The View From Down Here

Threat for Threat’s Sake

Like most tanks at my level of progression (or so I’m given to understand), I tend to gear for threat over survivabilty, so my DPS can go that little bit further all-out and help to beat the enrage timer. It’s an approach that’s served me well in Mount Hyjal, all the way to Archimonde, and it’s served me equally well in Black Temple. Of course, I have other gear that I can switch in when the need arises – fast hitting bosses, or tanking the Shade of Akama’s Ashtongue Defenders six at a time (though thankfully that doesn’t happen any more), but the gear set I wear most often is threat-oriented.

Yesterday that gearing strategy caused more issues than I could have possibly imagined.

That is to say – yesterday I met a certain Gurtogg Bloodboil, not for the first time, but for the first time while making serious attempts at him (as opposed to previously where it had been a case of “There’s half an hour left of the raid, let’s just take a quick look see what Bloodboil’s like”).

Bloodboil has two real parts to the fight. The bloodboil debuff, which is a damage over time spell that affects the five people furthest from him, and needs a rotation to deal with, is the first. I don’t care too much about that – I’m a tank, and as such I don’t have to worry about line-dancing to rotate a debuff. The other main ability is what he does to the tanks. Much like Void Reaver, multiple tanks are used on the fight because he has an aggro-reducing knockback, and also a disorient effect that can be cast on the Main Tank. However, unlike Void Reaver, there’s a second component. Every two seconds the main tank takes a stacking debuff, Fel Acid, which reduces armor by 500 and ticks for 250 damage. So after main tanking for 20 seconds, you’re taking 2500 damage every second or so, and your armor is reduced by 500. The debuff fades when it’s not been applied after 60 seconds.

And here’s my problem. My threat gear (hitcapped last night, plus a huge chunk of expertise) plus the huge amount of rage I was gaining from being hit meant I was way ahead on the threat stakes. So far ahead that even after two knockbacks I was ahead. Not good. I think at one point I was at 27 stacks of Fel Acid, leaving me effectively wearing something between cloth and leather, and having half my health disappear at scarily regular intervals. I’m amazed that the healers kept me up for as long as they did.

So on subsequent attempts, I swapped out some threat gear, dumped rage less, and things went much better. It was a definite learning experience though – a definite disproof of the old adage that “There’s no such thing as too much threat”. There is, and reining in threat is something I’m going to have to get used to.