as viable as a mage tank.
This and the dungeons changed quite a bit over time. Raids changed too, but less.
The classes evolved the most tho, they’re similar but very different in practice to their 1.1.0 states.
The game from 1.1.0 is so very different from the game of 1.12 that it’s almost not even comparable. Many things work the same, but the game in practice can be played in completely different way due to massively improved classes, gear, consumables, changes to the content it self, etc, etc.
Hunters have these kinds of abilities because in small groups when spec’d BM our pets can effectively tank named mobs (mobs like hogger example only), that were originally harder than they are now (back in 1.1.0)… Early wow was a lot less solo player friendly and encouraged grouping or very careful pulling.
As a result the pace of game play was a lot slower.
Early dungeons example scholomance was tuned for 10 players but had no actual dungeon cap. Between the classes being “Bad” compared to 1.12, and the gear being very bad compared to 1.12 the pace of dungeon crawling was a ton slower. Mana was a lot more finite, and the trash pack NPC’s hit for what would now be considered player levels of damage… NPC’s hit like BWL geared rogues and AQ geared warriors. This was changed with the conversion to 5 man dungeon caps and the re-tuning of these dungeons.
Furthermore dungeons had some nerfs to NPC abilities and frequency, Raids got some nerfs too, but some bosses got buffed to prevent cheese strats from taking place. (guilty here on this one, but in all fairness chromag was unkillable before he was buf-fixed with out cheesing him).
There are a zillion other examples of blizzard just refining the game with out consideration to retaining the original default 1.1.0 game state for all situations regarding the time it takes to kill said NPC target; IMO something they really should have considered doing for Classic wow to preserve the actual Vanilla feel of the game that 1.12 in it’s untuned classic wow 2019 state can never provide.
You can do all sorts of unorthodox things in dungeons & still succeed, even if those things are not considered optimal or cookie-cutter - but it does take a group of versatile/smart people to pull it all off usually.
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II think you can prolly can tank up to ZF if you don’t outlevel and outgear it. Anything above that you have to outlevel.
Can confirm, this works
Might try BM to empower your pet more than then other two specs and then tame a Gorilla. Use Eye of the Beast to send pet out and snatch up a bunch of mobs and then reel him back to you after you Thunder Stomp to aggro all of the mobs on the bet.
Then keep pet healed and alive as you DPS the mobs down.
This will only be good at certain levels. Once you get to instances that have mobs closer to your level, your F’ed.
Hi, I’m Tarok, and I’m a tank hunter. Yes, it can and does work but you have to be very good at managing the flow of battle and gear yourself decently. Tank hunters can only go so far as 5-mans, raid wise they could be an off-tank but never a main raid tank. That’s definitely for warriors.
Agree with this:
And this also:
I have done a few dungeon runs now without a tank at all. Our tank has sometimes been a combination of the hunter’s pet and my voidwalker. That’s part of the fun of Classic. You can clear dungeons, and clear them successfully without the normal tank, healer and three dps composition. Just need to be creative, but it can be done.
I actually did an Ulda run last night with my guild that went very smooth without one wipe, without having a tank. We had two warlocks, one hunter, a pally (who was dps, not tank), and a priest. My voidwalker and our hunter’s pet turtle did the tanking. The other warlock switched between imp and succubus depending on which was more beneficial at the time.
It was a lot of fun and really went much better than I think any of us thought it would. We didn’t complete the full dungeon though because we were all around level 40-41 and once we got so far in, mobs were too high level, red to us and too many resists. But we did clear a big portion of the dungeon very smoothly with our party.
I honestly wouldn’t plan on being a hunter tank for pugs as others have said. But, in a guild group and with friends, there are many class combinations and playstyles that will work just fine. Tanks really aren’t needed as much in leveling dungeons as many think. I think this made the third dungeon I have done without a tank that went well. The first two were pugs even.
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What do you have to lose its your life and time. I would not pug it, but I see no reason not to try.
The problem is there’s two parts to being a tank- mitigation and threat.
Now, ranged threat, distracting shot you can do decently- but once a mob gets close your threat gen goes down fast. Your threat is almost entirely damage based- but you won’t be doing more damage melee than anyone.
Mitigation- agi luckily offers good dodge, so you can keep some damage (needed for threat) while also getting some mitigation. But, if you want to get rid of crushing blows, ensure you have good parry- there’s limited good gear, and you lose a lot to get it.
Naturally- you can use your pet, but even as BM your pet is quickly outclassed by gear, and can’t even hold threat off you much less well geared team mates.
So- are they ‘possible’ as tanks? Yeah, probably- but it’s definitely not comparable to warrior, pally, druid tank- even a shammy or rogue should do better due to melee damage, the biggest issue is hunters have no damage in the deadzone and most tanking involves lots of foes in melee.
That said- with the right consumes and thunderfury, that changes things. TF’s aoe threat capabilities are huge, frankly I think just about anyone could tank with TF.
I mean if you want a difficult, cumbersome, and ultimately very shortchanged experience, you can go for it, but know the limitations before you invest in doing so. I’ve seen so many folks in the past get super excited at the CONCEPT of Hunter or Shaman or Rogue or w/e Tanking, typically because of a singular fantasy associated with one or two defensive skills. Threat is almost always a secondary consideration and either ignored or handwaved, the lack of taunt often dismissed, and the horrendous scaling on threat and mitigation left unobserved.
All that being said, if a BM Hunter really wants to micro a pet around single-target only DPS that still have to wait a bit, more power to them. The low level dungeons are a joke, but once folks are in Mara/ST, you need the Hunter to be pretty leveled and the DPS need to be pretty patient. Once you’re in Scholo and similar, any half-geared DPS is going to just be sitting on their hands or doing the “tanking” themselves.
It just sucks to grind THAT long to be cut off before you do any of the more fun dungeons or any raids without some substantial support from others, especially knowing any actual Tank would be able to accomplish what you’re doing with less gear, less effort, with less support, and in less time.
I’d be far more supportive of someone sticking to pure Arcane as a Mage, that is only use Arcane Explosion and Missiles, or a Holy DPS Priest.
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you can kite tank
Im the go-to guy for off-meta specs in WoW with over +8years of testing under my belt. Literally, search my name on Google, I am well respected as the most qualified person to talk about these type of subjects. Pardon the self promo but drop by my stream on twitch and we can talk about it.
And I’ve an item named for me in game, from a decade of Tank theorycrafting and community contribution in the actual game, not p-servers. So no, I don’t find your promotion to be much of anything.
Post your math up here.
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So paladin, priest, and Druid tier gear being entirely focused on healing, while warrior tier gear being entirely focused on tanking, had nothing to do with this pigeonholing that you speak of?
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Thunderfury can be used by Hunters so clearly they are considered a tank by Blizzard. Rogues can dodge tank too.
To be fair, they were so bad at making these sets for many of their intended roles that migrating away from those pieces or to entirely different sets of gear and specs isn’t out of the question. Or perhaps that was the point, after all we did get the AQ20/40 stuff, letting most of the specs have some progression to look forward to.
But yeah, pigeonholing happens as a matter of maximizing performance. If these people played baseball they’d demand they get to cover multiple bases by themselves because they enjoy the challenge, and then whine the game just doesn’t promote their individuality enough.
Tfury is absolutely overkill on a warrior, so I have no problem giving it to a Hunter tank or Rogue tank. It literally enables them to enter AQ and reliably keep up with threat.
my math? Idk what that means. Like TPS? If you actually knew anything about tanking and what’s required you would not be contentiously saying what is and isn’t a tank. You’d know how little is required to tank. Remember the game is 15years…
And this is why you can be safely and firmly ignored. If you don’t understand how to compare Tanks apples-to-apples, you have no place entering a discussion that attempts to assert that unorthodox methods are just as good.
Like I called out in the very first response to your guides: you simply make up numbers for your comparison between a Druid Tank and non-Tank class.