Main Tank Strategy: Utgard Keep (Heroic)

My first full heroic tanking, and as I noticed that people were looking for some ideas for general strategy, I figured that I should add my thoughts about this subject.

For the record, if you are wanting to do a Heroic tanking with your hunter, UK is going to be one of the easiest to start on. It is a very simple, straightforward tank through most of it, with the biggest problem you'll have being multiple mobs. Honestly, I'd like to consider this (for me, anyway) the 'gear check' of the Heroic world: if you die while trying to tank UK, you're likely not going to have luck with tanking anywhere else.

A second CC'er in here is not strictly necessary, but it will be a huge help for keeping the groups down. Since you have mob groups of 3-4 for the most part, keeping the numbers as low as possible is the key to making sure your healer doesn't feel too overworked. For me, I had an extra hunter in here; our Freeze Arrows were massively helpful to keep the groups to 1 and 2 at a time, rather than trying to MT the entire group of 4.

For the first few Vrykul pulls, the easiest thing for me to do was to let the hunter drop a trap in front of one of the mobs (not *on* it), then pull with my own arrow (dropping it on the mob). The pet then picked up the mob(s) that came to us, burned them down, and sent the pet to tank and pick up the frozen mobs. He handled two at a time, even three at a time, but aggro control was a little iffy if people got froggy and attacked the wrong target, so unless your group is willing to listen to who to attack, limiting the numbers is safest.

When it comes to the proto-drakes, turning their back to the party is usually important, since they fire breath. However, maneuvaring with the pet is awkward, at best. For here, an EotB pull is helpful, but even better is a MD pull to the pet, and let the party do the running behind. That way you can ensure solid aggro and the party doesn't need to worry about fire breath. The healer will have to be on the ball here, though, as the drakes can hit quite hard, and a badly-timed crit can spell the end.

The first boss here, Prince Keleseth, is easy as heck. You aren't going to be able to control the skellies without some major luck, so either have an offtank of some sort (even if it's just a Boomkin or second hunter) or AOE at the ready. Ice blocks should be broken ASAP unless you're going for the achievement; there'll never be a worry about your pet being 'blocked', but if the healer gets ice blocked, it could be all over very quickly.

The second boss, the paired nasties of Dalronn and Skarvold, is probably going to be the hardest one of the bunch. Normally, the idea is to burn the pair down together, rather than letting one get resurrected and the undead version causing a lot of pain. However, this isn't such an easy option with a pet tank, since the aggro it holds will only really be *solid* against one of them, with the other being mostly held from going after the healer. For my preference, we downed the melee individual first, though in hindsight we probably should have gone for the caster; the melee one is much easier to tank (other than random charges). Actually killing them wasn't too horrible, though the healer had to work very hard; be ready for a lot of healing to be needed, and be ready for the summoned undead rather like the skeletons with Boss #1.

Finally, Ingvarr is essentially one big tank n' spank. Put your pet on him in Phase 1 with a MD, and just burn him down. To save on your healer's mana (and sanity), you may want to position yourself off to one side and let the pet turn him away from the party that way. Then, when he is downed, and the cutscene is beginning, run around behind him. In that way, you can make certain to be behind him so the boss can be quickly turned away from the party. Once it has been turned, though, get the heck out of dodge yourself; make sure the pet stays behind him, but getting caught in the smash hurts badly.

Great walkthrough. I've been trying to get a group for UK myself, and now im even more inspired.

I guess the second phase of ingvar would be a perfect place to use the 'pet stay' trick.

also, on the second boss, if the undead version is really alot worse, and you've built enough threat, couldn't you burn one, leave it at 5% and then burn the other one?

This is awesome.

In reg UK, we burned the caster down to 20% and then went for both at the same time.

Well written, thank you.

Ihlos wrote:I guess the second phase of ingvar would be a perfect place to use the 'pet stay' trick.

I agree on this. The hardest part about using it here is trying to get behind him in the first place to put your pet on 'stay'. You don't want to aggro him onto you before the pet, after all.

I had thought about doing the 'burn one to a low number, then the other', yes. With how fast 5% went down, though, stopping at 20% (as suggested by Scaresome) would probably be better; they aren't exactly *weak*, but trying to stop at 5%, if you have a lot of DOTs going and a possible few shots of AOE on skeletons, it'd be a possibility of accidentally killing him. And I'd much rather be tanking an undead Dalronn/Skarvold that I *expected* to have to deal with. So yeah. The usual technique of 'get one down low, then work on the other, then burn together' is probably a much better idea than my 'burn one' suggestion if you can do it. Especially since if you kill one dead, there is a delay while they are ressurrected. That short delay can mean 10% or more is taken off the still living counterpart while they can do nothing back. If both are low, that may be a lifesaver.

I agree on this. The hardest part about using it here is trying to get behind him in the first place to put your pet on 'stay'. You don't want to aggro him onto you before the pet, after all. Smile

Just put stay on him anytime during the fight and either have him in defensive mode. Or if you prefer passive, just stay -> /petattack. Either way, he'll stay where the boss dies in phase 1, waiting for phase 2.

The second boss was the hardest, getting one down to 20% and then nuking the other was how I did it after 2-3 wipes from the resurrected versions.

I managed to tank this (heroic) with bananaman before 3.1

I was lucky in that the Healer was very good (had a hunter himself so actually understood what i was trying to do) and that the dps were actually fairly inexperianced which was a bit of a boost as the DPS was fairly low making generating threat a bit less of an issue - i also had 2 of them as mages for CC, though didnt use this all that much in the end.

Was a challenge but alot of fun and inspired me to do more with pet tanking - as i did this on a semi dps build with no real stam gear selected - and before the 3.1 added wild hunt and the glyph of mending

Boss two was done with the classic 10% to go and switch. Though we did wipe twice here.

Boss 3 i positioned by launching Bananaman forward whilst circling left - then calling him back a spilt second to turn him. DPS ran right and we fought him across the platform.

Bananaman tanked the first with out a prob and most of the second (AOE avoidance ftw!) but sucked a nasty crit and got pretty much 1-shotted. Thankfully Ingvar was pretty much dead and we managed to down him before the last of us died.

But the healer was key - i tried again later and failed miserably on trash as the healer didnt understand the need to 'spam teh healz'

I've not been able to get in since 3.1 on as a tank as the guildies are all offspec tanks and, funnily enough, i'm not taken seriously...