[Deathispink]

Hey, I'm an ok geared Death Knight Tank and I've done most of the Heroics as a tank. But today I tried to Tank heroic trial of the crusader and after we dismounted the champions (Rogue, Hunter, Warrior Combo), we wiped 3 times fighting them. I don't know if it was me tanking, or the healer, or if we just got a very hard combo but we got really mad because we couldnt even take out one of them. Here's a link to my armory The World of Warcraft Armory but it hasnt updated to my tank gear yet since I logged off yesterday in my DPS gear. My tanking spec is the Frost Spec and I got it off another tanking discussion here. I really need to know because when we get to it, I might be tanking Call of the Crusade in guild runs and I want to know what I need to change before I have to tank that.

It's updated to my tanking gear now but you might have to refresh it and I would like to hear any suggestions anyone has for me.

[PosiJoel]

ToC is harder than the other instances IMO; not necessarily boss difficulty or anything like that, I'm just saying you're going to take more of a beating in there than in most of the other heroics. Being almost completely geared in Blue pieces, most with Stam gems/enchants probably isn't going to cut it, even if you are def capped. The other thing I noticed was you had almost 24k health, obviously unbuffed. That's a little low too.
Knowing your limits is part of it all. Now that Conquest badges are dropping, getting quite a bit of much better tanking gear will be much, much easier.

I've just started tanking, and almost have a full set of gear already just from running heroics, getting a few pieces here and there, and using the emblems. So certainly stick to running other heroics until you get the necessary gear. Or run through Regular ToC several times in a row, it's quick, pretty painless, and the gear that drops is pretty solid:
Trinket: The Black Heart - Item - World of Warcraft
Gloves: Mercy's Hold - Item - World of Warcraft
Legs: Legguards of Abandoned Fealty - Item - World of Warcraft
Waist: Girdle of the Pallid Knight - Item - World of Warcraft
Boots: Boots of Heartfelt Repentance - Item - World of Warcraft

I managed to get the Legs, and the Trinket after 3 runs. Which probably took less than an hour to get through. You don't obviously get any emblems for these runs, but you get decent enough gear to make it worth while, if you're undergeared...

Edit: This is the Trial of the Champion instance BTW, not Trial of the Crusader.

[HDEagle71]

Also make sure you take them down int he right order.

Healer (Dranie if he is one of the 3 1st)
Then the Mage or Warrior
Then the Rogue who puts the AOE poison out.

It's a slow kite and it is brutal make sure you tell everyone to let you get aggro on all 3 otherwise the dps will die fast. You can stun them.

For the 2nd boss kill the groups targeting the healer 1st and make sure some one detroys the healing well she brings out. The boss is straight forward.

The Black Knight is easy until he launches Army of Undead getting aggro on them and kiting them because they explode I find difficult.

Run normal it drops epic items as well then do Heroic.

[Wolftank]

Uhm, I tanked that a few times... and I am in full U25 gear, so pretty good geared, and I have still wiped in there

A few things on how we manage it:

1) We run out to reset it at transition from mounted to unmounted combat... aggro is stupid at the trasition, so even with 2 taunts as a DK its still bloody impossible to pick them all up fast enough --> RUN OUT

2) I say Rogue is the most dangerous of the lot, so I kill him first, then warrior and finally caster - healer dont heal much.

Group combo is kinda important too, someone able to dispell the poison is a great help, but it can be done without - tank just need to move a bit more.

Otherwise its kinda healing intensive, so make sure your healer is up for it, this is not a fight to cut your teeth on so to speak, go to Nexus for that.

And silly dps doing 800dps should never even consider entering that place.

Good luck

/Wolf :Q

PS: Get the hp trinket from Normal ToC its bloody good (and making a normal run first usually show you if the rest of the team is able to do a heroic run after),

[Meldwyn]

I agree with everything posted so far. It is a dps and healer instance though, imo. I have tanked it plenty of times and have wiped due to low dps and taking too long to down the bosses, which taxes the healer too much. And I have breezed through it with some very good dps and heals. I have also switched to my dps set and have done well with that also depending on who else is dps'ing and healing.

Last night I felt bad for our first tank, he was 26K unbuffed and over the def cap, but our healer couldn't keep up with the spikes in dmg even though his aggro was fine. We wiped twice on the first boss fight and he left. Brought in a pally tank with 30K unbuffed and we did better the rest of the way through it with the same dps and heals, but it was still a challenge. Was it a tank issue? Maybe... with a different healer and higher dps, could our first tank have made it, probably!

If you are going to tank it, be picky about dps and your healer. If they are hitting for 1.5K and the healer can't aoe heal well, then think again. You need 3 dps hitting 2.5K avg and a great aoe healer to be able to get through unscathed if you are a bit squishy.

People think that because its Heroic, its on the same level as UK or HoS... I think its actually more along the lines of Naxx or OS.

good luck, and don't give up... be choosey!

[Hit Me]

Depending on the combination you get, the first three can be tough sledding. If you get the warrior and hunter at the same time, the tank is going to take a lot of really bursty damage.

Our priority goes Healer>Rogue>Hunter>Mage>Warrior. We're usually caster heavy though, so the Warrior doesn't pose nearly as much of a threat as it does with a Melee heavy group.

The Mage may be more of a threat to a non warrior tank. I usually just spell reflect tank her if she gets separated from the other two and it's no big deal, but I'm not sure how that would work with another class tanking it. This is especially true if you are also fighting the Hunter, who's disengaging the whole time.

I also agree with Wolftank, just run out after you dismount everybody and then run back in to restart the encounter on foot. The transition is retarded. Even if you dismount them all in the same spot, the aggro behaves strangely when you're trying to pick them up. I'm not sure if they are behaving based on threat generated in the jousting phase or what, but I've only managed to successfully grab them all before somebody died maybe two or three times. It's just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with when you can just reset it.

[Vorla]

The hunter is a very small problem if you kite the other adds to her, keeping her in melee. If both the mage and hunter are up, kite the hunter in melee range to the mage. Problem solved.

[Keza]

The Black Knight is easy until he launches Army of Undead getting aggro on them and kiting them because they explode I find difficult.

I release my own army of the undead the second he goes down the first time, works like a charm.

[Mecer]

The first encounter is by far the hardest pickup in the game for a tank.

2 suggestions if you decide to not run out (I never do, but I like a challenge):

1) Dismount right before the last one dies, DnD where you could hit the maximum number of targets. Your two taunts should be prioritized by controlling the warrior and the rogue, they can and WILL 1 shot a clothie. After that its a matter of AoE tanking. Ive found that if I drag the melee to the caster/hunter I can pull agro quickly. This isnt easy and you and your healer need to be on the ball because there will be some damage getting tossed around. If you are a Bloodelf, Arcane Torrent is amazing to keep the shaman/mage in your AoE.

2) Easy mode: again dismount early, ~2-3s, and pop Army. The zombies will gather everything up and keep it off the DPS.


As far as compositions, Warrior, Rogue, and Hunter is the hardest. If the healer isnt present we focus the warrior first, its MS+Whirlwind has killed me. We tend to run melee heavy, so we do the rogue next after that.

Note about the rogue: AMS prevents additional stacks of Deadly Poison to be laid, use it ~4-5stacks, lets it fade.

M

[Hit Me]

Source: Vorla The hunter is a very small problem if you kite the other adds to her, keeping her in melee. If both the mage and hunter are up, kite the hunter in melee range to the mage. Problem solved.

Yeah, I drag everybody to the Hunter. Shield bashing or heroic throwing the Mage allows for a little control over her as well. Kiting the Hunter in melee range has been hit or miss though. He seems to disengage quite a bit.

[tazdirector]

Just throwing my two cents in on the Healer/Warrior/Rogue combo in Heroic ToC:
My 5-man team (DK Frost Tank (me), 2x Ret Paladins, 1x Disc Priest and 1x Elemental Shaman) have run across the above combination more than 50% of the time. They gave us fits for the first several runs until we decided on the following:

I (Frost DK) tank the Rogue and Healer while one of our Palys switches to Prot to OT the Warrior. It makes it much easier to handle the poison/whirlwind combination and makes it easier for us to move through our interrupt rotation to minimize the heals.

It may take an extra 30 seconds because of the loss of DPS, but we've found it to be much easier on the healer. Since we've used the strategy above, we've yet to lose a member of the group.

Maybe not the best strat, but it works well for us!

[PosiJoel]

Since I last posted on this I've gone through it several times in Heroic.

First off you shouldn't have anyone under 2k dps in group; preferably 2.5k.
You also need a heavy healer that is up for a challenge.
I'm now over Def capped, nearly 30k health unbuffed, and 17k armor; and I still take a pretty heavy beating in this instance.


The Joust

The kill order I've done is:
Healer/Warrior/Mage/Hunter/Rogue

It's pretty easy to grab all of them as a DK tank and get a decent amount of early threat. Throwing D&D with Howling blast is a good enough start for the secondary targets, and getting a Rune Strike in helps a lot for the first target. Also, when you're dismounted, run out of the instance; it saves an almost guaranteed wipe unless you're way over geared for this and are more than prepared to switch to the appropriate weapon.

The healer... Shaman, or Druid or whatever it's supposed to be is an easy target that should be easily downed without too many problems as long as the tank maintains threat on all three targets.

The Warrior is the next target; he can have some very spikey hits, along with WW that can pose for an easy wipe. He should also be a pretty easy kill as long as melee DPS is self aware.

The Mage and Hunter I think are about equal amount of threat to the party and can be killed in either order. If you keep them close they shouldn't pose too much of a problem; just watch out for the Hunters Disengage where he jumps back (a simple Death Grib is remedy for this), and the mage will certainly wander away from time to time.

We always save the Rogue for last because he doesn't have the same damage spikes as the others, and his poison on the ground is extremely easy to kite out of since it's so bright and doesn't have a very big radius. If the party is self aware about the poison spots; this is the easiest to kill.


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Eadric the Pure is the easiest of the bosses IMO. He's not the heaviest of hitters, and as long as the part is selfaware of when he casts his Radiate spell (when you turn around), and can be healed through the hammer; this is an easy, painless kill.

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Argent Confessor Paletress is the harder of the 2nd bosses; but still isn't a difficult fight if the party knows what they are doing. I can't remember what the cooldown is, but she will cast a spell that summons a boss from a different raid or instance. The entire party must focus on this memory; Paletres will become immune. The memory will also cast a fear spell which can pose problematic if the tank can't get aggro back in time or is near death when it's cast. Other than the memories, it's an easy tank n' spank.


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The Black Knight is easily the most difficult boss in this instance, but again should be a breeze if people know what they're doing.

Phase 1; start by getting a steady amount of threat on The Black Knight by adding diseases and maybe a couple blood strikes. By the time you're done with that his ghoul will be summoned, Death Grip the ghoul to you, and have your party kill the ghoul first and foremost. The ghoul doesn't do much damage, but will beat on a clothie pretty hard; plus if you leave the ghoul up he'll explode.

Phase 2; start this phase by popping Army of the Dead; or by casting a D&D and grabbing all the ghouls the Black Knight summons. Kite them all around slowly making sure people in the party are away from them when they explode. The ghouls again don't do much melee damage, but pose as a sure wipe if not controlled.

Phase 3; if you didn't pop Army of the Dead on the 2nd phase, do it here. This is just a DPS burn. All melee DPS should stack on the tank, and the healer should be facerolling on their biggest heal button. Pop all Cooldowns: Ice Bound Fortitude, Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, whatever it is you have.

Phase 4; Ninja every item.

[Xerzes]

I find myself running this place quite often on both normal and heroic, and I've never needed any complicated strategies for any of the encounters.

The joust bosses have usually gone down painlessly if you just burn them down in the right order. I find the order will change depending on the make-up of your group and how good your DPS are. The priority that I find best is:
If melee-heavy group, warrior>rogue>shaman>mage>hunter.
If ranged-heavy group, rogue>hunter>shaman>warrior>mage.
If you have low DPS, it helps to give the shaman higher priority to get his heals out of the way quicker. If your DPS is higher however, you can usually burn through the warrior/rogue without too much regard for the shaman's heals.

The way I usually go about it (as a Blood tank) is to drop DnD to cover all of them as I run in. Then Death Grip the hunter, PS->IT->Pest and start single-target rotation on the warrior/rogue/whoever you're killing first. All three should be roughly close to you, sitting in your DnD and Heart Strike will be hitting both the main target and one of the others. If the warrior whirlwinds I'll pop IBF, and if my health is dropping rather quickly for whatever reason Vamp Blood. Should work alright as long as DPS focuses fire on one at a time and doesn't try to AoE all three. If you're killing the Shaman second it helps for DPS to use trinkets/cooldowns on the first boss to get to the shaman that much faster.

The trash pulls prior to Eadric/Paletress are easy. Priestess->Lightwielder->Monk. Make sure monk dies last.

Eadric is really easy, make sure people turn around for Radiance. If you're feeling psychic, pop IBF sometime during the fight. If it's up when he tries to hit you with Hammer of the Righteous, the stun will fail and you'll catch the hammer. A game of chance to be sure, but it helps everyone when you make it and you won't need IBF during the fight anyways.

Paletress is a bit harder if your DPS aren't very good. When she starts summoning the add, make sure to look around for it and target it as soon as you can. Taunt it once her stun wears off to keep it off the healer at the start. I usually burn AMS when he starts casting the first fear, as it'll both avoid the damage and allow you to keep your threat up. This is when your DPS should use trinkets and cooldowns, as he has quite a bit of health and a slow fight here could mean OOM for your healer. Add dies, kill her, pretty simple.

I'll add Black Knight in a minute.

[Bashal]

Some things I've noticed:

* I've seen the fight glitch lots after the dismount: duplicates of opponents that come active after the fight is "over" for example.

* They ignore aggro for a few seconds. I've seen them take tics from D&D or a paladin's Consecrate and just....walk away to kill someone else. Or maybe they retain aggro from damage done while jousting, idk.

Running out after the dismount avoids all of these issues.