pet-tanking
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Scattered Shots: The golden age of pet tanking
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. I have a suspicion that Wrath will go down in the history books as the golden age of pet tanking and extreme soloing. I think that Wrath hit the precise perfect balance for extreme pet antics, whether by design or by accident. We have solo'd from Molten Core to Violet Hold and everything in between (and more). We have used our pet to tank for our raids, from Naxx to Ulduar to TotC, all the way to ICC. Our pets have tanked Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship and Blood Princes, and our pets have even solo-tanked Sindragosa. We can pet tank Rotface while we kite the slimes. The beauty and balance of the Wrath pet tanking, however, is that we're generally only able to do it after we're a tier or two of gear beyond the content (or with the ICC raid buff). This way, we aren't taking tank spots away from actual tank classes -- something that would get our pet tanking nerfed in a heartbeat. But these are still impressive feats, challenging feats -- and they are big fun. While it's too early to say how pet tanking will work out in Cataclysm -- the pet design pass has not yet been done -- I keep getting emails about it, and we have seen enough to do some speculation. Join me after the cut for a look at what made pet tanking work so well in Wrath and what we know about it so far in Cataclysm.
Scattered Shots: Pet tanking
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. As hunters, we spend a lot of our down time engaged in awesomeness. On long weekends, we strip down and roll around in awesomesauce; we drink it and bathe in it it and steep ourselves in the awesome until we reek of it, until we radiate awesome so strongly that it even starts to rub off on those around us. Pet tanking is yet another example of this principle in action. Grandpappy Frostheim always used to say, "If you want a job done right, do it yourself. But if you're getting a good drunk on and good enough is good enough, send your pet to do it." With the right pet, the right talents, a bit of gear and a pinch of forethought, our pets can make surprisingly formidable tanks. Our pets can easily tank, for example, any dungeon and any heroic in the game. We can even tank raid bosses. And I'm not talking about just the easy stuff in Naxx, either. We can tank a goodly number of ICC bosses including, as you can see in the video above, Sindragosa (and we don't even need another tank to help out in Sindragosa phase 3, either). So join me after the cut and learn how!
Scattered Shots: Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2
Welcome to Scattered Shots, where Daniel Whitcomb loves his Hunter Judgement, but wishes he got the cool looking shoulders too. So between 3.0.2, the Scourge Invasion, and Hallow's End, my Hunter's seen a lot of play as I've been going after the title and the undead armor and playing with all the new changes on a live server and all, and in that time, I've had some chance to see how stuff works out when it's thrown into the crucible of live server playing. Most of my observations have ended up focusing around pets, which is probably to be expected. After all, they've changed quite a bit. Here's what's I've learned from 3.0.2 in the last few weeks about managing your pet:
