I've recently been thinking about our last SSC clearance and have realised there are quite a few questions about boss abilities that I don't know the answers for. Just wondered if anyone else can shed some light onto these and perhaps share your own experiences with them.

1. The banishes from the first adds at Leotheras. Is this fully intended to sometimes land on the people tanking the adds or is there some way to bypass it. I first believed it was due to someone being too high on threat but that was proved wrong pretty quickly.

2. Once all the adds are killed at Karathress I have observed that sometimes he actually has different abilities, or fails to use ones he should do. Last week he was using Sear Nova on us when we were dpsing him down (http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=38445) but the week before that he was failing to use this ability. Has anyone else noticed a week where he didn't use this ability? Some times he seems to have Spitfire totem, Sear Nova, the beast enrage and also the Ice stun ability and other times I think I have noticed him with a different combination.

3. This is slightly more Rogue specific perhaps. On Morogrim, I swear on our first kill I was able to cloak of shadows just as the water tomb exploded and received no damage. This happened multiple times in one night and I was never taking the frost damage. This week, and for the previous few kills, I have been unable to replicate this. Did any other rogues try this or notice it? Apparently you can still press healthstone or pot and get that to land before the damage registers though.

4. Slightly more simple question perhaps, and certainly one more commonplace. What makes the adds despawn sometimes on The Lurker Below? Is it something to do with pathing/evading or does someone else know the answer?

I couldn't really find any other posts with these answers in so thought it might make an interesting thread!

For number 1, I've seen it hit me while tanking an add before anyone else has even hit it, I'd consider it intended until blizzard changes it. To me it didn't seem like it hit the people tanking any more or any less often than anyone else, and it didn't cause a wipe if it was handled even remotely properly, so it seems like just a random targeted ability to me. I don't think anyone but blizzard could tell us for sure if it's intended or not, but I'd assume yes.

For 2, as far as I've noticed he's always had everything, but I don't get in every raid, and don't end up meleeing on him every time we kill him either, nor do I watch my combat log that closely if I'm not taking absurd damage, so I can't be positive.

Not a rogue so I can't be sure on 3, assuming it wasn't good luck on timing and near impossible to replicate, I really don't know.

For 4, I'd guess Buiden's right, if an add despawns for us it's almost 100% the same one, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was an evading thing, as far as I know we never tested to be sure though.

Rogues aggroing the Ambushers and then vanishing makes em despawn as well.

In general, if you get the ambushers in combat and are able to get them out of combat again, they despawn. Having a rogue/hunter aggro them, and thereafter vanish/feign death works.
We have replicated this consistently.

It might be that a paladin aggroing them and DI'ing himself would work aswell.

On Lurker a shadow priest that is killing an ambusher with a mindcontrolled add can usually despawn the remaining one (not that it really matter since it's so low hp anyways at that point).

Spamming CoS works depending on client-server lag, if CoS gets registred before grave or after
However vanish worked every time I tried it, I don't even get thrown up I think - as if you vanish pyro in a duel. CoS works about ~30% of the time for me.

If you get it on low HP, you'd better spam your vanish button

Tonight while working on Karathress we decided to change the order some. I figured it would be easier to do Shaman -> Hunter -> Karathress -> Priest (basically just offtanking priest the entire fight instead of killing). It was going well but when Karathress hit 60% or so, he gained Blessing of the Tides ( http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=38449 ), which also boosted his nova and totem damage, leading to the tank dying during a Beast Within.

We came to the conclusion that the Blessing must have come from the still alive Priest, as a way to stop a raid from just burning down the boss before killing all of his adds. Anyhow, it was a surprise that we didn't expect, so be sure to save Karathress for last when killing him

This isn't SSC-related, but let's lump TK in as well. One thing I've been curious about just as a gimmick -- if you had your entire raid stand on top of Void Reaver (and use AR gear), would he never cast Arcane Orb at all? Alternately, if you had 24 people on top of him and one person at range, would he just chain-lob orbs at that one person as he ran in circles around the room? Not really practical, and Void Reaver is easy regardless, but just one of those "hmm, I wonder what if" things where I'm not going to waste my raid's time finding out.

Well, all the skills with restrictions we've seen in the past did have a "default" behaviour : think patchwerk, he never used hs on your main tank except if he was the only one in range.
So I suppose that void reaver would cast arcane orb on melee targets if no ranged are found, and chain orb the only one at range.

It could be like Holy Fire from Maiden used to be, though... where it has a minimum and maximum range. If you had 1 person in range of the holy fire, they'd get nailed the whole fight repeatedly. If no one was in range, she never used the spell.

That definitely seems to be how "charge" abilities are coded. When we fight Attumen, our whole raid hangs out at max melee range behind the horse's rear end, and he simply never charges. Even going back to ZG, it was possible to position your raid such that Bloodlord Mandokir never charged. There's lots of mechanics like that which you can simply remove through positioning, although there's often a tradeoff (like forcing your hunter to do leet melee DPS).

The "one person at range" strat for Void Reaver appeals to me, but only because I am envisioning a hunter chain-chugging speed pots while the Benny Hill theme plays over vent.