[Prot] Solo tanking T15

[Deleted]

Okay, so had a request to make a post about solo tanking so here goes. Will try to make it as short and simple as possible, not make things more complicated than it is. Also mention how viable it is.

10 man normal ofc.

Jin'Rokh

Very straight forward. Have someone else taunt off right before a toss so you do not get tossed. Just heal through the debuff.
I would say you are better off going 2 tanks 2 healers than 1 tank since that will most likely require 3 healers.
But if you only have 1 tank or just for the lols, go for it, not that hard.


Horridon

Use SotR for every Tripple Puncture. Solve the stun on the first gate, either by lightning fast dispells or having some other person tanking the stunneres. Other than that just make sure you are able to aggro all the mobs, reset your stacks frequently and use CDs when war-god comes.
If you can pull it off, totally worth it, but can be troublesome for progressing guilds dealing with the stunners at the first gate, and wiping at first gate is no fun.

Council

The more interrupts you have on the priest the easier. Other than that, same as usual. Best way to deal with the frost guy is pingponging him when he got frostbite on. You can do that with 1 other player ( I use a holy paladin to help me ), simply have him taunt, taunt back before he punches him in the face, have him taunt again, then taunt again. You basically need 2 taunts from him to avoid getting stunned.
Or if you have 2 players. Have player A taunt, then player B taunts, then player A taunt, then you taunt again.
Don't stand in shit.
Quite easy to do and totally worth it.


Tortos

Are you not 1 tanking this? DO IT!
Use battle-healer. Use SotR on every snapping bite.
If you have bats up for the quake (slack dps), you can blow a bigger CD.
I like not to use SotR on the snapping bite right before the bats spawn. So every time before/when bats are spawning, I let a snapping bite through for 2 reasons.
1. Allows me to bank up 5 HoPo for when bats land
2. Me dropping lower in HP lets me do more SoI healing on myself making the bats 100% aggro me. If I didn't do this, especially on the first waves, then healers or boomkin with starfall could sometimes rip adds. So this was a safe way of getting the adds to come to me.

When the bats land, start off with a minor CD, like trinket or DP or something, apply weakened blow asap to the bats, after that focus on Tortos again only consecrating the bats. You can switch fully to adds if they are not dieng before quake, but I thought that was a waste of dps on the boss. Make sure you are not tanking bats your back.

Just rinse and repeat. Don't fail on snapping bites. I put focus on tortos to easy see his cast bar even when targeting bats.
You really should 1 tank this encounter.


Megaera

Oh! The fun starts now! This is solo tanking as it is meant to be done!

Several strats for this. I will go through them from worst to best in my opinion. Every strat pretty much requires you to only get 2 breaths per head.

The by far worst way is having a ranged tank on one of the head. It is actually very possible to have a warlock or even a hunter pet tanking 1 head, specifically the one not being nuked. But this is normally more trouble than it is worth. People don't realise that the heads do not do that much damage when out of range.

Still, this is in my opinion the worst strat unless you pull off a hunter pet tanking a head


One of the ways are going Green - Frost - Red - Green - Frost - Red - Green
When you are tanking Green + Frost, simply position yourself between the heads. Stand so you are front tanking both heads. Before the breath position yourself as close to the blue head and the water as you can. This will allow melee to stand on max range from green so they don't get hit by the blue.
Another, worse, way to deal with the breath, is if you are killing say green, you run around blue and stand on the side between blue and red, this will cause both the blue and green head to spray away from the raid, the green head will pound a few ranged attacks on you for no reason so it is a worse way to do it.
Pretty much exactly the same thing when tanking Red + Blue.

The iffy thing becomes when you have Red+Green. Red is obviously the kill target here. You are simply gonna have to range tank the green head, for breaths try to run towards blue so that melee can stand safely on max range at red. Melee really need to think about their positioning when solo tanking so they stand on max range, it is a huge hitbox.
Range tanking hurts but it is possibly, if you have a hunter pet or warlock for the green head you can also use it on the green head.

Which leaves to the best way to do this. Going G-R-G-R-G-R-G, simply using above Green+Blue / Red+Blue strategy.
It is very very simple. The only part here that you need to deal with is the stack from the blue one. This is simply dealt with by having a dps taunting of 1 breath every second head. This usually leaves you time to reset it. If it for some reason, just have that dps taunt of 2 breaths. That dps should just taunt of 1 second before breaths as they are really predictable, if done correctly he will not even get melee hitted. This works like a charm and is not hard at all.

This boss stands pretty much the same as Jin'Rokh. It is solo tankable, but no real benefit, though if you only have 1 tank, you do not need to call the raid, it is doable with 1 tank.


Ji-Kun

The hardest boss in the instance to one tank.
Three ways to solve this.

1. Be stronk, survive all the talon rakes.
2. Have a dps capable of taunting off 2 stacks of talon rakes and you take like 6-8 stacks atleast.
3. Go the 1 tank 1 healer 8 dps tactic and nuke. 4 dps on the first nest, 4 on the second, then burn baby burn.

But this fight as said, is by far the hardest and least benefitial to solo tank other than for the lulz. If you can solo tank this boss, you can kill it on heroic.


Durumu

Ehr, are you not solo tanking here? SotR for death stare. Roll CDs during the beams. I solo soak yellow beam, you can have someone in it if you want. Really really easy. I use Unbreakable Spirit, simply using Divine Shield resetting after the first death stare in the beam phase. If I have CDs up and full health I sometimes wait 1 more stare. Usually at 5-6 stacks. I then don't bother to BoP again, but you can if you want. Stacks falls of themself during maze and you will have bubble back for the next beam phase anyway, so I do not even use BoP, but you can if you want.

You really should 1 tank this.


Primordius
Well pretty obvious way to one tank this, just heal through the buff, try to get mutated if possible while kiting, but , why bother? Go two tanks.
Possible to 1 tank but no gain.


Dark Animus
Have a hunter pet, terracotta trinket or similar take 1 add in the start, after that just be strong taking both boss + massive.
Again, low gain not really needed. Another tactic I heard was doable. Was having the solo tank start on one corner of the room having add that noone is taking being on the other side of the room. This add will aggro the tank by healing aggro. The goal is to kill 1 of the tanks adds before the add from the other side reaches the tank, so that the tank never gets 3 adds at the same time. This of course require good burst and coordination. Again, go 2 tanks. You can solo tank it, but that is for epeen, not benefit.


Iron Qon
1 tank this.

I just used unbreakable spirit bubble resetting stacks every 2.5-4 minutes. Can reset every 1 minute with BoP and shield and stuff, but, vengeance is fun. Extremely easy to one man tank, stacks barely hurt. I even stand in fire and lightning for higher vengeance.


Twins

Just survive the stacking fire debuff either by CD rotating, very easy if you have a disc priest that knows how to play. Or have someone taunt of and eat a stack every now and then. Extremely easy and benefitial to solo tank, something you can easily try out.


Lei-Shen

Rotate CDs for the decaps. Good if you can get 2 only, but not the end of the world if you get 3. SotR + a 20% reduction is generally enough for decapitates, the issue comes in the 30 following second when the boss is gonna hulk smash you into the ground. Be ready for intense healing and almost 200k dps. You probably need a self healer in your pillar group, someone that can heal himself basically.
P2 easy pie, just position yourself nicely so you dont get knocked to far away. SoL is key here to get back to boss before he runs out of range from the pillar, or priest life grip. P3, burn.

Overall very easy to solo tank, and quite benefitial. The only part you really need to solve is the transition phase so you have someone that can successfully help you in your section.

For the decaps I use,
First: GoAK
Second: Dprot, Stone Form, Barkskin
Third: Pain sup, ardent defender

I used to do it without pain sup, was just something we started using now lately to make it even easier.




Summary
Every boss fight can be solo tanked. Some are just more benefitial than others.


Bosses you should solo tank
Tortos
Durumu
Iron Qon
Twins

Bosses that a progressing guild can solo tank That is, you can actually take your first kill with 1 tank without to much problem.
Jin'Rokh
Horridon
Council
Lei-Shen

Considering that a guild that is progressing Jin'Rokh/Horridon normal right now is maybe not so geared or contain the most experienced players, those two could arguably be removed from that list and be put into the next. So Jin'Rokh and Horridon is borderline in this category.

Bosses that can be solo tanked on farm kills You killed the boss before, and your second tank could not raid tonight, don't worry, you can still kill the farm!

Jin'Rokh (wanted this in both categories)
Horridon (wanted this in both categories)
Megaera
Primordius


Bosses that can be solo tanked for fun but will probably be very hard and expect a wipe or 50

Primordius (wanted this in both categories)
Dark Animus
Ji-Kun



That completes this solo tanking guide. Any questions on how to pull of specific bosses, do not be afraid to ask.

[Deleted]

One question for you (i posted this elsewhere). On Tortos heroic, I am having issues with battle healer not pulling adds to me, is this because of shells on the raid? Is it safe to take a bite to the face when they spawn, get healed up and then hit crystal before they actually get to me?

[Deleted]

Battle healer is not helping you because of the shells, correct. Taking a bite to the face could help you, but is far from safe. If you are running heroic it is safe to assume that you have competent raid group, so either having a hunter dropping 2 multishots with MD right when the bats spawn every time or having a paladin healer with RF on standing between the boss and you is probably safer and easier ways to deal with it.

[Fhi]

You have two Jin'Rokhs and no Ji-Kuns.

[Deleted]

Didn't you see patch notes? Ji-Kuns model was removed because it offended all the people that did not know that the bird was the word. So it has been replaced by Jin'Rokhs twin brother.



And yeah, fixed.

[Deleted]

We had our paladin tank solo tank Tortos on our very first kill after I read Firefly's advice in the prot pally sticky, and he said it was a ton of fun! He died once on one try due to messing up one ShotR timing, but every other try was flawless. It was awesome watching the bats just make a beeline for him as soon as they spawned

As a healer, I also found it much easier only having one tank to heal. Definitely recommend!

[Deleted]

We had our paladin tank solo tank Tortos on our very first kill, and he said it was a ton of fun! He died once on one try due to messing up one ShotR timing, but every other try was flawless. It was awesome watching the bats just make a beeline for him as soon as they spawned

As a healer, I also found it much easier only having one tank to heal. Definitely recommend!

Our healers also supported this by saying it was a lot easier to solo heal. I believe we only did 2 or 3 pulls with 2 tanks before switchin to 1 tank. Was so much easier. It is a bit tricky though, 1 bad times SotR can be a death, but timing SotR with snapping bites is not really that hard, just needs a bit of focus.

[Deleted]

Our healers also supported this by saying it was a lot easier to solo heal. I believe we only did 2 or 3 pulls with 2 tanks before switchin to 1 tank. Was so much easier. It is a bit tricky though, 1 bad times SotR can be a death, but timing SotR with snapping bites is not really that hard, just needs a bit of focus.

Yup, as a healer I saw your advice in the sticky thread above and just had to try it out. Worked very well, so thanks! And you're not wrong about the ShtoR timing, the one time he messed up was just instant death

[Deleted]

My gear was just shit the first time I was on Tortos, missing an SotR during bats then was pretty much 50/50 on death/life. But now I can actually afford to miss SotR with a few more ilvls. Still, not a forgiving fight with missing SotRs.

[Deleted]

We solo tank Primordius with minimal effort. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7105&e=7425
We have a Fury with Die by the Sword though, which makes bubbling stacks on some fights easier I guess.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ifire/advanced our Prot paladin.

I wouldn't advise solo-tanking Horridon at all though, unless your raid has no melee dps. That would just be horrible for them...
-- And most people who could solotank Horridon, have probably already killed it on HC. :P like you said.

[Deleted]

The thing with solo tanking primordius, is that it is not hard. It is just not benefitial, you most likely gain more dps and lower the healing requirements by bringing two tanks. So it is one of those, yeah, you can easily do it, but why would you.

We have always been stacking up horridon on top of melees since day 1, even when using 2 tanks on the boss for melese to cleave. We have not seen it as an issue at all. You got nameplates for a reason. However, I can see how some players would have problems with it.
Solo tanking it almost makes it easier for melee because of due to the angle of the raid and boss, the double swipes are less likely to hit melee.

[Wraith87]

i found this really interesting .. gonna try solo tanking some bosses after ive read this :P

[Deleted]

you can BoP/Bubble Decapitates

[Tomhvk]

Great guide, can anyone possibly give a quick run through of HEROIC bosses that can/should be solo tanked.

I really dont want to start changing tactics around for normal if we have to go back to 2 tanks in the coming weeks.

[Deleted]

For those fights that doesn't have any game breaking mechanic changes, it is pretty much the same, only that it will be tougher and require harder execution. On the top of my head, with room for obvious error as I have not done or attempted to solo tank any heroic boss yet. With reservation of being completely wrong

I guess that

Horridon
Council
Tortos
Durumu
Qon
Twins

are probably solo tankable.

Megaera
Primordius
Dark Animus
Lei-Shen

maybe, but unlikely.

No idea about Jin'rokh or Ji-Kun

[Lethora]

I'm trying to convince our raid leader to let me solo tank more stuff. Good thing was that our offtank got killed yesterday during first black phase on Durumu, thus letting me show the true power of prot paladin to raid. This is 25man, however, and tank damage is higher.

[Deleted]

I do not really want to comment about 25 as I raid 10. But in 10, if you are able to solo tank, it is a huuuuuge benefit, since the solo tank will do a lot more damage than he usually does, aswell as you gain another dps. Instead of having 2 tanks doing 100k dps, you can have 1 tank doin 140k and a dps doing 120k.

[Kroni]

How easy is it to solotank Twins?

I guess the beast is not the problem, then the fire debuff, how hard does it hit? Can we bubble it? I guess i would not survive all stacks if i would get them all and you cant really let them fall either. In the last phase the twins do more damage if they stay together right? Itns that a problem?

For Lei shen, this looks easily managable... just use CDs for decapitate, bop the debuff and go on... then in the last phase run away while thunderstruck is cast to reset o guess.

I just solotanked durumu and quon HC(last phase, but not dead yet) until now, but its fun and my cotank loves to do DPS and is really good at it too (was DPS and switched to tank to help us) so its good that there are those fights!

Thanks

[Deleted]

Twins (normal) is very easy to solo tank. The fire debuffs is the only issue yeah, but nothing minor CDs cant fix. If you have a disc priest that you can coplay with, it is a complete joke. Without Disc, you rotate CDs wisely.

[Miedo]

Solo tanking Horridon would be nice, but impossible for melee to hit the adds you're tanking. Also 3 battle bears + Horridon would smash your face in, even with cooldown- which you then wouldn't be able to use when the guy jumps down out of the stands. Not to mention the 3rd door, with the MS (x3) + Triple puncture.