I dont know if this has already been adressed... I did a search but couldnt find anything, so if it has been discussed already, please redirect me to that post / thread.

(For the record, I play a rogue
Profile: http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?1037231)

Now, on to my question. What kind of equipment should tanks use this fight? My guild has currently downed 5 bosses in Nax (Anub, Faerlina, Maexxna, Instructor and Noth) and has C'thun on farm status. Our GM has decided that we need to gear up 7-8 warriors (or something like that) in max Dreadnaught to be able to take the 4H... which I believe is a bit of a procrastination.

So what do you guys say? Do we need 7-8 Dreadnaught tanks or not?

Thanks for the fast answer Praetorian. You guessed right, our GM is infact a Warrior (in addition, our 1st MT). We agreed on having 4 full Dreadnaught tanks (rogues and warriors agreed) , giving these 4 guys prio on all T3 drops, and after that letting the rogues grab some parts. Now, however it seems as if the conditions are changing... but I cannot see the use of gearing up warriors so fast before giving rogues the huge dps buff coming from BS (well not the belt, but the other parts... Never-ending agony ftw).

Any other opinions would be helpful, thanks anyway though.

Nihilum, Euro horde guild killed them with 8 warriors on 4 dreadnaught.

http://www.nihilum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=3974

Death and Taxes have also killed them, but I can't speak for the number of warriors they used.

We made a similar deal. We've got 4 tanks now with the 4pc bonus including me, and we're gearing 2-3 more up. In return, Rogues get preference on all the trinkets, rings, cloaks etc until we're done with that (along with hunters). They all got their Deathdealers pieces first too, so noone is really undergeared for the place, and any leftover warrior/rog pieces are theirs, of course.

We killed Gothik yesterday so with a fresh reset we'll be looking at the 4 Horsemen this week I expect. I'm not familiar with the fight either but I've read enough about them to know you need excellent coordination and teamwork. The 4pc bonus is basically just that, a bonus so your taunt resists are less which makes it "easier". I guess we'll see how the fight goes right now with 4 tanks with it and work it out from there, there's been a few guilds who killed them without a lot of 4pc bonusses.

Basically. I think that once you have the execution down, "bad luck" will wipe you. There are three ways to minimize that bad luck: 1) bring more warriors; 2) have more warriors with 4/9 DN to reduce the chance of resists; 3) have more DPS so the fight ends faster and improbable events thus have less time to occur.

I'd recommend balancing those three elements.

Gurg in your estimation do you think the 4H encounter is properly balanced for what most would consider a standard 40 man raiding group?

We only had 3 warriors with the 4piece for our first kill, although since then we have been prioritizing warriors and have gotten 3 more warriors with the 4 piece. It cuts down on the randomness without a doubt but it isn't as necessary as your GM probably thinks. Having 8 warriors with full dreadnaught seems counterproductive as well, since most of them won't be tanking anything other than the horsemen, who don't hit very hard.

Where did you see that Kel was taken to 1% twice before despawning?

Saph takes lots of FrR crafting to beat, and I wouldn't say he is a reward boss.

WoW europe forums where it was posted by a number of members of Nihilum, and a Screen shot was given.

I'm really not the one to ask because we haven't killed them. But yes, I think the 4H are remarkable in that it proves that Blizzard can design a killable boss with a weeks-long learning curve. Every other boss in the game has either died relatively quickly, to someone, or has proven to be unbeatable.

Edit: There's an interview at worldofraids.com with Nihilum's raid leader (I think?) and he says that he thinks Sapphiron is harder than 4H, but 4H have a much tougher learning curve. The Four Horsemen are pretty much as complex a fight as Blizzard has ever designed, and the fact that it is possible to plausibly debate the merits of a dozen different strategies at length suggests as much. I'm sure that once someone releases a video and the world can see that, ok, this strat will work for sure, you'll see them die much faster. One of the hardest part of the 4H is arriving at a strat that really works. It can be deceptive -- sometimes you think you just need to improve your execution more and it'll be fine, or that you just got really unlucky, when actually the underlying strat is wrong. That's part of what makes the learning curve so steep -- and they are really unforgiving so most screwups will rapidly result in a wipe.

Margin for error. XI has posted as much on these forums -- basically you "need" 6 tanks. More just gives you more margin for error.