I recently mentioned Hrist’s extreme tanking when we ran heroic VH with no healer and 4-man. Well last night we had a bit more of the same, only a bajillion times more badass.
10-man raid night and the schedule says we’re going to TotC to pick up a couple of new achievements along with our weekly emblem farming run. Only one problem: our off-tank doesn’t show up. We sat around for about a half hour until Cheerleader checked her Facebook to find a message that he’s stuck at work and doesn’t know when (or if) he’ll get out.
We do some looking, and no other tanks online. We’re screwed.
Then Hrist starts another one of those conversations that lead to epicness….
Hrist: I could probably solo Gormok if we had a paladin do Hand of Protection at just the right time, and then I remove it immediately and taunted.
Arust: But what about the worms?
Hrist: No we’d need two tanks for the worms.
Frost: Wait — I can tank the stationary worm! I’ve done it before when the OT died.
Hrist: Oh yeah you can. Okay, let’s try this…
And epicness ensued.
We picked up an extra dpser and went after the Beasts of Northrend with only the Hate Tank between us and horrible impaled death. Of course we weren’t just trying to beat the Beasts, we wanted to get the Not One, But Two Jormungars achievement, which added just a bit more spice to the evening.
It took a couple of attempts for the healers to get used to my squishiness on the worm phase – but Hrist never had any problems soloing Gormok. It required a delicate dance halfway through where he had the pally Hand of Protection him (and at the same instant the rogue had to vanish — the rest of us were at max range) and then he dropped it and taunted before Gormok could reach the #2 on his aggro list.
So we beat them and got our achievement. And then we got to thinking…
Jaraxxus was next on our list, and we were planning on getting the Three Sixty Pain Spike achievement. No need for a 2nd tank there, right?
Indeed there was not. Hrist was tanking one Mistress throughout almost the entire fight, and two mistresses for the last 20% on Jaraxxus (and of course tanking Jaraxxus as well). During the infernal phase Arust and I had growl on our pets to tank them for a few seconds, but mostly we just relied on massive dps to kill them before they could reach us. And best of all, Jaraxxus was a one-shot.
So after getting our achievements for the night, we figured we should see how far we could get… Faction Champions was easiest — we just changed our kill order to take out one of the melee 2nd and we were good. Also a one-shot.
On the Twins we made some changes to our normal strat to compensate for the lack of Hrist threat on his off-target (we had all dpsers on the same target at all times) and again we got a one-shot.
Then Hrist verbally kicked me in the balls over vent when he said:
Hrist: Wow. I wish you were FRAPSing this Frost.
Yup. Rookie mistake. I was so focused on all the various strat adjustments we were doing to one-tank each fight that I never even though of recording it. So at the very least I recorded our final fight, Anub’arak with 1 tank, also one-shot.
And I should point out that I think we can all agree that this is seriously badass tanking skills, but a huge chunk of the credit also needs to go to our healers who managed the extra strain they were never meant to, especially healing Hrist with 4 stacks of impale while he’s tanking a worm, or healing me tanking a worm, and Hrist tanking both twins – not to mention both Anub’arak and one of the adds at once.
Badassedness all around, I think.
Frost, great video of your Anub’arak fight. Shows the movement required very well
I’m pretty sure the bf has always wanted to solo tank Trial and often tries but we won’t let him :p
Grats on the awesomeness!
Excellent!
I’d love to get to do crazy, off the wall stuff like this. It’s what makes this game interesting.
I have more recently made my prot pally my main while I take a hunter break, and I can really understand Hrist’s tanking skills. Immense props goes to the whole raid for the coordination aside from the obvious healing+dps awesomeness. I wish I had a solid consistent 10 man group to do fun shit like this (and the balls to solo tank ToC).
well anub solo tank surprises me. kudos for the healers being able to heal through stacks of Expose Weaknes from the burrowers. i imagine it didnt stack too high but still.
Yeah I have to say I continue to be impressed by the tanking stories you tell. A warrior tank to boot. I must just suck balls at tanking with my warrior because I could not even approach anything like this. I see good warrior tanks and shit ones. Very little in between. Much respect to Hrist!
peace
I am gobsmacked ! hats off to you guys
Hey people,
Great job on Anub very nice tanking their, As for the worms, We almost always you a range tank for the stationary worm and 2 tanks on the moving one, Then the tank that get’s the debuff, get’s taunted off, and can go cleanse raid members.
I am usually the sucker who need to offtank the adds tough…
Reading stuff like this makes me want to server change. Lol I have never even heard of a tank on my server attempting this. Let alone pulling it off. *salutes* You sir, Mr. Haterade, are the king of badasses.
And I can’t help but chuckle to myself at the reaction I would get from the healers I know if I suggested something like this. Nice to know there are people willing to actually challenge themselves in this game.
And all it took was a sex change.
Somehow “Epic” is not enough to describe the effort.
well done guys.
…and all this despite the handicap of playing as a Warrior (
). Truly, an achievement for the ages.
I really wish we had more ambitious and adventurous people in my guild – usually I’m the one coming up with crazy ideas and no-one else tends to want to try them
Maybe it’s just me but I think MOST of the credit should be directed at the healers. It was fun as hell and something we know we can do again (and easier too since we won’t need any achievements) but I don’t think I did anything that impressive. I have a fair amount of ToC25 gear which makes me out-gear the encounter a decent amount. The healers had to do the most work.
So much respect and kudos to Elixir, Worff and Bella.
I have a little “extreme tank?” type of story, although its nothing as impressive as this.
We’re all working on alts right now, and our newly annointed healer got his alt to 80 first. He wants to get geared up a little before we catch up so his job will be super easy. So we worked out a trade. He would heal us on some regular runs, if we all switched to our mains and took him on a heroic. No problem. We ran UK and Nexus regular, then swapped over to our mains to run through Nexus.
Everyone wandered to nexus and walked in ready to go melt face. Then we asked the obvious question, Who’s tanking? Oops. 4 Dps, one undergeared healer. Ok.
“Hey Kraigus, you should bust out your gorilla and tank it.”
It was meant as a joke. But I don’t take jokes very well. One of our “DPS”ers was actually our main healer, so he swapped to heal spec and the new healer went feral. And away we went. Luckily, our main healer already has macro’s setup to heal my gorilla. But I didn’t bring any tank gear, and was in my raiding SV spec. I completely figured we’d wipe early, laugh it off, and go on about our business. But we went all the way. 1 shot, no wipes.
I tanked Heroic Nexus in my DPS spec. Go me.
I’ve seen a shaman OT Patchwerk when Naxx was relevant.
That was awesome <3
Bloody brilliant effort, i couldnt imagine doing Beasts or Anub single tank – Jara possible but it wouldnt be friendly for the melee dps. I have actually tanked the val’kyr single tank before (footage here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGR0yBaRR0U ) that was fun, but that was born more from an accident where my OT had charged in (warrior) and got splatted before his healer was on the ball, I have picked up the other twin and we went well enough that a healer suggested ‘why doesnt (warrior) just switch to his dps spec?’ and that video was the result. Definately an exhilarating experience to do what ur not meant to, the whole of ToC, now that would be awesome. Gotta get my guild to try it next time XD
PS. And i have to agree with Hrist that the main credit definately goes to the heal team – nothing like a good druid and a disco priest to heal the impossible XD
Recently my guild has started farming TotC 10 man and trying out different strats with the Beasts just to change it up a bit. Our main 2 tanks decided to play around everytime we go in now, one is a warrior tank / dps and the other is a paladin tank / heal. They alternate every week 1 tanking the Beasts, they actually tank both worms. Kiting the one while range tanking the stationary. For a warrior thats a pain espiecally when we don’t DPS down Acidmaw fast enough and he is stationary for a bit. Our other tank just sat back and watched the first time now she just switches to heals without worrying if our warrior will lose aggro. It makes the encounter just a lot more fun. Just as a side note on the Anub fight our paladin likes to grab the adds while she tanks Anub because she likes the fact that when i finish with the orbs. the Entire room is a Skating Ring. Who needs to run from the spikes if there is no place for the spikes to go.