Return as tank, 3 bosses down in heroic

Last night I had my first serious look at ToC10, and my very first time in ToC as tank. Yeap, I got myself in a group as tank. Its not my main specc, but I problaly still have better tank gear than my retribution gear. (Working on it… )
But used the day to get me some knowledge of the fights as tank and feelt ready for the task. I was with a group where the majority had been in Heroic 10 man last week. And a good deal of em have been the core of one of our 10 man ulduar hardmode groups. So I knew that I had to bring my game, to not let em down.
We offcourse started the night with clearing 10 man normal mode, which was a good introduction for me. We didn’t have much hassle on those. So lets not use more time on that. Lets focus on the real fun part, 10 man heroic. As that was exactly what it was, it was damn fun.

Beast’s of Northrend
Starting the night with the Beast’s of Northrend. I must admit that I did not get a A+ on that one. I was to slow to tank switch in the start. Due to a few things. As all know communication between the tanks is important, and we didn’t have it in the start me and my fellow tank Acöma. But with the help of macro, Ventrilo and me getting into the tank role again we got it covered.

Lets look at the fight a bit more in deepth. I will try to point out the crucial tasks and what I did. On the first beast the switch after 3 stacks of impale, is crucial. Get it right and the fight is home as tank. We had a few unlucky combo’s on the healers, with a “snowbold” and fire at the same time. But tank switch, crucial. The impale is a lot stronger in heroic, so that have to work good.

Next up is the two Jormungars, take one each and tank your heart out. Its important to max your tps, I used wings in the start. As the timer is sharp, and you need to burn em down quickly.
Acöma died just before they went underground the first time, but I managed to pick em both up when they came back up. One of em died fast and then we just burnt the last one down.

The last beast…. Well, if you come to him with Jormungars death, you have a win. I cant see how you can fail here, if you just move out when he charges.

Jaxxr…..
Now the fun really began. This one needed max dps when portals and volcanos erupted. They have buffed the time between mistresses spawn out of the portals. So it needed full focus, from the dps to burn em down as quick as possible. Use all the dps you have when they spawn.
I was add tank, so I had to control the mistresses and pick up elementals when there came a volcano. Not an easy task, but damn challenging. I loved it.

As add tank, make sure when there is about to pop a portal. To have all your abilities off cooldown. As you really need to threat to the max. As the melee dps’ing the portals have to go all out. So there agro towards the mistress is high. Believe I had our dear warrior, Caird, die to that account a few times. Sorry, Caird.
I ran to the portal, and waited for the mistress to spawn. (Have health bars shown over the mobs heads, V on the keyboard. As you see the healthbar before the mob itself.) Target it and do a full rotation twice, but start with a taunt. She then jumps a player, use that time to run to the boss. (As you then max out the dps which hits multiple targets, mistress and boss at the same time.) Fire off a shield when she is at range. As there is still players building agro on her. When she came close I fired of another taunt, and used my rotation till she was down.
Next up was the volcanos. Your dps should be able to burn down the volcano, before more than 3 adds spawn. They come one at a time, you can follow the ball in the air before it lands. Be at the spot when it lands, and fire off a few abilities. Then the next one come, rinse repeat. Do that with all 3. Now try to move out of the way of your raid members. They will one by one charge one of your members. Just let it do it. It will charge em, stand and do some aoe. And then return to you. (If your initial agro was high enough.) If you see it run in another direction, use taunt. After some tries, you will see how they work. And nail em down.
You have your part covered, rest is up to the dps to burn the different things down and healers to keep you alive. But its key you keep mistress from melee and elementals from ranged. Or you will pretty sure have some death dps. Don’t blame em for too high dps, as that is needed on this fight. Blame yourself for to low threat and get back on the horse.

Faction Champions
Well, I think this is highly dependant on which setup you get. We got one where, we started with the resto druid, and then worked onto the enchanment shaman. I will not go into this, more than use all your cc. And nuke your heart out. And ofc all in dps specc and gear.
All I can say here is, it seems like this fights difficulty is very random… ;)
Last week the group got both a resto druid and a resto shaman. They did more than 1,5 million dps on one of em, but he was healed for 1,8 million. Go, go pew pew.

We got these 3, 10 man heroic bosses down last night. And have 25 try’s left. That could have been better, but we got one more boss down than last week. And after our last try of the night, 1 single Twin try. Im sure that will go down as well. Question is how many attempts we will have left for Anub. I guess around 15, but lets see.
But I liked it, the coloseum is a walkover on normal, but I really think it shines on heroic. And the number of attempts, is a cool twist to it all. Good work blizzard.