Post by hatman555
Well 3.3 is out and heroics are back to being the coolest thing on 4 wheels. Pug-able and love-able, the loot possibilities are out the window now that everything drops Triumph badges and you need to do at least 1 a day for your emblems of frost.
SO! To help out the paladins on this forums I will be writing a very complete and very through guild on "how to properly tank WOTLK heroics"
The first post of the guide will go live tomorrow with excerpts of some stuff I'm about to write. The most important part is, due to popular demand I will be starting with the
HALLS OF REFLECTION and moving my way backwards in difficulty ending with everyone favorite 12 minute UK speed run.
Its going to require some heavy posting, Lots of editing, and hopefully I will be able to get a ton of help from everyone on the site!
To get started though I wanted to post some quick pointers and strategies that I use to tank my better and faster.
How to improve you TankingAs a Paladin tank you have many many tools at your disposal to make raids more or less easier on your DPS and healers, especially your healers.
If you have not already I really suggest that you go out and download a Unit frames mod and a click customizing mod. My personal favorites are "
Grid" and "
Clique" I'm not going to tell you that this is your only option, I'm just going to say that for a minimalist like me, Grid and Clique do a great job at getting stuff done which out hogging a huge amount of memory or screen space.
Spells and abilities that you should have at the tip of your fingers.Righteous Defense and
Hand of Reckoning. What more needs to be said? You are a tank and these are your taunts. These are your bread and butter! Because these are your main tanking tools you are going to want to have quick access to them. Hand of Reckoning can been turned into a mouse over macro for quick clicking on mobs that are running away.
I want to go a bit more into Righteous Defense because it happens to be one of the coolest taunts ever. Its cool for 2 reasons. First is the more obvious reason that it doesn't need to be cast on a mob, it can be cast on a friendly target to have up to 3 mobs that are attacking that target be taunted to you. Two is the less obvious reason, because RD can be cast on your party and does not need to be cast on the mob you want to taunt, you can set up "L" line of sight pulls. If you can't see your mob, then you can't taunt your mob, BUT if you can see your ally and your mob can see your ally then you can taunt your mob from behind a Line of sight obstruction. This is great for casters that won't move even after a taunt because they will just attack you from range. With a LOS obstruction the caster will have no choice but to run around the LOS object to get a shot off at you. Trust bringing it into your melee range.
Long story short. Set up grid to give a full frame warning for threat and then set up clique so that a "right-click" on a unit frame will cast Righteous Defense on that target.
Here are some other spells that you SHOULD be using in heroics to help your party out, and that can be easily bound to Grid can Clique.
Cleanse - SHIFT Right Click
-Great for taking off single poisons from healers or DPS that relay can't afford to take the damage.
Hand of Protection - ALT Right Click
There are 2 groups of people that this is going to be a life saver for. If you are pulling very large groups of mobs, AOE castes can take a BOP and then AOE with out fear of taking threat on a mob you might not have that good a hold on. Ofcourse the other option is to save your healer from melee damage. Remember BOP's do not prevent anything except Physical damage.
Hand of Sacrifice - SHIFT Left Click
- A great to to push some predictable AOE damage to you instead of the target. Use on the target with the lowest total health to save him from AOE explosions or from future burst damage
Hand of Freedom ALT Left Click
-Mostly for personal uses, it still can be used on party members to free them from ice or other potential snares.
Divine Intervention - Click ability
-Divine Intervention is the Paladin "I'm sorry" button. If %^&* hits the fan and you know your going to die. Save some time and some repairs and DI your healer or someone who can Resurrect after combat is over.
-One additional ability that DI can provide is the STOP function. If one of your DPS is getting out of line, or is about to pull a pat, or walk off a cliff he doesn't see, you can DI him for a quick STOP to all of his movement.
Hand of Salvation - Click Ability
There are not many heroics where your going to be using this. If one of your DPS is pulling threat off of you on a heroics boss fight then there is something wrong with your spec or your rotation. If your tanking for a DPS that is unbelievably geared you could use this in the first 10 seconds of the boss fight to lose threat on that DPS, but changes are that using the GCD for it is could to be about as much threat lost as you save him. We will talk about boss threat later.
Threat --- From Mobs to Bosses|||| 4 mobs
Your strategy should be using
Avenger's Shield for the pull and at the same time using
Hand of Reckoning on the forth mob the shield doesn't hit. This will be hard. It will take you practice to think like your shield and know which mobs are going to be hit by the shield and what mob is going to be left out. It takes some memory, but you'll also learn to predict its movements. Follow up with a Hammer of the Righteous on the same 3 mobs that your shield hit. Then
Shield of Righteousness the mob you taunted. There is nothing that your DPS can do that is going to pull these mobs off of you as they group around you. Once you are in your tanking spot drop your consecrate and start rotating your attacks on the targets as needed.
I want to digress here for a second and mention something about "tab targeting" Yes, tab targeting does rotate your attacks pretty well, but if you want to be truly successful you will enable your floating health bars, disable the new feature were health bars merge so you can see them all, and then click through those bars keeping your eye on your target frame. The goal is to apply as many stacks of your Seal of Vengeance. This will dramatically increase the amount of threat you have on targets, and you will defiantly see it in your overall DPS.
||| ||| 6 mobs
This is more commonly a double pull. Run in and Hammer of Righteous your first 3 targets and then Avenger shield the next 3 mobs. Run past the first three you hit and stand in between the two groups. Drop your consecrate and then do a side step so that none of the mobs are attacking you from behind. rotate your attacks and stack those SOV stacks. You should have a pretty strong hold on most of these mobs.
||| ||| | 7 mobs
Put together the best of 4 and 6 mobs together. either use your taunt on the first pull or on the second but combine the strats and you should have no problem.
||| ||| ||| 9 mobs
Now your getting to the fun part. shock and awe baby shock and awe! pull your first 6 mobs and drop your consecrate just like in the 6 mob pull. instead of side stepping and grouping them in the middle of the 2 groups, run past them leaving them behind on your consecrate and pull another 3. Try and get as many single attacks on these new 3 mobs before turning back around and applying a new round of Hammer of the Righteous on the very first 3 mobs you pulled. With 9 mobs its a pretty good change that one of your DPS is going to get crazy and drop his AOE sooner than you had planned. BOP casters and get your taunt ready for melee. If they pull threat hit them with a Righteous Defense and then keep dropping your consecrate.
The BossThere are many different types of bosses in WOTLK heroics. 90% of these bosses are "Tank and spank" with a unique ability that makes them 1% different from each other.
The key to a tank and spank boss is the
96969 rotation. The "Pull" for a tank and spank boss for maximum threat is start at 30 yards away. Prep yourself by casting
Divine Plea then
Holy Shield, and then pull popping your
wings and using
Hand of Reckoning and
Avenger's Shield and the
same time. As the boss moves to you, or you move to the boss, cast your
Judgement, and weave right into the 96969 rotation.
This combination of prep and high aggro pull with make sure that you keep a tight hold on the boss during the pull.
Other Tips and TricksLet people know who is boss. Don't be a &*!@, but don't let the DK start the pulls for you. You and you alone deiced how quickly or slowly you want to run a heroic.
If you have a special type of pull, that required a bit of movement and set up, Use your party chat, its there for a reason. "Hold DPS for 3 seconds guys" can really work wonders when your trying to group up a bunch of casting dwarfs.
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Well that's it for now guys, I will be including many more Tips and tips for specific dungeons and trash mobs, for each dungeon as I right stuff up.
Look forward to
HALLS OF REFLECTIONS tomorrow!
Cheers,
Hat
Post by AnrDaemon
Cleanse - SHIFT Right Click
Hand of Sacrifice - SHIFT Left Click
Hand of Freedom ALT Left Click
WTB this kind of tank. Never ever have I seen a paladin tank cast any of these. No matter how many debuffs he has, no matter he is stuck in frost nova, no matter he is slowed by frost trap!
I hate you paladin tanks and I will never cleans/HoF you again. Oh yeah, and DPS aggro is yours too, have fun with HoS.
And now, you have a chance to raise your name in my eyes, and here is the guide.
Want me? I'm using them (minus Sacrifice) often. I don't want my party to die, and Cleanse is the one another threat-builder.