Tanking Naxx: A Hunter Perspective.

While I'm currently a bit slow writing it all down, I would like to promote and ask for help regarding my Naxx tanking strategy guide that can be found here.

If you have suggestions for bosses, or want to write an article yourself (Durante for Sapphiron perhaps? ) feel free to do so. Make a comment here, or at my blog. If you want to make the tactic-images yourself, give me a howl and I can give you the legend as a PSD.

One boss that I see being a very big challenge for pet tanking is Anub'Rekhan. Not because it would be difficult to keep up with healing/damage, but because one thing I've noticed even with my DPS pet: when the pet is pacified (with the locust swarm), it always would return to my side, since it could do absolutely nothing. You may want to mention that portion in your article so people realize how important it is to have your pet on 'Stay' when you get to the other side of the kite, as even one tick of Locust Swarm could kill you or the raid at that point otherwise (when the pet decides to play 'chase').

I don't know how much damage the locust swarm does to a pet as I've not tried to main tank him yet. However, if the damage isn't terrible with full resistance on, one thing that might work (I haven't tested it but it's a thought) is to actually put the pet on 'Stay' where Anub is tanked, and let a healer or two heal straight through the swarm. It has worked well with 'living' tanks who didn't want to risk a kite or were lazy; it might work with a pet tank if the DOT's damage is low enough by the last stack. Just make sure the healer(s) know that you intend to be digging in and taking the brunt of it first!

It's always a possibility to outheal the swarm. In fact, I believe it's easier to heal the pet through it because of all the +healing buffs it has. So it can definitely be a tactic to consider.

As for returning to your side. Never happened to me when it's doing the swarm. But I'm mostly quite careful to have passive on that boss and pull it back manually when locust swarm is cast. I can't see the reason why it would run back to your side if you tell it to attack the boss though. That only happens when your pets target gets CC:ed.

If you're doing the tactic when he's standing at one spot the whole time, just put on defensive and it will automatically charge back in if it gets confused. I do know that it can run into the swarm like that, my own mistakes have taught me that

Nordh wrote:As for returning to your side. Never happened to me when it's doing the swarm. But I'm mostly quite careful to have passive on that boss and pull it back manually when locust swarm is cast.

I tend to have my pet on 'passive', and used to just let it attack through the swarm. Due to Avoidance (so my moth could have rabid) the damage was minimal at best. But every time he'd get 'swarmed' he would immediately return to my side until the pacify wore off.

I can't see the reason why it would run back to your side if you tell it to attack the boss though. That only happens when your pets target gets CC:ed.

In effect, the pet is coming back because it is programmed 'If I can't attack the target, I return to my passive position'. In the same way a passive pet returns for a CCed mob. I expect a defensive or aggressive one might stay there; I don't know since the only time my mob is on aggressive in Naxx is during certain specific battles (i.e. the Harvester Of Souls)

I could very well be wrong in this for the reason, but I do know that the pet returns to my side when the pacify goes off, and 2+2 always equalled 4 in this case. I dunno. Maybe I was pulling it back completely unthinknig, but if so, I did it every time, even after sending the pet after the boss over again.

If you're doing the tactic when he's standing at one spot the whole time, just put on defensive and it will automatically charge back in if it gets confused. I do know that it can run into the swarm like that, my own mistakes have taught me that

Which does at least answer my 'wondering' over how it would behave on defensive/aggressive. Probably a good use for that setting, since I get annoyed at suddenly realizing 'Hey! Why is my moth beside me when it should be helping me DPS?!'

Kurasu, the swarm isn't an AoE, it's a stacking debuff, so avoidance is not appliable here.

You might be right, I've always been quite careful pulling it back. And I might be mistaking that I've had defensive a few minimal amount of times and that's why it's ran in during swarm, but before it's starting to stack or something.

However, stay/passive when the pet is in position after Swarm means it won't go anywhere. =)

Nordh wrote:Kurasu, the swarm isn't an AoE, it's a stacking debuff, so avoidance is not appliable here.

I stand corrected. The damage is still minimal, though now I get the feeling it might be because the pet is 'escaping' from it before the debuff stacks. I haven't checked how many stacks it gets; I'm usually too busy focusing all my ranged DPS on the crypt stalker who's spawned.

However, stay/passive when the pet is in position after Swarm means it won't go anywhere. =)

Definitely not arguing there. As tested out earlier, the 'stay' means the pet goes back to 'stay' position. Would definitely need to make sure there's some MDs being thrown at it, though, since who knows how long it would be before the pet could get its aggro back up. ... then again, the same issue happens with normal tanks, I suppose. I don't know, for myself; as a druid, I always kited like hell, and as a hunter, I wasn't being the main tank. So that one, I'll solidly defer to you on.

While kiting, not many dps the boss since there's an add to be taken care of at the same time. So your pet doesn't lose much threat compared to others. As with all pet tanking, your dps team need to know their threat.

Was tanking in 4 horsemen a few days ago (just as a back boss tank) and it got me thinking as to how a hunter pet could tank one of the front bosses without a decent taunt for the switch.

Answer - you cant, you need a decent taunt.

but then i started thinking..... perhaps we do have a second taunt with a 90 sec cd

Just theory here but soemthing i think is worth trying....

Taunt has a 3 min CD, or rather 2.1 mins with talents we'll all have. So taunt can be cast every 126 secs.

The second taunt on my mind is using distracting shot - followed by a deterrance.
The idea being that the boss would take a second or 2 to reach you - you could pop on Deterrence and let him swing away while your pet builds aggro - then when the 6 sec taunt of distract shot wears off the boss should be on the pet again.

Distracting shot is on an 8 sec CD - which is nothing.
Deterrence is every 90 secs - which is what limits this ability. (80 secs with glyph)

------------|0____25_____30____45____60____75____90____105____120____135____150____165____180___
TAUNT------|1____________________________________________________3_____________________________
DISTRACT---|__________________________2________________________________________________________4

basically you could switch every 63 secs for even switching - at 15 secs a mark (i believe) you could take 4 marks and swap with taunts.


Ofc - you could fire off all of your threat abilities, distract and then FD as he gets near. This gives a dodgy/risky taunt every 30 secs.

lets see -

MT yells switch - you cast MD, Intimidation, killcommand etc and send you pet at the other boss.
You then cast distracting shot and run back if needed firing remaining MDed shots.
As hes coming towards you slap FD on and let your pet take over.

Just theorycrafting.....

I asked durante ( Was it durante? Im not sure now ) how he did the switch because I was maybe going to have a shot at this, and he said you dont need a taunt, you just switch em.

Is he talking about the rear two knights, though? The 'ranged' knights? Or the front two? AFAIK, the only way to 'switch off' the front knights (the melee pair) is by taunting one, or at least getting more aggro than the previous tank. Standing too long with the pair together is going to get aura stacking up. Or am I wrong about this?

Bear behind wrote:a hunter pet could tank one of the front bosses without a decent taunt for the switch

Front guys

oh im sorry i was referring to the back ones. so sorry

Yeah. For doing the back two, it's very, very easy. All you need to do is put the pet on 'stay' at the place one is going to run and stand near the other. Once there's three stacks, just send the pet after the one you're on, start running toward your pet, and the two of you will switch sides without a single 'Full raid AOE'.

For the *front* two, you unfortunately need to either be able to surpass the other tank in threat, or you need to be able to taunt. Which is what BB's theorycraft here is suggesting. And which is... tricky. A better suggestion, for me, would be to MD an aggro-burst onto your pet before doing the aforementioned 'pull' and then FD once your pet is #2 in the meter (which hopefully should happen before some poor DPSer is). It's a very 'fiddly' workaround, but might be the only one.

where would a healer stand if you were tanking both the back two? how would that work? would you need two healers to waltz over from the two front sides and toss you a heal from time to time?

Bit 'o misunderstanding here - i was one of 2 back tanks.

Basically it was me and a Shammy healing

He kept himself up and tanked one -and i took the other. I simply put the bear forward and whacked Mend pet on him then when he ticked down moved so i was closer to the boss and gave the pet some time to recover, then switched back and applied any pots/bandages. as we switched bosses the healer would throw an extra heal in on either me or the pet if we needed it.

Tho i have heard that someone has 'soloed' it with their pet. I'm sure i saaw a video like somewhere...


EDIT - found the article!!!
http://bigredrhino.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/pet-feat-4-horsemen-naxx-10/

And blow me - it was Nord!

Well here's what im thinking. That shaman had to heal himself through damage, so he was suffering pushback right?

We did the four horsemen, and i looked at the dps of the two people (dps specced) for the whole fight and it didnt even add up to as much as I can do on my own while tanking.

So if a healer, even an unspecced one, could heal me and my pet (which wouldnt be all that much harder than healing themself) then the whole group would benefit from an increase in dps. The 'healer' would probably have an easier time healing me and the pet since they would not suffer pushback.

Im just having trouble with the ranges and where the healer would stand, since im pretty sure you cant heal someone without getting the debuff. So maybe the healer dances back and forth, healing you both, until they get the stacks from both, and then they switch with another 'healer' from the front?

Dont forget you could use RoS and Shell Sheild to manage the damage income and balance.

Bear, that's just the 10 man version, I've done the 25 as well. And I think there are quite a few others that have done that as well now. It's quite simple really.

You will not be able to tank the front two ones because there's no chance you can get your pets threat up on the other side to overtake the tank. =/

We need a better taunt.

I've done it as well, actually, Bear. It's how I know it works. In fact, it works *better* than any human combination since you don't need to coordinate as well.

The healer stands on the stairs, essentially, and heals the pair of them back and forth. When the auras build up, the healer at the front switches with the healer at the back. That way, they don't get too many debuffs.