[Faction Champions] Preparation for Boss #3

Funtodin wrote:Even though we 1-shot it in 25m, I have a bad feeling about this fight on heroic mode...

2 shot. Interrupted heals while we burned DK, Rogue, Lock. Then we just took our time. Our cleanse bot taunted pets when they popped.

Jerey-Darkspear wrote:
I suspect there will be a unit frame mod out soon that auto-populates with each of the npc and shows you their target of target. Then you can focus on just taunting the one that's targeting a squishy via whack-a-mole.

btw, RDX has been able to do this, or almost this for a while now. Not just for this fight, but for any it'll make a clickable list of mobs around you with their hp (not sure about their targets).

latest RDX also has some annoying issues with messing up your bars, so I haven't tried the feature myself yet, but other people in raid have been using it for algalon stars and for faction champs last night and were full of praise.

The reason I equate it to pvp is because my job as a tank is diminished. The raid would've been just as successful if I'd sat all of my tanks and brought in healers or dps instead. Yes, I can still play a paladin, but I can't play the specific role of paladin that I enjoy - tanking/mob control. It's pretty much the same reason I don't like any of the vehicle encounters: if I wanted to be a vehicle, I would've rolled a vehicle instead of a protection paladin.

This is a pvp encounter. The AI runs chains every now and then, it has access to most useful pvp spells, and there is no fixed aggro table. It does have touches of PVE - taunt still works, momentarily - but that very well could be a bug that Blizzard takes out in a hotfix. Players do predictable things, too. It's just their list of things to do is a few items larger than what's available in this encounter. All strategies that are being incorporated to down this encounter are PVP strategies, not PVE.

I'll look into RDX though. Thank you for that fafhrd.

In 10 man Heroism is spell-stealable (we're doing 25 man tonight)--if you have mages in your raid it's a waste to dispell it off the mobs.

Jerey-Darkspear wrote:This is a pvp encounter. The AI runs chains every now and then, it has access to most useful pvp spells, and there is no fixed aggro table. It does have touches of PVE - taunt still works, momentarily - but that very well could be a bug that Blizzard takes out in a hotfix. Players do predictable things, too. It's just their list of things to do is a few items larger than what's available in this encounter. All strategies that are being incorporated to down this encounter are PVP strategies, not PVE.

The AI is an AI. The mobs will never adapt to your strategy. Observe what they do and figure out a counter, and they will let themselves be countered every time. Just like Jaraxxis will let you interrupt and spellsteal him every time, or Icehowl will run stupidly into a wall every time. You formulated counters to what those mobs do, why not to what these ones do?

Just because PvE is usually dumbed down enough to make mobs blindly attack only one target doesn't mean it's suddenly "PvP" when people need to rely on themselves to survive instead of relying on a tank to save them.

As for "I don't get to play a paladin tank" - as many other paladin tanks here have pointed out there are many things you can do on this fight that no one other than a paladin tank can do. The only thing you didn't get to do which you normally do is worry about your TPS. Your TPS is completely irrelevant to this encounter, but that's not what you should be measuring your worth by.

I think it's silly to call this a PvP encounter. You can come into this fight with a plan, a strategy, and execute it cleanly. PvP is about memorizing and executing one of many reaction based strategies , PvE is about planning ahead with some minor reaction. If you plan this fight out, you'll kill it. No amount of planning will win you a hard arena match.


This is just a large scale control fight; That's all it is. If you approach it like a PvP fight, you're probably going to wipe.

I'm sorry that you can't tank this fight like you normally would, but deal with it. You rolled a paladin, so use your paladin abilities. Keep mobs off of players, stun them, cleanse. You may not be able to tank and spank a mob, but that doesn't mean you aren't keeping your raiders alive. This is the raid game: If you want to play it, you better be ready to expand your role beyond standing there and generating threat.

This fight is proof that many of the vocal raiders really don't want a challenge, don't want anything different. They want the same old easy fights. Look at how people handled Moroes when Karazhan was new: One tank on the boss, one tank on an add or two, and the rest of the adds CC'd. If someone got the bleed, they got BoP'd. Look at Shade of Aran's original incarnation: There's no way you were going to kill the elementals, so what did you do? You either stacked warlocks or you relied on one very skilled warlock who could banish one and keep another two feared permanent, while keeping curse of tongues on everything but the banish. Look at Oz: A mage or a warlock kept scarecrow disoriented, a hunter/warlock kept Roar feared, a tank (or mage, in the silly early days when no one understood the mechanic) kited Tinhead. Look at Maulgar: Tank on the boss, interrupts on the healer, mage tank on the mage, hunter tanks on the shaman, two proper tanks and a warlock on the warlock. Look at Leotheras: If you got whispered, you were forced to kill an add or get mind-controlled... Leo didn't care if you were a tank or a healer.

I don't think today's raiders could handle making macros for their weapons in the Kael fight. Did you hear healers complaining that they couldn't heal during phase 1 Reliquary of Souls? What about the 10 people you had rotating cubes on Magtheridon? Did they complain that they weren't tanking/DPSing?


If you want to raid, you need to forget what role you expect to have. Your role is whatever your raid leader gives you. This fight expects you to use the abilities at your disposal. Do it and stop complaining.

Frost DKs are OP for this fight. Like, stupidly so. They can AoE CC almost the entire group of mobs.

Belloc wrote:This fight is proof that many of the vocal raiders really don't want a challenge, don't want anything different. They want the same old easy fights. Look at how people handled Moroes when Karazhan was new: One tank on the boss, one tank on an add or two, and the rest of the adds CC'd. If someone got the bleed, they got BoP'd. Look at Shade of Aran's original incarnation: There's no way you were going to kill the elementals, so what did you do? You either stacked warlocks or you relied on one very skilled warlock who could banish one and keep another two feared permanent, while keeping curse of tongues on everything but the banish. Look at Oz: A mage or a warlock kept scarecrow disoriented, a hunter/warlock kept Roar feared, a tank (or mage, in the silly early days when no one understood the mechanic) kited Tinhead. Look at Maulgar: Tank on the boss, interrupts on the healer, mage tank on the mage, hunter tanks on the shaman, two proper tanks and a warlock on the warlock. Look at Leotheras: If you got whispered, you were forced to kill an add or get mind-controlled... Leo didn't care if you were a tank or a healer.

I don't think today's raiders could handle making macros for their weapons in the Kael fight. Did you hear healers complaining that they couldn't heal during phase 1 Reliquary of Souls? What about the 10 people you had rotating cubes on Magtheridon? Did they complain that they weren't tanking/DPSing?


If you want to raid, you need to forget what role you expect to have. Your role is whatever your raid leader gives you. This fight expects you to use the abilities at your disposal. Do it and stop complaining.

In all of the examples you have quoted not one of them involves the removal of the traditional tanking classes.

DPS will always have a purpose - to deal damage. Healers will always have a purpose - to heal damage taken. But when traditional aggro tables are removed you suddenly have 2-4 people in your raid for whom their gradual gearing up is essentially negated, all of the abilities they have learned about threat, positioning, aggro control, cooldown usage, its all useless. You can taunt and you can stun and thats basically the extent of your "tanking" abilities in this fight.

Personally I have no troubles with adding new and exciting elements to an encounter. Magtheridon Cubes (v1.0) were great and a refreshing new concept. ROS Phase 1 was cool too and forced tanks to think about how they were going to tank it, and about rotations. The Maulgar pull was incredibly frustrating but actually getting different classes to perform "tanking" roles was fun, similar to Instructor Rasuvious with priest's mindcontrols.

What I do have a problem with, or more specifically I can identify with the people who have expressed concern in this threat about, is the removal of the need for tanks. Based on my experiences in the fight this week (we one shot it, and I stayed prot for it), tanks simply aren't needed for the fight. The standard model of tank/healer/dps has moved to (for this single fight) healer/dps.

It's all very well for you to cry "today's raiders just don't want a challenge", but let me say to you I'm quite happy for a challenge, I'm just not happy for my primary spec/role to be completely obsolete in an encounter. How would you feel if an entire encounter was just healers and tanks? Or if it was just tanks and dps?

I have a good ret set and next week I'll be using it with my ret dualspec, but saying "people really don't want a challenge" and dismissing their arguments rather annoyed me and you have this rant as proof of that.

Personally I'm hoping that they don't add any other "anti-tank" fights - I quite enjoy tanking, just as much as I enjoy the challenge of a new conceptual fight. The two don't need to be mutually exclusive.

Went into the 25-man blindly. We were obliterated the first attempt, which has happened on every fight so far, but after we saw their abilities and came up with a non-zerg strategy, it went smoothly, and the boss was down two attempts later, no problem.

We came into ten-man tonight and we were destroyed. We changed class comp, we changed strategies, but there was nothing we could do.

A couple reason why I think this was. It isn't really our comp that mattered its what group we were set against. We had Rogue, Ret Paladin, Warlock, Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, Mage. We were just completely CC'd by them to hell. The warlock would throw up unstable affliction on virtually every target, so when our healers went to cleanse off cc's, they'd be silenced. Our healers would be feared, then cycloned, then repentanced, then feared again. It was insanity. And when they weren't feared, most of our people would die instantly, because the ret paladin and rogue always, bar none, every single time (I knew, cause I tried to control those two) would attack one person together. They rarely ever went seperate ways.

As for those saying they use their abilities rarely, I guess we just got something wrong, because it was a rare breath of fresh air that I, or anyone else in our raid, wasn't cc'd. Our guild is not bad, not up to some of your guys' caliber, but I've seen bad fights. I fought through to M'uru pre-nerf back in the day as a paladin tank, I've seen every fight up to now, and several hard modes. Our 10-man has beaten quite a few hard modes in Ulduar, and only stopped because our best healer quit the game due to RL reasons.

This fight was just simply ridiculous, and there is not a thing I could see that could have helped us. After wiping 2 hours on the 10-man version, we called it.

Joanadark wrote:Again, Fafhrd speaks the truth.

No you do not need PvP gear, PvP strategy, or even basic PvP competance to beat Faction Champions.
Nor is the fight even class-comp dependant in any way at all.

We 2 shotted. First time the dps was convinced that we could all clump up and aoe kill them all. after a relatively long wipe we took aoe off the strat, and did a nice FF on healer1, then 2, then 3, then the warrior, then rogue, then the rest. as the MT, i had everyone just focus on my target, so the dps didnt even have to really look who is who.

Soralin wrote:In all of the examples you have quoted not one of them involves the removal of the traditional tanking classes.

DPS will always have a purpose - to deal damage. Healers will always have a purpose - to heal damage taken. But when traditional aggro tables are removed you suddenly have 2-4 people in your raid for whom their gradual gearing up is essentially negated, all of the abilities they have learned about threat, positioning, aggro control, cooldown usage, its all useless. You can taunt and you can stun and thats basically the extent of your "tanking" abilities in this fight.

Personally I have no troubles with adding new and exciting elements to an encounter. Magtheridon Cubes (v1.0) were great and a refreshing new concept. ROS Phase 1 was cool too and forced tanks to think about how they were going to tank it, and about rotations. The Maulgar pull was incredibly frustrating but actually getting different classes to perform "tanking" roles was fun, similar to Instructor Rasuvious with priest's mindcontrols.

What I do have a problem with, or more specifically I can identify with the people who have expressed concern in this threat about, is the removal of the need for tanks. Based on my experiences in the fight this week (we one shot it, and I stayed prot for it), tanks simply aren't needed for the fight. The standard model of tank/healer/dps has moved to (for this single fight) healer/dps.

It's all very well for you to cry "today's raiders just don't want a challenge", but let me say to you I'm quite happy for a challenge, I'm just not happy for my primary spec/role to be completely obsolete in an encounter. How would you feel if an entire encounter was just healers and tanks? Or if it was just tanks and dps?

I have a good ret set and next week I'll be using it with my ret dualspec, but saying "people really don't want a challenge" and dismissing their arguments rather annoyed me and you have this rant as proof of that.

Personally I'm hoping that they don't add any other "anti-tank" fights - I quite enjoy tanking, just as much as I enjoy the challenge of a new conceptual fight. The two don't need to be mutually exclusive.

"Anti-tank"?
You have double HP and mitigation than if going ret, and you can survive bursts, being focused, etc.
Your TANK-related high hp lets you be the one dispelling Unstable affliction since the dispell dmg doesn't hurt you bad.
Your avenger shield can silence, slow mobs down.
Your longer duration on Seal of Justice stuns them. Your improved Hammer of Justice stuns them.
Your taunts are effective for kiting the mobs, and even if they bump on you and hit bladestorm, you would survive. Why? Because of your tanking hp/armor.
You can cleanse. Sorry if it sounds anti-tankish for you, but even in regular fights I help my healers with cleansing a lot, since my threat is more than enough and I can spare some GCDs and lift some burden off their shoulders.

All in all, tanking doesn't consist only of getting a big dude in a corner and mashing on 1-2-3 till he dies. You have tons of other skills which are more than often used by good tanks (and which to some extent differentiate them from the average tanks who just spam some moves and hope the boss dies). It's all up to you to use them.

And no, this fight is not taken to the "healer/dps" category. It's healer/dps/utility. Unless you wanna respec (Hello, Hodir, dis is no antitank fait, no?), your tanking relies more on utility. Sorry if you're disappointed, I find my skills put to a much greater test here than on Kologarn's adds.

People blame tanks for having the highest ego of all classes due to the nature of their job. Please don't be a proof for that "Omg, 1 fight in which I am not the most important. Nref!"

Soralin wrote:Personally I'm hoping that they don't add any other "anti-tank" fights - I quite enjoy tanking, just as much as I enjoy the challenge of a new conceptual fight. The two don't need to be mutually exclusive.

I guess it depends how you conceptualise tanking. If you see it as consisting (solely) of 96969, hitting the def minimum, and using cooldowns when you're going to take killing amounts of damage, yes, there's no tank role here. If you more broadly conceptualise the tanking role as "having the ability to take hits so others who are less able to take hits can do things that they're better than you at", you have:

* Hand of Protection/Freedom
* Seal/Hammer of Justice
* Righteous Defense/Hand of Reckoning
* Cleanse/Purify
* Silences

All of these are abilities that you should be at least aware of in your orthodox tanking toolkit. I genuinely don't mean this as a personal attack, but if you're unable to translate them to the FC fight I think the problem lies not in the design of the fight but in an overly narrow conceptualisation of your role. It's really no different to what I have our prot warrior do on Brundir.

The Instructor Razuvious fight did not have an extensive tanking role. The Flame Leviathan fight doesn't have traditional roles for healers or tanks.

This fight has much more use for tanking skills than either of those two. A tank's primary purpose is mob control and damage absorption/mitigation, and you can make good use of your prot spec and gear here (taunt spam on a melee mob, stun spam and silence spam on healers and casters, cleanse spam on UA targets, dsac, HoF, HoP, etc.).

This is seriously one of the best fights currently in the game and people are shitting all over it.

Quit sucking.

OMG DIS SO HARD I HAZ TO USE SOMETHING MORE THAN MY MACRO.