Reliquary of Souls

[Splug]

Cakes, I got ahold of someone with a parse of last week's day one BT clear, it includes Naj'entus through RoS. The overall data is listed here:

http://wowwebstats.com/nxi3sdhqjkptm

Here's a breakdown of me vs. EoA:

http://wowwebstats.com/nxi3sdhqjkptm?a=147

-Splug

[Cakes]

So a quick look over the logs, you take substantially less melee damage than me (not sure if you're wearing full onslaught during RoS) but a good deal more shadow damage.

Looks like you took two full rage Soul Screams for about 13k on each.

Our fights are of comparable length (about 1.5 minutes, your crew took 2 less anger ticks), so overall, I'd say you're still a better tank than me for the encounter. I'm not sure on the mechanics of how you're dropping rage now, but your spike damage is quite a bit larger than mine, and I have relative ease getting rid of my mana.

[Splug]

I use my standard tanking / crush immunity set, because I'm a terrible and don't want to worry about forgetting to save rage for spell reflect and tapping shield block right before a deaden. So aye, I'm running a Bulwark of Azzinoth and 5/5 Onslaught, where you said you're in block value gear (optimized for p1). That probably makes a fairly significant difference.

In EoA, I'm using spell reflection and shield block regardless of their effects being totally worthless, just because they're off the GCD and dump rage. Using a /cast Defensive Stance macro still works as a rage dump, but I've been avoiding that because it'll be fixed in 2.3.2 anyway. The first full rage soulscream was due to some fairly reckless play during the initial seethe (during which I think I had three hunters drop misdirection) where I totally ignored anything but threat generation. The second one was due to a series of my special attacks getting parried, and the aura ticks cranking up my rage income - I saw it coming and braced for it with last stand. When EoA dies, there's always a shadow priest or warlock ahead of me in threat, but not over the 130% ranged threat cutoff.

-Splug

[Cakes]

Yeah, I think I can improve our performance on the fight first by not having so many people die, and second telling ranged to go nuts. I think they're all looking at omen and not going crazy, for fear of pulling agro. Despite the damage increasing aura, I see little reason for me not to hold threat on this fight with a judicious use of cooldowns (Avenging Wrath > heroism).

[Joanadark]

Last week, I brought up the prospect of me tanking Reliquary of Souls phase 3 with my raid leaders.
I was shot down and yelled at for my presumption.

This week, I saved my entire raid by picking up Reliquary of Souls phase 3 when the warrior got instantly destroyed in the first 40%.
All the while the warrior MT was praising how little damage i was taking.

I'm riding an massive adrenaline high.
Tonite was a big turning point.

[Lansky]

For all the "optimizing" of raids that is done by various raid leaders changes are still slow despite the fact that in some cases the non standard way of thinking is the more optimal one. It takes a major event to break down these stupid trains of thought most of the time. For me it was outperforming the former tank so badly on Gurtogg and Council that it was embarassing. You may have found your moment. Sadly being in the raid as a member and being taken seroiusly when you propose ideas about what your class can do are very different.

[Splug]

Heh, so I tried to tank EoA in block value/hit gear last night (dropping crush immunity and some mitigation in favor of higher threat and easier rage dumping). I think our first pull looked something like taunt, seethe, hit, full rage burn, parry, dodge, no rage for shield block, crush, good night, wipe. That'll teach me to accidentally start p3 with 70 rage...

Second pull was a bit better, and I had a much nicer threat lead than I usually do, but I got the tar kicked out of me - barely survived even with most of the soulscreams landing at ~25 rage. I'll see if I can find someone with a parse (would be closer to what you're trying to compare to Cakes, since I was running around 750 block value instead of raw tanking gear). Methinks in the future, I'll be going back to heavy armor and just having damage throttle back if needed.

-Splug

[Cakes]

I'll have to look at the set that I was using, but I know my bv wasn't that high.

[Inferno255]

We decided to use a prot pally(me) on this fight today. It made phase 1 trivial=P
We decided I'd tank p3 aswell. Got there once and we got him to 8% before the raid died. I picked her up initially and popped AW as the warrior taunted it off, then positioned behind her and taunted it back. Incoming damage/healing was more then enough to keep my threat high above the rest of the dps. Didnt have any nature cauldrons so had a few deaths throughout. Which is probably what wiped us.

Had about 600 block value, 21.7k health buffed. Pocketwatch is really nice in phase 1, I've tanked it (almost)fully outside of enrages a couple of times because of it.

Basicly we progressed 10 times as fast as expected.

[Cakes]

Just to add a little bit to the phase 3 tanking discussion, if your guild is using nature/shadow cauldrons (which I recommend) I'd recommend not using a shadow pot during phase 3. I popped one right before heading into phase 3, which vastly mitigated the first soul scream that I took. However, it also meant that I lost a lot of mana vs. little health loss, which makes it brutal to get any sort of threat rotation going at the start. Pally tanks really need to abuse SA on this fight, you depend on it more than ever to tank.

[Inferno255]

Second full day on RoS(4 hours), 2nd try RoS down, once again DPS couldn't touch me on threat. Ran with about 500 SD buffed. PI AW after activating seethe. Still had a few deaths but we made good use of the 3 soulstones we had. It was declared a dry run because 1 of our rogues was dead as we engaged p3.

[Joanadark]

06:35'43.062 Essence of Anger's Melee hits Brekke for 6345

953 Essence of Anger's Soul Scream hits Brekke for 2536 Shadow damage

953 Essence of Anger's Soul Scream hits Dragenus for 2756 Shadow damage

953 Essence of Anger's Soul Scream hits Brekke for 339 Shadow damage

953 Essence of Anger's Soul Scream hits Dragenus for 9000 Shadow damage

I'll let that stand for its self.

[Mithos]

Well, I have tanked him ever since after trhe first time I brought it up and reasoned why. Mostly because of the soul scream damage, far far less damage. With the gear I used (My general "Main tanking" gear) I never managed to regen more than 2k mana I think, doesn't make a huge difference on soul scream damage anyway, as long as it wasn't full bars every time. Besides, a little more healable damage means more mana immediatly after a scream :p. Also I think our threat would scale better with the damage aura, as warrior threat has a decent amount of it fixed into the actual usage of the ability itsedlf rather than the damage dealt (can confirm? was this way at 60 I know at least, don't know if much has changed).

I will post the video of a recent kill when I get time to upload it (probably tomorrow).

Edit: I found myself using retri aura instead of devotion and skipping holy shield sometimes, it just wasn't needed, I don't think my HP ever went below 50% except at the very beginning. I even ate 3/4 crushes.

[Splug]

Also I think our threat would scale better with the damage aura, as warrior threat has a decent amount of it fixed into the actual usage of the ability itsedlf rather than the damage dealt (can confirm? was this way at 60 I know at least, don't know if much has changed).

Yes. Shield slam, heroic strike, and revenge have a moderate portion of their damage based on a fixed threat modifier (though revenge and shield slam have a lower percentage than at 60, it's still a very significant portion of the threat. I forgot the typical percentage of threat from the fixed modifier). Devastate's threat is roughly 50% from a fixed modifier, 50% from the attack's damage (without a damage-increase aura, and with 5 sunders on the target). I may be looking into trying to punch a hole in EoA's face with executes for the last 19% this week just because those numbers scale fully, but I haven't done the math on whether I'd be net losing threat from leaving defensive stance (or enough to not justify the additional damage intake).

-Splug

[Inferno255]

Our MT has a very very good TPS, but he can't even come close to me on RoS p3. As said we scale far better with +% to damage. The soul scream dealing less damage is far less of an issue in my eyes. I really can't see how people call this the hardest boss ingame. Without a prot pally maybe, I don't know.