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  1. #1
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    Guardian tanking Blade Lord Tay'ak

    I have a few questions regarding tanking him as bear. While we get the tactics down (which I think we managed to do last night), surviving and taking less damage is a bonus. (10-man normal)

    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...ses&boss=63664 / http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...C3%AD/advanced

    Should I consider him as Gara'jal where avoidance is "the king" as he seems to hit with melee more than with spells? If so SD >>> FR? Also should I take armor/mastery elixir or dodge/mastery elixir instead of Flask of the Earth? Although having high stamina is is some what good to survive all the bad stuff.

    The strange thing was that I managed to drop the"overwhelming assault" stacks, even when I had the aggro... Maybe it was due to me moving him to the next location, I dunno. The application of "Overwhelming assault" on me didn't seem to hurt me as much as it did our second tank (although I took more damage then him). He placing the second stack of debuff on me, didn't hurt that much, but half the time when he applied "overwhelming strike" on paladin, he almost one shotted or managed to kill him. But I could manage to take 3 stacks as I was half the health, the 4 stack killed me (that happened when paladin died after he got his second stack).

    So in general should I concentrate on using FR or SD?

  2. #2
    If so SD >>> FR?
    Yes.

    Also should I take armor/mastery elixir or dodge/mastery elixir instead of Flask of the Earth?
    O.o

    There's no reason to flask Stamina for any normal mode this tier. Crit / Armor is the best combo by a pretty wide margin.

    Keep using SD.

  3. #3
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    There's no reason to flask Stamina for any normal mode this tier. Crit / Armor is the best combo by a pretty wide margin.
    Darn, need to hope I proc on my elixirs then. Thanks for that tip.

  4. #4
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    You should really never get more than 2 stacks, have you and your co-tank taunt off each other after the 2nd stack of overwhelming assault. That way you can drop the stacks just as he takes his 2nd one too. Also makes sure to always pop a light CD when you are close to take the 2nd stack.

  5. #5
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    I got 3 stacks and got the 4th which killed me, cause the paladin was dead already and CR was used (did this for luls and maybe a chance to see how far we could push it with 2 healers dead and another one oom). And I know that one should taunt after 2 stacks. That's what we did (taunt when second stack was applied and you didn't have the debuff on), but the application of second stack, kept killing the paladin, that's why ended up tanking tay'ak alone on some pulls.

  6. #6
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    Well, make sure your pala is topped off and have him blow some CDs then? :/ He shouldn't really die by that 2nd spell imo. Cause that seems to be the only problem for what I can see.

  7. #7
    You should consider HotW for this fight. Let the pally tank at the start and with a caster weapon spam wrath at him until the first unseen strike (at this point you'll have about 5 seconds of hotw left but just ignore it and equip your staff while entering bear form at the same time.

    When you get into the corridor of incessant flatulence (the wind tunnel) you can focus on getting to the end (catform charge is the best way to cheat the last row of tornados) and pop hotw to either heal (if the raid is slow getting there) or spam wrath (for increased damage).

    Your paladin friend is probably doing something horribly wrong as for his issues. I haven't really tanked on mine since firelands so I cant tell you if the new mastery can be timed with overwhelming assault but the least he can do is use a glyphed DP each time.

    Good luck getting him to not die, but ultimately there's no reason at all he should be dying to a mechanic he has a 100% chance to mitigate 20% damage or more each time.

  8. #8
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    I have a 463 caster weapon and very low haste rating, thus wrath doesn't seem to be that good of an option or maybe I just don't feel that comfortable casting it. Call me an idiot or noob if you please, but I just don't like using wrath. I will consider however using HotW with tranquility as we probably won't have any other druid along.

    Gonna give tay'ak a go tonight (if all people show up). Hoping to at least see the wind tunnel phase if nothing else.

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    Since you should be lusting at the start of the fight anyways, popping HotW with a pre-pot and wrath spamming is actually quite significant. I end up pulling upwards of 90k+ DPS until its my turn to tank.

    If you're still against this then you should just use natures vigil.

  10. #10
    If you have dbm, its always good to pop barkskin right before that second overwhelming assault hit lands, they end up hitting pretty damn hard near the end of p1.

  11. #11
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    We made it to the phase 2, YAY (would've wanted to strangle the mage though as he failed on DPS (as our lower geared hunter out DPSed him)). No logs yet, since goblins decided to take a way my internet hour sooner then planned

    But I tried crit/armor elixir, I ended up switching to stamina flask. Just so cause I seriously felt that after a wipe (getting CR x_X before the wipe) loosing my elixirs when I die is not worth the loss of those extra stats. While my stamina flask persists through death. And the extra healthpool comes in handy. For our "Farm" kills the crit/armor combination is a decent thing. As for progression I will probably go with a flask.

    Barkskin tip is a good one, though I tend to keep in on CD, but I will try to keep it available for that. Full hit he did with overwhelming assault and melee hit was 400k, no damage reductions, but with some CD I get around 300k with the assault+melee hit.

    As we started lusting in the start I might as well give HotW a go, I just need to fix my shapeshifting macros for a weapon switch. Just a quaetion - do the weapon /equipt should be after or before the "powershift" line?

  12. #12
    Normaly I use two elixirs for this fight (mastery/armor or crit/armor), but as you've said.. if you die, you have to drink those elixirs again. Tanking a boss and having eyes on the mechanics, while glancing at your inventory to find those damn bottles is kinda annoying :b

    On which class do you use your symbiosis? My tankbuddy is a DK, so he is my one and only useful option in my raid, and if I'm not horrible wrong right now, your option seems to be Beermug (hah, luv the name!), but this extra-mini CD isn't very handy for overwhelming assault :|

    Like others have mentioned, you're good to go with small CDs on the second overwhelming assault, when the boss hasn't much stacks yet. Normaly it's me who is tanking the boss before he's switching to phase 2, so I pop survival instincts on the last hit and I'm fine. And don't forget to top off everyone before the transition.

    In phase two, you can pop stampeding roar to help your raid to get from A to B and when the boss is going to move from B to A, we have everyone running back to his old position, while one tank and one healer stay at the boss. The rest of the raid use the wind walls on the side to get there.
    ››yeah, here used to be a signature once. I've must lost it somewhere in the twisting nether... still waiting for the mail from the postmaster.

  13. #13
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    I use on our shaman for lightning shield for most fights what I tank. For bosses that require avoidance I take the monk's dodge thingy. Last night I had to use it on holy pala, as to get an extra CR in, when the boomkin's was on CD, and we didn't have our lock along.

  14. #14
    tanking blade lord (and phase 1 in general) should pretty much be a piece of cake.. I'm curious what exactly you're struggling with. For one thing, just because you can take 3 overwhelming assaults doesn't mean you should. The only thing that ever caused a phase 1 wipe for us was someone not stacking properly for unseen strike, but that should be rare. The easiest way to deal with this is to have everyone come stack up on the tanks.. but move out quick! you dont want a tornado spawning there if you can avoid it.

    In general you should be spending rage on SD, but its a good idea to FR right after the assault - you'll have high vengeance for a massive heal just when you need it.

    Also when I tank, I use zero stam gems, no stam trinkets, and I flask AGI. your mileage may vary ;P

  15. #15
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    People not paying attention is the main reason and well then there is the amount of DPS ofc. But anyhow, we are learning and fixing our mistakes.

    The amount of damage what I or the other tank get, makes it hard for healers to keep us topped off (but they are learning). As I usually end up dieing if I get 30k+90k melee hits+200 (300)k overwhelming assault hit+other dmg when he applies the second stack. And if I'm not at full health I'm more or less dead. The most funniest thing is that paladin has more health than me, I take more damage then him, but I'm harder to kill...
    Just our of curiousity, what is your unbuffed health in bear form dennis?

    Healed myself for 162k with FR for one usage of FR on most times.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Sonnillon View Post
    People not paying attention is the main reason and well then there is the amount of DPS ofc. But anyhow, we are learning and fixing our mistakes.

    The amount of damage what I or the other tank get, makes it hard for healers to keep us topped off (but they are learning). As I usually end up dieing if I get 30k+90k melee hits+200 (300)k overwhelming assault hit+other dmg when he applies the second stack. And if I'm not at full health I'm more or less dead. The most funniest thing is that paladin has more health than me, I take more damage then him, but I'm harder to kill...
    Just our of curiousity, what is your unbuffed health in bear form dennis?

    Healed myself for 162k with FR for one usage of FR on most times.
    If you try to keep up SD most of the time you're tanking, and then FR right after the assault hit, you should be pretty safe. I'm not sure of the math with the new maul but that may be a viable option as well.

    Paladins are interesting.. does he know he should be using seal if insight, glyph of insight etc? They have a lot of cooldowns too, make sure he's rotating cooldowns while tanking.

    If you're 3 healing and still struggling, its possible your healers arent coordinating well; we 2 heal and I havent noticed any problems with healing. Thinking back on it I remember being like ouch that second assault really hurts.. but there should be cooldowns available for it - like the other poster said, saving barkskin for that timeframe is a good idea.

    I'm at work atm so I dont know what my health is, but Im usually feral so I just use the same gear since crit and mastery are perfectly viable for guardian anyway. We don't get the same type of benefit from stam that blood DKs get, for example. Paladins don't either; if he's using stam stuff you may want to have him reconsider. My pally's tank gear is way behind atm, but I think hit/exp > haste > mastery is probably an ideal method.

    I have a super headache atm so forgive me if anything I've said is useless

  17. #17
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    I will try to keep SD up and save my Barkskin CD for second assault. I do use maul to dump my rage when I'm not tanking tay'ak. Maybe the "wrong" usage of barkskin was one of the reason why I felt like I was tanking in my troll form. And if we reach tay'ak I will try HotW Wrath out during the start and see what happens. Our last few attempts we tried 2 healing and the healers had bit of mana issues by the time we hit the end of p1. But the healing I recieved seemed the same, I was not that topped as I would've wanted to be, but as long as I have health to survive the assaults, I'll be fine.

    It is a uber fun boss to tank and see how people curse in mumble if they end up being knocked in the tornados and thanks to that kill the raid as they were too late to stack :P. I lasted rather long in one of our attempts when we reached second phase and I was only one alive on boss. I would've lasted longer, but the enrage unfortunately was the killer.

    This is a druid forum, but you can nitpick on my co-tank if you like http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lador/advanced

  18. #18
    You are in luck my friend. US armory is blocked at work but I can see EU

    Your co-tank.. has not read up on how to gear, lets put it that way. He's gemming and enchanting stam which is sooooo bad for prot paladin. He needs to understand that you ONLY want enough stam that you arent getting like 2 shot by bosses, once you have "enough" stam, its basically a worthless stat. Dodge and parry really arent very good right now.. they're not so bad that I'd say he HAS to change his stat priority, but I really think he should. Mastery is really good for paladins, hit/exp capping is a good idea, holy power generation and active mitigation with shield of the righteous is important, you can't just be a meat shield anymore. Both of his trinkets absolutely have to go. They are the worst trinkets he could possibly be using, I'm not kidding... and yeah all those stam and dodge enchants and gems need to go. Dodge is okay to have a little of but stacking a bunch is completely awful. His talents and glyphs look fine.. I'm guessing he got used to the way pallies geared in Cata and just never realized that it completely changed.

    With his low hit and expertise, he's not generating much holy power, can't keep up shield of the righteous on-demand, can't word of glory much.. its bad news. Unfortunately I'm not super-knowledgeable about prot pallies since I mostly heal on mine, so you *might* want to send him to the prot guide here on the forums, but I think just fixing his gear will make a huge difference.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Sonnillon View Post
    I got 3 stacks and got the 4th which killed me, cause the paladin was dead already and CR was used (did this for luls and maybe a chance to see how far we could push it with 2 healers dead and another one oom). And I know that one should taunt after 2 stacks. That's what we did (taunt when second stack was applied and you didn't have the debuff on), but the application of second stack, kept killing the paladin, that's why ended up tanking tay'ak alone on some pulls.
    I don't know what kind of gear you have but on normal, I don't understand why you're having issues with too much dmg taken - unless you take more than 2 stacks. Cause if you take more than 2 stacks, you can't really expect your healers to keep you up for long.

    I know that Arielle just said, that there's no need for Stam flasks on normal but I don't quite agree. Unseen strike should not be an issue, assuming everyone stacks up. The tornado phase on the other hand, is all about surviving. Your healers won't be able to heal much while running, trying to dodge tornadoes themselves as well.

    About SD on this fight; well, I don't use it much. Imo topping myself off with an FR after Unseen Strike is much more beneficial, cause while tanking the boss, the dmg isn't high and your healers really shouldn't struggle at all.

    I tanked this on heroic using stam flask and FR over SD and had no problems doing it like that tbh.

  20. #20
    I tanked this on heroic using stam flask and FR over SD and had no problems doing it like that tbh.
    Heroic isn't the same thing as Normal. Vengeance doesn't even get remotely high enough on Normal for FR to be a potentially better option than SD.

    You should be almost the first person to the other side during tornado phase anyway, and once you're there it's easy to keep yourself alive with FR.

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