Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Number Of Tanks in Naxx-25

By Boss, These are the predicted number of tanks that are needed. 
(According to my understanding)

Anub'Rekhan  -Three Tanks 
Faerlina - Three Tanks 
Maexxna - One Tank 
Noth - Three Tanks 
Heigan - One Tank 
Loatheb - One Tank 
Razuvious - One-Two Tanks 
Gothik - Two-Four Tanks 
4HM - Two Tanks 
Patchwerk - Three Tanks 
Grobbulus - Two Tanks
Gluth - Two-Three Tanks 
Thaddius - Two Tanks 
Sapphiron - One Tank 
Kel'Thuzad - Three-Four Tanks 

Five One Tank Fights
Five Two Tank Fights
Five Three Tank Fights

What is a raid leader (or tank officer) to do? Switching members between each boss, with so many bosses, just isn't an option if Naxx is going to get done in any sort of timely fashion. And even if you do, you have to have enough tanks at the ready to perform on the three tank fights, while not having so many that it could take a month to get a tank in for a single tank fight.

I think LOKI's plan will be to run with three tanks - Two being more pure Protection, and a third being a more offensive/threat/OT type. We currently have three protection warriors, one protection paladin that's out with computer issues, and another protection paladin who is swapping over from holy.

I issued the following note to our tanks earlier today... 

I'd just like to put it out there, that decisions regarding what Protection tanks are brought, may be influenced by their ability to DPS when not tanking, in order to justify a full three spots.
That's really what it comes to. It wouldn't be such a big issue if Dual-Spec's had been released yet, but they have not been. 

Regardless, I would suggest that all tanks stay current on their DPS gear/rotations. Cozy up to a friendly neighborhood DPS warrior and pick their brain, gem and enchant your DPS gear as if your raid spot depended on it, and know what buttons to press when - because as long as there are bosses that only need one tank, you may find yourself scrambling to justify getting to stand behind the boss instead of outside the instance. 


6 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm definetely in this boat. I want to tank but the main reason why I don't want to come out and say my main spec will be prot is for encouters which only needs 1 tank. So I went pewpew spec.

It looks like I have to get both prot and dps gear from heroics or token vendors to stay viable.

Anonymous said...

This concerns me as well. I am a tank and will stay one, even if it means riding the bench more. Its not that I couldn't go DPS and compete with some of the others in the group, its just that I feel I can tank

My other concern is too, that after the dual spec is released that the people in the raid as DPS (Pallies, Druids, Warriors, DKs) may be "suitable" for being an off tank for a selected fight and reduce the number of swaps, thus making some of the dedicated off tanks more obsolete. Either way I am going to brush up on how to do the most DPS as Prot until dual specs are released, and then get start putting some of my DPS gear in the bank to work.

Anonymous said...

I think we'll be running with 4. This is partial to accommodate the abundance of tanks we'll see, but also to make certain we have numerous well geared tanks for later encounters that require that many. I also really want Tanks to work towards solid DPS sets so that they're doing reasonable dps when not tanking.

Franklin said...

What about the 10-man version?

I'm staying prot for life. Dual-spec will probably just mean me switching between a threat and mitigation prot spec. :-)

Pharcyde82 said...

Think people that have been putting the most into their class and not a certain spec are already up to snuff on this. There were times where the need for a fury warrior in the melee group, since the only none prot warrior was arms in our guild, made it a necessity for one of us to respec and do great dps at the same time.

I look forward to dual speccing just cause I wont have to spend a ton of gold on respecs when needed.

Anonymous said...

According to a recent post on tankspot which quotes ghostcrawler the new duel specs will be as easy as pushing a button and have no cooldown or cost. Meaning you can switch specs back and forth on the fly as easy as you switch gear.

This could make for everyone being useful all the time