Heroic Tortos Tank Choices

[Bonsaii]

Okay, So my guild has the following tanks:
540 Prot Pally
530 ish Guardian Druid
524 Prot Warrior

and a 535 ish Blood Tank who may or may not show up tonight.

We are a 25 man guild and we're progressing on Tortos. Last night we had our prot pally on the boss and our druid on the bats. Most of our pulls ended early due to our bear getting dropped by the bats. Part of that was poorly coordinated warlock stuns, but the other part seems to be the weakness of druids on this fight.
Should I sit our bear or have him go DPS?
If our Blood Tank shows, would he be a significant upgrade over our prot warrior?

[Deleted]

I don't think stunning the adds is a good idea. It syncs up all the hits meaning the bear very easily drops his shield.

It might be worth using a long stun on them if the shield drops for other reasons I guess. but make sure the bear gets a new quickly and that several healers spam him to make sure it's topped (and don't be fooled by a tank with full health - it's about keeping the shield topped cause without it he can die in a global).

[Bryce]

Solo tank with the pally?

Or grab a shit geared brewmaster and kite them? The kiter can be any ilvl since they'll never get hit, just have enough gear to survive the aoe from rockfall, etc.

[Deja Thoris]

What spacebot said. Stunning them is killing your tank.

The only time you should consider stunning them is if a stomp is imminent and they aren't dead.

[Deleted]

Druids are strong for taking bats. Maybe your druid is just miss playing. Make sure shield is fully charged, and have enough rage for an SD just when the bats are taken. If shit hits the fan, you can Ursols Vortex them and kite while you get a new charged shield.

[Silay]

we had a paladin tank on the boss while i kited the adds as a brewmaster ,this worked pretty much flawlessly

[Braindwen]

Bat melees are usually sync'd up without stuns when they spawn anyway, and a good long stun is easily enough time to reapply SD/SB/whatever, and bats just do pitiful damage with those up.

Also make sure the bear is using sym on a DK for bone shield. Permanent 10% DR as long as he has a shield up.

[Inthislzon]

Okay, So my guild has the following tanks:
540 Prot Pally
530 ish Guardian Druid
524 Prot Warrior

and a 535 ish Blood Tank who may or may not show up tonight.

We are a 25 man guild and we're progressing on Tortos. Last night we had our prot pally on the boss and our druid on the bats. Most of our pulls ended early due to our bear getting dropped by the bats. Part of that was poorly coordinated warlock stuns, but the other part seems to be the weakness of druids on this fight.
Should I sit our bear or have him go DPS?
If our Blood Tank shows, would he be a significant upgrade over our prot warrior?

If you have any kind of monk on your roster (and you should, considering you are 25) have him spec BrM and kite adds. There's no gear requeriment except for +ms enchant on boots, so don't worry if it's a healer or something.

[Bonsaii]

Our only monk is a meh player who's never touched brewmaster. On a scale from 1-10 how hard is it?

[eschatological]

If your monk can spam that ground targeted AoE slow (Dizzying brew?) and manage to do so while kiting, it's a joke. Our mistweaver hadn't played BrM since leveling, and he had it down in under 3 attempts.

[Inthislzon]

Our only monk is a meh player who's never touched brewmaster. On a scale from 1-10 how hard is it?

1.

All it takes is hitting 1 button (Dizzing Haze) while running in circles.

Dizzing haze is a ground targeted AoE that slows AND generates a huge amount of threat

[trystero]

I see that you got a Tortos H kill but probably not with your current guild?

I took one night of attempts (before you presumably tried kiting with BrM), and of those, these were the primary culprits for wiping:

Warrior: 1, 3
Druid: 5, 6, 10
Random (Tons of Rockfall deaths, Furious Stone Breath, etc): 2, 4, 7, 8, 9

To me, it looks as if one real reason you're having so much trouble isn't the druid (who I'll get to in a moment) but overall raid awareness. So, no, most of your pulls don't end early due to the bear's misfortunes. At least, not on that night, and certainly not on the night you decided to try and kite the bats. Lines like this are absolutely inexcusable,

[23:21:32.878] Rockfall Rockfall Siefter 316084
[23:21:33.302] Rockfall Rockfall Siefter 50551 (O: 470791) (more)

[23:21:33.302] Rockfall Rockfall Zayrinoke 75606 (A: 3994)
[23:21:34.124] Rockfall Rockfall Zayrinoke 415436 (O: 99110) (more)

Six figure rockfall damage like that comes from standing in the AoE.

Now the druid's problems aren't just "misfortune." If he's getting trucked like this, then he should probably rework his gearing strategy. There's the tank LMG. People say it sucks, but it's not nearly as terrible as you'd think, especially not on a fight where you're almost always tanking something (the bats).

Main problem, though, is irregular usage of Savage Defense. From a wipe that was predominantly his fault, this is his combat log:

[22:09:44.602] Alchemiste's Savage Defense fades from Alchemiste
[22:09:45.015] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 44109
[22:09:45.943] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 42873
[22:09:45.943] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste Dodge
[22:09:45.943] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 47461
[22:09:46.084] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 48904
[22:09:46.203] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 44674
[22:09:46.203] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 58260
[22:09:46.929] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 60457
[22:09:47.041] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 52166
[22:09:47.909] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 44138 (A: 17094)
[22:09:47.925] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste Dodge
[22:09:47.998] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 27036 (A: 17094)
[22:09:48.100] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 34142 (A: 17094)
[22:09:48.164] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 38048 (A: 17094)
[22:09:48.164] Vampiric Cave Bat hits Alchemiste 39855 (A: 17094)

He NEEDS to have SD up for the bats basically fulltime....no excuses not to. That's a pretty common line in these logs, to watch him grab the bats, take a ton of hits, and THEN cast SD...only to watch it fall off and not be reapplied for several seconds...or not at all (like wipe #6, where it fades, he doesn't reapply it, and predictably he drops).

One tip that may help him, if he's having trouble after QS, is to kite the bats a bit himself. Ursol's Vortex like the poster said above can knock them back a bit, and right before the Stomp happens he can strafe away to safety, so they're not immediately on him following.

How fast can you get the bats down, though? If you're unable to kill each pack on its own, then you're basically screwed no matter what. I don't see him or anyone else in this raid being able to tank multiple packs of bats...make sure you've got the right DPS designed to help with bats, in that case.

Overall: While I'm not giving the guardian a pass, not by any means, note that the problem isn't limited to him. Many avoidable deaths going on in this raid.

[Sierra85]

Don't stun then, swing timers etc. Keep up your active mitigation if you are going to take hits.

Try rotating your tanks and let the other tank do it, give the easier job to the weaker tank.

[Sting123]

If your really having problems with bats and want to keep things the same just do this: Bear is fine for tanking bats, just make sure hes using Ursol's Vortex. Have your melee peel off Tortos and AoE them quickly. This way ranged can stay and focus on Turtles. Stuns are fine on the bats we've used stuns since week 1 of HMs coming out in ToT. Remorseless Winter/Monk Stun etc (basically high stun duration spells) are all great (despite what previous posts said) If your having melee swap and kill them, bats should literally die by the time a 6 sec stun wears off and even if it doesn't as long as the bear is keeping up SD + his shield etc he shouldn't get hit that hard at all. You can even have a hunter MD bats and just stay on them till they are dead. This fight is all about add control. RDPS should be on turtles nonstop entire fight and bats should be 2nd priority.