Serpentshrine Cavern - One Night, Four Bosses.

Well last night we went down to Serpentshrine Cavern and Cleared out the first four bosses: Hydross the Unstable, The Lurker Below, Leotheras The Blind and Morogrim Tidewalker. This is pretty much unprecedented for us.

As promised to Leon, I'll go over my tanking roles in each fight in order:

Hydross the Unstable

Hydross is the boss that kept us out of SSC for the longest time, as it requires tanks with maxed-out Frost and Nature Resistance (350 Resistance fully buffed).

This is the first resistance fight anyone who started tanking in TBC will likely face, so I'll speak briefly about the basic gearing philosophy.

Good News: Elemental melee attacks can't crush. No need to worry about 102.4% here.
Bad News: Elemental melee attacks can crit. Reaching crit immunity via Defense and/or Resilience is imperative.
Good News: Elemental melee attacks can be dodged/parried normally.
Bad News: Elemental melee attacks can't be blocked or mitigated by armor. Resistance Gear is the only viable form of mitigation.

In the fight, Ulu acts as an Add-tank mostly, so I've aimed for him to have around 180 unbuffed resistance to both Nature and Frost, which gets buffed to 250 with the help of a friendly Shaman and his totems. I try to keep aggro on 2-4 of the adds Hydross spawns, which without Holy Shield or Blessing of Sanctuary is quite tricky. For this fight I need to rely on Max-rank Consecrate and Retribution Aura to build aoe threat along with tab-targetting between adds with Seal of Righteousness. I try to hold the adds around the boss so that the AoE DPS can kill the adds and damage the boss at the same time.

The only real trick in this fight is to make sure that all aggro is stopped when it's time for a Tank transition. And that means all aggro, we've been wiped at least twice in the past by a Searing Totem pulling him from frost to poison and landing eight adds on us. There's plenty of time for DPS to kill him before the enrage, so there's no need for them to be careless.

The Lurker Below

This fight is basically Ragnaros-meets-Blastoise. Any decently-geared tank can tank the guy, and additional tanks are handy for dealing with the adds he spawns when he dives.

When Ulu's main tank, he tends to wear his "default" tank gear that balances avoidance, health, armor and threat (the stuff that's normally on his Armory Profile). I tend to tank him in the water in the middle ring, since this seems to significantly reduce his periodic knockbacks, plus it makes Spout dodging a breeze.

When not maintanking, Ulu wears his five-man tanking set, which has him uncrittable with about 550 holy damage. I keep up judgements on the boss whilst he's on and then tank an add when he's down.

The adds on the centre ring will pretty-much one-shot a clothie, hitting for about 4k on plate with a nasty frontal cleave. Tank them with your back to the inner water and enough space for the melee DPS to get behind them.

The only real issue with this fight is the Spout. When you get a Spout warning, everyone has to get in the water or suffer a bad case of watery death. Once your raid has managed to coordinate the spouts, then this boss will be easy. There's no enrage timer, so take it nice and steady.

Leotheras The Blind

I love to beat up Blood Elves! But to be fair, this guy has it coming.

This is a rhythm fight. He switches forms and aggro fairly constantly so you need to be ready with some snap aggro to make sure the boss doesn't go anywhere.

When Ulu MTs this fight, he wears a more threat-heavy set, since you can't afford to lose any time on pick-ups. Much as we were cursing them on Hydross, a Shaman's Searing Totems can be incredibly useful here, since they'll drag the boss back to them after he whirlwinds round the room making pick-ups a breeze. If that doesn't happen, then a quick Avenger's Shield will have him on you like Michael Moore on ice cream.

During the Demon phase, we have a Warlock specced Siphon Life/Soul Link tank him at range whilst the melee get stuck into him. If Ulu gets an inner demon, it's not normally a problem, since they're vulnerable to Holy damage. Exorcism, SoR and Holy Shield tend to make short work of him. When DPS on Leo stops prior to transition, then just keep swinging with SoR and judge it just as he switches to ensure solid aggro.

If he's not tanking, I just strap on Ulu's five-man set again and let him go hogwild on pseudoDPS.

Morogrim Tidewalker

This is a fight built for a Protadin. Being a fast, hard-hitting boss, Morogrim is a perfect boss for a Tanking Paladin. That said, our more usual role in the fight is to tank the swarms of Murloc adds that he spawns at regular intervals.

For phase one, Ulu stands at the bottom of the ramp to the left, with his pet Warlock lifetapping (we normally have the Lock who specced SL/SL for Leo on this job since his DPS will generally be the lowest). After the Earthquake, I begin casting a Max-rank Holy Light on the Warlock, which generates enough healing aggro to make the Murloc swarms charge towards me. After three Holy Lights and I have all the aggro I need on the Murlocs (especially if the priests have remembered not to put Prayer of Mending on the tank after the Earthquake), and I can start consecrating to hold them on me as the AoE kill them.

At 30%, we all move inside the corridor at the north end of the room to avoid Moro's new AoE attack. This creates a new wrinkle in that I'm now too close to the north Murloc spawn to get off three Holy Lights and too far from the South one for the healers to hold off on their big heals. In our last two kills, we've lost a few people to this problem, but i think I've found a solution. Next time I'm going to stand with the Melee, which should give me the time to get off enough heals to aggro the northern murlocs as well as forcing the southern ones to run through my consecrate and get further aggro'd.