The name of this article is a bit misleading. When I off-tanked Naxx, for example, I could rightly be called an off-tank. The number of fights where I had something useful I could do was far greater than those where I could not. The same was true in ToC, where, discounting the PvP fight, I was able to tank something on 3 of the 4 bosses.
ICC is not hunter-tank friendly. Many fights requires frequent taunt-juggling (Deathwhisper, Saurfang), some require extensive kiting (Putricide), many are straight dps burns with little or no interruption where no pet would hold aggro well, and dps would suffer (Rotface, Festergut, Blood Queen), and some simply don’t cater to our style of tanking or aren’t traditional “tank” fights (Valithria, Gunship). And one of them is Lich King. A few of those could be technically tanked, but not realistically tanked like a “normal” tank class, and I’m not a fan of nerfing raid dps in epic amounts to get a hunter achievement. That leaves us with Marrowgar, the Blood Council, and Sindragosa. Today we’re looking at the first of those.
Realistically, these few bosses are as far as hunter tanks will get in this expansion. And it’s been a good run. For a non-tank class, there’s a lot of heroic and raid content that we can tackle. We may never again have such success with tanking, so I’m enjoying the current content and challenges.
Marrowgar
We actually 9-manned this one. One of rogues was AFK, and is the person who died early in the fight. The same rogue was responsible for the video not including the first 10 seconds or so of the fight. I had turned off my FRAPS while waiting for him, then forgot to turn it back on when we decided to go without him.
Our pets can eat AoE’s like candy (90% avoidance), so there’s no need to maneuver him out of the fire columns since it’ll be a loss of threat. The opening pull can be handled with Eyes of the Beast, or just send him in and let your raid adjust to whatever positioning you end up with. I also had my rogue (the non-afk one) Tricks of the Trade’ing me whenever possible. If this lines up with MD being off of cooldown, we get an extra bonus to our MD threat generation.
Unbuffed AP: 4778
Unbuffed Stamina: 2236
Buffed Pet Health: 46K
Hunter Pet Tanks Lord Marrowgar (10M)
Tips:
- If health is a problem on fights like this, spec your tank pet into some extra resistance, because nearly every raid boss does some sort of magic damage, not just in ICC. Our pets already have awesome resistances, and ignore AoE’s, but this can add to it. Taunt is honestly the most expendable talent point. If you need to taunt on a single target raid boss, you’re doing something wrong. Right now, for ICC tanking I’m running with the following:
http://www.wowhead.com/petcalc#0d0GorMzr0oM
- Our off-tank for the fight stood on top of my pet to eat cleave damage with him. She barely attacked until I had a healthy threat lead, and wasn’t even close to second on the threat meter, but Marrowgar’s cleave is about location, not threat. I actually think I could’ve solo tanked it, but I didn’t want to toy with the raid’s chances.
News and Notes
1. I love our hunter guild. You guys rock!
2. The plan is to make this the 1st of 2 posts about tanking ICC. The 2nd will be heavily dependent on my raid’s progression and how much I over/under-estimated the difficulty of some of the upcoming fights. Wish me luck.
3. I’ve been working on something similar to “The Hunter Song” on my own for a while now. I mention it because I need to give myself a kick in the pants to finish it. Posting this here will force me to get back to work on it.
-Arth
I’m wondering what you are using to get your pet to that level of health? 46K is quite a bit. What sort of gear are you wearing? Pure PvP gear? All Stamina gems?
Hunter pet’s don’t need an off-tank on this fight. Most likely Saber Lash either counts as AoE and gets a 90% reduction, or pets don’t count as a valid target so he never uses it. It makes for nice little bonus so that instead of the healers having to heal multiple tanks they can all concentrate on the pet.
I would suspect that the proper build would actually be pretty easy to get 46k pet health in ICC gear. Buffed in a 10 man I am pushing 30k in my dps marks build. Months ago my warpchaser was breaking 30k solo.
As a note, this looks like a lot of fun. I only wish my guild wasn’t so stubbornly opposed to the thought
Haerich – Remember the ICC buff we all get (pets too) to our health. When I did this, it was at I think 10%. Which I didn’t honestly need to tank it, but it bumped my health up at least 4K to help me reach that mark.
As for gear, I’m using stamina trinkets (including, yes, the Frost emblem one), and a mixture of PvP and raid pieces for the rest. I still use 2 pieces of t7 for the extra threat, and also just added 2 t10 for the damage buff both hunter and pet get from it. I find that threat is more an issue these days than keeping him alive, so I try to err on the side of “more AP” as opposed to stamina…but such stats are highly dependent on you and your raid group.
Valacia – Start earlier than this. Try convincing them when, say, Patchwerk is the weekly. Or ask to tank a boss in a heroic. It’s taken me months to build this kind of nonchalant trust from my guildmates (I tank heroics at least a few times per week now, for example).
Also, as it concerns health, I’m not spec’ing into Survival at all, and continue to use the build recommended here on the WHU. The Go For the Throat threat points are far too valuable for the extra 2K health or so you’d get in SV.
no way!
*watches*
way!
awesome
ToT and MD actually dont work according to wiki.
Your pet gets some more threat (due to 15% damage buff) but the entire threat part of ToT goes to you and not your pet. Putting ToT directly on the pet will benefit more as then your pet has more threat (due to 15% damage) as well as getting the entire ToT threat portion.
Wow! well done Arth!!
i liked the vid a lot!!
Odd that I never see a contrarion view on pet tanking instances. I realize it’s kind of a hoot but if you chant the mantra of maximizing dps constantly then this dabbling in animal worship seems like an unfulfillable fetish. These fights were never designed to have a pet top a threat meter and hunters were not designed to fill a tank role in any fashion.
I see plenty of negative commentary on raiding in BM spec and while it’s couched in civilized language it kind of boils down to “WTF are you thinking raiding in BM?”. One might ask the same question with regard to pet tanking.
Myr – ToT doesn’t work on pets. But I don’t do it for MD boosts (though yes, as you mentioned, we do 15% more damage so they can supplement each other), it’s simply to mitigate the rogues’ threat, and also because I’m a great person to shunt the threat to, because I can always lose it immediately with FD.
Spleet – I raid as MM. This is just a fun way to use an off-spec. Marrowgar’s on farm for my raid, and this was a way to jazz things up while also stretching the limits of our class. Neither I nor Frostheim, nor the WHU in general endorses this as a “regular” use of your huntering skills. In other words, relax, and enjoy the fact that hunters are awesome dps, but also versatile.
As per usual Arthemystia, you are inspirational.
Oustanding Arth you’ve done it again , I have seen so called tanks have problems with this fight and your pet tanking made it look easy I take my hat of to you and your croc that was simply awesome.
Wow outstanding work. Once again I am impressed by the commitment everyone here from Frost on down show to the class. I will be looking to attempt this myself with our group sometime soon. We are at a point where Marrow is so farmed he’s boring; so this would make the fight a bit more fun.
I swear he’s using a bow there!!
Aura – I am using a bow. Zod’s in fact. I don’t have Frost’s hatred of bows. Or elves. Just rhinos and rogues.
Love the video! The raid leader of our 10 man raid team is going to let me pet tank Marrowgar when we reset….but what about 25 man? Think it’s doable?
Absolutely it’s doable. It’s actually been done. Most fights that are tankable on 10M will be similar on 25. It just requires a lot more understanding people who are willing to do such things. As it is, my guild does not do 25M’s. I also raid lead my 10M’s, so it’s easier for me to say something like “ok, I’m tanking this” without being questioned.
Hey, just wanted to say I’m a fan of your pet tanking, truly inspirational. I am trying to get a real viable pet tanking set, and have some real good pieces, including the frost trinket and the black heart. Now my question revolves more around mitigation. Does the damage reduction provided from reliance get transferred to the pet as well? And if it does, is it additive or multiplicative?
Jaseph – Resilience ONLY gives pets crit reduction. Beyond the defense cap for our pets, it is worthless as a tanking stat. It would likely be a broken stat otherwise, because we could stack resilience to no end, gather a few hunters for MDs, and our pets would basically be impenetrable fortresses. Alas, it isn’t so.