[10] Algalon

[fafhrd]

The biggest problem for us was realizing that the druid takes less damage because he's keeping demoralizing roar up when he starts tanking, and that "cat is not b 4 Dbuff." Once that was corrected, we killed him 2-3 pulls later.

We don't have a feral for 10 at all, and the tanks say the difference is quite noticeable without demo shout - we are usually getting a hunter pet to do it, or a lock to throw up CoW (as mentioned above, this takes out our only source of CoE though :/). The demo screech from pets isn't quite as strong as CoW, and the uptime is a bit sketchy too especially when coming out of a big bang, hence the thought of having the lock thrown up CoW while running to a black hole before bang. On the plus side, the pet never forgets to put it up at least.

[Splug]

Ah, the druid's actually the other tank in our case, so we just had to ask him to keep roar up while he's not tanking as well. You guys run DK/paladin as tanking for 10's?

-Splug

[fafhrd]

Yeah, shiny draenei spankadin to keep fafhrd's morale up, she gets bunny eared on cooldown ^_^ - and grumpy male human DK

Comp is warlock, resto/moonkin druid, ret/spankadin, blood DK, combat/mut rogue, disc priest, mage, sv hunter, resto/enhance shaman, ret/holy pally and recently (firefighter and alg) MM/SV hunter. Kinda crappy buff/debuff coverage imo, but everyone is regular.

edit: i hate only being able to pull this one night a week and having to only talk about it the other 6 >.>

[Splug]

edit: i hate only being able to pull this one night a week and having to only talk about it the other 6 >.>

It's worse when you get to do it on 25, and watch your guild's rank slowly slip the other six days...

Anyway... yeah, that does create a few holes in utility. The deathknight/MM hunter is certainly one major overlap though, and unholy DOES work fine for tanking here if you're keeping an AP debuff up steadily. That might overall be best: CoW, ebon plague, and TSA covers a good amount of ground for debuffing.

-Splug

[Treck]

We have been doing this completely without warlocks, havnt had a single one do even the hardmodes.
But then again, were prolly better off without them, its the sad truth about how they play.
Even tho they bring healthstones, Soulstone and CoW we have done the 10man hardmodes without them, wtb proper locks :S
We got warrior for demo shout tho.

The biggest problem for us was realizing that the druid takes less damage because he's keeping demoralizing roar up when he starts tanking, and that "cat is not b 4 Dbuff."

Did you mean this as the druid takes less dmg with demo shout up than without it? or less dmg than you?
But Demo should be up at all times even when someone else is tanking?
Our Druid just stays bearform even when not tanking, apparently the dps increase as cat isnt very significant.
I might have misunderstood what you meant tho.

[Avengeance]

Damn i wiped at 5% today... and I heard he surrenders at 4%... /slitwrist

[PsiVen]

It's just under 4%, yeah. He died at 3.8% for us last night, our other 10-man enrage wiped at 4% :/

Ah, the druid's actually the other tank in our case, so we just had to ask him to keep roar up while he's not tanking as well. You guys run DK/paladin as tanking for 10's?

-Splug

We've been running DK/paladin and typically had no demo at all because we forgot about it. I think last week we ran CoW and had our DK go unholy, but he got wrecked harder with that spec. This week our hunter brought a demo pet and the kill was very smooth. One death or it would have been another achievement

[Janduin]

edit: i hate only being able to pull this one night a week and having to only talk about it the other 6 >.>

It's worse when you get to do it on 25, and watch your guild's rank slowly slip the other six days...

Anyway... yeah, that does create a few holes in utility. The deathknight/MM hunter is certainly one major overlap though, and unholy DOES work fine for tanking here if you're keeping an AP debuff up steadily. That might overall be best: CoW, ebon plague, and TSA covers a good amount of ground for debuffing.

-Splug

Fali, I think you should go unholy if we have an enhance shaman.

[Falibard]

edit: i hate only being able to pull this one night a week and having to only talk about it the other 6 >.>

It's worse when you get to do it on 25, and watch your guild's rank slowly slip the other six days...

Anyway... yeah, that does create a few holes in utility. The deathknight/MM hunter is certainly one major overlap though, and unholy DOES work fine for tanking here if you're keeping an AP debuff up steadily. That might overall be best: CoW, ebon plague, and TSA covers a good amount of ground for debuffing.

-Splug

Fali, I think you should go unholy if we have an enhance shaman.

Bleh. Our healers seem to have trouble tank healing as it is, I'd be concerned about them keeping me up if I'm not using Death Strike/Rune Tap. Also our feral druids puts out the most dps by far and we'd be taking hysteria away from him so idk.

[Splug]

The biggest problem for us was realizing that the druid takes less damage because he's keeping demoralizing roar up when he starts tanking, and that "cat is not b 4 Dbuff."

Did you mean this as the druid takes less dmg with demo shout up than without it? or less dmg than you?
But Demo should be up at all times even when someone else is tanking?
Our Druid just stays bearform even when not tanking, apparently the dps increase as cat isnt very significant.
I might have misunderstood what you meant tho.

I meant the druid took significantly less damage than I did because I tanked first, and he didn't flip to bearform and demo roar until it was his turn to tank. Normally, it's our fury warrior's responsibility to keep roar up but he's not in the 10-man group, so it took us a bit to realize that and adjust accordingly. It was a significant help.

Anyway... yeah, that does create a few holes in utility. The deathknight/MM hunter is certainly one major overlap though, and unholy DOES work fine for tanking here if you're keeping an AP debuff up steadily. That might overall be best: CoW, ebon plague, and TSA covers a good amount of ground for debuffing.

-Splug

Fali, I think you should go unholy if we have an enhance shaman.

Bleh. Our healers seem to have trouble tank healing as it is, I'd be concerned about them keeping me up if I'm not using Death Strike/Rune Tap. Also our feral druids puts out the most dps by far and we'd be taking hysteria away from him so idk.

Don't forget that death strike is a baseline ability - you don't have to be blood to use it. Given everyone but the tanks is resetting threat every 90 seconds, you're actually open to use more death strikes as unholy than blood. Blood can max out at 2 per rotation, unholy would be able to pull a third via death runes. Since you're hitting a tri-diseased target, you'll regenerate the same health per swing as blood. You do lose rune tap which would have been more effective than the extra death strike, but overall it's pretty close whereas a 13% magic damage increase is fairly significant. Unholy also worked out very well given our tank rotation: I'd start with bone shield up and off cooldown, as soon as it gets eaten through pop IBF, when that goes down bone shield again and blow avoidance trinkets. By the time that's over, it's time for the second tank to taunt anyway.

-Splug

[Falibard]

I realize that Death Strike is a baseline ability but I was under the impression it would be healing for significantly less than it does as Blood, although it should be about the same since I'll have three diseases. I'm not sure what the damage will look like but I'm guessing Rune Strike threat is more than enough for this fight. I dunno, I look at the Unholy tree and nothing (except Bone Shield) jump out at me as "sweet tank talents" for this fight. I guess speccing ghoul gives you more Death Pacts to use. /shrug

I'd start with bone shield up and off cooldown, as soon as it gets eaten through pop IBF, when that goes down bone shield again and blow avoidance trinkets. By the time that's over, it's time for the second tank to taunt anyway.

So you weren't saving IBF for Big Bangs?

[Splug]

The first big bang is 90 seconds in. Blow IBF in the first 30 seconds and it'll be back up in time. This is also the reason for burning the avoidance trinkets to extend the second bone shield instead of the first one: you need to blow IBF before reaching the thirty second mark, whether bone shield has been consumed or not.

The whole raid gets their threat reset when they leave for big bang. When they come back out, you'll already have more threat than they generate in a 90 second period by definition (assuming you taunt algalon after he starts his cast but before your offtank gets into a portal). Anything beyond that is excess, so going into full defensive mode with death strike is only sacrificing your strike damage. Death strike heals for 5% per disease, increased by 50% with improved death strike. Having 50% more diseases creates the same effect; the only loss on that front is the 6% max health from Vot3W. You're going to suffer far more from losing WotN, to be honest - and given the fast-attack nature of the encounter, even that gets downplayed a lot.

Don't underestimate how much magic damage flies around during the encounter either. Magic suppression may not be amazing, but it does end up being somewhat useful. The throughput change is not going to be backbreaking like it was in Vezax either way; this encounter is almost entirely gated by the timer, and just requires everyone learning the mechanics and reacting. The tank damage is high, but once the healers get accustomed to it utility makes a much larger difference than minor tank spec tweaks.

-Splug

[Seloei]

Has anyone had a chance to see how big the nerf was to algalon? Was it just -500 AP across the board to fix the dual AP reduction switch or a lot more?
This might just kick-start a lot of "serverfirst" algalon kills if it was made too easy.

[Treck]

Nerf? what? :S

I meant the druid took significantly less damage than I did because I tanked first, and he didn't flip to bearform and demo roar until it was his turn to tank. Normally, it's our fury warrior's responsibility to keep roar up but he's not in the 10-man group, so it took us a bit to realize that and adjust accordingly. It was a significant help.

Im kinda suprised by this, didnt think the druid would take less dmg even if hes got demo shout on the boss while tanking, We are running with a dps warrior to keep up shout tho. However our feral sais its hardly worth going catform to dps so she just sticks to bearform.
Anyone have had much succes with warriors tanking this? We got one warrior in the guild but everyone refers to him as to squishy, and now his class is apparently "broken" according to him and noone really wants anything to do with warrior tanks, i wonder if its the same with other guilds. Both Ensidia and Method uses warriors and not a single paladin tank, but the ppl I talk to refer to them as squishy and easy to die :S

[amh]

7/21/09
Curse of Weakness no longer stacks with Demoralizing Shout or Demoralizing Roar.
The following Ulduar bosses have had their melee damage slightly reduced in both normal and heroic versions: Algalon, Thorim, General Vezax, and Steelbreaker.