Shadow tank opening threat generation

[Bilirubin]

I have been opening with slow time and force breach and that has mostly been sufficient for generating and holding threat for me. However having just ran a 16 man TfB and that rotation lead to DPS stripping me of threat p fast. Part of the problem was that DPS was a pug and was jumping in as soon as I opened, but that lead me to wonder whether I should be upping my game.

 

So a question. Do you open against a boss with force pull? Will this generate threat even if the boss is immune to the actual pull? If a boss or mob can be pulled, where do you typically place them wrt ranged/heals?

[THoK-Zeus]

I have been opening with slow time and force breach and that has mostly been sufficient for generating and holding threat for me. However having just ran a 16 man TfB and that rotation lead to DPS stripping me of threat p fast. Part of the problem was that DPS was a pug and was jumping in as soon as I opened, but that lead me to wonder whether I should be upping my game.

 

So a question. Do you open against a boss with force pull? Will this generate threat even if the boss is immune to the actual pull? If a boss or mob can be pulled, where do you typically place them wrt ranged/heals?

 

Yes it will generate about 8600 threat even if the boss is immune and you should definitly use it always in the beginning when you start.

 

Opening Rotation (i use): Force Pull -Force Speed to boss- Shock -Wither -Discharge -Thrash-Shock- Force Lightning with Recklessness. That should give you 40-45k threat atleast in the first 10 seconds.

 

When you still lose aggro then just use taunt and you should be fine.

 

I place the mobs inside the aoe circles our dps are casting .

[Bilirubin]

Thanks. Started using force pull as my opener last night in flashpoints to get into the habit, and never had a problem with threat.

[kennethdale]

Yes it will generate about 8600 threat even if the boss is immune and you should definitly use it always in the beginning when you start.

 

Opening Rotation (i use): Force Pull -Force Speed to boss- Shock -Wither -Discharge -Thrash-Shock- Force Lightning with Recklessness. That should give you 40-45k threat atleast in the first 10 seconds.

 

When you still lose aggro then just use taunt and you should be fine.

 

I place the mobs inside the aoe circles our dps are casting .

 

Depending on how good (read bad at dropping threat) your DPS are, its also helpful to throw in a taunt. I like to get it in after the second shock since thats going to increase my threat by 110% of ~25630 (Shock ~3300 threat x2 , Wither ~3800 threat, Pull ~8600 threat, Discharge 2800 threat, Thrash 1500 threat) or a cool 30290 if you can do it 4.5m from the center of the boss: take a few steps back > taunt > Recklessness > Force Lightning > and if you still need more threat and there aren't adds, > AoE taunt. This'll put you at (FL x3 = ~9300 threat + 30290 = 39590 threat*1.3=) 51467 threat in ~9 seconds which works out to be 5718.6 TPS. Even without a guard, DPS are gonna have trouble matching that.

[Evokid]

I do Wither -> shock -> Discharge -> Thrash x2 (If maul proc I Maul, if shock proc I shock early, failing both procs I continue) Shock (here you have 3 stacks of harness darkness) Reckless + Surge Adrenal (I'm Bio - as all good tanks should be ) Force Lightning -> Shock -> Wither ->Thrash x2 (If maul proc I Maul, if shock proc I shock early, failing both procs I continue) -> Shock (here you have 3 stacks of harness darkness) Force Lightning, and continue rotation. I only Discharge when the debuff is about to fall off, and I thrash as filler. As priority, Wither > Maul > Shock > Thrash. With that combo I don't need to taunt, I save them for screw ups and tank swaps.

[THoK-Zeus]

I do Wither -> shock -> Discharge -> Thrash x2 (If maul proc I Maul, if shock proc I shock early, failing both procs I continue) Shock (here you have 3 stacks of harness darkness) Reckless + Surge Adrenal (I'm Bio - as all good tanks should be ) Force Lightning -> Shock -> Wither ->Thrash x2 (If maul proc I Maul, if shock proc I shock early, failing both procs I continue) -> Shock (here you have 3 stacks of harness darkness) Force Lightning, and continue rotation. I only Discharge when the debuff is about to fall off, and I thrash as filler. As priority, Wither > Maul > Shock > Thrash. With that combo I don't need to taunt, I save them for screw ups and tank swaps.

 

Start with shock -> Wither, so you don't have to use Thrash 2 times (thrash does pathetic threat). If you fight for threat with a lot of 72/75 geared dps with ~3k dps output, they may rip aggro from you while you cast your Force Lightning. Then you have to cancel Force Lightning for a taunt and that absolutley cripples your threat generation.

 

Let's say you have 2 mdps and a mm and a hybrid sniper. Because of your wrong opening rotation the mm sniper pulls during the beginning of your Force Lightning Cast (entirely possible), then you have to taunt for less then 2k additional threat. About 5 seconds later the hybrid sniper reaches his peak dps and rips aggro off you easily because you had to waste your 15k Force Lightning Threat. Then you have to waste your aoe taunt and if something else goes wrong, you may have easily wiped the raid.

 

If you start with Shock instead of Wither (after Force Pull), you need 1 gcd less for your recklessnessed Force Lightning (which does ~15-20k threat) you have a far better threat generation at the very beginning.

 

For NiM don't recast Discharge when the debuff is about to fall off, recast it when you have about 6 sec left on the timer. If your discharge would be resisted, you don't have your debuff on the boss, which is absolutley not acceptable.

 

Also priority is wrong: Wither > Discharge (with 6 seconds) > Shock > Maul > Thrash

 

Also don't waste your adrenals for threat Generation. Your armor adrenal is one of your best defensive cooldowns, if you waste a surge adrenal for threat generation, you can't use this defensive cooldown for 3 min!

Edited September 20, 2013 by THoK-Zeus

[Marb]

Also don't waste your adrenals for threat Generation. Your armor adrenal is one of your best defensive cooldowns, if you waste a surge adrenal for threat generation, you can't use this defensive cooldown for 3 min!

 

I would probably still use the dps adrenal on Writhing Horror. A lot of tank swap fights will let you get away with not using that armor adrenal for the first 3mins. It really depends on the encounter.

[THoK-Zeus]

I would probably still use the dps adrenal on Writhing Horror. A lot of tank swap fights will let you get away with not using that armor adrenal for the first 3mins. It really depends on the encounter.

 

In the first 3 minutes you reach peak dps phases (twh, jealous male and foul offspring alive) of the encounter. If you feel you should waste your defensive cooldowns for threat, use a blue medpack (~8k threat) or overcharge saber (~6k instant threat + ~2,5k additional threat from stance dmg increase).

 

A Surge Adrenal will generate about 2,4k threat from Force Lightning, then another 600 threat from the next casted Wither (with the other recklessness stack).

On the rest of the 10 seconds it will increase your surge rating by ~24% which means with 17% crit a 4,08% dps increase which means ~500 additional dps during this Phase. Even if you are lucky and get an autocrit Shock during that time, it's just another 500 dmg.

 

So at best, the surge adrenal will net you 4k-5k threat over 15 seconds, for a 3 min cooldown. Overcharge Saber and Medpacks will grant you more threat (and they will grant you the threat faster) while on a faster cooldown.

 

All in all, the threat these defensive cooldowns generate is medicore (~1-2 gcd) and totally screws you in your defensive abilitys. It's the tanks job to stay alive and not to generate more dps. Holding threat is easy, if you learned your opening rotation and if you taunt the moment you lose aggro.

[Marb]

In the first 3 minutes you reach peak dps phases (twh, jealous male and foul offspring alive) of the encounter. If you feel you should waste your defensive cooldowns for threat, use a blue medpack (~8k threat) or overcharge saber (~6k instant threat + ~2,5k additional threat from stance dmg increase).

 

A Surge Adrenal will generate about 2,4k threat from Force Lightning, then another 600 threat from the next casted Wither (with the other recklessness stack).

On the rest of the 10 seconds it will increase your surge rating by ~24% which means with 17% crit a 4,08% dps increase which means ~500 additional dps during this Phase. Even if you are lucky and get an autocrit Shock during that time, it's just another 500 dmg.

 

So at best, the surge adrenal will net you 4k-5k threat over 15 seconds, for a 3 min cooldown. Overcharge Saber and Medpacks will grant you more threat (and they will grant you the threat faster) while on a faster cooldown.

 

All in all, the threat these defensive cooldowns generate is medicore (~1-2 gcd) and totally screws you in your defensive abilitys. It's the tanks job to stay alive and not to generate more dps. Holding threat is easy, if you learned your opening rotation and if you taunt the moment you lose aggro.

 

Admittedly, I was thinking about this from a Jugg tank perspective. You guys do have better alternatives with overcharge saber and medpac cd reset on stealth.

Edited September 21, 2013 by Marb

[Evokid]

A Surge Adrenal will generate about 2,4k threat from Force Lightning, then another 600 threat from the next casted Wither (with the other recklessness stack).

On the rest of the 10 seconds it will increase your surge rating by ~24% which means with 17% crit a 4,08% dps increase which means ~500 additional dps during this Phase. Even if you are lucky and get an autocrit Shock during that time, it's just another 500 dmg.

 

So at best, the surge adrenal will net you 4k-5k threat over 15 seconds, for a 3 min cooldown. Overcharge Saber and Medpacks will grant you more threat (and they will grant you the threat faster) while on a faster cooldown.

Show me how you came to this conclusion. Admittedly , I've only started using the Surge Adrenal in the past 3 weeks. and the only reason I did so was because I never have an issue with threat. I have 2 MM snipers in my raid group and they open with OS, they pre-cast it and when the beams touch I go in, they DPS - normally sitting 2.8k+. I do my rotation as I said above (Minus the surge adrenal) and I always hold aggro without an issue, as good DPS should, they regularly threat drop, like right after their initial burst DPS. As I said, I never had an issue with threat, on the rare occasion where I'd get a resist/miss or two, and they'd get some lucky crits and I'd see them creeping up on the threat meter I'd throw a taunt in at the end of my opening rotation. I use my defensive CDs - Overcharged saber and deflection, when needed mid fight, not as an opener.

So it got me thinking, how can I use the rest of the CDs available to me to help my raid, the surge adrenal is up for every second Force lightning, and I always follow it with a shock, not a wither, as shock does, on average 1.4k DMG more than a wither. Now, as a tank I always hold aggro and I'm pulling 1.2k DPS. Admittedly that's not a huge amount compared to DPS, but going from 900 DPS as a tank to 1.2k - an extra 300 DPS, is better than generating even more threat, when more threat won't help. The only time threat should be an issue is during the first 20secs. After the first tank swap in any fight threat shouldn't be an issue.

The reality is, you should never HAVE to use an adrenal to tank, you should be table to tank perfectly fine with just your class CD's, Adrenals should just be the icing on the cake, I'm not sure how low your threat is, or how spikey your damage is, but you shouldn't have to be blowing any defensive CDs within the first 1min of a fight. Whilst learning and clearing TFB HM/SV HM, for the first time - months ago, I never used an Adrenal, ever. So for me, I know I can tank perfectly fine without them, using one just helps me generate that little bit extra threat - Whoopie! I still hold aggro anyway, and lets me pull a little more DPS. It's not a huge amount either way, but a little here and a little there is better than nothing.

Edited September 21, 2013 by Evokid

[THoK-Zeus]

Show me how you came to this conclusion. Admittedly , I've only started using the Surge Adrenal in the past 3 weeks. and the only reason I did so was because I never have an issue with threat. I have 2 MM snipers in my raid group and they open with OS, they pre-cast it and when the beams touch I go in, they DPS - normally sitting 2.8k+. I do my rotation as I said above (Minus the surge adrenal) and I always hold aggro without an issue, as good DPS should, they regularly threat drop, like right after their initial burst DPS. As I said, I never had an issue with threat, on the rare occasion where I'd get a resist/miss or two, and they'd get some lucky crits and I'd see them creeping up on the threat meter I'd throw a taunt in at the end of my opening rotation. I use my defensive CDs - Overcharged saber and deflection, when needed mid fight, not as an opener.

So it got me thinking, how can I use the rest of the CDs available to me to help my raid, the surge adrenal is up for every second Force lightning, and I always follow it with a shock, not a wither, as shock does, on average 1.4k DMG more than a wither. Now, as a tank I always hold aggro and I'm pulling 1.2k DPS. Admittedly that's not a huge amount compared to DPS, but going from 900 DPS as a tank to 1.2k - an extra 300 DPS, is better than generating even more threat, when more threat won't help. The only time threat should be an issue is during the first 20secs. After the first tank swap in any fight threat shouldn't be an issue.

The reality is, you should never HAVE to use an adrenal to tank, you should be table to tank perfectly fine with just your class CD's, Adrenals should just be the icing on the cake, I'm not sure how low your threat is, or how spikey your damage is, but you shouldn't have to be blowing any defensive CDs within the first 1min of a fight. Whilst learning and clearing TFB HM/SV HM, for the first time - months ago, I never used an Adrenal, ever. So for me, I know I can tank perfectly fine without them, using one just helps me generate that little bit extra threat - Whoopie! I still hold aggro anyway, and lets me pull a little more DPS. It's not a huge amount either way, but a little here and a little there is better than nothing.

 

To which conclusion? That overcharge Saber or a Medpac generate more threat then a surge adrenal. I think i showed that perfectly fine....

 

So you say that an adrenal is not a real defensive cooldown and you shouldn't need to use it, as you don't use it (which made me laugh). Adrenal is on a 3 min cooldown, contrary to your other cooldowns (medpack 90 s...), so you wanna tell me that you don't need to use defensive cooldowns the first 3 minutes of a fight?

 

The reality is, you should never HAVE to use an adrenal to tank, you should be table to tank perfectly fine with just your class CD's, Adrenals should just be the icing on the cake.

 

Then you conclude that you should never need adrenal (about 10-12% dmg reduction) in a fight. You wanna tell me you never used Adrenal in sv/tfb nim?

 

Then you wanna tell me that you go from 900 dps to 1,2k dps with surge adrenal? I showed you already via maths, that a surge adrenal increases your dps by just 11 (~2000 additional dps every 180 sec).

 

Your dps talk (my snipers do 2,8k+, i do 1,2k....) sounds arrogant, while i think you could easily have snipers that deal 300 more dps and you can still improve your sin tank dps aswell.

 

Also shock is not doing 1,4k more damage on average then a wither (unless you meant an autocrit shock).

 

Just a comparision. Overcharge Saber has a lower cooldown, generates more threat and generates more damage (~1,5k additional damage every 120 seconds). Is someone using Overcharge Saber on cooldown because of additional damage? (Answer: No)

 

The armor adrenal is such an important part of a sin tank, it gives us way, way more value then the other tanks (due to our higher bonus armor) and armor is such an important stat for sin tanks (as we don't have much ). Telling other people to use a Surge Adrenal instead, is a totally wrong way and is not good!

Edited September 22, 2013 by THoK-Zeus

[KeyboardNinja]

I have 2 MM snipers in my raid group and they open with OS, they pre-cast it and when the beams touch I go in, they DPS - normally sitting 2.8k+. I do my rotation as I said above (Minus the surge adrenal) and I always hold aggro without an issue, as good DPS should, they regularly threat drop, like right after their initial burst DPS.

 

I have a gunnery commando, a hybrid gunslinger, a sharpshooter gunslinger (who goes hybrid depending on fight), and a focus sentinel. They all parse over a 3k on a boss, and the sharpshooter gunslinger parses a 3.2k. I can hold agro off them, but I can't have *any* miss/resist abilities in my opener. When that happens, they pull. Guard or no guard.

 

So it got me thinking, how can I use the rest of the CDs available to me to help my raid, the surge adrenal is up for every second Force lightning, and I always follow it with a shock, not a wither, as shock does, on average 1.4k DMG more than a wither. Now, as a tank I always hold aggro and I'm pulling 1.2k DPS. Admittedly that's not a huge amount compared to DPS, but going from 900 DPS as a tank to 1.2k - an extra 300 DPS, is better than generating even more threat, when more threat won't help. The only time threat should be an issue is during the first 20secs. After the first tank swap in any fight threat shouldn't be an issue.

 

The surge adrenal is really a very pathetic DPS cooldown. Thok already showed how it was a really poor threat generator. It has been known for a LONG time that surge adrenals were a poor contributor of DPS, which is why no damage dealer in their right mind will ever use one. If you absolutely must open up with a DPS adrenal, use an Attack Adrenal. Better yet though, don't do it. I only use attack adrenals on fights where the tank damage levels are comparatively low and the DPS required is substantial (e.g. Terror from Beyond). I generally switch to a Boundless Ages relic before I give up my adrenal though.

 

Incidentally, if you're only getting three Force Lightnings every three minutes, you're doing something horrifically wrong. You should be pressing your Force Lightning button *at the most* every 12 seconds. If it takes longer than that, your rotation is broken.

 

Regarding your precise rotation… Shock does far less damage than Wither due to the changes in 2.0 which reduced its cost and its damage levels. An auto-crit Shock is going to do more (especially with Recklessness), bu that's a different story. Your best damage rotation is to simply keep fishing for those Harnessed Darkness procs as fast as you can, using Maul instead of Thrash when you get the proc, and popping Recklessness before a 3 stack FL.

 

Assuming no resists and average crits, the following opener will hold agro off of essentially anyone:

 

Pull > Shock > Wither > Discharge > Thrash > Shock > (Recklessness + Single Taunt) Force Lightning > Thrash/Maul (until Energize) > Shock > etc

 

If you have the ability to use your AoE taunt, you can switch to the following rotation, which will hold agro even in the face of a resist or two and really good crits:

 

Pull > Shock > Wither > Discharge > (Single Taunt) Thrash > Shock > (Recklessness) Force Lightning > (AoE Taunt) Thrash/Maul (until Energize) > Shock > etc

 

No adrenals needed. If your DPS have longish ramp up times, you can probably get away even without using the taunt. I have two DPS who burst instantaneously (we pre-cast XS Flyby and time the pull as it hits) and another two DPS who burst on their second GCD (Force Sweep and High Impact Bolt), so I generally need to taunt fluff early on.

 

The reality is, you should never HAVE to use an adrenal to tank, you should be table to tank perfectly fine with just your class CD's, Adrenals should just be the icing on the cake, I'm not sure how low your threat is, or how spikey your damage is, but you shouldn't have to be blowing any defensive CDs within the first 1min of a fight. Whilst learning and clearing TFB HM/SV HM, for the first time - months ago, I never used an Adrenal, ever. So for me, I know I can tank perfectly fine without them, using one just helps me generate that little bit extra threat - Whoopie! I still hold aggro anyway, and lets me pull a little more DPS. It's not a huge amount either way, but a little here and a little there is better than nothing.

 

I pop *all three* of my defensive cooldowns in the first phase of Nightmare Dread Guard, and I hit my absorb adrenal right at the transition point. After that, I used to hit my CDs almost exactly on cooldown, though I don't really need to do that anymore now that my healers are more used to the fight. Especially as an assassin tank, there is no way that you're going to be able to get away with tanking a serious nightmare mode fight without an absorb adrenal (Writhing Horror is basically just a long mini-boss). Well, maybe if you have utterly godlike healers and are farming the boss, but during progression…no.

Edited September 25, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[Evokid]

My reply was in regards to fights where you don't NEED to pop CDs. IE fights you already have on farm. I only pop the surge adrenal because I thought that Rec(crit chance) + Surge Adrenal (More crit DMG) would equate to more threat than popping an Absorb Adrenal - BTW which absorb? Rakata or Nano? I use Nano, but I've been told Rakata is better. All though I do see the rest of the adrenal buff, after the 2 Rec's have gone as a waste.

I never used taunt in my opening rotation during TFB/SV HM/NiM, and very rarely had an issue. How ever since 2.4 came out, and all the DPS have got 78 gear via the vendor I have started to use it every now and then.

What about force pull? Would you recommend using that as often as possible? I know there's a minimum range, but say on Grok(?) When you have to move him around for the magnet.

[THoK-Zeus]

My reply was in regards to fights where you don't NEED to pop CDs. IE fights you already have on farm. I only pop the surge adrenal because I thought that Rec(crit chance) + Surge Adrenal (More crit DMG) would equate to more threat than popping an Absorb Adrenal - BTW which absorb? Rakata or Nano? I use Nano, but I've been told Rakata is better. All though I do see the rest of the adrenal buff, after the 2 Rec's have gone as a waste.

I never used taunt in my opening rotation during TFB/SV HM/NiM, and very rarely had an issue. How ever since 2.4 came out, and all the DPS have got 78 gear via the vendor I have started to use it every now and then.

What about force pull? Would you recommend using that as often as possible? I know there's a minimum range, but say on Grok(?) When you have to move him around for the magnet.

 

Well Overcharge Saber is generating more threat then Surge Adrenal and has a lower cooldown.

 

The Rakata Adrenal is better, thanks to our armor increasing stance we get a lot more value out of the additional armor.

 

Well when you are let's say about 30 sec into the fight the dps shouldn't be able to rip aggro of you and if they do you can always taunt back and will have aggro for sure (cause 10/30% additional threat after some time is a way to big threat difference).

[Evokid]

The point is not to lose aggro in the first place.

 

From my Torparse data it appears that force pull does a crazy amount of threat, how ever it's tricky to pop due to the minimum range required. There's no point using it as an off tank to build threat, when you can just taunt and get all the other tanks threat + 10/30%. But on a fight like Grob, where the enrage is very tight and you have to move the boss a lot, I found it really helpful.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Evokid

[THoK-Zeus]

The point is not to lose aggro in the first place.

 

From my Torparse data it appears that force pull does a crazy amount of threat, how ever it's tricky to pop due to the minimum range required. There's no point using it as an off tank to build threat, when you can just taunt and get all the other tanks threat + 10/30%. But on a fight like Grob, where the enrage is very tight and you have to move the boss a lot, I found it really helpful.

 

The problem is, while you move away from the boss to use Force Pull, you lose atleast a gcd for threat generation. So, the difference in threat generation is not that big. For Grob i did find it helpful to move him with this flying thing, so i can move him inside the elevator almost the second he does his pipe smash. As the raid gets constantly knocked (and you lose therefore dps) during this phase, it's very important for the tank to keep the downtime of this phase pretty short.

Edited October 6, 2013 by THoK-Zeus

[Evokid]

After the 3rd attempt I could anticipate where the magnet would be where he did his next pipe smash so I just took him there and waited. Mostly he got off 1 pipe smash, once he got off 2, if I was off I'd just walk him backwards.

[Jorammy]

This thread is more re: SV TFB then DF / DP but am looking for input as there are some in thread that have same composition we run. Pulling HM Calyphus last night we had quite a bit of DPS death pulling off our Sin tank and finally had our jug intercede at taunt to the unguarded sniper to get the boss down.

 

Composition:

Sin Tank

Jug Tank

2 Marauders

2 Snipers

2 Operative healers

 

DPS output is 3k+

 

We have jug open, and at tank swap our Sin was taking over. At the same time our sniper has all dots in play hits cull and pulls / dies. He drops agro after cull but - due to timing we still had a loss of agro.

 

Looking for suggestions on taunt rotation rather then opener or do you use the same thing.

[KeyboardNinja]

Have the Sin pull and taunt fluff to push agro higher. Assassin snap threat is a lot better than Juggernaut. Use the opener I outlined earlier. Calphayus should do his knockback right around the Force Lightning. When the Jugg taunts, they inherit all of the threat from the Assassin, plus extra.