We used them extensively, they definitely prevent the stun. I do not think they prevent any damage, but it allowed our tanks to wear more avoidance (and more hit to avoid annoying taunt resists).

...Either I'm misreading this or yeah. If you bring a bear tank you will still get mangle and FF. The mangle will be less often due to hit, so you can probably half the numbers on that one..but I always keep FF up personally, reducing boss armor for a little extra means more damage which means more threat.



On the heroic Kael discussion, this may seem like a no brainer, but if you're having dps issues on him, switch to cat form during gravity lapse and his stun right after. Also the fireballs hit for 5kish, for anyone who's curious, so if you get hit by a few, it won't kill you right off the bat if you're at 18k+ hp.

I am not sure what advice to give you for tanking heroic Magisters Terrace, I have been using my standard heroic tank set which includes a massive 29000 armour.
I guess it depends on who you are playing with as I have done it in a group very similar to the one you listed, I had a tree healing instead of a CoH priest.
My heroic tank set is very offensive, 4.8% hit and 32 expertise. I used to have more hit rating but changed some stuff around when I got upgrades recently, before the upgrades I had about 500 less armour, 5.8% hit but only 16 expertise which give 4% anti dodge and parry. I am logged out in my heroic/raid trash tanking setup now, the [Shard of Contempt] used to be an [Alchemist's Stone], this may be too much expertise now.

The following is mostly general tips with some MrT stuff in there, the post ended up a lot longer than I expected so I made it more general and reorganised it.
You need to keep mobs off your healer, DPS can and should avoid pulling aggro but if your healer is getting hit things go bad very quickly.
Use all of your abilities to achieve this, as someone mentioned already use Line of Sight (LoS).
If you think you will be taking a lot of damage on the pull use Barkskin before you pull, the start of the fight is the most important time for your healer so taking less damage then is good.

A smooth pull makes a huge of difference.
Tips I do to try and avoid things going wrong:
Cast Wrath at the mob the mage will Polymorph so if it breaks it comes for me, not them, making it easier for them to sheep it again.
Cyclone a mob to stagger incoming damage, very handy on twin pulls of heavy hitting mobs as this is when the healer is most vulnerable, not as important as your gear improves.
Moonfire an extra mob so you have threat on it before it gets to you.

You can combine these things as well, on tricky pulls I will do the following:
1. Cast Wrath the second mob to be killed, while the cast is in progress choose the fourth mob to be killed.
2. When the latency indicator on my castbar indicates Wrath has finished I cast Cyclone, while that casts I select the third mob to be killed.
3. When the latency indicator on my castbar indicates Cyclone has finished I start backing up and cast moonfire on the third mob to be killed and select the first kill target.
4. While backing up, or turning to run depending on how close the corner or my chose fight location is, I hit bear form and Enrage.

I have the Intensity talent so enrage gives me more rage, if you are running back far enough you can fit in another moonfire but be careful of the GCD preventing you getting into bear form.
With the bonus rage we can get at the start it is possible to get Demoralizing Roar up before the mob/s hit you further reducing initial healer danger and adding some threat to all the mobs.
If you are tanking four mobs and used Cyclone you should be able to get two Swipes in before the Cycloned mob gets to you, keep an eye out for it so you can select it as it comes and stop it hitting your healer. Ask the healer to stand in a position so that if he gets healing threat the mob runs past you not away from you.
Assuming you have enough rage, which you should with three mobs on you, you can Maul the first kill target while Swiping the others.
After picking up the Cycloned mob you might have to Taunt the first kill target depending on what your DPS classes are like, if it is close to death already you can just Bash it so it doesn't kill someone before it dies and work on getting a threat lead on the second kill target.

If the pulls are bigger than four and you don't have any CC DPS needs to be more careful than usual, if they are stupid let them die, just make sure you keep the healer alive as your healer can't really choose not to generate threat.
Most larger pulls in five man instances normally contain mobs which don't hit very hard, those six pulls before the first boss in Magisters Terrace are like this and some of them are casters which your armour doesn't do anything to. Initially I was quite cautious and pulled them with Barkskin/Hurricane which let me get two ticks of Hurricane before I hit bear form and ducked out of LoS, that should be enough threat to keep it off your healer.
The last run I did I just ran into the middle of them and cast Barkskin/Hurricane, warn your healer first if you try this. Healing threat is split between the mobs so your healer should be safe but a tree druid can get threat at the very start if you are not on full health and there is a HoT on you.
If you want to be more cautious go in in bear form and use Demoralizing Roar first then pop out and Barkskin/Hurricane, after it finishes just Swipe lots while tabbing between mobs each time you auto attack or Maul, depending on rage.
Note. This is how I did the dancers in Karazhan right from the start if we didn't have a paladin with us.

All of the above comes down to your group working together as a team, if DPS starts before the mobs get to where you want to fight them it sucks as you will be out of position and most likely have mobs hitting you from behind, but as you have recently killed Illidan I am going to assume that they have some idea of how threat mechanics work.

If your Warlock decided that Seed of Corruption was the right spell to cast and you want to save him use Challenging Roar, if he does the same thing next pull you can Bash one mob and Taunt the other or you can point and laugh.
Rogues using Blade Flurry will pull the second target from you, you can ask them not to use it but it kills shit faster so I just deal with it. If the primary target is still on you you can just Taunt the second one, if both have turned on the rogue Bash the one on the lowest life, it should be primary kill target or something went wrong, and Taunt the other.
If the first isn't dead before the stun wears off it is the Rogues turn to use his cooldowns.
If you have a Rogue try and make sure the mobs don't move around much as they can't control the second target for Blade Flurry and you want the damage focussed.
On large pulls I don't mind the Rogue using Cheap Shot, as it helps the healer out by minimising initial damage, with three or four mobs hitting you you should still have enough rage, on single or double pulls I prefer it they don't unless the mobs are hard hitters, either way they need to wait for the mobs to be in position.

My suggestion is to read the first posts, read them a few times if you need to.
Also read Working Theories of Theorycrafting as of 2.3 so you have a better understanding of what other classes do.

Astrylian as put a huge amount of time and effort into the Rawr program, I was late to use it but now I have I was a fool not to earlier, have a look at it as it will help you plan your sets out much more easily, it is linked in the first post.

Excellent writeup of multi-mob tanking. Thank you. It'd almost be worth incorporating into a playstyle guide.

I'm looking to be tanking Brutallus, honestly it concerns me more than any boss in TBC so far. Any critique of my proposed gear without breaking the forum ban on fight details would be great:


[Thunderheart Cover] 5agi/7sta 18sta/5%meta +16def/+17dodge
[Pendant of Titans]
[Thunderheart Pauldrons] 15sta 15sta +15def/10dodge
[Slikk's Cloak of Placation] +12agi
[Thunderheart Chestguard] 15sta 15sta 15sta +15 resilience
[Thunderheart Gauntlets] 15sta +12agi
[Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers] 4agi/6sta +12sta
[Belt of Natural Power] 4agi/6sta 4agi/6sta
[Thunderheart Leggings] +15sta +40sta/12agi
[Treads of the Den Mother]+9sta/speed
[A'dal's Signet of Defense]
[Violet Signet of the Great Protector]

[Badge of Tenacity]
[Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch]

[Wildfury Greatstaff] +35agi
[Idol of Terror]



I've got a bank full of alternatives from all kara/heroic/tier levels so rather than list all my other gear, just suggest alternatives and I can see if I have them

My dilemma is that this is pretty low on +hit/expertise - I was thinking of using [Brooch of Deftness] and enchanting the cloak with +def to maintain uncrittable.
Also maybe wear a high +sta trinket instead of Moroes? I'd dearly like to get more threat as well, but don't want to compromise my survivability.
Any other suggestions?

Regarding Fire Resist for Heroic Kael, I put on 280ish FR and did not observe a single resist on the fireballs. It may help for phoenixes and flamestrikes, but that's avoidable damage anyway.

Yeah, I noticed this the second time I tried it as well. I'm guessing the first time was just the healer adjusting to the fight, so it seemed like I was taking less damage, since the combat log hasn't been agreeing with me.

I put on my flame tanking gear for it so i guess i was around 300 FR. Also didnt get a single resist on the fireballs. I actually whent after the phoenix to see if it was affected by FR and atleast the phoenix AoE was partly resisted. Probably just gonna use cat gear with some high stamina tank items swapped in next time

Have the same experience and basically the same gear. We were close but didnt kill him yet. My gear stands for the damage but its heavy of course. I use T6 bracers and Shadowmoon + Moroes (no luck with Princess Delrissa so far) and I use them one at a time at every armor debuff. Without mentioning too much I can say that barkskin definitely is useful in this fight.

I also use Pillar.

If you have it, I would definitely suggest Pillar over Wildfury because of the extra stam. Same thing would probably apply for stam trinket over Moroes' one. Those two changes can get you a huge chunk of extra HP's, while losing a relatively small amount of avoidance.

Brooch of Deftness would definitely be a good choice, and you can make up for the loss in defense in a few ways. I don't know if you're already doing this or not, but instead of taking Fort Flasks like many tanks do, pop Agi and Ironskin elixirs every attempt. This adds some solid points of avoidance via the dodge, on top of giving you a lot of resilience, which results in you having a lot more stam because you can afford to drop some +def items in favour of stam. Depending on exactly how much defense you have over the uncrrittable point, you may be able to get away with switching out your neck and changing your cloak enchant to Steelweave (+12 def).

The hit/expertise/agility/crit you gain from that setup should help a lot with maintaining high threat, while keeping your mitigation and overall survivability high enough to cope with the damage you're taking.

[Commendation of Kael'thas] over [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch]: relatively small avoidance lost for the health gained, yes. But [Pillar of Ferocity] over [Wildfury Greatstaff]: relatively large avoidance lost for the health gained. I'd simply repeat what I said about that tradeoff earlier; that is, of all the options one has for trading avoidance for stamina, including gems and enchantments, this is not the most efficient but may still be worthwhile, especially considering that swapping weapons is a lot easier than swapping between two sets of t6 gear.