Tanking Anub'Arak heroic adds

[Xequecal]

This sounds suspiciously easier than interrupting if things like deterrence work on it. I know the strikes can miss, not sure about be parried. 1 MM hunter could negate 4-5 SS cooldowns (i.e. survive simultaneous SS from all 4 adds at once 4-5 times) just by standing far a way and deterrencing ~5 seconds before the cooldown?

It's not QUITE that easy. The adds jump to whoever they're shadow striking. If he sits 40 yards away they'll jump off the ice and immediately burrow. You have to position your raid so that the hunter is farthest from all four adds yet they're still on the ice if they decide to jump to him.

[Belloc]

This sounds suspiciously easier than interrupting if things like deterrence work on it. I know the strikes can miss, not sure about be parried. 1 MM hunter could negate 4-5 SS cooldowns (i.e. survive simultaneous SS from all 4 adds at once 4-5 times) just by standing far a way and deterrencing ~5 seconds before the cooldown?

It's not QUITE that easy. The adds jump to whoever they're shadow striking. If he sits 40 yards away they'll jump off the ice and immediately burrow. You have to position your raid so that the hunter is farthest from all four adds yet they're still on the ice if they decide to jump to him.

They don't immediately burrow after a shadow strike, do they? I don't believe they do.

The point still has merit, of course, but I think it quite likely that they would simply zoom back to the tank with their 300% movement speed and everything would be back to normal before they tried to burrow. Of course, there would be the occasional unlucky burrow that would quite likely cause a wipe.


I think a more important issue is the AOE DPS lost during the time it takes them to run back.

[Worldie]

This sounds suspiciously easier than interrupting if things like deterrence work on it. I know the strikes can miss, not sure about be parried. 1 MM hunter could negate 4-5 SS cooldowns (i.e. survive simultaneous SS from all 4 adds at once 4-5 times) just by standing far a way and deterrencing ~5 seconds before the cooldown?

Simply not anyway since Shadostrike teleports the adds BEHIND the person, and Deterrence only works on attacks from front.

[Belloc]

This sounds suspiciously easier than interrupting if things like deterrence work on it. I know the strikes can miss, not sure about be parried. 1 MM hunter could negate 4-5 SS cooldowns (i.e. survive simultaneous SS from all 4 adds at once 4-5 times) just by standing far a way and deterrencing ~5 seconds before the cooldown?

Simply not anyway since Shadostrike teleports the adds BEHIND the person, and Deterrence only works on attacks from front.

I wonder what would happen if the hunter put their back to the wall?

[Roknroll]

I think everyone's spending too much time working on unreliable gimmicks to get through parts of the fight that don't need them.

1. Shadow Strike

Just figure out how to interrupt it reliably instead of having a soaker. The chances of that add burrowing after the shadow strike are pretty high as well. It might not do it every time, but if that's the strategy you are relying on then you will have a lot of random unnecessary wipes because of it. Every raid has at least 2 paladins, which makes it easy to interrupt with Holy Wraths staggered 2 seconds apart.

The first paladin should use HW just as the timer finishes. The 2nd paladin should have a burrower set to his focus and hit it if he sees the cast bar for the spell. the 2nd paladin should be either prot or ret, and they should just auto attack for several 1-2 seconds before/after the shadow strike should be going off to account for any timer errors. Also, know which boss mods you are using and how their timers are affected in phase 3.

2. Kiting all 4 adds

It's just not possible without a block capped tank. To keep them on the ice, even with 2 patches side by side, you don't have enough room to kite them without crossing paths a LOT. They also gain 100% movement speed per burrow nearby, so they'll be almost back up to normal speed on the ice. With 4 together they've got about a 0.3 second swing timer, so just 1 second of being in melee range is about 13 swings at you. With good avoidance, you're still getting hit 4-5 times in 1 second. Without block mitigation, those hits will be for over 10k each.

[Roknroll]

If you are at the defense minimum, block cap, and 4k block value then why don't you just single tank all 4 adds?

Holy shield

In your first post, I thought you were saying you are block capped w/o holy shield. If you aren't block capped w/o holy shield then ya, just keep the 2 adds. Again, pure block value and low stamina is the best thing for you. I'd even click off HP boosting buffs of consumables. With only 2 adds on you, block capped with holy shield, and 4k block value you will barely take any damage.

[Xequecal]

I think everyone's spending too much time working on unreliable gimmicks to get through parts of the fight that don't need them.

1. Shadow Strike

Just figure out how to interrupt it reliably instead of having a soaker. The chances of that add burrowing after the shadow strike are pretty high as well. It might not do it every time, but if that's the strategy you are relying on then you will have a lot of random unnecessary wipes because of it. Every raid has at least 2 paladins, which makes it easy to interrupt with Holy Wraths staggered 2 seconds apart.

The first paladin should use HW just as the timer finishes. The 2nd paladin should have a burrower set to his focus and hit it if he sees the cast bar for the spell. the 2nd paladin should be either prot or ret, and they should just auto attack for several 1-2 seconds before/after the shadow strike should be going off to account for any timer errors. Also, know which boss mods you are using and how their timers are affected in phase 3.

2. Kiting all 4 adds

It's just not possible without a block capped tank. To keep them on the ice, even with 2 patches side by side, you don't have enough room to kite them without crossing paths a LOT. They also gain 100% movement speed per burrow nearby, so they'll be almost back up to normal speed on the ice. With 4 together they've got about a 0.3 second swing timer, so just 1 second of being in melee range is about 13 swings at you. With good avoidance, you're still getting hit 4-5 times in 1 second. Without block mitigation, those hits will be for over 10k each.

Honestly, suggesting these "gimmicks" is mainly to deal with the Golden Rule of leading raid DPS - if the job you give them substantially affects their ability to get the Recount high score, they will suck at it. The problem with the 1.5s Shadow Strike cast is if you're interrupting it with Holy Wrath, because most SS timers are somewhat inaccurate, that Paladin basically can't do ANYTHING else besides autoattack for the 5 seconds before and after the timer runs down or he risks GCD locking himself out of being able to interrupt. Deterrence is off the GCD, it can be pushed anytime, all you need is someone with good reflexes. He can DPS to his heart's content without fear.

In P3, Holy Paladins really can't afford to stop healing for that long. If you give this job to a Ret Paladin, without fail he might do it OK for like 3-5 attempts, but on every subsequent attempt he will cut the timer closer and closer to DPS more until he starts failing at it again. Raid leaders here know what I'm talking about. Along similar lines are Rogues that don't save Energy to kick Vezax, hybrid DPS that don't ever cleanse the healer in Yogg's brain room, and that guy that always goes insane in Yogg P3 because turning away three seconds before Gaze and waiting until three seconds after it's done costs too much DPS.

[Wrathy]

As much as I see what you are saying Xequecal, the fact of the matter is that the guilds that are getting Anub'arak down are the ones that have dps that know that is unacceptable behavior. If you assign a dps to do a job, they should do it, even if that means that they are not topping the charts. If they do not do it, you give them a warning, then you give them the boot.

Plain and simple, this fight is about 100% competency from every player, and you can not expect anything less from your players.

[fafhrd]

...and Deterrence only works on attacks from front.

No, it doesn't. See earlier posts.

The risk of a burrow is the primary argument against trying to just soak Sstrikes though, I hadn't thought of that. I'm mainly surprised that this is the first I've heard strong statements about being able to control who gets Sstruck though, which is a handy bit of info. I'll try to find out if the strike is parry/deflectable anyway, although I doubt we'll try to use it to make an interrupt-less strat - at the very least the tanks and dps would be annoyed at the adds rushing out of their range every now and then (although the interrupters would be much less stressed).

[Roknroll]

we've had SS miss people before or be fully resisted. it's shadow damage so other avoidance stats probably won't do anything. It hits for about 30k base, and we are seeing about 8k resisted.

[fafhrd]

we've had SS miss people before or be fully resisted. it's shadow damage so other avoidance stats probably won't do anything. It hits for about 30k base, and we are seeing about 8k resisted.

Yeah I've seen several miss me. Doesn't really say anything about whether it can be deterrenced though, since boss abilities are fairly inconsistent with respect to the ability. All melee attacks get parried, most aoes get through, some aoes (pew x3, light vortex) get deflected. If SS is a magical melee attack it could be parried, if it's a spell it could be deflected. If it's an actual ranged attack (not a melee or a spell) it will get through.

[hoho]

... and that guy that always goes insane in Yogg P3 because turning away three seconds before Gaze and waiting until three seconds after it's done costs too much DPS.

FYI, it is possible to keep up full-time DPS on Yogg during the gaze as most casters,you just need to be mouse turning and be facing him at when you start cast (and end for DD spells). E.g shadowpriest can start casting flay and immediately turn away, it'll keep casting without problems and if timed right you won't loose any sanity. It's tricky but doable. Though due to my lowish FPS I generally just spammed dots on adds during that.

[fafhrd]

You can also turn quickly to get shots off between gaze ticks. This generally means eating some ticks to get the timing right though, so not something to try without sanity wells around.

[Joanadark]

We had a Anub kill where an add shadowstepped out to the tank and was trying to burrow, and one of the mages blinked forward and blast waved him back onto the ice.
It was pretty pro.

[fafhrd]

Hate you brekkie :X

Our uses of blastwave and that shaman knockback have been... less desirable.