen. It's better. For one, it can tell, say, Midnight from Attumen the Huntsman. Eh, that's a bad example, due to the phase 2 aggro wipe. But the point is, Omen only gets confused with 2 mobs of the same name, KTM gets confused with any two mobs. No add-on can tell Spectral Performer from Spectral Performer. Ever.

We put the paladin MTing most of the trash in Kara last night. To try and get him some real practice. With advice from our paladin-cum-druid who MTs Kara and even Gruul on another server. He may have been given some gearing advice too; no reason for him not to use the Kara ring, for example. No loot that interested me, though we got the big hammer for a priest (as well as a staff for his damage set; nobody else wanted), and a free rubber ducky for the mage to vendor. We did get our first Netherspite kill though; just went in and one-shotted him without any deaths even. Very sweet. Also got Illhoof to 10%, though our only priest on is Disc, the druid healing in place of our normal holy priest is Feral (and a paladin besides), and the paladin tank backing them up has no points in holy at all.

For reference:

Me

Our Paladin Tank

The Paladin Tank on the Other Server (This may not be full tank gear.)

I'm trying to tone down my avoidance in favor of health, because I was experiencing too much risk of losing aggro due to rage starvation at least on certain fights. Which is part of why I have an 8 hit gem in the yellow socket of those shoulders, and str/stam in the red. I certainly had no threat issues on Moroes last night; but then I also had a warrior offtank instead of druid, and druid threat is stupidly high.

Also stayed up a good two hours too late to get run through ST and ZF (in the wrong order, but whatever) along with my housemate's boyfriend (who is a terrible hunter). 3 70s meant I basically didn't need to heal at all, though I tried.

As regards Growl, I don't know how it scales at low level, but at 70 a geared marksmanship hunter's pet growl can easily pull aggro off of a good tank. Turn it off in instances, always.

[Lyanna Stark]

As regards Growl, I don't know how it scales at low level, but at 70 a geared marksmanship hunter's pet growl can easily pull aggro off of a good tank. Turn it off in instances, always.

Growl scales with AP, hence MM hunters pets will normally give more threat than a BM hunter or SV hunter, plus at the moment, it is rather buggy at level 70, with poor scaling since SV hunter and in particular BM hunters will have lower AP and therefor the pet will hold aggro less.

Normally, it takes me one crit to get aggro off my pet at level 70. Sure, it's good to have to practise those kiting and trapping skills, but for good old fashioned grinding, it's very tedious.

As for tanks not outthreatening Growl? These tanks need to LERN2TANK. Christ. Growl puts out a flat 900 threat, approximately, from a well geared level 70 hunter. A tank should be able to spank that sort of threat out fairly easily, or he sucks bollocks. I have, on occasion, had Growl on in instances (normally when mobs need offtanking, cos I used my pet on a bad pull etc) and you know, if the tank is good, I can actually miss that Growl is on.

Only time now my pet pulls aggro is when we had a fun "3 hunter" SV run and we had 3 BM pets tanking mobs but that was more for shits and giggles.