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.

…

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.

1. I don’t know what Cataclysm tanking will be like, but I remain optimistic. And I hope Frost gets some tanking reps in the beta once they fix BM *nudges Frost*. In any case, I still get excited thinking about what hunter tanking was able to accomplish in Wrath. It goes without saying that I hope it doesn’t fade away, but it could also put me out of a job here at the WHU, which would suck.

2. There is technically one other cool tanking achievement I wanted to get to in ICC. Single tanking Rotface, with your pet tanking the boss and the hunter kiting slime adds. Despite not having the inherent flashiness of tanking Sindy, it’s likely that this would be a bigger test of skill. You could technically two-tank it much more easily and just have your pet on the boss while you dps and someone else kites slimes. But where’s the fun in that? But real life, less raid nights, and heroic-mode progression have ensured that I likely won’t get the chance to try it while it is still relevant. It’s very much possible though, and I’m sad that I won’t get to showcase it. I’ll send a WHU t-shirt signed by my pet croc to someone if they can muster up a video of this before Cat though, so get to work!

3. A while ago, inspired by Frost’s Hunter Song, I wrote a song about the hunter class in ICC. I wrote the music with a crappy midi-style program, and did the singing and editing all on my own. As such, it’s a notch below Frost’s song in quality, but was a lot of fun to make. Then I dropped the ball entirely trying to put together footage for the accompanying video, in which I had epic plans for numerous hunter in-jokes that the WHU crowd would enjoy. But I ended up letting the song sit long enough to become irrelevant to current hunter news, and never did finish the video. I didn’t want to let it go entirely to waste, though. So, for your listening pleasure, in all its embarrassing glory, here is the song:
http://kiwi6.com/file?id=432xu2x72u
Just click on ‘Download File’ and it should take care of it. Keep in mind that it is quite dated. For example, there’s a reference to feigning death on Marrowgar, as this was back when he had aggro wipes during transitions. Otherwise, enjoy!

[Frostheim note: I'm totally into shirts signed by Wit, and having kited the slimes back before the ICC buff at all, this was no problem. Here's my proof!]

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

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

But my last entry here on the WHU showcased my new bear for single target tanking. But then WHU reader and Big Red Rhino contributor Durante posted a big Wall O’ Numbers about the bear probably not being the best single target threat. And the great thing about doing science to things is that there’s very little subjectivity; either you’re right or you’re wrong. And it turns out he was right. The small, small number of hunter tanks out there ensures that the few of us writing about it will often be feeling around in the dark, so I’m always happy to see other contributions, even if it’s to point out that I’m wrong. So let’s revisit the topic.

The Candidates:

All our potential tenacity pets have a base damage ability: Claw, Smack, or Bite. All of these do equivalent damage. Problem is, some pets’ special abilities do less damage than this ability, and use up GCD’s in the process. A bear’s Swipe for example is great for AoE’s, but will actually waste a GCD on a lower-damage single target ability than his base attack (Claw). So we need to find a pet whose special ability exceeds the base attack, or provides the same damage with less focus cost. These include the Boar, Rhino, and Worm. None of these are bad choices, but we’d like to narrow things down a bit. I also looked at the croc, because while his Bad Attitude ability uses a GCD, we get multiple attacks from a single use of it.

I’m assuming for the purposes of this that focus isn’t a problem. The recommended tanking build includes 2 points in Go For the Throat, and most of the raid tanking we’re able to do is largely or entirely stationary. We’ll be critting a lot, thus generating focus. So while our pets won’t be attacking every second for the entire fight, there will be very little downtime in activity.

The Winner:

The two winners are Crocolisks and Worms. And why not a single winner? Because, frankly, it’s very close between the two. A lucky run with the RNG could put either one on top on a given fight. It’s also hard to approximate data for the croc, because while we can generate an average for their Bad Attitude hits, we can’t account for boss attack speed or BA’s uptime, which are wildly variable depending on the boss and fight length. But suffice it to say it’s close enough that either one is a viable single target tank.

Bears are still great heroic tanks (maybe even the best) because the downtime for the croc’s ability can hurt you for an entire pull occasionally. But for single target, croc it is, or a Worm if you’re without an armor reducer (Warrior or Rogue). I’m sure my bear Archibald will be devastated, but Witwicky will undoubtedly be a happy croc.

Swiss Army Tank:

Turtles are great backup tanks for their damage mitigation. Bears are good AoE tanks for heroics. Worms can be useful in the right setup. But if you’re hurting for stable slots and want a single pet for all your tanking needs, level a croc. Excellent single target, AoE, and all the survival talents that come with any tenacity pet. And please remember that tanking isn’t soloing (a surprisingly common mistake), where you want a turtle.

Tanking News & Notes:

1. As stated earlier, bears are still great for tanking heroics. But turn off Swipe for boss fights. Taking it out of the rotation will increase your single target threat.
2. The 2-piece t7 set bonus is still essential to tanking. But the 2-piece t10 makes an excellent complement. Most of us have the badges for this by now, so it’s something to look into if you tank.
3. This article, and indeed any of my pet tanking articles, shouldn’t just apply to those who are trying to tank Northrend raids/heroics. For example, a while back some guildies and I wanted to run MC. There was only 4 of us, and we had no tank, so I tanked it. Yes, I know, Frost solos MC. That’s not my realm of badassery. It wasn’t an epic achievement, but we had fun. So regardless of your level of tanking, I hope anyone who is attempting to tank is finding some fun outlets like this to showcase their talent.
4. In a small nod to the roleplayer in me, I name all my pets after Transformers (my original WoW guild was Transformers-themed). But I haven’t settled on a name for my new Worm. A genuine WHU pat on the back to whoever comes up with the best Transformers-themed suggestion.
5. Thank goodness Rhinos didn’t come out on top here. They’re loud, they’re smelly, they make targeting a nightmare, and as we see below they can’t defend themselves from aerial assault. Judging by the level of hatred Frost harbors for elves and bows, as well as other writers like Euripides hating feral Druids, I can increase my readership exponentially by loathing innocuous aspects of the game. So add Rhinos to the list.

Happy Tanking!

-Arth

As you may have seen, we can’t check the “tanking” box for even regular-difficulty instances in the random group finder. Some small red text informs us that “your class may not perform this role.” I yelled into Vent upon seeing this, eliciting laughs from my guildmates who had already anticipated my reaction. But what it means is this: Blizzard doesn’t think we can be tanks.

But forget them, we know better. And they’ve made it a bit easier for us. With the 90% pet AoE avoidance without spec, it frees up some points in our pet spec. I’m currently running with the following: http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc#0d0GbrMzbzoM
As I push forward into raids, threat is becoming more of an issue than survivability for me, so I splurged on Spiked Collar instead of something like Silverback or Last Stand. Either of those is appropriate for the final 2 points if your pet’s health is a bigger obstacle than threat, as it is for many who are new to tanking and are using a lot of raid gear. The WHU’s updated recommended pet tank build includes Last Stand, for example, which is prefectly fine for many tanks.  And the new Culling the Herd, while a larger total dps increase, won’t amount to better pet dps than Spiked Collar, so avoid it for tanking.

And with the 100% resilience transfer to pets now, we only need 132 resilience to d-cap our pets (including the 4% crit reduction from their spec). Any tank set worth its salt should probably include some PvP gear anyway, so this should be a breeze.

There’s two other changes of note: One is that Volley works with MD now. Adjust accordingly on trash pulls. The second is that Cower no longer affects threat, but reduces damage by 40% for 6 seconds.  After talents and on auto-cast, this will amount to roughly 8% reduction in total damage.  It slows your pet’s movement by 50% while up, but I don’t really see a huge downside to that aspect of it.  Barring special circumstances, leave it on auto-cast.  I did notice one other thing: unless my UI is lying to me, our pets don’t get the 20% dodge nerf inside ICC like the rest of us do.  I’m just saying…

Endgame Tanking

This is the part where I bemoan the lack of pet scaling with our gear. And not with avoidance stats… avoidance pieces would, frankly, kinda stink for tanking. Epic for soloing, but we’d be sacrificing a lot of threat. But I’m talking about crit, a higher percentage of attack power, agility, etc. Because we can compete with any average-geared tank in terms of health, armor, defense, etc. Not surpass, but compete. But we can’t generate threat like they can, even with the slight bone we were thrown in 3.3.

This can be dealt with even in lower-level raids (as with saw with Patchwerk, for example). Have some intelligent dps, give time for initial aggro, extra MD’s, stuff like that. But think about the dps you need to complete ToC compared to Naxx. The gap is gigantic. Intelligent or not, we can’t hold aggro against that kind of dps. Other hunters, ironically, could probably manage not to pull off of pet tanks since they have the best aggro drop in the game. But Warlocks, Warriors, and various other classes would have to nerf their dps a lot, which would result in frustrated players and wipes. Comprehensive pet scaling is literally the one big thing keeping us from being able to be decent endgame tanks. A long Taunt cooldown and inefficient kiting mechanics contribute, but I see this as the biggest culprit.

So no luck in 3.3 on scaling. But keep your fingers crossed, because as long as Blizzard plans to implement scaling, we should be able to remain viable almost-tanks.

Video Time: Forge of Souls Heroic Pet Tanking Pug!

New content, new 5M’s! And I tricked Blizzard’s role functions for this one. I grouped with a ret pally friend, he signed up as a tank, me as dps (we also grabbed a guild healer). Then we explained things to the random PUG’s once everyone was confirmed. They were cool about it, and we would’ve dropped group to let them find others if they weren’t.

Forge of Souls (Heroic):
Unbuffed Stamina: 2002
Unbuffed AP: 3808
Pet Buffed Health: 34.6K
Strats:

• I found the new MD Volley to be wildly useful for trash pulls. It might even be worth it to go MD, Multi-Shot, Volley on pulls of only 2-3 mobs to get those extra couple seconds of AoE threat.
• Pull the first boss to the side of the room for Phase 1, so that if you get the beam between you and the boss (where you want the boss away from you) you can run to the opposite side. If another person gets the beam, you can put your pet on passive and kite to wherever you need.
• Groupwide damage is more prevalent than most heroics even when you maintain aggro. It’s not a problem, just let your healer know beforehand to be ready for it.
• I’m getting better with hotkeys, but still revert to clicking occasionally. Still, it’s progress.

Expect more videos/strats/updates in the coming weeks and months, and Happy Holidays!

-Arth

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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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

“Arth, we need an off-tank for Nax 10. You in?”

After giddily accepting, I quickly put on my game face. This was the big time. I couldn’t shoot myself in the foot by turning in a sub-par performance.

Because it will apply to a few of the fights, let me briefly describe the group I ran with. Our MT (pally) was geared to the nines. 232+ level gear across the board. In the interests of time, he handled almost all trash tanking. Two of our heals were also from our main raid group. The dps had one hunter that could pull about 4K, a shaman who could push similar numbers, and an otherwise motley assortment of slightly undergeared alts, doing anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5K dps on bosses. A good setup for pet tanking: good heals, and no ridiculous dps, making aggro manageable.

And the verdict? It’s possible, and some fights were not nearly as hard to tank as I expected. However, Naxx was good for a couple reasons. Not only did it provide a great challenge and showcased a hunter tank, but it also highlighted our shortcomings as tanks, as I learned with a few fights that I absolutely couldn’t tank. The following is a bunch of random observations, tips, videos, insights etc. from my night. The bad is included with the good, because it’s great to see what we can do, but just as important to know our limits (and, be honest, to hear about my amusing failures).

Spider Quarter:

Anub’rekhan –
Pet tanks are surprisingly good with initial aggro when we hit all our CDs (MD, BW, and Intimidation). I tanked the big adds, and they were down before any of the dps could get close to me on aggro.

Grand Widow Faerlina –
I should add early on that healing pets is still a challenge. We can do a lot, but some of it will come down to the gear and skill of your heals. But if they can, this is another relatively easy intro fight. Our MT took the boss, I tanked the adds off to the side. The dps was on the boss, and the tank taunted adds off of me one by one to kill the enrages. I switched targets often among the 4 adds to ensure that they didn’t die prematurely, but I’m not sure Witwicky (my croc) could’ve killed any of them too soon anyway.

Maexxna –
A single-tank fight, so there wasn’t much for me to do. Pets don’t get web wrapped, though, which would help with threat if I ever MT it. We can main tank this, as long as the healers keep enough HoT’s on our pets during the web wraps.

Plague Quarter:

Noth –
The aforementioned uber-geared tank took the boss and all adds in the middle. I just dps’d. If you do split it into a two-tank fight, I’d actually recommend that the hunter take the boss, not the adds. Holding multiple-target aggro is tricky in raids, especially when you can’t make a kill sequence in fights like this one, and there’s very little time for initial aggro.

Heigan –
Unless you do the fancy corner-to-corner strat for this fight (we didn’t) I can’t see much use for us. Maintaining boss aggro while kiting isn’t something I relish trying. It’s possible, but would be inefficient because we can’t have our pets attacking while we pull them back during the lava dance. Witwicky sat this one out on the upper platform with me, as a backup in case the MT got hit by the lava.

Loatheb –
Fun story, I actually ripped aggro off our main tank in this fight. How? Spores. They negate aggro, our tank got one eventually, and pets are unaffected by spores. So not only are we great on threat for this fight, but we’re potentially the best tank class for threat on Loatheb. If I get to do Naxx again, I plan on trying to MT this, with the entire group getting spores.

Construct Quarter:

Patchwerk –
Here’s where things got fun. This fight requires two tanks maintaining the top 2 aggro spots. This wouldn’t have been a problem, since I was comfortably holding single target aggro up to about 4K (the 4K-ish hunter and Witwicky would usually be vying for 2nd aggro on fights where I wasn’t tanking). But when our pets don’t have top aggro, they attack from behind, which presents a problem for damage mitigation on Patchwerk. So Witwicky had to have top aggro, which means I needed to MT it. For our pally tank, this turned into an amusing trial of self-restraint, since he was reduced to auto attacks a lot of the time. For our healers, it meant that my pet would be taking the vast majority of damage from Patchwerk. The dps, with an occasional MD or FD from the hunter, could at least go nuts.

I rooted my croc in place to tank and put him on passive before MD’ing to him. Only after Patchwerk had positioned himself in front of Witwicky did I put him on defensive. At that point the group waited about 10 seconds for initial aggro, our MT waited a few more, and we were off.

Booyah.

Grobbulus –
Picking up and tanking the slime adds wasn’t terribly hard. We just have to make sure we don’t kite them into one of the plague clouds. It can be problematic to target them, since they like to cluster around Grobbulus’s feet. A macro for targeting them and sending in your pet is a good idea for this.

Gluth –
We can’t tank the Zombie Dog. Sorry guys. Two tanks have to bounce back and forth with their taunts because of the stacking debuff they get from Gluth. Our pet’s taunt is on too long a cooldown. But what can we do instead? Kite adds in the back. So we found another tank and proceeded.

The key to kiting the adds in the back is, well, kiting. Don’t tank them for long. Your pet will die. I found this out on the first wave of adds. That said, when done properly we can be incredibly affective in the back. A single attack/thunderstomp was enough to hold aggro off of my healer, so I’d simply have Witwicky attack each new one once, then put him on passive and run away with him trailing me. You never really want to attack them ever except for the initial attack. Frost traps help immensely too. And with a DBM notice for Decimate, you can run them to the very back wall, giving your dps a silly amount of time to down the adds before they reach Gluth.

Enjoy the video of what I just described. You’ll even get to see me hurriedly rebuff Witwicky after the sloppy first half (I <3 the new LW drums, btw, for moments like this).

[Frost note: probably a much easier method is what we do in our 10-mans:  just hunter kite the zombies without the pet. Between cheetah, freezing traps, and jump-shot it's not too difficult.]

Thaddius –
We had some debate over this one. In phase 1, when the two mini-bosses do their tank throw, will they throw a pet? Will he be out of range after the throw, disappearing? Would I get thrown too? I desperately wanted to find out just for the amusement value, but with our recruited tank from Gluth I couldn’t win the group over. Alas.

Pets don’t get a charge from Thaddius (much like Loatheb spores), and since the charge gives us increased damage, which would make threat rough, it’s likely that we can’t effectively tank any phase of this fight.

….

Real life intervened and broke up the band at that point. I had been looking forward to the Horsemen and KT, but maybe for another night. A small part of me died a little each time it dawned on me that hunter tanks can’t do certain things that other tanks can (I secretly want to replace other tank classes just to infuriate them). But on the whole, it was an awesome night, and made Naxx fun for me for the first time in months.

As a precautionary measure, I wouldn’t go into Naxx as a tank with less than about 3700 AP and 1700 Stamina (unbuffed, not fed, no aspect, just spec and gear, etc.). I went in with roughly 3850/1800, had the benefit of two excellent healers (one a Disc. Priest, our pets’ best friends), mostly sub-4K dps, and it still wasn’t a walk in the park. Otherwise, kick ass and take names. Hunters are raid tanks now.

-Arth

But what are we good at in raids? DPS. And what are hunter tanks better at than regular tanks, by a fair margin? DPS. So it’s possible for us to be more useful than normal tanks. We just need to find places where the group benefits directly from extra tank dps.

I lucked into figuring this out. We were badge farming in heroic UP with a decent-but-not-epicly-geared group, and I was in my MM spec. But our healer was an achievement farmer, and didn’t have the achievement for the first boss (The Incredible Hulk) …in it, you must position a nearby Scourge Hulk under the “sacrifice sword” during the add phase.

Our healer was bummed, because it likely required two tanks, AND it needed some fairly strong dps to down the adds during the Sacrifice phases before the sword fell if we went with two tanks, because there would be one less person dps’ing them than normal. I really wish I could’ve screenshotted my smile right then. Kiting the Scourge Hulk into place, who has a knockback attack, isn’t easy. So our MT took him, while I tanked the boss and provided extra dps for the adds. You’ll notice my pet on passive occasionally, but it’s because he kept wanting to attack Svala during the add phase, placing himself under the sword. Like most tanks, it seems, he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Could this have been one-tanked? Yes, absolutely. But it would’ve been much harder.

Anyway, enjoy!

Hunter Pet Tank for The Incredible Hulk Achievement

Other Useful Scenarios:

1. I’ve only found one other heroic instance where we are similarly more useful than a regular tank, and it’s also a two-tank achievement (the first boss in AN this time, for Watch Him Die).

This one is also possible with a single tank, but the constant web wraps doom most groups. Our group’s main tank (a druid) kited the adds into the back hallway, morphed into kitty-mode, and ran like hell toward the instance entrance. In essence, it was a sacrifice to buy us some time to down the boss, and it makes the boss himself a dps race. So I tanked the boss, and we killed him just before the adds returned. No video (alas) but another example of how we can be situationally useful as tanks, and occasionally even preferable to other tanks.

[Frostheim note: Some other acheivements that benefit from a hunter tank include Respect Your Elders in Ahn'Kahet and Share the Love in Gundrak (boss won't impale his primary aggro target, so pet tanking lets your tank get impaled for the achievement). - Frost out]

2. I wanted to post a bonus video of me and a healer buddy 2-manning Skadi the Ruthless in regular UP with a brief guide to it, but never got around to it. I may still eventually do it. Dude is not for the feint of heart, and it took us a couple dozen tries before we got the hang of it. Stuff like that blurs the line between pure soloing and pure tanking, but can be a fun way to use your tanking abilities without having to convince numerous people to come along. Find a solid healer, and nothing outside of heroics should be insurmountable (including high-lvl Outland heroics and bosses like Skadi that provide a fun challenge).

Tanking Updates:

• I’ve mentioned it in comments, but haven’t explicitly stated it in a guide yet, so here it is: Stamina is now our most important stat for tanking. Not at the expense of large chunks of attack power. But the expertise transfer in 3.2 made threat more manageable.
• This is just for reference to give players an idea of what stats I’m working with when I tank. In my current tank gear/spec, I have 1723 stamina and 3807 AP. That’s unbuffed, without food, and no Aspect is up. You don’t need to hit these numbers in order to successfully tank (the above video was actually with about 1500 base stamina), but if you’re too far off them you might have trouble.
• I’m seeing more hunter tanks popping up in the comments, which is cool. Now we just need to push Frost’s pet collar idea and start getting them some damn armor.

-Arth

Bubbling Brightbrew Charm and Bitter Balebrew Charm both drop from Coren Direbrew, and you can get them both. Bubbling Balebrew Charm is particularly nice since the buff heals you and your pet for 139 health every two seconds – great for soloing!

Now keep in mind that actual tanks have first dibs on them. But you can do the quest every day with a group of 5 (which means you can kill him 5 times (he just respawns after minute)). Shouldn’t be a problem for you to get them after just a few days.

I’ve already got both to add to my extreme solo max health build