Solo tanking Heroic Garrosh --- any tips?

[Captainn]

I'm going to be single tanking it soon, was wondering if anyone had any tips for cooldown usage or anything that you may have learned. Externals available: Life Cacoon, vigilance, Smoke Bomb, Pain Suppression. This is ten man by the way.

[Zabuzan]

Hey!

I solo tanked it for our first kill a few weeks ago.

From a tanking perspective, you can actually manage without any externals if you are holding off on EF and using it when you are getting pummeled. The Malkorok Vial trinket and the Protectors AoE mit CD trinket are pretty useful as well, though I dropped the AoE mit trinket for Thok's Tail Tip for the extra HPS for massive damage (and HPS as it happens). I used externals for safety, so that I was just on churning out EFs on 3HP for the damage increase with GoWoG. Divine Protection works nicely unglyphed for the 40% magic damage reduction.

Phase 1 - Adds do shadow damage on Heroic, not physical! First desecrate the whole raid stacks in the middle and we AoE it down with the adds. Nothing is alive long, Use DP.

Next wave of adds, we drop the desecrate out. When the war song goes off, I use DP chained into Ironbark and Vigilance.

Transition 1 - I blow every personal CD to soak the annihilates. If you can soak every single one, it's a massive DPS increase, even though Vengeance drops rapidly when tanking the boss again in P2. Annihilate soaking as below:
DP + AD
GoAK
DP (+Ironbark for safety in case of a timing mess up!)
End of phase.

Phase 2
5 stacks - Vigilance
7 stacks - DP
WC #1
4 stacks - DP
8/9 stacks - Pain Suppression
WC #2 - DP
7 stacks - Ironbark
9 stacks - DP
WC #3

^^ Basically, you swap IB/Vigi/Pain Sup around to suit where you start to feel a bit squishy! Once you hit EWCs (we purposefully took one in P2 and one in P3) after T2, assuming you do that (PS: just stand at the back of the room and don't take part during T2!), you have AD and GoaK up... basically making you invincible even at higher stacks, with EF self sustaining you through the mitigated damage no sweat.

Externals obviously depend on your strat and comp too. For instance, for WC #3 in P2, we had the whole raid stack on Garrosh in a Barrier, which obviously also gave me a bit of extra damage reduction by being inside it as well

Final note - P3 is the only part in the fight where the DPS check is a little tight (though not so much post nerf), if you are solo tanking you cannot survive more than 1 EWC, as the explosion during the 2nd EWC is too big to survive whilst also taking the other EWC AoE damage + damage from adds. If you have pushed the boss into the P4 RP, your raiders should survive the tank blast unmitigated, though a small raid mit CD might be useful if you don't need it for the Iron Star explosion in P4.

I've waffled a bit! Anyway, hope some of that may be of use. Best of luck It's a fun fight to solo tank.

[Soloz]

I do almost the same as Zab.

With my raid setup I have Vigilance(x2), Ironbark, and Life Cacoon.(Hand of Sac too but don't use it)

Phase 1

1st Adds

They get aoe'd downed really quick, DP

2nd Adds

Our DK aoe grips on me,monk ring of peace, and devo. When Garrosh buffs them our hunter binding shots and our druid typhoons behind me and when that runs out I use DP and use Light's Hammer.

1st Transition

DP+AD
GotAK
DP+Stoneform(External if not Dwarf/Cloak proc/not soak a couple)

Phase 2

6-7 stacks DP
1st WC
6 stacks Vigilance
8-9 stacks Ironbark
11 stacks DP
2nd WC
6 stacks Vigilance
8-9 stacks AD+Life Cacoon+Stoneform
11 stacks DP
3rd WC

2nd Transition

We skip it :/

Rinse repeat(We push boss after 1 EWC)

Phase 3

Pretty much a rinse and repeat of Phase 2 with cooldowns while putting GotAK or AD in there as needed

Phase 4

What are cooldowns? Do you mean Wings?

[Montoyal]

Would you guys recommend one tanking it as the first strategy to try out?

[Zabuzan]

I would say it depends on the strengths of your group.

We didn't want to solo heal it, but we didn't have a 2nd tank so would have been using a DPS OS, which resulted in lower net raid DPS to 2 tank / 2 heal than 1 tank / 2 heal (even having both tanks soak annihilates and vengeance trading during Phase 2, 1 tanking was around 150k higher net raid DPS). That won't be the case for every group.

You also need to be pretty confident to solo tank it, CDs need to be spot on, having a selection of trinkets so you can swap things around to find what's best for your setup ( I started using Spark and Thok's, switched to Malk's and Protector's, then dropped Protector's for Thok's on our kill) is pretty useful.

It's certainly higher risk to solo tank it it also leaves no room for error in Phase 3, as if you don't meet the DPS check for only 1 EWC during P3 it's a raid wipe.

On a side note - don't ever take part in the ToES transition!!! Empowered MC's are a piece of piss and Empowered Desecrate makes no difference Stand at the back and wait for it to end with Garrosh at 80 energy or whaetever! I say this pretty much every time I talk to anyone about Garrosh haha.

[Deleted]

What kind of ilvl are we talking about when you guys attempted this? I'm currently at 564 since I switched from Blood DK for the final 3 bosses (61% Haste / 30% Mastery / 910K Stamina). Overall it didn't go too bad since we didn't really sort external Cooldowns (Sac/Pain/Vig) as the original plan was to two tank it so we just did 1 tank for some test pulls before raid time ran out.

I'm running with 4 set currently for the free SoTR, I took Light's Hammer for the pickup & 2nd pack extra healing on Iron Star then for a little help for WC & MC's but I'd be interested to know what 90 talent you guys ran with since I normally run with Holy Prism I'm still a little unsure about which is optimal.

Assuming you guys also ran with Blinding Light glyph for the adds in the first transition, did you glyph your Avengers Shield? I'm unsure if its worth it or not since the AoE in Phase 1 & the transition is important or just stick with Holy Wrath for my left over glyph slot.

[Soloz]

I had 572 Ilvl for our kill with one tanking. Ran with Light's hammer for P1 add packs and Annihilate part in T1, Used for MC's whenever it was up also. May try out HPrism though. I didn't glyph for AS or Blinding though, ran with Wog glyph, Alabaster, and HW glyph(the stun one). Used the WoG glyph cause I used Divine Purpose and was fishing for proc's. and HW glyph so I still had some damage going out from the stun.

61% haste? I assume you are adding the attack speed buff to it which doesn't count as haste really. You should be fine solo tanking it just make good use of your cds and externals in P2 and P3, you get 7 debuff stacks before first WC, and 11-12 before all other WC.

[Deleted]

I had 572 Ilvl for our kill with one tanking. Ran with Light's hammer for P1 add packs and Annihilate part in T1, Used for MC's whenever it was up also. May try out HPrism though. I didn't glyph for AS or Blinding though, ran with Wog glyph, Alabaster, and HW glyph(the stun one). Used the WoG glyph cause I used Divine Purpose and was fishing for proc's. and HW glyph so I still had some damage going out from the stun.

61% haste? I assume you are adding the attack speed buff to it which doesn't count as haste really. You should be fine solo tanking it just make good use of your cds and externals in P2 and P3, you get 7 debuff stacks before first WC, and 11-12 before all other WC.

Okay cheers, and yes I'm talking raid buffed.