Mastering tanks, one boss at a time.
This is my particular brand of crazy — some may even call it a gift. The truth is, I can wipe many, many times without become too frustrated, at least before we score that first kill. (Wipes after that first kill…well no one’s patience can last that long.)
Since I am nearly done wiping in Cataclysm, here are my all time high scores, complete with recent pictures I’ve taken while wiping.
In 10 man, Heroic Madness is more difficult than Heroic Spine, and will probably remain difficult even after successive nerfs. Don’t get fooled into thinking that you’ll be done with this tier after just one or two nights of wiping, because it will probably take many more. Heroic Madness is very stressful for healers, but pretty straightforward for tanks and dps.
As with most my guides, this is intended for tanks because that’s the role I filled. I hope there are helpful things for other roles, but I am not an expert in those roles. I expect you to know the basic mechanics of the fight before diving into this guide. There are many solutions to complex boss fights like these, and the way we did it is not the only right way.
Continue reading “Heroic Madness of Deathwing 10 Tanking Guide”
This is a difficult fight for tanks and healers, and an extremely boring fight for damage dealers. Each phase gets progressively more intense until you finally reach the chaotic finish. It’s widely believed to be the most difficult fight in Dragon Soul because it requires highly focused dps, a lot of blood control, and lucky strings of avoidance while kiting. After all the nerfs it has received, I’d rank the 10 man version far below Heroic Madness and Heroic Warmaster, but it is still a difficult fight.
As with most my guides, this is intended for tanks because that’s the role I filled. I hope there are helpful things for other roles, but I am not an expert in those roles. I expect you to know the basic mechanics of the fight before diving into this guide. There are many solutions to complex boss fights like these, and the way we did it is not the only right way.
Continue reading “Heroic Spine of Deathwing 10 Tanking Guide”
I really hate this fight. Someone will probably die if you (or someone else) second guesses soaking puddles, and the adds need to be positioned precisely but they have such tiny hit boxes that it’s often hard to do so. Oh well, you have to get it over with sometime. It’s a big step up in difficulty from the previous bosses in 10 man.
Continue reading “Heroic Warmaster Blackhorn 10 Tanking Guide”
Finally, a fight that actually require the tank to do some heavy lifting. As usual, this is not intended to be a complete guide, but rather a supplement for tanks who are working on the heroic mode. I expect you to know the basic mechanics of this fight.
As usual, this isn’t meant to be a complete guide. I assume you already know the basic mechanics of this fight and everything here is mostly geared toward tanks.
Or as my guild calls him, Ultra-Nixon (he even sounds like Nixon). This fight doesn’t change much from the Normal version, but the dps race is tighter and you have to rely on more people to soak Hour of Twilight. As usual, this isn’t meant to be a complete guide. I assume you already know the basic mechanics of this fight and everything here is mostly geared toward tanks.
I’m not going to do a narrated video this time because my experience during this particular kill will be vastly different than your own. This fight is has so many avenues of variation that it’s difficult to cover all possibilities.
As usual, this isn’t meant to be a complete guide. I assume you already know the basic mechanics of this fight. Everything here is mostly geared toward tanks, though since this fight is primarily a test of healer skill, I will add what I know for other roles as well. I only have experience in the 10 man version of the encounter, so all advice in this article is catered to that raid size.
Dragon Soul. Perhaps a more fitting name would be “Raid of the 1.5 Tanks.” Nearly every fight has a place for you to go cat form, or for non-druid tanks to sit around and dance. If they don’t have that opportunity, then it’s just a 1 tank fight to begin with. I like to think that this instance was designed to give feral druids one last go at being that tank who dpses, because damn there are a lot of opportunities to do so.
Continue reading “Quick Things I Learned from Tanking 10 Man Dragon Soul”
So far my procrastination has served me well. Instead of posting my thoughts on Tier 13 bonuses immediately after they were released, now I can have a post dedicated to the updated Tier 13 bonuses.
