Today over at WoW.com, a discussion of pet tanking — where it is now, and where it might be in Cataclysm based on the info that we know.
I have a suspicion that Wrath will go down in the history books as the golden age of pet tanking and extreme soloing. I think that Wrath hit the precise perfect balance for extreme pet antics, whether by design or by accident. We have solo’d from Molten Core to Violet Hold and everything in between (and more). We have used our pet to tank for our raids, from Naxx to Ulduar to TotC, all the way to ICC. Our pets have tanked Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship and Blood Princes, and our pets have even solo-tanked Sindragosa. We can pet tank Rotface while we kite the slimes.
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While it’s too early to say how pet tanking will work out in Cataclysm – the pet design pass has not yet been done — I keep getting emails about it, and we have seen enough to do some speculation. Join me after the cut for a look at what made pet tanking work so well in Wrath and what we know about it so far in Cataclysm… Read More.
I am so impressed with the tank AND slime tank/kiter for Rotface video…..I still get into PUGS that can’t manage him even with the current damage buff LoL
fantastic article Frost. I hope that with a little work, pet tanking will stay around! It has been a fun adventure the last few weeks to stave off the lull while Cata creeps up.
@omogon – I still can’t believe people who think that fight is hard. I’ve done it on reg and hard mode, 10 and 25 on my hunter, healing on my shaman, and tanking on my bear and it has never been a huge challenge except when we first set foot in there and were getting used to the mechanics. I will tank a guild run GDKP typically and it always amazes me when people don’t get it.
@Topic
I sincerely hope that Cata does not ring the death knell of hunter tanking or extreme soloing. This is one of my personal favorite things to do when I am not raiding. I can understand Blizzard not wanting hunters to be tanking raids for progression, but I hope they see that a lot of hunters enjoy the challenge of doing something quite outside of our general class description.
*cross fingers* come on on top of the world.
@Valacia…there are some frightful PUGs out there. I have a resto Druid and had to quit a pug the other night who was wiping on the trash leading up to Marrogar !
I swear Frost wrote this just to toy with my emotions. I saw the name of the article and thought Ghostcrawler had rained glorious pet buffs down on us. /shakefist
Still, a good analysis, and I agree that threat will likely be the bigger issue come Cata. Also an excellent excuse to showcase the Rotface awesomesauce.
And there remains the possibility, with pet scaling, that we’ll find ourselves gemming for defense rating for tanking/soloing. Another potential nerf to pet dps, but perhaps a necessary evil.
Yay! we moved off Volley.
I like pet tanking. I need to set up my second spec for it though. You ever wonder why BM hunters are so fond of their pets, most likely it’s because of this. Send the bugger in, let Cthulu sort out the dead.
I’m sure Blizzard wants people to experience old content, pet tanking makes that a lot easier. Even with DK’s and LFG tools, sometimes it’s just nice to bring in Sparky and tell him to “Sic’em”. Sometime’s I’d actually prefer Sparky to some of the human tanks I get. He doesn’t complain, does what I want, won’t break CC if I don’t want him too. But mostly he doesn’t complain.
They’ll get the Mend Pet straightened out. Even with Cata in beta, Blizz is constantly re-evaluating classes and specs, so if something doesn’t work right out of the box, it will get there eventually. It’s part of the dynamic MMO quality of the game.
Keep fightin’ the good fight, Frost! It sounds like your giving the Devs the feedback they’re actually looking for. Not the typical QQ they get from the forums.
Meeg
@arthemystia: since the removal of defense rating on gear, im fairly certain there wont be any def rating gems either if i had to guess. i think if our pets are getting a much higher amount of our stats and with the addition of all the other stats they dont get in live, about the only thing i could think of is they would need additional expertise for threat (outside of what you normally gem for dps anyway)
well i hope thay dont nerf the tanacity pet. if they do ihope they add some other feature so its still viable to tank instances and not just good for leveling.
@ DarkD: Thanks for the info, I didn’t know defense rating was leaving. Do we know how will tanks become crit immune then? Will it be entirely through talents, or wrapped up in Mastery? Because if any kind of avoidance stats remain, it may be an opening for pet tanking. If it’s through mastery and spec, we may be in trouble.
It will be done entirely through talents for all tanks, not just druids.
Bummer. Thanks though Hrist.
On a brighter note, a couple others have tanked Sindragosa with their pets recently and put the videos up, usually to help with hard mode or the Sindy achievement (which pets are a HUGE help for, since the achievement involves no one getting more than 5 stacks of the phase 3 debuff). Pet tanking actually being useful, not just a novelty. It’s more than I think we could’ve hoped for in Wrath, and it’s awesome.
did they change it hrist? last i checked it was supposed to be wrapped up on the stances (prot stance, righteous fury, frost presence and bear forms). either way, lets hope grace of the mantis will give our pets enough to be crit immune if its still going to be in the game.
its possible they may put it at the heroic dungeon crit defense cap but just below the raid cap to keep us from tanking in raids, but still let us tank in heroics if needed. its just a thought that came to mind. just depends on what blizz wants hunters to do.
oh and to answer your other question Art, all the other avoidance stats are staying, but are being changed a bit. dodge will remain the same, parry will no longer increase your next attack’s swing speed and will reduce the damage taken by 50%(no longer making you take no damage from the attack) and block will be a base 30% dmg reduction. but unless our pets are allowed to parry, the avoidance changes wont affect our pets aside from agi->dodge scaling and stat conversion rates from us to fluffy