Main Tank Strategy: Gundrak Heroic

No screenshots for this one. I was too distracted, which is certainly not an excuse, but... well, OK. It's an excuse and it's all I've got!

Our heroic group lost its paladin tank, but managed to gain a druid. ... who wanted to go Boomkin. Well, I figure why not go tanking, and see how well it goes?

It actually surprised me how well it went; the tanking for Gundrak is fairly straightforward. As always, make sure that you are the leader and that you can mark your pet's target. The groups of snakes are a big temptation for your group to AOE, since they don't have a lot of HP, but as a pet tank class, your AOE threat-holding is *not* going to be able to hold up to it. Especially if they're doing it after the first thunderstomp.

The first bits of trash are straightforward: attack the spitting cobras (they will randomly target their spits; getting rid of them fast keeps them from spitting on your healers and DPS), and take out the others as you see fit. Later on, the troll trash can be handled the same way: focus on healers first, then pick off the others, same as any normal tank group. If you aren't using the water, and are thus going against bigger groups than two or three, you may wish to CC one or two to take some of the stress off your healer.

Slad'ran, for me, was a bit of a shock on how easy he was. Clear the room of the small, harmless snakes (this makes it easier to tab-target if something goes wrong and is just fun) and as long as you have a good healer or two, you can tank the boss right where he stands. This way, your people have an easy time getting out of LoS of the poison aura attack (which can wipe a party very quickly) and make the 'wrapping' snakes have a long way to go for your party. It's quite possible to do the achievement here, as well, especially if you have an AOE class who can kill the snakes coming after your group (the snakes will usually gravitate toward the highest threat individual, which will often be the healer). Let your pet tank through the poisons and heal as needed; the fact it's an AOE means you take less damage, and the DOT can be handled with judicious healing. Be warned: it can't be cleansed. It's considered a physical DOT.

The Drakkari Elemental/Colossus is a lot harder. The issue here is that he will drop aggro when he transforms, making it extremely difficult to keep up your threat. If you can get your party to listen, you'll want to have them stop *all* DPS while he's transforming until you get a hit and growl in, then continue. This goes for transforming both to and from the big colossus. Of the pair, the elemental is harder to tank, due to its habit of charging an individual now and then. This does not drop its aggro, however; when it charges, you can pick it up again fairly easily. It's the transforms that will get your party killed. Also, you may want to move about, keeping your pet away from the mojo puddles on the ground. They will not do a terrible amount of damage to a pet, but they do do damage, and it takes a little stress off your healer if you can afford to move. If not, it's not the end of the world; just tank, and save your MD for when the transformations happen.

Moorabi is so easy that it almost made me cry. Pure tank and spank, once you've gotten to the point where you can take his damage. Even if you are not trying for the achievement, do your best to block his casts. This transformation increases his damage considerably and gives him a rend/bleed effect that will make it harder on your healer and pet. So the longer you can keep him from inflicting that on you, the easier it will be. Feel free to use whatever you have to stop his casting; it seems as if 99% of the interrupts work just fine (I didn't test whether an Intimidation stun worked; I used it right off the bat for threat).

If you are on Heroic, Eck comes next. Now, this is a boss that is, quite honestly, effectively impossible to tank. He has a very bad habit of suddenly dropping his threat totally and jumping one member of the party. Pulling him off them is possible, but extremely difficult; usually he will Eck Spit on them. So don't feel bad if he is leaping all over the place when you're usually a skilled tank. It happens to everyone. Just keep as much threat on him as possible, warn your party about the threat drops (if they don't already know), and prepare your Taunt, Intimidation, MD, whatever you have to spike threat whenever you get the chance. The good news: compared to most bosses, he hits like a wuss.

Finally, the last boss: Gal'darah. Here, you'll have to be ready and on the ball with all your damage reduction abilities. Put your pet against a wall and MD to the pet, so he has a solid brace and won't be flung around (hopefully). When he is a troll, he hits fairly hard. However, this is nothing compared to how he hits when he transforms into a rhino. When you get the warning for his transformation, *immediately* use damage shielding abilities if you have them: Shell Shield, bubbles from your priests, whatever. Because he will throw a massive spike of damage on your pet, and one badly-timed crit could spell the end for your party. Also, during this phase, he will charge at and 'impale' a random party member. At this point, both the impaled person and the tank will continue to need healing. If it is your healer who's been impaled, and you don't have a second off-healer, then you may as well kiss your ass goodbye; it's likely to be a wipe. The good news is that this will happen no matter what; it's probably the #1 cause of people wiping on this boss. If you do have an Offhealer, then damage reduction (if they aren't all on CD) should be used, and Mend Pet should be kept up every second; it may not save your pet, but it will give that much more time for your offhealer to handle both sides.

Hopefully that gives a good idea for just what to do here, and some notes that I could take on 'what could be done better'. Definitely an instance that leaves one feeling a warm glow for being able to tank, though. It's not as easy as Nexus or UK, but it's simple enough that you *can* do it, and yet difficult enough that it leaves a nice feeling of accomplishment behind. Give it a shot!

Awesome feat! Sounds like Gundrak might be my first heroic attempt.

I'm going to add a posting about how to do the "place your pet near the wall" with specifics since it took me a while to figure out how to do that in my practice run of Shadow Labs today, but that probably doesn't need to be buried in a thread since it applies everywhere.

Ground-DH

Great write up! I like the insight and the level of detail. I was wondering about this instance, I think I'll give it a shot!

Looking at the information about some of the bosses, I happened to notice a couple things about Eck that I figured I should add here. They could be quite important.

1) The 'random aggro drop' I talked about: this can be taunted away. So save a taunt (if you have one) for when he goes hopping after people. Especially if he goes hopping after them and starts an Eck Spit.

2) Eck has a hard enrage. After about 90 seconds, he'll do 500% damage. And while he may hit like a wuss compared to other bosses, +500% is pretty much a guaranteed wipe even if you're in heavy Ulduar gear. So don't play around; burn the bugger down. As I've never seen the enrage my own self, this isn't terribly hard to do, but it *is* something that people should be aware of just in case they're coming in wearing new-80-greens-and-blues.

Another double-post, just because I figure that this could best be added here rather than in a whole nother post.

A few guildies and I have been hunting achievements, and discovered that a pet-tanking hunter can do an incredible job of helping out with the 'Share The Love' achievement (get the entire party impaled).

A good party setup to try for this achievement normally consists of two tanks, one main healer, one offhealer (who might be one of the tanks if you've a druid or paladin), and a full DPS. The extra tank is *necessary* since Gal'darah will not impale the one highest on his threat (i.e the tank).

That's where we come in.

Go through the rest of the instance as DPS if you like, but at Gal'darah, get your pet out and go tank. Now, there are two ways to do this, depending on how good your TPS is.

If your TPS is at 'proper tank' level, then start out with the pet tanking the boss, DPS until he transforms, then stop all DPS and focus on healing the pet and keeping him from going down.

The second way to do it is if you've not got good enough threat to hold against your party. In this case, let the 'normal' tank handle him until he transforms, then let your pet Taunt him (Moorabi is not immune to pet-taunt from what I saw). Just as above, you stop all DPS when he transforms, so there is no threat issue. Just survival.

Either way, when the main tank gets impaled, he can take over tanking if people feel more comfortable, or you can just leave the pet on him. Trust me: after all this tanking, you'll have more threat than you could ever need, even if you're usually poor on TPS. Just remember: when he turns into a rhino, his spike damage goes up considerably.

There's an easier method to this. Have a normal druid tank as backup. When you face the boss, have 2 people stand out of combat in the beginning, so you've got higher chance that the impale hits the normal tank.

The reason you want a druid is so he can throw in an off heal if the real healer gets impaled, because the pet can go down very fast otherwise.

Once the real tank has gotten impaled he takes over the tanking and the rest of the group can join in the fight so that everyone gets impaled.


Another way to do it, without pet tanking, is to distract shot and kite when he transforms. He can then do the impale on the tank. Again, this is best done with 2 people standing on the side OOC until the tank has gotten the impale to increase the chances.