H Blackrock Caverns

Finally what seems to be our first piece of pet tanking in Cataclysm.



Tonight I decided that I'd waited long enough, and once our two heroic groups finished their nightly farm I started picking up people for my own run. Fortunately out of the thirteen online, three didn't think I was insane, and one still thought I was insane but wanted to see the ensuing disaster.

The first few pulls went better than expected. One two mob pulls I generally sent Bubbles directly on Skull and Misdirected the second mob with a few Arcane Shots. Usually by the time the first mob was at 1/3 health I had plenty of threat lead so I could switch Bubbles to the second target to start building threat before the Misdirection threat wore off. With any pull with more than two mobs, the additional mobs were CCed. There were a few trash mobs that for some reason Bubbles generated significantly less threat against for some reason. Against Evolved Twilight Zealots for example, his threat generation was only about half of normal. I'm guessing there might be an issue with Growl on certain mobs, but we'll need some testing to know for sure.

The first boss, Rom'ogg Bonecrusher, was accidentally aggroed by a DPS while we were clearing the room. One DPS died while I was still attempting to pick up aggro, and I hadn't had a chance to put on my Misdirect glyph so aggro on the aggro on the adds was extremely poor. Its hard to say if Misdirection and Multishot teamed with Thunderstomp would be enough to prevent the healer from pulling aggro.

Corla went very smoothly. Just make sure that you turn off Thunderstomp to not damage the adds and position with the Go To ability and pull with Misdirect to make sure that any melee tanking beams can reach the boss.

Karsh Steelbender was the boss that worried me the most when we got Blackrock as our random, but after an initial wipe its turned out to be incredibly easy. The first attempt I had planned to pull the mob in and out of the same side of the lava falls as our guild's tank do, using Distracting Shot and Feign Death to try to get the boss to run in and out, but it ended up being much too clunky and we wiped in short measure. For the second attempt I decided to just keep it simple and maneuvering the old fashion way with the Passive, pulling the boss through the edge of the lava instead of center to limit the number of stacks going up. It ended up being the cleanest kill any of us had ever had, and our tanks will probably end up using the technique for our normal runs.

By keeping the adds CCed, Beauty became basically a tank and spank. Just maneuver your pet slightly to keep her from getting too close to the lava and try to stay near Tremor totems.

Obsidius is in the same boat as Beauty. With a good kiter on the adds, the boss is basically tank and spank. The only thing you need to worry about is the position switch the boss does with one of the adds, but there's no aggro reset during this so you could really just put your pet on passive and wait for the boss to come to you.

Our healer says that after factoring in Blood of the Rhino, Bubbles was still a bit squisher than a normal tank, but not terribly so, and his single target threat was very much up to par with a traditional tank. All in all we only had the one wipe; considering it was my first Cata heroic, I didn't have a dedicated tanking set, and we randomed one of the harder heroics I call it a great success.

The floodgate is now open.

Well done!

I have been spending more time on alts than my poor hunter this exapc, but it is exciting to see that pet tanking is as strong as ever.

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