Monday, January 4, 2010

Healing and tanking Halls of Reflection, Part 3

In part 3 of my mini-series in tanking and healing HoR we've come to the tanking part. Now like with healing, I haven't tried this instance with my paladin yet, neither healing nor tanking. Therefore I will focus on what I have tried so far, namely warrior tanking.

Tanking - Warrior
When tanking any instance there are generally two different ways of doing it. Either you set out to tank every mob, or you realize you won't be able to and set out to tank the mobs that would kill anything but a tank. HoR is mostly about tank-style number two. This because of a mix between there being very many mobs around at the same time, and roughly half of them being ranged. For some reason tanks were never meant to tank ranged mobs, at least not by judging the skills we're blessed with to do so. All tanks have some sort of ranged attack which works in keeping aggro on one or maybe two ranged targets, but not much more than that. That is where corner pulling comes into play.

Most parties I've joined, as either role, do this event from one of the alcoves, preferably the one where the first boss is located (to the left from the entrance). That way everyone in the party will have an easy way to line-of-sight the ranged mobs which allows for the tank to collect them as they come running. And as the mobs come closer it is up to the rest of the party to move away from any aoe and/or kicks the mobs might be doing.

I recommend setting up a kill order. Many people go for priests first, but my experience with them are that they are probably the least dangerous mob. Sure they heal, but not for much (approx 50k hp, which is less than half their own healthpool), and they don't have any other dangerous or annoying skills (the SWP they do isn't much trouble either, 5k dmg over 8 sec). So this is what I would recommend;

1. Kill mages. Always have any dps run after the mage, wherever they are located. As a tank I'll say you shouldn't have to think much about them, but should focus on other things and hope the dps is good enough to burst mages down before they get too troublesome. The mages summon copies and do a nasty flamestrike which you don't want to have around for too long.
2. Collect melee. As a tank your primary job will be to collect all the melee classes, that is mercenaries and footmen and hunters too if you can. These are the real cloth-killers. Make sure you don't stand too close to the party-casters since the footmen and mercenaries kick/shield bash casts, which you really don't need in this situation. As a warrior you will need to make full use of all those stuns you've got, but that's basics, and nothing special about this event.
3. Kill hunters. Second to mages, I personally think the hunters are the second most troublesome. They trap and curse and slow and whatnot devilish. And also being ranged they are tough to tank which means they more often decide to hit someone squishy.

After all the ranged are dead you can go after the rest, preferably starting with the priests. Rinse and repeat.

For the Run-From-Arthas-event the same rule applies. Some mobs are definitely more important to tank than others, in this case the abominations. Remember to try to direct them so they don't face the party, so to avoid having them spew bile all over everyone. The Risen Witch Doctors simply cast shadow bolts which don't do that much dmg (approx 4,5k). The only reason to target them at all is to interrupt their Shadow Bolt Volley which does the equal amount of dmg but to everyone in the party instead. The abominations on the other hand will probably two-shot most clothies. The dps should go for the Witch Doctors, try to interrupt as many casts as possible, and then turn to the abominations. If you're wondering about the small jumping mobs they usually die so fast and hit relatively weak so there's no need to bother about them. Just make sure they all die, so that there isn't one standing around interrupting your healers heals.

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