[10] Lich King Solo tank

[snakë]

Fellow Paladin Tanks,

Just wanted to check and see if anyone has ever heard of, or has ever solo Tanked the Lich King on 10 man difficulty?

I did just that last night with the following group make-up.

(1) Paladin Tank
(2) Resto Druids
(1) Resto Shaman
(2) Hunters
(2) Warlocks
(1) Ret Paladin
(1) Rogue

I have included the world of logs report that shows our 2 shot of the Lich King.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3n3fxq2tw4mps2ho/

V/R
Snakë
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... Snak%C3%AB

[lythac]

He gets done quite often with a solo tank I think.

Someone killed LK10 Heroic as a solo tank.

[snakë]

Wow,

so I guess I missed that while I was looking through the web. Good for them!

[Nexiv]

Can you give me an idea of your general tactics for solo-tanking? Such as how you handled phase1 and the transition phases. How did you find tanking through his Reapers?

[Worldie]

Tanking through Reapers is a joke as a properly geared Paladin in 10 normal. You are looking at a potential 35kish + 15k damage, when you probably have more than 70k HP.
All our 10 (and 25) regular kills we have done with me alone eating Reapers with no external cd, easily

Phase one may be a bit hectic for melees that have to move in order to not be in front of Shambling Horrors.

[Nexiv]

Sounds good. I was thinking that solo-tanking made sense, as having an offtank just for shamblings and drudges in phase1 seemed a waste of a raidslot. I'd rather fill that with another dps and it will make tanking everything at the start easier anyway.

[Xequecal]

Hardest part of solo tanking would probably be aggro. It is already extremely difficult for a Paladin to hold aggro off a top-geared fire Mage or fury Warrior with Shadowmourne in 10-man. If you have to split your attention on picking up and positioning horrors as well, you might have problems.

[Treck]

We solo tanked it on our firstkill, like? 5 months ago (2nd week LK was available)
We just brought a lot of ranged, had no meele at all.
At first i thought this was for hc mode. Altho only P1 would be problematic with only one tank, even on HC, if you kill the spirits instead of soaking then ofc.

[warden]

I was just thinking about starting a topic on this, so I guess I'll just post the questions here

I'm taking a bunch of guildies in who haven't done this before (I'm the only one with the title, much less more than 2 attempts), and we're solo-tanking simply because I'm the only reliable tank that shows up regularly anymore. Keeping in mind that this is a fairly casual group seeing this fight the first time, and that we're running a somewhat unbalanced, ranged-heavy group (gotta work with who shows up)...

We had a couple probs with tank deaths due to shamblers + 2 spirits + ghouls before the plague finished off the shamblers. Stopping briefly to aoe the ghouls down after the 3rd spawn seemed to make the shamblers die a ton faster. I'm not imagining this, am I? We're getting the plague stacking faster on the shamblers?

Spriest threat seems unusually high on this fight. Is he just really just on his game, or do you notice increased Spriest threat (possibly from so much VE healing?) during the transition phase?

In the transition to p2, it seemed significantly more chaotic than my old groups. Is this typical of trying to drag two spirits over and position LK by myself (usually as the first valk is spawning), or just a product of people's inexperience that will work itself out?

Thanks for the inputs. Its quite wierd going from a group where I was the "new guy" to the fight, to being the old crusty vet lol.

[Nexiv]

Really you shouldnt have 2 spirits up going into phase2. The spirits are the dps priority during the phase transition, and you shouldnt be putting any dps onto the shamblings or drudges, thats what the plague is for. You will always exit the transition phase with a spirit up, as it spawns just before the start of phase2, but if you still have another left alive before that spawn, then your dps need to hit harder and get it down faster.

[lythac]

Spriest threat seems unusually high on this fight. Is he just really just on his game, or do you notice increased Spriest threat (possibly from so much VE healing?) during the transition phase?

If its during the transition phase I suppose he has Mind Sear up on the ghouls as the Raging Spirits are spawning? So as soon as they spawn it gets hit by 3-4 lots of Mind Sear and in total would get 6-10 hits as well as normal SP damage. Only for the first Raging Spirit.

[hoho]

Spriest threat seems unusually high on this fight. Is he just really just on his game, or do you notice increased Spriest threat (possibly from so much VE healing?) during the transition phase?

If your priest don't spec into extra threat reduction then yea, VE healing can cause a bit increased threat but it shouldn't be too bad. On spirits it could be that generally spriests tend to spam dots on everything they can. VT+SWP+MB+DP on a spirit will make all four cause their damage in very tiny window, with some crit luck that comes to well over 20k damage just a few seconds after a new spawn. I know I've ripped mobs off tanks like that before on multiple occasions.

[Belloc]

Really you shouldnt have 2 spirits up going into phase2. The spirits are the dps priority during the phase transition, and you shouldnt be putting any dps onto the shamblings or drudges, thats what the plague is for. You will always exit the transition phase with a spirit up, as it spawns just before the start of phase2, but if you still have another left alive before that spawn, then your dps need to hit harder and get it down faster.

I agree with this. My current guild is, by no means, a serious guild, and even we can kill a spirit as the next one is spawning. If we were solo-tanking it, the extra dps would cause this to be even less of an issue.

So, uh... work on that.

[Kaory]

Hello
This is my kill via solo tanking.
Setup :
palatank
restodruid, holypala, discpriest
elemental, shpriest, moonkin, mage, hunter, rogue

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/agaxtrlbg22x6xnm/sum/damageDone/?s=19030&e=20066

Dealing with Reaper :
1) Fang + Key
2) Salv
3) DP
Sometimes I call for Pain Suppression. Also using one of this right after each room phase.

[Nexiv]

Tried solo-tanking last night and it worked really well; we got straight to phase3 on our first attempt (3rd set of tries in a semi-casual guild). Handling all of the adds plus the King in phase1 was easier than with a 2 tank setup. With Seal of Cleave and consecration I would just slowly track backwards between the two south pillars, parallel to the ranged/healers on the southern edge, so that I kept the adds mostly infront of me and the shambling shockwaves pointed away from the melee.
I had initially been worried about Reaper for phase2, but so long as I called out on vent when it was incoming the healers bombed me with extra heals, and we never had to use a cooldown for it. I only kept my bubblewall or the disc priests pain suppression for if we got unlucky with a valkyr on a healer or being out of range from the defile spread.