So apparently I'm getting hit real hard...

[swollenpickles]

Last night I tried tanking H HoR for the first time (run it a stack of times as DPS on my DK and another toon).

I've been working on my tanking and gearing up recently (a whole other thread), and figured my gear was getting to be about where it needed to be. You can see it all here.

Long story short, one boss down, then wipe. The healer starts asking me if I'm defense capped (defense was at 554 so AFAIK I'm capped) and that I'm getting hit real hard, basically putting the wipe on me. I guess someone has to take the blame (seems like thats a key skill to have when tanking), but I'm a little confused cos stat wise I'm not too bad. I've seen tanks run it in worse nick.

With buffs I was sitting on 36K hp. Armor wise I'm at 17431 before applying frost presence. The black heart also procs reguarly boosting armor by an additional 7K. I can pop unbreakable armor ever minute to boost armor by another 25%. I've also go all the frost damage mitigation skills on the go (eg. frigid dredgeplate).

So anyway, first wipe happens. I deal with it. It's a game. Sh!t happens. So we start up again, 6th wave. This time the healer doesn't quite get the LoS thing right (which was confirmed by one or two others in the group). Anyway, I go down pretty quickly seeing as though I don't get any heals, then the healer dies, then everyone else. Healer starts QQing again I'm getting hit too hard. I think well maybe I am crap, apologise to the group and suggest it'd be better for them to get another tank. It kinda sucked, but it was a learning experience.

Anyway, my question for a more level headed and less emotional audience (ie. not a qqing healer) is, based on my gear and talents, would I really be getting hit any harder than anyone else? Is there something I'm missing? Or was the healer just crying because he was having to heal me and not getting a free ride like he would have had an uber geared tank taken my place?

[deathdaddy]

Hi Mate

stay dps, thats what i woudl say for that one, I have managed to tank P1 once, loose agro die easy. On the other hand with the same gear i can single tank ICC10 up to marro with out any issues what so every, even tanking 2 of those hard hitting big bastard giants.

But HOR Heroic, ahhh refuse to tank it. I know its not healer related, as its our guild healer that runs icc10 and heals me on that. So again cant help you, only advice is stay dps for it lol

Heres my armory link, as you can see im not crap geared

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...n&n=deathdaddy

regards

DD

[swollenpickles]

Lol thanks. I would have dps'ed it instead but I was thrown in as tank for the daily 2 Frost random run. I guess the random generator gerbil thought I was up to it Clearly I wasn't.

[Pestiilence]

Swollen, HHOR is a real test for tanking, don't let the healer BS you, it is a tough place for a healer on those wave pulls. ( I have a 80 geared Holy Priest - Wiitchdoctor -Llane) and I have healed that fight, and it is not easy. I grimace when I get that instance on my randoms, but have managed to get through it as a DW tank. The mobs in there can hit pretty had especially when you have 2 melee, a range hunter shooting you, and a mage nuking you with frostbolts. Using your cooldowns and positioning is important. Just stick with it, if your lucky you won't get it very often until your gear/skills improve. Keeping agro in there shouldn't be that difficult for you as frost, make sure the dps focus fire down the, Priest, Mage, then start working on hunters, melee. I usually DG the mage or priest into my fray to help hammer them down.
Pest.

[Pestiilence]

Swollen Have you read this yet? Read the section on frost it should answer your questions from the other post.
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...Knight-Tanking

PS... I use Razorice on my offhand because it helps with threat as a frost tank, it makes targets vulnerable to frost damage.. aka.. FS, IT, HB..

[swollenpickles]

Thanks Pestiilence. Threat didn't seem to be an issue in H HoR. Generally (with a couple of exceptions) all the bad guys were pounding on me. The problem was more with me standing up long enough to get to the boss battles. Once the first boss came out he was relatively straight forward, and I didn't have any 'oh sh!t' moments. During the waves though I was constantly holding my finger on the oh sh!t button.

Now I'm over the defense cap I'm going to re-rune one of my weapons too.

[Vlad]

36k buffed is a little low, it should be fine for HHOR but if the healer isn't good your chances of survival are going to be low.
Granted your spec will be good for packs, but you'll get better survivabilty from blood. VB/WOTN/spell deflection are very powerful tools, not to mention the extra health you'll get.
Also theres a could of enhancements you can make to your gear such as:
Bracers - 40 stam enchant (I can see you are probably watiing for better ones before splashing out on this)
Belt - change the gem to stam/def
Chest - 275 health enchant
Gloves - 18 stam armour patch
Also I'm assuming the blood off-spec you have at the moment is for tanking, it needs some work.. DRW does you no good as a tank, take a look at some other blood tank specs as there are some good ones. My own is pretty much cookie cutter.
Remember your job is to survive first, and foremost.. when you are die everybody dies.
Good luck!

[smackers]

I've both healed HHoR and tanked it several times, it can be a nightmare for both since the tank needs to get several ranged mobs under control and the healer needs to really push the envelope with all the damage and cc coming in from the mobs. Both the healer and the tank need to be very aware of where each other is since a lapse in los for a couple seconds can quickly lead to a wipe. As long as you had the mobs under control and there wasn't a rogue or hunter pounding on your healer, how hard you were getting hit should be of no consequence. Any healer worth his salt should be able to heal any def capped reasonably geared tank in HHoR without issue, it's when everyone else starts getting pounded on or when the healer starts getting blasted that things quickly go south.

[zaubade]

This is all cool... But belongs in the Halp Forum

[Satorri]

Heroic HoR is a test of tanks *and* healers. Generally it's a test of the tank's ability to pick up everything that comes running across the room, and the test of the healers ability to keep people alive. There are 2 things that make that easier or harder.

1.) If the tank keeps all attention on himself, the healer just has to heal him more heavily, and it can be pretty painful (I've had healers who struggled to keep me up at 50k health in heavy ICC gear through the CCs and #2).

2.) Dispels dispels dispels and interrupts. There are poisons being thrown around like crazy whenever a Mercenary is up that will really hurt, but are easily avoided with a quick poison removal. If you have a druid, pally, or shaman, regardless of spec, have them watching and ready to dispel it and it really hurts a lot less. Interrupts on Mages, really if nothing else interrupting Flamestrike (or fire school spells will suffice) will also save a lot of burden. If the healer just tries to heal you through it? It's a lot of damage that is further complicated if you're stunned, which does happen.

The healer will also end up being stunned, feared, and trapped every now and then, so if he falls behind *then* gets CC'd you're in trouble. The only responsibility I'd really put on a tank is not picking everything up. I healed a newbie newbie protadin with 32k health through the instance, he did a fantastic job. He dispelled poisons himself, he grabbed everything, HoSacr'd dps who pulled threat when he couldn't taunt immediately, in general just a great player.

[immerc]

I've done HHOR as a DK tank and as a druid healer. For a long while I just apologized and left the group if it came up as my daily heroic, because even though I was probably geared enough to handle it, I wasn't willing to do something that hard in a PuG for just two frost badges.

I've started doing it recently, and haven't been part of a group that wasn't able to do it, but honestly, it is harder than anything I've tanked in ICC-10 yet, including festergut and kiting oozes on rotface.

As a tank it's hard because:

1) You get a wave of adds, many of which are ranged, many of which do moves to targets other than the tank (the hunter trapping ppl, the rogue stunning ppl, the mages casting blastwave, etc). This means getting and keeping aggro on all of them is very hard. I frequently have to deathgrip a caster back into melee range or it gets missed by pestilence and isn't standing in D&D so I lose threat on it.

2) Keeping track of all the adds is hard because they're all ghosts, and you're fighting in such a cramped space, and there's just so much going on.

3) The time between waves is very short, and you have to be very careful to make sure that D&D is ready to go at the start of each wave, and you can't use it too early or too late. One time I tanked it was a wipe because when I tried to drop D&D I was crammed in the corner to make sure everyone was out of LoS and when I tried to drop D&D it told me the D&D target wasn't in LoS, so no D&D meant healer had tons of initial aggro and got 2-shot.

As a healer, it's hard because:

1) Healer aggro is a major issue. Not only are you in trouble if any heals happen before the tank gets aggro, there's also just so much healing that needs to be done and so many adds for the tank to keep threat on, that it's very easy for your healing threat to outstrip the tank threat on one of them

2) No matter how good the tank is at keeping aggro, there's a ton of damage split around the whole party, and keeping everybody up is very hard.

I'm glad they finally made a heroic that's hard, but I wish it weren't on the same daily random list as heroic Nexus or something.

[Bashal]

HoR hammers tanks. It's important to not let mobs get behind you, particularly the mercs, and as mentioned, healer aggro and party-wide damage can make this very rough.

It's hard to heal, a healer looking for an easy ride in there isn't likely to find one. They just have to knuckle down and heal, damnit.

[Inaara]

While 36 is fairly low it is definitely doable with a good healer. I've healed my buddies' alt who's sitting at 35k with no problem. As long as you can keep aggro off of everyone else the waves are easy to heal, well from a priest standpoint at least. I pretty much just spam greater heal with PoM and CoH thrown in between to keep the others healed up. While it can be fairly mana intensive there are many options to regain mana and i've never had an issue there. IMO the healer could have done a better job.

[JuanBlunté]

First i'd like to say hello! This forum really helped me alot (special thanks to satorri for the great dw dk guide! ;D)

On topic:

As a tank, HoR was a nightmare for me, too. As the gear on my TankDK progressed, it became better and better but still ...
Recently, a Priestfriend of mine started to farm the offhand in HoR. So he searched for a tank (HealerTank instant invites - yay!). I wanted to tank with my Druid as he was still ilvl 200/219 and needed the TriumphMarks

I was a bit afraid because:
1. I was sitting at around 30k hp selfbuffed - not exactly overequipped :-x
2. I was missing many tools i had and loved on my DK (DG, 2 silences etc)

So my friend and i thought about it and went clasisc. We discovered CCs again! He has shackle and at least one DD always has some other kind of CC (think of Hunters shooting Frost Traps or Rogue's Sap etc)

Nowadays when i tank HoR i tank in the ENTRANCE or the MIDDLE of the room - no LoS. My Buddy shackles one Mage, DD CCs another ranged and the enemypriest runs happily into my paws. You see wave for wave which enemies come to life and can CC properly

Pros of this strategy:
1. I dont take as much damage because 2/5 enemies are knocked out - less stress on the healer
2. I, as a tank, can finally see whats going on around me. I simply hate the cameraangle in the corners ;\
3. I, as a Druidtank, am capable of BR someone midfight with the last enemy standing in shackles

I've easily tanked HoR this way like 5 times or so and it never was a real problem. You just have to prepare your group and ask for some CCs.

I think this is a general problem nowadays. Everyone wants to run run run. Groups HAVE to be bombed. If someones dying it's either the lowequipped tank's or the healer's fault. ;(

[Cabar]

All you need to do is tell that lazy ret paladin in your group where his repentance and turn undead spells are and it's almost too easy. But seriously, after 3.3 this fight was so much fun, until people started wearing pvp gear to get into the higher level instances.

For nook-tanking I learned to beware the combinations. Footsoldiers are easy to tank, even 2 at a time, but if that merc gets a stun off on you they will absolutely tear you a new one. So for human me I'd always need to be ready with every man and then ibf. The same goes for that Arrow curse from riflemen and the mages. Flamestrike hurts bad enough on it's own but especially in the nook it's a wipe waiting to happen with the dwarf spreading his 50% magic damage debuff around.

The fun part is the split second decision (x10!) of who you'll take first, grip this mob, strangulate the mage in. etc The not fun part is dealing with puggers who don't know their tools, or (worse imo) aren't interested in learning them.

Anymore I love doing HoR with at least a few guildmates so we can play rock-paper-scissors with the skills at our disposal.

To the OP: What probably got you is either the stun+melee damage with no avoidance burst or the curse + flamestrike. That would certainly make you drop like a rock. But so would any other tank. The healer needs to be more constructive with his criticism, and you need to learn to scroll up after you die to see what got you.

edit: Sorry wasn't taking c/r, I hope nobody went blinding reading that

[Fledern]

There's been good advice given but there are also things as a tank that you can watch out for.

1) CC is important. If you have any in your group, plan for it ahead. A priest healer is better off taking 2 secs off to shackle a mob rather than start spamming you heals immediately. You also need to work out if it's better to shackle the mage or the rifleman, depending on your group makeup - before you start the pulls.

2) Are you doing all you can to mitigate damage? The mercenary loves to kidneyshot you and shadowstep to someone else, usually the healer but not always. You need to be aware when that happens and get his attention back. With all the pretty colored action going on it's very easy to miss that. You also need to watch out that your tries to get the mercenary back dont leave your back exposed to two enraged footmen.

3) Mage flamestrike can be a lot of party damage source. The healer has to work extrahard to keep people up. Relocating the whole group avoids a lot of damage. You have to interpret your healers complaints. They arent really complaining that you're taking too much damage. What they're really complaining about is you going down to dangerous levels of hp (simply because of your lower healthpool) while they take a gcd to heal someone else. If you cant up your hp, then you work on minimizing party damage. If the healer can keep his focus only on you, even a low geared tank is easy to keep up. You also have antimagic shell, mind freeze, strangulate to keep the mage damage under control. It makes for some really hectic target switching but it's worth it.

4) Are you aware of mob positioning? If you start going mobile to keep all mobs under control and the party damage low, the supposedly fixed but still broken mob pathing will put those supposedly easy footmen at your back. When there, they hit surprisingly hard.

[manicus]

Actually i think you are geared enough to do HOR HC, however you have to treat it like an old instance where you just cant lolfacerollaoepewpewmoaraoe.

Unless you are grouped with 3 rogues and a druid, you should have some meaningful CC.

Ret paladins can use repentace and turn evil/undead, Hunters can trap, priests can shackle.

After the cc is taken care of, you need to set a killorder, if cc is available, i like to do mercs->priest->mages->footmen->riflemen, with the riflemen cc'ed.

if no cc is available riflemen move up after priests. The reason for this is the 50% increased magic damage they put on people. It is absolutely lethal in conjunction with a split mage.

I like tanking in the center. it gives a better view of the instance and more room to relocate the party in case of a flamestrike.

Mercs are evil. Burn them down fast.

Mages wont split if you stun them around the 55% mark and burn them after that point - this is ofc hard when you are a DK, but maybe a friendly paladin or rogue could help you there.

Priests arent that bad if they are interrupted when casting.

Riflemen are evil and should be cc'ed.

Footmen are lollerskates and can be saved for last. When they enrage, not so much.

[Redefined]

H HoR...I call it the AoE threat instance of hell and also the clear proof that Blizzard wants us all to reroll Paladins. Here are my tips:

1) If your spec doesn't include morbidity, use D&D only once per wave, right when the mobs are getting to you. It will be up again just in time for the next wave.

2) COOLDOWNS! If you are Frost, blow UA every wave. Blow AMS every time there is a mage up. Blow IBF whenever you see yourself dropping hard to give yourself some buffer. The bosses in there are a joke. Chances are with a half decent healer, you won't need your CDs during the boss fights so use them every chance during the waves.

3) Don't tank this as Blood. Just don't. Even if you can do it, there is no reason to put yourself through that.

[Raysere]

The big trash packs do hit hard, even if you are very well geared. As a warrior I shieldwall a lot on the largest of the waves, it really helps your healer cope until the damage on you lessens. If you have a paladin, have him fear the Riflemen or Mages, and establish a strict kill order. The mobs innitialy aggro whoever was closest to them when they become active, stand out front till they are headed to you then LoS the ranged in. Smart DPS will know what you are doing and shouldn't go nuts till you have them all securely. If it helps, you can have a Rogue stunlock say, a caster mob and disarm Riflemen to bring them in close to you.

[swollenpickles]

If you have a paladin, have him fear the Riflemen or Mages, and establish a strict kill order.

I'm finding this to be one of the biggest issues with PUGs. It seems like kill order is a joke to most people. Set up a kill order and some people go out of there way to ignore it. The problem usually comes from the dudes with the inflated 5.5K gearscores that seem to take it as a personal challenge to peel threat off the tank. That and the fact that people would rather AoE spam (which is more about padding the DPS numbers rather than getting through the instance smoothly) than focus on dropping single targets in order makes it more difficult than it needs to be.

If I get a group of friends together I'll tank this one again, otherwise I think I'll pass until I'm ridiculously over geared. I can't have another healer crying into their hot pocket on my conscience.