◊ Quigon

I need to update the boss guide portion of my guide:
I took a break after illidan, so: would someone be kind enough to write up a short description of advice, in the style of the guide, for the first 5 bosses of sunwell.

This is section XX.

Basically gear advice, talent spec advice (which is assumed mitigation, only mention it if otherwise). Anything aberrant that should be known.
I'll add a decent set of advice to the guide directly and credit the author.

This does not need to be a strategy guide - anything beyond 6 sentences really the individual is looking in the wrong place. Brutallus might need a bit more discussion - but not really (wear max avoidance, gem for avoidance, wear high avoidance trinket with option of commendation) is almost enough. Taunt when your balls tingle.

 

• Tauftamir

Kalecgos:

Wear gear with maximum stamina and armor. Ensure you debuff Sathrovar before you taunt him, and where possible, taunt Sathrovar just as he lands Corrupting Strike on his current target.
Kalecgo's Human form can generate a lot of threat, pay attention to his target in case you need to retaunt.
You may also want to use items which offer Hit Rating, (or Hit Rating Food) if you have issues with taunt resists.
Use cooldowns (Shield Wall etc) when tanking during the enrage from 10% > 0%.

Brutallus:

Wear maximum avoidance gear, gemmed for avoidance. A avoidance trinket(s) like [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] or [Scarab of Displacement] to use on Stomp's is invaluable. Use Last Stand/Nightmare Seed or Shield Wall to mitigate stomps where you have no trinket to use.
Make sure yourself and an offtank announce tank switches to make sure healers are prepared, usually every 3 meteor slashes. If your offtank is a Feral Druid or Paladin, you may want to let them start tanking to give you a chance to put up debuffs so they can build a good threat lead for your DPS.
If you are not currently tanking Brutallus and he is reaching enrage at a low percentage, run away. His travel time to you will give your raid as much as 20 seconds or more free DPS time if done correctly.

Felmyst:

Aggro is a bigger concern on this boss as the ground phase is tank and spank, and ranged can still DPS in the air. Ensure you have decent hit rating and expertise, while having high stamina.
In phase 2, help your Paladin tank by picking up the skeletons which spawn from the vapor, they usually aggro on whoever is closest, giving you time to pick them up before they run to healers.

Eredar Twins:

Gear for stamina, with some concession to hit or expertise if you are killing Sacrolash first. Use the 2 minute PvP trinket in case you need to remove an untimely conflagrate in Phase 1.
Sacrolash can crush, unlike many other Tier 6+ level bosses.

Is this what you were looking for? I've tried to trim the comments down as much as possible to include things only relevant to someone looking for basic information, obviously the rest can be found in the thread or various websites.

 

Xav

Kalecgos - a full mitigation spec, sacrificing 1h-specialization to max out demo + TC, etc.

Brutallus - you can do a standard tanking spec and max 1h-spec, assuming at least one other person in raid has max demo or some equiv.
When not currently tanking, make sure you run to your other tank and buff him/her with whatever shout you're on, since most (all?) tanking positions will normally leave you out of range if players don't move.

Felmyst - a spec with max 1h-specialization is useful again due to threat being more important here than before.
Intervene can be useful on yourself, or if you're OT'ing, you can intervene the MT when corrosion is cast to prevent burst damage deaths.

Eredar Twins - Yes, PvP trinket is basically essential regardless of the strategy you use, as a tank. Also depending on the kill order you may need to spec into max demo+tc and a full mitigation spec and sacrifice 1h-specialization, since you may not be threat capped in a certain kill order.

M'uru - If tanking a "side" (adds), you want high avoidance and threat. Max stamina isn't useful because all the adds do small individual damage hits but extremely rapidly. You also need to have excellent threat gen due to the high DPS requirements.
Spec wise: Max threat generation with 3/3 imp TC being essential.

If main tanking / sentinel tanking, you want extremely high stamina+armor if possible due to the high individual damage hits, and overabundance of elemental damage you take. Also highly useful to wear select "exceptional" threat pieces for Phase 2 - and swap in your best threat weapon/shield/ranged when phase 2 starts to have as much threat generation as possible.
Spec wise: Standard spec, but 2/5 imp demo and maxing out 1h-spec gives you the best threat talents and sufficient mitigation talents.

It is also worth noting that nothing in the M'uru encounter is buffed by Sunwell Radiance, which is an anomaly.
WWS report where you can check the dodge chances of the 3 tanks (Xavastrasz, Sadarie, Dartanius), and the hit rate of the various mobs. Wow Web Stats
I noticed this right away when tanking the encounter, and WWS let me know I wasn't just having a bad RNG.

 

◊ Quigon

Funny how different those two posts are. Xav's was more along what I was looking for, but I will mix some here and there, thanks.
I don't want much of a strategy guide for this compendium, unless the boss does something extremely unusual.

 

◊ Quigon

Okay I updated it, thanks again to both of you.

 

darkra

I'm trying some macros (up to now i've been tanking with all abilities in single bindings)

So i started with a simple "/cast Devastate /cast Heroic Strike" macro, to use when i got rage to spam, having Devastate on it's own on some button in case I'm rage starved. It seemed to work ok, till i used it at brutallus, where i had unlimited rage and i totally spammed it. When I checked the WWS site later, I saw that I had used almost twice the amount of Heroics compared to the amount of Devastates. I consider this a bad thing as I usually use HS only as a ragedump, and i guess it's because my macro is so basic...

Anyone got any idea how i should make it so it casts Devastate and casts Heroic only if I have rage to spare? Also any other usefull tanking macros would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams

 

jozga

I have Heroic Strike and Shield Block on a macro, in a high rage situation I can switch from spamming regular Shield Block to spamming the macro instead - it's not what you asked for but it works well to only have one button that needs to be constantly pressed.

Quick questions - with the proc from [Band of the Eternal Defender] removing scrolls, do people still consider it worth using for bosses at all? And does the proc from Bulwark also replace scrolls?

 

Xav

I don't think the Bulwark proc does. Oddly, it might be related to the icons somehow. Not sure what the graphic is on the Bulwark proc cause it's been a while, but scrolls + BotED share the same buff graphic. Anyway, you aren't using scrolls of protection on every boss, so for the majority of them, it's still very, very good! I just no longer will wear it on M'uru.

 

Suesse

What is the best sharpening stone for threat and/or damage when tanking?
I'd guess [Adamantite Sharpening Stone] due to our fast attack speed but I know [Elemental Sharpening Stone] is pretty decent for dps.
I've been using [Righteous Weapon Coating] recently, I'm pretty certain it is not the best (though it is cheap).

I pretty much never get a shaman ever.

 

• Jamor

Adamantite sharps are better for a tank. exactly why you said.

 

Mode

After some testing, it looks like you guys are right. I'm 90% sure sundering a CC'd target does not build threat on it. It was difficult to test because apparently I suck at making macros. Sure glad I never bothered trying to do it in a real situation.

 

Koshnek

I was wondering if Girdle of the Invulnerable really would be better in non-farmed fights than Fearless? Fearless is obviously better for farmed and trash, but you lose a lot of avoidance for comparatively little mitigation over Invulnerable. The expertise is nice, but unless it's Tidewalker or similar being tanked, the benefits of the expertise shouldn't trump those of the avoidance. Or am I mistaken?

 

◊ Quigon

I can add it, since its a Tier 5 item and fits in between quite well. But it also gives up armor and stamina. Raw avoidance in Tier 5 is generally a bad idea - in tier 6, maybe... and certainly for some sunwell fights.

 

Koshnek

I agree that mitigation for t5 content is superior, but would the 98 Armor, 69 health, and the expertise bonus from fearless really outweigh the extra 1.69% avoidance from Invulnerable?

With math, I do fairly well with the concepts, but I fail rather badly with the accompanying numbers. I like to perfect my tanking set(s) with what is available to me, so I just wanted to make sure I wasn't making an error in numbers.

Edit: That's all for an epic gemmed Tauren.

 

◊ Quigon

In tier 5, yes, armor and health should beat a little more avoidance. Nothing except morogrim requires avoidance... your healers won't be sweating until Tier 6, and even then, not too much minus a few notable bosses.

You don't want to be the red gemmed 13k HP tank on kael/hydross/etc.

If your healers are whining either replace them or get more avoidance. If they're whining about lack of avoidance on say: al'ar or kael - they're terrible healers. If they're whining on najentus or Teron, you should consider starting your avoidance shift. Collect both sets for now.

Frankly I've heard of tanks even killing to eredar twins with stamina gear, but most are red'ed up by brut.

 

Reliknom

Definitely killed twins with two warriors gemmed with all 15 sta.
Although the main cause for that is the lack of drops; red gemming only the (2) new T6 pieces didn't seem necessary, especially without a gem vendor.

"Morituri Nolumus Mori!"

 

Touf

I must say this surprises me. We are already out of gems, for whatever reason, so I never thought tanks would take spinels for those purposes. Perhaps we're putting too much stress on our healers this way? And I'd hate to get to KJ and end up with a "Okay, now soak 27K or die" situation. I know the dps would get really pissed off overwriting 20 spinels that way.

 

Dots

Frankly not everyone wants to give up ~835hp for ~2,9% avoidance all the time by 'red'ing up' when the total avoidance is so low to begin with and just sticks to using rings/trinkets/etc for the 1-2 fights where it is good.

 

Dra

I wouldn't even dare dream of getting a red gem. We went into sunwell with a spinal shortage and the problem has obviously gotten worse since. I frankly think that any guild that doesn't get miraculously lucky with red gem drops would be making a mistake by letting their tanks "red up".

 

• Jamor

A lot of casters are moving away from using red gems. For us, they are not the most requested gems anymore. I believe orange gems are used more.

 

Fellwraith

This becomes far less of a concern once the epic gem vendor is available on Sunwell Isle. Then it's just a matter of finding the badges to re-gem your items. Most tanks have plenty of badges if they've been doing heroics or the occasional kara/ZA run.

I'm with Dots, I didn't regem my gear so much as set aside certain pieces of gear specifically for the avoidance fights like Brutallus (T6 gloves are a good piece to socket/enchant for avoidance since Brutallus doesn't parry flurry, etc.) You shouldn't need to be 100% avoidance focused until Sunwell, and by that point, you should have some back-up pieces or doubles of some items, one gemmed for avoidance, one for stamina.

 

Xav

I'm not sure if you guys know this, but there's a daily quest chain on Sunwell Isle that opens up a vendor that actually sells you Epic gems incredibly cheap. 15 badges lets you buy a gem, even a spinel, which you can cut into whatever you like. Check it out, no more dealing with casters crying!

Edit: I didn't realize some servers still didn't have the vendor open. Wow, that's amazing. Ours took forever so I figured by now they'd all be open. Oh well!

 

Touf

That quest line moves at 1% a day on our server.

 

Anedielyon

Slower on ours...being one of the two guilds on the server killing Illidan/Actually being in BT, its hard for some people to understand how bad some drop rates of epic gems can be.

On a side note, go check out the new Rawr version. Prot Warrior option included, Good stuff!

 

Reliknom

Our server had it 5%/day, should be finished today if it's not done already. Sadly I cannot do the daily for the random casuals (even though it gives a guaranteed green item and maybe a badge too). Even more sadly I couldn't even convince some of my guld mates (and we've been server first since Gurtogg and RoS) to do the quest. some people just don't seem to care...
Casters moving away from red to orange only gave us a pyrestone shortage too, melee and hunters still seem to eat spinels for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"Morituri Nolumus Mori!"