Needing some advise for Gurtogg

[Methadone]

I'm a warrior tank for this fight along with a prot Paladin and feral Druid but we are having major difficulties with tanking. We have 8 healers (4 on MT, 2 on OT's and 2 raid healing), for the fel rages we have 3 of the MT healers (and the prot pala) on the fel raged guy if its a clothy. We're usually ok with keeping them up although its 50/50 as to wether a mage survives sadly.

As for tanking, we've been following the Rough Tanking guide posted here which is great.

What we're doing currently is to MD gurtogg to the Paladin (MT2) with a 2nd MD to the druid (MT3) while I (MT1) build threat with the help of a rage pot and wf totem, this is how it usually works out (from memory, I'm at work atm)

MT2 does nice threat, 1100 or so.
MT3 gets 2nd on threat due to MD and taking strikes.
MT1 is a little way behind MT3 with about 700-800 tps.
MT2 stops TPS at ~7 stacks
MT3 takes over with MT2 at 11~ stacks and with 3~ stacks himself.
MT1 overtakes threat on MT2 who as OT cant do a great deal and is usually the tank after the first fel rage.
MT3 and MT2 both have stacks when they take over again. All tanks get too many stacks and theres not enough healing during fel rage.

I've probably made this more complicated than it should be.

Basically we can't seem to shed the debuff when we OT. Is this a positioning issue, gear issue, l2play issue?

With 3 tanks. Should the top 2 on threat stand infront with the 3rd to the side to avoid cleave (and hopefully the debuff re-application)?

Appreciate any help.

[Dragaan]

here's something you might wanna try:

at the start of the fight have all 3 tanks stand in front of gurtogg and build threat. 7 stacks, like youve been doing, is a good time to have tank2 take over from tank1. once tank2 gains threat over tank1, tank1 should move to his side (a side where he will be by himself). tank1 can wait there until the debuff wears off. then just keep alternating like this, having hunters use misdirects to bring whoever is lowest on threat back up. be smart with misdirects and work your ass off to build threat when you are standing to the side (waiting for the debuff to wear off) and things should all go well.


Edit: note i did not use the same mt #s that you did to identify the pally/warrior/druid. the numbers just mean whoever is main tanking him first, second.

[Zéph]

Something that my guild did when we were first learning this fight is that myself and the other tanks (we use three) did not go all out, we kept a relatively low TPS so it is much easier to rotate main tank between each other.

This really doesn't hurt your DPS at all since you have ample time to kill him even if your DPS is only going hard during the Fel Enrage (which they should,) since they can go as hard as possible without the threat of pulling aggro.

Additionally, from what I understand is that prot Paladins main form of threat comes from blocking attacks. Which would cause an issue when he or she is not the main tank, since the warrior and the druid can independently build sufficient aggro. So again, I suggest that the three of you only produce as much TPS as the TPS of the lowest tank.

As for positioning, like Dragaan said once you get your 6 or 7 stacks stand out of the way of the cleave, since it has a 50% chance to reapply the debuff- and he uses it often.

[Kavtor]

On that topic.
Gurtogg's up next for us, and we'll likely be hitting it with 2 prot warriors and a prot pally.
Problem - the other prot warrior runs with out mods. This is a non negotiable issue.
Anyone have any advice for planning threat switches with out KTM / Omen?
We did the same thing on Huhuran last year, and it often wasn't pretty.

[byechee]

First off, to address what you think your main issue is, namely not being able to shed acidic wounds from OT's: OT's really shouldn't be attacking from the front, unless you're extremely rage starved at the start, in which case take a cleave or two. Chain MD's if you have to, but bear OTs and warriors w/ WF should be able to keep up in threat from behind. Put on a slow wep if you have to, or if you're feeling adventurous, dual-wield devastate spam with two slow weps-it's surprisingly effective.

Speaking more generally to the encounter, pretty much since our first kill we've been running with just 2 tanks on togg, a strat I highly advocate. Even when we did try with three, the third tank (fury war) rarely got aggro, if ever. The only real reason for a 3rd OT is to prevent an unlucky knockback->disorient combo on your first 2 tanks, but from many weeks of this guy, we've yet to have that happen to us.

While lots of strats say that running with 2 tanks is much tricker, with how well omen usually works on this fight, it usually isn't, and depending on how many MD's are in your raid, can be easier to manage (the more the merrier).

The 2 tanks we have are me (warrior) and a feral druid. I run at about 70% total avoidance (miss/dodge/parry, probably closer to 65 when we first got there) and the druid has at least 50-60% dodge, not sure exactly.

I mention this because managing aggro goes hand in hand with managing acidic wounds. Everyone knows to stop building threat at a certain number of stacks, but longer you can delay that point, the better off everyone will be. What I usually try to do is watch my debuff timer and use avoidance trinkets accordingly. If it's getting to the end of a regular phase and the debuff timer is at 40 seconds or so, pop your moroes trinket and scarab of displacement (if u have those or similar items). That will hopefully prevent any further wounds from being applied and by the end of the fel rage period it should have completely ticked off. During that time, make sure your OT isn't attacking from the front, so togg doesn't get extra hits off parries. Also make sure tclap is always up. (any debuffs your raid might have to decrease mob chance to hit i.e. scorpid sting insect swarm should be up as well).

what this ultimately allows you to do is spend more time building aggro without having to stop prematurely to swap tanks. If the wounds go your way you can build all the way up to a knockback, thus allowing your dps to push it a lot harder. It'll also create less burden on healers.

Obviously this strategy works great when it works, but you're back to square one if togg is able to steadily refresh acidic wound on you. In that case just switch off as needed as you have been and your healers should be able to keep you alive. 4 healers should easily be able to keep an MT up, and 1 healer can heal through 10 stacks during an enrage. I would encourage you to run with 2 tanks and see how it goes. ditch the pally imo, or let him be 1st tank for as long as he can and just have him bubble when it gets too crazy with stacks. (pro tip: He could also DI someone (spriest) right before he dies to help them drop aggro, lul).

As for mages dying, make sure they're using frost armor when they get the rage.

[Methadone]

Cheers, awesome help.

My avoidance is pretty low, 52%ish (25% dodge, 16% parry, 11% miss) and even worse on our pala tank so we found whoever was OT was picking up alot of debuffs before the aggro switch which meant he couldn't last long as MT.

Our mages were using Ice Armour as well and we made sure to fully debuff gurtogg before the fel rage.

[Worldie]

Our usual tanking tactic uses 1 paladin (me), 1 warrior, 1 druid.

We MD the boss to the warrior, he starts. He builds aggro for like 10 seconds, then only autoattacks. If the druid gets aggro, he stops doing anything. If i get aggro, i use only Holy Shield (rank 1 if i have big threat lead) and just autoattack.
We tell the DPS to not do anything in the first P1 so we have some threat lead for the rest of the fight. If a tank gets > 8 debuff and other 2 tanks cant pick the boss, we bubble him.
The plan for us is not allowing the boss to refresh stacks on a tank. If i lose aggro, i build soft aggro and stay behind the other 2 tanks until stacks wear off, then i start again. I use spelldam trinket or avenging wrath for that, i guess warriors can abuse of the Autoblocker for same purpose.


Just pray that rogues or tanks get fel rage. I hope u arent as unlucky as us where it only hits holy priests and mages

Also another suggestion: if you dare, have a disc/holy priest spec full disci: pain suppression is pure gold while learning this fight.