Were having trouble with threat on Vael.
The tanks just cant seem to hold aggro well enough for the DPS to go ham.
We always have to hold back or start late, etc.
We clear it fine but it’s frustrating constantly having to stop dpsing.
We mainly use a fury/prot tank and I think that’s the problem.
None of us can go close to 1000 DPS which sucks. We have to hold back around 800.
Would a full prot tank be better here?
Do you have logs I can look at? The problem won’t be fixed by going deep prot, since that has even less threat.
Can I ask the super obvious question…
Why?
You indicate you can clear it just fine but merely have to wait a few seconds for threat. For a fight that literally lasts under a minute… why is the few seconds that you have to wait before slamming your dps rotation really that big of a deal?
It’s been 15 or so years and I still don’t understand this about Vael. Its the one fight in the game that should never really be wiped on because if you wanted to you could have all dps just do NOTHING for 20 seconds of the start of the fight to cement the first 2 or 3 tanks threat to a level that would make losing aggro nearly impossible before Vaels death.
The tradeoff for this would be what, a couple deaths to the Burning Adrenaline debuff? Its casts about every 15 seconds. So you trade assured victory for 1 life. IMO this makes any wipe on Vael almost criminal levels of terrible as its purely a lack of restraint that causes them. Noone in the raid has A.D.D. so it should be effortless.
The only scenario I can see beyond this is: Chasing ranks on Warcraftlogs… At which point, a dual wielding tank with full consumables, flasks and all would be the ultimate and easy answer.
A Bear tank with MCP is the safest option for any guild outside of the top 5%. They will generate more TPS than your Fury/Prot while giving up less of their tanking profile. That said, if you’re killing the boss that’s literally all that matters.
reports/bJYZ6gmd9CPcGxX7/#fight=5
The thing is we are killing it but we always wipe first.
I hate losing my buffs on Vael every week.
So is this a problem with your initial tank, the swap, or both? I can see a lot of improvements for the first one for sure. I’ll get to typing that up while I wait for an answer
Edit: and to be 100% sure, he is an orc right?
The problem is with the initial tank.
We wait for him to gain aggro, and once we start he usually either dies quickly or we pull threat VERY quickly. Like we dont even get our rotations fully in yet even tho he has 5 sunders and we waited a bit for him.
He’s ORC
Yeah, I butted heads with my guild on this, too. The fight is super easy if DPS is disciplined and the tanks wear high FR. But I ended up compromising and scaling down to about half FR to get more threat stats, because it was apparently super important to people to be able to go ham and push for better parses and not hold back, even if it risks a wipe or two.
But I’m an old school guy. For me, it’s about control and a consistent one-shot, every week. That’s all I really care about. IMO, that should be first priority before worrying about parses. But I think the parse culture is something that bled over from retail, and it is what it is.
As for OP, what weapons are your tanks using? They should be using a 1.3 speed dagger. Tanking Vael is all about attack speed and being able to dish out as many Heroic Strikes as possible. The best weapons for that fight are, in this order…
Alcor’s Sunrazer… 1.3
Finkle’s Skinner… 1.3
Julie’s Dagger… 1.3
Julie’s Dagger can usually be picked up on AH for cheap.
They should also be using Ancient Core Leather Gloves, Edgemaster’s, or Mugger’s Belt to get to 305 weapon skill.
He is using quel’serrar and a shield on this fight.
So starting with his gear: Is there a survival issue here? He’s decked in defensive gear. You’ll probably want him to at least start picking up more threat pieces for this fight.
He needs to get himself hit capped first off 9% with his current weapon, or 6% if he gets himself an axe (Which he should really really want since he’s an orc.)
Second thing I see here is his opener and cooldown usage: Simply put, he isn’t using his cooldowns. He doesn’t use reck or deathwish. I have a pretty detailed opener that I use for vael because of set-ups I have but he should atleast be able to replicate part of it:
4 seconds before the boss becomes active, use recklessness
2 seconds before the pull switch to defensive stance, use bloodrage and activate deathwish.
That’s going to massively increase his initial threat.
Third thing you’ll want him to do is fix his priority order for ability usage:
His first cast should be bloodthirst, and he should use it on CD for the entire fight.
Sunders aren’t his main priority or his job even, your dps warriors/OTs should always use their first GCD in a fight sundering, and OTs should maintain it.
His ideal cast breakdown by the end of the fight should be: 1 bloodthirst and 1 revenge for every 2 sunders.
This also great advice for a weapon set up on vael specifically.
Is there a way for your DPS to know if they are about to pull? If you could find a way to get that information, it might allow you to stop them from pulling. It might be hard work though since you might have to design an addon to read damage based on threat and do a ton of testing to figure out the exact threat ratios.
Thank you very much [Mayatau]
I will pass this info along.
I had a feeling it was his ability usage or something along those lines.
Feel free to send him along if he wants to chat about tank stuff directly or has concerns with anything. Either here in this thread or you can give him my btag to add me:
Druides#1399
Ok perfect thank you very much!
I really appreciate it.
Quel is too slow for this fight, IMO. Since he has unlimited rage, he should be spamming Heroic Strike every single cooldown, just hammering the sh*t out of that key nonstop, in addition to his regular rotation. A 1.3 speed dagger can dish out 50% more Heroic Strikes per sec. than a 2.0 speed Quel, for a LOT more threat.
I will let him know to change weapons because it did seem odd for him to be using Quel for this fight.
If you’re trying to parse and kill vael fast you want your threat tank having as much up time on heroic strike as much as possible. Either having thunderfury/perdz/alcors is your best bet.
It’s not really about parsing.
It just seems that we wait for him to get 5 sunders, and wait, and then once we jump in it’s like 5 seconds only and someone is pulling threat somehow already.
I just dont see that being possible unless he is doing something wrong, which it looks like he is with his cooldowns.
You shouldn’t rely solely on the main tank sundering the boss. Other warriors should be contributing to that.
Yeah that is another issue then.
Everyone thinks we have to wait for the MT to put up 5 sunders before we dps.
But I guess the MT is supposed to use his other CD’s to gain initial threat which overcomes the offtanks using sunders?
Sounds like it anyways.