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Some things you need to remember when you're going into the 84-85 dungeons

1) Crowd Control everything you can. Trash mobs do tons of damage in multiples.

Druids: Hibernate and Cyclone are your friends.
Hunter: Trap skill is king again! Camouflage helps.
Mage: Sheep! Except in Grim Batol, sometimes.
Paladin: Repentance for Ret
Priest: Shackle Undead
Rogue: Sap is reliable now!
Shaman: Hex, Bind Elemental (yes, Bind Elemental comes up)
Warlock: Banish, Fear (for the love of crap please gylph fear)

Warriors and DKs, I have no idea what you guys do that can CC, so please inform me.

2) Interrupt and stun and dispel _everything_ you can.

See above. Spells will regularly do 22-35k on your tank, and it can get worse from there. Pact of Darkness will do something like 12k dps to all melee for every second it's channeled. Charged Shot does 22k to a randomly targeted party member. The list goes on. If it has a cast bar that isn't protected, kick it!

3) Don't stand in that!

With only a few exceptions, the tank will be taking the majority of damage on all encounters. The healer will need to pay a lot of attention to the tank, and will almost never have time to heal you until the pull is under full control. So, don't take damage when you can avoid it. This means paying full attention to boss mechanics and doing whatever you can do to stay alive, because if the healer has to spend some mana healing you, the tank may very well die.

Example: the first boss in Grim Batol has an icehowl charge. If you get hit by it you will take... get this:

80,000-90,000 damage. That is not a typo. The healer will not be able to spare you any heals that will let you survive another of those. It is completely, one hundred percent on you to keep yourself alive on fights where you can avoid damage.

Other tips to come!

For tanks: don't be afraid to blow cooldowns on trash. 3-4 trash mobs can and will kill you if you're not careful. It'll probably refresh by the time you get to the boss and a boss mechanic that you want to CD through.

Warriors have (and this is really, really not CC):

Arms: Improved Hamstring - immobilizes the target, this requires the warrior to Hamstring a mob twice in a row. However, it only lasts for 5 seconds.

Fury: Piercing Howl - slows down mobs for 6 seconds by 50%.

Prot: Umm, you're tanking. >.> I suppose there's Shockwave (4 second stun in a cone, 20 second cooldown) and Concussion Blow (5 second stun, 30 second cooldown).

All warriors with the Intimidating Shout glyph (minor): Enemies now tremble in place as opposed to running all over the place. However, this ability has a 2 minute cooldown, and only lasts for 8 seconds.

In other words, unless they're off-tanking, warriors really have nothing resembling crowd control. :/

Pocky wrote:In other words, unless they're off-tanking, warriors really have nothing resembling crowd control. :/

It's not THAT bad. Smart interrupting and good kill orders will prevent almost as much damage as a CC. This isn't BC Shattered Halls. It's more like "the more CC you have, the less gear-constrained you are by your tank and healer." Terry and I have noticed that X dungeons later, we can get away with fewer CCs - we just prefer having them if the option is there.

Don't forget roots and wild mushroom for druids.