Heroic Mana Tombs

[onacouch]

Ughn.... I've never tanked it, usually if I wanna farm badges I just AoE tank coilfang or mechinar or something. I was asked by my guild to tank mana tombs and I agreed to it and for some reason This was the most painful heroic instance run I have ever done. It felt like I was tanking with righteous fury off, the priest was pulling aggro from healing, I ended up blessing salvation for the whole party and I was still struggling immensely.

Is there something about this instance that I don't know? I have never had nearly this much trouble Tanking stuff.

It was insanely frustrating how difficult this was. When it comes to any other instance I can just breeze through effortlessly, but for this instance Omen was reporting with max consecrate down and max holy shield rank up judging/sealing righteousness I'd be at like 300 TPS.

In addition to this hard core lack of threat I seemed to be getting rocked hard core in damage, and my mana seemed to deplete at an alarming rate.

I don't understand what was going on, we had a solid group. I can say though that I plan on never coming back to that instance again.

[Worldie]

Manaburning mobs = GG

[Afraithe]

Perhaps your party members are used to Mechanar and Coilfang heroics, where there aren't a lot of casters (at least not in underbog and slave pens). Sounds to me like they are just starting to DPS to fast, and maybe not focusing DPS.

Ive tanked Mana Tombs several times, need a good group for that instance, there are 2 things that can happen if you dont have good groups, you can fail at first boss cause healing or tanking is bad. Or you can fail on last boss cause DPS is bad.

As far as the trash, I don't think there is any trash pull where you should not use Avengers Shield to pull, haven't checked your armory though so more CC might be needed. As for the big Shadow trash mobs (can't remember name, always single pulls) they do as much damage to you as anyone else in the group (pure shadow damage) so it isn't so bad loosing aggro on them, when I play with my Shaman, I go all out on them, if we have a good healer.

Good luck.

[Mithos]

Mana tombs is probably one of the best heroics, because it is actually challenging (along with BM). The mobs can hit pretty hard, especially the casters, as the heroic AI is "pick a spell and spam it to death", like the spellbinders and Immolate. It's such a fun instance, the last boss is mental, I don't use any tank gear on him since he melees for ~700 and is chain casting usually anyway.

Hell I have specific sets that mix in my arena/pvp gear so that my mana pool/spell dmg is high enough so I can spam and don't have to drink every pull, the degree of the gear mix depends on which heroic. If its a joke like mech, mostly spell dmg, if not, almost full tank, with one or two high int items thrown in. I use ItemRack, and I swap between heavy tank gear and heavy spell dmg gear almsot every pull. If theres casters, screw avoidance, get block value/% and spell dmg and go to town, they melee for ~400, so just nuke. If theres melee (crypt-raiders/nexus stalkers etc) use mostly tank gear. It works well mxing and matching because you really DON'T need a tank to tank the spell casters, you just need someone who is going to hold aggro on all of them easily.

I assume you wre using full SR gear for first boss, as it makes it immensly easier. I run with 312 SR with aura and 12k unbuffed HP, use JoL too, makes it EZ mode. The 2nd boss can hit pretty anrd actually, he has hit me for a 10k arcing smash before, can be nasty before/after an earthquake, I got 2 shot by him once :\ (in almost my current tank gear). Last boss, spell dmg gear and nuke the hell out of him, FrR geare helps a lot, as thats his main school, be quick on cleansing frost nova's. We actually did it once where we killed the adds, that was some intense DPS we brought along. Otherwise I'd recommend fearing/AoE CC'ing them until the boss is dead, they take a long time to down and they spawn so quickly.

[Parishna]

I didn't think it was that bad at all really. I was holy specced at the time and I heard from guild that one of thier friends was looking for a tank and healer for a heroic tombs so I whispered them.. we waited around for about 25 minutes and couldnt find a tank so I told them to find a healer.

The healer was spooked when I said brb re-speccing lawl. But we got in there had a weee bit of trouble on the first boss too many people in range of the explosion thingy the first time, then we fixed it and downed him.

and at the end of the run.. mana regen scarab, epic resist shield and ret pally shoulders... i felt like such a loot whore lol..


End boss wasn't tooo bad, we were a little slow killing the orbs so got a couple extra friends on the fight.. but still got it first try. A pug from a couple of the better guilds on the server, and the shaman healer was a total pug, but it worked out well.

[onacouch]

We 1-shot all the bosses, they weren't a problem at all. It's just the trash, I've never had that hard of a time holding things to me. I know some of the guys charge away but if I have a max rank consecration down and a max rank consecration up and righteous fury up how is a priest is blessing of salvation pulling aggro...?

I've done all the heroics with minimal difficulty except for the Auchindion ones save for Shadowlabs, I've done shadowlabs a few times, it's easy sauce, but Mana Tombs just rocked me.

[Mithos]

hmm interesting, perhaps it's just different technique hehe, the trash is challenging but never an issue, I hold aggro on all of them all the time, even with some full T5/some hyjal/BT geared dpsers, including a shadowpriest. Ofc with this group setup the bosses weren't a problem anyway as they were just squishy, but with lesser DPS the bosses presented more of a challenge. Granted, we cleared it on our first venture there without any real problem, but it felt like it was the bosses that were the issues. I guess our server really is slack .

[Worldie]

Well actually about the trashs, you should keep an eye for the Teurgists (sheep), the shadow priests (1k ticking SW:P and mana burn), Nexus Terrors (curse that reduces spelldamage by 300), and the melee ones that usually hit HARD. The melee ones after 2nd boss (cant remember the name now) also will Gouge you and go wtfpwning your party, so have someone be ready to stop them; if they poison you i'd suggest to not dispel it since its ticks will dispel the gouge.

The place is fine anyway, challenging and hard, not as easy as most heroics are. I definitively will never try to AoE Heroic MT down like i do with most of others

[Afraithe]

If you have problems with some trash, one tip might be to not tank the first target, let DPS burn him down fast, this should be a caster target since they don't hit very hard. By the time they are done with the first target, you should have enough threat on the others so they can go all out on them as well.

[Mithos]

Yeah that works Afraithe, a lot of the casters only need someone to focus on (like the priests and the...erm, the ones that do arcane missiles and slow >_>). Can just have DPS nuke them as you said whilst you focus on the others.