Threat issues

Intro:

If you're losing threat to your co-tank who is similarly geared to you, you're doing something wrong. It doesn't matter that they're doing a lot of DPS, you should be able to do near enough to their DPS that you don't lose threat.

Warriors in particular do a lot of threat even if they aren't necessarily very good, so many guilds notice an issue with a Druid vs. a Warrior especially, but also Druids vs. other specs - this is especially prominent on Krosus where you have to frequently taunt swap and an over-aggro will easily cause a kill. It is mainly confirmation bias that lead people to think it's something to do with Krosus specifically - it is not.

Druid is a pretty easy class to play when concerned solely with survivability, so many coast through without necessarily playing exceptionally well, and then encounter issues like this.

Druid does do slightly less threat than it ought to, because Galactic Guardian and Moonfire have a bug with their threat generation (but this does NOT mean you should use a different talent, even if this is your only problem). Druids also don't do particularly great DPS when in pure bear form. This means Druids might have to work a little bit harder than they ought to otherwise in order to keep threat.

So put in the work.

If all else fails, you can try to ask your co-tank to hold back on their DPS, so they'll do less threat - but this is not a good solution. They will often lose out on survivability as a result; they will feel punished for your failure to keep up with them; and they will lose DPS, and DPS helps kill bosses. Though it is true that sometimes, you are doing everything you can, there is in virtually all cases vast room for improvement.

Here's how you do that.


Instructions:

Step 1:

Make sure you are not missing any GCDs. You can queue your abilities - using the ability just before the GCD is over, so the game uses it straight away, as soon as it's ready (it's not ideal if you do this and then miss a moonfire proc, but it's not a big deal if it happens occasionally). Lots of people sometimes have very slight delays in between their abilities which leads to a lot of missed casts on average throughout the fight - and missed casts are lost DPS for a spec like Guardian, which can and should be casting something in every single GCD.

Step 2:

Make sure you're doing the single target DPS rotation correctly.
Mangle > Thrash > Moonfire with a Galactic Guardian Proc > Swipe

If using Pulverize, this is the highest priority when at maximum thrash stacks. Ideally you want to use it when Mangle is on cooldown, but make sure you use it before Thrash comes off cooldown again.

Make sure you are making good use out of Rage of the Sleeper. It does a lot of damage, particularly when tanking the boss and/or standing in (some) fire and/or you have a DoT on you.

Step 3 (Advanced):

If you are sure you are doing Steps 1 and 2 correctly, you should probably not be losing threat in general. However, if you are still losing threat, or otherwise concerned with improving your DPS (which you always should be, when comfortable with your survivability), you may want to try Catweaving. This is a process by which you use Feral Affinity and repeatedly swap between Bear and Cat form, for a very significant DPS increase. A guide to Catweaving can be found here: https://goo.gl/2NyeYT

This is a massive DPS increase. Though you will not generate much threat when in Cat form, this is fine - you won't (generally) be in Cat form whilst tanking. You will have bleeds up from Cat form when you start tanking, and this will help with your threat enormously. Though on fights like Krosus, you take lots of damage even whilst not tanking, this is not necessarily a problem - Mark of Ursol, for example, does not go away when you go into Cat form, so you can put that up just before switching. With Mark of Ursol up, you don't take any additional damage from the Krosus DoT being in Cat form than you do being in Bear form; you just have less HP and can't use Frenzied Regeneration. Though it's obviously harder to Catweave effectively on Krosus than it is on e.g. Nythendra, you can still get a very large DPS increase out of it; albeit less than the amount you would have gotten if you didn't have to worry about the DoT or slams etc.

Notes:

Although Pulverize is the best talent for damage done in pure bear form (without the legendary legs); Rend and Tear is the best talent for DPS when Catweaving.

Haste goes from being one of the best DPS stats to the worst when Catweaving, but it will still be an enormous DPS increase even if you have lots of Haste.

Don't worry about threat on pull - just let the other tank start. If you are Catweaving, you will want to start in stealth anyway.