Best tanking pet - Turtle?

Hi guys,

I'm new to Big Red Rhino and I'm loving it. Very nice work sir

I've been tanking with my pets since Stockades and LOVE it. The hardest thing about tanking is usually convincing the group it's possible. I've been playing WoW for about 3 years now. I have played in top raiding guilds (<Ret> #44 US #98 World) back in BC but sold the account, got a new job, and have a baby on the way Well, in not so short, I play casually now and have a 70 hunter I'm leveling atm.

On to my question:
Is there an agreed upon best instance tanking pet?
Before thunderclap was talented it was the Gorilla for AoE and Turtle for MT. Now that TC is talented I've been using a turtle. With all the duration shortening talents my turtle takes 50% less damage for 12 seconds every 42 seconds. With that ability, along with thunderclap, he seems like the best possible tanking choice. Are there any other top pets or theories that disprove the turtle-god-tank theory?

Again, awesome site!

Howdy.

While I do agree that the turtle is the top tank pet in terms of mitigation (shield wall on a 42 sec CD woot!), I also think that
bears and crocolisks are interesting choices in terms of TPS.

for fights where turtle level mitigation is not needed I think either of the others would provide for smoother sailing, as dps would not need to hold back as much.

These are all pure speculation on my part (as I havent played at all during WOTLK), but would merit some testing.

cheers
- ACH

The big problem with bears is that the swipe only hits the mobs in front of it. And it can be quite hard to position the pet to make it hit several targets.

Crocolisks' Bad Attitude however is like thorns on steroids and provide quite a nice AoE threat to an unlimited amount of targets. This does however require the mobs to be hitting your pet, which means that if you lose aggro, it can be harder to get back. Bad Attitude doesn't cost any focus though, and has quite a nice uptime.

Overall, Crocs are the new AoE tanks.

With the Thunderclap threat nerf, I'm not sure how well the turtle's going to perform. I haven't tested it yet in a proper instance. But when I tried aoe grinding, the turtle is horrible compared to the (pre-patch) gorilla. I think that now more than ever, the dps need to understand focus targeting.

I just tamed a turtle, and I must say, I am impressed - the turtle is only level 73 (to my 75), but it successfully tanked a elite 75 mob and a 73 normal mob, with some healing from a pally and me dps'ing. his shield spell is pretty awesome, but mana is a bit limiting if you have all his talents going off.

Just my two cents on the turtle

Silvart on Proudmoore

Very interesting. I may have to try out the croc. I haven't run into any TPS issues with the turtle and thought the main issue would always be survivability since they aren't crit immune but I haven't run WTOLK dungeons yet either as I just hit 70.

When I tank with the turtle I rarely AOE volley the mobs down and single target kill.. maybe that's why I'm not seeing the adds pull of the turtle. I kinda wish the tenacity or BM tree had a talent equiv to thorns or ret aura.. That would be nice for aoe tanking.

J

My own personal (admittedly very *VERY* biased opinion) is for the turtle. I've loved my Panzer, and tanked with him all the way through WotLK. He handled tanking for every one of the elite mob quests without a problem, and that was when I was specced Survival.

However, I have to agree: I love my Panzer, but when it comes to TPS, the crocolisk is definitely far above and beyond. Thus, I run with both of them: the croc for when I need TPS on groups and the turtle when I need single person tanking or solid damage-eating main tanking. I haven't tried a bear yet for groups, but it has possibility.

Personally, I love my Warp Stalker for tanking. Warp helps with mitigating damage by causing the target to miss sometimes, but it also frees up a pet-talent point since I don't need to buy Charge. Without Charge, my pet looses a little initial aggro, but Thunderstomp quickly makes up for it!

Adding the thunderstomp to all but making soooo much weaker took a lot of fun out of this talent. I'm pretty disappointed. Can't our pets have cool things? Everything seems to get evened out over and over again. I don't mind a few spikes in certain areas like when gorilla had thunderstomp.

Yeah making it sooo much weaker has really upset me too. I was using it on my lower level bear and i think i got exactly 1k threat out of it each time. It used to be closer to 2k as I remember.

Making a slightly (OK, maybe a lot) weaker version of this, but adding it to *all* tenacity pets while doing so? To be honest, I think it was a good trade-off. You might have to work a little harder to tank an instance, but your pet still isn't going to lose aggro, especially if you're willing to use MDs, Intimidation, Taunt if needed, and *especially* if your party doesn't mind either holding back a little while fighting, or giving some aggro-grabbing time.

I would love a more powerful thunderstomp, yes, but I have nothing to complain about. My turtle? Thunderstomps. My Warp Stalker? Thunderstomps. My croc? Thunderstomps. And aggro? Solid on all of them.

Its really hard to say which is better I think for single target that the turtle(Tankss) would be better due to shell sheild but I also tank with a bear (DruidTank). On just bosses Id use My turtle but for everything else my bear. I know the swipe issue kinda sucks but I have a macro just for that. I tied in misdirect, beast wrath and one of my trinkets. So putting aggro back on him and having a nice jump on the group isnt so much of an issue.

Id say grab a turtle and an "aoe" tank just swap out as you need.

Ed

Kurasu, I wish I could be as optimistic, but as things are now I can't. AoE threat is way too low. But until I've actually tried tanking trash in Naxx, I won't know how well it will hold aggro. But without buffs in a solo situation, the AoE threat is horrible.