Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Behold, O God, our shield

More instancing to discuss, this time in Hellfire Ramparts. My role this time was an off-tank, as I had done before (albeit unintentionally) in Zul'Farrak. I'm defining an off-tank here as "a player that can safely and effectively tank one enemy," as recognized by The Way of the Punch Bag - A Guide to Tanking v2.0 on Allakhazam. For every pull the main tank made, I singled out at least one mob and tanked it until it was dead. That was my job, and really, it makes perfect sense.

When I choose my gear, I look primarily at two areas: damage mitigation and attack power. Those categories break down into things like agi, str, def, dodge, and so on, but broadly those two categories are it. Can I kill it, and can I stay alive while it's trying to kill me. There's a couple ways I might have chosen to gear myself toward that end. One is the agi/dodge heavy setup some rogues prefer, which I've never really explored. Instead, I've gone the route of favoring survivability except in cases where an item is available that has ridiculously more AP.

So here I am, a guy in the second heaviest armor in the game, dressed with tank stats in mind, a 26.3% dodge rate, and attacks that are opened up by dodging and parrying. Off-tanking just seems like a natural fit, nicht wahr?

And it works. I always tanked at least one mob, sometimes more when my AoE fire traps caught their attention. And since I was an OT, my special attacks were regularly unlocked. I came in second on the damage meters, below our level 68 tank and above a 64 warlock. (I was 63 at the time.) I did die a couple times, but I attribute the deaths to mistakes (some mine, some not) rather than a fundamentally flawed strategy. Generally my health never got lower than about 50%.

Proof of our group's success can be seen in my armory profile for now, as I'm currently wearing the Handguards of Precision quest reward.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I found your blog via a post about my experience leveling my pet as a melee hunter. Just read through your blog and had a few suggestions.

First, a cat for a pet would be ideal for what you're doing. Highest dps tied with raptors Dash helps pulls, claw and bite do great dps, and cower will ensure you never lose agro. A raptor is exactly the same except no dash, but there's some really cool looking ones in outland.

Second, check out http://tkasomething.com There's a lot of helpful people over there that would help you out in optimizing.

I don't know how long you've been playing, but you might be interested to know that the survival tree was originally a melee tree with the 31 point talent being a melee DoT.

I'd also be very interested to see you level a 2nd hunter 'the right' way, and compare your experiences, at least for a few levels.