Easy to miss this but he's a feral druid. Important to keep in mind when talking about defense and HP.

I'm wondering about this for a while now, but when is the good time to let go of SSC/TK in regards for progress in BT/MH?

We had a serious setback and had to rebuild our guild from scratch, finally we are starting to get back on our feet (geared up the new people, attunements sorted, etc) and we basicly cleared SSC/TK/Winterchill/Anetheron/Naj'entus and Supremus in two days. How can you decide when you don't need the upgrades from SSC/TK anymore? I'd like to get some more progress raids in BT/MH.
Two weeks ago we didn't have the DPS to kill Kaz'rogal before our healers were completely drained, so thats why I'm wondering.

How did your guild decide when to drop SSC/TK?

There was talk of that in this thread before, if I remember correctly most people stopped SSC/TK once they killed EoS and started to farm the Hearts of Darkness for SR gear. Personally id stop well before that, an extra two days learning any of the encounters in Hyjal or BT will be 10 times more valuable than any loot you could get from SSC or TK at this point.

Agreed. Basically when you can kill Kael, you can clear Hyjal. That means you have at least 3 BT bosses and 5 Hyjal to gear up. More then enough. Kill vashj/kael 3-4 times max, then I'd focus on t6 instances.
The sad truth is: If someone lacks gear, he can as well get it from karazhan, which you can easily do on non-raid days. THe stuff is somewhat worse then T5 instances ofc, but it is enough to go all the way in BT - minus melee weapons. Those can be obtained through arena though.

I don't think we may a conscious decision to drop ssc/tk, when we had anything left to learn or kill in BT/Hyjal we went there, and the only reason we would go back to tk or ssc was to attune new members or people who have been on holiday.

I think what really hit home with SSC was going there and disenchanting all but 3 items from a full clear (granted we didn't get the best drops)

Now we have cut down on raiding alot to give members more time to enjoy the summer (or in britain the lack of one)

We raid Wednesday - hyjal (full clear + 2-3 BT bosses)
Thursday - rest of BT
And alternate between SSC/TK each week on either sunday or monday.

Personally this isn't as much as I would like, I find myself with free time to do stuff, which seems kind of odd after 2 and a half years of 5-7 day raiding.

I'd like to point out that the parry mechanic has a weird oddity.

Those mobs like Vaelastrasz, and Illidan, that look toward the person they're casting their secondary abilities on. While they're looking away like this - any melee dps standing where he temporarily faces will proc a HORDE of parries. I took about 30k damage instantly on Illidan due to this. It is manageable with positioning, but clearly another bug that should be looked at (I'm not complaining about the Illidan fight, it is leagues beyond Archi/Shahraz).

Yeah - you could also just stack resillience gems in all the fire res craftables too (although I'm not sure if the plate ones have sockets). That along with PvP bracers and the chest enchant is pretty much capped.

I am not trying to single you out or anything, but do you have an SS that shows that 30k instantly? That seems pretty insane, as I have never seen close to that. A 15k burst on me has happened before but that is easily survivable since you have the majority of heals on you in P1 & P3. I am trying to wrap my head around how 30k is even possible, that is like 5 hits at least in under 2 seconds, or was it preceded by a draw soul or something.

Or perhaps you misunderstood the instant kill for a shear+quick big hit. Possible, but unlikely.

I want to say that we had a 21k spike within 2 seconds on our tank last night during Phase 1, but I don't have the logs to prove it.

It went something like this:

00:00 Hit for 6k
00:00 hit for 3k
00:01 hit for 6k
00:02 hit for 6k


I'll be logging our attempts later this week and maybe we'll see such a streak again. But from a healer's perspective, I've definitely seen our tank drop from full to almost zero without a Shear landing.

Thrall is just too awesome, this week on Kaz'rogal, he saved what should've been a wipe by practically soloing the last 10% with a resto shammy desperately throwing lightning bolts and self healing to stay alive. Incredibly horrible to watch and hilarious all at the same time.

Protip for Kaz'rogal, find a spot and DON'T MOVE FOR GODS SAKE >.<, mage moved back and ended up equidistant from 2 healers, killed them both when blowing up and it just cascaded from there.

I also highly suggest getting crit immune and capped fr, having healed various tanks on phase 2 illidan, I know what kills and what doesn't. Warriors can get crit immune (without resilience) and capped FR with pretty easy to acquire gear, here is the setup I had in mind for preparation:

Back: Wyrmcultist's Cloak (+15 Fire Resistance)
Chest: Inferno Tempered Chestguard (+8 Fire Resistance)
Feet: Inferno Tempered Boots (+8 Fire Resistance)
Left Finger: Ring of Sundered Souls
Right Finger: Band of Eternity
Hands: Flamebane Gloves (+8 Fire Resistance)
Sockets: +8 defense dawnstone, +12 stam gem. Socket bonus: 3 parry
Head: Eternium Greathelm (Defense Rating +16, Dodge Rating +17)
Sockets: 5 def 4 dodge gem from Sethekk, 8 def dawnstone, 12 stam. (socket bonus: 4 dodge)

Legs: Inferno Tempered Leggings (Stamina +40, Agility +12)
Neck: Frayed Tether of the Drowned
Shoulder: Warbringer Shoulderguards (+7 All Resistances)
Sockets: two Void Sphers. (+4 res all each). socket bonus: 4 defense

Left Trinket: Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch
Right Trinket: Scarab of Displacement
Waist: Girdle of the Invulnerable
Sockets: typical, dodge or parry+stam heroic gem, and +12 stam

Wrist: Wristgaurds of Determination (Stamina +12)
Mainhand: Mallet of the Tides
Offhand: Shield of Impenetrable Darkness (Stamina +18)
Ranged: Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer

This comes out to unbuffed stats of (for a human warrior)

291 defense rating (right at the cap for 73s)
12714 hp
19% dodge
15.83% parry
26 hit rating and some weapon skill
260 fire resist.

260 fire resist you say? yes, you use chromatic violet eye flask, for 35 resist all and 10 extra stats.
for now, you could change a bit of that (1 piece of gear ish) and get the 295 unbuffed req. for now
Using this style of resistance gear gets you a lot more avoidance, for possibly slightly less hp. And of course, being crit immune without wasting itemization on resilience.

Truly inspirational.

My art skills are unrivaled!

We had killed Illidan last week after a few days of atempts. However this week i wanted to go in having 102.4% block + avoidance so i wouldnt have to rely on using SB to avoid Shears. Would 102.4 work or do Shears work of a higher value?

He doesn't crush, so I don't think it is really that big of a deal.

well i know that he dont crush, however what i used to do was wait for him to begin casting Shear and then hit SB. However i was just curious if Shear could be entierly avoided without the means of using SB. Raid buffed and wearing full tank gear i am about 0.4 or so off the required amount, therefor i would have to switch one of my rings to reach that point. I just do not want to cause a wipe due to me wanting to lazy man it.

I tried this and I was somewhere in the 103-104ish range, and I never used shield block and was never hit with a shear over like 10 attempts, a couple of them going pretty long (once to 10%). That being said, it doesn't really prove anything because there still could be a really low chance of the shear going through, and I just got lucky.

On the note of getting to 102.4% total avoidance + block, has anyone seen a Shear miss yet? I had considered looking at building a set like that with a few other pieces after a night when my connection was being terrible and I kept lagging at a Shear, but I have yet to see a "Illidan's Shear misses you" in my log (at least as far as I've noticed) and with more than 7% chance to miss from defense I'd think I'd have seen it at some point. If it can't miss (as I was thinking at the time) I'd think that would make 102.4% noticeably harder.

Went in tonight with about 103 and the first Shear i was greeted with an earful of people yelling on vent "SHEAR." The rest of the night i spent watching my combat log and positive that Shear cant miss as Lodekim mentioned above me.

Thanks for the confirmation Fame, I figured that it would take 102.4 dodge/parry/block and ignoring miss but that was just anectodal, thanks for getting the actual evidence.

Yeah, my guess to this is that Illidan does get a DW penalty, and that it's built into the design of all DW mobs, but to counteract it to make him still deal hefty damage they gave him +hit, but the result of whatever they did is just that Shear can't miss,

It's easy to imagine, MH/OH hit with a draw soul, turn to parasite and melee proc at least 4+ parries that were called out, turn around and MH/OH hit MH/OH hit again from speed increase. Shitty luck, terrible luck, but with enough attempts it's bound to happen (like unresisted crit max hits from Azzinoth Ember's at 5% with 4.96 crit avoidance).

I had a random idea the other day: does anyone know what happens if you hearth out of the zone when Teron Gorefiend marks you for death? I'm wondering if it could help a couple people in our guild who have terrible pings at the moment.