Gruul, HS Tanking

[Afraithe]

He doesn't, he kind of outgears Gruul so it's not much of a problem, if he goes down, it's cause we lost to much healers, and even if I was in gear and they where not able to keep him up, they wont be able to keep me up either.

[iliya]

So, in short, if you're not MTing Gruul on this fight, and are just the Hateful Bolt tank for this one, you just stack Spell Damage and Stamina to keep up aggro and stay up?

My guild hit Gruul yesterday and got him down to 42% before we called it a night, but no matter what I did, my threat was pathetic and was number 7 or lower on the threat meter, we also had a bear OT and a Warrior MT for that one, but you know how it goes.

[Afraithe]

Yes, if you are confident in your MT, cause if he dies, your screwed if you are crittable/crushable at that point. Even in my full spelldamage gear, I could probably hold him for a few %, so if the tank would die at the end, it shouldn't matter much.

[Brute]

I fought Gruul for the first time last night, and they had me tank the Hurtful Strikes.

I stood under his crotch the whole time, used JotC, and watched KTM for guidance on when to drop the consecrate and JoR... I stayed right behind the MT the whole time and didn't have to down a single mana pot; the healing from the hurtful strikes was plenty to keep my mana up.

We didn't kill him... first fight was a bunch of people's first try ever, and second fight, the MT died fairly late into the fight and then 3-shotted me. Bastard hit me for over 8k non-crushing, i think 5.6k minimum in the 3-hit string that killed me. With that kind of damage, how many growths would you guess he had on him?

Also, should I have had a lot harder time keeping up with the MT on threat gen with my gear? (in other words, was his threat gen sucking?)

[iliya]

Yes, if you are confident in your MT, cause if he dies, your screwed if you are crittable/crushable at that point. Even in my full spelldamage gear, I could probably hold him for a few %, so if the tank would die at the end, it shouldn't matter much.

Good to know, thank you.

[Afraithe]

Dunno if you warriors threat gen was sucking, but usually, warriors are in full mitigation gear for the Gruul fight, so their aggro generation isn't that impressive. In 450 spelldamage, I need to hold back not to pass the main tank.

[Tanks-PL]

...Bastard hit me for over 8k non-crushing, i think 5.6k minimum in the 3-hit string that killed me. With that kind of damage, how many growths would you guess he had on him?...

Well, last time I was the MT on Gruul, he was hitting me for 9K+ at growth 12. Not knowing your gear, I would guess 10 or 11. It really hurts at growth 16 btw, which is when all the tanks died and he had enough DoTs on him to die as well.

[Melathys]

So, in short, if you're not MTing Gruul on this fight, and are just the Hateful Bolt tank for this one, you just stack Spell Damage and Stamina to keep up aggro and stay up?

Thats what it seems to me. I've got a spell damage set, I lose dodge and stamina (but remain uncrushable/uncrittable) while nearly doubling my spell damage compared to my boss avoidance set.

Tonight will be our first time, and prot warrior is usually the default for first times, lol.

[cordelia]

Is it necessary to be uncrushable as HS tank? My guild said yes. Or is it necessary to keep Holy Shield up during HS tanking?

[Worldie]

Hurtful strike cant crit and cant crush. However, having Holy Shield up while hit reduces the damage and gives some extra threat if you menage to have it.

[adese]

When I'm the hurtful strike tank, I keep rank 1 Holy Shield as much as I can. I only use rank 1 to help conserve mana - since I'm not getting hit that often, it's not worth it to me to waste the mana of rank 4 when I'm probably going to waste most/all of the charges.

While you don't need to be uncrittable or uncrushable, I wear my standard boss tanking/max stamina gear in this case. It's really just planning for the worst - max stamina allows me to live to the later growths, and if the MT goes down I'm in my boss tanking gear so that I can take over as MT if I am needed to do so.

Granted, my guild is getting this fight down now, so the likely hood of me needing to MT is getting slimmer. But it could still prevent a wipe if bad things happen.

[Duradeell]

Gruul has been killed over 16 times in my guild and we are now 5/6 SSC, 3/4 TK working on Vashj. Although I have only been the HS tank once or twice for this encounter, I have never had problems keeping 2nd hate. Here are some tips I can give you.

- Judge Wisdom: Wisdom being judged is basically you auto attacking for rage just as a warrior does, it will do well in this fight and benefit all the mana dps.

- Keep consecrate, Judgements, and Seals consistent: Although these are big mana hogs, they are crucial as you are unable to gain holy shield threat while not being hit making you have to work a lot harder.

- Stand in cave ins! Thats right, I said it and I will say it again. Stand in cave ins! If anybody complains, tell them that it will save a lot of people if you keep your mana up this way. (But don't stand in them for too long otherwise a hurtful will own you if you don't get a heal in time, I like to move in, run out, get a heal, run in.)

- Shadow priest in group! This is free blue rage! A warrior or druid tank would kill to have a shadow priest give them rage and you should take advantage of something like this.

- Chug mana pots! I don't know how many times I need to say this to people, if you are off-tanking an encounter as a Paladin you should not even try if you are not chugging mana potions.

But MAKE SURE you time them right; if you use a mana pot when you are at 300/6000 mana as opposed to 3800/6000 mana you are going to have big mana issues. If your mana pot can restore 1800 to 3000 mana you should be using it when you lose roughly that amount so that by the time you are actually really low on mana, you will have another potion availiable.

Goodluck!

[Windra]

I am currently building a set particularly for the HS tank role.

Anyone have any idea what kind of threat per second I should be sitting at to stay above the average Karazhan-geared DPS class?

[Donjuan]

I did ok as hs tank, when the fight started the warrior who was supposed to be third was ahead of me for a bit, i decided not blow my mana and just wait, and sure enough after a small length of time he was rage starved and i was no 2 for a very long time.

Gruul seems to be quiet easy to build aggro on for some reason unlike some other stuff, where ist early impossible to get over 300tps. As main tanking him the tps just shoots through the roof , for when i do main tank him.

Lets see what i did? Well 1st of all if you are actually taking hs you will be getting more than enough (or more specifically just enough)heals to ride high (i mean high enough, to do the job)on for start of fight (especially if you judged wisdom and used a destruction pot for seal of vengeance and then switched to white dps weapon and seal of right) mana. 2nd I start with seal of wisdom as my cooldwon stuff will generate enough aggro to start. I use a combination of seal of vengence and seal of right, then by about 4th , 5h growth i switch to seal of crusader and start working my spells hard. consecration (low rank, high rank if mt)always under him, using mana pots cooldown or destruction pot when ever i see cd.

Judging seal of vengeance is pretty nice and should be done alot. Need to do alot of weapon, seal switching and cooldown playing to be good at hs tank.

Using my tactic you will be in danger of overtaking main tank at times, if that ever happens all you do is, quickly cast bos on yourself or cancel right fury (but recasting righ fury is a huge man drain so bos is better) (perhaps its better just to ease up on the spells rather than do that , i never needed to cast bos on myself like this, as i never got to the point where i was definitely about to over take, but itsa n option for the types who end up overaggroing due to burst threat), let it stay for 3 sec then take it off, and take it a bit easier.

[honorshammer]

I found it very difficult to keep Vengence stacks up as the HS tank. I have to juggle my seals quite a bit for this job.