I was just wondering, personally I think a BM is better then most tanks in any low and easy instance...
It requires some skills but you can make your pet build up enough agro and also keep it... Generaly our pets have more armor and hp + you dont need a healer on the "tank" cause you just mend your own pet.
Ive done this now a couple of times and i find it goes better this way... The rest of the group can focus on pure dps and healers have an easier job...
But then again highest instance I tanked with my pet was ZF at lvl 45, but pet didnt die onces nor did we get a whipe ;)
What are your opinions about this...
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BM vs TankFollow
MMmmmm.... yes, it's possible to tank sub 50, and it gets progressively more difficult from there. Here's a direct quote from our new sticky:
You can't really do away with a tank versus high level elites, but you can do the job with your pet for a short while.
I tried to tank the Headless Horseman with Morris, he lasted the whoppin' 3 shots... if I were BM, he might've lasted 4...
A good tank is an invaluable asset to any group.
Quote:
What is the hunter's role in a group?
A hunter's primary role in a group is to safely deal damage. They have other possible roles, but 90% of the time, your group will want you to just stand in the back and shoot.
Note that that means not taking aggro, running into other creatures to get a clear shot, or breaking sheep.
Other things you can do for your group include:
Crowd Control - Freezing Trap will work on nearly every creature in the game. It affects the first target to run across it, and it doesn't work extremely long when the effect isn't broken by someone hitting the frozen target, freeze trap is still a very powerful tool. While survival hunters are masters of crowd control (due to talents like Wyvern Sting, Readiness and improved traps,) all other specs are still very able to do pull their weight. Also, your pet can sometimes off-tank things in a pinch; at higher levels, this isn't usually recommended, as Fido will not weather too many hits from elites, but better your kitty than your healer!
Pull - Hunters can feign death, take one creature out of the fight with freeze trap, designate a target with Hunter's Mark, and are masters of taking and dropping hate. At level 70 you will also get Misdirection, which lets you give someone the threat from your next 3 attacks. (Note that you cant abort the pull with FD if you do this.)
Scout - hunters can track, meaning they can know if something is nearby without walking up to see it. Hunters can also use their pet with Eyes of the Beast to go exploring; even if the pet aggroes something, as long as he doesn’t bring it back to the party, it doesn’t matter.
Tank - it's a pretty sad day when this happens in a group, but in some cases and with the right talents, your pet can tank single targets. (This is generally a much more acceptable thing to do before level 50 than after.)
A hunter's primary role in a group is to safely deal damage. They have other possible roles, but 90% of the time, your group will want you to just stand in the back and shoot.
Note that that means not taking aggro, running into other creatures to get a clear shot, or breaking sheep.
Other things you can do for your group include:
Crowd Control - Freezing Trap will work on nearly every creature in the game. It affects the first target to run across it, and it doesn't work extremely long when the effect isn't broken by someone hitting the frozen target, freeze trap is still a very powerful tool. While survival hunters are masters of crowd control (due to talents like Wyvern Sting, Readiness and improved traps,) all other specs are still very able to do pull their weight. Also, your pet can sometimes off-tank things in a pinch; at higher levels, this isn't usually recommended, as Fido will not weather too many hits from elites, but better your kitty than your healer!
Pull - Hunters can feign death, take one creature out of the fight with freeze trap, designate a target with Hunter's Mark, and are masters of taking and dropping hate. At level 70 you will also get Misdirection, which lets you give someone the threat from your next 3 attacks. (Note that you cant abort the pull with FD if you do this.)
Scout - hunters can track, meaning they can know if something is nearby without walking up to see it. Hunters can also use their pet with Eyes of the Beast to go exploring; even if the pet aggroes something, as long as he doesn’t bring it back to the party, it doesn’t matter.
Tank - it's a pretty sad day when this happens in a group, but in some cases and with the right talents, your pet can tank single targets. (This is generally a much more acceptable thing to do before level 50 than after.)
You can't really do away with a tank versus high level elites, but you can do the job with your pet for a short while.
I tried to tank the Headless Horseman with Morris, he lasted the whoppin' 3 shots... if I were BM, he might've lasted 4...
A good tank is an invaluable asset to any group.
Hmm.. really shouldn't be any reason to have your pet Tank in a group as there should always be a Warrior, Druid or Paladin in it to tank ?
Your pet makes a fine off-tank for sure and is great for protecting the clothies (for example) who can be standing close to you as you all do your ranged stuff.
In emergencies, yes I agree a BM pet can be an adequate tank but really.. they lack all the special skills and abillities a tank has and should be using (multiple aggro-building, stance switching, high-end armors etc. etc.)
If you want (or forced perhaps) to go against the general consensus of party optimisation by not having a true tank then perhaps it's possible to manage with the pet but i'd say it's just making things harder (especially on certain instances or bosses)
Your pet makes a fine off-tank for sure and is great for protecting the clothies (for example) who can be standing close to you as you all do your ranged stuff.
In emergencies, yes I agree a BM pet can be an adequate tank but really.. they lack all the special skills and abillities a tank has and should be using (multiple aggro-building, stance switching, high-end armors etc. etc.)
If you want (or forced perhaps) to go against the general consensus of party optimisation by not having a true tank then perhaps it's possible to manage with the pet but i'd say it's just making things harder (especially on certain instances or bosses)
Every once in a while on my hunter I tank instances. There are only a few circumstances when this happens, however:
1. The tank just left and/or we cannot find a tank (I tanked the last room on mana tombs when I was about 65-67 ish...I ended up combat rezzing my pet TWICE in the attempt we actually won on, that was a pretty fun fight).
2. I am way higher level than the tank and pretty well geared (I tanked ZF when the warrior was 44-45 and I was 51 with a 50 bat...so I tanked trash he tanked bosses).
3. For the specific fight, it is better to have a pet tank (In mana tombs again...if the fight involved the void terrors, who would use AoE fears, I would tank since my pet could get right back into the fight with BW).
However, pet tanking is NOT a good substitute for a real tank in most situations. In higher level content, pets health doesn't scale very well (i.e. my hunter has about 7300 HP and my pet has 5600), so even though their armor is close to that of the other classes, they can't take the big hits very well. Pets also lack the ability to throw crits or crushing blows off the table (which druids do too, but druids have higher dodge and huge amounts of AC/HP). So end-game and even in outlands pets are not very viable main-tanks.
In order for a pet to tank effectively, you have to be able to let it get aggro on all the targets, which would require either a specialized pet (i.e. something with screech), a lot of micromanagement (making sure he has threat on all targets), or great cooperation from CC and/or off-tanks (I tanked VC on a rogue once, because between VW, sap, and polymorph we could take on 4 guys at once...with 4 of us).
However, pets do tank BETTER than the tanking classes on mobs that fear (granted some of them can break fear, but not as easily as a hunter with BW), and against mobs which deal heavy magic damage (since you can get your pet a lot of resistances real fast). For that reason, you can expect to off-tank for those fights when spells will be the primary damage dealer from the enemy.
I guess the point of that bunch of text is this: pets serve as great off-tanks on magic damage targets, but other than that are very subpar for tanking instances.
1. The tank just left and/or we cannot find a tank (I tanked the last room on mana tombs when I was about 65-67 ish...I ended up combat rezzing my pet TWICE in the attempt we actually won on, that was a pretty fun fight).
2. I am way higher level than the tank and pretty well geared (I tanked ZF when the warrior was 44-45 and I was 51 with a 50 bat...so I tanked trash he tanked bosses).
3. For the specific fight, it is better to have a pet tank (In mana tombs again...if the fight involved the void terrors, who would use AoE fears, I would tank since my pet could get right back into the fight with BW).
However, pet tanking is NOT a good substitute for a real tank in most situations. In higher level content, pets health doesn't scale very well (i.e. my hunter has about 7300 HP and my pet has 5600), so even though their armor is close to that of the other classes, they can't take the big hits very well. Pets also lack the ability to throw crits or crushing blows off the table (which druids do too, but druids have higher dodge and huge amounts of AC/HP). So end-game and even in outlands pets are not very viable main-tanks.
In order for a pet to tank effectively, you have to be able to let it get aggro on all the targets, which would require either a specialized pet (i.e. something with screech), a lot of micromanagement (making sure he has threat on all targets), or great cooperation from CC and/or off-tanks (I tanked VC on a rogue once, because between VW, sap, and polymorph we could take on 4 guys at once...with 4 of us).
However, pets do tank BETTER than the tanking classes on mobs that fear (granted some of them can break fear, but not as easily as a hunter with BW), and against mobs which deal heavy magic damage (since you can get your pet a lot of resistances real fast). For that reason, you can expect to off-tank for those fights when spells will be the primary damage dealer from the enemy.
I guess the point of that bunch of text is this: pets serve as great off-tanks on magic damage targets, but other than that are very subpar for tanking instances.
When you're low level, it's possible, but I really only suggest it as a last resort when your tank drops and the rest of your group is about to drop if you can't keep going.
Last night we wanted to take down Morcrush, 68ish rare in BEM. He seems to be bugged tho, we pulled lot of adds with him and our tank couldnt hit him for some reason - was getting "out of range" and "too close" messages all the time.
So my pet (level 66 cat I got out of the stable to level) got aggro and kept it. Our pally focused on healing her, 2 warriors cleaned the adds and I was dpsing carefully so not to pull aggro from my kitty. I had to FD once I think and it was pretty easy actually. My cat turned out to be better tank than I actually thought she was.
So my pet (level 66 cat I got out of the stable to level) got aggro and kept it. Our pally focused on healing her, 2 warriors cleaned the adds and I was dpsing carefully so not to pull aggro from my kitty. I had to FD once I think and it was pretty easy actually. My cat turned out to be better tank than I actually thought she was.
The thing is, even though your pet was the "main tank" because you were tanking the main target...in essence it was the off-tank because it just had to focus on one target. Sort of like how in VC on the smite fight, if there's a hunter or a warlock in the group the plan is "pet on smite, kill rogues first" where even though smite is the main target in the end, the pet is not holding aggro on the main target.
Pre-Outland, the right pet/hunter spec can tank a lot of things. Even in Outland pets can tank some things fairly well with enough backup healing done properly. What pets currently lack is a means to boost their defense rating. Any good tank at level 70 aims for a minimum adjusted defense rating of 490 (+140 defense over the standard capped defense skill) so that they can't be critically hit. After that, they'll aim for something like 520 defense rating so they become immune to crushing blows. It's the crits/crushing blows combined with a pets very low HP (relative to tanking classes) that makes them far less viable as tanks in Outland.
Edited, Nov 7th 2007 11:58pm by AureliusSir
Edited, Nov 7th 2007 11:58pm by AureliusSir
It was doable even in low tbc instances such as ramps blood furnance, since my lvl 64 bm specced owl tanked everything there including bosses without trouble.
My owl also tanked Ruul the Darkener in SMV with a shadow priest as healer and me for dps.
Edited, Nov 8th 2007 5:18am by Elustriel
My owl also tanked Ruul the Darkener in SMV with a shadow priest as healer and me for dps.
Edited, Nov 8th 2007 5:18am by Elustriel
skribs wrote:
The thing is, even though your pet was the "main tank" because you were tanking the main target...in essence it was the off-tank because it just had to focus on one target.
That is true, but in my situation the adds went down pretty fast (they were pulled non intentionally and I managed to trap some otw so it wasnt such big deal) and warrior could get back to tank our primary and main target. But for some reason he was bugged and couldnt hit it. So my pet was the only choice left really.
I can hardly imagine my cat tanking more than one target without lot of micromanaging that would lower my dps a lot, and very skillful healer.
The main problem as I see it is very high damage output some classes can provide at higher levels that only a real player can deal with.
I remember at level 40ish when a mage in team would pull aggro, one hit on growl would get it on my pet and keep there.
Now at 70 I can start pulling my hair out but I cant dream of getting aggro from half decently geared fire mage.
Pets dont scale well, and that gets even more noticeable at 70 when players start to improve - fresh dinged 70 in quested greens is not the same as raider in T5 and they are both same level. There is no way we can improve pets as we can improve gear.
I am comparing my felguard that used to hold aggro so great when my Shadowbolts didnt hit over 1k. Now when 3k is regular thing I can pull aggro from anyone and anything but well geared and quite skillful tank.
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