Sorry if this has been covered.

Just curious if there is class specific advantages when tanking Prince. As a Warrior with only 15K life and 13 K armor I was having A LOT of trouble in his second phase dealing with spike damage.

It got me wondering if it's best to let a feral druid tank due to the much higher armor and greater ability to soak spikes.

His second phase is intended to put out major spike damage. You could try a druid- I MTed my Kara group's first kill- but it wouldn't necessarily be any better as he would take more crushing hits in phase 2 than you would.

And yes, Prince, including tanking, has been covered extensively before.

If you have a well geared paladin tank they are the only class that can tank prince uncrushably. If you dont have a good tankadin though tossing one out there in 110 blues isnt going to do you any good.

Is that 15k health buffed? I remember I had less than 13k unbuffed for our first kill. My deaths tend to occur when the healers need to reposition. Make sure you keep commanding shout, shield block, thunderclap and demoralising shout refreshed, also an armor potion+adamatine figurine would help a lot.

In my experience, I'd rather have a warrior with less gear tank it than a feral druid with more gear. Prince crushes really hard and really fast and a feral druid has no way to avoid these, while a warrior does. He hits hard but thats just part of the fight.

At the point where you're learning/working on prince, our experience was that the druid has access to gear which allows him to get crushed for roughly the same amount a warrior was taking normal hits. The gap between them for that type of mitigation closes significantly as you move further along in gear and progression.

Of course, if your druid tank is simply a dps feral who thinks he can tank, it's another story. He would need to have had his craftables and the right greens, blues, etc, understand what it requires to be uncrittable and be sitting on almost twice the armor of your warrior. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

Hunter's Scorpid Sting reduces hit chance by 5%. This effect is more pronounced during phase 2, when he already has the +19% chance to miss due to dual-wielding. With that, you can probably eliminate crushes for 15 seconds while you have Dabiri's Enigma active, and then again for another 10 seconds if you have Moroes' Watch.

Chugging Stoneshield/Ironshield pots is also a good idea if you aren't already.

Thank you for all your tips and suggestions.

Yes I was using Ironsheild pots and such. I think that someone may have hit the nail on the head with the healers maybe moving.

I know our feral Druid isn't by any means fully geared so I imgaine I'll just have to fight throught it.

I guess there is an element of luck for certain involving the infernals and if Prince gets an unlucky set of consecutive hits.

A feral druid? Prince just screams for a paladin tank. He's a demon and has a very fast attack (dual wielding) in phase 2.

Get 25% dodge. Pop Watch -> Auto blocker then ... win.

Keep thunderclap and demo shout on him. I've actually yet to die on prince and usually don't have more than 1-2 sunders on me at once.

Few key things I can point out that may help if you're just starting--

1)Ironshields. Many tanks undervalue them, but they're just as(if not more important) important as a flask.

2)Obviously, Flask and stam food. You'll need it.

3)Make sure your damage uses consumables as well; you'll need it to burn through phase 2.

4)Make sure you(or a dps warrior) keep up Demo shout and Thunderclap.

5)If you have a lot of block value, you may want to switch to some avoidance gear, to minimize your chance of getting a string of crushings.

6)Obviously, spam shield block.

Fancy seeing you here, Orcheon. Have your DPS save important cooldowns for Phase 2 (in addition to short-duration DPS consumables, i.e. Flame Caps, Destruction Potions, etc.).

Hello Snape. Gonna stop being casual and show Snuf what DPS really is?

Anyway, to address what you said, DPS during phase 2 is very important as well, and if the threat of the tank is low it can pose some serious problems(such as getting enfeebled); but that isn't mentioned at all here; as your gear progresses(especially armor! I have nearly 17.5k armor and the damage difference is very, very noticeable) this fight mostly becomes both a DPS check and pure luck on infernal drops.

One thing I've noticed is that (barring cheese strategies where you never have to move him) Prince is essentially a DPS race from 60% on. In phase 2 you need enough dps to get to phase three without sunders getting stacked on your tank, and in phase 3 you need to kill him before you get overwhelmed by infernals.

That said, our first couple of kills had phase 2 as the much toucher part, due to me being undergeared. Popping trinkets at the start of phase two may result in some really ugly kills, but stacking sunders can make the tank pretty much unhealable.

One thing that has been noted here that my guild found to work well was using a pally tank for him. We are likely a bit bias because the pally was geared better than our warrior but a pally is more or less immune to crushing blows here as well as the sunder armor (improved holy shield). The one thing we had problems with was having the person who was calling out internals correctly call out where people should move to and who should be moving. Ironshield pots also help a good amount.

In my runs we've always got one ranged dps with an icon that we use as the stack location, who specifically keeps an eye out for infernals for that group. As melee dps I've also got an icon on my head so that if we need to move the tank, I can just run to where he needs to go and say "Move to the orange circle now" rather then trying to say "go left, no - your left, ok keep going, ok stop".

I'd say there is alot about your gear you can change very easily that will have a major impact on your tanking.

- Cloak: get Devilshark cape. Shouldnt take more then a few SV runs. Since you wont be replacing it for a very long time, put 12 dodge rating on it.
- Bracers: I'd do a small effort and get Bracers of the Green Fortress crafted (even I have those, for in AV), but even if you dont plan to do that, get 12 sta enchant on these.
- Boots: 12 sta enchant on them (I know, they are blues, but 12 sta is dirt cheap), and since that set bonus does absolutetly nothing for you, put another sta gem in it. (9 sta if you'r feeling cheap)
- Legs: ignore the bonus, go for 12 sta.
- Belt: 12 sta
- Gloves: 15 agi enchant
- Shoulders: 12 sta
- Ranged: green 'of stamina' 'of the champion' or the best investement you can do currently, the engineering gun with 12sta gem.

In general, it boils down to getting rid of all those hit rating gems -really a waste- and dodge ones -not that bad, though I'd rate them worse than sta-. You'll want to start with replacing all these hit rating gems before your next raid really.

You'r also loosing out on 24 sta and 12 agi on (rather cheap) enchants.

To sum it up, these changes would be:
Assuming you'r not replacing your dodge rating gems, putting +9 sta in your boots, are not getting the bracers crafted and just getting a green 'of stamina' gun. (aka: the cheap option)
-32 hit rating
-30 AP
-10 crit rating
-3 parry rating
-38 strenght
+27 dodge rating
+20 defense rating
+101 stamina
+15 agility

Replacing the dodge rating gems would make you loose 24 dodge rating but gain another 36 stamina. Another 72 armor, 10 dodge rating, 2 defense rating and 12 stamina if you get those bracers crafted. The engineer gun would be another 12 stamina.

These changes combined would grant you 1859 hp (with vitality and BoK), 22 defense rating, 13 dodge rating and 15 agility while only loosing some 'second grade stats' like hit rating, str, AP, crit rating and a tiny amount of parry rating. (I'm not saying they are bad stats, but they arent doing you any good when you cant stay alive.)

For the rest, everything has been said already I think. Make sure your healers spread out so they never have to move all at the same time, use some cooldowns on p2 (defenitly an ironshield potion!), keep demo shout and (imp) TC on, wyvern sting if you have it and spam that shieldblock button.

If you're getting stacking sunders, there's something wrong. Anything past 2 sunders, and your tank has serious mitigation issues.

He cannot sunder through a block, parry, or dodge. Hint. If you hit 2 sunder stacks, block. Block. Block some more. Get that stack to drop off, or your healers will go crazy.

We run with a paladin tank. Before they fixed the "animation = no shield" effect, he'd get stacking sunders like crazy, because the sunders were "sneaking through" as he cast consecrate, or put up Holy Shield, etc, etc..

Once we figured this out, anytime he got a 2nd sunder up, he'd throw up Holy Shield and auto-attack for 5 seconds. The stack would promptly fall off, and he'd resume threat generation.

If you're running with a druid tank, obviously there's less you can do, but equally, the druid tank is less affected by the sunder stack. Once it hits 3, hit your +dodge trinket (assuming s/he has one, a reasonable assumption), and pray it falls off.

To summarize it:

keep your debuffs on the prince, use pots (as you do already), get more stam, use your trinkets (and possibley your cooldowns) and let your dps go all out in phase 2 (Bloodlust for example is very helpfull here). If your DPS sucks and P2 takes to long this might also be a reason for failure if the tank well geared (well geared = mostly kara epics or better).

Now that I have some decent gear, I rarely see two sunders. Coming into the fight undergeared and gemmed to max my stamina I had problems with stacking sunders, even keeping shield block on cooldown. The problem went away as I geared up and got the Moroes trinket. I maintain that if you're having problems surviving phase 2 (while maintaining TC/shield block) the most immediate solution is to have DPS ramp up when he hits 60%.

Edit for fubared formatting.

At some point you'll just eat 3 crushes inside 1-2 seconds and run back because prince rolled a 98. There's nothing you can do about that really.

The vast majority of tanks simply have poor gear choice for fights that actually benefit from smart gear choice. In the case of prince, contrary to popular opinion - stamina and armor are king, not avoidance. Every fight is different, so you should have a gearset for each. But 15k HP is terrible for prince - unless it is unbuffed, but even unbuffed, you could go higher. 13k armor is what I had in full blues when I first dinged 70... thats also pretty terrible.