The Ultimate Test: Malygos?

So I got curious and brought my pet into a Malygos 10-man with a single healer, just to see how he'd hold up. It was pretty bad; he took three melee hits and went down. But I'm not yet fully 'tanked out', nor was my pet massively buffed or not.

So while this might belong in the theorycraft area, I can't help but wonder: anyone have some suggestions for just how to make this tanking a possibility? Obviously, 'more buffs' is an obvious one, but what about types? Should I focus more on extra armor and/or HP in my talent build, or should the talents focus on anti-spell and let the buffs handle armor/HP?

The build I was using on the turtle for this test was as follows:
http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc#Mc0u0bGzf0oM
The one I usually use for the turtle (since he is my main 'endurance' tank rather than 'TPS' tank):
http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc#Mc0GbrMzbzoM

As for myself, here's my present tanking build:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cV0G0ggRiuhestcj0b
I had some plans to put points into Survival instead, but felt for myself that GFTT might be more important for pure TPS.
And tanking gear (which I wear to solo mostly) should be in my Armory:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Emerald+Dream&n=Kurasu

This may be an impossibility, but damned if I want to say so without giving it my utmost try. It is, as the title suggests, the big test for me.

Your test pet build looks pretty good, except I would probably take the points out of Great Resistance and put them in Cobra Reflexes/Spiked Collar for threat and perhaps grabbing Last Stand. While Arcane Breaths deal a lot of spike damage, its a small percentage of the overall damage on the tank on phase 1. Further more, between 3 points in avoidance, pet base 80 resist and another 75 resist from Improved Gift of the Wild, your pet should be taking something like 10-15% of the breaths normal damage.

For your spec I'd take the 2 points out of Improved Revive Pet to fill Lethal Shots and place a point into Aspect Mastery. If your pet dies while tanking Maly its all over, 4 second pet res or not. Adding the last point in Lethal Shots will result in slightly more threat from Cobra Strikes and Go For the Throat and the point in Aspect Mastery will give more threat through more pet AP and more potent Growls.

The two biggest issues I see for this is positioning and threat. Since your raid members are going to have to hold back significantly even before factoring spark buffs, the total time spent in phase 1 is going to be much greater than normal. In order for this to be possible your DPS is going to have to be very good at DPSing during the drake phase, and I'd strongly recommend bringing at least 1 rogue for Tricks of the Trade. For positioning you may have to end up using passive to try to run your pet the correct direction for the first breath after the vortexes to keep your raid from getting hit as trying to use Eyes of the Beast. It shouldn't be fatal with the amount of health you'd have in a pet tanking build, but it will certainly hurt and you'd definitely want your healers to be aware. Alternatively you might have to make a strategy change where the raid is more responsible for moving while the tank stays fairly still.

One problem I see is that when the vortex hits your pet will despawn. I'm not sure if it clears the threat of him, but even if it doesn't, the lag of re-spawning the pet could easily kill a raid member before your pet is on Malygos again.

Due to the strict enrage timer, your pet might not be able to boost enough threat to make it possible to kill Maly in time. Unless you go with a raid with several MD/TotT and aggro resets such as FD and Vanish. Your best bet is bringing 7 well geared hunters incl yourself and 3 healers.

You will need luck with the sparks, because repositioning Malygos is going to be quite hard. You will have to use EotB due to the breath being too risky if you use the /petfollow way to move him around.

The sparks will need focus to be dealt with. Especially if they come from the wrong direction. There's no need for anyone in the raid to be standing in sparks with good dps, but it helps a lot. And if all dps have aggro reseters, they can nuke their hearts out.

The guild has a number of rogues and two other frequent raiding hunters. I would expect to be able to get at least two other MDers (either two rogues or one rogue and one hunter) in a 10-man fairly easily, though I doubt 7 would be much of an option without a heck of a lot of luck and without a full scheduling.

The enrage timer was one of the things I'd been considering as my #2 concern (#1 being the survivability; if the tank can't live, everything else is moot). I'd hoped that with rotating MDs (I was anticipating the above 'two others' as a regular thing) the threat would be able to be held well enough, and with maneuvering (/petfollow and re-sending the pet once we were rotated) being able to keep the breath away from the sparked players. He supposedly waits to breathe on vortex, so I'd have time to get out of the way of it. I probably couldn't keep him facing away from *all* the sparks unless we had a DK to stack them, but I could easily turn him away from one of the spawned ones immediately on exiting. Just a matter of, where I usually run *toward* the spark when I fall out of vortex, run *away* from it with the pet. As for killing the things, that part is no problem. As long as people are paying attention and chasing them down fast enough.

You do make a solid point about the vortex despawn, though. That part, I'd forgotten completely about. And with a despawning pet, whether it's normally a full aggro-wipe or not, the pet would probably fall completely off the aggro meter on vortex since it would effectively 'go away'. I doubt that MDs would be able to hold enough aggro in that case without said full party of redirectors, especially if people hopped into the spark zones since the pet wouldn't have that advantage. Will have to get a glance at Omen the next time we run a 10-man and see if the pet's threat disappears completely like I expect it will.

Blasted vortex. Ruining our Malygos experience since day 1!

Well, we can only hope that the despawning of the pet doesn't reset aggro or make it respawn only after Malygos has already meleed a raid member to death.

Pets despawning during vortex is a result of being too far away from your pet, not an effect of the vortex itself. If you position Maly's back legs are around the center of the platform such that you and your pet are equal distances away form the center, it shouldn't despawn. It'll probably take a little practice, but it should be doable.

You can have your pet on the other side of the platform without it being too far away. I really doubt that's the reason for the despawning. Especially since it respawns automatically. It wouldn't do that if it was a range issue.

I'm pretty sure my pets have never despawned in this phase, maybe there is a glitch?

Doug wrote:I'm pretty sure my pets have never despawned in this phase, maybe there is a glitch?

I am positive that every time I have entered this phase, 100% of the time, my pets despawn. I have never had a time they *didn't* despawn.

However, and the reason I forgot that they despawn, they reappear without needing to be resummoned when the vortex disappears and you are dropped back to the ground. As Nordh said, it's automatic, and doesn't seem to be a range issue. I'm not sure what sort of issue it *is*, unfortunately. I can't think of why this would be advantageous or disadvantageous in the battle.

I stand corrected, I interpreted de-spawn as having to resummon. Can't honestly say I've noticed that they just disappear now you mention it, I'm always worried about my own dps here.

I am not sure how one can test the effect of this on aggro without getting a seriously annoyed tank. Might be easier to do in 10-man.

Doug wrote:I am not sure how one can test the effect of this on aggro without getting a seriously annoyed tank. Might be easier to do in 10-man.

Actually, using Omen, it should be easy to test. 25-man, there'd probably be too many bodies to do so, but in 10-man, you should be able to get your pet high enough on the meter to be seen when the vortex hits (*without* pulling aggro right off the tank), and you can give a comparison. Of course, that's a guess; I haven't run Malygos at all since the single test to see how my armor would handle the melee.

Ahh, I had assumed they meant the permanent type of despawn that requires calling your pet again. Pets can get far enough away from their masters during the vortex for that to occur if the pet if far enough to one side as the vortex lifts you into the air quite a ways. I remember this happening very often in the past but that might have been something they've since fixed.

Once the servers come back up I'll try to convince a guild healer to come into Maly to test if the temporary despawn is indeed a complete aggro wipe.

That might be the best way to find out for sure. Failing that and if omen doesn't help one could perhaps test if the pet's special abilities (like the wolf howl) still functions in this phase: Is it possible that they just get lifted up like any character?

Your pet is not active, so you can't use howl. Pet bar disappears, pet target frame disappears.

The question isn't whether or not it despawns, because it does. The question is, will it reset the aggro and if not, will it respawn before Malygos melees someone?

In that case someone would just have to do a test with omen in a ten man.

Just did a fail EoE run and it does appear that the pet drops off omen altogether in the air phase and then start from scratch.

Would be nice if someone could confirm though.

Omen is an estimated tool though, so until you've tried to tank it, and then noticed that it's got its aggro completely reset after the vortex, only then will you know if it's indeed reset or not.

But I guess it would follow under the same principle as dismissing and recalling the pet. =/

No, Omen has been changed now. It actually asks the game for the threat on a mob, which is why it doesn't always report threat exactly in real time.

As long as you are attacking something Omen will return the ACTUAL rather than DERIVED threat as used to be the case. So in this particular instance it is quite definitive I would imagine. The details are on the Curse website.

I just did another (fail) run. But I can now confirm that all pets drop off the Omen meter completely and start with zero threat after the air phase.

So no dice

Oh, that's an utter bummer. I wonder if there's a reason for the pets despawning there. Obviously it's programming mechanics of some sort, but is it a bug, or 'working as intended'?

I guess we could hash back and forth about that forever; we'd have to get a Blue to tell us to know for sure the 'why', and that'd probably be something we wouldn't hear much on.

So looks like the 'ultimate test' is an 'ultimate failure'. On to offtanking Ulduar 10.

The reason that they despawn has to do with the behaviour of the pets in there I believe. It was really horrible in the beginning and I guess this was a cheaper solution than make the pets fly around.

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Your check puppy produce appears quite good, except I would possibly consider the factors away from decent Resistance and suit them in Cobra Reflexes/Spiked training collar for risk and possibly grabbing last Stand. even although Arcane Breaths offer loads of spike damage, its only a tiny percentage using the basic harm concerning the tank on point 1. additional more, in between three factors in avoidance, puppy bottom 80 resist and an additional 75 resist from enhanced current using the Wild, your puppy must develop to be getting a thing like 10-15% using the breaths common damage