Bear Tanking H Rag.

[PHsname]

Hi guys. I need a crash course on this.

Long story short, one of our tanks ninja quit and server transferred on us, and to be able to clear H Rag this week, we decided I would be the best to fill in on the short term as tank on the fight. My main spec is Resto, and I've never tanked Rag on Normal or Heroic. I haven't tanked a raid in months. I do have a large amount of off-spec gear, though.

I'm already familiar with Bear tanking and have gone through the material in the guides and whatnot. I've also done a rough search through the forums here.

What I want, however, are tips on H Rag specifically on 10 man. Is there anything in particular I should do with regards to gearing and stat balancing? Is there any reason why I shouldn't use Mirror? Are there any talent points that are or aren't particularly helpful? Any specific tips on handling whatever mechanic in the fight?

I'd also appreciate a decent hybrid DPS build catered to H Rag, as our fill-in DPS may give us issues with the p3 damage requirements. I just have so little experience tanking that I don't know what's worth keeping or taking and what's not.

Thanks in advance.

[tangedyn]

This fight is tankable with full agility gear, 180k hp is sufficient as long as you use your CDs correctly. That is, use CDs when Ragnaros is on you and a trap is about to be blown, use CDs when Ragnaros is on you and the healers are running from Seeds. There should be enough CDs to use even without the Mirror.

For Glyphs, you want to have Glyph of Mangle, Glyph of Berserk and Glyph of Rip. Spec wise, you can follow my hybrid feral guide at http://theincbear.com/hybrid-feral-guide For this fight you should probably go with Feral Aggression and Blood in the Water options, since there's nothing to interrupt, your co-tank will provide the slow debuff, AND you want the DPS boost from 25%-10%.

Try to arrange it such that at the start of P3, your co-tank is on the opposite side of the room so that you can shred. Go cat form, TF+Berserk and burst all you can until Berserk drops, then Tiger's Fury again and spend the remaining energy, before switching to bear to taunt. Make sure the co-tank and healers are aware that the co-tank will be on 8-9 stacks before you taunt!

[PHsname]

Those are some excellent tips. In particular, thanks for the spec advice.

EDIT
What consumables do you recommend, btw? Agi or Stam flask? or Elixirs?

[Rioo]

Agility all the way. And I would recommend you picking up both adds in the second transition (good time for mirror or barkskin), and using Berserk, pot and Enrage then after putting up FF and pulverize. I usually peak at 60k DPS then and we always get the adds down before Raggy returns.

Also, in p3 you want to stay in cat almost all the time. If you want the other tank can one-tank it, but I prefer to taunt at the end of World in Flames. Since Ragnaros doesn't melee during WiF the other tank's debuff will almost have run out and he can taunt back after like 5 seconds.

For a rough CD plan, I use this:

p1: Alternate between mirror and barkskin for traps. If both are ready I use barkskin if tanking Ragnaros. Don't be afraid to use the two big ones if you need, but pref. not towards the end.

p2: Barkskin for every seed explosion. If I'm tanking Ragnaros at the same time I might use FR depending on raid CDs. In this phase we pop the rest of the traps so I use mirror for them. SI is kept for if we need to run while I'm tanking and I feel healers will have a hard time.

Barkskin in transition while tanking adds.

In p3 there should be no damage except normal melee damage. Just make sure to have CDs ready for p4.

p4: I mostly use CDs for oh shit moments here because it's so rng. Barkskin while tanking him as much as possible, mirror every time you need to run out of the patch, be extra ready with the other two if healers are running or you're outside a frost patch with no barkskin or mirror.

GlhfDD

[PHsname]

Awesome thanks. This will be interesting to try out.