Speaking of snakes on Mother, does anyone know where to plant the trap so that they'll reliably go behind her every time?

Right now it seems that the only thing the snakes are doing is giving Shahraz permanent windfury because they will NOT go behind her.

The most important thing is only drop 1 at a time otherwise they fan out around here in a complete circle of parry death. What we do (I tank her under the typical couch) is I turn her facing the main path slightly and we drop the snakes directly behind her. Really it shouldn't be a problem but it is a pretty dumb mechanic.

Either way it hopefully won't be a problem next week...

All the guilds reading this thread (and there are probably a lot), and seeing this and reading it as: "snake traps = free loot..." Don't kid yourselves. I personally do not recommend you even attempt to use snake traps for this encounter. I have seen no evidence that they cause less than 3 teleport FAs. For all we know low FA teleports are when she chooses saber lash targets - it would almost certainly be more common to have less than 3 if pets and totems counted. We already know azgalor only does empty Dooms once in a blue moon, and the assumption here would be when it chooses the MT. It might also be why the "Fix" to < 3 ports is coinciding with saber lash fixes. Just a theory...

Learn to deal with FA - its the ONE thing you can control about this fight. Typically if you lose no one to FA (in terms of appropriate spreading out), you will be in a great position to win. Positioning, luck, and gear basically make up the rest of the fight. Strategy need not apply.

We did try using an internal mod on day 1 to tell people which way to go. The mod figured out the 3 people who got FA, and told them north, west, east. We then told people to turn this off and just "wing it" and they did far better as such. I explained this in more detail earlier in this thread, or in another thread, and as always Juggernaut went through almost the precise experience and outcome as we did.

However, for new guilds, I found this interesting mod which adds a graphical element to this idea.
WoWInterface Downloads : MotherArrows

You can test it out and see if it helps your guild - but the disclaimer is the same idea without arrows was terrible for us - but the arrows might buy you the speed and focus to make this reasonably work.

Also, turn off SCT - it lets you see the FA lines and gives you a clearer pictures of where to go to put those lines behind you. Hope that helps.

If you can't survive a three person FA 95% of the time then you are going to be in big trouble. After getting used to the encounter you will be able to survive FAs on the raid, people getting ported into corners and all sorts of other terrible situations. One of the solutions our guild discovered to survive FA was to have the healer stand and heal themselves while the other characters ran away. If two healers got ported someone on vent would call out who should sit and spam themselves while the others ran away. The arrow mod that Quigon pointed to above is helpful but not a fix-all by any means. Familiarity with the encounter, solid dps and exceptional situational awareness from your players will do more good than any gimmick.

my guild killed shahraz now 2 times, and the main key was really just stacking. and i mean healer stacking. we had 2 days of tries with 7 / 8 healers, and it was a pain in the ass .. i don't think we got her much lower than 50 %, and all the healers were moaning about low mana etc. then on the next ID we tackled her with 9 healers, and down she went. this week the same - we got her second try, after a MT port wipe on the first try.

if nobody fucks up badly, the only thing that can kill you apart from freak wipes is healers being oom. with more healers, FAs aren't as big of a problem, a chain of wicked beam casts doesn't completely fuck you up .. it's much more relaxed. we even had a few FAs where people ran like headless chicken, but they still survived it thanks to the extra 1-2 healers in the raid. a few guys who didn't experience our pains with shahraz really wondered why we did wipe in the first time.

so in case of doubt - bring more healers !

Sorry to bump this from a page back, I haven't had time to browse EJ for a couple days ; <

Here's WWS for a couple different attempts:
Warrior MT http://titans.darkstargamers.com/wws...az/bittar.html & http://titans.darkstargamers.com/wws...az/bittar.html
Druid MT http://titans.darkstargamers.com/wws...hraz/nizi.html

The bottom line numbers are:
Warrior MT Fight 1 - Mother Shahraz inflicted 571,850 damage across 272 hits (avg 2102 max 12238) on me. (One of our OTs died towards the end so we were splitting Saber Lashes between only 1 OT and MT) (Fight lasted 6:56) (wearing only SR back)

Warrior MT Fight 2 - Mother Shahraz inflicts 717,845 across 321 hits (average 2236 max 9113) on me (Fight lasted 8:15) (wearing SR back/neck/wrist)

Druid MT Fight - Mother Shahraz inflicted 766,093 damage across 280 hits (avg 2736 max 8037) on Nizi. (Fight lasted 7:02)

Contradicting what Metro wrote, I'm taking less damage per hit than the Druid OT. I'm also getting hit less. My gear is better, but the only gear I have that wouldn't be available to a Warrior MT tanking Shahraz for the first time are Tier 6 bp/shoulders.

I think the big advantage for a Druid MT is that one of the situations that's bound to occur a couple times per fight (melee/saber lash/melee across 2-3 seconds) will result with the druid, on average, having more HP left due to higher AC. This is probably where the perception of a Druid taking more consistent damage comes in. However, due to this fight mostly being about 90% execution and 10% handling "oh shit" moments, I think the Warrior is a better choice due to all the cooldowns (healthstone/last stand/shield wall/Shadowmoon Insignia/Iron Shield or Shadow Protection pots) that are available. Maybe I'm a bit biased though. ; >

You are taking less hits, but the average damage taken per hit is lower for a druid, reducing the melee burst potential. That makes druid the preferable tank for melee that cannot crush, as long as healer mana is not an issue (because the druid will takes more damage overall).

I don't know if that makes druids the better tanks for Shahraz, since there is a lot of magical damage going around as well. Hard to say without actually trying it out.

today we tried mother with all ranged+healers camped in a corner (as seen in the buena video) and it worked really well. if people get ported into the camp its a wipe, but other then this they have to watch out for maintanks and melee only.

the arrow addon sounds like a neat idea, maybe we'll give it a try.

Hey I just listen to the Holy/Disc guys chatter in the Priest channel for my info!

You take much more damage as a druid on Shahraz. I don't know why, you just do. Maybe its avoidance, maybe defensive stance is catching up (like on patchwerk).

Regardless of total damage, druid MT just worked better for us. We started with a warrior and were having significant problems with him getting bursted down. Druid MT solved this problem so that's what we use.

One consideration is the number of shaman/priest healers you have on the MT. Our MT healers were paladins with 1.6 second Holy Lights, shamans on raid, the one holy priest on OT heals. As a result uptime on ancestral fortitude/inspiration on the MT was almost non-existant. Also banking on LOH is difficult for a fight that can't be reliably one shotted. For a bear the armor buffs don't do much since they're very close to cap anyway whereas our warriors were far short of the armor cap and those buffs would make a large difference. I can see a guild that uses the opposite healing scheme as us having less problems healing a warrior. Numbers out of my ass and off the top of my head I think our warrior was at like 22-24k armor in 300 SR buffed whereas the bear was at like 29-30k or so. I think those numbers are close but I don't recall exactly.

I debated this when we tried a druid first, thinking that he should be taking less than me. 75% reduction versus 65-70, then I realized duh, defensive stance, so warriors are actually at 80ish% depending on the amount of armor buffs you have. So yes, defensive stance has caught up.

Defensive Stance doesn't work like that, it actually reduces the damage you would take after armor reduction by another 10%. A well geared warrior is at roughly 62% unbuffed armor reduction against level 73 mobs, Defensive Stance adds another 3.8%. So you got around 65.8% damage reduction totally unbuffed. Pots and buffs will add a few more % though and reduction through blocked attacks can be quite substantial as well.

Well we typically see much higher avoidance on a warrior than a feral - and you can do the math of how that scales obviously as well.
Magic damage should be obviously lower as well on a warrior.

Further the warrior will have ironshields chugged, and the feral typically isn't at 38k or whatever in decent SR. Armor really doesn't go down for a warrior in SR.
The armor gap is typically more than compensated for. I would simply try it both ways and parse it out. You may find the feral works better for you because your feral is much more well geared in an SR set. Or you might find the burst is less on a feral - and therefore use that... or you may find your healers going OOM, and you'll want a warrior.

Like everything, reading shit on forums will lead to a disaster, just do both ways yourself and use what works best.

We tried it out yesterday. It actually works pretty well, suprisingly.

Didn't see this searching through the thread so here goes:

Is sabre-lash damage affected by Curse of Recklessness?

Shouldn't be since its a fixed 76000-84000 damage ability. Reck should only effect things based off weapon damage.

My guild had a pretty heartbreaking wipe last night, 1% on our last pull of the night. Unfortunately, we had someone that had to go (it was starting to get late), so we did our last couple of pulls with 24 people. It wasn't all bad though, and it was obvious that we made progress from our initial night of attempts to the second night. Getting everyone's resistance capped seemed to make the biggest difference. We also switched to two paladin off tanks, and it seemed alright once we got the raid on the same page.

Surviving FA still seems to be the key factor in the fight, and I had a few questions that the EJ community might have insight into (you sly dogs). I have been using a shadow protection potion the second I get teleported and then popping a healthstone as a run like the wind. This is a pretty standard method of escape. The first question may be dumb, which has been known to happen, but does anyone know if aspect of the cheetah will proc a daze effect during FA? I am assuming it does, but I can’t tell if it is technically direct damage, or if it behaves more like a dot. Since prayer of mending behaves strangely I thought other abilities might as well. I can test it, but I would hate to die if someone has already tried it. Kind of along those same lines, I was wondering if using a swiftness potion would be more beneficial than a shadow potion. I could see this as way to not only help keep myself alive, but potentially reduce the damage on other players as well. I really hate it when I survive an FA only to see someone else dead behind me. I just can’t tell if the tradeoff is worth it.

We did some experimenting, and all I can say is, when you throw on shadow resist gear (even epics!), to get decent amounts of resist PLUS crit immunity, druids will either sacrifice too much stamina/armor, or too much avoidance, or a combination of both. I was sitting at around 32% avoidance (without agility consumables, which would have bumped that to about 36%), 30k armor, 22k hp, and then only (theoretically) resisting approx 50% shadow damage. That's just not enough.

Any fight where there's a combination of both spell damage and physical damage, a warrior will be a better tank. Shield block, Defensive/Imp. Defensive shears off a lot of damage already, and on top of that, this is where a cartload of +Defense itemization works wonders - to stay crit immune, you already pick up a lot of dodge/miss/parry avoidance, and that's just pretty lacking on leather gear.

I'd say the best setup would be warrior MT, holy paladin offtanks, as has been suggested multiple times already.

(P.S. that aside, since Hydross was pure magic damage, tanking Nature phase with 22khp, capped NR and uncrittable was pretty fun... Armor? Screw that shit, 15k armor in bear form is where it's at. I love cloth greens)

I don't know how much sr you are putting on or if my gear is so much better then yours or what but i can reach 38% dodge with 204 SR and still having 32k armor. Not saying that I should be the MT for Mother but just putting it out there.

It's not a matter of just spamming Shadow Pots and Heathstones. Every member needs to use them intelligently. It will click eventually, you got her to 1%, you'll do it again. Make sure everyone understands- any attempt you can kill her, so do everything you possibly can to survive.

Make sure you take a look at WWS, see who's dealing the most damage and getting teleported the least. It sounds pretty blunt, but those people probably needs some things to be cleared. For example, are mages blinking late and on top of people? Are people running on top of a mage who just blinked? Are the rogues running back to Shahraz while others run the opposite way? etc..etc..