Reply With Quotewhere do you find this Skullme you talk of? I looked on all the three main addon sites I use and trust and found nothing. A link pls if you would not mind as this sounds like an addon I would like to try out.Originally Posted by Goros
I use Skullme to make sure my primary target on my aoe pulls is being targeted by the dps in the raid. If they pull a mob I'm not directing attention to because they are dumping huge DPS on it and die, it's their own fault.
I don't think you need to stay DPS for this, it's a rough one to tank but I enjoy it and haven't had that many issues unless someone else was messing up (only wiped twice out of like 16 runs). I noticed my incoming damage spiked significantly when I went to DW on my DK and at the request of my Disc priest healer from my guild went back to my 2h. The problems stopped instantly when I did. As fun as DW is, my gear wasn't up to par and my job as a tank is to stay alive and make everyone else's jobs easier, so I switched back.
Like everyone else is saying, make sure you grab everyone, start kill order with the priests, then the mages, then the mercs, finally hunters & warriors. Silencing the mages gets them to run into the room and you can DG the hunter if he's being an ass. Once that's taken care of keep D&D down and make liberal use of HB or Deathchill + HB, even toss in a PS & pest w/BB when you get the chance. Keep the diseases up, keep them in the D&D, and follow a kill order rotation.
It's chaos, but I've found using Skullme helps put order to that chaos since there is always a marked target for the dps to focus on.
To the OP: There is a learning curve with any class, and the best thing you can do is wipe and keep wiping till you find the fix. I suggest doing this with guildies that have toons in equivalent gear to yours so you aren't "carried", and let them know ahead of time that you're learning to tank the hardest 5 man in the game and you want to get it right. Once you master HHoR, you should never have issues with AOE tanking anywhere else again.
Cry Havoc! And let slip the Ghosts of War..
where do you find this Skullme you talk of? I looked on all the three main addon sites I use and trust and found nothing. A link pls if you would not mind as this sounds like an addon I would like to try out.
It's called Skull Me actually, and I got it from Curse. I forgot to put the space in there, most likely because I'm lazy.
Cry Havoc! And let slip the Ghosts of War..
ahh. thank you
It's a bit rough for druid healers, we are so used to pre-hotting the tank, which basically gives them aggro right of the bat, and not insignificant amounts given the strength of druids. Gotta train them to minimize it (let any hots from previous wave fall off, don't add new ones until tank establishes aggro).
Nature's Grasp is your friend if that fails. I learned that one the hard way in ToC FC. Rolling HoTs on yourself PvP style makes it that much harder for the tank to overcome your aggro on multiple mobs.
My experiences are as a bear and as a pally. One would think a paladin would have an easier time, but it has some challenges. If it's a mage or a priest pegging away from ranged, you can silence with Frisbee Toss, otherwise exorcism rifleman before the melee get to you and then LOS yourself in the nook. As a bear, all you can do is Faerie Fire ranged mobs and LoS.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.
Where things go south is when healers (and DPS) stand behind the wall, rather than right at the corner behind the archway post. This is because the approach vector of the mobs allows them to see your unless you are quite snuggly tucked away and range the visible arm, etc. frustrating tanks. As a paladin, and incorrectly placed consecrate at the corner means they mobs can actually run past the consecrate without taking a tick and proceed to eat a healer or DPS. Saving grace is in Holy Wrath to get snap aggro and a free stun as well.
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.Stuns/interrupts and dispels are the key. As a paladin, holy wrath is there as well as HoJ, but long cooldown.
Shockwave is your friend as a warrior and its a little more frequent
Bears be screwed, AFAIK, except for bash. I would never pop out of form to deal with poison damage.
DKs gotta use their two silences, IBF, and possibly AMS.
To me HoR Hc just means one thing, I cant carry whatever fool of a healer we have through it, which is basicly posibly for almost all other 5-man. In my oppinion the skill level of pug healers have fallen considerbly. Let me say this, cc makes that place easier, much easier, but it is not fully required to do it. You just need a competent healer and it is no problem. Why do I say this? Because the first few times I went there with around 30k unbuffed hp, there were no problems, we just sailed through it and while it was hard because barely only a few of us knew the encounters and how to work them optimally, we didnt end up having the problems most of you describe. This was ofcause we a healer I knew and trusted to be good.
I would not consider the fight to have incredibly defficult treathwise, ofcause you have problems where there are 2 nonLoSed range mobs and you can only DG one of them, and since such situations are quite random, you cant be sure to have strangulate ready each time. I do see problems with incoming damage though, so I would suggest using a lot of your focus on these 3 things:
1) the intial pull, with the DG of one of the range mobs, since everyone appart from tank in my runs stand in cornor, it will only be a problem if they come from opposite side, which is the one you should DG.
2) Make absolutely sure that nothing is hitting you in the back, because you just cant afford that extra damage, espcially as a DK where you often have around or above 60% avoidance when you reach that point.
3) Good use of your cool downs, defensive especially, if you have a trinket with instant healing/shield/max hp, make sure you save it for when you go really low, migration cool downs must be used wisely, it doesnt mater that you surviev this wave by blowing all your cds if there are 3 more harder waves, where you have nothing to keep you alive. Therefor aim to use your cool downs where they help most, which mainly include healer lockouts, initial pull on large groups, and armor/avoidance types on melee heavy groups (remember though that you have a 1 min cool down, that can be used much more often than the rest, and is therefor optimal to use on the most common treath to you, which depend on the group).
With that, a competent healer should be able to make the run go relatively smoothly. Oh and ofcause debuff removal helps serverly.
About druid healers, I dont see the problem with it. Actually I would rather have the mobs starting to run for the healer who is hidden in the cornor than me, since they will be hit by my DnD before they reach him, which just make them stand in a nice position close enough to hit them with all the aoe you want.
Personally I usually prioritice: Priest>merc>hunter>everything else.
Since both priest and merc both really irritating, the order of them doesnt mater all that much. The priest is dagerous due to fear and his bighit+heal that needs to be interupted, while the rogue is dangerous due to his jumping (often behind your, or to another member), his poisons and sometimes his stun. If you can work around his jumping, then you can take him second, if you find that hard, it might be worse taking this one down before priest. Hunter? He just makes the fight harder, with tendency to loss aggro/shoot at not primary target (havent confermed this, just a feeling), I often wait with the mage, since he likes to split in the middle, and having 2 mages while a lot of mobs are up, who are speading themselfs out and slowing you, certainly doesnt help you, so even though they do a lot of damage, especially to the group, it is just as risky to go for them while there are many mobs up.
My main problem with this place, is that I get really irritated at healers who are just not performing good enough. It is not because I am trying to require something rediculess of them, but you really cant just stand around in 5-10 seconds and look at the scenery before you start healing there. Therefor I have lately got so tirred of these, that if I can feel they are serverly underperforming, they are very short away from getting a kick.
To the OP, 36 hp (even if it is unbuffed) should be plenty for that place, if you have a competent healer and you are a competent tank, it certainly within reach, but since half the healers you meet nowadays in pugs wouldnt be able to have keep the tank alive if he was at appropiate gear level and not outgeared the content by serveral tiers, probably comes from the "a borred healer is a bad healer", and the new healers never learned how it was not to be borred.
Deathshay, I'm curious if you heal H HoR on another toon. While a good healer is always welcome, it isn't a cakewalk to heal as you make it out to be. The pool of healer quality hasn't gone down, the bar has gone up with H HoR, it's intentionally high. While I never pally heal it despite having a holy spec, I have healed it as a shaman, druid and a disc priest, and it isn't fun or easy at any time or on any class despite being successful if I have an adequate tank.
I can see your healers saying "Healing H HoR is not so bad if it wasn't for the lower quality of tanks that sprung up since they get instant queues." While I doubt you are a bad tank, just remember QQing can go both ways, and they would be equally wrong for the same reasons, the bar has gone up, not the quality of tanks.
I perfectly see your point, and I would agree that H HoR is where the lams are seperated from the sheeps. You are also parly right on that my usual healer have saied something about allong that. My problem with the qualenty of healers are definitly not based entirely on H HoR, I have seen them so many different places. For instance if you go to a random heroic, you may find healers who keep you in the dangerzone almost all the time, and where you have to watch closely not to die, while it with an old standard healer you wouldnt even need to think about your hp, and just focus on pulling and building aggro.
However I will say, that my usual healer have told me that it isnt all that bad, as long as you have a good tank and healer, which I will agree on. This place is not for newly leveled chars with low experiance, just like H ToC 5 man wasnt for everyone on launch (that changed within relatively short time, when people all knew the fights). Since I dont have a healer char myself anywhere near 80, then I cant speak of personal experiance of how bad it is.
There is one thing I find funny about that place though, and that is the heavy empathy on trash pulls being hard. As far I remember that place is the only place in a while where trashpulls have been interesting and challeging.
When looking at the general playerbase and comparing to a known sample of propor players, then it seems like the level of the average player at 80 have sunk comsiderbly, which I mainly blame overgearing content, which doenst force people to do good performance. For instance, a year ago finding a bad healer was actually deficult, but it was not all that uncommon to see a good or really good healer. Now, 40% of the healers you meet barely feels like there are watching what is going on. I wouldnt talk about pug tanks, since I have no idea how they are or have changed, but most dpsers are just as bad as they used to, and it is still not all that hard to do more than them in a given random heroic.
But I guess this rambling of changes in playerbase wouldnt get us anywhere, since it is just a tip toe feeling you have, and you could mindlessly discuss such a thing for ages
I've pug tanked HHoR as warr, (undergeared) pala and (blood and frost) dk - I definitely found it hardest as DK. If you get caught without runes available when something goes wrong, it's very difficult to recover.
Lot of great advice above, I won't repeat it, but I will say a lot of it is down to confidence and experience. Just keep tanking. Things will go wrong, but you'll learn from it. Pugs may be the work of the devil, but there's nothing better for improving reactions and tolerance. There'll come a point when you know when it's your fault, or when someone's blaming you to cover up their own mistakes.
Take heart! You are probably getting 2% Moar stamina when you switch to Frost Presence, hooray!
I'm not sure whether other people share my experience, but I have never been paired up with Paladin heals as frequently as I have since the launch of the random dungeon finder. I'd estimate that 65% of the time I get into a random dungeon group, it's with a paladin healer. Prior to the random dungeon finder, it would be a relatively rare occurrence to end up with pally heals. Maybe thats a server based thing, I'm not sure.
If I had to guess, it would be that once you can dual spec, if you are a paladin and want to get into groups quick, and don't want the responsibility of tanking on your shoulders, the next best option is to heal. It seems as though it would be relatively easy to build up a decent set of plate healing gear, as pally's are the only ones that can use it (unlike the battle for cloth that priests may have etc). So you can heal as offspec all the time picking up gear that no one else wants cos they can't use. So you may end up at 80 with the money to dual spec, want quick groups and all of a sudden find yourself healing 80 heroics, with very little prior experience. I've ended up in instances where pallys have had decent gear (and gearscores to match) yet struggle to handle everything that comes with healing an instance.
I think the chaotic nature of H HoR and the amount of damage being pumped out (not to mention the stuns and interrupts) is blizzard's way of saying, "You've got CC, use it please!".
Since the beginning of wrath (and even more so with welfare epics being readily available), heroics have been about AoEing the trivial trash ASAP to quickly make one's way to a boss(and now the bosses are easymode, but that's besides the point). With HoR it seems to be the opposite; the bosses remain rather trivial (for the most part) and are often considered a break from waves of trash. So dealing with the waves requires a certain amount of planning and consideration -- unfortunately many groups can't adjust to this change.
As i'm sure many would agree, the best way to reduce the chaos, the tank damage, the sudden death of a healer or dps and the over-all stress would be to take the mobs that are giving you the most trouble out of the fight.
I had a hunter in my group freeze the enemy hunter few times because i was having trouble managing him (without even asking for CC), i could have kissed the guy. It made my job easier and allowed me to focus on one of the many other issues at hand, not to mention the healer had to heal less and could focus on me instead of the dps that was getting shot.
Just imagine if 2 targets were cc'd during that fight...even less healing and stress to worry about all at once. Think back to TBC when you basically HAD to CC for any hope of success; the same idea applies here.
Don't get me wrong, it can definitely be done without ever CCing, but sacrificing 2 seconds of dps to prevent a mobs actions for the majority of the fight seems like an obvious trade off to me.
Last edited by Myndroa; 02-10-2010 at 07:35 AM. Reason: Speeling
As DK tanks we have the best cure for this 5.5k dps'r. First of I should say that I'm pretty up there in GS myself. 42k unbuffed blood tank. I generate a lot of threat just because I stick with the priorities in my rotation, I'm always ontop of who is targeting what, my caelnameplates are showing me whats going on with each mob... anywho. I rarely lose threat however, H HOR is a diffrent beast. The healers that are running randoms are NOT YOUR STANDARD ICC HEALER. They are alts, new 80s, just dying to get those 232 drops. So you have to work alittle harder. IBF, Runetap, MOB, anything you have that can help them during that 5th or 6th wave with mean the diffrence between 0 and hero in their eyes. But for those pesky DPS that just won't follow your mark. This is what you should do....
-Step 1: Let them pull aggro, instruct the healer to let them die.
- Step 2: Once they are dead, Raise Ally, Let them jump around as a ghoul for a moment. (Also, this keeps them from being battle res'd)
- Step 3: After the fight, let them know that they pushed it there, YOU saved them with the ghoul and next time, you won't be taunting off him again and Ghoul is now on CD.
I should have stated that I'm a steady poster in the "Has tanking made you mean" Thread.
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