Warrior Tanking on Council of Elders tips?

[Wardley]

Hi,

My guild has hit a bit of a roadblock on Council of Elders (normal - not heroic). We've got 2 tanks at the moment - a warrior and a monk. We've tried Council of Elders with them trying to tank swap Malakk to avoid getting Frigid Assault, and also with the warrior tanking Malakk and using cooldowns to survive Frigid Assault and both ways don't seem to work for us.

We've also got a Pally and DK tank in the guild and using those we downed Council of Elders with the Pally tanking Malakk and using cooldowns to survive. However, at the moment those tanks aren't an option for us (holidays etc. and we don't want to not progress for the next 3 weeks).

With the Warrior and Monk tanks, we got further using the cooldown method (lasted onto Sul empowered a few times compared to wiping during the 2nd empower with tank swaps) but that was it.

Has anyone got any tips for this fight on Warrior tanks? If using cooldowns is possible - what's the best cooldowns to use and when? Or should we concentrate on the tanks getting the tank-swap method sorted instead?

[Tibeus]

Stack them all up ignore all spirits except ones that kill. Hero on pull stay on Sul till empowered one is at 30 energy then switch to empowered back on sul till about 30 energy again. Tanks should swap Frost King at 10 stacks. Have 1 tank tank Frost King other tank Sul and Priestess. Sul only attacks if he is interrupted and it is only a auto attack so he wont be a problem for tanks have 2 people stay on Sul and only switch if empowered is about to overload preferably melee they should be interrupting him as well. If you do this right you shouldn't get 1 Sandstorm if you just have a tank pop CD's and kite. I recomend the Monk do it every week on one ^^ Also have your monk spec Rushing Jade Wind and cleave them all with SCK its a huge DPS increase. I normally do about 20mil with SCK on this fight.

[Deleted]

We tank is on 25man normal with me as a warrior tank eating the fidgid assault.. although as we are progressing in the early heroics (+lots of thunderforged on 25man) i would assume my/our gear level makes it much easier to deal with.

you should really link a log or the armories of both tanks so people here can get a feel for what might need to be done.

iirc we did tank swaps early in progress on this fight... you need to have your tanks make a focus taunt macro..

/tar Frost King Malakk
/cast taunt
/targetlasttarget

or something to that degree.. make sure your tanks within range to taunt the boss and then have your Malakk tank call for a taunt when he has something like 8/10 stacks of the debuff so the other tank can taunt... when fridgid assault ends, your original malakk tank should taunt back. Use of timers/buff watching on tank/focus frames is needed here.. Communication is also key..

If you want your tank to just soak the damage.. warriors have plenty of CDs to deal with it but you also want to be calling for help from external CDs later in the fight to cover spots where he might have stuff on CD.. The main trick is to get your CDs up for the stun part of the debuff (so when Frigid Assault hits 15 stacks).

I deal with it by : Shield Block + demo shout for every one... Then rotate though last stand, demo banner, On use Trinket and Shieldwall. using one of those abilities each time. So maybe first time il use a block/shout and trinket... Last stand +banner the 2nd one.. Shield wall the next.. Trinket usuall ready for 4th, then just use wahtever CDs are coming back each following stun.

The biggest thing tho is to be vocal that your going to be stunned.. tell the healers you are stunned so that they can keep an eye on you and if necessary use an external CD

also the above is by all means not the best advice, its how i deal with it, each raid group is different and im not a top player (we are 2/12 heroic progress but seems to be stalling a bit here)

[Wardley]

We tank is on 25man normal with me as a warrior tank eating the fidgid assault.. although as we are progressing in the early heroics (+lots of thunderforged on 25man) i would assume my/our gear level makes it much easier to deal with.

you should really link a log or the armories of both tanks so people here can get a feel for what might need to be done.

iirc we did tank swaps early in progress on this fight... you need to have your tanks make a focus taunt macro..

or something to that degree.. make sure your tanks within range to taunt the boss and then have your Malakk tank call for a taunt when he has something like 8/10 stacks of the debuff so the other tank can taunt... when fridgid assault ends, your original malakk tank should taunt back. Use of timers/buff watching on tank/focus frames is needed here.. Communication is also key..

If you want your tank to just soak the damage.. warriors have plenty of CDs to deal with it but you also want to be calling for help from external CDs later in the fight to cover spots where he might have stuff on CD.. The main trick is to get your CDs up for the stun part of the debuff (so when Frigid Assault hits 15 stacks).

I deal with it by : Shield Block + demo shout for every one... Then rotate though last stand, demo banner, On use Trinket and Shieldwall. using one of those abilities each time. So maybe first time il use a block/shout and trinket... Last stand +banner the 2nd one.. Shield wall the next.. Trinket usuall ready for 4th, then just use wahtever CDs are coming back each following stun.

The biggest thing tho is to be vocal that your going to be stunned.. tell the healers you are stunned so that they can keep an eye on you and if necessary use an external CD

also the above is by all means not the best advice, its how i deal with it, each raid group is different and im not a top player (we are 2/12 heroic progress but seems to be stalling a bit here)

Thanks for all that - I'll let the tanks know and see what they say

Here's the world of logs entry for last nights raid:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-c82ce453c8a8mpxv/

And here's the armory details for both tanks

Warrior tank - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...amandar/simple
Monk tank - http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...r/Pijiu/simple

I'm pretty sure that part of the problem is that the warrior tank wasn't doubling-up cooldowns and was expecting just 1 cooldown to be enough with help from the healers. So, I'm hoping giving him some pointers on which ones to use when will help him with that.

[Deleted]

yea so looking at the logs, your warrior could definatly use his trinkets much more.... soul barrier only saw 4 uses in 19 attempts of whatever it is, maybe some of them ended to fast.. but again, if an attempt is ending after ~2 mins and its cos your tank has died is because hes not using enough CDs.. the fight is reletivly long.. you will get 2/3 uses out of all your big CDs and more use out of the shorter ones... Its better to use a CD and die trying than die because you didnt use anything.

I also see hes all glyphed for Inturrupting and spell reflection.. although this is cool i guess it seems hes mostly wasting a glyph by speccing for a reduced CD on spell reflect, then not using it.. If hes going to glyph for it, he should be using it on CD.. otherwise put one of the standard tanking glyphs in there like The ~heavy Reprocussions glyph.

Edit - Just looked at one of your longest tries... Hes taken impending victory as one of his talents, but again is not using it as much.. maybe he would be better off using one of the other talents from that tier.. if he is often going low... taking Second wind might help the healers catch him up a bit... and tbh, he cant use IV when stunned which is when he seems to need the HP.

tbh im not great about analysing logs myself.. so i will stop there.

[Khorm]

Don't eat the freeze, tank DPS is important on this fight especially if you want to burn Sul. Have your warrior spec into Bloodbath so he can double it up with Dragon Roar for extra dps.

-I tank with a pally and at the pull he'll pick up Malakk and Sul while I'll take Mar'li and take her out of cleave range then go dps Sul. This is done to ensure Mar'li will be empowered 2nd after malakk as we have 1 ranged on kazra.
-When she gets empowered I'll then go back after and interrupt with pummel and disrupting shout and bring her back to the other two and then switch back to DPS on Sul.
-Call out your taunts when Frigid Assault is going so the healers know to switch targets because when you taunt you'll be taking a lot of damage and the other tank will be hardly getting hit. Demo shout on every FA with Shield block and barrier going, once again all you need to do is taunt him and then go back to DPSing Sul.
-If Sul is still up when he gets empowered pop Mocking Banner and heroic leap out of there so quicksand doesn't screw up the other tank. I save Shield Wall for this and any other CD I have.

[Valech]

Oh, I love Council. I have to tank Mar´li, and it´s a real pleasure. If you happen to tank her as well, do the following for maximum lulz: Glyph of Spellreflection. Talent Massspellreflection and interrupting shout. Then rotate through. You will be able to take no damage at all, if you fill the small gaps of cooldowns with Shieldbarrier. just don´t forget to respecc/reglyph afterwards.

Oh, and also, write a Makro for taunting Malakk. You wont have to taunt something else in that fight. Furthermore, keep your shockwave for mar´li´s Adds (ever 2nd) if you don´t stack them. DDs will be thankful. Finally, if you happen to have a sandstormphase, use mocking banner and walk in small circles to avaoid sandpools. But you should be able to kill Sul pre sandstorm.

[Deleted]

Hey,

We also use the stacking method, purely to maximize dps on Sul and don't waste it on switching to the spirits. We tanked it with a DK and myself Prot War. The dk took care of Marli, while I took Sul and Mallak. Key point is to assign people to interupt Sul including yourself with your 2 interupts.
Marli will focus on the tank that has aggro, Sul will randomly cast sandbolts to anyone, this can create big problems when left uninterupted for say 3 or 4 casts. Interupting him is next to dpsing him down before his Sandstorm you primairy goal. Also try and call at 8 stacks of frigid assault, because when you call it your off tank has to react first and this can take a few moments. If you call at 10 there is a larger risk of you getting stunned. I spec for Hold the line, Heavy repercussions and incite/rude interuption. (I've ranked with both). Bloodbath and dragonsroar are a must.
Use massive spell reflect for when kazra'jin gets empowered. Indeed rotate your cd's for frigid assault, but more importantly (especially with a few melee cleaving sul next to you) keep interupting Sul while soaking the frigid assault, because the splash damage from the sandbolts, directed at you or the other melee can get you low very fast.

We tried a couple of tactics, first stacking (which in the beginning didnt go so well) than seperating marli from sul and mallak (which we tried for 40 tries or something....) and than back to stacking (5th try and he was down). The main issue is getting control of the incoming raid dmg through interupting spells and rotating healer cd's during kazrajin's empowerment.

Below the logs of one of the most succesful kills not that long after our first kill.

www(.)worldoflogs(.)com/reports/s8bj28q8uquepiq3/analyze/dd/source/?s=7292&e=7747

I hope this helps a bit. Good luck!