Anthion

Why? Just do it as intended, if you can get to mother and have the SR requirements this fight should not be much trouble. We didn't get to her pre-nerf so I didn't get to experience the "HARD" version, but we 2-shot her for our first kill.

 

Tyrian

This fight is a big let down, imo. To quote someone after our first kill, 'We just wear our SR and Shahraz falls over after 6 minutes'. No real sense of accomplishment lbecause the fight demands very little (now, I cant comment on old versions) except from 'run away when you get fa ported, lol'. Its a innovative mechanic idea, but implemented into what makes for a very bland fight imo.

The only thing I found myself doing on Shahraz was being bored spamming Fireball and amusing myself as people with FA scatter , trying to survive. At least Illidari council, despite being too long.. kept me on my toes the whole time with a myriad of things I need to look out for.

 

Vazu

Went in for our first actual attempts on her this evening and she got 3-shotted. Really, it was 2-shotted. The first wipe was just bad positioning on the tanks part for Saber Lashes. The second wipe was people figuring out how FA worked. Beyond that, everyone had a shadow protection pot to buy them a little more time during FA ports and our third attempt was a kill. This fight is very, very easy with proper resist gear and people who can move immediately after an FA. All the talk about "bring 10 healers to learn it your first time" isn't really very accurate. We had 7 real healers and a prot Paladin.

 

woo-haa

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. FA in it self is not LOSable. The damage from FA is. The beams are also LOSable. With this in mind you could put a group of MT healers out of LOS of beams - Firemaw style. They are still able to be ported, though.

 

Tyrian

Despite several kills, I never realised any of this until you posted it :S However the fight is easy enough I dont think we'll make use of any of those points - but they are fun facts nevertheless.

 

Derrida

You can never be ported to a position that is out of Mother's LOS. You can be ported from a position that is out of Mother's LOS.

 

Vazu

There's really no need to get cute with positioning, LOS or anything fancy. We just stacked all of our ranged DPS and healers on top of each other way against a wall on a bush. Tanked her about 25yds in front of us along the same wall. Reduced the chances FA gets anywhere near the main raid because her possible FA port locations are 90% or more away from 15ish other people. We initially looked at the 3 group strategy and just junked the idea. Why spread out and create more chances for an FA to land on 5 people? Further, Chain Heal is enormously useful here. Just doesn't make sense to do anything but stand on top of each other.

 

Vidofnir

Hello,

I couldn't really find an answer to my question in the last 3-4 page of this thread, if it already has been answered feel free to point me to it.

We just killed Reliquary of Souls a few days ago in 1 night, and we're still running a bit low on Hearts of Darkness. In other words: we dont have enough to provide an entire raid with the full crafted epic resistance set. I understand wearing capped SR on all non-tanks makes this encounter quite easy these days, so that's what were aiming for for our first kill. I also read that its wiser to have the MT wear his normal tanking gear, he will take more damage from the beams, but he will take less damage from melee hits and Saber Lashes. My question is though: what do the 2 Offtanks use? SR-gear or their own gear? Im guessing SR-gear, but i wasnt totally sure. They are immune to FA, but will still get hit by all the other beams except the one with the lowest damage.

Another aspect i have been wondering about is positioning. My current plan is to have her tanked against a wall and have the raid stand approx. 25 yards behind her also against the same wall, so the chance of the FA porting people near the raid is 50% smaller. Exactly like someone suggested a few posts above this. Is this the most common strategy? Or are there positions that make more sense. I want the whole (ranged) raid on top of each other, to get maximum potential from Chain Heal and Circle of Healing. I know that if FA ports into the raid we're kind of screwed, but the same thing happens when you have 3 groups and it only makes the chance of FA porting into a group bigger.

Also, any clues on what the cooldown of Fatal Attraction is? Or isnt there one and is it used on completely random timers?

Any help and feedback to these questions is greatly appreciated.

 

• Kalroth

Maximum SR (295 unbuffed) and maximum health/avoidance. You don't need 490 defense to eat Saber Lash, only the MT does. And they aren't immune to FA from other players, so you do want them to have max SR.

We got MT/OTs on the left side (when facing her) against the wall. We got the rest of the raid (minus melee dps obviously) on the right side, on the corner of a pond. We killed her in three pulls (first pull was tank death at 99%) using this position.

Also regarding the HoDs. Don't make the leggings, they're too expensive. Currently we're making cloak/bracers and boots only and we use green gear to make up for the rest. Eventually we'll make belts too, but we won't bother with leggings at all.

 

gody

I just heard from somebody that FA can be LOS targeted,some laser can be avoid by LOS either.
Via our recent experience, those can't be LOS totally... But LOS still have advantage on FA port which won't influence healer in LOS position.

 

khel

After reading through this thread, I am walking away with this general idea as the best strategy for taking on Mother Shahraz:

Position in a straight line, on either the left or right wall.

Try to get everyone except the tanks to 295 unbuffed shadow resist. Hopefully a raid that is lacking HoD's can kill this boss with resist flasks, and shadow protection pots, with the majority of the raid at 300SR fully buffed. Offtanks should just stand in the proper position without attacking to avoid unnecessary parries. Tanks don't 'need' to cap SR, but a healthy base amount (150ish buffed) is nice.

Nothing conclusive about trying to keep 4 totems down per shaman at all times, or the use of snake traps. I personally think that if the hunter drops the trap at the farthest back edge of the hitbox so that the snakes don't run around to the front (and the boss doesn't move) that there is no reason *not* to use snake traps unless it is shown that they don't help with the transports.

Have the entire raid use WoWInterface Downloads : MotherArrows at least for the first few kills. I really don't see how mindlessly following the arrows each time could ever really hurt, even though it may not always be the best choice. Even if you run into the raid, the other two are guaranteed to run elsewhere, so damage should be minimal.



For healing assignments, we will probably start with 2 holy pallies and a holy priest on the main tank, a resto druid keeping lifebloom rolling on all 3 tanks, a holy priest on Fatal Attraction duty using PoM and healing people who get ported, and three resto shamans raid healing and helping with offtanks. And of course adjust from there.




Thanks to everyone for the advice, and if anything that I wrote seems terribly off please let me know.

 

Broxx

Lifebloom on the offtanks isn't really necessary. One shaman chain healing the melee/tanks is usually enough if the main target of the chain heal if an off tank for them to live.

 

Nuveena

Forget Shadow Protection Potions. And if you keep your ranged group all in one pile, then 365 buffed on everyone is pretty much mandatory. We split ranged into 3 camps, and use 365 buffed on everyone to keep raid damage under control, though using just 1 group is certainly a common strategy as well. Over all, imo, you somewhat underestimate the need for SR on this encounter though.

Tanks mostly need SR to avoid dying to unlucky FA's close to the tanking position. We tend to go with some on the MT as well as the OTs (usually about 200 buffed). Use a feral tank btw, makes life so much easier..

Make everyone look for the purple beams linking the 2-3 people with FA. If they run so that those beams exit through their backs, they are golden (which is the case if each person is running away from each other, when the beams form a triangle pattern). A beam going to your left, right or front is bad news. No mod is actually needed to sort this out. Obviously, lag can make 2 people percieve that they have the beam out of their backs, even when running on top of each other.

 

Tyrian

Lifebloom is so good in these situations where 3-4 people (especially tanks) are taking regular damage. While it might not be necessary, guilds would be silly to not be taking advantage of it.

 

khel

Why forget shadow protection potions if the raid doesn't have enough hod's to get everyone up to 365? For a first kill, I am trying to predict what is necessary to scrape by and get the kill. The 1 ranged group strategy seems to be the easiest to understand for learning the fight and except in the occasional bad port onto the raid, minimizes overall dmg we take. I know it leaves a bit to the RNG, but going in with less than optimal SR it sounds like we'll be a bit dependant on the RNG to drop her.


Our MT warrior and our best feral tank have about the same hp...within 500hp of each other. Based on my experiences and the opinions from most in the thread, in our situation anyway, I think we are going to stick with our warrior MT as he can shield wall and last stand in those "oh shit" scenarios.


Good tip thanks.

 

Tenacious

Atleast dps classes can use green SR stuff if they need it to get maxed SR because enrage timer isn't really a problem.

 

Nuveena

If you don't have at least 6X25 HoD's (+ a boe SP item / person), then you'd be better off farming trash until you have them, which you can do with ~10 people off hours. Using up peoples potion cooldowns on shadow protection potions doesn't strike me as a very good idea. And no, the way you propose to stand minimizes the chance of a FA on top of the raid, but as a consequence, you will take 3X the raid damage compared to standing in 3 groups (all her raid damage attacks link to nearby people).

On MS, there is really no movement involved, unless you get FA, so any arbitrarily chosen way of standing is equally simple. FA on top the raid is, in my experience rarely a problem, as they all have 75% mitigation it's very rare for anyone to die to it, with the changed FA. But see how your healer mana holds up with the raid damage, never said one way of standing is superior to another. Our healers just felt their job was easier when we split up into 3 groups, compared to standing in one spot.

The advantage of a feral tank is that the feral will be at his/her armor cap, thus making the damage spikes less dangerous, whereas the warrior relies more on dodge/parrry/miss and with that, at times, the dice will end up badly landing a pretty huge damage spike on the tank. Add someone with FA nearby and it is usually a wipe. A MH+OH+Lash combo with ~65% armor reduction is a totally different thing to the same attacks with a 75% mitigation. Last Stand and Shield Wall is nice, but not ideal for this fight. Here are two example of the difference in mitigation:

20:02'14.515 Mother Shahraz's Saber Lash hits Krezalyz for 8489 {Paladin OT}
20:02'14.515 Mother Shahraz's Saber Lash hits Olbrok for 9600 {Warrior OT}
20:02'14.515 Mother Shahraz's Saber Lash hits Shayelee for 7062 {Feral MT}

20:02'22.593 Mother Shahraz's Saber Lash hits Krezalyz for 10110
20:02'22.609 Mother Shahraz's Saber Lash hits Olbrok for 9048 (444 blocked)
20:02'22.609 Mother Shahraz's Saber Lash hits Shayelee for 6691

 

Touf

Think of it this way: 300SR is 60% more damage taken than 365 SR. It's probably possible to heal through it now, but why risk it?

Oh, and don't be misled, Shadow Protection potions are really really nice to have. It's just less important than capped SR.

 

◊ vorpalblade

I have to respectfully disagree with a couple things here. First off, a Major Shadow prot pot can be a lifesaver on a poorly placed FA port. As long as people spread out quickly, FA Damage is minimized, but having that option available is very important in my opinion. The general philosophy that we use is to do EVERYTHING in your power to survive. Sure, you aren't REQUIRED to chug a pot and an HS on an FA like old-timey shahraz, and you probably wouldn't even need one every time, but don't discount the amount of survival a major shadow pot can provide to each of your raid members.

As for the Warrior vs Druid argument, it's been covered extensively earlier in the thread, and it's more of a toss up than you make it out to be. Yes, your druid will absolutely take somewhat lower spike damage in general, even though it will generally turn out to be more damage OVERALL in the fight than an equivalently geared warrior would take (As has been shown in WWS logs earlier in this thread). Still, there's something weird and abnormally high about the saber lash numbers you listed.

For one thing, It's misleading to look at a single saber lash across three tanks, and use that damage as a comparison for how much damage each of those players would be taking from saber lash as an MT, since the gear you wear while OTing is VERY different than the gear worn while MTing. As a warrior MT for this fight, my saber lashes are around 7k to 7.5k.. I've occasionally seen the odd 8k+ saber lash, but those are typically few and far between.

Either way, the trade off is that while your Warrior MT may possibly take somewhat more spike damage, he or she can also survive longer without a heal in the event of a triple-healer port, or a badly located port on top of the raid... so it really depends on a judgement call on the part of the raid. Our experience has been generally that warriors are more appropriate MT's for Mother, while Druids are better suited to OT's, for their superior armor mitigation while at capped SR. Clearly, for this revision of mother, the tank classes are pretty much interchangeable, and you can still easily be successful in the fight...but the ability to shield wall, last stand, and use potions (in our experience, at least) has proved to far outweigh the disadvantage of any additional spike damage the warrior MT might take. Of course, each raid must weigh the disadvantages carefully and use the tank that best fits their raid composition, style, and gear level, so I don't believe there is a clear cut choice of tank class that shines above all others in this fight for every raid.

 

Nuveena

I didn't really say Shadow Protection potions shouldn't be used at all, but rather that you shouldn't cover lack of SR gear with potion usage. That would, among other things, take away the benefit of having an "oh shit" potion for FA, like you describe

As for the choice of tank; Sabre Lash caps out at ~85,000 damage (before armor mitgation and spread on tanks). This is a bit quickly calculated, but I recon the OH is ~20,000 and the MH ~32,000 before mitigation. So, the maximum peak damage you can take for a warrior (65% mitigation) is: (85,000/3)*0.35+20,000*0.35+32,000*0.35 = ~28,000 damage (-1,000 for 2 SBs). For a druid at the armor cap, the same number ends up as 20,000 damage. Now, a well geared warrior tank with an armor potion would likely end up at closer to 70% mitigation, so wouldn't risk being one shotted, but imho the difference is quite significant with the typical warrior tank ending up uncomfortably close to the limit of what he or she can take in one go. We certainly had quite a lot of wipes due to the tank just dropping dead from a lash+MH+OH combo when we started off on MS. It seemed like the dice ended up with at an average one really high damage tripple combo killing them / fight.

As for who takes more overall damage over the whole fight, yeah, that is pretty trivial to work out, but does it matter? The average DPS on the MT isn't actually that high on MS, around 2,000, but she is able to deliver quite silly spike damage. Nothing in TBC raid content has really been capped by available healer mana. So where peak damage is an issue, we go with a feral tank, the job for the healers is much more relaxed when the tank doesn't drop to 5% every so often.. As a warrior who used to tank through MC => Naxx, TBC has been quite a dissappointment with bosses designed to favour bear tanks (see how many warriors use dodge & parry gems in their gear over stamina..) apart from the odd few actually untankable by druids (Illidan, RoS, etc). Hence why I specced damage for this expansion. I keep hoping WotLK will favour something else than armor and stamina on tanks.

But, the whole unholy trinity of bear tanks, shadow priests and spike damage is somewhat outside the scope of this topic, sorry for digressing

 

khel

Regarding her beams linking to nearby people...is there a maximum range that they will not link across? If each group is 20 yards apart...the beams won't link between groups?

 

Esg876

Guild is gonna try her this Sunday for the first time, just have a few questions. For SR, we are having the 2 offtanks capped and everyone else sitting around 320-350 raid buffed, with a few members capped. MT will wear full tanking gear and the two offtanks are feral. Is 0 SR on the MT a good idea?, I know a FA port +saber on him might cause an insta gib, or is this rare enough that simply saving last stand or shield wall should fix it? To hit the 365 cap, is it worth having everyone wear 1-2 greens of shadow protection since I have heard the difference between 330 to 365 is like night and day in terms of damage migration.

For the fight, is the positioning shown above where you tank her on a wall and have the ranged 25 yards down the same wall the best idea to learn it? This seems to increase the area people can get FA to and reduces the risk of them landing on the Ranged or MT group. Also if shadow protection potions are saved until we have a FA land on the group, how much stupid is allowed for the FA runners if they land on the group? Also from reading the posts it seems totems (maybe snakes) are valid targets for FA but immune to port, just wanted to confirm it.

Finally, regarding her trash. How many people do you need to successfully farm it, as well as the ideal minimum group setup(tanks/heals/dps, have access to a prot pally). The aoe packs seem to MC quite a bit, however not sure if its interruptible. In a full clear we only received two from a sister of pain and a priestess, was this just bad luck on our part or are the drops just over hyped?

Also, we spent about 3 hours learning and killing bloodboil and ROS this week, given this should we expect a mother kill Sunday (4-5 hours of raiding) and maybe even a council kill on Monday if we do get her?

 

◊ vorpalblade

That doesn't account for defensive stance, but it doesn't matter; You're still right and I still agree with you that a bear will take lower spike damage. That can't really be argued. My difference of opinion is this: Your choice of tank is just determining which kind of "worst case scenario" your raid intends to plan for.

If a bear or a warrior take the peak hits decscribed above (which I think are perhaps a bit on the high side for her melee attacks, unless the boss isn't debuffed at ALL, I suppose), they can both be brought down to a health range in which the next hit can kill them if a heal doesn't land. The ability for a warrior to keep himself alive at this point is where he has the advantage, in my opinion.

For us, when learning this fight, the tank getting 1 shotted wasn't ever an issue.. It was bad healer FA ports that caused tank deaths, and a warrior can react to that. If your raid is finding the tank spike damage to be problematic, then a Druid MT may well be a more appropriate solution. As I mentioned before, you can tank Shahraz with any class and still be successful, but if you're learning the fight, you should probably consider the pros and cons of your raid make-up and the gear level of your tanks to best determine the right choice of tank class =) There isn't just one "right answer", since both classes each have their own advantages.

For the situations we found to be troublesome, a warrior tank was the right answer

 

◊ Klasto

You don't need 365 SR if you are going to do this fight with 3 camps, which is pretty easy to do considering you have enough shamans/healers in all 3 groups.Wasting 3 heart of darknesses on legs for whole raid is not a good idea when the fight itself is pretty doable with 6 per person and a bit of tactic, item tweaking/pot using(spare tier 4 heads with 20 SR come into my mind), unless you wanna play it safe and farm the boring trash for ages.

 

Nurru

We didn't make people legs and still used a 1 camp strategy, ymmv.