For anyone that cares, the way we farm trash in our push to shahraz is:
We leave either bloodboil or gorefiend up after clearing hyjal and up to akama(usually tuesday). This leaves the remaining's trash alive. Depending on # of ppl we can either do the aoe packs to bloodboil with the 2 huge guys or do any of gorefiend's trash. basically 2 of the 4 chains in the large center room that leads to bloodboil/akama/gorefiend/rol can be jumped up near, and you can leave 1 mob up in any pack(especially nice for aoe packs, lots of mobs, low hp, just dot em up while you kite with pack..), have everyone jump up there and it'll evade the entire pack out, reset it to full and you can farm the same pack the whole time.
With a skilled walljumper(ours is named torrac!) you can actually pull any of the trash to bloodboil AND bloodboil himself without it pulling any other packs along the way. We like the aoe packs if torrac is there because we can just tank the 2 guys with a warrior and 2 healers while a hunter and a cpl warlocks run circles around the room killing the 10 little guys that would be AOE'd. This strategy is also particulary effective with the first pull of gorefiend trash, a warlock can get 2 seeds of corruption off and solo 3 of the 4 mobs in 14min w/ a zanza. A hunter and extra warlocks can bring this down to about 6-7 minutes a reset.
We can usually get a grp in there at any time of the day killing and resetting the trash mobs, hearts go for SR, anything else is handled by how long you've been in the grp, 1 per person until everyone gets something(be it epic or gem).
For anyone new doing the fight I want to say that you should do everything you can to minimize the randomness of the fight.
When we first learned the fight we tried using 0 SR on the MT, tanking it in the middle and having a few camps of people. This was pretty much everything you could do to cause dice rolls aside from having the OT's attack from the front.
- Make sure you have SR on EVERYONE in the raid. The MT doesn't need full SR, but having around 150-220ish can mitigate a ton of damage.
- Make sure your Off Tanks do not attack the boss unless they absolutely have to. She hits hard and fast, there are no reasons to have her swing faster by getting parried.
- Tank her in a spot where your tanks cannot be knocked. She shouldn't knock your tanks back in theory, but it does happen and it usually doesn't end up pretty. We found that the couch wasn't working for us, so we found this spot here:
- Bring 9-10 Healers. There is no reason not to stack healing if you have it available.
- Stack physical dps if it is available, caster damage is poor on this fight.
- If you have the resources, drop a few shadow cauldrons so people can have a pot everytime they possibly can.
There is a lot you can do to mitigate damage on this fight and if you take every precaution you possibly can, it will be highly repeatable. So far we haven't wiped more than once to her in the last 3 weeks.
For anyone new doing the fight I want to say that you should do everything you can to minimize the randomness of the fight.
When we first learned the fight we tried using 0 SR on the MT, tanking it in the middle and having a few camps of people. This was pretty much everything you could do to cause dice rolls aside from having the OT's attack from the front.
- Make sure you have SR on EVERYONE in the raid. The MT doesn't need full SR, but having around 150-220ish can mitigate a ton of damage.
- Make sure your Off Tanks do not attack the boss unless they absolutely have to. She hits hard and fast, there are no reasons to have her swing faster by getting parried.
- Tank her in a spot where your tanks cannot be knocked. She shouldn't knock your tanks back in theory, but it does happen and it usually doesn't end up pretty. We found that the couch wasn't working for us, so we found this spot here:
- Bring 9-10 Healers. There is no reason not to stack healing if you have it available.
- Stack physical dps if it is available, caster damage is poor on this fight.
- If you have the resources, drop a few shadow cauldrons so people can have a pot everytime they possibly can.
There is a lot you can do to mitigate damage on this fight and if you take every precaution you possibly can, it will be highly repeatable. So far we haven't wiped more than once to her in the last 4-5 weeks.
Where is the tank in this diagram? I assume in the green circle, with yellow being melee dps and blue being one large range camp?
There is a lot you can do to mitigate damage on this fight and if you take every precaution you possibly can, it will be highly repeatable. So far we haven't wiped more than once to her in the last 4-5 weeks.
According to your homepage and wowjutsu, your first kill was on the 28th of august, that is barely three weeks ago ...
edit: I agree with what you said though, especially the multiple ranged camp to avoid being screwed by bad teleports. That will also be even more important/better, when the first few seconds of FA get nurfed in a patch that we will hopefully see this century.
Where is the tank in this diagram? I assume in the green circle, with yellow being melee dps and blue being one large range camp?
Yes and the white dots are single healers to watch FA'd people.
Originally Posted by kaib
According to your homepage and wowjutsu, your first kill was on the 28th of august, that is barely three weeks ago ...
edit: I agree with what you said though, especially the multiple ranged camp to avoid being screwed by bad teleports. That will also be even more important/better, when the first few seconds of FA get nurfed in a patch that we will hopefully see this century.
4 Kills sorry* Our first kill was pretty quickly too after delegating healing and finding a spot where we could avoid some randomness. A lot of people don't bother with doing everything they can so they can blame RNG. Yes the RNG is dumb, but you def can help out with doing as much as you can.
We shifted positions to a place similar to renew's based on a post in this forum.
Only for us, we draw a line along that overhang. The melee are on the far right just where the right/eastern edge of the overhang ends. Mother shahraz is just west of them. The tanks are wedged against the wall about 3/4rs of the way along the wall nearer the right/east side (and facing east). The entire raid is on the west end of the overhang/diagonal - the FA healers and 1 MT healer are positioned in the open.
We've done much better in this position, and have had probably 5-6 fold less ports on the melee than at the couch. On the couch we would have up to 5 melee ports in ONE attempt. On the wall the MT's get ported on once, and I can't recall the melee ever being ported directly upon.
Even if the raid gets ported on we typically survive that - it is the sinful beam combinations, and other bullshit that will basically end you.
Here is a picture.
This picture was post-wipe on a double offtank port with both tank's backs turned. So I wasn't taking it to show positioning. The raid would be to the left of this picture, just where the wall ends in the west. The MT positioning is shown, melee are facing them, and shahraz fits in the middle. Between the Yellow and Green icons.
I believe this is superior to the above strategy because it places the melee closer to a wall - and the closer to a wall, the less likely you are that an FA will be placed near you.
I also truly doubt anyone here blaming the RNG hasn't done everything in their power to stack against the fight. I think the reason the above picture even exists shows that strategy is not really the issue - or 0.1 second deaths from full health due to sinful beams.
If you are wiping from FA you are almost certainly doing something wrong - but FA isn't the culprit here in making a terrible fight, at least not by itself.
I'm much too lazy and it's much too late to bother with a picture or fancy diagram, but we tank her in the middle of the room, with one ranged camp in front at max range, 1 ranged camp behind at max range, and a melee camp behind her.
Our first kill took us less than 4 total hours, and none of our subsequent kills have taken us longer than roughly 30 minutes of total attempts.
The ONLY thing that ever really wipes us is a main tank knock up/lash. While its annoying, its rare enough that we have seen no reason to alter our position or setup. In 4 weeks, we've lost a grand total of 1 kill due to it.
I will admit, I'm not quite sure I see the benefit of positioning the raid in such a way that you lessen the groups and area you are able to spread to. Perhaps it's just our luck and we are avoiding the knock ups/lash at a much higher rate than other guilds (we get knock ups with no lash, but those are inconsequential and have no real effect one way or the other), but doing a very quirky setup that limits space for the raid to move to wedge your tank in a couch or in a corner seems to simply add to the overall random luck of the encounter, not really lessen it (ports on camps happen at a higher rate than knock up/saber lash in our experience). We do 4 total camps (2 ranged, 1 melee, 1 main tank), and ports on top of any of them are extremely trivial. People move, healers heal, and you move on with relative ease.
I am really not sold on the SR for tanks idea myself. We have only wiped once because I died prematurely to FA damage when one of my healers was silenced, one was dead and two got ported. I have however lived with only a couple hundred hp several times from 20k lashes so I think SR on me would actually increase our odds of a random wipe. We could log in tomorrow and have the total opposite happen however, so that doesn't mean all that much.
I tank her just around the corner in Quigons pick, maybe 1-2 yards to the north of the melee camp shown by the green triangle with my back wedged in there to avoid knockbacks, and we also have only seen a single port directly onto the tanks after 50 attempts or so. 50 attempts isn't very much, but eh, it's worth noting I guess as this is the third time someone has commented on that particular spot. We had our raid on the opposite end, more east under the lip of a huge armchair/couch only because I didn't realize the overhang when you tank it prevents knockbacks. Tanking in that spots definitely speeds up wipe recovery though when you only have to run 4-5 yards to leash. I was the only one who went below 50% durability after a full 4 hour raid.
I am sold on the paladin OT's however, assuming you have 8-9 healers or so. Aside from them always being at full mana despite group composition, and the constant judgements, you can put your two real OT's on dps duty which significantly increases dps and reduces the time available for stupid things to happen.
As for the trash, we farmed about 100 hearts on a Fri/Sat after our first RoS kill Thursday by simply offering people dkp for going on runs and free random rolls on gems/epics. The bank paid any willing paladin to respec prot and aoe tank the group pulls (made 9 man runs 100x easier then anyone else trying to tank them). Our runs were 30-50m depending on how many people showed up. It really just comes down to knowing how to pull everything properly with so fer people and it goes really fast once you master that.
I am pretty sure our melee hug the wall more as you mentioned. I made the diagram after our first kill so people could see what's up with the fight and for people who might have to lead the raid if I miss a night.
We survive melee and raid ports without issues usually, people are just really solid about spreading out asap.
As far as SR, our feral druid said the same thing, but I pretty much did not agree with wearing 0 SR for a little bit more stats. Resist gear has immense mitigation, her melee will not kill you, her shadow damage will, especially as a Druid. Trust me, you do not give up much for a huge amount of magical mitigation. Looking at my SCT everytime I am ported, have people port near me, or am in an arena cheesing a shadow based team, the mitigation is HUGE.
I am really not sold on the SR for tanks idea myself.
The idea sells itself:
Max burst potential (barring OT ports which can happen):
Melee - parry - melee (common*): 6k + 6k (uncommon that both hit)
Saber Lash ~ 7k
*Because weapon skill is broken (for parry) all of your attacks parry about 10% of the time. With a 1.5 weapon (assuming you use GoA!) and a 1.5 GCD you get roughly 13 attacks in 10 seconds, for roughly 1 parry in 10 seconds, for roughly 1 parry for every 3-4 natural shahraz swings (lets say 5 though). It is extremely common, check your logs. You'll double parry her every kill (defined as melee-parry-melee-parry-melee, not melee-parry,parry-melee), and triple parry a couple times generally.
SR items:
Sinful beam: 6700 (improved defensive stance from 8000 unmitigated, recursive)
Fatal attraction: ~7600 (1.0), ~15200 (2.0), ~22800 (3.0) (3000 per player, 3 players, mitigated with improved defensive stance)
In 2.0 seconds with FA up you're looking with "0" SR roughly 40.9 max burst in 2.0 seconds, 48.5 in 3.0 seconds.
A more realistic number in 2.0 seconds after an FA might be closer to 29,000 taken - but that is just with a saber lash, melee hit, and 16k in FA damage, no beam, no parry, no third tick from anyone - all of which can happen. You're already over the cap - anything that can theoretically kill you in 2.0 seconds should be considered unhealable. You can use oh-shit abilities for this situation, but again, we're gambling because you're ignoring beams, parries, and additional FA ticks. Even a vile beam is going to be killer.
The one time I tried using 0 SR this exact scenario happened - unfortunately this was a while ago and the WWS of the experience expired (I have the URL if that matters for anyone who can extract the old log) - but we had 0 deaths at 20% and I needlessly died to beam + FA in under a second.
So in 0 SR (I know its really 70):
Max burst in 2.0 seconds ~ 40.9k (22k from SR) - maybe a few resists for 37-41ish
In MAX SR in 2.0 seconds ~ 25k (~6k from SR) - maybe less resists for 27-29ish
Let's also remember that overall a tank will take anywhere between 10 and 30% of the total damage from shadow damage. Knocking your damage down anywhere from 7 to 21% of the total from 3-4 epics?
Now I know these burst numbers seem absurd, but they can and will eventually happen. But it is mostly about how you are so far beyond dead in the "worst case" scenario with 0 SR that even if it isn't remotely a worst-case you are still going to die more than you should. Since increasing my SR I personally have not died outside of offtanks being ported.
Your job as a tank is to decrease your chance of being gibbed instantly - a 0 SR tank is like an avoidance tank with low HP. You're sacrificing "armor" (in this case resist gear, guaranteed reduction of damage - and yes it IS guaranteed to not get a 0 resist past like 180ish SR, and the odds for 25% go to almost nothing beyond that). You sacrifice that "armor" (SR) for avoidance... its just a stupid tanking mistake. The mob will eventually get lucky, and it is YOUR fault you weren't wearing enough HP/armor[SR]. In this case your HP cannot compensate for the loss of SR mitigation in even a semi-bad scenario.
Further, I'm fairly certain the overall fight mitigation is lower in 0 SR.
In a recent WWS with only 205 SR, I mitigate off 9% of the total damage she put out on me. This could readily be increased to 13.5% reduction with the gear I wear now.
At the time, that 205 SR was achieved by wearing 3 pieces of gear, losing less than 100 armor, and roughly 2% dodge. At about 50% avoidance that is roughly a 4% improvement in damage reduction - not even remotely close to what I gained from the SR. This becomes worse with a druid by just over 1000 hp... read: the RNG has 1000 more ways to get lucky on you as a druid in 0 SR. Once you theoretically over-the-top the HP dam you really are on borrowed time - as you get further over you rapidly diminish your chances, regardless of the base.
Using 0 SR is a rather bad idea. Once you get the healing figured out, what kills you is a bad FA port either on the raid (1 camp method) or port on your tank. I can survive a port on me, but its really rough with 220SR. Using 0 I might as well bend over and get ready for it. It's a really dumb risk and if you're smart about it, you don't sacrifice much in stats/avoidance with SR. What pieces of gear do you "need" to not use 3 pieces of SR? I guess it will just take a sub 20% FA port on the tanks to change your mind though. You'll end up telling yourself how much stupid luck that was and realize you could have likely survived it with some resist on.
I would be hesitant to tank her near a wall. If she's against a wall then you've reduced the area she can port to by 50% which doubles the odds of her teleporting to any given space in the open area, where your raid is standing. This sounds like it might be a complex mathematical problem but I have a feeling you don't actually reduce the odds of a melee port by tanking her against the wall.
I see what you're saying, I didn't realize that. In this case you would have one super clump with pretty much the entire raid in it. Still, I don't think putting everyone up against the wall actually reduces your chance for a port on the raid. Like I said, you reduce the available teleport space by 40-50% so you're increasing the odds of any spot in the open area getting a port by an inverse amount. By being up against the wall you reduce the space around the raid by 50% also, so the values should roughly cancel out unless I'm missing some aspects to it. This compared to tanking out in the open with the entire raid standing just outside of silence range would accomplish nearly the same thing no? Except the odds of the port being near a wall are increased, and wall ports tend to be more difficult for people to escape from.
I don't know for a fact what I'm saying is true. I haven't done any calculations or any crazy maths or whatever, but it seems to me to make sense. Just idle theorycraft I suppose as hopefully the nerfstick will be coming will be coming shortly and it will be a non issue. The way I look at is, I think of everything as a circle. The potential teleport area is a circle around Shahraz. The "area of influence" of a port is a circle around where the people get ported. The "area of influence" where the raid gets the effects of a port is a circle around the raid, well actually a circle around any clumps you might be using. Intersection of these circles causes bad results. Putting the circle near a wall cuts off roughly half the circle.
A port on the raid, tank or wall shouldn't kill you.
A tank getting knocked up in the air, tanks without SR getting an FA port ontop of them and or off tanks attacking the boss from the front will.
We survived tanks getting knocked in the air pretty much 75% of the time without SW or whatever, however she decides to get around that by evading and resetting on 8% ~~
We had problems whenever we tanked her near a wall, where it was providing alot of problems when people get teleported to a wall close to either of the groups.
Our safest way sofar was when we had alot of space either side of our ranged group and teleports gave us less issues.
Uh, you definitely are going out of your way to employ the exploit. You probably wait for the druid to get the buff, and before he gets the buff he's probably not lifeblooming because he's waiting for the buff. Then once he gets the buff, he sits there and continues to keep the buff rolling while the raid gets into its shadow resist. Then you skip getting your shadow resist, despite the fact that it's better on the fight, and it would take you about 2 minutes to get it, as you've killed Illidan and could hearth to Shat then port yourself back. I also don't understand how you're going to argue that it doesn't trivialize the tank healing on the fight. Looking at your own WWS, you take 500k melee damage and the druid has 480k effective healing on you. He basically healed you by himself. The Lifebloom is also going to be more consistant than any other possible healing and is going to keep you up through the burst better than anything else.
That's a lot of probably.
We didn't kill the trash any differently than usual. This was the first time that Druid used the Dementia's Lifebloom and without Dementia'd lifebloom he typically puts about 300k healing into me. The 480k you quote isn't effective, its pure output. We still ran with 2 full time healers on me, no different than usual, except one had less effective healing than usual. And you're right, I coulda gone back to get my SR gear but part of me wanted to try the fight with just the SR buff and like I said, i was tired as hell that night and just wanted to be done raiding ASAP.
I could really care less if they take Dementia'd Lifebloom out, the fight might go back to taking more than one attempt, but in 2.2 it will be even easier than it is now with Dementia'd Lifebloom. For the sake of my repair bills and moderating my frustration with Blizzard I hope we keep using Dementia until they take it out.
BTW-This thread has a bunch of WWS I've posted for this fight if you'd care to provide something more than conjecture in your future posts.
Commenting on maintanking her and the use of shadow resistance:
I've tried everything from almost capped, to nothing at all while tanking her,and concluded the best setup to be my normal tanking gear, with threat items replaced for shadowres items(f.ex. BT neck instead of Karathress/RoS neck).
Linking data from 2 kills to show the difference in damage taken. Top one with around 150 sres buffed, and second one with around 315 buffed:
We tried that wall positioning one day and it was awful for us. Shahraz would consistently decide to attack me while being out of melee range, and we got more bad ports than we ever did in the center (on the raid, in corners, on the wall, in couches, though I think in couches could be changed by moving back a bit)
As I've geared up to ridiculous levels for the fight, tank healing has become all but a joke, I used to drop sub 1k a few times a kill, this last kill I don't think I dropped under 5k once, including a couple ports near me (219 SR because I'm not risking it)
We have had a few times when I've been punted and lashed, but I think it was once while learning, once sometime a while back, and once two weeks ago, the one two weeks ago was the only really frustrating time since it was at like 20% on what would have been a kill. (Side note I parried the lash on knockback at 10% the next pull for a kill) Maybe we had the wrong spot on the wall but slow attrition from someone being a retard seemed to be a bigger issue than what comes down to a very rare occurance of me getting gibbed in the air.
Your math for proving that SR on tanks is sound, if your only goal is to not wipe when people get ported on the tanks. From several peoples experience with that spot, including ours, people just don't get ported onto that spot often enough to warrant me potentially dying from the myriad of other things I have otherwise lived through because I was not wearing shadow resist gear. I've eaten at least 4 19-20k lashes without dying in our attempts when OT's were ported or knocked or when I got knocked myself and stuck up on the wall for 10s because I was bad at camera angles. I've lived with <1k hp 2-3 times as well when all of my healers were ported or silenced or whatever reason. Most of those narrow escapes would have been a wipe if I put on even 3 pieces of SR gear, as I'd lose well over 1k hp and several % avoidance. Warriors clearly don't lose as much from SR gear as druids do though.
The way I see the fight in it's current form, there are a number of things that will wipe the raid regardless of how you play. People getting ported on tanks with no SR is far less common then a number of other things that are being avoided without SR, so we just eat a wipe when it happens (only once in maybe 50 so far) and laugh it off.
Just for reference, we have used three snake traps at all times while learning the encounter to give people more chance to get used to it without wiping us repeatedly. It's much easier to get your bearings your first port when it's just 2 of you. I'm currently at 24-25k buffed depending on what I wear and while the damage is definitely increased, it's been worth it for more time spent learning to handle FA rather then recovering from a leash/wipe. If I ever die from standard incoming damage, I might change my mind but right now snakes are a useful learning tool.
The other thing is, due to the changes of the beams and FA next patch there is even less need for SR on the tanks, so why bother crafting them for 2 more people now who won't need it later if you are hurting for hearts as it is. Of course, by the time the patch actually comes out we'll have more hearts then we know what to do with and the point will be mute, but for guilds getting to her just now it's semi-valid.
Using snakes and no SR on tanks has in my opinion hastening our learning the boss in the time spent and lowered the total time spent to kill her.
Personally I'm never comfortable with a strat that has a basic "you lose" chance. 0 SR means you lose if you get a 3-port on the MT, pretty much. I'm not really sure why you wouldn't use at least some SR as a warrior. The gear is ilvl 130 and has high stamina. You perhaps lose a bit of avoidance but in many cases unless you somehow have full BT/Hyjal tank gear in every slot you may be gaining armor and breaking even on hp by using SR. A few % lower avoidance isn't going to make or break your attempt, but 230ish SR vs. 0 is a massive difference.
But eh, whatever works for you. If you can walk in and one-shot the fight every week, then keep doing what you're doing. If not, then maybe you should consider some tweaks.
As a warrior yes, as a druid you lose thousands of armor and at least 1k hp, and some amount of avoidance which I really don't care about.
If I lose that much armor, we may as well change to a warrior tank since half the benefit of me tanking is freeing up the shamans to spam chain heal without worrying about ancestral fort.
I'm not comfortable with any strat that has any "you lose" factor in it either, but I'm also not comfortable learning a boss that is so horribly designed that every single aspect of the fight is about to be changed any day now. Granted I've been saying that for almost two months, and had we gotten to Shahraz sooner then a week ago I would probably have a different opinion.
If I saw tanks needing SR even after patch, then we'd just switch to a warrior tank and give him SR, but the inability to be hit by beams and the heavily nerfed FA damage won't be harmful to a tank then even without any SR.
The benefit from having me tank far outweighs the occasional "you lose" factor that is present without a warrior SR tank until next patch. This is of course assuming the patch is around the corner. It's really just a gamble that it will come out soon.
As a warrior yes, as a druid you lose thousands of armor and at least 1k hp, and some amount of avoidance which I really don't care about.
Your math is wrong or you are using the wrong pieces of shadow resist gear.
Looking at your armory if you used neck/cloak/bracers like most MTs are suggesting you'd actually gain stamina and maybe lose 1000 armor. 1000 armor vs +135 shadow resist the choice is obvious. Its not just FA ports she sinful beams the fuck out of the MT too sometimes.
You're right sometimes you get lucky and don't need it, but when the tradeoff is so small (much smaller than you make it out to be) you really should be doing it.
P.S. Post a WWS of the kill when you get the chance I'm interested to compare overall damage, average melee hits, etc
First of all, your experiences don't seem to be even close to mine. I see FA ports on or near the tank FAR more often than I take single tank lashes. I've only ever once had a 1 tank lash that wasn't our fault or from being knocked in the air. With no snake traps and no OT's attacking her melee is rarely that close to fatal, and I'm somewhat curious how often your "live with 1k hp" scenario's involve either a beam or a FA not on you but near enough that you take damage. I did a quick armory though and could see how you'd have to lose a good bit to get SR on since you appear to be just barely crit immune, so you'd have to swap other items to get defense, which is a much bigger reason not to wear it.
I'd also suggest wearing SR after the patch as well, and probably will myself, because it's still additional burst on the tank in a fight that can still hurt in melee (even a reduced damage port combo'd with a melee/lash/melee is going to hurt)
09/17/07, 11:48 AM
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