Cataclysm tanking cheat sheet

This post is written by Idkittens.  Id has been a member of Business Time since March.  He is also known under the name Dirtface for the habit that his warlock had to face his demise after pulling from our tanks.  In order to keep him alive in Cataclysm, he has now moved to our tanking team with his Death Knight.  He’s an outstanding player and strategist and I’m very happy to be hosting his guest post today.

The general consensus of the Internet seems to be that the Cataclysm dungeon bosses aren’t particularly difficult.  However, I am a perfectionist, and I prefer to look like I know what I’m doing… and lord knows Voss does.

I put together a cheat sheet – cliffs notes for all of the bosses you’ll encounter in normal Cataclysm dungeons.  This is TLDR in the extreme – but it should be everything you and your group needs to know in order to survive.  It doesn’t hurt to perpetuate the illusion that we tanks are always prepared… always well researched… always know what we’re doing.  Even if we are just copying and pasting.

ON THAT NOTE… please, for the sake of the kittens, please learn the routes to the dungeons.  This guy is going to be relying on you for directions when you wipe.  We must look like we know our stuff!

Blackrock Caverns

Rom’ogg Bonecrusher

• Clear the room, he calls adds.
• Be aware of the mortal strike.
• Be aware of the PBAOE (Point Blank AoE) quake, 40 yard range.
• When he pulls you to him, he’ll root you with Chains of Woe, then AOE the group.  Kill chains (single target, don’t AOE), then run away from the boss.
• Heroic: He summons adds, which can (and should) be killed by rooting them after breaking his chains (which must be done more quickly).

Corla, Herald of Twilight

• She has 2 adds – players have to stand in front of their beams to block them.  I recommend using the tank and a ranged dps.
• Party members cannot get 100 stacks of the beam debuff – step out of the beam until your debuff drops if you get above 80.  Other party members should pick the beams up when this happens.
• The boss will death grip and fear your party members, making beam-blocking more difficult.  Err on the side of caution.  Try to interrupt her abilities.
• Heroic: There is a 3rd add.  If you have a good tank and healer, you can simplify the fight by letting it evolve and killing it.  (Do this to all 3 adds to get the achievement.)

Karsh Steelbender

• Kill his trash by pulling the conflagrations away from the alloys.
• To damage him, you have to drag him through the central pillar of fire to stack a debuff on him.
• When his stacks drop, fire shoots out of grates on the ground.  Don’t stand in it.
• He cleaves.
• Heroic: When his debuff stacks drop, he spawns adds.  Manage this either by killing the adds (they drop a lava puddle that behaves similarly to the central pillar) in a good place, or by building stacks slowly throughout the whole fight (and never letting the debuff drop).  With practice, you can easily move him quickly enough through the pillar to get only 1-2 stacks at a time.

Beauty

• Pull and kill the 3 puppies in front of Beauty.  Beauty will not aggro.
• Beauty can be pulled without aggro’ing Runty (the puppy behind her).
• You must leave at least one puppy alive, or she will enrage and wipe the group.
• She has a fear, a PBAOE knockback, a charge, and an ‘explodes when dispelled’ debuff.
• Heroic: The puppies and the boss are linked – crowd control what you can, kill the puppies first.  Runty is not linked and can still be used to avoid the enrage.

Ascendant Lord Obsidius

• He comes with two unkillable adds that stack a healing debuff on their target.
• Ranged should kite the adds – they don’t have a normal aggro table, but instead follow whoever hit them last.  This makes kiting easy.
• Adds can and should be snared and rooted.  They hit reasonably hard on non-tanks.
• The boss will switch bodies with an add periodically – just switch targets.
• Boss abilities include a knockdown, a dot, and Thunderclap.
• Heroic: He comes with a 3rd add.

Throne of the Tides

Lady Naz’jar

• Interrupt Shock Blast – it hurts.
• Run out of blue circles.
• At 60% and 20%, summons adds and shields herself.  2 are casters – they should die first and only require provisional tanking.  The 3rd is a melee add with a low-health enrage.  Adds can be CC’d.
• Heroic: Dodge water spouts in the add phase.  The further away from her you are, the easier this gets.

Commander Ulthok

• He casts Dark Fissure, similar to Anub’arak’s Slam.  Don’t get hit by it.  It spawns a powerful void zone on the ground as well.
• He grabs party members, carrying them around for a while, then dropping them.  Make sure they don’t get dropped in void zones.
• He slows you, making Dark Fissure dodging more difficult.
• Heroic: Dark fissures slowly expand over time.  Start the fight by pulling him towards Naz’jar’s room, then kite towards the elevator.

Erunak Stonespeaker (and a squid)

• Face him away from the group – he has a breath-like attack.
• Interrupt his nuke, and avoid earth shards (a ground-traveling damage spell).
• At 50%, the squid will leave Erunak – tank’n'spank the squid until it mind controls a party member.
• When a party member gets MC’d, DPS them down to 50% to knock the squid off again.  Resume tank’n'spank.
• Green clouds will silence/pacify you.  Don’t stand in them.
• Heroic: Nothing special.

Ozumat

• In phase 1, tank and kill adds.  DPS order is murlocs, small faceless ones, big faceless ones.
• The big add will fly up and crash to the ground several seconds later – run away from the crash.
• In phase 2, DPS should kill the faceless one adds.  The tank should kite the demons.
• Phase 3 is a race against time – all players, including you, should switch to the boss at the edge of the room.  Use cooldowns to help out your healer if the fight drags on too long.
• Heroic: Nothing special.
• Death Knights: You can solo the last phase, even on heroic.  Spam death strike, and AMS to drop your debuff stack.