The art of trashtanking

Synopsis
Tanking trash needs dps to understand game mechanics. You can't tank decent with stupid dps.

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Last night I was one of 3 tanks in Naxx 25. The trash tanking in Deathknight Wing can be hard. We did it over and over again after resetting the instance several times when we were failing on Razuvious trying for immortal. (Only to find someone dying on the boss right after that.)

Anyway the packs in there are pretty hard and consist of 5 or more and you often get 2 groups. The raidleader said our tanking sucked. And yes indeed the trash was all over the place. Though I really don't think it was because of bad tanking. It was because of bad dps.

Some examples.

• A dps gets agro. He starts running away. RUN TO THE TANK!? What are these people who don't know to stay in range of the tanks?
• Tanks start out on a group. Charge in and swipe. There are 3 tanks so we all 3 want to get those trash together so all our aoe hits all targets, and others can aoe all at once. We are often not given time to do this and while moving there is already hard aoe and dps on mobs. You loose agro and you have to chase them.
• A rogue wanted to have some fun and gets agro on a mob. You taunt it and want to drag it into the pack. Instead the rogue stuns it... dps on the mob still continues, meaning you have to go back to the mob, do dps and hope you got to do enough threat when the mob gets out of the stun.

All the examples above are there because people have lost respect for trash. Understandable, but I think my raidleader should understand that and not say that 3, good, extremely well geared, tanks are sucking so hastily.

Anyway... the next and last example is in my opinion something hard to forgive. The arrogance is so huge and it shows a total lack of knowledge of the game mechanics. Again we are tanking trash. There is aoe damage. Normally swipe can do more threat then any aoe dps can so that is no problem. The only preblem is there when someone does single target dps. In this case a hunter. There are 3 tanks, and 6 mobs. Not all mobs are targetted by the tanks. Sure the tanks can switch between them, but it is really hard to do it correctly (not without marks anyway). So for tanks (at least for) tanking trash is having 1 main target you mangle and maul and the rest you swipe. Call them main target and off-target. next to that I constantly watch for some mob to break out of the pack so I can taunt it.

To continue on the example. The hunter had chosen a target that was an off-target for all 3 tanks and was not being tanked by anyone directly. This mob then ran towards him and I taunted it. It turned, came back to me, but when he was close the taunt had stopped working and the mob ran back towards the hunter. The thing was, all this time the hunter had targeted this mob and had not stopped dps. If this player had been decent he would have done any of the following (decreasing in most appropriate thing to do, nr 1 being the best imo):

1. before gaining initial agro, he would have seen himself high on the threatlist and switched to a different target. /target tank /assist. Very simple;
2. before gaining initial agro, seen himself high on the threatlist and he could have done Feign Death;
3. when the mob was running towards him he could have done a Feign Death;
4. when the mob was taunted by me he could have changed his target.

No. None of the above. Instead he kept on shooting this target so it ran straight back to him after the taunt was over. I talked to him and he said: "It is the job of the tanks to get them off me". So I really hope he doesn't understand game mechanics rather then be very arrogant, but then again, what is someone like him doing in a hard core raiding guild? Naxx has been to easy on bad players to perform well.

Anyway, to finish my story, if you have dps that doesn't allow you to tank you have to switch your target to the mob running away. You get that mob but that means you can't get threat on other mobs. So they break loose and you have to taunt those, with taunt being on cooldown. It is a cascading effect, that makes it seem you are sucking at tanking. Instead the dps that overagros should wake up and realise they might be doing something wrong...

Immortal not far away - a fail story

Synopsis
We tried an immortal run this week. We didn't get it but it was not far away.

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We tried to casually do an immortal run. It was our first serious try. We didn't expect to be able to do it. But we would try our best at least.

We started out on Razuvious and there was some interruption of the MC which killed someone. That meant full reset. Run out, reform the raid with a new leader and go back in. Try him again. Downside, you have to clear all trash again. This time fill military quarter went without death.
The construction quarter was next. At Thaddius we used to have lost of disconnect at times. Now one of our more stable raiders (who disconnects seldom), which is nearly everyone really, now disconnected. So we quickly adjusted and moved to the sides. This unfortunately coincided with a polarity shift. While I am using DBM that gave me a huge warning, stopped running to the sides and crossed over diagonally... some others didn't I think. They realized too late their polarity had shifted and they died. The disconnecting hunter survived the whole fight...
We went on and because of kidding around some people died. For instance on Noth I saw a mage had agro (living bomb) and he did not get into the paladin's consecration. If I would have been in bearform (which I would have been was it still immortal, take no risks!) I could have taunted earlier and he would not have died.

The only thing that went wrong further on was a rogue dying on KT, but that might have been because the focus was low.

Anyway, next week a new try. We are also trying to do malygos under 6 minutes. If those 2 succeed I only need 20 man naxx and to die on sarth 25 (like in ont of my previous posts) to get the heroic raiding drake.

I wonder how many weeks are left before the patch. I hope at least some. I like mounts!

Here I am to save the day - an epic story

Synopsis
A story about a disastrous battle versus Kel'Thuzad whit a happy ending; starring Monedula.

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Ok, time for a first druid post. Not as much a post about tanking or dps, theorycrafting or mechanics, but a story of a fight verses Kel'Thuzad on Naxxramas 25 man. that happened about a week ago.

First of all you must know that our tactic on Kel'Thuzad makes use of 3 tanks. One maintank, and 2 offtanks. Could be done with 1 offtank, but having 2 offtanks means, first of all, it is easier to pick up the 4 scarab-like adds and thus less raid damage. Second, tanks are melee and that would endanger the maintank and other melee on Kel'Thuzad in case of a frostblast. We don't need the extra dps that much either. Third, it is easier to heal 2 tanks then 1 getting double damage.

My roll was that of an offtank. A Deathknight was the maintank. A paladin was the other offtank. We started out fine but at 50% something went wrong. I don't know what exactly but our Deathknight maintank died. Me and the Paladin both went to get Kel'Thuzad and the Paladin won. So I went to give a combat ress to the Deathknight. Both me and the Deathknight went back to the entrance of the chamber waiting for the adds.

The adds came. I was comfortably tanking 2 of them and the same goes for the Deathknight. Again however something went wrong. This was a real disastrous try. Definitely the worst one since we first cleared Naxxramas. What exactly went wrong, I again don't know but the Paladin died. Kel'Thuzad had no tank. Again, now dragging the scarab adds, me and the deathknight raced for Kel'Thuzad. Again I lost, that is to say, the Deathknight taunted first.

Now I realized we had a Deathknight without any buffs tanking 2 adds and Kel'Thuzad. He is very well geared but I would rather have me tanking all the adds then have those on our Deathknight. So I started taunting the adds from the Deathknight. Being in a corner, to prevent people dying from frostblast that might land on me, was not that easy. I got one and hit him a few times. That time the Deathknight died again. Disaster!

Now we had Kel'Thuzad focussing on healers and dps and also a scarab around. At this point I forgot I had an aoe taunt ability (which is not something you use often) and I single target taunted Kel'Thuzad. Went to tank him and started looking for the loose scarab. Once I had targetted him I saw him making a pretty angel out of a holy priest and then I taunted him and he came to me.
I was swiping to get overall agro, and then targetted Kel'Thuzad again. I realized he was out of range and I had lost agro. Luckily he had targeted a rogue who for a few moments was evasion tanking Kel'Thuzad. Taunted again and started swiping and throwing everything at them.

So there I was, Kel'thusad at 20% health with him hitting me, aided by his 4 scarab adds. Half the raid was lying dead on the floor. I used every cooldown I had and I am glad our healers are sublime! Finally the evil bastard died!

It was the most fun I could ever have on what would have otherwise been a pretty boring fight. Everyone else hated it, I loved it! I Love tanking!