Forgive the noobish question, but I enjoy the signal to noise ratio here.

My raid alliance on my backwater server (arr-pee!!) is making forays into BWL, and we're trying to determine the rough level of gear adequate for tanking Nefarian.

The crux of the biscuit is this: Is a tauren tank, specced adequately in protection and arms and wearing 8/8 might sufficient for tanking Nefarion, or is some level of Wrath gear necessary to help mitigate the extra damage? Assume that the OTs are geared similarly but with non-complete T1 sets and a dab of T2.

Enquiring minds want to know!

Thank you for your time, everyone
-Z

I would say he could pull it off, you might want to flask him, however, in case he takes a shadow flame crit.

I would say the #1 most important stat for tanking Nef would be Stamina.

If he just wears whatever gives him the most stamina (not lolgreens of stamina of course), I think that will be more sufficient than 8/8 might.

Our MT was still using drac deflector and adamantium breastplate when we killed him :(

Agreed. Nef isn't a very aggro-sensitive fight, you have all the time in the world to get him down. The 15% increased aggro on sunder won't make or break the fight. Having a tank who can survive a triple-crush/shadowflame will.

SF can't crit (or else even a better-geared tank would get killed by it during Warrior calls).

But the point still stands; flasking your tank while you're learning will prevent a lot of deaths during Warrior shouts.

yeah proof that experience is far more important than gear.

More like proof that Flask of the Titans gives more HP than going from Valor->Wrath

Excellent - thanks for the responses so far. So if we're talking stamina - are we shooting for 8-10k hp via flasky tricks? Said tank is sitting about 7k hp and can ding 10k with the last stand pre-flask (or is is post-flask... I'm a hunter n00b, please forgive)

-Z

The most important things to have on nefarian is last stand or lifegiving gem for warrior calls and flask of the titans/any stamina buffs possible (boar lung comes to mind). 8/8 might will work but jeeze just go kill onyxia and get him a helm of wrath before you go in. The fight is not agro sensitive at all.

I'd say ~9k hp would be good for learning. Flask up the MT and save your pot cooldown to use a greater shadow protection potion for the warrior call and you should be good.

I've never seen someone pull aggro on Nef. It's too long of a fight for mana users to sustain anywhere near max dps, and rogues can often vanish multiple times in phase 2. DPS warriors (almost) always have aggro issues, so if it's only them, I wouldn't call it aggro sensitive.

Point taken.

The out aggro issue is more of out aggroing an offtank, granted this is nearly irellevant for any raid with a dorf priest in it, but mage call can still lead to Nef facing away for a split second (and its always just as he is about to cast shadowflame).

But as said above, yeah, if anyone other than a dps warrior out aggros the MT on nefarian then something is deeply wrong.