Depends really on how close you are bumping against the enrage timer really. If your dps is just barely making it under the enrage timer then probably safer to respec to demo. But if your dps is comfortably ahead of the enrage there is no reason why you can't tank it as destro. (wouldn't recommend affliction tanking though).

If you go destro just make sure you have items that you can swap in to stack some extra hit and stam to make up for the 2 extra pieces of FR you have to wear. I used to swap out my belt for unyeilding girdle with two stam gems, my Darkmoon trink for Scryer's Bloodgem and one of my regular rings for Ashlyn's gift. I never got hit capped but it isn't necessary to be completely capped to hold aggro. Putting points into imp searing pain and shadow and flame will give you more than enough damage to not worry about threat. As someone said above. Timing your CoD is the main thing to give you a head start that can't be caught.

When the split happens we always had a prot warrior shield wall tank the demon until my debuffs fell then I'd take over. If you're worried about stam/spike damage soul stone yourself, pop a nightmare seed around 7% and coast home.

We're struggling a bit in P3. We get the job done week after week, but it's often messy in P3.... people grow sloppy, whirlwinds increase, I die (I'm the warlock tank) and, well, we kill Leo with half the raid dead. It happened again last night too. I'd like to see things get cleaned up.

In P3, any positioning suggestions? I feel that I probably should grab the demon and then pull him away from others, but input would be appreciated on exactly where I should take him. I was thinking of dragging him to the back of the room (where Leo starts at the beginning of the fight) and let the rest of the raid burn down the human form by the tends, with more space to avoid whirlwinds and the like. But I'm not sure if that would split up healing too much, or if there would be issues doing so. Is there a "best practice" on how to do P3 cleanly?

Best practice is still for dps to pay attention to timers and move unless he's about to hit enrage and you absolutely need a full burn for 20 seconds or so to even have a shot. Our tanks drug human leo a bit further down with the raid shifting accordingly. Easier to do since demon is ranged based and it can make the abilty to drag him to any one position on a consistant basis somewhat of a crap shoot depending on where the split happens. No one should be standing near you to chain whirlwinds or take collateral damage from demon form aoe and you should never be the target of whirlwind. We've long stopped doing SSC but I can't think of a time that I've ever been hit with whirlwind while tanking. Just be conscious of where you are standing in relation to where human form is being tanked and have everyone else get away from you.

Yeah if theres gonna be a wipe on leo night, its during PH3.

Some reasons that happened in our experiences is,

1. People panic, stead of keeping their cool, losing composure messing up and not running out or stopping DPS when he agro dumps

The raid leaders voice can fix that.

2. Melees "hang out" near leo as hes splitting, then WW occurs instantly and gets them all

As hes splitting, remind them of the timer. Instruct run-out if needed. This is a very common occurance - look for it

3. A number of melees run toward the lock tank side when "running out" increasing chances he'll WW that direction

Tell them to favor other directions. Dont increase the chance that leo will choose someone in that area

-Lock tank dies so demon attacks the main tank

Odd phenomenon, when the lock tank dies in PH3, the demon automatically hates me and fireballs me from over yonder. Kinda like a "shared agro" I generated on him by tanking leo himself. best solution, dont let the lock die.

We split healers at 15% 3 on lock tank, 3 on the main tank. Raid (if competent) should need little to no heals if they are running away properly, and the MT isnt hard to heal.

For us, a resto druid helps worlds because he can HoT me then run out / back up for whirlwind with the rest, and I am fine. But when he took a week vacation, leo was harder to tank for me because most healers back up / run away and the MT doesnt get many heals if any =/

Note, our demon almost NEVER, ever moves.

We had issues with demon fireballing the MT for no reason "whatsoever" but eventually discovered, the lock tank was trying to "back him up" and once out of the 30 yard range, demon just attacks the MT instead of "moving". Sometimes he moves, but I think thats more of a fluke when he does, cuz its so rare

But you dont have to move him anyway. Raid shouldnt be around you, or your "spot" persay

Leo is actually VERY easy but you need people to listen and pay close attention. NO ONE should die to his whirlwind.... EVER.!! Timers work well and if you form a proper circle he typically just bounces around hitting only the MT. If everyone is up and standing then the enrage isn't much of an issue.

Here's my pointers.

1.) Have an assigned "Warlock" spot that everyone stays away from... there is no excuse for splash dmg. Also have the Lock park his pet far enough behind him that it isn't getting hit by the splash either.

2.) Use "Searing Totem" to reposition after the Whirlwind. Leo will run to it after the Whirlwind meaning your MT doesn't have to chase him. This will aid your DPS substantially and you won't have to rely on Misdirects.

3.) A very large portion of you DPS will be during the demon phase. Make sure everyone maximizes this time. This means your Lock needs to time their Curse of Doom and spam the heck out of Searing Pain.

4.) For the Inner Demon phase, we have a policy where only healers call out if they have a demon. This alerts the other healers to keep them healed. At no point should a healer be healing themselves or they will fail to kill their demon.

5.) As you approach 15% life, you have several options that you need to be aware of. IDEALLY, you get him to the transition in Demon Form PRIOR to the Inner demons. IF you can do this, you will get about 10 seconds of free dps on him while he's talking... this can mean getting him to 10% life before the split. If he's in human form he will become immune for those few seconds before splitting. WORSE case is that he hits it while inner demons are up... this should be avoided at all costs.

6.) After the P3 Transition, we have our Melee dps return to their "whirlwind" positions while the MT and Lock establish aggro. After the first Whirlwind we simply repeat the process used when he was in human form.

7.) If your warlock has too many debuffs (which he will if you time the transition during the demon phase) you simply Blessing of Protection them off during his "do nothing" phase just before the transition.


But most of all.... people need to live.... you loose too much DPS early and you may as well reset and try again.

As the raid leader who pushed my guild through this fight, the thing that helped the most was the phrase "Less DPS is more."

Make sure you explain to the ranged DPS that if they pull aggro after a whirlwind or phase change, they've basically just traded the extra 2-3k damage for the full 10 seconds everyone else could've DPS'd if they weren't waiting around for the tank to chase down Leo and get aggro. Also, the value of the searing totems CANNOT be understated. We literally have every shaman in the raid drop a searing totem in the middle to make sure he goes back to them as soon as he leaves whirlwind.

Another thing I think is underrated is moving the demon in phase 3 to a safer location. Once the tank has aggro, he can easily be moved.

After learning and getting the kill with a Warlock tank, my guild started having a Warrior (me) tank the demon one night when we didn't have a suitable warlock on. It worked great, and we've sinced changed our strategy to have our Bear tank human form (since he has an easier time with demons than a prot warrior in tank gear) and me tank Demon form. It seems to help that I have around 21k health in my FR, as well as last stand if I get too many debuffs stacked on me.

Overall, in Phase 3, it's all about keeping people calm and just doing the exact same thing with human form as before. For some reason, people just tend to freak out.

I haven't actually done Leotheras, so take this with a grain of salt, but Leo switches his forms every 60 seconds or so, so even if you have the warlocks alternate each phase who initially picks him up, there will always be a gap when the warlock can't soulshatter. I think your best bet is to just be ready with the pot/hs macro.

I had about 12k hp (positive estimate) and SL with capped FR. Only times you do have problems should the last last 15%.

I wouldn't bother with the two-lock strategy. The only coordination between locks, really, is that you guys need to establish a soulstone rotation so there's always a soulstone on the warlock tank.

14.5k health is actually about 2k more than our lock tank had with him, so you're good to go there. The more health the better, certainly, as long as you can still pick up aggro.

As far as the Felhunter/Whirlwind issue goes, remember -- during human phase, you have one job: DON'T GET HIT BY WHIRLWIND! Back way up and make sure nobody else is too close so that if he comes toward you, he doesn't make it and turns around.

Also, you should coordinate with healers to make sure at least one (preferably two in case of inner demon) has a macro to heal your pet. Make sure they know the pet needs to stay alive, too.

In our experience, the number of debuffs you pick up can vary wildly. Some phases you'll end with 3-4, sometimes you'll have 7-8 pile up. This is normal; there's not much you can do about it. It does help quite a bit if someone can call out on vent when your debuff stack gets up to 4-5 so the healers know to just start overhealing like maniacs.

Good luck to ya.

When you have more than 15k hp, this makes your healers' job way easier ^^
I started with 13k hp fully buffed I think. With almost 16kpv, I can take 7 stacks without dying, but things get hairy then =)

There is a place where you can put your felhunter, between the two "camping tents", that's where I put mine.

The idea of using 2 locks is not a good one. You have plenty of life, and if you keep your felhunter parked away so he doesn't get hit (get him buffed before too!) you shouldn't have any issue.

The debuffs really are only an issue in the last phase when he splits and both are up. How we handle this is to have a pally bubble the warlock (removing the debuffs) during the 10 seconds of transition before both of his forms become active. Obviously, the longer this last phase persists the harder it will be, but that boils down to your dps being smart and not dying in previous phases. There is honestly no reason for them to be dying AT ALL during the previous phases.

The only problem with using any melee class to tank the demon phase is splash damage. If you are a melee heavy group, then the demon phase is really where you have to make up the DPS.
If using a warlock they can easily sit with 15k life (and reaching FR cap is MUCH easier), and warlocks can build aggro WAY faster with a properly timed Curse of Doom and Searing Pain spam.

Overall, for guild just getting into SSC i think the Warlock strat is easier and more viable.

I've tanked this fight on my warlock many times and our first few kills the biggest issue became me staying alive from 15% to the kill. The demon phases won't typically last long enough for you to recieve the 6-7 debuffs that will instagib you. During the last 15% you very much can your debuffs stacked high, especially if you don't time your transition for your debuffs to fall off. It's really all a matter of luck though, there have been times where I got 7 debuffs had to nightmare seed, then SS and regain aggro to finish the fight and there were times I have had the debuff drop off after a long string of resist. The 2nd warlock tank would only be helpful if you're dying in Phase 3 before your DPS is killing him, but that's what the SS is for. The warlock wouldn't even need to be in full FR gear. He would just need to be 2nd on the list to keep aggro off healers while you got back up and caught up on aggro.

I used a few pieces of pvp gear in this fight and sat around 16k health with and imp. There's no dire need to stack higher than that. It's helpful, but to me it seemed like having the front load threat from more spell damage helped the raid more.

Sometimes WW is so random that you can't avoid getting hit, but if you're near the wall the odds are extremely low you or your felhunter will get hit. I believe the only LOS obstacle in the entire remove is the large pillar as you're entering from Lurker (vice from Fathom-Lord). Otherwise my healers never said anything about needing to move my felhunter and it was always near wall and behind some of the small pillars near the left wall.

Back when my guild did Leo regularly, we had a standing plan to have one of our Holydins use Divine Intervention on the warlock tank if his debuffs stacked dangerously high during the final 15%. I do believe we had an offtank for the threat to drop onto, but it shouldn't even be necessarily with quick buff cancelling from a macro or similar. One benefit of doing it this way is that the lock's aggro ought to remain intact, rather than the soulstone cleanse method, which will might end up putting him on healers for a while.

The melee splash isn't really an issue. If everyone is at max range, with the tank in the front and all the melee in the back, there's no splash damage taken at all. When we first tried it, we expected that to kill the strategy, but it was surprisingly irrelevant.

Hiya. We're about to try this fight, and our lock of choice asked if it would be possible to warlock tank this in full season three gear? Or is FR 100% necessary?

Also, should FR be capped?

Yep. If that post wasn't perfectly clear. The way Leo's damage works is like a flame buffet in that it simply increases the fire damage you take for each stacked debuff. After a certain number of debuffs if you don't get a full resist you're going to get one shot, period. It has nothing to do with mitigating spike damage or crits which is what he or you must be thinking. It's all about fully resisting as many of his attacks as possible. You won't last more than 10-15 seconds in demon phase without resist gear.

Since they reduced the AoE range of Leo's splash damage in demon form (2.2?), I wouldn't recommand tanking with a warlock, actually. A warrior can do fine and if the melee just stays at max hit range they shouldn't get hit. Warriors have way more health and they don't run around with a silly SL'd pet that serves as nothing more than an extra healing target in an already hectic fight. On top of it warriors have a few extra tricks to stay alive during the last few seconds in P3 (last stand, shield wall). Added bonus is that you have an extra DPS in your raid and one less useless tank trying to DPS in a prot spec, unless of course your raid doesn't mind you swapping people for fights.

Another thing to consider is that getting him to phase 3 during or right after demon phase is generally bad because your tank will sit on 5-6 stacks of the debuff before the hectic part even starts. Better let the stacks wear off in human form and then burn him to 15% when he transforms again.

We recently had our first Leo kill and I was wondering what Rogue rotations are being used? Right now I end up using a lot of 3 pt Ruptures on Leo so I can put something on Leo before running off to avoid WW. Is that the right thing to do?

Our Warlock tank ran off because the guild wouldn't pay for him to respec weekly (nobody asked him to respec), so we tried to have a warrior tank the demon phase for the first time, and it was a piece of cake.
Melee dps stayed at max range behind Leo, and I didn't see anybody taking any aoe damage. Certainly nobody died from it.

The tank had 4/5 Flamebane and a couple of green "... of fire protection" items, and hardly took any damage. It was the cleanest kill for us by far (killed him maybe 10 times), and I don't see us bothering with the warlock tanking again.