WoW: Tanks and Hydross - What you need to know and get
Okay, first, let's go over the mechanics of a boss that attacks fully with magic.
Block means absolutely nothing, as they are completely ignored (value and rating...don't even need a shield). Likewise, magic attacks cannot crush, so throw that out the window too. For our purposes of survival, you have the following:
Defense - needed as melee magic attacks can crit, so plate = 490, druid = 415 (or equivalent resilience)
Parry - applies
Dodge - applies
Miss - applies
Resistance - applies greatly.
First off, Resistance works like a hit table. You can either have a chance to resist the whole amount of the spell, or absorb a portion of the damage. The higher your resistance, the more often you resist and absorb, which is a good thing. There is a hardcap on resistance of 365, including all flask and aura buffs, so there's no sense in going higher than that, as it will do nothing. Once you've hit that, you either go for more avoidance (dodge, miss, parry) or more stamina to soak more hits.
Take away the Pally Frost Aura (70) or Hunter Aspect of the Wild (70 Nature), and you need 295 to hit cap. As long as pallies or hunters are present, expect to have these auras on.
To reach 295, it's far easier for Plate wearers, and here's a pretty easy way to get it:
Iceguard or Wildguard sets - these use your Helmet, Chest and Leggings slots, and will provide you with 170 Resistance to either Frost or Nature damage. You can also get Leather kits (Frost or Nature) and apply them to the Chest and Leggings, which will increase the resistance by an additional 8. The helmet allows you to get a glyph to add another 20. The Glyph of Frost Warding is available from Keepers of Time - Honored Rep. The Glyph of Nature Warding is avaiable from Cenarion Expedition - Honored Rep.
For Helmet, Legs and Chest, that's 206, which allows you to tank the trash on Hydross. We still need 89 more to hit cap.
Pendant of Withering/Pendant of Thawing - Gives 30 more for a Necklace Piece
The Frozen Eye/The Natural Ward - Gives 35 more for a ring slot (can only have one on of each)
Band of Many Prisms - Gives 10 more for another ring slot to ALL resistances
The Mystic Sheen - Gives 12 more for a cloak slot to ALL resistances, and can be enchanted with +7 Resist all, to give 19 to both Nature and Frost resistance
So, for two rings, a cloak and a necklace, you get 94 resistance, and that puts you EXACTLY at 300. Add in the aura/aspect and you've got yourself a plate-wearing resistance capped tank. You also will have 29 Resistance to the other kind base. It's not great, but it helps if you get caught tanking the wrong mob.
Meanwhile, plate-wearers still need 490 Defense, and while the Iceguard/Wildguard sets give some, you need a whole lot more. You have Trinkets, Shoulders, Bracers, Gloves, Belt and Boots to do this with. While there's alot of armor to obtain this, here's some that help:
Adamantine Figurine - 32 Defense Rating
Dabiri's Enigma - 30 Defense Rating
Druids Tanking:
It's a little more difficult, but several of the items above can be used:
Necklace, Rings, Cloak - 94
Wowwiki has info, but it's not that great. It's a very odd way to go about it, and not really necessary IMO. Basically you can obtain your resistance with the same slots as the plate wearers:
Grab some green con BoE drops from the AH with the suffix of "Of Nature Resistance" or "Of Frost Resistance". Preferably Helmet to add +20 Glyph, or Chest, Legs, Boots and Gloves to add the +8 kits. These should get you most of the way.
It's likely you'll prefer to use Bloodfin food (8) and a Flask of Chromatic Wonder (35) and be done with it there (stacking stamina and avoidance the rest of the way). Otherwise you'll sacrifice too much for it to be worth it.
With glyphs, kits, and the specific resist items, you can obtain 146 Nature/Frost resist, add in a Flask and Bloodfin food, you have 189, and that should be good enough for the trash on this fight. A couple extra greens and you are over what is needed for the trash on that fight!
Copingsaw wrote:
Honestly, I think if we could get Krindle to tank Al Qaeda, this world would be a much safer place.
Super K - The "Anti-Wipe"
For druids, start stockpiling level 70 green "of Nature Resist" and "of Frost Resist" pieces. They don't need to be leather, even. Those will give more resist than any of the crafted pieces.
WoW-Dark Iron: Cuberen(80 Druid), Spacecube(70 Shaman), Deathcube(60 Deathknight)
Ya know, I went looking for those items, and couldn't find any via searching....But they do exist, and it would be best to get a helmet, boots, legs and chest since they will allow you to add the kits and increase them further.
I'll edit the original post - Thanks Cube!
Copingsaw wrote:
Super K - The "Anti-Wipe"
I've seen the green leather "of nature resist" pop from the bags you get from doing the SSO dailies. I offered in guild chat and then tried to sell on auction but couldn't give the damned things away so I sent to Troll for DE I think. If I recall, the amount of resist was quite high so just a few of these items may get you there.
I have my own nature resist set. I put it together when I realized that I was going to be farming rep from CE for awhile. With MoTW I get to about 150 now and I dont drop one point in defense/resilience... I lose a ton of agi/str but actually gain in stamina. So with one-two more items , chromatic wonder pot, and help from a hunter I can get to the 250's.
Playing WoW as: Vilius (70 NE Druid)
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” John K Galbraith
You can still be crit, which is a bit of a bugger, since that means you have to keep that defense or resilience up. The base damage for the fight is 5.5k frost or 5k nature damage, and crit means 10 - 11k damage. The resistance gear reduces the amount taken by anywhere between 25 - 75%, so a full 365 resistance with uncrittable gear means you take an "average" of 2.5k a shot, up to 4k. Without that defense, even with full resist, you can still take a shot of 8k, before the debuff is applied.
A special note to consider is that on either resistance side, Hydross applies a debuff every 15 secs that increases the damage everyone in the raid takes by his current element. It stacks the following way:
15 sec - 10%
30 sec - 25%
45 sec - 50%
1 min - 100%
1 min, 15 sec - 250%
1 min, 30 sec - 500%
Needless to say, 500% damage = dead tank, but for the most part, you want to push the 100% debuff (so, double damage) tanking Hydross, but get out before the 250%.
For the adds though, you can still be crit, and the melee damage is the same if not a little higher than Hydross. The only benefit is that all adds should be dead by 25% increased damage (30sec). Which means less resistance is needed to compensate, but the crits can still be an issue.
Copingsaw wrote:
Super K - The "Anti-Wipe"
Again Krind, I said I don't lose one point in my defense and resilience and can still get up to ~250 resistance. So I would not be critted.
Playing WoW as: Vilius (70 NE Druid)
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” John K Galbraith
My bad
It appears I was a flithy skimmer. (sorry, read that as and "i don't need one point in defense/resilience")
I went out of the theorycrafting stated here and actually got into my nature gear last night. It appears I didn't have it all and vendored some of it a while ago in a bank clearing exercise. I'll be working on it more over the next couple of days, but I did find out some more stuff.
1. Mystic Sheen and Band of Many Prisms are only good if you are going for mixed sets to deal with the trash. MT'ing one side or the other it's not worth it if you can get a decent specific resist cloak or ring due to the additional stamina you'll get.
2. Don't underestimate the power of Flask of Chromatic Wonder. 35 Resist All and 18 to all stats, and it stacks with all other buffs and gear. This potentially can drop the resistance you need to 165 to OT or 260 to MT.
3. Getting resistances up tends to drop either your health or avoidance, sometimes both. Don't give up too much of either in the process when you don't have to.
For instance, in my normal gear, I'm at 16.8k health, 48% avoidance, uncrittable, uncrushable and 380 spell damage for added threat.
In max nature resistance gear last night, I had 303 NR, but only 10.4k health, and around 37% avoidance.
So the toss up:
Do I take 5k damage base and let it increase to 10k over the duration of tanking, taking damage only 1/2 the time and having a 20k health pool or,
Do I take only 2.5k damage base and let it increase to 5k over the duration of tanking, taking damage 2/3 of the time while having only a 14k health pool?
I get the uneasy feeling that we're gearing for more resistance than what we need to have...
Copingsaw wrote:
Super K - The "Anti-Wipe"
Until you're resist capped, it really isn't an issue here.
Higher resistance gives the tanks a bit more leeway with switches. This is extremely helpful during your first attempts as you get used to how you guys need to dance Hydross.
Typically, the first wipes will be:
1. Overaggro by a trigger-happy DPS that forgets to stop dots/DPS on the boss, or healers that forget to stop HoT's-when we ran the instance, I would get a full set of HoT's up, and maintain them until 10 seconds before the switch(swiftmending off any extras at that point).
2. The tanks not switching every minute when the mark hits 100% more damage-250% is pretty much insta-gib with a 375 resist tank, and should be avoided at all costs.
DPS aggro should not be an issue, because they should be concentrating on the adds the first 20-25 seconds, and should stop all DPS 5 seconds before the 100% mark, where you do your switch. If you're warlock heavy(i.e. more than 3), give the add tanks 5-10 seconds to get aggro on the adds, then have them chain-seed Hydross while the melee open up on him. The adds go down QUICK this way.
EDIT: From personal experience, I'd try to avoid overthinking any encounter that you're up against. Read the strats, and be aware of what's coming, sure, but direct experience will tell you how to deal with the bosses more than any one FAQ or strat. Above all, don't be afraid to just test stuff. If nothing else, it leads to epic wipes that everyone will remember for a long time.
WoW-Dark Iron: Cuberen(80 Druid), Spacecube(70 Shaman), Deathcube(60 Deathknight)
I'm curious Cube, since I'm taking everything you're telling me very serious, how much health do the MTs need to have, or avoidance for that matter?
When I first doned my Max NR gear, I was shot down to 9.8k health unbuffed, which seemed WAY too low. I got it back up to 10.4k without losing anything (had too much defense on). I'm expecting to have this up to 11k or 12k before I head in there, so fully buffed should put me around the 15k mark. Is that enough? At the start, it would be, since the average hit would only be around 2,500 damage, but with 100% debuff, the max hit would be around 8,000 damage, so there is potential to get 2-shotted if my math is right. My understanding is that you want to be able to take two full max hits from a boss at any point, meaning I should aim to be around 17k health raid buffed, or 13 - 14k unbuffed. This would reduce my overall resist though down to around 300 total with auras/flasks.
Copingsaw wrote:
Super K - The "Anti-Wipe"
Ideally, every switch will be done the moment he hits the 100% mark, so 15k is about right. IIRC, it's around what our tanks had when we were farming the place.
I honestly don't have any numbers for avoidance-it's been a while, and I really don't pay attention to it that much. I just heal the crap out of things.
WoW-Dark Iron: Cuberen(80 Druid), Spacecube(70 Shaman), Deathcube(60 Deathknight)
If you have a lock with improved imp are you counting the 91 stam as a buff? If so, ok. if not, there is almost another 1k HP there.
Unfortunately, if I slash my wrist with my lightsaber it cauterizes instantly. - PurEvil on emo Star Wars plots.
Yeah, I'm talking 15k fully buffed. Typically you'll have the following buffs (prot pallies get 16% additional health from stam):
Stam food - 350 hp
Imp Blood Pact - 1,050 hp
Flask (chromatic) - 200 hp
Imp PW:F - 1,190 hp
Imp MotW - 220 hp
BoKings - 800 hp+ (assuming 11k unbuffed, would be around 700 stamina)
Total - 3,810 hp
So, assuming I want to have 15k+, I will have to break 11k health unbuffed.
I want to know this stuff so I can set standards in the future for what MTs should have.
So far, Cap resist buffed (365), with 11.5k hp and 490 Defense (415 for Druid). For the trash, you probably only need around 200 resist, and lower defense (level 71 mobs), meaning you only need 480/405 Defense. This allows you to keep more avoidance and stamina so you can tank more of them if needed.
Copingsaw wrote:
Super K - The "Anti-Wipe"
Krin I can ask one of our Hydross tanks to log out in his resist gear so you can see some stats in that gear for a tank who is farming that boss. You will have to do some conversions as we use warriors to MT that boss rather than pallys, but it should give you a basic idea on the stats that are similar to all tanks.
And cube is right, you can beat your head against strats all day long, but nothing really matters but getting in there and dying to him half a dozen times. No matter what your resist is or how high your health is, the most important part of that fight is the transistion and getting it into the rest of the raid's heads to lay off, turn around and stop dps.
Until you drop him, I would seriously consider banning the use of damage meters.
*Bandolique (70 Combat Rogue)
*Amara (70 Fire Mage)
*Zeus the Good Luck Dog making the Lords of Kara/SSC/TK cry whenever he is around
Joe/Nuka spotted an extra Ring of Nature Protection (for level 68). I'm holding onto it. If anyone needs it, please let me know.