We all know hunters are excellent as a DPS class and possess useful CC abilities, however recently I’ve had the itch to try my hand at a much less conventional hunter role… tanking.
I have tried countless experiments with this concept, and the following is the result of my experiences. No doubt, most of you have begun reading this post and made an incorrect assumption. No, my pet is not going to be the focus of this topic.
Don’t get me wrong, this was one of the first places I went to try and make this work. However, after several talent and gear builds based around making my pet the best tank it could be, I came to a most disappointing conclusion. While I most definitely can talent so that my pet has excellent armor, hp and crit immunity… even with all the avoidance talents available for my pets, they come up ridiculously short of what a tank needs to have for long-term survivability.
Fully buffed and tenacity defense talented, all my parses reveal that my pet only dodges between 5% and 10% of the time. Basically this means, unlike the occasional spike damage a player tank may take, the pet tank is going to be a constant mana drain on any healer. Which pretty much removes its usefulness right there.