Mother Shahraz

[Lansky]

Since the Shahraz rework Prismatic Shield is no longer the same massive reduction in magical damage done. It randomly alternates between buffing/reducing damage done by opposite school of magic. So for every holy damage reduction you will have a holy damage buff, ultimately it evens out and if you pop AW during a holy magic buff I'd imagine you'd generate more threat overall. The main issues are the incoming damage and to a lesser degree the silence.

[Rhî]

I would say Silence is a big issue here. You don't have SR equipped, at least not very much. You will be silenced approx 33% of the time. That's my result of offtanking her since the last 2 months.

And you can't say for sure, that, if she is holy sensitive, you can pop up your AW and a destruction pot, because of the silence.

Blizzard is making us more viable, but we still are definately far inferior in such fights compared to warriors.

But that's just my opinion or the opinion of my raid. They are moaning everytime i'm only thinking loud of tanking bosses like Kaz'rogal, Azgalor, Archimonde, RoS, Shahraz and Illidan. And compared to our warrior tank they have the right to. The disadvantage is totally obvious.

[fiorina]

But that's just my opinion or the opinion of my raid. They are moaning everytime i'm only thinking loud of tanking bosses like Kaz'rogal, Azgalor, Archimonde, RoS, Shahraz and Illidan. And compared to our warrior tank they have the right to. The disadvantage is totally obvious.

That's correct. Equally geared and skilled warriors have clear advantage. If this will be still an issue in Sunwell and WotLK I will just delete this crap and reroll something. It's not fun to be 2nd rate tank just due to ignorance of encounter designers.

[Neuron]

What about the prismatic shield? If you're nuking her with holy damage you'll get a large reduction in holy dmg output --> screwed threat?

Yes. Silence + prismatic shield:holy + gimped stats in SR gear if you wear any at all + enrage + worse magic damage reduction than a warrior + great opportunity to off tank because you can sort of heal here = bad for paladin to MT.

[Lore]

Well, Exorcism should make up for most of what threat loss there is. Keep in mind that most of our abilities are on cooldowns most of the time anyway, so a silence for 8 seconds (or however long it is) isn't really 8 seconds of doing nothing unless you're really unlucky.

I'd imagine we'd still have a little bit of a threat problem, but it's not quite as bad as it may sound.

[Worldie]

To my eyes also her being quadwielding + our Holy Shield sounds like "aggro", enough to counter those small silences.

[Gerilith]

To my eyes also her being quadwielding + our Holy Shield sounds like "aggro", enough to counter those small silences.

I tried it and no, it does not imo.

[Splug]

I can't imagine any tank is going to have trouble keeping hate on this encounter. The damage lost by the raid due to SR gear is immense, and in our raids even the heavy hitters are generating ~30% less threat than normal. Our first two kills I turned autoattack off at 40% on Shahraz and just turned it back on to devastate once and refresh the sunders on her every 20 seconds.

As far as gear goes: full on tanking gear. When we were doing our first few attempts on her, I had a SR cloak crafted and wore my necklace. I took them off in favor of superior avoidance gear after two pulls and never looked back. Offtanks may as well go full SR. My offtanks tell me they never take saber lash more often than once every 8 seconds, so our druid OT even has time to pop out of bearform and rebirth people between lashes. The only difficult part of the fight is that she hits like a bus, so MT survivability can prove difficult.

If you've done much in ZA, it's the same concept as the Lynx boss, just scaled up to be 25-man size with a bit of raid damage, and some very heavy/fast MT damage.

-Splug

[Kayoto]

So, has ANY Paladin successfully main tanked her yet? My guild's usual tanking line-up consists of me as main tank, with two feral druid off-tanks. The two Warriors in the raid are Fury and Arms, and the Arms Warrior occasionally respecs Prot for Warrior gimmick fights (Archimonde, RoS, etc), but I really want to MT for Mother if it's possible.

[Gerilith]

So, has ANY Paladin successfully main tanked her yet? My guild's usual tanking line-up consists of me as main tank, with two feral druid off-tanks. The two Warriors in the raid are Fury and Arms, and the Arms Warrior occasionally respecs Prot for Warrior gimmick fights (Archimonde, RoS, etc), but I really want to MT for Mother if it's possible.

Yes, a protpally on the German RP-Server Zirkel des Cenarius-EU has indeed maintanked Sharahz (not within progression, but..you know). They said it was their easiest kill ever.

[Peaces]

Yesterday was our first try on Mother and she went down alright. But I have one question : I was one of the offtanks and after each sabre lash I would just throw one Holy Light on myself and judge wisdom every once in a while.

I read some saying here that they are healing throughout the fight. But isn't it better to dodge a lash than heal the MT? Yesterday I got my dodge and sta up and used my moroes trinket whenever it was up so I could hopefully dodge some lashes. Is this the best way or is stacking Block Value better ?

I didn't use bubble yesterday but I guess it can't hurt when your moroes effect fades out, to use bubble ?

Thanks already for some more info.

[Jensaarai]

From what I've heard, you DON'T want to dodge a lash, in fact you want your back to the boss so you DO take them, therefore spreading out the damage...

I want to MT her...if for no other reason than to spit in Blizzard's face for making her not crush. Bastards.

I know. I'm horrible. But c'mon.

[Gerilith]

As Offtnak you will put on your SR and as much avoidance as possible since not avoiding Saber Lash stresses the healers and the damage will be divided anyway.

[Cakes]

You do want to dodge as many of them as possible. I noticed that while tossing heals, I took substantially more damage throughout the fight, which meant a net loss (i.e I didn't put as much in healing as it took to heal me). Next time, I'll be a good little offtank and just sit there. Always the sign of a well-designed encounter when several members of the raid just sit there.

Edit: Oh, and for the record, couchs of death still exist.

[Mateo]

Do you sit at capped SR for this fight as an offtank? I've been lazy and haven't gotten the pants made yet and wondering if I need to. >.<