Tank like a girl

My apologies for the quiet lately, but I’ve been sick with the plague aka bronchitis since Tuesday. I actually didn’t play much, go figure. I am slowly feeling better. I have a bunch of drafts, including my warrior leveling guide, but decided to push through what I began recently, my Karazhan boss tanking guide. Today, everyone’s favorite tower steward, Moroes. Hahaha, right.

Moroes’ trash is just about my least favorite trash section, due to the number of AoE pulls on the way to him. You will want to mark every single lone Spectral Servant walking through the room, and pull them quickly whenever you can grab one. While the MT pulls one, the OT can stand ready to grab the next one. You’ll be better off first handling the two groups of Phantom Guests by pulling them down to the stairs. Make sure your healers are prepared for your Valet pulls, those guys hit like trucks. Once you have cleared enough to make it to Moroes’ ballroom, make sure to mark all the wandering Skeletal Waiters. The only other trash of note are the Ghostly Steward. They come armed with wine bottles, and when they hit you with that, expect massive damage: With the Drunken Head Crack debuff, the tank will become unable to evade, block or parry and each melee attack from the Ghostly Steward can hit him for numbers in the 4000’s. Oh, also immune to taunts. Fun times.

Moroes himself is the first difficult encounter for the raid group, but not so much for the tank. As far as tanking goes, it’s very basic tank and spank, with breaks inbetween while he stealths across the room to Garrote an unlucky raid member. The difficulty of this encounter is to handle Moroes’ adds and yet manage to burn him down before the damage of the Garrote in the raid becomes too much for the healers.

For beginning Karazhan tanks, I suggest you have enough CC that you do not have to worry about any of Moroes’ adds as tank. Having two priests, a hunter, a rogue, or a paladin will make this a lot easier, especially if you’re just starting Karazhan. This means the two tanks can focus on Moroes completely. When you pull Moroes, bring him over to the general area of the wall, as indicated in the screenshot. While your raid handles the adds, you two have the task of a) building lots of threat and b) avoiding a simultaneous gouge-blind combo. When one tank is gouged and the other one blinded, Moroes will head straight for the next healer, no doubt, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. If you end up blinded, it is important that you inform the other tank (best on Vent or TS) so that the other tank can turn his back on Moroes. That way Moroes can’t gouge. At the same time the blinded tank must of course inform the other tank to turn back around once no longer blinded.

The off-tank will have a harder time building threat, due to rage issues, and the raid must be prepared to not ever pass the off-tank threat-wise. If it’s two warriors tanking, my advice is to Shield Slam every CD as off-tank, keep the Devastates coming in, make the best use of your limited rage.

If Moroes decides to Garrote one of the tanks, that’s actually a good thing. Due to a stream of incoming heals on the tanks anyway, and the much larger health pools, it’s a lot easier for healers to handle garroted tanks instead of squishy casters that bleed.

Once Moroes reaches 30% health, he will Enrage, so now is a good time for Oh Shit buttons. Don’t be shy with Shield Wall, and for an ironic trick use Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch once you get it. If you have a shaman in the raid, Bloodlust/Heroism rocks for those last painful enraged moments.

If your raid can handle the adds, burn them down quickly, and then burn Moroes fast enough, while the tanks share the aggro load, then Moroes is not that difficult at all. It’s all about the execution and the crowd control, and you can do your share by always keeping Moroes on you.

Once your gear improves, you should be able to off-tank one of the adds as well, for that little bit of extra-tank challenge.