Tanking Heroic SH

Heroic SH is a tough instance to tank for a druid - large pulls with very hard-hitting mobs. That place is practically made for tankadins. So when I was /w and invited to tank heroic SH PuG (I was in the LFG channel but looking for an heroic BM run) I was frankly skeptical. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained...

The group consisted of a mage, hunter and fury warrior as DPS, and a priest as healer. This made me even more uncomfortable, as having the fury warrior meant one less DPS (in an instance with already large trash pulls). The priest was very well geared but priests tend to draw a lot of agro and are very squishy.

I assigned marks, made it clear to the DPS that they had to take the Legionnaire down first and quickly, and we pulled the first 2 mobs. This pull and the following single mobs all went okay, as did the pair at the end of the corridor, just before the first room.

Now came the first challange, a 5 mob pull. Again, you have to kill the Legionnaire quickly or he summons more mobs, and with only 2 CC this meant I had to tank 3 mobs. The mage, thinking to sheep quickly, stood out front to sheep her target. Unfortunetly she didn't blink back behind me after the sheep, and the passing mobs 1-shotted her. Luckily our DPS was enough to kill the Legionnaire before the sheep released and I was able to hang on to it when it broke, together with the remaining mobs I was tanking. No one else died and the first hard pull was a success! :)

The rest of the instance was rinse-repeat - corner pull, AOE pull, MD pull, all were methods we used. Not everything was perfect, e.g. the warrior would sometimes kill a mob other than the "X" after the skull went down, drawing agro and making life hard for the priest. Luckily our priest was up for the challange and all went well.

The only wipe we had was on one of the large groups of Gladiators, they hit so hard I had to keep backing away to give time for the priest to heal me. Since I swiped less, the mage got agro more quickly, and things quickly went bad for us. So instead of the usual "pull and AOE", I treated the pack as a usual pack of mobs - 1 sheep, 1 trap, 3 tanked. Worked wonders for us and we didn't wipe again on those. Sure, the sheep healed back to 100%, but as it was the last mob killed it also went down fast.

As usual in heroics, bosses 1-3 were less trouble than the trash. However in heroic, Kargath, the 4th boss, can be a real challenge, especially when your DPS is a bit low (as ours was). Still after 2 wipes we got our act together and managed to take him.

2 hour run for 4 badges and some SH quests and rep. Maybe not worth it in terms of badges/hour but at least now I know it is possible for my druid to tank heroic SH and damn that feels good. Good feeling >> badges :D