So apparently I’m not great under pressure.
Knowing that this video would end up on the WHU if we were successful, my hands were literally shaking as we started the first pull. This same nervousness resulted in a few sloppy pulls, though luckily the nerves calmed by about the first boss. So in advance, while I’m proud of the video, it’s not a flawless run.
But here’s the thing: despite the nerves, it still went smoothly as all hell. Which is great news for tanking hunters in a post-3.2 WoW. With priest, pally, and warlock buffs my croc was just over 30K health. Legit tanking health, though lower than you’d need for raid tanking. Our ‘lock died on the 2nd boss, because he forgot the plan of switching targets often to stay under my croc’s threat. The rest was like clockwork, and I routinely held aggro on multiple targets. It was a reasonable pace as well. No chain pulls but not a lot of down time either.
There is one wipe. We pulled Keleseth with the trash preceding him by accident. Nothing directly related to the pet, and it would’ve wiped most normal groups as well.
I purposely left Power Auras off. No need for health updates when you have a healer. Technically you can, but I wanted to show that it wasn’t needed. I only threw Witwicky (my lovable croc) 1-2 heals the entire time.
The first boss got cut off a bit (I forgot to start recording again after the lone wipe) and I slow down the last boss, the only trick pull of the instance. So without further adieu, enjoy!
Tips, Tricks, and Notes
- I’ve found that once you have enough aggro on the primary target that you won’t lose him before he dies, it’s advantageous to have your pet switch targets before the first is dead to shore up the others. This takes some practice, but I managed to keep a couple large groups off of my healer like this. And if you’ve popped enough cooldowns early (Intimidation, BW, etc.) you can sometimes come off of the primary target rather early.
- Discipline Priests. Can’t say enough. They’re my new best friends.
- The pet tanking gear guide has more detailed advice, but here’s a few examples of gear that I’m using in my tank set:
http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=45212
http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=42131
http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=47216
http://www.wowarmory.com/item-info.xml?i=49000The use on the Battlemaster trinket doesn’t transfer to pets, alas, but it’s still more steady AP than we get from even high-level trinkets like the Mirror of Truth and our Darkmoon card. I’ve been thinking of using a Jewelcrafting stamina trinket instead, but haven’t made the switch. Fury of the Five Flights would also be awesome, if only I had it. Otherwise, I have two pieces of t7, a different helm for the tanking meta gem, and the rest is raid gear. - I didn’t use Scorpid Sting, and would venture to say that it should only be a situational substitute for the dps-oriented Serpent Sting. But if your healer is struggling or you don’t have the stamina you want, it might provide a bit of cushion for damage mitigation.
- Bonus points for anyone who stuck around to see the group photo at the end of the video.
- I have more videos planned, but probably not entire instances. But, get this, I’ve found a couple places where hunter tanks are actually preferable to regular tanks. Skeptical? Then stay tuned.
- Pet tanking works. And post-3.2 it’s actually not any worse than your average-geared PUG tank. And UK, to be perfectly honest, wasn’t much of a challenge (with a good healer, granted). Hunters are probably capable of tanking any and all Northrend instances. Heroic UP (Skadi) and ToC are probably the only two I’d hesitate to tank at this point. People still won’t believe it, so it won’t be easy. But if you decide to try some tanking, do the legwork beforehand, but have confidence that it’s a viable off-spec for us.
Peace,
-Arth
Amazing stuff !
I have tanked a couple of the easier Outland dungeons for lowbies in the guild using Harry (my turtle) but have never even tried a regular Northrend instance. Maybe I’ll try to get a group of fresh 80′s through reg UK and see how it goes.
I love this stuff
The bastard at the end had the audacity to turn around after my skillfully maneuvered pull. It’s the first time that’s happened in my 3 times tanking UK. Didn’t he know this was supposed to be a flawless run for the WHU?!
And since posting this vid for WHU use, I’ve added a couple more PvP pieces to my tank set. The lvl 226 stuff you can get with battleground honor (I don’t do arena) is loaded with stamina, and usually crit and AP. The ring I linked above is a good example of this.
Other Hunters! Please please please post your own exploits.
I’ve played WoW for a little over a year now, my first character is my Hunter, she is also my only 80.
For a long time it had been a joke amongst my friends and I about “My pet can tank”… Even I myself felt like there was no real way for even a tenacity pet to really tank a “serious” pull. I had pretty much resolved to the thought that tenacity pets were for leveling and soloing.
On a whim, whilst running around in stranglethorn grinding out the Nessingwary quests for the achievement I realized I was standing at the gates of ZG. On a whim I asked one of my guildies if they wanted to do ZG.
“Sure!”
Mind you, neither of us had ever run it, as we were both new players. I had been 80 all of about a month and was still wearing greens with some heroic blues. We recruit a guildie mage who was in some t7 gear but mostly blues. and set forth!
Everything was fine until Hakkar. My friend was tanking on his DK and when he got MCd he just one shotted the mage and two shotted me. Of course, the topic of conversation went to “what are we going to do?”
“Val’s pet can tank!! lawlz”
Yeah, I pulled out my warpstalker (scotty) and sure as hell he tanked Hakkar like a champ! He only lost threat one time and we burned her down to victory!
It was at this point that I realized that my pet maybe could tank, then I found WHU and started hearing all this “pet tanking” noise and actually started seeing that this was not just some crazy idea. Since then I have taken the opportunity to put lil scotty into situations to shine, like tanking chillmaw every day
Hey there,
Just wanted to leave a comment about this site. Inspired me to use a WordPress hosting and layout for our guilds website. Also, I tanked Heroic UK 3 weeks ago, with a Turtle. Turtle was specced into the Extreme Soloing Guide’s pet build. I was also using my full PvP gear (also notable, no T5 bonus). Our healer was a Paladin, using beacon. Our DPS was another Hunter, and a Rogue (4-manned, yawn). The second Hunter, was to have another MD on the pet, and an additional Feign Death. The Rogue, would alternate Tricks of the Trade between the other Hunter and myself, and we would Feign as necessary. Was a very enjoyable experience, and I look forward to tanking other Heroics as well.
Keep up the good work Frost and Aruth!
(PS. Have you seen the gun in honor of Big Red Kitty, the BRK-1000? Maybe you can retire, and us Hunter can get a pair of Frostheim Goggles for our own!)
@valacia – A friend and I just finished duoing Zul’Gurub at level 75. He was holy spec and I’m BM, using a turtle (Shelly).
The hardest fight by far was the tiger priest, with his two acolytes who all have to die within 10 seconds. With no reliable interrupts (I tried dual speccing MM for silencing shot, but then Shelly wasn’t tough enough) we just had to drain the healer.
The panther fight was also fun. My friend had to switch to ret for better AE damage. We must have killed thousands of panthers!
Meant to say my friend was holy spec paladin, sorry!
Val – Glad you were vindicated. My own tanking started as a nagging feeling like that as well (“Damnit, I *know* my pet holds aggro better than this fail-Pug-tank”….that sort of thing). And, similarly enough, “Have Arth tank it” is a common vent chat joke for my guild. But yeah, Hakkar is a mother. I found that out the hard way trying to solo him. Some bosses in there are soloable. But I highly doubt he is.
Daddyodwarf – That’s actually pretty impressive, considering your spec sounds much more acclimated to soloing than tanking (which is a different beast). So kudos. But forget Frost goggles. I want a pet collar named after me now!
Hey Frost theres a trinket that increases your pet damage from a hunter quest were you have to go to the sunken temple and kill the drake then once you hand in the quest you get a option of 2 trinkets one is your dps improvement the other is for pet damage but i think its a 70 level quest in Azshara. Its called a hunters charm its starts there and ends up killing the drake for Devilsaurs Tooth which does 5 agility and 200 attack power for 20 secs for your pet it seems to be the only pet trinket i have seen but then again it is a low level not sure if this would help tanking.
Hehhehee, the tank in my giggles a little at your marking, keybind that shiz yo!
On another note, incredible vid! Great group too.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that trinket. Of course I’ve already done the quest, and took something different as the reward, and it’s long, long gone. There are also some crazy BC shoulders that increase pet damage that Arth dug up.
However, with pets getting expertise now, that was something like a 20% dps (and thus threat) gain to tanking pets. I think stamina is a bigger pet tanking stat than dps now. And there’s some nice stamina trinkets from ToC — I’ve even gotten one of them
Fradin -
I actually found the trinket you mentioned when I was making the tanking gear guide for the WHU:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=19992
Here’s the problem though: 200 AP that’s only up 1/6 of the time amounts to 33.3 AP per second over that 2 minute span. And we also prefer steady AP to burst AP for tanking. But even with relatively low transfer rates, our pets are getting far more AP from lvl 80 trinkets like the Mirror of Truth or the Battlemaster trinket I linked. I wish there were items like this currently, however (the 4-piece t9 set bonus may be worth looking into).
But like Frost said, with the expertise transfer post 3.2, stamina becomes our main concern (and yes, I replaced the Battlemaster trinket with a Jewelcrafting stamina one recently as well). Threat will never be a walk in the park, but the *bigger* obstacle for tanking is health.
Ablimoth -
Yeah, gotta write me some marking macros….
Great job, Arth.
If it help you with your marking – there is an addon, HattysMarkBar, quite good stuff. Check it out here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/project-6793.aspx (also, dont forget about /hmb scale command as the initial size is quite scary
Bah, will people stop congratulating the wrong people – Arthemystia did this!
I have pet tanked a few normal instances and have duo-d all sorts of instances with my wifes Discipline Priest. We are currently working our way through all the BC Heroics and maybe even raids…
My gear is pretty much all level 200.
Heh. Yeah, I think someone called me Aruth earlier. Apparently Arust and I have been merged into a joint hunter, who is both a pet fetish-ist while simultaneously putting them through the torture of tanking. BDSM, WoW style….
But yeah, Arust and Frostheim run this blog. I’m Arth, guest contributor. I take my dps cues from them like everyone else, and shouldn’t get credit for the awesomesauce that is the WHU. Tanking is really my only specialty, and is only a tiny sub-section of the huntering world. But hopefully that alleviates any confusion.
Thanks for the add-on suggestion deepfried. I’ll probably try it out.
Jackdaw, if that gear includes a couple pieces of t7, you’re probably only a few stamina pieces away from being able to attempt some serious tanking. ilvl becomes less important with tanking, as we can pretty much ignore everything but stamina and AP (within reason of course).
its really funny i leveled with bear/mm and my group never had a tank normaly me, palay roge, mag, sow my pet tanked all the lower instances its harder and slower but we could grind them out. once i went to outland i stoped thinking it would be to hard to hould the agro
but last few weeks i have started up using my core hound/bm, i like the instant Resurrection but he does have rtoble holding more than 3 sowe il have to dust off the bear again lol. last week got a nice job well done from the best tank i know who ran Alcatraz with me tanking.
I love this site, you guys are great wanted to ask for some input on a boss tho.
Ive been tanking H-Nexxus lately and do great till the last boss cant seem to keep pet up long enuf. Im using a crock for the thanking and Im using the max health bm spec.
Hiero: Ferocity pets will have similar aggro, but won’t stay alive as long. So yes, the bear will be a better option.
Demeitry: Keeping your pet up is frankly not your concern in an instance. Even good healers can struggle with pet-healing, so I’m not throwing your heals under the bus, but there’s plenty you can do to make his job easier. Stamina stacking helps immensely with different gear, and check out the Pet Tanking section of the guides page for suggestions about you and your pet’s spec.
As for the last boss, the stacking debuff is a big problem. I’m rather unscientific about it and just oscillate him between defensive and passive every now and then to ensure that my croc is moving to shake the debuff stacks. It’s also one of the few fights where I make sure my own heals are up on him at all times. A solid decurser also works wonders for that fight, so you might try juggling group members to get a favorable match.
I have to say, I pet tanked Regular ToC and it was a toughie. Of course, I should have gone with the turtle, but I didn’t have time to finish leveling him when the guildies threw down the gauntlet. I’ve hunter-tanked every regular Northrend instance and some heroics. I have a smart group that understands how things are supposed to work.
We made it through the ToC regular because of good group composition and a lucky faction boss… We had the Tauren shammy, the Blood Elf Mage-adin, and the Orc warrior. Since I didn’t have shell shield, my pet died once, which resulted in my pulling and holding aggro for a few seconds on the mage, which ended up killing me. Thankfully, we had silences long enough for me to run back and use the rez on the gorilla.
ToC is a bastard to tank, even on regular. I’ve done it too, but it’s never a clean run. But kudos for clearing it.
But my advice would be to grab a croc/bear for better aggro (ditch the monkey), stamina stack a bit, or find someone for the group that contributes a stam. buff (Lock, Priest, etc.). I carry stamina scrolls with me at all times in case I don’t have this luxury, and it provides a nice extra health cushion.
Bit of advice that I won’t last long enough for me to post it in the next video:
The Brewfest quests currently have a trinket that drops from a daily that has 180 stamina! You can run it 5 times with a group if you each have the quest. Every tank will want it, but by next week you can probably pick it up once they’ve all gotten it. I’ll be running it 5 times each day in hopes of picking it up. It would be *huge* for our tanking.
Ahhh, but arthemystia, have you tried Heroic Nexus? Everythings fine till you realise what ridiculous micromanaging is required for Keri…Oh its possible…sure….But god It hurts.(although with a good healer the debuff is probably managable)
You’re right, it’s not easy. But it’s really all about planning. It’s one of the few fights where I activate my Power Auras to let me know when my heal is down so that I can always have it up, I make sure there’s a dedicated debuffer whose first priority is my pet, and I occasionally move my pet back and forth by putting him on passive for a moment, then back to defensive/agressive. It also helps that the healer who enjoys healing for me is an absolute pro.
Not an easy fight regardless, granted, especially since dps can’t go crazy because of all the pet gymnastics. But manageable, like you said. I don’t think my group one-shotted it when I tanked it, but it wasn’t too bad once we knew what to do. And after I got video capability, I wanted to showcase an entire instance. UK just happened to be the first I ran. If I ever make it back to Nexus again as a tank, I’ll try to capture it, and even if it doesn’t make it onto the WHU I’ll have it up on my youtube account.
for the love off god , bind your keys, why should that be so hard… it makes me cry every time i see somone click there skills , i did that aswell at one points but that was 4 years ago on my first 2 months of playing, i have everything binded on my hunter exept ASPECT OF THE WILD , i know its not needed to bind everything in mindless pve , but the whole feeling of playing the game gets fucked by CLICKING .imagen playing a song on a guitar clicking the strings with a mouse … i bet 99% of the guitar players would quit playing. im not flaming you , just saying you miss alot of the “feeling” by clicking like that rofl
Well, most of my time while tanking is spent tab-switching targets to maintain aggro. As such I don’t have a set rotation, and my mind is usually on watching a lot more things than while I’m dps’ing, which I do keybind. Added to the fact that I tank very sporadically, which means I haven’t had time to engrain key bindings into my mind, and it’s something that I know I need to work on but haven’t gotten to yet.
Beyond that, it’s one thing when you’re losing shots/time for dps, but when I’m deciding between casting a heal on my pet, watching Omen as I tab to maintain aggro on all targets, and toggling between pet-threat abilities which may or may not need cast depending on the situation and dps abilities, keybinding everything becomes much more tricky. The highly situational nature of a lot of these abilities makes it harder, for me at least, and I’m not convinced that extensive keybinds would be a better solution.
You have a valid point, however, and aren’t the first to make it. But please try to refrain from the profanity, as it casts a negative light on what could be a constructive observation.