(Started this thread on the wrong toon. My warrior is Ghakh on US Shadowsong/Bornean Tundra.)
Two weeks ago, I got tired of wasting time applying to M+ groups and waiting for tanks as fury, so I decided to take up tanking. I spent hours pouring over the icy veins prot guide and then started in on the four dungeons I felt like I knew best, which I have mostly stuck with. I spent a week and a half cranking through a lot of dungeon runs, most of which I forgot to log. I felt like I was doing okay up until I started trying to break into +7s and +8s. I’ve completed a number of them, and even have felt pretty good about some, but I feel like there is a lot of room for improvement, and in some of the areas i’m not quite sure what to do next. I am really enjoying tanking, though. It has certainly made me realize I was not playing very well as DPS and I want to improve in both roles
I know some of the more challenging pulls in WCM and AD my rotation is probably sub-optimal because i’m so focused on staying out of bad, interrupts, staying alive, and not excelling in any of those areas at the moment. In particular, I’ve had a lot of deaths on the last two pulls before Vol’kal. Between the sanguine pools, the green puddles left by those two big zombies, and the necrotic stacks, i’m struggling hard. As you know, the quarters are tight and it’s hard to get away to let necrotic stacks fall. One thought I had was to just pull all the groups along the way to Vol’kal, but a lot of groups are resistant to that.
And on the logs, i’m Not quite sure how to make the most of them. What should I be looking at most closely? There were some keys in the +6 range that’s i felt I had done pretty well on, but my parses are barely to 50. I’m sure there is plenty of criticism to lay on me but hey, I’m here to learn. A sincere thanks in advance.
I tried to link logs and raider io but apparently you can’t do that any more? I’m Ghakh in US Shadowsong
My strategy for that area is to jump down before that last pull, grab the stealth, if you can handle it, grab the 4 by the gate as well to save a few minutes, if not just grab the 2 then the 4. Rush in and grab as much threat on the big guys as you can. The casters random target so you’re only priority after an interrupt. After 2 or 3 stacks of the bleed, heroic leap to the other side of the staircase. They’ll walk all the way around and they’re pretty slow. If you’re healer stands somewhat close to the side of the stair opening, they can reach you just fine.
As a general rule, I tank things on the edge of available room to allow some travel distance if needed (for sang pulls or kiting). You’ll have to make the call if popping the totem right away is the way to go. (If the damage is pretty high, pop it. If the healer seems to struggle a bit or poor interrupts, don’t.) The bleed is pretty manageable without the aoe damage after the totem goes down. If you have a priest or hunter, it may be wise to cc the big guy prepull if you’re struggling there and just kill the casters/skeles. Save shockwave/storm bolt for bulwark of juju.
For this pack in particular, there are a few tricks you can use to avoid pulling it at all; it’s easy to stealth past it, if you don’t have a stealth you can death skip it by having the tank pull the pack far to the left and having the rest of the group run in to the boss room on the right side and have the healer mass res you (you can do this method without any one specific in your group, you may have to death skip back out. Have a hunter, mage, or rogue, they can vanish/invis/feign instead of killing the tank again to get out); if you have a monk you can double CC the two mobs on the right side of the pack and ring of peace them out of the way and run through.
Parses aren’t useful for dungeons, ignore them. Focus on cleaning up your rotation and learning routes.
One of the best ways to learn mythic+ is to watch people who are better than you and learn from them. Figure out what tricks they use that you can or can’t use for your own group. For Warrior, you have a lot of options right now. Nerfclap runs with Method NA, Trellsky switched to prot for this season, Sense has been running keys on warrior since the beginning of the xpac, Glickz is (or was?) the number one rated tank in the world and streams his keys. Use other people’s experience as a resource.