Tanking Icecrown Citadel

By Lr on February 7th, 2010

The purpose of this article is going to be raising awareness of just how menial the tanks role has become as a result of arbitrary mechanics being put into encounters for the sake of simplified/consistant raid composition.

Now, I'm a tanking enthusiast as much as the rest but this instance has proven to be very predictable. Blizzard has put in arbitrary debuffs that get placed on the tank such that another tank needs to taunt off of them in 6/12 of the Icecrown Citadel encounters, and in another 2/12 encounters the tank just has to exist and stand there to fulfill a critical role. Let's analyze these fights closer:

The Encounters

Lord Marrowgar - 3 Tanks
Tanks stack for "Saber Lash" mechanic. Only mitigation abilities matter for the two offtanks.
Lady Deathwhisper - 2-3 Tanks
Phase 1: Pick up adds. Phase 2: tank rotation, taunt off at 3 stack of Touch of Insignificance.
Gunship Battle - 2-3 Tanks
Friendly ship tank: pick up adds. Enemy ship tank: Jetpack over and offtank Muradin/Saurfang, threat irrelevant.
Deathbringer Saurfang - 2 Tanks
Taunt off other tank when Rune of Blood is applied.
Festergut - 2 Tanks
Taunt off other tank at 9 stack of Gastric Bloat.
Rotface - 1-2 Tank(s)
Tank the boss or kite Big Oozes.
Professor Putricide - 3 Tanks
Phase 1/2: 1st tank gets the boss, 2nd tank drives abomination, 3rd tank dpses in tanking spec/gear. Phase 3: 3-Tank taunt rotation every 2 stacks of Mutated Plague.
Blood Princes - 2-3 Tanks - One tank per mob. Paladin tanks on Taldaram can pull with Hammer of Wrath if they want!
Blood-Queen Lana'thel - 2 Tanks - MT plus an OT that has to just stand there with threat/armor/avoidance/block irrelevant, while being immune to all fight mechanics.
Valithria Dreamwalker - 2-4 Tanks - Tanks are designated areas and pickup mobs one at a time.
Sindragosa - 2-3 Tanks - MT, OTs dps in tanking gear/spec for 65% of the fight, last 35% they taunt to avoid high-stacking Mystic Buffet.
The Lich King - 2 Tanks - One tank handles Arthas and small adds in phase 1, other tank faces big adds away from the raid. Later phases: Taunt off the other tank when they get Soul Reaper debuff.

Low Stress Levels

I played a Holy Paladin for 4 years prior to Icecrown Citadel, and was just recently required to tank for the guild and I was expecting much more pressure to be placed on my performance as a tank than there ended up being. Between Tricks/Misdirections threat is irrelevant in almost all encounters. Positioning by the tank is required on Marrowgar, Putricide, somewhat on The Lich King. The most difficult tanking times I experienced in Icecrown Citadel normal modes was tanking the trash in the Blood Wing before we realized that CC might actually be a good idea on Tacticians.

When I watched tanks play in Classic/TBC, it seemed like a demanding and stressful role to fulfill. I had the pleasure(or displeasure) of experiencing a very short period of MTing for my guild at the end of BT/Hyjal farming in early-2008, it proved to be very difficult relative to what I'm experiencing now. Blizzard needs to reconsider the strength of threat-giving abilities from rogues/hunters and look into altering threat values on all abilities instead, making it more dependent on the skill of the tank(s).

Predictions for Hard Modes

I don't expect much to change, other than your fellow raid-members wanting to feed the tanks more gear. Which isn't really possible other than prioritizing tokens. Just by using Trial of the Crusader as an example, nothing really changed for tanks from normal to heroic except incoming damage being increased. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the amount that is demanded by tanks to be quite high in heroic ICC.

7 comments so far. Add yours!

Saffrin February 7th, 2010 at 11:19pm

In most fights, there are small things that the tanks can do to make it significantly easier on the rest of the raid (positioning aside). On Saurfang: slows, stuns, and (delayed) taunts on the blood beasts while handling their primary tank role; and on Blood Princes: using ranged instants to keep up kinetic orbs in their immediate area while tanking a Prince, just to name a few.

It would definitely be more challenging if threat (beyond snap threat on multiple mobs) mattered. However, it would then be even more important for the 4 tanks to have their threat output (snap and throughput) equalized across the board. Knowing Blizzard’s stated philosophy on “flavor”, I don’t see that happening for a while.
Kinigos February 8th, 2010 at 10:29am

I played a warrior since WoW release all the way through to Sunwell and then switched to my hunter for WotLK. I decided to regear and play a warrior again with the recent changes to the Triumph Emblems were made, combined with the LFG tool - which made gearing up too easy to pass up.

I was also struck once I reached raid content - especially in ICC and ToC - of the very things you highlight above. Tanking has become so much easier than I ever remember it being in SSC/TK/BT, etc. The main issue I feel is just what you point out - the introduction of so many tools to transfer threat to the tank. Balancing your abilities becomes almost a non-issue when you start a fight with a few hundred thousand threat advantage.

The way I’ve been enjoying the process - and that’s just it, I still find tanking on a warrior extremely fun - is to try to do all the little things like Saffrin points out. Maximizing my aoe dps, and performing interrupts and stuns at optimal times are some ways to make it a bit more interesting.
Mahida February 9th, 2010 at 3:05am

Marrowgar - Make sure you re-establish agro after bone storm so your melee don’t get killed.
Lady Death - Make sure your fanatics are faced away from your melee so they don’t get cleaved.
Gunship - Make sure Muradin doesn’t evade, cleave and kill your melee
Saurfang - Ok, you got me, that’s easy.
Festergut - Effective use of cooldowns. Hardmode PTR showed how much of a tank slap this fight will be.
Rotface - Joke.
Putricide - Correct positioning is critical. Get hit with vials in Phase 3 and you can miss a taunt.
Blood Princes - You have a lot of roles to do here. Positioning is critical for exceptional DPS (Hello melee running from 1 more to the other).
BQL - Tanks won’t die from air phase, but everyone else can. Help your raid members by going over that fire to open more holes for them.
Valithria - So many critical aspects on this fight you can do. Again, positioning is key.
Sindragosa - Correct, first 65% is fucking boring as the off tank. I think this is a stupid fight.
Lich King - Face Shamblers away from the raid. Stun them when they enrage so you don’t get one shot. Position mobs correctly so Necrotic plague jumps to NPCs and not players. Position Raging Spirits properly. Position LK properly for Val’kyr. Proper cooldown usage. Effective use of stuns.

You might think tanking is very easy, but if you screw up on a single aspect of one of your jobs it can cost your raid dearly. Not many fights are very forgiving.
Lr February 11th, 2010 at 2:19am

Killed 25man Lich King tonight and I have to say that I was wrong about that fight. Not necessary extremely difficult to tank but definitely a very fun fight to tank. I’ll look forward to it every week.
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