I was recording the final bits of the Hunting Party podcast on Tuesday with Euripides and Darkbrew and before we got started we were chatting about raiding, and the 10-man raid I had just finished. At some point it came up that my 10-man group usually just has Hrist as the only tank on Ony, and they were shocked.
Now I’m not a tank, and I’m only tangentially aware of tanking stuff. I had always assumed that’s how it was done. Why on earth would you need a 2nd tank? Hrist just gathers up the adds and the whelps and we dps them. Dark and Euripides assured me this is not the way most groups do it.
I think that sometimes I’m a bit spoiled when it comes to my tank. I sometimes forget, for example, that people can have threat problems – just MD and possibly you’ll have to FD once. But then I’ll run an instance with a different tank and suddenly realize, oh yeah, threat can be an issue.
So last night I was gathering some footage for my video project and had just finished shooting something with Arust when Arust asked me if I’d do the daily, VH. Hrist hopped on board, and then Cocky Mage joined us.
Unfortunately, no one else in the guild was free. And certainly no healers. Then we had a conversation that went something like this:
Hrist: I could switch to my healer and you could pet tank it.
Frost: Nah, I’ve pet tanked VH before. I’d rather just race though it. Would you mind if we got a healer from LFG?
Hrist: That’s fine.
Frost: Crap – no healers in LFG.
Hirst: You know, I don’t take much damage from heroic mobs and you guys kill stuff fast. We could try it without a healer.
Frost: OMG, hell yes. We’ll want to get a fifth – a dpser from LFG?
Hrist: But that wouldn’t be as epic.
Frost: I’m on board.
Arust: Hell yes.
Cocky Mage: ….
So here it is, our 4-man of Violet Hold heroic, with no healer.
It wasn’t exactly a smooth run. We didn’t do much planning other than Hrist telling everyone to single target down my target since he’d be dancing in and out of melee.
And Violet Hold is a tough place to be doing these shenanigans. The mobs just keep coming – you can’t wait to eat up to full health, you can’t wait for cooldowns to become available – you just grab what you can in a few seconds and keep going.
Right off the bat, on the first pull, I suddenly realized I was in my BM soloing spec… not a dps spec, which was very bad. A couple pulls later I went ahead and switched specs between portals, meaning I had to be in viper for a full portal. Then our mage pulled aggro badly (by aoeing) and got ganked. While he was running back we didn’t have the dps to kill the next swarm fast enough and though Hrist tried kiting them, he got killed. Fortunately we just had time to use Jumper Cables on him (Arust and I both – one worked) and get him bandaged up a wee bit while he was eating to keep going.
In the end those were the only two deaths. No wipes, and we cleared it and got our Emblems of Triumph. And I’m sure that now that we know what we’re doing we could go in and smoke it easily (with no aoe and no solo specs).
But hopefully we’ll be able to find a healer next time 
Nice job guys!
Nice, has anyone else seen the jumper cables NOT working as well as before?
I’ve not had one working in like the last 12 tries.
We are happy when we 4 man H Violet Hold WITH a healer LoL
Wow, pretty nice. I think I’ll try and talk my guild to run VH without a healer. We’ll probably bring 4 DPS the first try, though.
Out of curiosity, what kind of DPS were you guys pulling in that run? Did you have recount running?
I never knew prot warriors were this kickass, only been seeing alot of pally tanks running around, hard to comeby a warr tank these days..
I have an 80 warrior tank as an alt
Damn (reverently)
I tell hunters around you all the time!
OMG! Nerf Hrist!
I did not have recount running, by typical VH heroic dps is around 4k dps, spiking up around 5k on bosses.
Lawl. Congrats. A buddy of mine did this with heroic UK, but VH is obviously tougher.
We have 4 “raid ready” tanks in our guild…two are warriors, one is a pally and the third a DK. The warriors seem to hold threat the best, but the Pally is pretty much “unkillable”. The DK is well……….he’s a DK
You also had me worried with the article name. I was like “ah damn, I’m being replaced.”
Heh, this was pretty fun but I don’t think I’d consider it “extreme”. If you want real extreme tanking stuff I should point you towards Stonefather, one of our guild DK tanks. He has soloed some fairly impressive things that I am sure I cannot do.
Woooo! you guys rock:D
Yes, but that’s extreme soloing, which I consider to be a different beast
Wow Great Job guys! Frost, I actually have a question as well. Are you using a macro for MD and if so, how does yours look, because it seems to be much smoother than the way mine is set up.
Love this song :>
-Matt “code”
I do use a macro for my Misdirect. I have it set so that it will automatically MD to my focus target – then I just manually set my focus for each instance (and occasionally have to change for a specific boss)
Don’t you carry a few mana potions for emergencies?
Great run otherwise.
That song never would have worked for Hrist if he hadn’t changed gender…but now its perfect
Where have all good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise “Hrist”ules
To fight the rising odds?
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
and 2 WOW movies in 2 days. Frost you can’t not like it that much
I loved this video. I laughed quite a bit, too. Best I can claim is downing the last 55% of Icehowl in ToC10, while all the other dps plus one tank decided to have a little popcorn break. 3 healer, 1 Druid tank and little old me. But this beats anything I’ve seen in a loooong time
PS:
If Frostheims macro looks like mine, it would be something like:
/target focus
/cast misdirection
(plus added:
/assist target (makes you target whatever your focus targets)
I have two different ones. One to just MD at tank without the last line, to direct adds to him etc, the other for long fights when I don’t want to waste time on tabbing back to target, an example being the last phase of Ony. There’s not going to be anymore mobs, so you want to just press button, MD, straight back on boss.
Btw, the UK group I mentioned earlier didn’t 4-man it. This is a much tougher feat. The more I think about it, the more impressed I am. Especially with a tank who can’t heal himself at all (like a pally would).
Best. Song. Ever. You guys never cease to amaze
@Arthemystia Well warriors have a rage heals and I think there’s something else, would have helped for the boss fights definately.
Purp – didn’t know that. My guild doesn’t run with any warrior tanks. Pallys, druids, Dk’s…Hunters (
). No Warriors. But thanks.
Awe inspiring; So that is what the combination of players who know their class, plus good gear can do!
On the Macro…
Wouldn’t
/cast [Target=Focus] misdirection
Be better? Can’t check at the moment as I am at work.
Interesting about the Ony tanking strategy, many groups I have been in have had big problems with the adds as the OT dont seem able to gather the up. Do not want to think about what would have happend if they were supposed to deal with Ony aswell. The upcoming change for MD might take care of the OT problem, just MD then volley.
I use this macro for MD;
#showtooltip Misdirection
/ [target=focus,exists,nodead][target=pet,exists,nodead]
/cast Misdirection
/y Casting Misdirection on %t!
/targetlasttarget
If I have a focus it will cast MD on focus, otherwise it will cast it on pet. Then it yells out who is receiving MD, which is good thing as you sometimes realize that you forgot to set focus and kill your pet. After that it targets you last target which makes it easier to use as an agro dumper.
Sometimes it is fun to make a macro that just yells out the name of the healer instead of the focus, it always makes someone nervous.
(think I got all the lines correct but since I am also at work…)
Yes, we technically have a rage heal. It heals us for 30% of our health over 10 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown. Hardly comparable to Death Strike spam or actual heals from a paladin. Yes, it is SOMETHING and yes, I did use it twice, but I think you overplay the usefulness of the skill when compared to the other tanks.
Most groups do indeed use two tanks. It requires not just a good tank, but also good dps. In many pugs you’ll see even if teh tank properly pulls all welps, the dps doesn’t down them quick enough before the first big add comes. And also, when a second wave of welps come, the big adds preferably should be death or close to it. In many groups the melee dps is way to slow to do that.
And of course if the tank screws up by not grabbing all the welps fast enough – which happens often – you fail too. So you canot have a slacking tank.
(And I didn’t even started with people spawning welps by being at the wrong spot, getting hit by tails, etc. A second tank is then needed to bail these screwups out …)
So it is not just a good tank, but friost, also the rest of your team is good
I have one for the collection: I pugged VoA10 today. Just home from work, pretty high on caffeine, opened a beer, logged, got an invite. Cleared trash. Happily hammering away at Koralon, wondering a bit how my dps was below 5.5k on that boss, despite all the right buffs, until the raid leader pointed out what I still had equipped from the night before: My Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Rod. Now, THAT is stupidity at a very high standard :O
LoL @ Ghum. …..ran H Gundrak like that once …. I did feel that I had pulled a classic “huntard” move
Hrist: Any chance that you and Stonefather might develope a tanking tutorial together? Or just you? I really want some help with my tanking and you seem to have it figured out.
Rhino,
I highly recommend looking through the TankSpot forums/guides for any help you might need. I simply don’t have the free time to make my own guides and any pre-existing ones on TankSpot would be better than anything I would come up with.
Apologies,
Hrist
@Ghum’s fishing pole comment, that is not the worst fishin pole incident i have encountered. In ToC10 our MT was fishing in the pond whilst the raid lead was explaining the Anub 25 fight to the pugs, and once ready check was started, he just got into position, charged the boss when told to do so, went splat in 3 hits and then had the presence of mind to check his equipped weapons… As the OT i didnt know whether to grab the boss or Divine Intervention the raid leader, i chose the latter, and was definately a smart move XD As for the Extreme Tanking, I used to do it alot back when Naxx was end game, Pallies were buffed high enough that through stam stacking i had enough SP to effectively remove a healer with the right hybrid prot/holy spec, it was fun till we got hit for a home run with the nerf bat. But Warrior tanking, thats another kettle of fish, grats on an amazing feat!