Loading ...When can I start tanking Karazhan?
It’s amazing how often I’m asked this question and most of the time whoever asks it is way more prepared than they need to be.
Simple Starting Requirements
- 490 Defense
- 11,000 Unbuffed Health
The reality is that you can start tanking Karazhan quite early, but you still need to do 5 mans especially heroics. There is actually quite a big gap between the gear required to start and the gear needed to finish up Karazhan.
July 18th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Yeah, even the difference between the gear needed to tank Attumen and Moroes is pretty large if you need to solo tank the guy. :/ Plus, a tank who spent a ton of time farming heroics and faction will be much better geared than a warrior who didn’t bother and just OT’d Kara for a couple of months and picked up some gear there. There is some kickass stuff in heroics. /nod
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July 18th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Some good heroic gear available would be Lion Heart Girdle from Heroic Ramparts, Eagle Crest War Boots from Heroic Blood Furnace, Suneater from Heroic Mech, Fanblade Pauldrons (1st Boss) of Heroic Crypts. These are very easy runs from a Heroic standpoint. You should get enough badges as well to get the tanking ring and/or tanking necklace. These will serve you well for a while. Also think about the crafted items. Bracers of the Green Fortress are easy enough to buy. Helm of the Stalwart Defender and the Gauntlets of the Iron Fortress can be a little pricier but worth it until you get some of the better drops. Grind the Tempest Keep for Sha’tar rep for the shield and the Keepers of Time for the pants. You will be in great shape for Kara then.
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July 25th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I’ve updated this entry to say the minimum should be 11,000 unbuffed health because a warrior in my guild literally has barely over that and is doing a solid job of tanking every boss outside of prince and nightbane.
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July 25th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: A tank is only as good as his/her healers. The only thing that a tank needs to be good at IMO is threat generation, and this is only for the DPS. As long as the tank isn’t getting one-shotted, a good set of healers can keep anyone up.
Note: Biased comment considering my main was a holy priest for well over a year
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July 25th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Ya I have to completely disagree. A tank can do A TON of things above and beyond his gear to make a healers job WAY easier.
-Shield Block
-Demo Shout
-Commanding Shout
-Thunderclap
-Potions
-Last Stand
-Healthstones
-Shield Wall
-Mocking Blow
-Challenging Shout
-Taunt
-Intervene
-Intercept
-Concussion Blow
And the list goes on… A tank is far more than just threat generation. It’s the very reason that a site like this can even exist.
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July 25th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I was looking at it from a Tanking a Boss point of view. Yea, 5 mans are completely different. What I was trying to say was that good healers can overcome issues with being undergeared. Whereas, it’s not so easy when the healers are the ones that are undergeared.
Am I making sense, or just digging a deeper hole?
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July 25th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Deeper Hole
In fact, it goes against the entire idea of how a raid gears its raiders. There is a reason that a lot guilds gear up the Tank first. There is a reason why a lot of guilds stockpile every tank drop on one Main Tank rather than evenly gearing all of their tanks.
If the tank is getting 2 shot the entire fight, it’s not going to matter how amazing your healers are.
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July 27th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
“a solid job of tanking every boss outside of prince and nightbane”
ill take that as a compliment… thanx vene =)
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August 14th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
To addon to Veneretio’s point about healer upgrades etc.
I’ve always said tank upgrades are an upgrade for every healer in the raid. You really can’t beat a tank upgrade when thinking about progression.
Think about a tank that has high survivability, but with an average raid makeup. Sure, they might not down the boss for a couple weeks, but at least it gives the team lots of live practice time on each boss.
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September 13th, 2007 at 8:01 am
I have to agree that upgrades for the tank = upgrades for the whole raid.
Some new to raids may not see the light though. Sometimes I feel kinda bad for the DPS in our raids because the drops from them are pretty infrequent. As MT I tend to get drops without rolls or DKP. Just as stated above the reason behind this is that when the MT gets an upgrade the entire Raid gets an upgrade. More mistakes can be made by the healing and dps. They are absorbed by the gear alone.
The comment about the gap for gear to start kara and finish it is also very very true. My guild tried to take an early shot at prince and bane when my gear was just starting to get good (IMO). Even with 17k HP those fights sucked. Do yourself a favor and farm those heroics and pvp. Get the seth shoulders, arena shield, and autoblocker and ring with badges. Those are some great upgrades you can snatch that will make your life much easier to finish out kara.
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December 5th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I guess i think about it this way. The better the tank is geared, the more mana the healers save.
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December 7th, 2007 at 7:55 am
only problem is that if you only gear up 1 viable tank, and your not no#1 guild on your server boss killing wise, they tend to abandon you the moment they have 4 set peices or that special bit of armor etc.
Happened 3 times in 3 different guilds for me >_
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January 6th, 2008 at 1:36 am
That’s why you have to 1) trust your tank to not leave and 2) gear up two tanks.
A tank that leaves a guild for a ‘better’ guild is an ass imo
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July 6th, 2008 at 2:21 am
As long as the tank has 490 defense and is not getting 2 shot (and isnt a total moron) then progression when you start raiding is solely dependent on your healers IMO. If you have kick ass healers then you can pretty much have anyone tanking
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Dreadly reply on July 11, 2008 4:49 pm:
Omaran, that just isn’t true. Healers are important sure but the entire Raid’s DPS potential is dependent upon your tanks gear and their TPS. Even bosses that are not a straight up timed Raid DPS gearcheck (Gruul) are significantly easier if the Raid can full out DPS.
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July 14th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
well i started on kara and got stuck in mt position when i was geared for ot. 11844hp, 490 defense, and 14073 armor. i managed to down prince, thank you healers! i had 400k threat at the end of the fight
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Khrushchev reply on July 15, 2008 3:11 pm:
Man, those are some crazy numbers. My health has always been pretty consistent with my armor. Like right now (not even started Kara yet) I’m at 14k health and 14.1k armor. Pretty high for starting Kara, but I’ve ended up going with a few high stam/armor pieces with low or no defense on them and just making it up through gems and enchants.
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September 22nd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I know this is an old thread but I wanted to get some explanation on the 490 defense.
I know that 490 defense give you uncrittability, but a good defense rating and a high resiliance rating can give you the same uncrittability, right?
So to say that 490 defense capped could be wrong, and instead the requirement would be: uncrittable.
With that said, I know that everyone wants 490 defense instead. But why? What is the real difference between being capped with defense and being uncrittable?
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Arvernien reply on September 22, 2008 1:21 pm:
Reaching uncrittable with a defense score of 490 also gives you additional chance to be missed, to dodge, to parry and to block. Resiliance does not modify anything other than chance to be crit and damage taken when crit.
Additional defense skill is very valuable because it continues to add to your avoidance (miss, dodge, and parry) and mitigation (block). As you get items with more defense you can swap in items with just dodge, block rating and block value or more armor and stamina. These changes increase your survivability and make things easier on the healers. As hit rating, expertise rating, and block value (increases shield slam damage) increase your threat generation increases which allows the DPSers to do more damage.
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Tankette reply on September 22, 2008 1:28 pm:
Defense makes you uncrittable at 490 but continues to add to your avoidance (dodge, parry and block) after 490. Resilience does help make you uncritable but doesn’t do anything for your avoidance, thus you will take more damage if you are using resilience to make you uncrittable.
Our guild has brought several tanks into Kara that used resilience to be uncrittable and its not a problem until you get to Prince and/or Nightbane.
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