[25] [Hard modes] Keep getting my face smashed in...

Our guild usually runs with 1-2 DK tanks, 1-2 feral tanks and one prot pally (me), of course not all at the same time. For some reason, on any boss that hits hard, I am always the first tank to die. For example, on Thorim hard mode, once he hits about 5 charges, if someone doesn't taunt off me when I get the unbalancing strike, there is a huge chance that I will just drop dead to the next attack. On XT hard mode, while I didn't actually die, the healers said it was way harder to keep me up then the DKs or feral druids. On Yogg +3 (no Hodir), the phase 3 adds can hit me for about 40k. Am I doing something wrong in my gearing or am I just a bit under geared for hard modes?

Here is my armory. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... &n=Tandors

In case armory is bad, my unbuffed character sheets stats are 33.2k HP, 25.78% dodge, 18.79% parry and block capped with 1469 BV. I also have 550 defense and 24443 armor without devo.

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum. I didn't know whether to put it in the gear and advice, basic training or Ulduar forums.

Well for starters this should be in the gear advice forum, but I'm no moderator, so oh well.

Looking at your armoury, I'd say for hard mode purposes, the first thing you want to ditch is the DMC:Greatness trinket and use a proper tanking trinket, such as another stamina trinket off Ignis if you have it. The DMC is nice for threat, but it's not something you want to use when the bosses in hard modes can and will hit north of 30k. If you have the T8 chest piece you'd want to use that over those block ones off Auriaya. I'm not sure on the policy with runed orbs are within your guild, but getting the belt and feet crafted would go a long way.

Your gemming and enchants in general are fine, but again for hard mode purposes you might want to consider changing the meta to the 32 stamina over the def/BV ones. Although some people might think otherwise, but gearing for hard modes in general, especially for progression, you'd want to stack stamina while squeezing as much avoidance as you can. Pieces that have def/dodge/parry are ideal for this. Items that come to mind are the crafted ones, the T8 chest and legs. Don't be afraid to swap in some ilevel 213 depending on the boss.

On threat sensitive fights such as Vezax, personally I prefer pieces with def/dodge/hit rather than BV pieces. With a few execptions most BV pieces also have BR on them, making them sub optimal. Hit rating does give nice increases to threat until you reach the cap. In this example if you are put on the Saronite Animus, a missed ShoR at the start could be disastrous as both Vezax and the Animus are both immune to taunt.

First off, Blood DK tanks are overpowered, right Faligard? As far as survivability you won't be able to beat them pre-3.2.

Second, if nobody taunts off you and you have the debuff after 5 stacks on Thorim 25 (I'm thinking hard mode, I forget what kind of damage multiplier that gives Thorim) your raid is playing roulette with your life, as your avoidance will suck and you'll have a chance to be crit. This is true for all tanks, though one can reduce the chance of being one-shot through use of cooldowns (which we lack relative to DKs, for instance). Either way, this isn't your fault, it's the other tank's fault.

XT I'm not sure, as I said DKs will take less damage, and ferals tend to have large HP pools, but paladins are not especially hard to heal on XT hard mode. We can also use bubble + Divine Sacrifice while tanking the boss on that fight during tantrums, which is nice. Remember to stick to 969 for maximal Holy Shield uptime and to keep Sacred Shield on yourself.

Yogg + 3 we do without Mimiron, so that's an additional 20% damage you are taking, but I never noticed being particularly in danger of dying on that phase. You will get hit harder than a DK or feral due to lower armor. You still should have like 50K HP or something though, and the adds take less damage as they are DPS'd. If you are taking more than 1 or at most 2 40K hits your melee is slacking.

What it boils down to is that EH is king on hard modes, both armor and just pure stam (magic and physical). We are disadvantaged to some extent relative to blood DKs and ferals in this department. I like to think it's not a huge difference and is made up for with better threat/ranged pickup/utility, but the difference is there and it does matter, at least until 3.2 where this is being addressed. In the mean time I would say:

1) Use 2xStam trinkets. You have DMC:G equipped right now, I don't know if that is your usual trinket but I use Heart of Iron/Signet of King Llane, and you could at least go get EOG to replace it. You need as much HP as you can reasonably get without sacrficing other important stats, and threat stats aren't important to stack for the hard modes you are referring to.

2) Indestructible pots are your friend. I had largely forgotten these existed until Faligard/Falibard reminded me of them. Key for hard mode Steelbreaker, tanking 2 or more assault bots on hard mode Mim, etc.

3) Keep up Sacred Shield and Holy Shield, together they mitigate significant amounts of damage, and when you get hit for 40K 1K damage absorbed might be the difference between living and dying.

Wow. I forgot to take off the DMC for my armory and unbuffed stats . I usually use the furnace stone which puts me at 27.61% dodge. I keep the DMC on for trash and threat sensitive fights but I do take it off for real bosses. Once I can get heart of iron or that one off Yogg10, I will be using that in place of whatever my worst trinket it.
I do have the t8 chest piece. The only reason I don't use it over the unbreakable is the stamina loss but I guess the pure avoidance makes up for that. I did completely forget about armor pots, I haven't used one since learning Prince in Kara.
I just went on my guy and worked out a new set. Unbuffed I have 34.4k HP, 27.57% dodge, 20.03% parry and 1k BV with 24918 armor. Would the only 1k BV make my threat too low for hardmodes?
We actually always have a holy pally keep up Sacred Shield on me. I don't think they stack, do they?

Tandors wrote: Once I can get heart of iron or that one off Yogg10, I will be using that in place of whatever my worst trinket it.

Furnace stone is amazing, though situationally I'd still even use EoG over it for some hard modes, and the stam trinks are usually a lot better in my experience. Fusion punch doesn't care about your armor (or your avoidance). Neither does plasma blast. The on-use is probably excellent for Thorim at high stacks if you don't have someone using an external cooldown, but again I doubt it outweighs that much more HP.

Tandors wrote:
I just went on my guy and worked out a new set. Unbuffed I have 34.4k HP, 27.57% dodge, 20.03% parry and 1k BV with 24918 armor. Would the only 1k BV make my threat too low for hardmodes?

That sounds in line with what I have in my usual tank set, not sure about the block. My toon is logged out in ret gear or I'd check. That said, I think the only pieces I have with non-strength-derived BV on them are the XT ring and the T8.5 gloves, so I doubt I have much more than you unbuffed. Buffs tend to add a fair amount, and I typically have no trouble holding aggro.

Tandors wrote:
We actually always have a holy pally keep up Sacred Shield on me. I don't think they stack, do they?

They can't proc at the same time, but yes, they stack in some sense. If you have 2 of the parent buff on, you can get two copies of the shield buff up, and if on one hit one of the shields is consumed, the other shield buff will take damage off the next hit. I don't remember exactly how the internal CDs work with multiple buffs, but it's never a bad idea to throw it up, and it costs you only 1 GCD every minute. Essentially an extra block on top of yours. Very important for Vezax hard mode--regardless of whether you are tanking or not, throw that up on the MT.

Is my raid the only one that doesn't taunt off on Unbalancing Strikes?

moduspwnens wrote:Is my raid the only one that doesn't taunt off on Unbalancing Strikes?

You mean you just heal through the crit/burst damage or you have a pvp bear tank it?

Janduin wrote:First off, Blood DK tanks are overpowered, right Faligard?

Wrong. Buff please.

Falibard wrote:

moduspwnens wrote:Is my raid the only one that doesn't taunt off on Unbalancing Strikes?

You mean you just heal through the crit/burst damage or you have a pvp bear tank it?

I'd be interested how you do this too. At the moment we have 3 tanks and they taunt every unbalancing, but our warriors are idiots and always screw up taunt order.

moduspwnens wrote:Is my raid the only one that doesn't taunt off on Unbalancing Strikes?

No, we use a Bear. It used to be expected that he'd die at some point, but DPS has come up a ways, he normally lives now.

--
Meloree, <Edge>, Garona

kanst wrote:

Falibard wrote:

moduspwnens wrote:Is my raid the only one that doesn't taunt off on Unbalancing Strikes?

You mean you just heal through the crit/burst damage or you have a pvp bear tank it?

I'd be interested how you do this too. At the moment we have 3 tanks and they taunt every unbalancing, but our warriors are idiots and always screw up taunt order.

We seriously don't taunt on them and we don't have a bear tank. We sometimes have DK / Me / Warrior and sometimes Me / Warrior / Warrior, and this week DK /Warrior / Warrior, but we've always basically used the same strategy. The same guy can tank with little gib potential up to 9 stacks (hard mode). After that, he's watching the Unbalancing cooldown timer and calling for external buffs (Pain Suppression, GS, HoSac) so that we do our best to have them up for each Unbalancing Strike. The guild actually had this down before I got there so I did miss out on progression, but they tell me that it's just too tough to have the healers switch with very little warning and that it was leading to Taunt->Gib.

Once most of our external CDs are out, the main tank (usually our DK for this one, but sometimes me) will pop each of his CDs for Unbalancing Strikes. If I remember correctly, once you get up to 11 or so stacks, it's either an actual one-shot or very fast two-shot, so CDs are highly important. I shouldn't have to remind you, though, that a lot of this is luck based. Unbalancing Strike could not land, essentially trivializing a full 30 seconds or so, or you can get the super fun Unbalancing > Crit combo, but he swings so fast that that can happen with either strategy.

Anyway, I'm not 100% convinced it's better in every way. Just throwing it out there as a possibility if you're having trouble because that's how my guild does it. My raid leaders are fairly stubborn though so we might just be doing it the hard way.

in my experience taunt-gib is far more likely than crit-gib, too (but i only have thorim hard on 10-man down, dunno on 25)

DBM shows a potential timer for the swap, so our healers tend to be ready for the swap. With double Mind control (yes they stack!) from shadow priests on the warbringers, we can bring this down extremly quickly with herosim, so gibs rarely happen (each tank pops a CD when unbalancing strike is incoming whilst they are tanking to stop the gib potential).

Tandors wrote:For example, on Thorim hard mode, once he hits about 5 charges, if someone doesn't taunt off me when I get the unbalancing strike, there is a huge chance that I will just drop dead to the next attack.

We pop CD's for the 5th unbalancing and beyond, usually me and a DK tanking it, we got enough raid CD's to survive to upto the 10th than it's usually dead, guardian spirits/pain supp, ret+holy bubble sacs, our own shield walls/trinkets.