Archive for October 23rd, 2008:
The threat minigame
At Tankspot we have a thread about the threat minigame and how broken it was at Sunwell level. Lots of interesting points in that threat. As I am cruising around in 10-man and T4 content, I never knew it was broken, so the vivid descriptions of excellent tanks really struggling and having to use tricks like turning their back on mobs to get the necessary rage was really interesting to read.
Yet, like other posters, I do miss the threat minigame. Kadomi, what are you talking about, some might say. Let me explain. As tank you traditionally did two things. You fought the mob by tanking it and binding it to you. You fought the rest of the party by trying to outTPS them. Especially in PUGs you were pitting yourself against the group. I am sure DPS never viewed it like this, but it really was a constant struggle, where you as tank had to be on top of your game. I will admit to eyeing the TPS column in Omen a lot, to figure out how much TPS I could squeeze out, and to see if I needed to work harder. I prided myself on being the best tank in my guild when it came to the speed of building initial threat and maintaining it. I patted myself on the shoulder that DPS didn’t have to wait very long before laying down the law. I played the threat game, and I was good at it. There were a bunch of people who could outthreat me, and having them in my group made me work even harder. It was a challenge, I loved it.
The threat minigame is gone. Even against power-crazy retribution paladins, I can snag the threat and run away with it, miles and miles. I can tank through Seed of Corruption flying past me. Threat is all mine. I have read how threat was broken in Sunwell, but it was not at my level of content. Instead of sacrificing damage for innate threat, I now provide excellent damage when tanking. I play with the group instead against it, in a way.
I miss the challenge. Shield Slam crits make me cackle, but not as much as doing 1600 TPS in the pre-patch Eagle gauntlet in ZA did. I will have to find a suitable replacement for the threat game.
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