Hunter tanks have always had a few key things going for them. Tank pets take the biggest heals in the game. They ignore 90% of AoE damage. They have incredible natural resistances. Our threat has never been as good, our health pools not as large, our taunt cooldown is annoyingly long, and kiting bosses is an occasional issue. But we’re not without advantages.
Sindragosa can be solo tanked by hunters, and is likely the most challenging boss we’ve ever been able to realistically tank. And I server transferred for a week to do it with Frost’s raid team, combining our strengths: my tanking and MNK’s hunters who could shore up the threat issues I was having on the fight with my regular guild. Combine those together and you have a recipe for awesomesauce. And Sindragosa gives us perhaps the best chance in all of this expansion to utilize every advantage I listed above. Let’s take a look at them:
1. Our pets basically ignore the Frost damage on the fight, which is a HUGE concern for any other tank. Over 90% of the damage I took was just melee dmg. The rest was negligible.
2. Pets take zero damage from frostbolts in the air phases, allowing us to keep them in position to tank while we hide behind ice blocks.
3. Taunt should never be needed, and it is largely a stationary fight.
4. In the final phase, I originally noticed that pets did not get the stacking debuff that most tanks do. This, more than anything, kills regular tanks. Upon switching servers, my pet DID get the debuff, which was initially alarming. But the damage is largely ignored, as pets take a paltry percentage of the damage that any other tank would. The stacks would also randomly drop (despite no line of sight behind ice blocks) so it was never a concern.
5. The threat cushion provided by the team of hunters allowed me to pop in and out of Eyes of the Beast at will to maneuver Sindragosa.
6. Having 1 tank instead of 2 means an extra dps. Always a good thing.
So not only do we have a fight that is tankable, but it’s one that is potentially easier on dps and healers than it would be with a normal raid composition. Threat can be an issue with some groups, but with 2+ hunters it never should be. The idea is that you can place your pet before combat, have him stay there the entire time, keeping Sindragosa in the same place in all phases. In reality, this is trickier than it sounds (which is why I needed EotB a few times), but the biggest challenge of the fight is still ice block coordination in Phase 3. Nearly every wipe preceding this video was due to that, not with anything having to do with pet tanking.
Hunter AP (Unbuffed): 4798
Hunter Stamina (Unbuffed): 2423
Pet Armor (Unbuffed): 22985
Pet Health (Buffed): 50K
*Unbuffed means nothing but spec and gear, in Aspect of the Beast
Hunter Pet Tanks Sindragosa
Details:
1. After setting him to “Stay” at the beginning, only some occasional turning should be needed via Eyes of the Beast.
2. I almost always recommend a crocalisk for tanking, but this was a single target fight where a worm has comparable threat to a croc. And we didn’t have a warrior, so the worm’s armor reduction ability improved the raid’s dps. Witwicky, sadly, had to sit this one out, but Spittor was a fine replacement.
3. He had a tendency to run after Sindragosa during the air phases, despite still being on Stay (bad worm!). I had to switch him to passive during these so that he wouldn’t run toward Sindy, get out of range, and disappear. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, just recall him and place him again. But it wipes his threat, which is the real issue.
4. I didn’t need Taunt, and threat wasn’t an issue. As such, I was running with the following:
http://www.wowhead.com/petcalc#mV0G0rMzf0oM
Not that he took much Frost damage, but every little bit to help the healers out. In retrospect, I probably should’ve used those resistance points in Silverback and Last Stand. Alas.
5. My life was my pet’s, so he was my first and only priority. I’d often stay behind blocks in phase 3 even when it probably wasn’t needed. I also made sure Mend Pet was up (macro’d to Cower for extra mitigation) before I went behind any block.
6. Stats are below. Total damage taken followed by a breakdown of the damage, including resistances. The biggest different is in “Frost Aura (DoT)” damage, which is the final phase debuff that is hell for regular tank classes, and even raid members. A mere 26K dmg. from it, instead of the hundreds of thousands that players take.
And with that, I’m done tanking in Wrath. Well, not done, but done searching for new mountains to climb. My guild needs the Kingslayer title soon, and I’ve been neglecting them too much. But it’s been fun, and thanks to Frost and the WHU for providing a knowledgeable and interested audience.
Death Knell for Tanking?
Frost is now going to write a tanking article for WoW.com. I’m flattered and honored to have helped pet tanking achieve some notoriety. But what’s the most likely outcome of Blizzard seeing a mainstream website broadcast hunters tanking endgame content? Yeah, we’re probably getting nerfed back to the Stone Age in Cataclysm. So this may be the highest-level raid we can EVER tank. If that’s the case, it’s been a good run. And if we can’t tank in Cataclysm, it won’t be from my lack of trying.
[Frostheim Note: Personally, I suspect that Blizz is already killing tanking in Wrath, since it no longer looks as if we can make our pets crit immune.]
Amusing Anecdotes
1. When I upload videos to youtube, they suggest “tags” for the video based on what they think it is. For this one, they suggested “computer hacking” and “video editing” among a few others. I smiled.
2. For those who read my Week with Wyrmfoe post the other day, Frost v. Arth eventually happened in earnest. A Blood Council attempt where I had the mother of all lag spikes crushed my overall meter (before it, I was 2nd in dmg. and something like 5th in dps), but it still wasn’t anything to write home about. I came close on a couple bosses, including less than 100 dps away on Lady D, where we both topped 11K and took 1-2. But otherwise I was a distant 2nd-through-5th (depending on the boss). I think I’ll stick to tanking.
[Frotheim Note: after the "student surpassing the master" comments in Arth's Week with Wyrmfoe post, I would be remiss if I didn't include a couple of meter screenshots for you all 
Note that we only had 20 people at the raid and were missing several buffs, including minor armor debuff, bleed debuff, real kings, and judgment of wisdom (thus we had to dip into viper from time to time).]
Overall meter for the night.
Festergut.
Rotface.
3. My week with Wyrmfoe, as well as pretty much everything I’ve done for or with the WHU, has been a blast. This isn’t goodbye, because I’ll be involved in a lot of things down the road (including the lvl 30 all-hunter insanity we have planned), but it’s certainly a significant stopping point for me. Thank you to all, and I’ll raise a glass to hunters next time I’m out. Cheers!
-Arth
(14 votes, average: 4.64 out of 5)
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Fan-freaking-tastic!!!!
I had a moment of “non-traditional” huntering this last week as I finally realized what to do with my PvP gear now that I don’t plan on ever doing PvP again. I re-gemmed with shifting dreadstones (primarily) and watched my warpstalker hit almost 40k HP self buffed (no ghetto kings, just runescroll of fort) and went and took down Thrym, something I have wanted to do for over a year, but never felt like my scotty had the HP for.
It will be a sad day when Blizz makes us less capable of such awesome stuff. It gives us something to do when raiding has become tedious and repetitive.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormrage&n=Valacia
Sweet Mary… I don’t think I’ve seen anything that awesome since the 19-capped hunter run on Gnomeregan!
Thanks for sharin’, Arth!
I’m going to see if I can sell this to my guild
Hopefully before Blizzard nerfs it like they did voidwalkers tanking Sarth pre-Ulduar.
Hey Bliz!! This could be an opportunity to make hunters a hybrid class as well.
Think of all the people that would want to tank as a hunter.
Yeah Right, Like that’s going to happen!!!
Macroing Cower and Mend Pet! This wee hunter learns something new every time!
Euripides you are gonna jinx us,
also HOW do you get your pets health and armor that high?
This is the most beautiful thing I have ever read
i think that after im going to link this video to my guild, they all will start believingme that hunter can tank…
they always laughed me away, even after i putted evidence on that forum…
i think that the guys that laughed the hardest, will now be very silent..
awesome job, and to be honest, jeamous aswell!
thanks for taking all that effort and showing that hunters really are more than “just another dps class”
That is so cool!
Member
Gasp!
That’s really all that can be said.
damn everytime i see a new upload i wish i could get my hunt in the american servers
Contributor
I see Frost wasn’t above rubbing some salt in the wound, despite me conceding defeat. Classy Frost, classy. The overall meter isn’t indicative of the night, though. I was vying for 2nd-through-4th until basically sitting out of Blood Council due to crappy frame rates. The rest, however, is unfortunately relatively accurate.
Anyway, I’m glad this is up, and equally glad it’s over. One big goal down, one more to go (Lich King). And to answer an earlier question, the 20% ICC buff (may have been 25 when we did this, I actually didn’t check) helps to get him to 50K health. Stamina trinkets and a liberal amount of PvP gear do the rest. I even swapped out my tier 7 since threat wasn’t an issue and substituted some more PvP gear, as well as re-gemming for more Stam (instead of AP). It’s all very situational.
Exceptional.
Woah i will have to sit down after that word.
Arth once again you have shown us but a glimps of what it is to be a hunter.
I still dont think i will be able to convince my guild to do this..
But….
If i can get the prince tanking job..
why not sindy…
looks like my pet “Trouser” and i will have to petition hard and long for this gig.
*sigh* another respec comming my way.. well whats another 50G in the 3000G respec pool ..lol
Extremely super fantastic.
Now I am trying to get the guild to let us do it in 25 man. That would also be our first attempt at Sindragosa ever in 25.
I and a hunter buddy are looking at the options. I will replace the legs and one trinket with pvp legs and tank stamina trinket using frost emblems. If I had more over (I sold lots of saronite..) I thought the hands and head. that means replacing my t9.5 (hands, legs), head and trinket.
After gemming for stamina and enchanting correctly, would that be enough to do this without also buying the hands and head?
I have pretty standard icc25/icc10hc gear with item level about 255-260 I would guess.
Also I tried to find out on wowhead the pysical cleave damage of 25 compared to 10 man but it had the same spell, do anyone know the difference?
I’d love to see some data on the healing taken (HPS) on the pet, and comment from healers on whether they were having to deal out higher or lower amounts of healing compared to a player tank.
i was curious as to the other tank in the fight, what exactly was his function, seems like u wouldn’t need another if the worm was taking all the stacks, and there was no taunt rotation for tanks to drop em…. we’ve been having trouble on this fight in 25, partially poor raid awareness, but i think this would help tremendously, not only on the heals trying to keep the tanks up, but it seems that it would also almost eliminate the frost tomb location problems in the final phase… plz more explanation….
Contributor
The healing taken will be roughly equivalent to the damage taken, though I don’t know what the HPS was for our healers. Pets are easier to heal on this fight though, because they take so much less damage from the AoE’s and frost attacks. The melee attacks will hit slightly harder, but not enough to make it harder than an average tank.
Wize, there was no other tank. No taunt rotation is needed because pets aren’t getting the stacking debuff in phase 3 like most tanks do. For this to work in a 25M group, you’d first have to have someone capable of pet tanking it, and then have at least 3-4 hunters for constant misdirects to shore up threat. But it’s definitely possible.
thanks Arth! great video:D i must say i look hawt:P
It was great to run with you:D Thanks for the fun!
Tremble, pet tanks, as your game developers betray you!
Couldn’t resist.
*sighs at the meters* Guess I’ll only reach that level on Cataclysm… *sob*
My raid leader took one look at this video and said RESPEC!!!!, I’ll let you know how it goes. We have been stuck on Sindy for awhile, ahhh desperation leads to opportunites for awsomsauce
Heh cool. Congrats =P
My raid leader’s original main was a hunter. Guess what we’re trying this week
thx for the reply, that’s what i was thinking, although it looked as if the drake swung around once during the fight, i was assuming that this was due to aggro issues, but wasn’t exactly sure, i definitely will try this during this raid wk… we’ll only have 2 hunters, but we raid w/ 3 rogues as well, so w/ tricks and constant MD’s i think this should be doable… i’ll let u know… i’ve done some extensive extreme soloing, and have tanked quite a few heroics w/ my croc, so i have some definite experience in this department…
so yea, scratch the tricks comment…
gonna have to see about finding more hunters for this…..
Contributor
Ah yes, the 180 degree turns. My pet would do this turn with Sindy on his own every time the pull-in AoE explosion happened. I don’t know why, but it didn’t affect our strategy, so we didn’t try to change it. But he never lost aggro.
Blizz should give Arth his very own Feral druid pet, so he can keep tanking into Cata.
Contributor
Sofel, I support that completely.
There may be other ways to sneak tanking into Cat, though. My guild already knows that our first Cat. instance is going to be with me as a tank. And the second, third, etc. assuming we don’t wipe endlessly. And with the ever-present promise of full stat transfer, we may end up gemming for defense to get d-capped.
Absolutley frickin’ awesome.
No other way to put it.
Member
What spec are you using for this? and are you using any special gear, etc etc?
Contributor
Nikoro, the guides linked below should answer all of your questions, including spec and gear:
http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/category/pet-tanking/
There was only a few deviations for this fight, and they’re listed above. Everything else is in adherence with my earlier guides here on the WHU.
Awesome video, very impressive work. I never imagined this would have been possible! ^^ I do have a couple quick questions about the Mystic Buffet if I may?
(1) Do the pets still get it or was it just a one off?
(2) Also, how do you drop the mystic debuffs off your own characters? I play a hunter myself and I’ve had a lot of trouble doing this myself. I understand the idea is to LoS using the ice block but I haven’t been able to succeed in doing this yet : / Is there a particular position you must stand or a part of the body you have to specifically LoS?
Keep up the great work, <3 Huntersunion!!
Contributor
The only bit of advice I’ve received with ice blocks is that you’re LoS’ing her head, not her body. I actually don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s how I approach it. It also depends on how fast the block is killed. You may need to slow dps slightly.
Pets don’t have to worry about Mystic Buffet for reasons stated in the above writeup.
I really appreciate the reply, Arthemystia. I’ll be sure to definitely try LoS’ing her head specifically the next time I attempt it, I originally tried the LoS the hit box as that is what I was told at first.