So maybe we aren’t the best raid tanks. Or heroic instance tanks. Or…
But what are we good at in raids? DPS. And what are hunter tanks better at than regular tanks, by a fair margin? DPS. So it’s possible for us to be more useful than normal tanks. We just need to find places where the group benefits directly from extra tank dps.
I lucked into figuring this out. We were badge farming in heroic UP with a decent-but-not-epicly-geared group, and I was in my MM spec. But our healer was an achievement farmer, and didn’t have the achievement for the first boss (The Incredible Hulk) …in it, you must position a nearby Scourge Hulk under the “sacrifice sword” during the add phase.
Our healer was bummed, because it likely required two tanks, AND it needed some fairly strong dps to down the adds during the Sacrifice phases before the sword fell if we went with two tanks, because there would be one less person dps’ing them than normal. I really wish I could’ve screenshotted my smile right then. Kiting the Scourge Hulk into place, who has a knockback attack, isn’t easy. So our MT took him, while I tanked the boss and provided extra dps for the adds. You’ll notice my pet on passive occasionally, but it’s because he kept wanting to attack Svala during the add phase, placing himself under the sword. Like most tanks, it seems, he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Could this have been one-tanked? Yes, absolutely. But it would’ve been much harder.
Anyway, enjoy!
Hunter Pet Tank for The Incredible Hulk Achievement
Other Useful Scenarios:
1. I’ve only found one other heroic instance where we are similarly more useful than a regular tank, and it’s also a two-tank achievement (the first boss in AN this time, for Watch Him Die).
This one is also possible with a single tank, but the constant web wraps doom most groups. Our group’s main tank (a druid) kited the adds into the back hallway, morphed into kitty-mode, and ran like hell toward the instance entrance. In essence, it was a sacrifice to buy us some time to down the boss, and it makes the boss himself a dps race. So I tanked the boss, and we killed him just before the adds returned. No video (alas) but another example of how we can be situationally useful as tanks, and occasionally even preferable to other tanks.
[Frostheim note: Some other acheivements that benefit from a hunter tank include Respect Your Elders in Ahn'Kahet and Share the Love in Gundrak (boss won't impale his primary aggro target, so pet tanking lets your tank get impaled for the achievement). - Frost out]
2. I wanted to post a bonus video of me and a healer buddy 2-manning Skadi the Ruthless in regular UP with a brief guide to it, but never got around to it. I may still eventually do it. Dude is not for the feint of heart, and it took us a couple dozen tries before we got the hang of it. Stuff like that blurs the line between pure soloing and pure tanking, but can be a fun way to use your tanking abilities without having to convince numerous people to come along. Find a solid healer, and nothing outside of heroics should be insurmountable (including high-lvl Outland heroics and bosses like Skadi that provide a fun challenge).
Tanking Updates:
- I’ve mentioned it in comments, but haven’t explicitly stated it in a guide yet, so here it is: Stamina is now our most important stat for tanking. Not at the expense of large chunks of attack power. But the expertise transfer in 3.2 made threat more manageable.
- This is just for reference to give players an idea of what stats I’m working with when I tank. In my current tank gear/spec, I have 1723 stamina and 3807 AP. That’s unbuffed, without food, and no Aspect is up. You don’t need to hit these numbers in order to successfully tank (the above video was actually with about 1500 base stamina), but if you’re too far off them you might have trouble.
- I’m seeing more hunter tanks popping up in the comments, which is cool. Now we just need to push Frost’s pet collar idea and start getting them some damn armor.
-Arth
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A guildie friend and I were talking just last night about the possibility of using my warp stalker to off tank the adds on Ignis at some point. It seems like the whole “goto here” ability that was mentioned at blizzcon would make this almost easy, but even without it may be doable.
When I first started this crazy talk about hunters tanking/pet tanking my guildies laughed at me for the most part. Since then, however, I have had several chances to step up and make it apparent that it’s not so crazy.
I now have guildies asking me to come tank with at least fair regularity. The only situation I have found where it does not work out is when the tank is taking really big hits, or has several adds on him at once and Mend Pet just can’t keep up (even gift of the naaru doesn’t help) and there is no real healer.
I really love the idea of pushing that boundary, and I find that when those people who insist that hunters must stay in their little corner of the world get worked up at the thought of a hunter tanking anything, it just makes me grin.
Member
Stamina is top priority? Would you make a quick priority list when you get a sec; I would have thought Hit Rating would still need to be capped. For BM in general I have gone by:
Hit Rating > AP > Agility >Crit > Intellect > Stam
Now with heroics – since we obviously have no business doing tanking in raids – I would think you would still need 7% hit at least, right? But if Stam is so important, would it then be:
Hit Rating > Stam > AP > Agility >Crit > Intellect
And do we flip-flop Agility and AP since we get armor and AP from Agility?
With a few pieces of PvP gear from VoA, Wintergrasp gear, Mark of Honor gear, plus the holiday trinkets, my pet is getting very close to tank-viability. Already tanked some non-heroics 80 instances without issue, and Coren Direbrew a bunch of times. Thanks for all the great input!
Contributor
Boz -
Sorry, I should have qualified the Stamina statement a bit more carefully. Yes, reaching the hit cap should be top priority (7% for tanks). But yeah, I’ve been prioritizing Stam. above AP. There’s a limit to this (if you can get yourself near or above, say, 2K stamina without outside buffs you can switch to focusing on AP), but this takes time.
As it pertains to agility, we do get armor from it as well. However, a properly specced hunter/pet combo will actually get your pet a competitive armor total. Without gearing for armor/Agi at all, my pet has about as much armor as a tank who is heroic-geared with possibly some Nax pieces. Not bad at all. And if you’re using cooldowns intelligently (MD, BW, Intimidation, Taunt, etc.) we can hold aggro as well as similarly-geared tanks. Our biggest hurdle to matching tanks of any level is our pet’s health. So that’s why Stamina takes precedence. Like I said, don’t sacrifice huge chunks of AP to do this, but that should be the priority rating.
…
This article was written prior to getting the Brewfest trinkets. I’ve cracked 1800 stamina in my gear, unbuffed. And with stam scrolls, both of us being well fed, and my new LW buffs (the Drums of Kings and Gift of the Wild) I got my croc to 31K health yesterday, with no others helping out. I may personally switch to AP > Stam. at this point, but wouldn’t advise it until you get to that level of stamina.
Contributor
Anyway, for an easier answer, your latter priority system looks right. I may ask Frost to edit it in to help out others, and thanks.
Member
Don’t know if you’ ve seen these or not… http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49632 huge stam boost, and they don’t cost all that much to have made. I bought enough of the ink off of the ah for about 55g for a stack of them.
Contributor
Wow! Excellent find. I’ll have to buy my own mats soon. Thanks!
Member
I know it stacks with well fed, haven’t tried it with any other stam buffs though
Member
Oooh I tanked that on my badger the other day and got it first sword
Member
The scroll is the same as a Priest Buff so will stack with everything a priest buff does.
I almost completed my 2th tanking set now i got the second stamina trinket from Brewfest.
The drums and scroll really add a lot to my high stamina set.
When i go in full stamina gear my pet reaches 42K hp selfbuffed. My having 2986 stamina.
The main problem staying my dps has gone down a lot.
Another possible use for a pet tank is on the last boss in Gundrak Heroic, when you’re going for the achievement ‘Share the Love’ – Its the one where you need everybody to be impaled, and he never impales the main tank. So if you use your pet to tank at the start and wait until your regular tank is impaled, then he can taunt and carry on as normal.
what is the addon that makes your attack bar appear like that? sorry if im being dense
Contributor
Thundar – that actually sounds like too much stamina. See my earlier comments under the post for general guidelines. You’d be better off sacrificing some stamina for attack power, because I can’t imagine being able to hold aggro too well with those stats, though it will depend on what your AP is (which I’m actually curious about if you see this post). Still, congrats on all the stam. I only top 2K with some buffs, and hit about 1850 with gear alone.
Wendar – See Frost’s comment in the article here
Rufus – Bartender. And the lower bars are handled by ZHuntermod, which groups together things likes aspects and traps.
Member
Arthemystia – I know its a bit over the top, butt in some solo fights its pretty good it is my second solo/tank set. In my stamina set i have just below 3K AP and 23% crit.
In my most used solo/tank set im on 3800 AP and 26% crit butt i am wearing 2 T5 pieces and 2 tanking trinkets then, then my pet is hitting 30K HP
Contributor
Gotcha. Interesting combos there. Keep in mind, you won’t want T5 for tanking. Awesome for soloing, but that’s what a healer is for while tanking. You sacrifice too much pet dps using them. It’s also possible to hit higher stam. numbers with the max health spec, which dips into SV instead of MM like we do for tanking. But that’s also more for soloing than tanking.
The 3800 is fine, but less than 3K won’t allow you to hold aggro off of good dps. Even when I was topping 4K AP in my tank set, anyone doing over 4K dps on bosses (which a lot of classes can do now) had to watch themselves. But if you can get to 2K stamina with just gear/spec, that’s more than enough for tanking heroics once buffs are added.
Still, you’re set on stamina, so nice job. Just make sure your AP is high enough for the situation.
Hey, just wanted to share a hunter tanking experience. Did a heroic VH awhile back with a holy paladin (well-geared and stable), a ret paladin (well-geared, slightly clueless), a druid tank and a warlock. It started off fine, until the 3 or 4 the portal….when our druid tank disconnected. I had immediately switched my pet to growl to tank the remaining 2 portals before the boss which turned out to be the the Voidwalker, joy! I was under the impression the ret pally would switch to tank spec and tank boss and beyond until our wayward druid returned, alas he didn’t. We were able to down the boss, and after silent agreement, I brought out my very own bear tank. Thanks to our combined dps (the ret, lock and myself) as well and stellar healing from the healadin (so much for a relaxed healing night..) we successfully completed up to the the last boss, which happened to be the exact moment our druid tank reconnected and resumed tanking duties.
While not overly difficult, the spawn point furthest left with the splitting mobs was a bit of a pain (especially when spawn before was normally furthest right), however sending my pet up while using MD/Multi shot for strays helped big. Was even able to get the Defenseless achievement for the ret. Things I learned from this experience? Always be prepared for the worst, yet keep a calm demeanor. Even an average night can have it’s twists and turns, but remaining calm and confident (and having a clue what your doing) can help big time. I’m definitely not the best hunter out there, but I am a capable hunter who been around for awhile who enjoys pushing the limits of her class.
Every time I hear someone sneering on how hunter’s can’t tank, or that something is impossible, I just put on a great big dwarven smile…
I don’t know where, it might have been a guildmate, but I seem to recall hearing about a hunter pet tanking Hodir. This leaving room for extra dps for the speed kill. In a fight where every single damage dealer increases your chances of success (even with the reitemized BM hunter build that doing this would require), this would make a lot of sense, but I wonder about the truth of it.
Contributor
Polarity – The logical default position for such rumors is skepticism. Any rumor that is so vague is likely to be false, even if it’s not nearly as difficult as tanking Hodir would be. In a speed kill you aren’t even supposed to be wearing frost resist gear. Even if the hunter was wearing it, to transfer some resistance to the pet, he’d still get critted, and the healers would be under more duress from raid healing anyway. Holding aggro off of a group capable of dps’ing fast enough to get the speed kill is also unlikely, if not impossible. Combine the two and you see the problem.
I off-tanked Naxx the other day (WHU videos/strats forthcoming). It was amazingly fun, and was mostly successful, but also highlighted our limitations as tanks. I was with a smart group that was nearly ideal for tanking. But even still, nothing about the experience suggested to me that I could be main tanking the latter half of Ulduar. I hit a tangible wall on certain fights in Naxx, which is far easier than Ulduar.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see a hunter do such a thing. And in an endgame-completed pro raid group, it might even be possible. But such a group could clear the Hodir speed kill without gimmicks like that. So until I see a video, complete with some form of explanation, strategy, gear, etc. I won’t believe it, and won’t even consider it remotely likely.
After I made that post I went looking. and indeed a guild used a pet tank to tank Hodir, but I don’t think they hit the speed kill.
Here’s the video that i found.
http://bigredrhino.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/bubbles-tanks-25-man-hodir/
I totally agree with you in general, tanking on many boss fights is too movement and positioning oriented for a pet tank to be really effective, but on certain fights it looks like it can work. I could see a pet potentially tanking jaraxxus or even one of the twin valkyr’s on regular mode, having tanked both of those on my sub geared 32k HP DK in 10 man.
Contributor
Interesting. Thanks.
Big Red Rhino is the only site I’ve found that makes a concerted effort toward pet tanking (besides the WHU now, of course) rather than just soloing. When I first started tanking I used a couple of their guides for help, which cover the basics nicely, which I then added heavily to in order to create my own.
I still have to say I’m not quite sure how they manage it. It *couldn’t* have been the speed kill, mind you. The length of the video, even with the Naxx interlude, ensures that, as does the fact that the dps had enough restraint to let a gorilla keep aggro (an unfortunate decision for such an obviously skilled pet tanker, imo, unless the gorilla’s interrupt helps somehow on that fight). I may dig around the site to see if further info on the fight is available.
It also looks like he loses aggro around 2:30 in the vid. It’s possible to follow it on Omen. It then cuts out to Naxx, and he has aggro comfortably again when it cuts back to Hodir. Not sure what happened there. I’m not calling the video into question, but just stating what I saw.
And yes, I see where you’re coming from, and pets can indeed extend themselves into raids. But your DK example is a little off, because I assume you’re at least defense capped. Pets can’t be made d-capped, which is the biggest health-related problem with even tanking heroics. We still get critted, which is why I was shocked the monkey wasn’t one-shotted at some point in that fight. The heals must have been pro as hell, and likely included a Disc. Priest for mitigation against such hits.
Still, a goal for us, no? Having scoured youtube and google searches for other tanking stuff, this is the first I’ve seen that goes beyond tanking Outland heroics. It’s nice to see other tanks out there doing such difficult fights.
Contributor
Ok, I found his writeup on it:
http://bigredrhino.forumotion.com/pet-feats-and-walkthroughs-f7/feat-hodir-25-mt-t94.htm
With 3 dedicated healers for the pet, dps doing very little except auto attack, and full raid buffs tailored specifically toward letting a pet tank, I can see how it would be possible. But good luck convincing a 25M group to go through such hoops to let a pet tank Hodir. It’s still very impressive, but feels more like an achievement attempt to me than actual tanking. It’s an awesome “look what we can do” feat, but wouldn’t be viable in a normal group or on a regular basis. I’m excited to see what he tried next, though. I’m just starting to get my guild ok with me OT’ing Naxx. If this guy has a 25M group willing to let him attempt such things, the ceiling for his potential feats is much higher.
He mentions crit reduction from resilience, which should only be for PvP, and shouldn’t affect our pet in raids. I may talk to a GM to confirm this, but unless he found a way to get resil. directly on his pet, or the patch notes on the transfer were worded poorly from Blizz, he’s mistaken about that.
re the video. I was really impressed with the positioning of the boss, I don’t know how he was able to maneuver that monkey so well, I’ve been on the dps end of a poorly tanked hodir many times, but thinking about it its probably one of the *only* fights in ulduar that could be pet tanked considering how movement based most of them are.
Oh for sure, I definitely didn’t realize that pets can’t be defense capped, I thought that it must be somehow in there (especially since at the beginning of wrath they were making such a hubbub about hunters being viable heroic tanks that they must get some defense with certain builds). In terms of tanking other things, I’d definitely consider some of the fights in 10 ToC much easier for pet tanks than most, if not all of the fights in Ulduar.
I’m new to the whole hunter tank scene. I’m lucky enough to have a full set of t8.5 that I’ve grown out of and can regem/enchant and play around with, and I’m a chronic saver of old gear, so I even have some decent offset stuff that i can use as well, that aren’t huge downgrades. This allows me to not change anything on my current raiding gear. That, with the pvp gear should get me going, but I honestly haven’t played BM since I was leveling to 80, so it’s going to be interesting relearning how to play it.
If my heroic tanking ventures go well I’m making my 10 man let me try to tank some regular ToC since we’re blowing through both the regular and heroic modes in under 3 hours, Im pretty sure my people would be down for some experimentation just for the fun of it. insert evil laugh here.
PS. I love this blog. you got me commenting in a public forum! I never do that, and sorry for the text wall!
Contributor
No worries. Glad you’re enjoying it. A perusal of the pet tanking section will likely give you some ideas to help out your pursuit, unless you have already.
Pets get 4% crit defense through pet talents. Unfortunately, That leaves a 1.4% chance for heroic bosses, and 1.6% for raid bosses. So yes, unless resil. transfers (as I understand it, it only does for dmg. from other players) we’re not d-capped.
I lack the data to prove it, but I believe 328 resilence is the number to hit to make your pet un-crittable. After patch 3.3 that number may even decrease quite a bit.
For a good read on pet tanking check out Kheldul’s article on his site Hunter DPS at hunter-dps.dungeoneer.com.
Pet Tanking Article:
http://hunter-dps.dungeoneer.com/2009/07/hunter-pet-tanking-gear.html
The basic summary is to get hit capped, get 328 resilience, have 2 tier 7.5 pieces for the pet damage bonus, get to 25% crit and to stack stamina and attack power.
Contributor
Frost and possibly myself are running some tests to confirm or deny the resilience transfer to d-cap pets. In the meantime, I’ll withhold comment.
That’s a good article, btw, Uru. It’s a slightly more concise version of the one I made a while ago for the WHU here, but covers similar ground. Past the hit cap, AP and Stam. are really our only concerns, and the t7 set bonus is an obvious boon to pet tanks. With enough good gear, crit. will take care of itself. 25% seems arbitrary, but it’s as good a number as any. And resilience…well, like I said, we’ll know for sure soon.
Contributor
Two things. One, resilience does indeed transfers to pets for crit reduction and crit. dmg taken, but not for overall dmg. taken. 328 is needed for raids to be d-capped, and 287 for heroics if I did my math right. It will be considerably less than that once 3.3 hits. Which is great news. More on this in subsequent tanking articles, and I’ll also tweak the gear guide accordingly sometime soon. My thanks to Frost for testing this to confirm it after we both realized that it might be the case.
Two: A WHU reader just joined my guild yesterday, and promptly took me to school in all but 1 fight of a 25M ToC Pug. I cried a little inside. My newly acquired 245 crossbow should rectify things though. But we were randomly chatting about pet tanking and he says to me, “Do you read WoW Hunter’s Union at all? They have this guy that writes all about it…” etc. etc. Apparently he thought it was Frost writing them. I lol’d, toyed around with him for a bit by feigning ignorance about pet tanking, then sent him here. The stunned silence when he realized it was me, followed by incredulity and laughter was priceless.
Member
Have you given any thought to pet tanking OS+ a couple drakes?
Contributor
I have. It’s on my short list of things I still want to tank in the current content. Heroic HoL and a couple specific Ulduar encounters are up there too. But Pug’s aren’t up for pet tanks and my guild rarely runs OS anymore, so it’s been difficult.
I did tank H Gundrak the other day, which marks the highest level instance I’ve tanked. Very smooth too. It seems less an achievement in the wake of my last big excursion to Naxx, but I’m always happy to add a checkmark beside a new instance.
I’m the GM of a fairly small guild that is slowly gaining members. However, our guildies have alts that they are leveling so we can have raids with the correct makeup of tanks and healers. My guild is a mix of adults and teenagers like most guilds and our times are very strange so its difficult to get a normal group together when the alts need to run an instance. After visiting this site for the first time and seeing that a hunter can tank and what I need to do in order to accomplish this, I smiled and started working. Using my t7.5 set gemmed and enchanted for tanking, Off we went. Jumping into regular instances with a group make up of what ever with me as the tank. I’m still working on getting my Croc up to 80 but using a Rhino right now. It works well as long as they stay on the marked target. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for the help with this. I’ve been getting more comfortable with tanking and a renewed joy for the game and my Hunter.
Contributor
That’s awesome to hear, Oyless. Glad it’s paying off. I could never get used to Rhinos though. Too damn big, especially when you pop Bestial Wrath.
LOL yea your right! They are a pain to look around but I must say….They are fun to see running at an enemy then the Thunderstomp and Stampede. OOOO!! Hunter Rhino Bowling…LOL