Loading ...Solo Tanking Moroes
…is not impossible, if you’re a warrior.
The Setup
You are going to want to have a ranged class preferably a mage or warlock (this way they can dps both adds and Moroes) to stand on top of you for the duration of the fight. You will want your raid killing at least one if not two adds in order to get into the initial rhythm, but once you’ve got it threat generation should not be an issue.
Pulling
You’ll want to start the pull and move Moroes to the right side of the room away from the where the adds are Crowd Controlled and/or Kited. This is to ensure that you can Thunder Clap as required during the actual tanking.
The Dance
With your ranged party member (RPM) stacked on top of you, stance dance and use Berserker Rage. This will give you 10 seconds where you cannot be gouged so generated threat quickly. (You should be able to land 2 Shield Slams during this period) During the 10 second duration, your RPM may get gouged and if he does then he should call it out immediately. What this means is that you can continue to generate threat as you normally would until Moroes vanishes.
So what if he doesn’t get Gouged?
If your RPM doesn’t get gouged during the 10 seconds you have Berserker Rage active then you must immediately turn around when the Berserker Rage buff expires. At this point, you should be spamming Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout in order to keep some threat generation coming in. At some point in time, your RPM will be gouged allowing you to turn around and generate threat or Moroes will vanish.
Moroes just re-appeared. What do I do?
Start with your back facing him until he’s in melee range then stance dance into Berserker Rage. You can then safely turn around and generate threat for 10 seconds. From here on out its just a matter of sticking with the plan outlined above.
So why doesn’t everyone do this?
This strategy requires a slightly better geared tank than the standard 2 tank strategy as well as making the fight significantly more complex to explain to a new tank. The advantages is that it takes Moroes’ Blind almost completely out of the fight making the amount of raid wide communication slightly less. Furthermore, it allows you to utilize your off-tank to control Moroes adds easily, making them go down much smoother. Overall, this strategy is best suited towards a guild that wants to burden the healers a little less and is confident in the abilities of their Main Tank. It’s also a fantastic way to determine if a tank that wants to join your guild can truly play his class by testing his communication skills, ability to change stances, watch buffs, and generate burst threat.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I’ve actually always solo-tanked Moroes… I still dread that fight everytime we go in there. (Especially when all we end up doing is DEing another piece of mail healing gear, lawl) I do use BR when he comes out of vanish to pick him up and build some threat, but the idea of having a caster stand with me to take the gouges is an awesome idea! Thanks for the tip.
Btw, you actually can function 100% normally while tanking him backwards. You can block, parry, sheild slame, sunder, etc etc if you get close enough to him. /nod Just make sure you find that sweet spot cause if you get too close he jumps in front of you and can gouge and if you’re a bit too far he backs up and you need to reposition which can get annoying.
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July 11th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I should note that last time I single tanked him the range person was not eating the gouges. This may have been something they fixed in a recent patch.
So I should say… thanks to you. I’ll have to try finding this “sweet spot” you speak of myself!
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July 18th, 2007 at 9:33 am
BTW, BR doesn’t seem to work on the gouges as of at least last week…I got gouged in the middle of a BR on Friday and I looked it up and apparently people have been complaining about that very problem. But I just had everyone call out when they got gouged. I think there might be like a 20 sec CD on Gouge though cause I have seen him do it more than once inbetween vanishes. If I just made sure to tank him in the “sweet spot” until my gouge dummy got gouged I could safely turn around for about 15 seconds, mitigate some dmg, rinse and repeat. He gouges as often as he can most of the time so it seemed to go really really well.
Thanks!
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September 17th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Offtank went down in under 5 seconds so thought what the hell and tried backing into him. Worked great! I did call for slower dps that usual and had a hunter pet and a rogue standing near as “blind eaters” just in case, but I don’t think they ate many blinds and I could generate threat pretty much as normal once I got into place each time. My guild (and some others) call it “asstanking” and say it’s easier for the druid tanks (I’m a tiny undead female) to do because their models have larger butts.
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September 17th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Tara really has hit the head on this one and I’ll be re-vamping this post in the near future to reflect her strategy. Her’s is simply a better strat which my advice couples well with, but ultimately Tara has been doing it a stronger way the whole time!
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March 3rd, 2008 at 7:55 am
Our guild this past week tried this with a paladin tank as our only tank. However all we did was have the weakest add (the protection warrior when possible) beat on him the entire fight. Basically whenever he got gouged or blinded, the add would knock him out within a second or two.
I was dpsing on my mage, and I was #2 on threat, so once he managed to get to me but I iceblocked in time. The second time there was a delay on gouge/blind break I got one shotted, but before he could do it a third time (get away from the tank), the fight was over. So a paladin tank can typically solo tank this. Perhaps having two adds beating on the main tank can help. He may take more of a beating, but he’ll get knocked out of gouge/blind even faster.
It was definitely funny, however, because my guild always teases that a raid isn’t a raid unless I die.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Iv’e been reading up on alot of strategies. I like this latest one with the 1 tank idea…I may try that this week. So from what I gather..I need to have a ranged dps stand on top of me, and pretty much tank moroes with my back facing him the whole fight.
How many healers are recommended for Kara? Not just for Moroes, I mean overall?
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March 4th, 2008 at 4:23 am
2 decently equipped healers can handle everything with the exception of nightbane and prince. Those ones we try to have 3.
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