1. May 29, 2019  
    Spamming lacerate means it doesn't tick anymore. Assuming you're casting lacerate faster than once every 2.5 seconds, and knowing that lacerate ticks every 2.5 seconds, if you spam it, it will seldom ever tick, realistically only when you take some time to mangle and faerie fire.

    At my low gear level, lacerate ticks for 675 at 5 stacks. The upfront damage, however, is 67 (it is not affected by the stacks). It is an insane, massive loss to spam lacerate instead of letting it tick.

    Maybe on Warmane refreshing a dot doesn't reset its tick timer ? I can't test it there. However, if it works like I think it does, there isn't any theorycrafting, calculations, forum war-waging or hair-pulling to do on this matter : fill with swipe, let lacerate tick, refresh when you think it's safest, taking into account your hit/expertise and cooldown of your other abilities.

    Note that even at my low, naxx-entry level gear, swipe deals around 700 damage, and lacerate 67. There may be some sort of coefficient bug where I'm playing (not Warmane), but if there isn't, it means that even at low gear, swipe will do more threat than lacerate's upfront damage, if your formulae are to be trusted. 3*700 = 2100. 1*100 + 1000 = 1100. 2100 > 1100 swipe superior even at the lowest conceivable gear levels.

    Note that now that I think about it, my lacerate damage really seems to be low. I'm at 4.6k ap. The tooltip says 92 to 93 damage and yet it does 67 (it is bleed damage, so armor shouldn't matter). Maybe it's bugged on my server ? It would help if someone could test on Warmane to settle this once and for all.

    But low lacerate upfront damage or not, the tick resetting issue makes it clear that swipe as a filler is the only, very obvious, option.
    This guide was originally written almost 5 or 6 years ago, before Warmane was even called Warmane. Unfortunately I no longer actively play WoW, nor warmane. But i may be getting into WoW Classic in a few months time. But anyway, to answer your question, there are addons that track Lacerate ticks and using these can let you time your refreshes at an ideal time, and even then, lacerate ticks only account for an extremely minor percentage of your total threat, and min maxing DoT ticks this way is more of a DPS technique than a tanking technique, keeping in mind tanks have a lot more to do than just sit on a boss and mash keys like a rogue or hunter.

    There's a time and a place when you need maximum threat output, but at very high gear levels, it is rarely ever the case that you need the extra 1~3% total threat generation to keep ahead of a DPS, especially in WotLK where blizzard gave tanks an extremely generous Threat Multiplier compared to other expansions, making it significantly easier for tanks to effortlessly hold aggro. Keep in mind Tricks of the Trade and Misdirections also help with your threat as well, it's rare for a good tank to ever lose threat even without min-maxing the last 1~3% possible total threat gains.

    There is DEFINITELY something wrong with the way AP scales with your damage numbers; I recall that the difference between swipe, unbuffed, with low AP was quite a bit lower than 400, whereas lacerate always deals 2-400. This means Lacerate consistently deals about 1400 threat regardless of gear level, and swipe anywhere from sub 1000, to over 2k threat depending on gear, buffs, and location.

    2 Piece Tier 10 also increases damage, and buffs like ICC's 30% buff throws numbers off as well, the rotation that deals maximum threat basically changes depending on the scenario.

    Point is, the difference between a Swipe-filler and a Lacerate-filler rotation are EXTREMELY marginal. Things can go wrong in the Swipe-Filler rotation as well; If you swiped too often that there is less than 4 seconds left on lacerate bleed, and your mangle and Faerie fire come off cooldown, you have less than 1 second to refresh your lacerate in time. Taking into account tanks are rarely hit/expertise capped, you could miss or get parried/dodged and lose your 5 stack bleed. This is a more major Threat loss than swipe's advantage over lacerate (keeping in mind the difference is likely 2~300 threat. For reference, a single Maul is closer to 10,000 Threat).

    On the flipside to this scenario, when you realise that your lacerate needs to be refreshed and choose to delay you mangle/FF in order to do so, you've also possibly lost a whole Mangle and FF that fight as well, depending how many times you had to delay these abilities. For example, you might only get 39 Mangles in the fight, instead of 40. Or worse if you delay it multiple times.

    End of the day, if you also wish to min-max tick timers, you can monitor your Mangle/FF Cooldowns and refresh lacerate with sub-3 seconds when you are SURE it won't delay your Mangle/FF.
    Otherwise, if you'll want to refresh your lacerate if it goes under 5.99 seconds left (aka 6 second left tick has occured) as this allows you 4 GCD's, 2 of which for Mangle/Faerie Fire. But the default GCD is 1.5 seconds, and fitting 4 GCD's in 5.99 seconds either requires a good amount of haste, or a very good ping connection, or both. For this reason, most people choose to play it even safer, and refresh Lacerate at any time with less than 9 seconds left, due to poor netcoding, lag, and the occurrence of misses or dodged/parried attacks.
    Which means the only tick guaranteed to deal damage is the tick at 12 seconds remaning. Honestly, really not a big deal, hence why you shouldn't feel bad spamming 2-3 lacerates in a row, its not as major of an overall threat loss as you think.

    TL;DR Lacerate-spam filler is more braindead. I only recommend a lacerate-filler based rotation because most tanks would be better served focussing on raid/boss mechanics, rather than staring at their action bars.
    Yes there's a minor threat loss, but its less than 3% of your total threat. It's more likely that if you're tunnel-visioning on your Rotation that you cause a Raid Wipe by messing up at a raid mechanic, or you mismanage your defensive cooldowns such as enrage, barkskin, or don't react in time to pop Survival Instincts when you get brought to sub 5% HP and end up dying, or wiping the raid as a result.

    Basically, tanks have better things to do than tunnel vision on DPSing/Threat whoring.

    Edit: okay its a non warmane server, phew. Warmane works as intended and ticks work correctly here. Thank goodness. Lacerate spamming gogogo
    Edited: May 29, 2019

  2. May 29, 2019  
    @Raenel

    The person you were replying to plays on a server other than Warmane, where apparently a number of mechanics must be broken. His entire premise that Lacerate reapplication rests its tick timer isn't true. It works correctly on Warmane, and it's definitely been this way for a very long time, maybe always.

  3. May 29, 2019  
    @Raenel

    The person you were replying to plays on a server other than Warmane, where apparently a number of mechanics must be broken. His entire premise that Lacerate reapplication rests its tick timer isn't true. It works correctly on Warmane, and it's definitely been this way for a very long time, maybe always.
    Ah indeed. I literally logged on today just to find out which addons I used, how they were setup, and to find if there were any WoW classic equivalents to said plugins lol.

    Appreciate that the same old faces are still answering questions on the forums, even after all these years. Been absent for a while, and unless Classic becomes a flop, I'll likely be absent for a long while more

  4. June 1, 2019  
    Raenel perfect explanation for everything , i just start druid 3 days ago had already 80 lvl before but didnt play it to much and im 5.5 gs ( decide to donate for polearm , the rest items are boe + rdf farm ) . I read couple of times how to keep aggro and etc , i dont have to much problem in rdf except if some pala or war with sm get in or some bis class is hard without hunter and rogue for md and tot . One thing which confuse me is that , can you explain it .

    ~Maul is our #1 threat producer! It does even more threat than Mangle AND Faerie Fire put together! Hopefully you will now understand how important Maul is in our rotation .... ~

    I make macros for all of my ability with Maul , and lets say lacerate is already on 5 stacks and mangle is in cd and i already cast faerie fire . Do i have to keep spamming Maul to keep it or have to wait for Mangle and to refresh Lacerate ? I just throw Maul which i had it away from my binding , i see it but not press it .

  5. June 1, 2019  
    I have one more question . Try to edit previous post but cant find edit . How manage to use cd`s on soul reapers and breath from syndra and halion ? how to combinate them and also if im MT at Halion did i you cd every time there is inferno or depends inferno + breath ? my nick in game is Bumblebebee , curently dont have 4 parts t10 so enrage will be not used as cd aswell .

  6. June 3, 2019  
    Raenel perfect explanation for everything , i just start druid 3 days ago had already 80 lvl before but didnt play it to much and im 5.5 gs ( decide to donate for polearm , the rest items are boe + rdf farm ) . I read couple of times how to keep aggro and etc , i dont have to much problem in rdf except if some pala or war with sm get in or some bis class is hard without hunter and rogue for md and tot . One thing which confuse me is that , can you explain it .

    ~Maul is our #1 threat producer! It does even more threat than Mangle AND Faerie Fire put together! Hopefully you will now understand how important Maul is in our rotation .... ~

    I make macros for all of my ability with Maul , and lets say lacerate is already on 5 stacks and mangle is in cd and i already cast faerie fire . Do i have to keep spamming Maul to keep it or have to wait for Mangle and to refresh Lacerate ? I just throw Maul which i had it away from my binding , i see it but not press it .
    if you are using macros with /use !Maul in them, you basically want to be pressing a button at all times, to keep queuing Maul as your next attack.
    That said, even if Mangle and Faerie Fire are both on cooldown, you should either be using lacerate or swipe. Swipe if it's AoE tanking. Also don't be afraid to recast Lacerate even when lacerate is already at 5 stacks on single target bosses, casting something is always better than casting nothing.
    The best thing you can do for Threat per Second output is to always be on a global cooldown, at all times. That's actually a pretty valid DPS tip too. Time spent doing nothing, is time wasted.


    I have one more question . Try to edit previous post but cant find edit . How manage to use cd`s on soul reapers and breath from syndra and halion ? how to combinate them and also if im MT at Halion did i you cd every time there is inferno or depends inferno + breath ? my nick in game is Bumblebebee , curently dont have 4 parts t10 so enrage will be not used as cd aswell .
    Cooldown management is simply just something you'll learn by playing the game, and gaining experience at tanking. It's quite play-style dependant, and depends alot on the situation. For example, if you notice your healers are low on mana, or that your raid has recently taken a lot of damage you may want to use cooldowns more aggressively. In safer environments, you can save your bigger cooldowns for emergencies.
    I usually always like to recommend that your smaller cooldowns such as sindragosa's fang trinket and barkskin be on cooldown as often as possible, so use one each time a breath attack happens on sindy/halion for example.
    Soul Reaper is dangerous mostly because of the 100% Melee Haste that the Lich King gains, meaning his melee attacks will be hitting thick and fast. There's a few tricks you can use to keep you safe, such as backpedalling out of his melee range, or getting your off tank to taunt him and keep him running around for the duration of the Soul Reaper. Also, the shadow damage from the Soul reaper is painful too. Depending on what your off tank does to help you, it's always good to use a cooldown on soul reapers, and have your finger ready on the Survival Instincts button incase you see yourself getting dangerously low. At some points in the fight, the raid timers for soul reaper and defile/infest actually come very closely. The LK pauses to cast these skills which an attentive Main Tank can use to his advantage to help kite the boss incase your offtank isn't helping you.

    Worst come to worst, remember that calling for a Divine Sacrifice or Hand Of Sacrifice from your paladin is another option, or a Pain Supression from your priest.

    4 Piece tier 10 is highly recommended because it's basically another mini-Barkskin cooldown, and makes rotating cooldowns much much easier. Your first Frost Emblems should immediately go towards T10, don't buy any trinkets/belts/cloaks or anything until you have 4 pieces Tier 10.
    Edited: June 3, 2019

  7. June 5, 2019  
    Thanks alot for the help . On sunday i manage to down icc10 HC ( with french pugs and one friend ) with another prot pala 5.7 ( i was 5.5 ) ye the first thing to buy was shoulders so i can get 2t10 , now i have 75 emblems and when i reach 90+ will buy Helm , i have already pants from long time was sitting in bank . The last part will be hands , hope to drop from voa 10 or 25 , i got already mark waiting for them . I dont had any problem to tank icc even without trinkets , i use black heart and triumpf one . Only i miss to get one orbs and Keleseth nearly one shot me with 2 orbs on me but then we do it on normal . But ye during tanking i manage to use my cd better and on time .I got hands + waist 10 hc and now im nearly 5.8 . Very good giude , and thanks again for explanation

  8. June 8, 2019  
    I have one more question . Try to edit previous post but cant find edit . How manage to use cd`s on soul reapers and breath from syndra and halion ? how to combinate them and also if im MT at Halion did i you cd every time there is inferno or depends inferno + breath ? my nick in game is Bumblebebee , curently dont have 4 parts t10 so enrage will be not used as cd aswell .
    Get your 4p t10 asap.

    Telling new bears to spec into Feral Aggression tends to be one of my first pieces of advice, but from your armory it seems you already have that, which is good. I'd personally also shift the Omen of Clarity point into Master Shapeshifter, from the same Restoration tier.

    Halion's breath itself isn't so lethal. It's when there's a Living Inferno also attacking you where it gets a bit rough. Make sure you throw up a Demo Roar on the Inferno asap. Usually you should be able to do this before it's even reached your melee range. Meteor spawns are 40 seconds apart, which means you're able to rotate both your "small" CDs, Barkskin and 4p, for each Living Inferno. The Sindy trinket also helps because the Living Inferno's damage is partially-resistible spell damage.

    Lich King is a complex encounter that deserves a tanking guide of its own. I put together something of the sort a while back, and one of the places I posted it was here.

    Spoiler: Show
    Who the guide is for:

    This guide is for both new and experienced players interested in maximizing their survivability efforts on the LoD encounter without the 30% ICC Aura buff. It highlights the most challenging aspects of the encounters from a tank and healing PoV, and details how best to handle those situations. It is also for raid leaders who want to better understand what to expect from their tanks and healers.



    Raid Buffs and Debuffs


    First thing first - your raid buffs! On the most basic level, your raid is going to need to be able to fully cover some fundamental bases. Here I list these, in order of least to most important:


    - 3% Raid-Wide DR

    1) Protection Paladins - Blessing of Sanctuary

    2) Discipline Priests - Renewed Hope

    3) Protection Warriors - Vigilance

    This Damage Reduction buff is usually very easily covered. You should have it by default if you have a Prot Pally in your raid at all. A Discipline Priest will also apply the buff to your entire raid upon shielding anyone. The Protection Warrior version of the buff can only be applied on 1 raid member. Contrary to popular belief, Vigilance's damage reduction does not stack with the other 2 buffs.



    - 10% Physical DR

    1) Restoration Shamans - Ancestral Fortitude

    2) Discipline Priests - Inspiration

    3) Holy Priests - Inspiration

    This is a VERY significant buff to have against bosses. Boss damage is tuned around assuming your raid is competent enough to have a healer who keeps this buff on your tanks. Restoration Shamans and Holy Priests are the best for applying for this buff in P1 and P2 of LK. Earth Shield does not automatically proc the buff on the tank it crits, so manual effort will be constantly needed from your Rshammies and Hpriests in keeping this buff up on both tanks. In p1, it needs to be up on both tanks permanently. In p2, it needs to be up on the MT permanently, and should be refreshed on the OT just before he taunts. Your healers NEED to be tracking these buffs and ensuring that they stay up permanently.



    - 20% Enemy Attack Speed Slow

    1) Any Death Knight - Frost Fever with 3/3 Improved Icy Touch

    2) Protection Paladins - Judgements of the Just

    3) Feral Druids - Infected Wounds

    4) Protection Warriors - Thunderclap with 3/3 Improved Thunderclap

    This buff is usually very easily provided because of the fact that most DK DPS will apply it. Not having it drastically increases your tank's damage taken from boss auto-attacks.



    - 574/575 Enemy Attack Power reduction

    1) Feral Druids - Demoralizing Roar with 5/5 Feral Aggression

    2) Protection Paladins - 2/2 Vindication

    3) Retribution Paladins - 2/2 Vindication

    4) Fury Warriors - Demoralizing Shout with 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout

    5) Protection Warriors - Demoralizing Shout with 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout

    6) Affliction Warlocks - Curse of Weakness with 2/2 Improved Curse of Weakness

    This is the most significant debuff of all, which is a shame because it tends to be the one most often missing. The untalented versions of these debuffs do NOT cut it. 410 AP reduction only provides about ~10% or so damage reduction. The full 574/575 AP reduction provides something closer to ~15%. This is a monumental difference, and not having the fully talented version of the debuff is about equivalent to having 5000-6000 armour less! You MUST have the talented versions!!

    If you're going to have your Ret/Prot Pally off-tank apply this debuff, make sure there's at least 2 of them specced into it. This ensures that the debuff stays up even when the Pally gets grabbed by a Val'kyr, gets Ice-Tombed, or otherwise gets himself killed. Vindication can be an unreliable source of this debuff because of its short duration and dependence on the Paladin's DPS uptime.

    Curse of Weakness tends to be much more reliable. Curse of Weakness' range also makes it a very good choice to use on Shambling Horrors and the like. However, your Warlock is going to have to alter his spec and your raid will lose DPS from not having the DPS curse.

    Fury Warriors are a great choice to have apply this debuff, so long as they don't slack off on keeping the debuff up. If your Fury Warrior is assigned to it, make sure he knows to refresh it just before every Val'kyr wave, in case he's grabbed. After coming out of FMC and the like, he needs to know it's his duty to apply the Demo Roar buff ASAP on Arthas before the Soul Reaper hits.

    Prot Warriors can technically spec 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout, but they lose a lot of threat doing so. Nevertheless, this is something to keep in mind.

    Prot Pally and Feral Bear Main Tanks have the easiest time applying this. As a Bear, it is entirely possible to have 5/5 Feral Aggression specced whilst maintaining a talent build that is really close to your max TPS. Having fully talented Demo Roar is particularly great on a Bear, because even while main-tanking LK in p1, you can usually catch the Shambling Horrors with the debuff that the OT is tanking. This goes a long way towards preventing wipes due to OT deaths. Naturally, this also makes the ability great on RS when tanking little adds, because it's easiest way to apply the debuff to numerous targets.




    Consumables and Gems/Enchants/Professions

    - Consumables

    1) Indestructible Potion

    3500 Armour for 2 mins, on a 60 second cooldown. These are stupidly cheap so there is no reason to go into ICC without several stacks of these in your bags. Because of the 2 minute duration, these are terrific to pre-pot with.

    2) Flask of Stoneblood

    +1300 HP. Raw EHP boost. Can't go wrong with that.

    3) Lesser Flask of Resistance

    +50 resistance to all schools of magic damage. This is also wonderful to have on LK. It doesn't help against the physical damage, which is the bulk majority of the damage you take, but the resistance is amazing to have against Soul Reaper's initial damage (it can be partially resisted), as well as the damage from Vile Spirits.



    - Gems

    Yep, I'm really going to make this point. You should be utterly spamming the crap out of +30 stamina gems EVERYWHERE, with the only exception being one purple gem to activate the Austere Earthsiege Diamond meta-gem. An environment like LoD places a heavy emphasis on your EHP as a tank, and the best way to adjust your tank accordingly is to spam straight EHP instead of any avoidance/threat gems you might have placed on your tank to satisfy socket bonuses.


    - Enchants

    1) Weapon Enchant - Mongoose or Blood Draining

    For all tanks except for DKs, these are the only two viable enchants you have to pick from. I'm excluding hit enchants and things of that sort which might be needed for certain taunt caps. Don't fall into the Blade Ward trap! Mongoose is a slight EHP and avoidance bonus with decent uptime, and Blood Draining is an automated, smart healing-pot that instantly goes off anytime you're brought below 35% hp. In that sense, this can be termed pseudo-EHP too. This can be particularly good for predictable surges of damage, such as Soul Reapers.


    2) Resistance Enchants

    If it's needed, you can augment your tank's Shadow Resistance substantially through the use of enchants.

    You can swap out the Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (37 Stamina 20 Defense) for the Arcanum of Fleeing Shadow (30 Stamina 25 Shadow Resist).

    You can use the Enchant Cloak - Superior Shadow Resist (20 Shadow Resistance) in place of Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Mighty Armour (225 Armour). Replacing the Cloak enchant, however, is more of an EHP tradeoff.

    One should keep in the mind that they have these tools at their disposal if they decide to gear their tank towards meeting certain partial-resistance breakpoints:


    In particular, the 219 breakpoint for a minimum 20% partial resist on the SR's hit is very much within reach with slight tweaks to one's gear. With Sindragosa's Flawless Fang (ilvl 277) used, you'd need 242 shadow resistance to guarantee a minimum 40% partial resist while the Sindy trink is up. This significantly trivializes the reaper and all you need along with that to live is an extra small CD like Barkskin. No big CD needed unless you intend to face-tank the Soul Reaper's DoT too.

    - Professions

    In terms of raw EHP, JC gives you the best bonus of +63 Stamina. Leatherworking is right behind, at its +62 Stamina bonus. These Stamina bonuses are particularly useful (over say, the +885 Armour on gloves from Engineering) because spell damage will be involved in situations when you're most likely to die.

    Two Professions also stand out for providing some unique resistance bonuses:

    1) Leatherworking

    As a Leatherworker, you can apply +70 Shadow Resistance to your wrists. This makes a staggering difference. 70 Shadow Resistance is around 10-12% less shadow damage taken, on average. This can be particularly amazing for reaching a certain partial resist break-point. Having a tank that's able to apply a +70 resist enchant on his wrists is an invaluable asset to have on LK, Halion, and Sindragosa.


    2) Alchemy

    Alchemy seems like a really random choice of profession to bring up. Indeed, for the most part, it's not as eye-catching as what most other professions have to offer you. However, it's one of the only 2 professions in the game that offer you a magic resistance increase. Because of Mixology, the resistance you gain from Lesser Flask of Resistance increases from 50 to 90. This can likewise be invaluable for the purpose of surviving Soul Reapers.



    External Raid Cooldowns

    Surviving the unforgiving rigour of LoD is something no tank can do alone. Keeping the tank alive is a collaborative effort between the healing party, the tanks themselves, as well as the rest of your raid members. I.e., your entire raid.


    - Hand of Sacrifice (30% DR until 100% of Paladin's HP is transferred, or for 12 seconds)

    Very basic and well-known spell, but this is going to have to be used much more.


    - Pain Suppression (40% DR for 8 seconds)

    Another raid-favorite external CD, along with Hand of Sacrifice. This reduces your tank's total threat by 5%, which shouldn't be a big deal.


    - Guardian Spirit (40% increased healing taken for 10 seconds + death immunity)

    For 10 seconds, your target takes 40% more healing, and is death-proof for at least 1 killing hit. If a killing hit occurs in the 10 second window, the Guardian Spirit prevents it from actually killing the tank, and the buff is then lost. This is also an invaluable tool to have. If Guardian Spirit's life-saving proc doesn't actually occur, the spell ends up only having a 1 minute 10 second cooldown, which makes this spell great to liberally throw up anytime you're even slightly concerned that a tank might die.


    - Improved Lay on Hands (20% physical DR for 15 seconds)

    After using Lay on Hands, its target takes 20% reduced physical damage for 15 seconds. Every Holy Paladin in your raid should have this, as well as most Retribution Paladins. Prot Pallies can certainly pick this up as well, at the cost of some threat. Its 15 second duration is fairly substantial. Numerous Paladins can chain this on the same tank where it's needed.


    - Divine Sacrifice (30% party-wide DR for 12 seconds)

    Prot and Holy Paladins should be specced into this. Usually both tanks are in the same party, so if one of them is a Pally tank, he should keep in mind his ability to put Divine Sacrifice's buff on the other tank.


    - Divine Guardian (20% raid-wide DR for 6 seconds)

    Prot and Holy Paladins should be specced into this. This is an enhancement to your Divine Sacrifice. When you Divine Sacrifice, along with the party-wide effect, you also apply a 20% DR buff to ALL raid members. For the 6 seconds that Divine Guardian is up, party members therefore have a 44% DR buff, in conjunction with Divine Sacrifice's original effect. This is staggering!

    It's also possible for a Ret to be specced into this, though that's at the cost of Aura Mastery and some DPS.



    - Soulstones

    These should be reserved for your tanks, particularly your Main Tanks. When a tank dies and uses his SS to come back up, make sure the second Warlock in line to Soulstone him quickly applies his too. Tanks WILL die on LoD. They're the ones most likely to die, and they're also the ones whose death affects your raid the most. There's no reason to Soulstone anyone else!


    - Safeguard (30% DR for 6 seconds)

    Prot Warriors can apply a 30% DR buff on the other tank that lasts for 6 seconds by using Intervene on them. However, this reduces that tank's threat by 10%. Spamming Intervene for every Soul Reaper will create threat issues.


    - Power Word: Shield (One-time damage absorb)

    At the start of a fight, as well as immediately before every Reaper, it can be a good idea to assign a Shadow Priest or Holy Priest to put a PW:S on the Main Tank. The 6-7k absorb, while pretty measly on its own, goes a long way towards helping your tank live through a melee + Reaper hit. A tank with 81k/75k HP has better odds of living against a large burst of damage than a tank with just 75k/75k HP. It can also be nice to put a PW:S on the OT before he taunts, since that buys more time for the healers to redirect their healing towards him.

    In Phase 3, your Disc Priest should be the one putting PW:S on the tank immediately before every Reaper, since there aren't Infests to worry about anymore.




    Fight Execution, from a Tank PoV


    - Phase 1, MT PoV

    Pre-pot with an Indestructible Potion, for the love of God!!

    The very first hit LK delivers will be particularly hard. This is because he probably won't have any AP debuff on him just yet. Also, some Resto Shamans and Holy Priests do not bother with pre-casting heals on him so as to pre-proc the aforementioned Ancestral Fortitude/Inspiration buff. This is, of course, a bad habit that should be unlearned. Otherwise, the first hit is no biggie, because fortunately it also has a 100% chance to proc your tank's Earth Shield and Prayer of Mending (your Discipline priest or Holy Priest should've at least pre-casted PoM on the Main Tank before the pull!)

    Phase 1 is pretty straightforward as a Main Tank. If you're a Bear, DK, or Warrior, you should periodically throw up your "small" cooldowns and keep some kind of rotation going for them. Optimal times to throw these small cooldowns up are when your healers have to move for Shadow Trap, for a Necrotic Plague, or when you see your Hpally has popped his Divine Plea. As a Prot Paladin, you don't really have any small cooldowns apart from the t10 4p, which is a dodge based on-use effect. Towards the end, Plague Siphon makes his damage even more brutal. If you popped those small cooldowns earlier, make sure they are back up by the time the boss is below 80% of his HP. Below 80%, you should ideally strive to have some kind of constant cooldown order going. Even things like Glyphed Enraged Regeneration will help here. Don't be shy to use big cooldowns like Divine Protection, Shield Wall, or even Survival Instincts/Last Stand. The TOGC stamina trinket also provides a very nice health bonus you can weave into your cooldown rotation. Ideally, as a Main Tank, you should have lived through P1 without forcing any external cooldowns on you, as it's usually better to keep them for the Off-Tank.



    - Phase 1, OT PoV

    Off-tanking p1 is where the fun is at. Just as with the MT, you also need to pre-pot with an Indestructible Potion.

    You want to make sure your Shambling Horrors always have an AP debuff on them, as well as an attack speed slow. If you're a Paladin specced into Judgements of Just, you should alternate your Judgement casts on the Shambling Horrors when there's two of them. Remember also that it's a very necessary to have a Warlock put Curse of Elements on your Shamblings (they will take 13% more damage from the plague!). Crypt Fever also works (note that only the +13% spell dmg portion of Ebon Plaguebringer will work, and NOT the +30% disease damage). Ideally, you want to use stuns either before an Enrage cast, or when Shambling Horrors are frenzied! If an Enrage goes off, you're going to have to hope that your Hunters dispel it instantly. When Shambling Horrors frenzy (the 100% damage buff when they have less than 20% HP) is when you pop your big stuns (like HoJ/Concussion Blow), and big cooldowns (like Divine Protection, or Shield Wall). Ideally, your raid will also be saving their external cooldowns for you until both Shamblings are dead.

    DO NOT FACE-TANK a frenzy if you have no cooldowns up. Remember that you can kite Shambling Horrors with Avenger's Shield and whatnot. You could even ask a DK dps to throw a Chains of Ice on your Shambling. If you're a Paladin, remember that you have Seal of Justice. Seal of Justice is a random 3 second stun that does NOT share a Diminishing Return category with other stuns, so it's a great tool to have to reduce Shambling Horror damage uptime. Glyphed Hand of Salvation on yourself is also another very nice tool to have on Shambling Horrors that most people overlook pretty easily. When tanking 2 Shamblings, remember that the plague bounces to whichever target is nearest to it. When the Plague goes onto you, you can make sure that it bounces to the Shambling Horror with lower HP by positioning yourself closer to it. Likewise, you can also receive the plague from the Shambling that's about to lose it by positioning yourself extremely close to it, so it doesn't jump to the other one. This is something that can be helpful.

    As for ghoul handling, you can be as liberal as you want about ghoul-taunting for the first 2-3 waves, to build up the plague. This also helps your Main Tank a lot if your Main tank is a bear, because the ghouls on him eat away at his Savage Defense uptime fairly significantly and that causes him to take more damage from the boss. However, once the second Shambling Horror spawns you absolutely want to stop taunting ghouls. This is because at that point you only want the Plague to bounce between Shambling Horrors and kill them off as fast as possible. Any extra ghouls it bounces towards and wastes time on is going to increase your odds of dying to the 2 Shambling Horrors that are the actual threat.



    - Transition Phases

    The transition phases are largely a short 1 minute reprieve from the otherwise hectic and intense Arthas 25hc encounter. The only challenge as a tank here is maintaining high threat. As a Paladin, you might want to swap out your weapon to a 2.6 one, and change your Libram to the Libram of Valiance (+200 Str on proc) to maximize your threat. You should also use threat cooldowns here, like Wings (but be careful to avoid over-lapping Wings with the damage buff from Tricks of the Trade, because they don't stack). Bears and DKs should have a slightly easier time with the aggro. The truth is that you're going to have to be dependent on the threat transfer from Rogues and Hunters, regardless of your own threat.

    Remember that landing a taunt on a Raging Spirit very shortly after it spawns is crucial so a raid member doesn't randomly get 1 shot. Both tanks shouldn't be standing where they both get silenced by a Soul Shriek. When there is overlap between Raging Spirit uptime (like in phase 2.5), one way you can split the aggro assignments on Raging Spirits is to have the 2nd tank taunt the Raging Spirit from the 1st tank once it's below 30-40% health. This leaves the 1st tank more free to build aggro on the next Raging Spirit to spawn. This works great if your DPS are only Misdirecting to the 1st tank.

    The part where it gets slightly sticky is when Raging Spirits from the transition phases linger over into the next phase.



    - Phase 2

    Phase 2 is arguably the most difficult one on LK. Stacking for Val'kyrs, spreading for Defiles, all while facing very tight DPS requirements on the Val'kyrs and dealing with the Val'kyrs occasionally grabbing key healers and whatnot, which then leaves your raid vulnerable to Infests or boss damage.

    As the MT, you want to move Arthas along with the Val'kyr to maximize the damage he takes from the cleaving. This also lets Spriests Mind Sear off him and hit the Val'kyrs. If you're a Bear, Warrior, or Paladin, you might be assigned to a stun on one of the Val'kyrs. You need to be mindful of Soul Reapers and healer grabs. If you're specced into infected Wounds as a Bear, you can help maintain slows on the Val'kyrs, and it can be good to throw the Mangle debuff on as many of them as possible. Every little bit of DPS helps, so don't be shy about helping to DPS the Valks if your threat on LK is good. If you're a Prot Pally, you can use Avenger's Shield to ensure a 10 second AoE slow on all of them. Prot Paladins also have an extra amazing tool in their belt to use on Val'kyrs: Seal of Justice. This is a random 3 second stun that doesn't DR with other standard stuns. It is a great choice to use on a Val'kyr that has flown far infront of the rest (so you can AoE all 3 of them properly again), or to use on a Val'kyr that just needs extra stuns.

    As the OT, you will probably be holding the Raging Spirit from the earlier transition phase. You want to keep this stacked on the Lich King to maximize the cleaving. When the Val'kyrs come and the Raging Spirit is still up, you should try and move the Raging Spirit closer to where the pack is flying, but only after a Soul Shriek proc has just happened. Once the Raging Spirit is dead, most of your job in p2 comes down to helping stun Val'kyrs, and assisting the main tank with taunts and heavy defensive cooldowns, as well as keeping the damage from the Val'kyrs in the air (Soul Siphon) concentrated on you. This makes it so they aren't breaking the Disc Priest's shields left and right. One extremely reliable way of doing this is having a Ret keep his Righteous Fury on while DPSing Val'kyrs, so you can just Righteous Defense off him. If you're not a Paladin, you could just manually taunt them one by one too, because that also works.



    - What is Soul Reaper, exactly?

    A lot of people don't have a clear understanding of this ability. They just vaguely know it's some tank-killing mechanic that occurs every 30 seconds, and that the tank should use defensives so as not to die. Soul Reapers are just about 30 seconds apart, which makes the DBM timer very reliable when it comes to pre-popping CDs for a Soul Reaper, especially the 2nd Reaper and all Reapers after that. Soul Reaper is basically a 10 second window of increased damage. I will break this down into 3 parts:

    0.0 -> Soul Reaper application

    5.0 -> Soul Reaper's DoT tick

    5.0 - 10.0 -> LK's 100% Haste buff for 5 seconds

    Soul Reaper's initial hit upon application:

    This is the hit that occurs around the time the DBM timer will say it should. You will need to have popped some kind of defensive BEFORE it goes off. The initial Soul Reaper hit is 50% of his raw damage, delivered to you as something called Shadowstrike damage. Shadowstrike damage will either be resisted by your Shadow Resistance, or your Armour - whichever would mitigate it less. As a tank, it is therefore certainly going to be mitigated by your Shadow Resistance, which makes Shadow Resistance effects like the Sindy trink particularly valuable. His raw hit is around 190-200k or so. 50% of this is 95-100k. This is then reduced by all the standard passive DR effects, and it's also then further reduced by 1) your partial resist amount based on your Shadow Resistance, and 2) any cooldowns you might have popped to help mitigate it more. Even so, this will still hit fairly hard. The deadliest thing about the Reaper's initial hit is not so much the damage itself, but the fact that its damage can occur really close to one of LK's auto-attacks. A simultaneous Reaper hit + auto attack WILL kill you if you don't have some significant mitigation going. The application of the Soul Reaper also places a DoT on you that will tick after 5 seconds.

    Soul Reaper's DoT after 5 seconds:

    Rather like the Soul Reaper's initial hit, this is a nasty chunk of very high damage that might occur together with an auto-attack and kill you in the process. UNLIKE the initial hit, this damage cannot be partially-resisted. On 25hc, this will tick for exactly 70k raw damage, mitigated only by DR effects, and not Shadow Resistance. To have your tank survive this DoT, you need to have a big cooldown on him going, or you need the other tank to taunt the LK at least 1.5 or more seconds before the DoT ticks, so as to ensure that the tank with the debuff does not suffer the DoT tick together with a melee hit. After this DoT ticks, the LK receives a 100% buff to his melee haste for 5 seconds.

    LK's 100% haste buff for 5 seconds:

    Instead of hitting you every ~1.8 seconds, LK will now hit you every 0.9 seconds. The good news is that unlike the Shadow damage portions of the Soul Reapers, these hits do not involve monstrous bursts of near-simultaneous damage that will easily insta-gib you. They can be brute-healed through by simply having your healers spam an insane amount of healing on you. It is also likely that you should have at least some kind of small cooldown going from having popped it for the shadow damage portions earlier (like Barkskin, Vampiric Blood, or one of the t10 4p bonuses for Bears/Pallies/DKs). So long as you have the LK appropriately debuffed with AP and Attack Speed slow debuffs, the 100% melee haste should not be threatening unless you have key tank healers grabbed. In that case, it would be good to have called for a big external cooldown (like improved LoH, Pain Supp, GS) beforehand - ideally even before the initial reaper hits.



    - Dealing with Soul Reaper




    - Phase 3

    Phase 3 is fortunately very straightforward. The entirety of this phase is predictable and therefore easily controllable, with the exception of bad bomb spawns inside Frostmourne Chamber.

    Transitioning from p2.5 to p3:
    At the very end of p2.5, there is a 4th and final Raging Spirit spawn that happens just before the raid runs in. One of the tanks (the one not tanking the LK) needs to pick this up



    Recommended Healing Composition:

    - Infest Coverage

    1x Disc Priest is obviously mandatory because of Infests.

    If Infests continue to be a problem, the best way to address that is by adding a Holy Priest. Between a pre-casted PoH + instant CoH, Holy Priests are the best class in the game to instantly clean up any leftover infests. Not to mention those few stacks of PoM bouncing around for good measure.

    Once the Infests are properly covered, the only other thing you need to worry about is the tank-healing.


    - Tank healing coverage

    1-2x Holy Paladins are strongly recommended. Holy Pallies provide a constant, powerful, and above all, sustainable influx of healing on one target (2, with the beacon). Some healers, like the Rshammy, might be able to temporarily exceed the Hpally in single target HPS for short bursts, but they can't hope to keep it up because they don't have the Mana Regen tools that a Holy Pally has. Rshammies are forced to tank heal mostly with their weaker Lesser Healing Wave ability for mana sustainability purposes, and a Rdruid's Nourish (even glyphed) or a Hpriest's Flash Heal don't compare to the sheer size of a single Holy Light, let alone 2 Holy Lights (because Beacon copies the heal).

    At the very minimum, run 1 Hpally. If tank deaths are a consistent problem, get a 2nd Hpally, and make sure they never Divine Plea together (your Holy Pallies should ideally have party chat macros that alert the other healers they just used Divine Plea, so those other healers know to kick up the tank-healing a notch for the next 15 seconds).

    Rshammies are also a frequent raid staple, though not inherently quite as mandatory. Rshammies bring your tanks the amazing Earth Shield buff (this is basically pseudo-EHP, due to instantly covering part of the damage taken by a hit, and it procs on more than half of all LK's hits). On top of that, you have LHW which is a decent tank-healing tool, even moreso glyphed. LHW with its high crit rates also frequently procs Ancestral Awakening, which is a smart heal that finds its way towards whoever needs it most. They also therefore have the easiest time applying the Ancestral Fortitude buff, and have the ability to temporarily tap into higher HPS mode (like if a Holy Pally is grabbed) through their Healing Wave spamming via Tidal Waves. They also have Chain Heal to assist with leftover Infests where needed. The rshammy toolset abounds with smart-healing tools, which makes them especially valuable.


    - Composition examples:

    All in all, if Infests are an issue for you, I'd recommend:

    2x Hpallies

    1x Disc

    1x Rsham

    1x Holy


    If Infests are not a major issue, I'd recommend:

    2x Hpallies

    1x Disc

    1x Rsham

    1x Rdruid


    Rdruids, when specced appropriately, have higher sustained single target healing than Hpriests, on top of the amazing Living Seed talent. They make better back-up tank healers, apart from not proccing Inspiration and not having GS. Having an extra Innervate and Brez also never goes awry. Note that if the Rshammy is grabbed, however, your tanks will probably lose the Ancestral Fortitude/Inspiration buff due to not having a Hpriest to be able to supply the buff in the Rshammy's place.

    Do not be shy about adding a 6th healer if you feel it'd make a significant difference.



    - Summary of Healer Strengths for raid leaders to keep in mind:

    Holy Pally:

    - Provides a guarantee of a strong and constant influx of tank healing.

    - Strong cooldowns (Divine Guardian, Aura Mastery, Hand of Sac), all of which will be invaluable.



    Resto Shaman:

    - Earth Shield is a very powerful pseudo-EHP buff on tanks

    - Powerful in the role of an assistant tank healer due to LHW. Very reliably procs Ancestral Fortitude. High amount of smart-healing makes it good for leftover Infests, and Chain Heal spam very nicely covers transition and FMC healing.

    - Has the ability to switch to Healing Wave mode for dramatically increased single target healing when it's needed, like when your Hpally pops Divine Plea or gets grabbed by a Val'kyr. Its extremely adaptable nature makes it great to plug up whatever kind of healing happens to be needed most at any given moment.



    Discipline Priest:

    - Non-negotiable to have 1 Disco Priest because of Infest.

    - Pain Supp is something your tanks will depend on to live through Reapers or Shamblings.

    - Modestly powerful tank healing when needed. Divine Aegis in particular is a very strong talent.



    Resto Druid:

    - Decent back-up tank healing. The Living Seed talent that procs on crits is basically like an Earth Shield with no ICD. Higher single target healing than Hpriest. Swiftmend, NS + Healing Touch, and the greater amount of HoTs on tanks makes Rdruids very reliable back-up tank healers.

    - Brez, Innervate

    - The resource gain from Revitalize can be viewed as a unique buff only Rdruids supply. This increases raid DPS slightly due to the energy procs on your Rogues, and the mana procs on your caster DPS and Hunters. This also returns your fellow healers a decent amount of mana, which might mean your Hpallies needing to plea less, etc.



    Holy Priest:

    - Best Infest clean-up toolkit by a margin.

    - Weakest sustained single-target healing, but it makes up for that through Guardian Spirit, and by being an Inspiration provider.

    - Hymn of Hope/Divine Hymn in case of emergencies when needed.



    Healer Perspective Breakdown

    The most crucial thing that needs to be kept in mind now is that the Holy Paladin CANNOT solo-heal both tanks alone. Every healer that isn't a Disc Priest needs to be constantly pumping some kind of healing into the tank(s) if they're not doing anything else! Note that Resto Shammies and Resto Druids in particular are advised to possibly alter their talents/glyphs slightly to better enhance their tank-healing capabilities. The individual PoVs for each healer are broken down even further:


    Holy Paladin: The entirety of this fight is extremely unforgiving to lapses on your part, because of how the tanks are almost constantly bombarded with huge amounts of damage. Preemptively positioning your toon in a good spot and pre-casting appropriately are all going to be necessary on several occasions. In Phase 1, you should be precasting a Holy Light on the MT immediately before the RP ends, so it lands after his first hit. You should be positioned with the melee DPS to land off some free auto attacks when refreshing judgement/beacon/sacred shield or while moving. The best time to refresh these are while LK is casting his ghouls (it's a 3 or 4 second channel), or immediately after a Holy Light cast that leaves both tanks as full health such that you now have breathing room to afford that GCD. As to who to beacon initially, you should beacon the OT and use absolutely every HL cast healing the MT, which is great for Val'anyr users especially because of the extra shielding on the MDPS via the glyph effect. Until the 2nd Shambling spawns the damage on the OT isn't really critical outside of enrages so be wary of that. Keep an eye on the Shambling's health and assist with Divine Guardian or Hand of Sacrifice accordingly. It's a good idea to Plea in early to mid P1, but don't do it in late p1, or while both shamblings are still alive. The transition phase is also a good time to pop the 2nd Plea assuming both Shamblings are dead and people aren't taking lots of damage. Remember to maximize effective Judgement uptime by keeping it up on the highest health Raging Spirit. As you move in to stack for p2, be careful that movement isn't done at a time when healing might be needed. You should move only immediately after Holy Lights and buffer that GCD with Holy Shock. This phase requires a lot of premeditated planning and moving on your part. Soul Reapers are 30 seconds apart so you can find time to plea in between, but absolutely never plea on a reaper. It's a good idea to have a party chat macro that announces to your back-up tank healers in party chat when you Divine Plea so they know they have to focus harder on tanks for a bit. On a reaper you want to make sure the MT is beaconed , and start pre-emptively healing the OT because he will either taunt or put a hand of sac up on the MT. As a rule of thumb, as Long as no one one else needs heals, the default person you heal while the MT is beaconed should be the OT or a mdps, as this way the splash heals benefit the MT too. As a Holy Pally, you'll be required to stun a Val'kyr (usually the circle by convention). Sound it off in say chat if you are grabbed so everyone is instantly alerted that a Valkyr needs stunning and that the MT needs major healing backup. In p2.5, much the same applies as in p1.5. Remember to be constantly healing the MT as he goes in after the phase. In FMC be alert and beacon yourself so you're guaranteed to always be topped. Throw a sacred shield on anyone else while moving. Remember to shift the beacon back to the MT before going out. It can be safe to plea inside assuming everyone is constantly topped. Occasionally there will be a bad bomb the raid will inevitably be hit by. You can shadow AM or Divine Guardian these. When you go out, the same applies about pre-movement and not landing bad defiles. Heal OT when Viles descend. Stay at max range behind LK so when the MT catches a Vile you don't eat the splash. In each outside phase in p3, the LK casts 2 Vile Spirit channels, and these casts are 5 seconds long. You can use this time to get some movement done, but make sure it's not while Vile Spirits are descending. Sometimes, the tank runs a long distance away from the LK while the Vile Spirit cast is ongoing, and then the LK has to spend a couple of seconds running back to the MT. If you're watchful for when that happens you can strategically move for a second more while the LK is running but make sure to be pre-casting the heal for before the hit lands. If you can't afford to move but you're in a bad spot for Vile Spirits, use your bubble when they descend.

    Resto Shaman: Your foremost role here is being the secondary tank healer. Keep Earth Shield up on the MT always, or on the OT when 2 Shamblings are present. It's probable that there will be ghouls in the Melee pile Aggrod onto warriors or the Unholy DK, so keep the Chain Heal spam going when that happens. Outside of that, you should be using LHW as your default heal on the tanks, or Healing Wave If that's needed (like when the Hpally moves). Remember that you will be expected to dispel most plagues too. Track the Disco's shields and precast a Chain Heal on the group that you see isn't shielded before Infest hits. Keep Ancestral Fortitude up on both tanks basically always. On transition, be prepared to reinforce the OT hard when his shamblings get Low. Transition phases should be almost 100% pure chain heal spammage. You can mana tide here so it's up again at some point in p3. Remember to recast all your totems here so you keep the casters in range of the 5% spell haste buff. Going into p2, you resuming your tank back-u healing game. Outside of Infests and Chain Heals, you should mostly be spamming LHW on the MT. Keeping totems in the middle is a good idea as everyone is easily always in range. Remember to have Ancestral Fortitude procced on the OT for when he's about to taunt for a reaper. When the Hpally is grabbed, or when someone is critically Low is when you unleash those gigantic Healing Wave casts. Try and always use it under the effect of Tidal Waves (if it's not up, you can Chain Heal or Riptide to proc it). Be watchful for when the Hpally uses Divine Plea, because when he does is when you kick up the tank-healing a couple of notches, weaving in tidal waves-buffed Healing Waves on the MT where you can. In FMC remember to place your totems again. Healing Stream and spell haste especially are going to be really helpful. You can use another Call of the Elements ability to place a different combo of totems - one that includes Earthbind totem, because this Earthbind totem right in the middle will be nice for slowing the descent of the Wicked Spirits. Keep Riptide on CD in FMC and keep spamming Chain Heals while moving with the group. When porting out, remember to continue to assist with tank healing and keep totems, particularly spell haste, in range of the raid. Sometimes the Hpally is slow to cast those heals on the MT immediately when they port out so it's a good idea to cast a heal on him. Like a Holy Paladin, you're a rather immobile healer, so plan ahead a lot, and remember that you can use the 5 second Vile Spirit summon cast as a chance to reposition (One thing you should really try to also do is put an earth bind totem in between the viles and the MT, because unlike Frost Traps, Earthbind is able to catch and slow them in the air pretty effectively.

    Discipline Priest: You bear a lot of responsibility in p1 and p2 in preventing Infests. When you see 20 seconds left on the pull timer, make sure you start shielding everyone in a specific order (this makes reshielding for subsequent infest waves easier since you know the order you'll be shielding them). It's fine to shield the Off-tank at the start, but don't shield the MT as that messes up your Rapture; only use PoM on the MT before the pull. A huge part of playing Disc properly here is making sure your Rapture is used to snag huge amounts of mana from Infest casts. There are 20 seconds between Infest casts, thus your priority during p1 and p2 is to cover 20 non-tank targets with shields. You don't want to Shield tanks unless you're sure the shield is going to be needed to prevent a death. Aside from the tanks, you will leave 3-4 targets unshielded. Usually this is going to be the Fury Warriors, but also possibly the Rets or Unh DKs, since their ghoul aggro might pop a shield and mess up your Rapture too. This isn't that big a deal usually because melees are more easily healed up from Chain Heal and other splash heals anyway. If you have a Holy priest in the raid, you'll want to try and make sure that the people you don't shield are all in the same group, so the Holy Priest's Prayer of Healing covers the Infest damage better. In p1.5, keep an eye on the health of Shamblings and use PS when it's needed. In p2, focus on shielding while dropping good defiles, sound it out right away if you're grabbed so everyone knows a bad infest is coming. Co-ordinate Pain Sup with the tank's own CD's and other external CD's. Keep PoM on CD inside FMC and during transition phases. Inside FMC, chaining GTS with the other healers well of course applies, and when you're outside in p3, it's also mostly going to be the same pattern of shielding the raid, although you should be a bit more free to assist in tank healing, particularly around the time of reapers. Feel free to use PW:S on tanks before a reaper liberally in p3.

    Resto Druid: In phase 1 you're just the secondary healer in every sense. Track who doesn't have Disco shields on them and Rejuvenate them. Keep hots on tanks, and keep Wild Growth on the melees on cooldown. Outside of that, spam Nourishes on the Main tank or off-tank. This is what basically what your backup tank healing looks like; you pump lots of Nourishes on the MT and proc Living Seeds that serve as a nice health buffer for the next hit, and use Swiftmend or NS+HT for when tanks' health looks dire. Remember, if a tank goes down to 25% HP, a single Holy Light from the Hpally won't Top him up for the next hit, so don't underestimate your value as an assistant tank healer. Where you see Healing isn't an issue, take advantage of Clearcasting to force mana gains with Lifebloom. You can also Rejuv the healer groups for the mana gains from Revitalize, which can add up to a fair bit on a fight this Long. On transitions you begin your 5x1 aoe healing rotation, with emphasis on hotting the tanks, healers, and MDPS. Phase 2 is much the same with backup healing. If an Rsham or Hpally is grabbed brace yourself for some hard tank healing. FMC and transitions are your real forte. It's basically 5x1 all day Everyday here, and remember to prioritise healers for Rejuvs for the revitalise procs. When you go out, you focus on tanks again while keeping Wild Growths on the Melee on CD. Around after the time the 2nd wave has descended and have been soaked is when you can start to pre-hot people for the next FMC.

    Holy Priest: Holy Priests are amazing at instantly swiping away any leftover infests. This is one of the main fortes that makes Holy Priests extremely valuable on this encounter. You can use CoH liberally, but make sure it's available immediately after every Infest cast. Outside of that you can keep Renew on the tanks and Mdps that are likely to pull ghoul aggro, since these are the guys that will also likely not have disc shields (the fury warrs primarily). Between Infests, most of what you'll be doing is simply hotting those guys and assisting the tank healing with Flash Heal spam + PoM. As a Holy Priest that's what your tank healing is going to look like - Keeping Renew up and Flash Heal spamming, along with putting PoM on the tank on CD, since PoM heals about the same amount, is incredibly cheap, over-heals less, and will bounce and heal other targets too, in addition to proccing Inspiration on them. In a pinch, you'll use either Greater Heal (if specced into Serendipity), or Binding Heal (same cast time as Flash Heal but heals slightly more, for a much greater mana cost). When an Infest is about to hit, pre-cast a Prayer of Healing on the unshielded group and immediately follow that with CoH. If done right, odds are good you'll have cleaned up most leftover Infests instantly. GS will be best kept for the off-tank so he isn't destroyed by his Shamblings. Transition healing will most be Renew spreading + CoH/PoM on CD. If the damage is manageable you can regen some mana using only CoH and PoM on CD, and any free Flash Heals that proc. In p2 your role is quite similiar to p1, apart from hotting MDPS unless moving. GS is great for Reapers, or when a Hpally is grabbed. It is a VERY good idea to put Power Word: Shield or Prayer of Mending on the tank immediately before a Reaper is applied; the extra cushioning between between the SR hit and the LK's significantly reduces your tank's odds of getting insta-gibbed! Remember that you share the job of keeping Inspiration up on tanks with the Resto Shaman. If the Resto Shaman is grabbed, that means his Inspiration buff will likely fall off from the tank unless you're there spamming heals on the tank in his place. The other part of this fight that plays to your strengths, apart from instant Infest cleaning and GS, is FMC. Here you basically go to town with Renews and PoM + CoH on CD, and remember that if a group is low, your biggest heal is Prayer of Healing. It's a good idea to have built up 3x stacks of Serendipity (if you're specced into that) when going into FMC, and then maintaining it.

    ______________________

    To be continued later today.


    Specifically spoke about Soul Reapers and Cooldown management in another comment here:
    Spoiler: Show
    You mention "unless you intend to face tank the soul reaper DOT too"

    are you saying the tank would only need an external cooldown like hand of sacrifice to survive the second hit? provided the tank still has barkskin up?

    Just would like more info on how you would reccomend rotating cd's properly?
    Yes, that is certainly possible. Though it might not always be advisable.

    Let's say you're a Bear tank, and on average, you take 43k in melee hits without CDs (this 43k is already after Demo Roar, Inspiration, etc), You're also going to suffer the 70k DoT along with one of these hits. We are going to assume you have the 4p bonus up, and that you have a Paladin's Hand of Sacrifice.

    After various DR effects, the 70k is mitigated to: 70k x 0.97 (Blessing of Sanctuary) x 0.88 (Protector of the Pack) x 0.88 (4p bonus) x 0.7 (Hand of Sacrifice) = 36.8k

    After Hand of Sac and Enrage 4p bonus, the melee hit is mitigated to: 43k x 0.88 x 0.7 = 26.5k

    These add up to 26.5k + 36.8k = 63.288. A BiS Bear would certainly live through face-tanking a DoT + melee combo, although your healers are going to need to top you up ASAP afterwards because the next melee hit comes 0.9 seconds later (LK gives himself a Haste buff after the DoT).

    The other thing to keep in mind is Hand of Sac's health transfer limit. When given to you by anyone other than a Prot Paladin, you're going to likely lose the buff well before the full 12 seconds are over. Moreover, the 30% DR is on the low side, so it might be better to pair that with a slightly stronger CD like Barkskin as opposed to the 4p.

    Here's an example of a strategy my guild found great success with for Reapers. We most commonly ran Bear MT Pally OT, or 2x Pally tanks. In the example I'll show what we did when it was Bear + Pally. Half of the time, the Bear face-tanked the Reapers with a small CD of his own, along with a big external CD from the Prot Pally. The other half of the time, the Paladin would tank.


    0s 1st Reaper -> Bear 4p, Sindy trinket + OT taunting before the DoT ticks and face-tanking the hasted melee hits with Divine Protection and his 4p bonus.
    30s 2nd Reaper -> Bear Barkskin + Divine Sacrifice, Divine Guardian from OT.
    60s 3rd Reaper -> Bear 4p, Sindy trinket + OT taunting before the DoT ticks and face-tanking the hasted melee hits with Pally 4p bonus + glyphed Hand of Salv, and TOGC trinket.
    90s 4th Reaper -> Bear Barkskin + Hand of Sacrifice from OT
    120s 5th Reaper -> (Same as the 1st Reaper)
    150s 6th Reaper -> (Same as 2nd Reaper)

    One strength of Bears on this fight is they have several small cooldowns on a 60 sec CD that they can rotate on reapers. Since Reapers are 30 seconds apart, this means they can have 1-2 small cooldowns for each Reaper. We coupled 1 small CD (from the Bear) + 1 big CD (from the Prot Pally) to get him through most Reapers. The pally would taunt some of the time, as described above. This entire time, the Bear would keep his Survival Instincts and Enraged Regeneration in the tank, to be used in case of a contingency. If a Holy Pally was grabbed, he would pop Enraged Regen right then. Survival Instincts he would try and hold on and to use when really needed. Things like Pain Suppression and external CDs apart from the Prot Pally's were also employed mainly just as back-up tools, since the tanks were able to do such a good job keeping Soul Reaper under control between themselves. Divine Sacrifice was used just before the 2nd Reaper because then it would coincide with an Infest cast, thus the raid would benefit from the 20% DR effect of Divine Guardian too.

    For the most part, the small CD + big CD combo worked out amazingly for face-tanking entire reapers, especially since Bears are already inherently such EHP behemoths. If there is the slightest chance your tank might die from the DoT tick + melee hit though, it's safer to just have the other tank taunt 1.5 secs before it ticks. That's the most foolproof way to do it. The advantage of allowing a tank to face-tank reapers through the use of cooldowns on him are that a) your melee lose less DPS from the movement, and [B)] your rsham, rdruid, and hpriest don't lose time switching their healing target to the new tank (this doesn't apply to Hpallies because they are always healing 2 tanks anyway).
    Edited: June 8, 2019

  9. As a druid that has been a druid for tons of years, thank you very much for the guide and all the explanations :3
    <333

  10. i planning to play tank in Frostmourne server and come across this build, and i interested to play tank druid, can i follow this build as a newbie? or this build for advanced player only? thank you

  11. May 15, 2020  
    This guide has helped me so much, thank you so much.

  12. May 24, 2020  
    How much armor should i aim for in Endgame raiding? Druids start off ahead in armor department in the early game but in the Near bis 6k gs+ they get outscaled.

  13. June 2, 2020  
    How much armor should i aim for in Endgame raiding? Druids start off ahead in armor department in the early game but in the Near bis 6k gs+ they get outscaled.
    A typical BiS set for bears has 34k+ armor but up to 37k completely unbuffed in bear form (no kings/motw/stoneskin/aura) https://imgur.com/a/Lva7KSc

    Bears don't so much get outscaled as the fact that we're stuck with leather DPS gear at endgame, whereas BiS plate tanks have more armor options than us. T10 plate Gloves + Shoulders, as well as the BoE 264 Pillars of Might all add a significant amount of "BONUS" armor which closes the armor gap.

    Bears make up for this by having better HP per stamina, and tend to reach around 95k hp in ICC full buffed which no other classes can come close to. With armor rings/cloak and trinket, bears can easily break 40k+ armor as well, but this set sacrifices some stamina.

    Overall bears still tend to have better EHP than other tanks, it's just that Prot paladins offer an amazing toolkit which includes a 2nd life proc and multiple raid buffs and raid defensives that no other tanks have access to.

  14. Awesome guide, I will always come back to this when taking on a druid!

  15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqtw...harpshadyWoTLK my bear LOD vid. It's on Lordearon btw, not Icecrown. Check out other bear videos.
    regards
    Shady

First ... 4567 Last

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •