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59 Responses to “It snuck up on us… we’re Amazing Add Tanks”

1. Durnic Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 10:29 am

   Fascinating post, Vene and really something for people to think about. My guild is working on Sarth with three drakes up right now and I gave the Sartharion tanking job over to a DK so I could tank the drakes. To be perfectly honest, I think I got the better part of the deal because I love movement-based fights and you just don’t get that when you’re tanking Sarth.

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   Krays reply on February 20, 2009 3:15 am:

   I been add tank on this fight since day one, it was pretty obvious to all my guild that warrior wasnt gonna be good for the boss, and that warriors were doing better than druids on fast pick of adds (read pick up, not threat).

   Anyway we manged to get sarth 3d with this stratgy, so i like to think i know what im tlaking about when i say you makinga huge mitskae by using piercing howl or telling anyone to take that. why?

   Well the lava elemnatls will enrage if they hit fire walls, that come thick and fast from both sides. By the time you doing sarth and drakes, there really isnt enough dps or healing left over to take care of very many enragd mobs, even if you have a hunter/rogue in raid for ednrageing them.

   Well by using piercing howl on the adds you slowed them down, so making it very hard on anyone who may be getting hit by an add, and yourslef to kit them out of the fire wall path. I highly suggest you dont use the howl, and that you tell mages not to slow them down either, all you ding is creating extra work for tha raid when they get enraged.

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   Veneretio reply on February 20, 2009 8:22 am:

   You’re correct that Piercing Howl needs to be used with some caution. I’ve added a section on this to reflect these concerns.

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   Clint reply on March 5, 2009 9:09 am:

   I find Piercing Howl to be invaluable for this fight, but yes, used with caution. The flame walls are at least 2 or 3 Piercing Howls apart. I find myself kiting them around in a circle, spamming TC and taunting new flames. (glyphed TC seems to hit the mobs while still being out of range of their melee)

   Not only does Piercing Howl significantly reduce your incoming damage, it is also a wonderful ‘oh shit’ ability. ex– Last night I was tanking 10+ flames (2 drakes already down) and I failed to get them to the safe zone for a flame wall. Nine or ten enraged flames coming at me… no big deal, I already have substantial threat on them. Just Piercing Howl and kite over to the Fan of Knives rogue and your golden. You should easily have the 130% threat to maintain ranged aggro.

2. Gallin Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 10:49 am

   Very intriguing post Vene. I have thought about it that way before…but in a different capacity. What about the Adds on Gluth? Is that spec viable for that duty do you think? If only there was a talent to reduce the cooldown on Challenging Shout now…

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   Veneretio reply on February 19, 2009 11:08 am:

   I wouldn’t Vigilance one of the MTs on Gluth, but I would use this spec for the Adds for sure.

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3. Karl Hungus Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 10:51 am

   Hmm, extremely fascinating post.

   I had considered a tanking spec before that would incorporate Improved Cleave, but I had never considered taking piercing howl before. It’s a very interesting notion, and the applications are instantly evident.

   Why, kiting the zombies on Gluth would be more than possible with this setup!

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4. Trix Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 10:54 am

   I tanked Sarth for our 3D progression kill. I’ve also done adds on subsequent kills. Add tanking is definitely harder and warriors are definitely the best suited for it with infinite taunts.

   However, I really don’t get the whole “warriors can’t tank Sarth” thing.

   A Last Stand can get you through two heavy breaths. Same with Shield Wall.

   We find that regardless of who is tanking Sarth (myself our or DK) we still end up using external cooldowns for at least one breath.

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   Veneretio reply on February 19, 2009 11:11 am:

   Yup, you’re right which is why I say, “not as good as” instead of “can’t do it”. You’re right in both cases it’s likely at least 1 external cooldown will be necessary. In the DK case though, it’s usually significantly less.

   …and more to the point, we’re just a whole lot better on Add duty than a DK is.

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   Trix reply on February 19, 2009 11:49 am:

   For sure. Having done it both ways my advice would be:

   Put your best skilled tank on add duty; it’s by far the most difficult job. If that’s a warrior, so much the better. Warriors have vigilance, DKs can “throw” their AOE aggro with Death and Decay and Pallys have Righteous Fury to suck in the adds. Druids, unfortunately, seem to be pretty weak for add detail but I like them quite a bit on Drakes.

   I really want to stress, though, that people make a bigger deal about using only DKs on Sarth than they should. In the end, coordinating external CDs is critical regardless of your tank and is a good skill that your raid should have.

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   Ilovetarana reply on February 19, 2009 1:26 pm:

   I’d just like to add that even though Warriors and Death Knights both have sweet ass cooldowns, that we in my guild used a Druid for our Sartharion 3d kill, so it’s entirely possible for them to tank it aswell, simply because of their huge healthpool

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5. Tarsus Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 11:05 am

   I’m still not certain whether or not doubling up on your main role for dual spec is the right thing to do. It will probably depend at least partly on the impact on encounter design. The number of tanks needed per encounter already varies by quite a bit.

   It would be somewhat insane if what dual spec does for some of us is having us respec two builds regularly instead of one. I can only imagine the situation where you’re finished with using your Main Tank/Off Tank build and then you have to respec for DPS to work on Malygos or something.

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   Veneretio reply on February 19, 2009 11:20 am:

   Yes, certainly going the route of double Prot spec is a conversation you have to have with your guild. Realistically only 1 maybe 2 of your tanks will want to do this and the rest will want to go a Tank/DPS or Tank/Healing spec depending on their class and personal preferences.

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   Chet reply on February 19, 2009 1:05 pm:

   well what I see, using Gluth10 as the example, for dual spec is this (a bit off-topic, yet still on topic with add tanking):

   Pally tank/dps
   Me tank/add tank
   DK dps/tank

   Me and the Pally are going along tanking everything just fine, then we get to Gluth. I switch to add tanking, and the DK switches to tanking (as long as we both have the gear). After the encounter we switch back.

   Same thing would apply with

   Pally DPS/Heal
   Me tank/add tank
   Druid heal/tank

   This might be easier too, since in order to be OT for this fight the druid wouldn’t need a huge amount of gear (uncrittable through talents and whatnot)

   But basically I agree that you shouldn’t ALL be tank/tank spec, because it could be very helpful to be able to trade jobs based on specs. If everyone has the same 2 specs, then it wouldn’t be of any use to anyone. If you’re casual like my guild, you probably won’t do a lot of respeccing, but if you’re serious, I would guess you’ll probably have certain roles that someone will always be spec’d for, and if one respecs, another will have to respec as well to take their role.

   Just another reason I’m glad my guild is casual, even though I’ll probably do 2 prot specs anyway

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6. marklar Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

   are you sure taunt is still considered a spell? i know it used to be, but i thought that got changed at one point.

   wowhead lists taunt as in the “physical” school (same as devastate), so i figured the 8% hit cap applied to it as well.

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   marklar reply on February 20, 2009 2:33 pm:

   just to add to this a bit more - if taunt was really based on spell hit %, i would expect to see resists on the 4-horsemen fight fairly often (~1/10). however, i don’t - which leads me back to thinking it’s considered a physical effect with an 8% hit cap.

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   Veneretio reply on February 20, 2009 2:41 pm:

   Resists do happen. Keep in mind that Blizzard has stated before that some bosses where it’s especially required that they lower the chance of resist. (Al’ar I know off hand they did this for)

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7. Lakland Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

   (…and we give them an extra 3% damage reduction too!)

   Does this stack with Blessing of Sanctuary?

   I should probably try to tank adds on Sarth sometimes as well. I had a difficult time doing it the few times they had me respec prot but this makes sense.

   –Sword

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   Durnic reply on February 19, 2009 3:33 pm:

   No, it does not stack, it’s one or the other. We discovered this the other night while doing our first attempts on Sarth with three drakes.

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   Veneretio reply on February 19, 2009 3:36 pm:

   BoSanc’s advantage over Vigilance is it’s a threat buff and the Sartharion tank doesn’t need threat. So, even if you have access to BoSanc insist on being able to Vigilance the MT instead.

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   fiskeboss reply on February 21, 2009 2:53 am:

   It doesn’t give you a threat buff for this fight though(?), but I’m buying the infinite taunt situation.

   Just in case someone’s wondering grace(from disc priests) doesn’t stack with bosanc/vigilance anymore either.

8. Okerhs Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

   Interesting read

   Piercing Howl

   Reminds me of respeccing to take it for Tanking adds on Razorgore and chugging down Swiftness Potions

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9. Ducrush Says:
   February 19th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

   I’m gobsmacked! I can’t believe I never thought of using Vig on the MT. My jaw hit the floor when I read that!

   Thanks for the great tips and thoughtful articles as always.

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   Veneretio reply on February 19, 2009 4:12 pm:

   You’re welcome!

   A note: remember Vigilance does transfer 10% threat to you so you aren’t going to want to Vigilance the MT always, but you can on a number of fights. A great example of it’s use on Patchwerk is when myself and another Warrior both soak the hateful bolts, we use our Vigilances on each other. Effectively no threat loss this way and we both get the benefit of 3% reduction

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10. Cleaved Says:
    February 19th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    Almost everyone can AOE tank, and it comes down to the type of fight and what the tank is comfortable with. If you have undead mobs, maybe a pally is just as equal as a Warrior (Wrath, Consecrate, etc), or maybe the Pally is more comfortable AOE Tanking Flame Ellies on Sarth than Sarth or a Drake. A lot of it comes down to preference, and hardly anyone has trouble AOE Tanking atm… if they put a modicum of effort in.
    A Main Tank is made simply by attendance, as any mediocre tank can do ANY of the content atm. You don’t need an excess of skill for 90% of the boss fights and the other 10% can be learned through a few wipes/trial-and-error. I used to MT, but went Fury because putting in a supreme effort and showing up 100% of the time wasn’t worth it when someone less geared could do the same job almost as easily albeit slightly sloppier… but it still got done. I’m beginning to agree with the “Time to Step down as MT” post.. but for the reason of “why stress?” just to lose loot to an OT that puts in maybe 1/4 of the effort? We’re a casual guild and use Free Rolls, but there is no consideration given to someone showing up and putting in more effort… so I say… step down as MT, because no one cares how much work you do anymore… because you don’t hafta do it to tank like you did pre-3.0.

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    Veneretio reply on February 19, 2009 3:31 pm:

    Well I must say, I don’t share your attitude. The content is easier than usual, but it won’t stay that way forever. There’s more to a MT than ability.

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    Cleaved reply on February 19, 2009 5:27 pm:

    Hopefully content gets harder, but as I said, the current content means any mediocre tank (anyone spec’d as a tank) can Tank. MT is only defined by Attendance now, whereas in the past it was a combination of attendance/skill.
    You can still be an excellent tank now, but it is not required to get the current content down.

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11. tPaste Says:
    February 19th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    Well, you asked us not to complain about deathknights (or, really, even bears) for being better MTs on this fight than us…so I won’t, I’ll spare you that…but I will complain about add tanking, and how weren’t not even as good as we should be at that. Heck I’ll even ignore the VERY REAL AoE threat issue.

    Let me start by saying I’ve done add tanking on sarth, and done decently well at it…at least most the time…Unfortunately the lava spawns are based off the RGN and an “unlucky” attempt leaves me working my ass off. Frankly, on those “unlucky” attempts it’s a damn misery.

    Really I bet blizzard is having a real great laugh at all us Prot Warriors over this one, because it’s got to be a freaking joke to them, you see here’s the counter Vene’s post…

    We’re simultaneously the BEST and WORST at tanking these adds…and it all comes down to thunderclap.

    Basically every point Vene makes is dead on. It’s a really good article. Though let’s be real…we don’t have anything we can place in a spot to “catch” things like a Consecrate or Death and Decay, so really thunderclap needs to be that…and it’s far from it.

    Don’t get me wrong I realize it’s a bad idea to remove the cooldown all together and make it spammerclap, and I also don’t wish for it to be a dot as I’ve seen come people call for, but a 6 sec cooldown? That is simply two long. It needs to be brought down to 3, maybe 4, seconds. Few things in this game have been more frustrating than to get screwed by the RGN and try pick up four lava blazes at once only to have that cause your tclap (and if you’ve timed things poorly shockwave) to be on cooldown for the whelp adds. Because Demo shout won’t hold them over a crit heal or two. Oh, and if you get unlucky with lava waves you might be out of position because you couldn’t leave anything under the portal where they spawn. I mean, sure you can Challenging Shout in a pinch, but you happen wander a tad too close to sarth or a drake when you do and it can end your attempt faster than you can yell “EFF CLASS MECHANICS!”

    I will say this: I also agree completely that warriors need to drop the “but I’m the MT” mentality when better options are there, and on this fight as much of a pain as it can be we are much better suited for adds than MT. I also bet some tanks have a blast dealing with these adds…but not me. At least not when I’m overcome with the extreme randomness I’ve experienced in lava blaze numbers over different attempts.

    So Blizzard, lower our TC cooldown, or simply fix some inherent problems with the RNG. Your call.

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12. bryn Says:
    February 19th, 2009 at 6:41 pm

    I’d say that I’d pick up the Glyph of Cleaving and spec into improved Cleave instead of Commanding Presence.

    It would help a lot with threat on the adds, and damage so that you can take them down a lot more yourself. Helps out so the dps stays on the drakes longer.

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    Aulaugus reply on February 20, 2009 1:56 am:

    Righto. I was going to mention cleave in my comment as well. I Cleave spam almost the entire time. This Glyph would be better than Taunt in my setup.

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13. Feven Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 1:12 am

    Wouldn’t the glyph of taunt be wasted though? The adds you’ll be tanking on Sartharion are level 81 so they only have a spell hit cap of 5%, don’t they?

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14. Aulaugus Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 1:43 am

    I tank the adds on Sarth 3D since our first 10 and 25 man kills. This really is a niche for Warriors given the number of options we have and how movable our AoE threat is. We are the AoE frontloaders right now, which makes us perfect for this. That combined with numerous ways to grab a stray add (Melee: Devastate, Shield Slam, Mocking Blow, Revenge - Ranged: Heroic Throw, 30 yard taunt, Charge) give the Warrior so many ways in which to control the adds in this fight. Thunderclap is amazing for grabbing those whelps, since we just have to run over and grab them. No need to wait for a tick (Consecrate/Death and Decay). It’s instant and that is what’s needed.

    Deciding what ability to use and when given the variety of options we have is what does this. Personally, I always Shockwave my adds when I’m safe in between waves and always pop Shield Block every time whelps spawn (usually we only have 1 spawn) and I have them under control. Try to use things with lower cool downs to pick up stray adds and only use Thunderclap to pick up multiple mobs. The big thing here as well is making sure you can Thunderclap when the whelps spawn to grab them all, and if you can’t, AoE taunt and Thunderclap as soon as possible (though make sure you don’t pull Sarth or drakes). Tanking the adds definitely makes you think and plan more than anything else right now. This is what I like.

    I do this as the spec I am right now (though I was going to spec for the extra shield block sometime) and the gear I am wearing right now with the exception of three pieces: T7.5 shoulders, Essence of Gossemer (for Meteorite) and Wall of Terror.

    That being said, I have one suggestion for this post. The Vigilance target. We use two holy paladins (one on Sarth tank and the other on myself and the drake tank) who are specced into Divine Guardian. My paladin specs into Improved Righteous Fury on his way to Divine Guardian and heals the entire fight with Righteous Fury on. He is also my Vigilance target. From these two buffs he gains 90% more threat from Holy spells and 9% damage reduction.

    The reason the increased threat is not a bad thing is because I stay relatively close to him. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, he is my healer. Second, the increased threat on his heals basically funnels all the adds our way. He is sort of my take-off point. I’ll run away to grab some adds, but always come back near him again and I’m always near him for waves.

    My paladin rarely has an add get to him, but if one does Vigilance gives me a quick taunt off him (plus he’s in plate). The only real issue are enraged adds, but I can Intervene him or he can stun them allowing me to taunt it off. This helps keep our other, more squishy healers alive and gives a lot more control to the adds.

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15. Aulaugus Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 1:47 am

    Oh, a couple more things. I mark myself and my paladin and turn enemy name plates on to help me see everything more clearly. With the amount of adds and people in the encounter, I find it very hard to see what I need to if I don’t do this. The flames also kind of phase in but their nameplate will be there before they are fully visible so this lets me get over to them and grab them right when they spawn.

    Finally, turning spell detail down all the way is almost a must because you can see the void zones and waves still but won’t get so laggy when the adds are getting AoE’d down.

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    Aulaugus reply on February 20, 2009 2:40 am:

    Nameplates also help you distinguish between an enraged add and a shaman’s fire elemental. They look identical.

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16. Rak Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 2:16 am

    I would say the taunt glyph is unneeded in the role you talk about. The adds are not boss mobs, so the spell hit cap is at most 6%, and possibly even less (I’m too lazy to go look it up for the Sarth adds). Maybe if you don’t have that much hit in some trash gear + food + elixir (since I know you won’t be using an expertise elixir on mobs that don’t need more than 21 expertise)… but even then I don’t think it’s worth reglyphing.

    Personally I very rarely taunt them at all, but that might be a playstyle difference.

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    Veneretio reply on February 20, 2009 8:19 am:

    Good point on the Spell Hit cap for level 81 mobs. I’d agree that it’s certainly doable without “infinite” Taunt, but myself, I definitely find times where I’m Taunting in quick succession which wouldn’t be possible without Vigilance up.

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17. Sumendis Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 2:30 am

    Interesting article. Compared to consecration or DnD, I find that thunderclap can often provide some pretty powerful burst threat on aoe packs. In naxx our prot pally often runs ahead and pulls the next pack, when I charge after him and thunderclap I usually get aggro back on a whole lot of mobs (often to lose them again pretty quick though hehe)

    I’m not sure about the use of piercing howl on the sartharion adds though, the fire elementals can be slow enough to kite sometimes and you don’t want them to get caught in a wave and enrage. If anything can kill our add tank (a prot pally usually) atm, then it’s enraged elementals.
    We usually tell the hunters not to use any frost traps either, just had too many times when the slowed adds got into a wave. But strategies differ and it may work for you, slowing and kiting the whelps could be useful no question.

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18. Truhjek Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 5:21 am

    This is interesting to put into words. Most tanks have already been realizing they are great at pick up but to finally have someone out and say it is kinda enlightening to the extent of our ability. Makes me look at piercing howl again after ignoring it for much of the 80 content.

    Also agreeing with Sumendis, Clap and shockwave are huge burst. I run with a DK and Pally OTs and even after a lead on 4-6 mobs when I get in and pop those 2 skills I usually have threat. The trouble does come in maintaining it where I tend to focus on the heaviest hitters or tab target around to pick up the target DPS is blowing up to give them room on the threat meter.

    For Sarth, however, we use a druid for MT, warrior (me) Drakes, Pally/Dk adds and portals. In terms of effectiveness I believe paladins to be right behind us in ability to pick up targets as well as being far superior at holding them all.

    To debunk the “vigilance” idea, I had the same thoughts running into sarth and put the buff on the MT just for infinite taunts. With tab targeting no longer modified by max range commands, and the aoe spells + fissures and whatever else going on it’s usually safter to AoE for my threat. I didn’t find myself taunting more than usual even with it refreshing. The fact that a taunt is usually followed by some other means to establish threat by the time we are ready to taunt another it’s refreshed on it’s own accord. While tab taunting might sound useful I’d be afraid to taunt Sarth or a drake in my spam.

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19. Tarsus Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 7:18 am

    Doing some review of the Sarth 3D fight last night made me think of one risk using Piercing Howl to slow/kite the adds - enraged elementals. Make sure you’re not hitting your Howl debuff right before the wave and leaving your flaming buddies in the middle of one of the Tsunamis. One or two of them is manageable. Anything over 4 and you’re in for some serious hurt.

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20. Mookey Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 7:28 am

    Glyph of Sunder or cleave is better with this build.

    One big question - is 5/5 improved Demo shout working?

    Afaik in old days we allways used that only with CoR from Warlocks, otherwise 2/5 was enough… with 2 points in unbridled wrath you can save points from focused rage and put them in Sword and board.

    http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZGMhoLZVItrx0zidczsGo

    I like Vene’s ideas - allways making me rethink my way of tanking

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    Kavtor reply on February 20, 2009 9:53 am:

    http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/42342-level-80-boss-ap.html

    Every point of demo shout reduces damage taken.

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    Veneretio reply on February 20, 2009 10:23 am:

    It’s really nice if you’ve got a DK tanking to do laps when tanking adds kinda… and make sure to apply Demo Shout as you run by Sartharion for extra AP reduction

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21. Tulakk Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 9:25 am

    I’ve done add tank duty for Sarth a few times, and my spec is similar to what you posted save that I opted to put 3 points in improved cleave over commanding presence. The extra health on commanding shout is nice, but 120% extra damage on cleave coupled with glyph of cleave really grabs the adds. And I just love piercing howl on the whelps; it makes them so much easier to control.

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22. Kavtor Says:
    February 20th, 2009 at 10:03 am

    I’d stick with a standard 15/5/51 for tanking adds on Sarth. Deep wounds on thunderclap and damage shield with a slow main hand is a pretty solid boost in DPS and add threat. So long as you have a DPS DK that can spread devouring plague adds shouldn’t be a problem.

    With our outstanding mobility and the shock wave stun, it’s pretty easy to kite the adds with out piercing howl.

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23. Wukki Says:
    February 21st, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    I am almost positive that shockwave doesn’t count as a spell, and uses melee hit instead.

    1. If you get silenced, you still can use shockwave.
    2. Shockwave is of the physical school.
    3. With 8% hit, my shockwave has never missed.

    That said, we use a pally for Add tanking, druid / warrior on sarth (using ranged taunt so druid never gets hit), and warrior on drake tanks.

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24. Tazoth Says:
    February 22nd, 2009 at 8:23 am

    I guess expertise wont help any for that

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25. Tazoth Says:
    February 22nd, 2009 at 8:24 am

    … spell hiting, or does it?

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26. mavfin Says:
    February 22nd, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    Yeah, I got to tank Sarth a time or two, but I pretty much leave that to the other tanks now. I can just wend my way through the maze picking up adds and it makes the fight go really fast for me. The other tanks I work with who aren’t warriors all say they just can’t beat intervene and warbringer for picking stuff up.

    I ran through Naxx with a ‘newer’ group of my Alliance guild today, and the other tank hadn’t done many of the fights. I had him take the boss on the fights where there were adds to deal with, as I could just simply do it quicker and better than he could (he was a druid), while he was fine on boss duty.

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27. Tànk Says:
    February 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    Oh, my own tankingtips reference, I feel so violat….er, special!

    I’ve run with the piercing howl spec for a while now. Running with imp demo as a complement to the overall raid and other tanks, piercing howl was just one point down.

    Timing between flamewaves just gives healers that extra time when we’re taking no dmg.

    Makes Gluth adds simple.

    Since the concept of CC on trash is does not exist anymore, I use it in rotation for those times where we pull an extra pack and the trigger happy dps just keeps on with the aoe.

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28. Mini-Mog Says:
    February 23rd, 2009 at 5:51 am

    We did Sath 3d in two versions.
    first: druid mt and dk add tank
    second: dk mt and warri add tank.

    And on my opinion the dk make the race as add tank and mt.
    Ok we (warri) got a lot of spells for dmg reduction / survivability.
    But the dk got more on pure thread. death & dk, frost strike, deathcoil, howling blast, grip, even pestilence and ice chains.

    I think the Warri can hold more adds with the same amount of heal, but the dk got less problems to aggro them fast.

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29. Thugs Says:
    February 23rd, 2009 at 10:09 am

    Interesting choices and notes here regarding warriors as add-tanks on Sartharion (which along side with tanking the minibosses is the hardest thing to do, MT:ing Sartharion him self is easy for the tank him self).

    The problem we’ve had is even if Warriors have all these utilities for add-tanking, paladins surve much better tanks here simply due to the fact they have an easier time picking up adds (placing consecrate on the caster group, on the whelp spawn point, taunting 3 adds of a person with aggro over single target tabbing).I guess that’s part the the issue here that aggro and fast building aggro is very good in this fight. With this I’m not saying “Warrior suck” at it, but I wouldn’t put them on the pillar as “the best adds tanks”, but perhaps “one of the better ones”. I think the only class that really suffers here are druids (but they have the EH / MEH advantage from hell so QQ moar :))

    Personally I’d also opt for 4/5 commanding presence over 5/5 imp. demo-shout due to HP being more of importance in the fight than physical damage reduction (more people die from them selves or due to magical damage).

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30. Jessika Says:
    February 23rd, 2009 at 11:53 am

    Nice post Ven. I’m going to try a build like this for Gluth. He’s been giving us a bit of trouble. I looked like an idiot the other day when I was out in Zul’drak practicing my zombie chow kiting with a Piercing Howl build.

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31. Hydrix Says:
    February 24th, 2009 at 11:22 am

    I agree that having piercing howl is amazing on whelp and fire elemental add duty, but I changed up a few things about that spec you posted Vene:

    1. I took the points out of commanding presence and moved them to max out sword/board. That way the spec still works in other aspects. The extra health bonus is marginal at best, considering 25% is nerfed by the aura.

    2. The third point I took out is a floater, and I decided to move it over to an extra point in heroic strike. Again, for other things like heroics without respeccing.

    3. I took 2 points from booming voice and 3 points from imp demorilizing shout and moved them to cruelty. The extra range on imp demo shout is irrelevant once you have the adds on you (glyph of thunder clap ftw). Also, the extra damge reduction from imp demo is only helping you with the whelps I believe, since the fire elementals do magic (fire) damage. I could be wrong.

    But like I said, piercing howly is ungodly in that fight for reducing the incoming damage if all the adds are on you since you can kite them around and reduce the incoming damage by a LOT between shockwave and shield block cooldowns. I pretty much run the spec all the time now unless I’m main tanking something like Maly where max threat is relevant.

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    Veneretio reply on February 24, 2009 11:27 am:

    I have no idea how I missed that I didn’t max out Sword and Board. Good catch… I’ve updated the post with a new spec.

    The reasoning behind Imp Demo and Booming Voice is being able to run past Sartharion and put the buff up for the DK that’s tanking since they can’t do this on their own.

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    Hydrix reply on February 24, 2009 11:35 am:

    So you mean the extra damage reduction is not intended to save our ass but the DK’s? Makes sense, but booming voice? Really? I think I’d be happier with two points cruelty as the extra couple feet I have to run to put the debuff on the boss probabaly isn’t going to matter as much as 2 points cruelty would in my overall threat, especially when I’m NOT on whelp duty.

    I mean it’s really, at that point, two points booming or two points cruelty. Hard to say which provides better overall value, as neither are really crucial for the purpose of the spec.

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32. Belthamel Says:
    February 24th, 2009 at 11:49 am

    I want to give a big shout out to Vene on this one. Downed Sarth +3 drakes for the first time last night using a slight variation of this spec. We had initial done it where our druid tanked Sarth (figured the huge amount of hp our druid would get would negate the breath), our DK and pally were tanking adds, and I was tanking the drakes. It worked ok, and probably could have been done that way, but it was much more difficult. We had previously been thinking about switching our DK to tank Sarth, but our pally was new so we didn’t want to put all the weight of adds on him. After the switch though, it was so much better. I took probably 10 times less damage then the DK did on adds. The only times I died were 100% my fault, otherwise I took little to no damage. I find that after a fire wall, I shockwave, tc, then peircing howl and kite, and by the time and space I have created, the fade armor debuff would wear off. That was the biggest problem with our DK tanking, was that the fade armor stacks got really high.
    http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhi0oZVItrt0zidIzsGo - This is the spec I used, moved a couple points around, but no real significant change.

    Thanks again Vene, keep up the good work!

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    Veneretio reply on February 24, 2009 12:07 pm:

    Great to hear!!! Your spec is a perfect example as well of grasping the important concepts of a build while also making it your own. Big grats to you and your guild

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33. Arvernien Says:
    March 13th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    I have tanked the Adds on Sarth 3 times since reading this article. I has been invaluable. These have been PUGs so I have not respec’d as suggested but the strategies noted here were used. All three times were successful and had warriors on Sarth. I think the other tanks were exercising their “raid priority” to do the easier part of the battle. It does get very chaotic in there and the fire elementals can be hard to spot. Vigilence’s infinite Taunts helped on grabbing them and 3% damage reduction on the main tank were key elements to the success.

    Be very careful using Challenging Shout - it’s easy to accidentally pull Sarth on to you. If you do, you better hope his tank has Taunt on an easy button.

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34. Verata Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 6:33 am

    I think every MT should OT/ADD TANK at least once a month. It will definately give you a much broader ability base and let MT know tank’n’spank is good except when you have Rune of Death active and if you don’t move.. your ADD TANK has to save your butt.. lol.. The Tank that saves the raid is the Tank that is mobile and has spacial awareness… AND the undying thanks of the raid LOL

    Just an opinion…

    [Reply]

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