Tanking Stormstout Brewery
Stormstout Brewery, home to the native Pandaria branch of the Stormstout family (and so distantly related to Chen Stormstout of the Wandering Isle) has fallen on hard times. It's infested with hozen, virmen and crazy ale elementals, and it's up to you to fix the place and get it back to something like a working brewery. Chen would really appreciate the help, I'm sure.
The fights in Stormstout Brewery tend to have gimmicks to them. Fortunately, as a tank you can almost completely ignore these, which makes me happy. I'm easily pleased, I guess.
Shock that monkey, you gotta
Tanking Ook-Ook is actually interesting in that you can really help your group out by turning him so that they can easily ride one of the barrels into him, increasing his damage taken by 10% for 15 seconds. Aside from that, you want to keep him turned away from the DPS and healer, because of his Ground Slam ability which stuns in a cone in front of him. You'll want to save some form of damage reduction or cooldown for the Ground Slam (as a warrior, I tend to save up rage and hit a Shield Barrier just before he does it) and watch his stacking buff, Going Bananas. I find it best to use my threat gen up front on this fight, and by about 50% my lead's so comfortable that I can devote all of my resources to active mitigation with no concern that I'll lose threat. Just remember not to let the barrels hit you, they do 50k damage to players.
Hop to it
For Hoptallus, there's a lot of moving parts to the fight. The group should be watching out for the add phases and getting as many of the hammers as they can to use during those phases, as it really clears out the virmen swarms. You just have to get agg on the adds, usually they're dead before you have to worry about maintaining it. Hoptallus' main abilities are Carrot Breath and Furlwind. Furlwind you can usually pop a mitigation ability, run away and taunt him away from the party, since he moves so slowly with it up that it's not a concern. Carrot Breath is your typical 'stand in one place, slowly spin around, and spray nastiness in a line' ability. Don't stand in it.
Essentially you want to keep Hoptallus central during his Carrot Breath to give the party room to avoid it, and kite him during his Furlwind. Keep your big AoE threat moves ready to go when he starts his Shrill Screech and summoning adds, they don't all come at once so you'll need to pick them up in staggered order. You can also combine cooldowns for a Furlwind and just stand there tanking him - you don't have to do it that way, but I often do near the end of the fight just to allow the ranged to burn him longer. Be sure you have cooldowns up if you're going to try that.
Spewing the brew
Finally, we have Yan-Zhu the Uncasked. This is a fun fight to tank because it varies depending on which abilities Tan-Zhu gains from Uncle Gao's brewing experiments. So you're always going into it with different possible effects to consider. First up he either casts Bloat or Blackout Brew. Blackout Brew is by far the easier to counter, you simply jump in place while tanking him. (You can strafe or backpedal as well, any movement will do.) With Bloat, you make sure you have no one standing to either your left or right, and hope that if any melee get it they do the same for you.
Next up, Yan-Zhu either gains Bubble Shield or the Yeasty Alementals. Bubble Shield just reduces how much damage he takes, but the Yeasty Alementals can heal him up to full, so hopefully your party can stand in the Ferment and take that healing instead.
Our last suite of abilities comes down to either Carbonation or Wall of Suds. With Carbonation, it's very important that everyone (including you) get the flying buff from Fizzy Bubbles and then you immediately get back into melee range so Yan-Zhu doesn't crush anyone with his Brew Bolt. With Wall of Suds, you're going to get the Sudsy buff, so just jump over the Wall of Suds as it comes in and keep tanking. It's not a bad idea to use damage reduction cooldowns on the Wall of Suds/Carbonation phases to give your healer a break so he or she can avoid the big damage as well.
Always remember these are random abilities. If you get Blackout Brew and Bubble Shield ten times in a row, that doesn't mean you can count on it. Be ready for all his possible abilities and you'll be fine.
Next up, we'll look at tanking Shado-Pan Monastery.
It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
