Hi there,
Last night myself and fellow guildies attempted the 10 man version of Icecrown Citadel. We wiped on Lord Marrowgar multiple times, with our best attempt getting him to about 65%. I feel like the problem may have been the tanks being undergeared. Is gear the problem or do we need to fix something else? Any help and suggestions are greatly appreciated. I figured I would turn to the community here at Tankspot since I know very little about tanking and you all seem to be pros at it.
I will try and give as much information about the raid composition as possible.
The links to our tanks' armory pages are below:
The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory
Tanks: Warrior, Druid
DPS: Fire Mage, Arcane Mage, Destruction Warlock, and two Survival Hunters
Healers: Holy Priest, Discipline Priest, and Restoration Druid
Gearscore wise (for those that use wow-heroes.com) all the DPS were 2700+ with the Fire Mage being 2800. The healers were also 2700+. Our tanks however were 2650 for the warrior and 2570 for the druid.
Please help. Again, any help is greatly appreciated.
/bow
Right off the start get your warrior tank;
A better shield and cloak
Get rid of Ick's thumb for either the black heart of the onyxia 25 trinket
the 30 stam shoulder enchant
Overall I would use less dodge/defense gear (he has plenty) and gem enchant for EH
Thank you!
I do know we need to get him a better shield and cloak. By the Onyxia 25 trinket do you mean the one from you get when you turn in the head?
Also given the new -20% dodge debuff from Icecrown Citadel, what is the best way for him to gem for EH? Would it be just through pure +stamina gems?
I would disagree. I think Marrowgar favors avoidance.
1) Saberlash can be avoided.
2) His melee hits in 10 man are small but faster (9k range on me).
How about some more information? Exactly what is causing you to wipe at 65%? What is your overall raid DPS? At what point in the fight are your tanks dying? i.e. is it during the transition from P2 back to P1? have the tanks checked combat log to see what killed them?
Having done this on both 10 and 25 man, I will say... the stacking of the tanks can be a little sensitive. Unlike Mother Sharaz, this is a movement fight. One thing that is important to do is, whoever your MT is needs to have a specific plan in regards to which direction they are going to move to, in the event that the blue flame comes at the tanks.
I call it on vent. "MOVING LEFT". And I try to move back and forth, so as to not force the entire raid to spin. Move left. If you get another flame at the tanks, move back right (the first one should be going away by now), etc.
EDIT: A few suggestions, going back over your warrior's armory:
1) He is using some 15 stam / 10 defense gems. These could be much better used with Stam / Avoidance or raw stam, as his defense is at 554 already.
2) As a tank, farming Emblems of Triumph is SUPER, SUPER easy right now. Helm / Gloves / Legs could be easily upgraded. Which will help with...
3) Expertise Expertise Expertise. If I would suggest any one stat for your tank friend to work on in 10 mans, it would be to get his expertise up. Assuming you have all the health buffs. There is a good thread here on Tankspot, I think called "Avoidance Value of Expertise". Expertise really helps reduce incoming damage. Some of the T9 gear is loaded with it.
4) While I think Marrowgar is a good fight for an avoidance setup, I'd definitely agree with switching Cloak + Gloves to armor enchants. Though I would keep Ick's Rotting Thumb.
Also... shields and cloaks are finicky. I am, embarassingly, still using the same cloak as your Warrior. Kill Jaraxxus every week on 10 and 25 man, no cloak. Cleared Ulduar forever... no cloak. Nothing yet from the new 5 mans, 10 man, or 25 man. We just can't get a cloak to drop for ANYTHING.
Last edited by Stymie; 12-14-2009 at 02:45 PM.
"Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer." -- Brian Greene.
I am geared more for 25m content but still your warrior has 8k unbuffed health less then me. I would definitely have him switch out those legs/shield/trinket asap. Same with the block ring, he needs two sets if he is gearing for Anub'arak ad tanking versus real tanking. Block is still a meh stat when working on progression content.
In truth his gear is probably ok and it is more of an issue getting your raid members to all know the ICC fights and how to handle them correctly. If your raid is taking a ton of damage from Marrowgar's Cold Flame or if they aren't breaking spikes fast enough healers will fall behind in general, whereas if everyone is doing their job the raid healing should be minimal an allow your healers to spam your tanks.
Well we actually had very little raid wide damage. People got very good at avoiding cold flame and whirlwind as the night went on. The only real raid damage we took was when someone was impaled.
The tanks seemed to die mostly during phase 1, I saw a couple times where they were not stacked properly and the MT's health dropped to almost 0, I am assuming that was a full saber lash hit by himself. It seemed though that the tanks just died too quickly, I know the healers were going all out. We had our druid throw HoT's on each tank whenever he could when the raid wasn't taking any damage.
It is not that we are wiping at 65%, that was just the best we could get him to. That wipe was from the tanks not picking him up together out of whirlwind phase so they went down.
You know, tanks can stand just inside the boss hitbox and effectively never get hit by the flame o' frost. It is a bit of an exact science though cause if you move a little too far into the hit box you will cause the boss to adjust (a bear druid will likely have their hind legs sticking out of the hitbox for example but likely still forward enough to not be hit by flames).Originally Posted by Stymie
Honestly, the bear is far worse than the warrior. All the warrior needs to do is to get rid of all extra dodge and go stam (dodge gems, defense gems because he is way over cap, as well as the dodge trinkets). The only non-stamina gem I would keep on the warrior would be the expertise gems. The bear need to grind the heck out of H ToC 5 man for the stam trinket (The Black Hear) as well as marrowstrike polearm, and grab the pvp shoulder enchant if you want even more stamina.
I am surprised they are holding threat, the warrior has next to no threat stats, and the ilvl 200 weapon is too low to hold out against 2700-2800 gear scores (assuming they are competent).
A combat log would help. We don't know why they died. Could be not enough HP to survive hits + saberlashes, or the DPS could be threat capped by the tanks, meaning they cannot put out DPS before they pull threat, or are constantly trying to misdirect or shed threat instead of doing full on damage.
I don't disagree on the shield and cloak, but there's no guarantee to getting a new one.
Rather I'd like to see the warrior upgrade his helm to the offset Triumph helm and maybe get his legs to the T9 version. I say the legs because although it's a minor upgrade block value pieces are kind of lackluster and the T9 version is a decent jump in stamina.
Thank you all for ideas. I will be sure to relay them to our tanks/send them here for more advice. I hope to gear them up as fast as possible.
Yeah, but you likely won't prevent them 100%. The only time the flames generally are an issue for a tank is when he spawns one coming right out of the whirlwind phase, usually by that point we're not quite in position.
"Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer." -- Brian Greene.
BTW, Marrowgar melee damage has been nerfed already (He was hitting for about the same on 10/25 so maybe re-tuned would be better than nerfed) so life may be a little more certain for you in there.
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