Think I need a break from tanking for people who are offended by requests to watch Omen.

Stealing threat from high-dps fire mage: very useful.

Regularly reminding my wife that I’m thinking of her: PRICELESS.

Okay, romance aside, I’ll vig the top dps when I want threat, or another tank if I want the regular taunt refreshes.

The main purpose of MD is it establish initial threat at range, but using it periodically is really a very small effect. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but unless your pure DPS classes without threat dumps (like mages) are throttling more than their mana would force them to anyways, it’s probably a waste of time.

I think currently threat management is a team thing. I hate the fact that to many players it’s seen as a tank job. Dps have many options to manage threat or help tank threat and your raid is gimped if they feel they don’t need to bother.

As tank you should never have to make deals for Tricks of the Trade or misdirect. They are so obviously good that they should permanently be on cooldown. If your hunters and rogues are more inclined to choose a shot that pushes them further up the damage meter than a move that helps the raid win it’s just demoralising.

I have raided as a hunter and except in the first 10 seconds of a pull it’s impossible to rip aggro (even back in the old Wait for 3 sunders days of terrible tank threat). Provided FD is in your rotation. FD sets your threat to zero. It have a 30 sec cooldown which you can glyph down to 25 secs with a minor glyph. It is almost never resisted if you are at range.

If I were still raiding with a Hunter my opening would be Misdirect – 3 big shots which cause tank threat – 4 or 5 other shots – FD – rotation until MD ready – MD – FD. Not only can Hunters set threat to zero every 25 seconds but 3 of their shots will be MD shots not shots that generate Hunter threat.

Having said all that I have seen Hunters rip aggro. When it happens I feel like I’m playing with someone who has only discovered what 3 of their class’s skills do. Demoralising.

Of course possibly the player knows his stuff but is simply more focused on meter whoring than on playing the best moves for the raid. Also demoralising.

Andrew gives a good list of classes who are much more deserving of Vigilance. Another option is to steal some threat off another tank. Sartharion + drakes is a good example of fight where Vigilance on one tank would work well. The Sarth tank has bundles of excess threat and the drake tank needs to generate huge damage quickly. 3% less damage on the Sarth tank is also useful.

Of course WoW is a social game and if you’ve found a way to social engineer a one button macro spammer into using one of his class skills he normally doesn’t bother with then good luck to you. But you really shouldn’t have to.

Also, dps warriors (sadly) aren’t threatening the tops of any meters since the last patch ;/

I would think that the following are all better choices from a min-max “benefit the entire raid” point of view (roughly in this order):

DPS Warrior
Ret Pally
Enhancement Shaman
Boomkin
Elemental Shaman
Mage