Comments on: Inching Toward Endgame: Tanking ToC

By: Arthemystia

Arthemystia — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:12:10 +0000

Durante – If we’re talking single target, we have to assume it’s a longer fight, so BA would have some considerable downtime, and would only be cast when the boss does a melee attack. Focus is also rarely a factor. 2 points in Go For the Throat and current crit rates even with sub-optimal gear, ensures that Claw gets cast more than Swipe. Either way though, I doubt it will end up making a huge difference between pets. I use a croc for heroics, and my guides recommend either one, so there’s not really a bad choice between the two.

Bastille – Welcome, and glad you like the site!

By: Bastille

Bastille — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:40:23 +0000

Great site and vid. I just found it today (yeah, I’m one of the slow kids) and was thrilled to see such proactive hunterspeak. Cheers!

By: Durante

Durante — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:07:58 +0000

I haven’t been able to test it personally, but I’m thinking that using a bear on a purely single target fight may result in lower TPS, not higher.

I don’t have an open stable slot, so I’m assuming casting Swipe triggers the pet GCD. I also don’t have access to Excel for the next couple days, so I’m assuming that Swipe and Claw both scale the same with AP.

Going on those assumptions, when casting Swipe the bear is essentially replacing a higher damage ability in Claw (118-168/2= 143) with Swipe (90-126/2= 108). Therefore if GCD’s is the limiting factor in special casts, using Swipe would be a DPS drop.

If focus is the limiting factor, Swipe starts to look better because of its slightly lower focus cost, but still falls short compared to Claw.

Claw: 143 damage / 25 focus = 5.72 damage
Swipe: 108 damage / 20focus = 5.4 damage

I suspect that the damage to focus ratio will swing further towards Swipe once scaling is taken into account, so if your pet is slightly focus deprived that may push Swipe out ahead. All of that’s pure speculation until I can get my hands on some solid numbers though, so at this point its just food for thought.

Even if the TPS noticeably improved with Swipe, there’s really nothing wrong with using a bear since its not always practical or really necessary to switch your pet out for every fight. Heck, I still tank with a gorilla for RP reasons, but if you’re looking for the best possible TPS I suspect Crocs are the best choice since Bad Attitude adds threat without using the GCD.

By: Arthemystia

Arthemystia — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:25:06 +0000

Myrdreon – A bear’s AoE may temporarily inflate it past a wolf on random trash pulls. But there’s no raid boss where AoE is prevalent enough to warrant a switch. So while it might be fun to experiment in heroics with the pets (where, frankly, pet choice isn’t really a concern), in our dps spec we’re almost entirely concerned with boss dps. Might be interesting to try out on ICC trash though. I’ll let you know if I try it.

BRR Guys – Good luck in your own exploits! Although, Durante, I’m a he. Confusing, I know, but I just play a girl in WoW (loosely named after the Greek goddess of hunters, Artemis, thus the gender choice). I chuckled when I saw that though.

By: Kheldul

Kheldul — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:10:12 +0000

Threat and taunts will continue to be the problem for tanking raid content. But for OT’ng something and surviving … well that’s usually pretty easy. That’s why I keep a Turtle.

We all need to figure out how to max our pet threat. Durante has some good info over at big red rhino

By: Durante

Durante — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:07:05 +0000

Durante here, the new writer for BigRedRhino. First congratulations on your achievement, to the best of my knowledge its the first pet main-tanking of any ToC boss. Second, I only recently stumbled upon your articles and I’ve enjoyed reading them; its nice to see a hunter site with a larger footprint and fan base devoting some space to pet tanking because, as far as I’m concerned, the more champions for our cause the better.

Also its great to see more and more guilds putting trust in their hunter tanks to go forth an conquer on raid content. Besides prohibitive mechanics like taunting, pets are much more durable in a raid environment than people think. I found that once you prove that to your guild by getting success on that first attempt people are a lot more receptive to giving you more chances and I hope you’ve found this to be the case since this was filmed. I’m looking forward to seeing more from you in the future.

By: Myrdreon

Myrdreon — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:34:04 +0000

Besides tanking, how is the bear for dps?

Was doing some dungeons last night, and it seemed that bear is actually better in dps then wolf due to the aoe part in his damage.
Sure, you loose out some on bosses but thats where call stabled pet is for. Just might be something worth looking at while doing this tanking.

By: Arthemystia

Arthemystia — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:07:49 +0000

Andorhal. And I have a 2′s partner, but we’re pretty awful. I only PvP to try to get myself tanking upgrades. My current team cracked 1400 this season, which got me a few nice pieces, so I was happy.

By: Dorgman Berg

Dorgman Berg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:12:49 +0000

Arth, what server are you on? And do you pvp, by any chance ?

By: Arthemystia

Arthemystia — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:33:14 +0000

Nookzy – You’re probably right. The stacks are relatively quick to build up though, so it would definitely be a challenge. A d-capped pet can take hits comparable to other tanks, but the health pool is smaller. I may try to talk my guild into experimenting with it in the future.

Still, I think we can agree that the cool part of this is that we’re having a discussion on the viability of pet tanking close-to-endgame raid bosses.