Ok, so I’m officially spooked. I’ve been to Naxx, did some spot off-tanking. So I knew I could tank heroic HoL. What I didn’t know is how easy it would be.
I know, I know, it’s just a 5M heroic. Kid’s stuff compared to current endgame content. But how many of us originally thought hunters could be doing decent tanking in raids? Or blowing through heroics? I know I wasn’t among them. Back when I was struggling through UK, HoL was my original end goal for Northrend pet tanking. A dream to shoot for. So completing it meant something to me, even if the execution was eerily nonchalant. I’ve since added Gundrak and VH to my list (both on my youtube account, for those interested). Heroics are not only tankable with the right gear and planning, but we can be every bit as effective as regular tanks in them.
Shaman heals, Ret pally and rogue dps (Tricks of the Trade does NOT work on pets, though), and I cheated and brought an extra hunter not just for the extra MD but also so neither I nor the healer needed to handle the nature resist buff for Ionar and Loken.
Strategy:
- You’ll notice a marking bar just under Recount and Omen on my screen. Helps immensely with eliminating downtime before pulls, and for marking targets on the fly (if you pull a PAT, for example). Thanks to WHU readers deepfriedegg and Ablimoth for suggesting this.
- Hardest pull in the whole place is the respawning rock elementals. Walk as a group, thunderstomp in the middle to get them on your pet, then wait until the end to dps them. My group didn’t walk together, so it’s the lone sloppy pull.
- The room where mobs randomly come to life on the sides of the walls is tricky. Put your pet on aggressive to attack the closest, then hit MD and cycle through the others.
- Your pet will automatically run away from Ionar during the spark phases, but if you accidentally hit a spark, he attacks. Switch him to passive to avoid this.
Unbuffed Stamina: 1952
Unbuffed AP: 3876
Pet Buffed Health: 33K
Hunter Pet Tanks Heroic Halls of Lightning
Pet Tanking News and Notes:
- Our regular flask (Endless Rage) is fine for tanking, but if you need more health/armor, try Guru’s Elixir (+20 stats) + Elixir of Protection (800 armor).
- The t9 2-piece set bonus works with Go For the Throat to generate pet focus. Make sure you have the t7 set bonus first, but consider some t9 unless you have some monstrous PvP gear for the other slots. The tier 10 2-piece bonus will also be awesome when 3.3 drops.
- 328 resilience (hunter) is needed to defense cap our pets for raids. 287 for heroics. It got stealth added to the gear guide, but I’m not sure it’s been stated in a “new” blog. Now it has. These caps will drop considerably in 3.3.
- I don’t have a set rotation for tanking. Much of my time is spent switching targets to maintain aggro. So I mouse-click constantly when I tank, instead of using the keyboard. A youtube comment pointed this out to me, and while he lacked context for it, it’s a valid point. As a dues-paying hunter, I’ll be working on it, but no promises. A dps rotation while standing still is one thing. Tanking is another. My mind can only process so much at once.
- No official word on avoidance transfer to pets in 3.3. Keep hoping.
Where to next…Ulduar? Sarth? Hell, I don’t know. This is further than I thought I’d get with tanking. Suggestions are welcome.
-Arth
I always find myself watching these videos two or three times. Soaking in the tactics and what tidbits of information I can. This stuff always impresses me. I’m nowhere near good enough at micromanaging my pet though, or fully understanding my own stats (atleast not to the degree you guys do). The closest i’ve come to something like this was pet tanking Reg VH with my g/fs 75 Hunter. Tank died Mid Erekem fight. Some lousy excuse of a DK tank with 11K hp. (I lold at me having more hp than him). Anywho, he kicked the bucket quite fast despite the 79 pally heals going all out on him. And needless to say i found myself switching my MD focus to my wolf on instinct. Pally focused heals on it and I managed to kite the boss and his two adds around the room enough to take them down.
Not a bucket of rainbows or nearly as crazy as the stuff you guys pull off in these vids, but it was a small accomplishment in my book.
And wouldn’t have been able to pull it off if I hadn’t learned about the jump-shot kiting technique from one of the WHU videos. Lol
Anywho, Awesome stuff as always! Maybe one day youtube wont be a bandwidth whore and we can see one of these videos in a normal speed for better studying. Hard to tell what’s going on in certain parts from the group zooming around on speed.
What about EoE, that fight could be interesting with a pet tank. You would just need to avoid the second phase AoE the boss does, but i think you could do it.
My gear is no way as good as yours (pre-raid), but I do still do some pet tanking.
I pet-tanked regular Nexus with myself at 80 and the rest being the correct level for the instance. Most of the group was pugged, and seemed nervous at the start. By the time we finished the healer was telling me it was easier than healing a regular tank!
Admittedly – you guys can solo nexus, but as I say – my gear (and skills) are no where near as good.
What upsets me is when I see other hunters that just don’t care as much as you guys; I see so many with all talent points in one tree, or BM hunters not using steady shot… *sigh* Giving us a bad name…
That is seriously impressive stuff! Just wow! (and I got a mention :-O)
As for where to go next… I would love to see an XT-002 video. When I was tanking him for the first time (as an actual Warrior tank) he was close to destroying me, if a pet can manage it… wow…
Jackdaw – I chuckled at “you guys can solo regular Nexus.” Frost can, I can’t.
KaliTorah – As for general strategy that might be hard to pick up, I try to hit as many cooldowns at the very beginning of a pull to build solid aggro on my primary target. I then begin switching targets immediately after a couple of his attacks, so that by the time he’s killed, I have solid aggro on the rest of the group. This often takes precedence for me even over rotation shots.
Pat – EoE would be rough…raid dps buffs (the sparks) that my pet wouldn’t have. Aggro would be tough to manage, though I don’t doubt that my healers could keep me up.
Excelent stuff, just a questions. You say
“328 resilience (hunter) is needed to defense cap our pets for raids”
As I understood resilience only works for damage from players, not from non-players?
Resilience contributes toward crit defense on our pets, even in PvE. What it doesn’t do is contribute toward overall damage reduction…that benefit is only for the hunters themselves. As such, resilience is worthless for tanking beyond those numbers, but it’s important to get there to d-cap our pets.
Blizzard’s patch notes for it were (not surprisingly) garbled to the point of confusion, but Frost was kind enough to run some tests for me to confirm that it does work for our pets.
That’s pretty dang awesome I have to say.
On a side note, what is the piece of music you used as background for the video?
Impressive!
you ask the question of wher to go now.
wasnt that the same question you asked as a new lvl80 for yourself?
what is there after heroics?
10man naxx OT duties, EoE, Voa.
it’s time for the big league.
sure getting 4 willing participants for a pet tank is one thing, but getting 9… that will be the first hurdle
keep up the great work Arth.
Tera – The music is excerpts from the 1st movement of Mahler’s 8th Symphony.
art are you serious about not being able to solo reg nexus? i know you can dude, i believe in you
btw thanks for the resil update, i missed this. luckily im using 3-4 pieces of pvp gear for its stam already but now ill make sure to def cap my pet.
I probably could with some practice, quiv. But soloing is Frost’s thing, and he’s much better at it than I am. I don’t have any t5, and more importantly don’t have the desire to attempt too many crazy soloing endeavors. I’m happy to stick to tanking. Thanks for the vote of confidence though.
Art, whats the name of the target bar addon
Hatty’s Mark Bar, and it’s available on Curse.com….just make sure to read the tooltip on resizing it, since it starts off scarily large.
“Our regular flask’endless rage. Call me crazy (this is off topic, of course, sorry) but I use Guru’s and Mighty Thought for dps in raids.
I do lose some AP, true (not as much as you might think, as ST, IN and AGI all give us AP), but: I gain a little crit from the AGI (quarter of a percent, but hey), but I gain some mana (about enough for a complete MM rotation), some health, a tiny bit of MP5 from the spirit buff, plus, higher mana pool means better regen from rapid killing / rapid fire (percentage of mana pool, not X mana, afterall). I’ve done a lot of runs (we’re talking in excess of 500 boss fights in each combo) with either flask or the elixir combo (with all kinds of conceivable buffs), but I seem to get a better dps overall out of the elixirs. I’ve been laughed at for it, but it works really well for me. Feel welcome to laugh some more at me ;P
Believe it or not Ghumbdaor, I use the exact same setup. With me being a JC/miner Frost lotus doesnt exactly come by me easily. And with current AH prices, (50G a piece for FL on my server Kahz Modan) Having a stack of Flasks made doesn’t come cheap at all. But with all the pygmy oil I get from the fishing daily, and the very cheap prices of Deadnettle and Talandra’s Rose. Guru’s Elixirs and Mighty Thought pots are a MUCH more friendlier combo on my bank.
And with me being a Survival Hunter and having 0 mana regenerating abilities, The larger mana pool is a big help. Not to mention either way I go I’ve somehow still managed to out dps nearly every hunter I’ve grouped with. Though I still blame luck for that.
Sorry to bother, but what UI do you use, pretty cool setup in my opinion
Nothing fancy, tbh Odi. Recount and Omen at the top right. Bartender and ZHunterMod for the bars, XPerl Unitframes, Chinchilla to move the map and resize it, Hatty’s Mark Bar for marking targets. I do keep my sound on when tanking, and I have my Power Auras set to give a couple audio cues when my pet’s health is low and BW is off of cooldown. Been meaning to make them visual, but meh. That’s the only non-visible aspect of my raid-relevant UI.
Hope that helps though.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned that you pulled Bjarngrim with the lightning buff!
Pay attention peeps, that’s 30% extra damage (at least) that the tank (pet) is taking!
Does anyone know of any pet addons that would add spots for the pets action bar?
That’s a good question Roar. I don’t know of any, but I make macros for some of my pet abilities like Taunt and Shell Shield and just add them to my regular bars while I’m tanking.
I suppose you could customize a small Bartender bar for pet abilities this way depending on how much you want to micromanage your pet’s actions. I sometimes want to control the first thunderstomp on a pull, for example, because it often triggers before an entire pull is in range of it.
Thanks for the quick response, I just got my croc “NACHO” to 80 and have been practicing on elite mobs and helped a buddy with a quest chain. I am going to try the macro and bartender, Thanks again.
Awesome stuff, I tanked my first instance yesterday…VH normal with 1 healer and 1 dps…enjoyed it so much we did Uk after…great fun…although I need some help on macros ( I am just an amateur with only 1 macro atm,! ). My Turtle is still only level 77 and she coped easily with the bosses in VH and UK keeping aggro well…..onwards and upwards to Heroics!
The benefits of shamanic healing are many and varied. Many people claim to feel lighter, freer and happier after only one session. Additionally, as toxic emotional debris is cleared from the energy field, valuable life force energy is released and utilised by the physical and energy bodies, thus greatly improving health, boosting immunity and often preventing disease