Who: Durante of Hydraxis (US)
Pet: Bubbles (85 Turtle)
I had been hoping to tank Argaloth for some time, but I didn’t think I’d be able to have the opportunity for some time since our guild hasn’t been able to set up a working raid schedule. I joined a half formed pug yesterday, and immediately had several members ask me if I wanted to tank with Bubbles, definitely a first for me.
We set up the group with the normal two healers, but with seven dps and myself as the only tank. I was relying on Avoidance reducing Argaloth’s Meteor Slash, even though I’d never definitively tested whether or not Saber Lash type abilities fall into that category. Turns out that pets don’t count as valid targets to Meteor Slash at all, and are completely unaffected by he ability both in terms of damage and its debuff. Since no Meteor Slash soaking was needed unlike with normal tanks, all raid members were able to stand behind the boss, completely eliminating the attack and significantly reducing the amount of raid healing required.
Melee also saw an increase in their DPS since normally they would spend half of the fight attacking the boss from the front, making them subject to parries and limiting the abilities that rogues and feral druids can use. Paired with that the fact that we were able to bring an extra DPS and I was able to do more damage than a typical tank would, we downed the boss in just over three minutes, easily the fastest run I’d even done. Between the lower healing required and higher raid DPS, pet tanks actually make for ideal tanks!
I uploaded the logs, if you want to take a look.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/6b40hhh976k7m4sj/
By: Beamen on February 2, 2011
at 5:15 pm
Fantastic, thanks Beamen, this is the first hard data in a real fight I’ve had this expansion.
By: Durante on February 3, 2011
at 12:36 am
What’s your rotation for keeping aggro highest?
By: Drunkor on February 14, 2011
at 8:00 am
you had to have relied on a macro for constant MDs to the pet….yes? Care to share? Also, what type of healer was on your pet? I trust it was not you in 2 pc T5 or anything. Disc Priest or Holy Pally would have worked best….my best guess, but confirmation would be nice. Was it one healer on the pet, one on raid only?
By: quori on February 18, 2011
at 2:38 pm
Also…you run that as BM?
By: quori on February 18, 2011
at 2:42 pm
dammit…one more question. Whats your UI set up/addons? I like the circled effect on the buttons.
By: quori on February 18, 2011
at 2:43 pm
That was a fanstastic and inspiring vid, i also tried and managed to successfuly tank BH with my pet
and last night tanked the whole Throne of the Tides instance with the turtle pet
it was amusing and fun 
. Only wiped on first boss when one of the adds was not cc’d. But apart from that 1-shotted all other bosses 
found the mobs more harder than the boss itself 
By: Sandokan on February 25, 2011
at 2:42 am
To try to answer some questions here:
1. My highest threat rotation is Kill Command on cooldown, Arcane shot to dump extra focus and to proc Sic ‘Em!, and Cobra Shot to regen focus. Serpent Sting does nothing to increase pet TPS, and Focus Fire will actually reduce pet TPS ever so slightly.
2. Pets don’t require constant MD’s in single target fights. I might chain several together at the beginning of a fight since some DPS have the tendency to blow ever DPS cooldown the second the pull happens though. At any rate, the following macro will make your current friendly target your focus, or cast misdirect on your focus, or if you don’t have a focus cast it on your pet.
#showtooltip
/focus [help]
/cast [target=focus,exists] Misdirection
/cast [target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection
3. It doesn’t really matter what type of healer you have on your pet for the most part, pets don’t really require any special consideration.
4. I run it as BM. Since MD aggro fades away after 30 seconds, your pet needs to generate as much of his own aggro as possible.
5. I use Bartender and ButtonFacade for my bar setup.
By: Durante on February 25, 2011
at 8:01 am
how much health did your pet have when you tried this?
By: ingen2 on March 13, 2011
at 11:13 pm
[...] Wrath of the Lich King was a glorious time for tenacity pets, and that was how Big Red Rhino began. Rhinos, which are only found in Northrend, identifies the blog as having been started in the previous expansion. Of course, rhinos being tenacity pets indicate that the blog is about pet tanking. The level of difficulty of Cataclysm‘s dungeons has forced hunters to shy away from challenging themselves and pet tanking. But be honest, how many of you really want to try and pet tank Argaloth? [...]
By: Writing the Hunter « 35 Yards Out on March 28, 2011
at 9:27 am
LMAO! Just as a follow up…my server was skeptical of this method of dealing with Lootaloth. I went into a pug that had 5 different players drop because they were skeptical or convinced it couldn’t work.
I took care the nay-sayers and downed Argaloth. Took a few attempts this time around since it was a pug group and folks weren’t understanding to stand BEHIND the boss.
By: quori on March 29, 2011
at 10:06 am
hi all thx for this i did it last night with some guildies and some pugs and a few who never been there, so dps was for 4 peeps under 10k and still we did it in a record time.
healers where very happy some parts the pet needs no healing.
so thx for this inspiring article
whiteapple, frostwisper server EU
By: whiteapple on May 5, 2011
at 2:33 pm
It’s worth noting that Saber Lash abilities actually rape pets as they appear incapable of sharing the damage with other tanks around them. There haven’t actually been many Saber Lash abilities in a long time, but this was the case in TBC with Mother Shahraz in Black Temple. That was the only BT boss I couldn’t pet tank during TBC.
By: Kamaa/Omni on June 1, 2011
at 12:16 am
Were you moving Bubbles during Fel Firestorm? I saw him move to the rear end of the boss on both Fel Firestorm phases?
By: Mark on June 2, 2011
at 6:36 pm
[...] eliminating the attack and significantly reducing the amount of raid healing required……Read Full Article. (No Ratings Yet) Loading [...]
By: Pet Feat: Argaloth | WoW Hunters Hall on November 4, 2011
at 9:32 pm