Pet Tanking Heroics

Hi everyone. Arthemystia here, a devoted dues-payer and follower of the WHU. I came to Frost recently with an offer to collect data on pet tanking for him, since I do a fair amount of tanking. He graciously accepted, and also allowed me to write some guest articles.

This will be the first of several installments on pet tanking, with a specific emphasis on Northrend heroics. The articles are mine, but for those suspicious of anyone not named Arust or Frost, everything here was reviewed by Frostheim. Anything fancy, from pictures to bold text, is also Frost since I’m new to the blog-writing mechanics on the WHU.

Pet Tanking Heroics

People won’t believe you. They’ll laugh when you suggest that you want to tank, say, heroic Nexus. And not just in PUGs. I’ve had guildies join my tanking groups “just to see it fail.” It’s an uphill battle.

But it can be done.

It’s hard, and requires a fair amount of preparation and a difference skill set than we hunters are used to. But yes, you can pet tank Northrend heroics. I’ve personally tanked heroic UK and heroic DTK , and have even pet off-tanked Naxx. And while there is obviously a limit to our tanking (don’t take it to Ulduar, for example), most or all heroic 5 man instances should be tankable.

Future installments will include which pet to use for tanking, spec, gear, enchants, gems, glyphs, rotation, and more. Today we’ll discuss general strategies for tanking, and solutions to common problems encountered while tanking.

Basics

The mechanics of tanking are similar to soloing, but soloing is focused on pet health and overall dps. Extreme soloing focuses on pet damage mitigation and healing. But with tanking, our pet’s health, mitigation, and aggro are the only considerations. We will still dps more than a “normal” tank, but it is a secondary purpose.

Groups

First, start slow. Do some extreme soloing work. Or 2-man a regular difficulty instance with a friend. Or tank some Northrend dungeons in normal mode first. Convince your guildmates that you can do it.

Second, be the leader. We’re used to sitting back, being told by the MT what target to kill, and rocking dps meters. This is a different world. Make sure everyone is focused on the correct target sequences so that you can maintain aggro. Coordinate boss fights, even if the strategies fail. I usually consult with tanks in my guild before running an instance to pick their brains. Chances are, there’s something you didn’t know about in a boss fight, even if it’s an instance you’ve done dozens of times.

Third, make sure others in your group are helping. Other hunters? They need to be misdirecting to your pet. A Priest? Make sure he’s casting Fade. It’s possible to hold aggro off of very good dps without these kinds of things, but every little bit helps.

Fourth, talk to your group beforehand. Run down a list of what they need to know about running in a group with a pet doing their tanking, including:

• The pet is not as good as holding aggro as a geared tank. Everyone should use their threat-reduction abilities at every opportunity. They should watch their threat on Omen.
• They will need to wait a solid 5 seconds or so before starting to dps on a pull.
• They must single target dps unless explicitly told otherwise by you. You will mark each kill target so they’re attacking the same thing as the pet.
• Other hunters should MD to your pet at every opportunity.
• The overall pace of the instance will be slower. You will pause between each pull to wait for pet cooldowns and recover your own mana.
• Healers should be told that the pet just has less health than a normal tank, and while the pet increases the effect of heals received, there’s just a smaller margin of error. Faster small heals are better than slower big heals. Priest shields are better still.
  

Heals

We can get our pet’s armor up fairly high relative to “normal” heroic-geared tanks. But a pet’s hit points will be lower than a normal tank regardless of our gear and spec, and of course our pet will have less avoidance, meaning he’ll take more damage. Stamina buffs are incredibly useful, and you should supplement your gear with stamina-heavy items.

If you have a choice, Discipline Priests are wildly useful healers for their damage mitigation talents. They can also shield your pet instead of heal him during the initial pull, which doesn’t create threat and makes the pull easier. Any heal class should be able to keep your pet up consistently though.

Aggro

The dps in your group needs to be using their threat-drops, and they need to single target dps as much as possible. Without threat mitigation, I’ve held aggro on a single target up to about 3K dps. As we know, many classes can do more than that. But with threat reduced as needed, an intelligent group shouldn’t have any more of a problem than with a normal tank.

Mana:

While we can nerf our dps using Aspect of the Viper and not suffer immediate consequences, our pet needs to stay in Aspect of the Beast to maintain aggro. Stay out of Viper whenever possible. To make this possible, bring lots of consumables to replenish your mana, and stay topped up whenever possible. Or wait until Viper regenerates your mana between pulls before pulling again. Remember — when pet tanking a heroic, you’re pace will probably be slower than with a player tank. It’s okay if you need a bit of a mana break between each pull. You aren’t chain pulling here.

Pulling:

Say you’re in heroic UK. You come to the second pull of the instance, with mobs standing around giant anvils. There’s 4 of them in the upcoming pull. You send your pet in, load up misdirection, fire multi-shot. Suddenly, one of them runs straight at your healer and one-shots him. Another runs toward your AOE-happy Warlock. You get Intervene and Taunt going, but it’s too late. Your group wipes. And it’s your fault. Ok, so maybe the Warlock deserved it for AoE’ing too soon. But it’s still your fault.

Future installments will talk more about rotation, but your initial aggro is going to come from the pet’s thunderstomp and you casting misdirection + Multi-Shot. And the trickiest pulls will be the ones where you can’t cover everyone with Multi-Shot, and your pet’s initial Thunderstomp isn’t wide enough to reach all of the targets. There’s multiple ways around this. Have the pet pull, and wait for the mobs to group together around him before firing Multi-Shot. Or send him after 2 targets, while you fire your MD Multi at two others outside of Thunderstomp distance.

Also be aware of adds that might be summoned. Save your MD and Taunt for these pulls whenever possible. And have a definite kill sequence, and make sure your group sticks to it. Because if dps is focused on a different target than your pet, they WILL pull aggro. Even with thunderstomp, your pet is really just holding aggro against dpsers on one target. The rest he’s just holding aggro against healer threat.

Threat:

A nice way to increase initial threat is to pop Bestial Wrath just before your pet makes a pull. That way, the damage multiplier from BW will apply to the initial thunderstomp, thus increasing threat (and thunderstomp does 2.5 times it’s damage in threat, note). Thanks to Frost for contributing this little gem, which I hadn’t thought of.

And unlike dps where we sometimes want to wait for a bloodlust or <20% on a boss, using your cooldowns early is generally advisable while tanking because it helps establish threat. This would include BW, Kill Command, and any trinkets. The exception to this rule is Taunt, which should be controlled manually either for aggro drops from bosses or situations where you’ve lost aggro. Shell Shield would also be an exception if you’re using a Turtle, but you shouldn’t be except in specific circumstances.

Conclusion:

There will be exceptions to these rules, as well as to those that will be laid out in future tanking articles. I’ll try to cover some of them, but as we already know, a lot of WoW is being able to adapt.

But it’s fun to prove people wrong, and do something that our class isn’t traditionally designed for. And not only that, but to do it well. Or it can be a nice option for your guildies if you lack numerous tanks willing to run heroics. My Ulduar group still laughs at me about this occasionally, but I’ve made believers out of several newly-dinged 80′s and alts who need runs through instances but can’t find groups easily. And there’s also nothing like tanking an instance AND being top dps. Rare, but possible.

Not everyone aspires to tanking, just like not everyone gets a kick out of extreme soloing, PvP, or raiding. But for those that do, this should be a nice intro to it. My thanks to Frost for opening the WHU to this, and you can expect new installments in this series soon. Next up is pet choice.