Vengeance - all the new Rage!

Oh my, I am so proud of that title. Notice how I managed to sneak my guild name in there and let it sound like an advertisement at the same time? Yeah, I'm that impressive...

Anyway.

Todays topic is the new talent called "Vengeance" (not the guild) and in a very broad sense "what tanks would like non-tanks to know about it". This post was mostly inspired by Uncrittables post - which suddenly explained a lot of things about my threat management. Well worth the read if you want more pertinent information. From my side: just the quick summary.

All the tanks got it with patch 4.0.1 and it looks something like this:

Basically: As long as the tank is taking loads of damage, they are going to deal more damage. Quite a lot more damage. "Normal" tank attack power is still nothing very impressive, but with a full stack of this, damage will be through the roof.

That is a good thing, as most high-threat moves these days are based on attack power - with the possible exception of Consecrate for paladins.

Remember all those moans and complains when patch 4.0.1 came out first about tanks not able to hold threat? This is part of the problem. The other part is impatient DPS - which might be an old trend with roughly 21.000 results on a search for the year 2007 alone.

The mechanic is nothing entirely new - although paladins and deathknights won't know it as such. This is basically exactly the same rage did before. If your tank is getting hit lots, they manage to dish out lots of threat and hold the enemy just where you want them. If your DPS managed to pull aggro on the initial pull it's going to be a floudering catching up race of madness (93k results - people seem to do that a lot).

Examples? Some fights have actually got easier to hold aggro on. I know I used to struggle on Sindragosa before the patch - our dps were generally catching up very quick. I had to use intervene on every air phase just to bring some semblance of stability to the whole fight and still our top people had to use their threat-dropping-moves. No longer the case. Sindragosa now happily tears holes into my armour and blasts me with frosty fire. My vengeance stacks tic up and my shield slams would bring a smile even to a DPS players face. Threat output increases so much that it doesn't even matter that Chilled to the Bone stacks faster with the new heroic strike mechanic.

And on the other side?

Try charging into a pack of relatively low level trash in a 5-man instance. Ideally, I'd try to thunderclap, cleave, shieldslam one, thunderclap again and then use shockwave to make sure I get a nice threat lead.

Any of you think this path has worked ever? Even once?

I might have some bad news for you then - on at least two topics.

Now as I see the first snow from Blizzard and the first lightning from Hurricane strike after my initial charge my options are limited. Thunderclap, Shockwave right away to stun those things from trying to beat up my dps. This not only gives me a rather low threat to start with, it also makes sure those same mobs don't hit me (because they are stunned - Note to self: This is also a bad time to use Shield Block). Vengeance does not stack up rapidly, my following cleavage looks more like this:

rather than this:

All hell breaks loose and things run all over the place and start beating up the DPS. Will you stop looking already? There is a rather important topic on here.

I'll try a summary - and maybe, if you are very good there will be a reward image at the end of it.

Summary!

Vengeance is your tanks new ability to stay ahead on threat. To use this to it's fulle extend the tanks need to take damage from all mobs they have pulled. The ramp-up time is roughly 6 seconds in current content. This means all DPS need to wait until they have counted to  6  10  20  30 (I know how DPS count!) before starting with the massive damage dealing. If you wait patiently, you can then see large numbers bounce across your screen (eyes down here, damnit!).

Wait before shooting!

Gratituitious picture here (SFW).