[10N] Soloing the King at my level, am I delusional?

[branwell]

Gday all,

My guild and I are getting into P3 of the King fight but are having a heck of a time getting there.

I am thinking solo tanking would free up the other tank ( DK ) to use his pretty awesome DPS spec to our advantage.

This is me:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... =epicdwarf

5913 GS

Assuming our heals are good, at my characters level, do you think I'm geared well enough to have a reasonable chance of success?

Is there anything in my talent tree I should change to solo it?

Thanks.

[Vrimmel]

You shouldn't really attempt that until you have more than 6000 gearscore.

[fuzzygeek]

I solotanked LK with slightly better gear at 10%. Solo tanking is a great deal more about your DPS and healers than you personally. The onus is on the tank to position and pickup; heals have to be sufficient to allow you to handle the significantly increased damage income, and DPS has to be solid enough to take down adds before you get RNGed to death.

By all means, try it. If it doesn't work, it's likely as much your comp as it is your gear.

You might consider the PVP shoulder enchant, by the way, and I personally wouldn't gem my chest that way.

[Donahu]

There are a few other changes you might want to consider.

PoJ talent instead of 2x Conviction. More move speed, more stamina gain from enchant swap.

I'd regem your BP all stamina and then change the gem in your helmet to activate the meta. Overall gain of much more stamina this way.

Solo tanking LK is a lot easier now then when it was first done. I'd be in agreement with Fuzzy when saying to give it a go and see what issues you are having as compared to the issues you are having right now (which you didn't post >.>). It might not be a lack of DPS but of other things giving you trouble on the way to P3 which would not gain you much, if anything, by trying to solo tank it. If you post your current issues maybe we can help figure those out first...

[branwell]

I've changed the gem'ing, talent points, and enchant as suggested. I am not too keen on dropping below the Hit cap, but the gain in health is likely a good trade.

Will take a few shots at the king tonight solo tanking. Hopefully it wont be too much of a blood bath.... for us that is

Thanks!!!

[branwell]

Tried the solo tanking. Worked great. No problem for the healers.

The only issue was holding agro on the King.

Solved that by swapping Bonebreaker Scepter for the Gutbuster.

Thanks for the advice

[fuzzygeek]

You get him?

[Brekkie]

You shouldn't really attempt that until you have over 9000 gearscore.

fixed.

[Nikachelle]

I'm confused. Why were you swapping tanks in P3 anyway? (And this was normal mode right?)

[branwell]

Did we get him.? No.
But since changing to a solo tank configuration, we haven't lost anyone to the Valks and are able to get further along more consistently.

The main problem we where having prior to solo tanking was getting the Valks down.

I have a 6 second stun and a Lock in the group an effective 1.5 second stun ( following mine ). Assuming everyone was close enough for me to get a stun off, and assuming a defile did not get under the Valk, we where okay, but a fair amount of the time we would mess up on the defile, put one under the Valk, and not have enough DPS to get it down.

Now with the solo tanking, it frees up the DK to have 2 even 3 Chains of Ice available beyond the stuns. If we make a mistake with the defile, there is still plenty of time to get the Valk down.

Nickachelle
Tank swapping?
No swapping. Solo all the way through.
Yes, normal mode.

Again, thanks for the hints and advice.

[Nikachelle]

Nickachelle
Tank swapping?
No swapping. Solo all the way through.
Yes, normal mode.

No, I mean...

Oh wait. I just went and read back. I misread what I thought you were trying to do. I thought you were having problems with P3 and wanted to remove the notion of tank swapping (which I didn't understand why you were tank swapping in the first place - but it seems you weren't.)

Ignore me, moving on!

[theckhd]

Now with the solo tanking, it frees up the DK to have 2 even 3 Chains of Ice available beyond the stuns. If we make a mistake with the defile, there is still plenty of time to get the Valk down.

A tip on handling defiles while killing a Valk:

The inclination of most melee DPS is to stand right up underneath the Valk, as if trying to perform a colonoscopy with their main-hand weapon. In fact, there are a lot of ranged DPS that fall into this trap too. This causes all sorts of problems when Defile is dropped, because you have a large chance of it being dropped underneath the Valk. Worse yet, many players will instinctively run out ahead of the Valk before defile because it's open space, risking a Defile falling in the Valk's path. Luckily, however, most DPS can be trained.

Ranged DPS should spread out to the sides, away from the Valk's path, and DPS from there. They shouldn't have any problems with Defile.

Melee DPS should stand at max melee range on one side of the Valk. When Defile is cast, the person targeted should run away perpendicular to the Valk's path. In other words, if the Valk is headed North, and the DPS is standing on the East side of the Valk, he runs away to the East.

The rest of the melee DPS (not targetted) should run through the Valk to the other side, where they should be able to keep DPSing. In other words, in the above example, they would run West and start DPSing from the Valk's left side.

If you can get them to follow this simple convention, then you won't have Defiles in the path, the Valks will die faster, and you'll get through that annoying phase a lot quicker because you have more face time with the King.

[fuzzygeek]

Did we get him.? No.
But since changing to a solo tank configuration, we haven't lost anyone to the Valks and are able to get further along more consistently.

When you get deeper into P3 since it sounds like your DPS is having issues, be prepared to kite LK away from chasing ghosts, ideally across frost traps (which are hopefully available).

[Belloc]

I am going to strongly suggest that your players improve their DPS if you are having issues with Valks. It's time to stop holding their hands on this.

[branwell]

To be fair, none of our group has done this fight before so we are all learning as we go. Hell, I stepped off the edge yesterday. Meant to strafe one way and went the other

Re DPS: Our top is 12K and lowest over 7K. The average is about 9K. Its more a matter of raid awareness then pure DPS I think, and we are getting awareness as we get more time with the fight.