I've already got my Gorilladin on the way to 80, since it was so easy to AoE farm and level with it. The "only" thing to start on this project was to pull out my rusty Gorilladin from his stable, go to class and pet trainer and respec my secondary spec (which is, btw, already BM - for Spirit Beast) to a pet tanking spec, and my Gorilladin spec to kind of optimal pet tanking spec. That was the easy part though. The harder part is to get sufficient gear for pet tanking.
For non-hunters, our pets get percentage of hunter's Stamina, Attack Power, Hit, Armor and some other, not so important stats.
The formulas are quite complicated (you can check them at Big Red Rhino though, it's an awesome resource from which I learned a lot of information) so I wouldn't discuss them here, but pet hit is 8%, and it scales 100% from hunter. The problem is that "tanking" gear doesn't have much of it on, hence the +3% from talents. Of course you want tank to be hit capped.
Now the biggest crack is to get a great tanking gear, which means loads of stamina, all mail, and still not completely ditch AP and hit, since my pet will have to hold aggro, and that means it needs Attack Power that it gets from hunter. Luckily, since most of my gear is close to BiS, or at least from Ulduar 10, that means I can basically replace half of items with pure tanking items and the other half of pure PvE dps pieces will still compensate for a good amount of attack power and hit, thus maintaining pet threat while greatly boosting its survivability.
I've already got 2 pieces of Frost Resist mail gear (Icy Scale Boots&Belt), which is attractive not because of frost resist but because of large quantities of stamina, and 4 sockets. Combinating that with Deadly Gladiator's Chest (which I regemmed with 2 stamina gems and +18 LW enchant), and Deadly Gladiator Neck, the only armor item I'm currently still in process of getting is WG mark epic PvP mail helm, which will also get the "+32 Stamina and 2% more armor from items" meta gem. And one of the "+Stamina +Res" head enchants (sadly, defence rating doesn't transfer to pet). Then I'm all ready.
I've also reglyphed. It was a bit hard on this part since there's no definite guide on what to glyph. 2 are quite obvious though, the new Glyph of Mending is awesome because it boost our Mend Pet by 40%, and Glyph of Bestial Wrath (reduces cd even more) is also a no-brainer.
The only thing I really lack is 2 pieces of Tier 5. Tier 5 set bonus is just so awesome for soloing people on 80 that do solo stuff still wear it, regardless of its low stats budget. Sadly I don't really have time and will to organize old raids just for that, so I'll have to do it without.
But I'm really happy. This is one sphere of hunter playstyle I haven't touched much yet, and it's awesome doing something new and it's just great because it's not practised by the masses of huntards all around.
I've still got loads to learn, but so far my pet has off-tanked Attumen, Moroes, main tanked Maiden and main tanked Big Bad Wolf (this boss is sooo soloable, wasn't even hard). And didn't really had much problem outlasting it, friend said he rarely even fetched a heal (that was before I got new gear and glyphs). I'll definately be soloing at least some Karazhan (gief mount! :P) on a weekly basis if I'll have time.
Especially now I feel more powerful with new items and glyphs.
The other objective I currently have is to start doing ZG... some bosses are quite nasty, but most of them are soloable. I wonder how will I fare without the 2t5pc bonus though, but I suppose it's best to just give it a try. The attractive thing about ZG is also the fished boss, Gahz'Ranka, that has like 25% chance to drop Book of Polymorph: Turtle, which is still a good money-maker (ppl were buying that for 6k at the end of TBC on some servers!), and it only takes a minimal effort to get it.
So, that's it, there's way more to tell, but well, I don't have all day. I can just say it's awesome doing and researching something new.
Oh, btw in old days Gorillas were taken as a tanking pet of choice because of their ability, Thunderstomp, which is basically a pet Consecration :). But now Blizzard gave that ability to all Tenacity pets (well, a talent), and Gorillas get a Pummel, which I hope will still prove useful - it's a normal spell interrupt. The pure tanking pets now became Turtles because of their special ability Shell Shield, which is basically a pet Shield Wall.
Happy hunting!
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