I agreed with you until the "one-shot" part, if your tanks are getting one-shot, you are doing something wrong. I'm not posting this for e-peen++ but as an argument that the "randomness" of this encounter is highly overrated. Since our first kill we have never wiped on this guy, neither have we used DPS consumables. The intended way to kill him is about control, not about rolling the dice on whether the tank gets crushed or not. I have always been a big fan of thinking outside the box, and getting kills in ways other than the obviously intended one, but if you choose to tank through the 250% stack don't complain when the dice don't fall in your favor.

Rule of thumb on this board: When you start to write that, or even think it, don't post.

Players can block arcane shot too, or at least could, way back in the AQ40 days. I'm pretty sure I can dig up an old screenshot if you need me too.

Are you referring to that one test realm patch cycle where ranged attacks were subject to dodge/parry/block? I don't think that ever made it to live, but that's a function of ranged attacks rather than hybrid damage attacks.

Yes, I'm sure that with appropriate management of healing and tank buffs/gear you can consistantly survive crushes at 100% stacks. However, my point is more that it seems absurd that a mob would function in a very fundamental way that is so different from previous bosses - there is a mechanic in the game to prevent crushing blows, and this is a boss that crushing blows but avoids that mechanic. That seems more like an issue of someone missing that detail about the encounter than something that is intended - it's clearly avoidable, but seems like undue pressure on your healing/gear as a result of an error.

Frankly, we've only lost a tank to a huge crush once since we started flasking, and that was admittedly his own fault for being slow on a swap, so that's hardly the source of my primary frustration with the encounter. The implementation of trash mobs and respawns in TBC is simply horrible, and SSC makes it painfully obvious. I'm actually in the process of writing a big analysis of trash mob philosophy/design, inspired largely by the misery that is SSC, because frankly I'm enjoying raiding less than I ever have since I started playing WoW. I have no problem with wiping for hours to tough boss fights, but I *DO* have a problem with wiping for 30 minutes and then waiting on trash to respawn so it doesn't aggro during the fight. That's just stupid. Not to mention "Does anyone have any swiftness pots?" Give me a break.

Not to dismiss your complaints about trash respawns (I agree they are 100% awful), but I find that Hydross is much better than say Magtheridon. One easy mob every 45 minutes and no run backs (assuming you can wipe recover every time) vs 4 packs of 3 annoying mobs every 1 hour? A lesser of two evils perhaps.

No, I don't think I even made it onto the test servers that patch. This was just me screenshotting a swarmguarded raptor strike against our MT in a duel, and later noticing a blocked arcane shot in screenshot. I'll try to find it for you when I get home.

Or more relevant to today, someone can duel a warrior and arcane shot him while he has shield block up.

Yep, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who will argue with you about trash.

I mean hell, take AQ40 trash. Those pulls were cited by everyone as being so horrible. I honestly did not mind them all that much. They were really challenging as a healer, particularly while we weren't overgeared for them, but also they stayed dead once killed. They weren't even tied to a boss like Ouro. They were just their own independent entities. You could clear Skeram through Emps, kill the trash, and then stop. And for the rest of the week you had unfettered access to C'Thun and Ouro.

If they want to artificially limit volume of attempts, I'd seriously rather have bosses that despawn after 2 hours like the old Vaelastrasz. At least then we could focus intently for 2 hours and come back the next day if we fail. Beats the hell out of spending 4-5 hours raiding, but only 2 hours of pure attempts anyway, because of the time spent clearing trash, waiting for trash to respawn, taking repair breaks between trash cycles so that no one would need to repair once we started clearing, etc.

Even so, it doesn't really shed any light on the question at hand, as I'd think that would fall under quirkiness in ranged attack mechanics. Is there even a relevant player skill to test blocks on? Can you block Seal of Command?

It really comes back to Quigon's post: Screenshot or it didn't happen.

All you need to do is produce a single screenshot of a player (not a mob) shield-blocking a mob's elemental attack.

On the side topic of trash respawns; my opinion is there should be multiple types of trash

- Easy trash, tied to a boss. Once the boss dies, the trash stays dead. 2 hour respawn minimum. Prefer 4 hours like much of the trash in heroic dungeons.

- Hard trash, mini-boss stuff. This kind of trash should stay dead - just like the pre-c'thun trash Gurg referenced. Give these guys a loot table, perhaps a higher chance of dropping trash epics or something (15 or 20% chance seems decent).

- Gauntlet trash - e.g. curator, broodlord, etc. I understand bliz wants to have the occasional gauntlet encounter where the trash clear is part of the boss event. For this stuff, the trash should be tied to the boss, respawning as soon as the boss leaves combat. Half hour respawns are stupid. Trash respawning during a boss encounter is stupid. Rushing to beat spawns is stupid, as is waiting 10 min for it all to repop because you don't quite have time to do the boss.
If the trash respawned when the boss was deaggroed (wipe) it would be clear that it is part of the boss event. And it would cut down immensely on wasted time waiting, rushing, etc.
[edit, clarity] i.e. clear the trash for 1 (uninterrupted) attempt on the boss after which you have to repeat.

Yeah Praetorian, I agree... AQ40 trash never irked me out that much, but the SSC stuff is so over the top it just drives me up a wall. It just has too much HP.

As for hydross and dampen magic - I don't see the point, or recommend it. The killer points are the 15k hits, and you might just kill healing efficacy to remove less than a percent of damage.

Oh, I hated the C'Thun trash with as much as passion as anyone else, but I also remember the sigh of relief when we successfully killed a pack, because it was GONE.

Mag trash is extremely annoying, it takes a much more concerted effort clear it all out than it did for Onyxia trash, for example. Either the trash should be easier, not spawn at all, or be more forgiving of a respawn timer. Even 2 hours wouldn't be too bad. The difference between having a 40-45 minute window and a 1:40-1:45 window is huge.

Trash on short respawn timers are in these zones for a reason right now. Haven't people realized blizzard uses trash to limit progression. Slow down the rate of a guilds ability to breeze through raid zones and your buying time for your designers. I'm sure blizzard would rather deal with a few guilds than a majority of the raiding population crying about new content. Makes sense that gruul is going to be tuned in the same patch as hyjal release doesn't it? I think thats why you dont ever see official responses to questions concerning trash since what would they really say if thats really their intention.

Naxx was perfect probably because of the fact it took them ages to finally finish and they didn't need a trash cock block.

You see, this is what our guild pretty much agreed on.
The trash would be okay, if it was, like AQ40 or BWL, completely gone forever once you killed a pack.

The packs of 10-12 mobs on the large platforms have no purpose currently, and being able to perma clear them might actually provide incentives for guilds to not just water walk past it all. Its so silly in there right now. At least the bosses are fun. YECH.

I'm not so much bothered by quick respawn as I am about respawning and aggroing DURING a boss encounter. I can only imagine the frustration of having Mag sub 30% only to see a pack barreling down the hallway triple shadowbolt volleying your entire raid.

Yeah, finally got added in 2.0.10. So nice not having to wait for trash to respawn and just pulling (have to make sure you don't immediately drop DI or soulstone because it takes like 5 seconds after the zone leaves combat for the mobs to all respawn).

We had murlocs respawn on us while fighting Tidewalker. So I'm not sure what this is about.

We've absolutely had the last ogre pack respawn while we were doing Gruul, so this certainly doesn't seem to be the case.

Had the last pack respawn while we were working on Gruul the other night, someone aggroed them through the door to.

There's many signs that point towards the fact that the internal test team never tested SSC with trash. They probably had everything despawned for them apart from the bosses.

For instance the "other" trash pull, on the opposite side of Tidewalker. There's a naga patrol in the tunnel behind him (towards Karathress), that you have no reasonable way of getting to before killing him. Yet, they added onto us with the earthquake murlocs several times during progress.

If the test team would have tested it with trash up there's no way they wouldn't have noticed that.

The issue of trash not being "tied" to bosses is probably also a bug due to them not testing it. It doesn't make any sense that the first 5 pulls are tied to Hydross, but nothing else ties to anything.

I actually tested this just today because I wanted to drop Imp Def Stance (which is overall not that exciting) for some Imp Demo Shout.
I simply let myself get beat up by a water elemental on the elemental plateau in battle and defensive stance for 20 minutes each and compared the max hits. The difference was almost precisely 16% (291 and 344 damage). Didn't keep any logs of this little test though.
Guess I'll have to give up something else for Imp DS, which btw also affects elemental melee. Maybe some 1h spec, but I hate dropping threat talents. That is an entirely different topic though.

Or the fact that you can aggro a bog lord that roams on a bridge while clearing the trash between Hydross and The Lurker Below. Brilliant zone design. When it happened to us, he sprinted through some other trash packs, but didn't link any of them. So it wasn't too bad.
At least the trash later on is on a longer respawn than pre-Hydross.