Gormal

We've been breezing through BT and Hyjal never spending more than 2 nights on a boss, which on a sever where we're the only BT guild means we've got a huge heart shortage. Rather than waste time in TK, we opted to use what hearts we had and see how well we could do. 4 attempts later and she was down with the whole raid confused about why it was billed to be so hard. Most of us snagged some green SR stuff and had the neck, cloak, and 2 crafted pieces, leaving the majority of the raid hovering around 300 on average. Our third attempt went smoothly too, until FA targets decided to go cuddle in a corner at the end, so I'm curious if we were just incredibly lucky or what? I'd love to repeat the kill next week, but being the pessimist I am, forsee us wiping all night and chalking this kill up luck with how much trouble most guilds have.

We used the 1-camp strategy.

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• Anarkii

The first half(or more) of this thread was about pre-nerf Shahraz. I don't think any guild which can kill RoS and Gurtogg and has enough hearts finds the current version hard.

 

Pyros

We're on the same train really, and while we wiped a few times, it was mostly to bad tank positionning resulting in our MT getting 16k saberlashed, and then a few "real" tries where people would need to understand fatal attraction. Downed her in around 6tries counting the instant mt deaths, as long as you have the SR, the start you use doesn't seem to affect your chances to kill her at all. We used the 1group strat too, and had an attraction on the raid at around 25%, still managed just fine, even tho quite a lot of people died. I doubt she'll last more than a few pulls next week either, just need to get the whole tanking thing going then she's down pretty much, unless you get 3 or more FA on the raid.

 

Cardynal

You only need 300 sr to do this fight. We got it the first night in 4 tries...but we've had some nights where FA lands ontop of the tanks multiple times in a row...making it impossible to keep them up. Also...some people seem to have a harder time knowing what to do when they get FA than others.

 

Musa

My guild is currently on Gurtogg and our way to mum shahraz.
I would like confirmation about this 300 SR requirement (only? oO). Is it buffed or unbuffed.
As a rogue I don't know which enchantment to add to my complete SR set. If 300 is enough, I'll go for damage enchants, if not, I'll go for Shadow Armour kits...
I understand there will be various opinion. I want to be on the safe side.

 

Gormal

It wouldn't be very complete would it without all of the crafted pieces... and that would put you at the cap. Toss 15 shadow resist on your cloak, and go for normal enchants on the rest and you'll break 300 (buffed) with 2 crafted items and a shadow protection green.

 

Viv

Resistance cap against a lvl 73 mob is at 365 buffed, which corresponds to 295 unbuffed. Cardynal meant 300 buffed, naturally.
Note that the chromatic flask counts towards your unbuffed value, stacking fully with the priest/paladin shadow resist buff.

A lot depends on your raid composition: you can get away with lower raidwide SR if you can bring 4+ carpet-healers like resto shamans or CoH priests. But if you don't have that luxury, I wouldn't slack on preparation

 

Juelz

Tigole posted the following on Feb 22. 2008

 

Xei

Capped SR on the whole raid makes the encounter a total cake walk. Since she has been fixed to not be so "insta-gibby" most guilds with max SR on everyone (bar MT) kill her within a few pulls.

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JuhnorX

One thing i would seriously stress to guilds moving forward to Mother is to wait with the crafting of SR until you know who will be there on the kill night. Don't make the mistake we originally did 3 months ago and craft items too soon, there is a possibility some will leave with your hard earnt HoDs, or don't turn up on the night, delaying your progress severely.

We waited and waited, and after killing RoS and Bloodboil we gathered for 15 minute break while we crafted all items for the current raid setup.

All 25 recieved all SR items but legs and then we proceeded to one-shot her.

We used 2 camps, one either side of her and no-one died.

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Luminair

This was essentially what we did on our first kill, but because we'd crafted some items for a few people, had some random haste gear made, ect, there were a few of us with less than 300SR; I myself around 250, if not less, buffed - basically incredibly low, with no greens of Shadow Resistance to cover my ass. I'm already a mage and a complete glass cannon, so I just offset the differences with my S3 gear for the most part. It was still quite healing intensive, and during our 1st attempt I ended up getting gibbed because we didn't realize just how fast we'd have to get away from one another - we ended up killing her on the 3rd try I believe, 1 camp strategy.

The following week, we managed to hit a bizzarely lucky streak clearing Hyjal and doing trash up to Mother herself, and ended up with something to the effect of 25 hearts; it was asinine. At that point, everyone in the raid was SR capped, and it absolutely trivialized the fight. Once you can figure out how to get away from your raid members quickly enough, you will win - plus, it's good training for elements in the Council and Illidan fights too (Blizzard/Flamestrike, Parasites, Flame Crash, ect).

 

Zurgat

On the second day of attempts we managed to kill her. The fight isn't too hard once your raid members manage to run away after a teleport fast enough.

Mother Shahraz - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
Wikipedia lists a few (rather incomplete) strategies for positioning. Three groups or one group.
We tried for a full two hours using the three group strategy and got her to about 19%

Three groups setup:
Initially this seemed like a good way to do the fight. Beams should affect less players, and if you get an unlucky teleport it should affect only one of the 4 player camps.
This setup proved to be rather ineffective however. There wasn't really any place to run, wherever you went you'd always blow up other people with the 3K/sec AoE. Especially the tanks took a lot of that "running player" Aoe which caused some wipes. And to make things worse, the boss' ability saber lash is 20 yards in front of her and was also killing players.

We came up with a variation
This took care of the Saber lash related deaths, but we still had problems with people getting away from other groups in a clean fashion.

A few people mentioned that the beams did not appear to have a maximum range, so we switched to a single group setup.
This resulted in a kill for us after a few attempts.


Points of notice
Saber lash only seems to hit the players "behind" the main tank.
If either of the two offtanks are standing in front of the main tank, they will not be affected and the main tank can be killed quite fast.
Still, there were times when for some unknown reason the main tank still got more damage than usual just after the pull.
There are some reports mentioning that the offtanks should try to get in to combat with the boss by throwing a dagger or using moonfire before she reaches the MT. This seems to work rather average.
Our MT has a [Tiny Voodoo Mask] which he frequently uses as his mascots, on this fight however they are life savers.
He equips the mask, summons the gnomes, then equips his usual trinket. The gnomes remain active contrary to default behaviour of other trinkets. And the gnomes will eat up one of the saber lash hits.

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◊ Bryne

You answered your own question here, didn't you? Yes, the OTs need to be engaged with her. It's also possible that your OTs are standing out of position - we've never had any problems with just parking them directly on top of the MT (bears should have the tank somewhere around their front paws).

 

Grayson Carlyle

Also, if your MT is a Tauren, have him pop a [Savory Deviate Delight] prior to the pull. We recently found out that saber lashes wouldn't split properly because of the hitbox sizes of our 3 tanks...

 

khel

Seriously, if you are still working on Mother Shahraz, just have 2 groups stack up on each other. One melee group, one ranged dps group. The entire raid should equip battlemaster's trinkets, and have healthstones and healthpots available. We put both groups on the same wall so that when people get ported, there is plenty of room to spread out. If there is a bad port near the melee or ranged group, then everyone simply uses one of their survival cooldowns, the dps bandages back up, and proceed with the fight.

3 paladin healers on the main tank, 1 resto druid with hots rolling on all 3 tanks, 1 priest and 1 shaman healing people who get ported and raid healing otherwise, 1 shaman chain healing the melee, 1 shaman chain healing the ranged.

More complicated strategies can often prove to be more effective if everyone performs their jobs correctly, but to minimize the "retard-factor", K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid) is really the best way to approach new encounters imo.

Two groups, both on the same wall, stacked up to maximize raid healing and nobody linking the groups in the center.

 

Mideci

My guild has a significant "moron factor" a lot of the time. It took us four pulls to kill Shahraz last night. In other words, she died on our 4th try ever. We really should've had it on the first try but someone chained too much damage through the tanks at 30%.

We used 3 "camps". Right side in front of the tanking area, left side in front of the tanking area, and one group behind melee. We encouraged the teleported healer not to move if they were the only teleported healer. People died.

This fight is so ridiculously easy compared to almost everything else in BT, including the very easy Supremus, the easier-every-week Akama, etc. etc. If you are really struggling on Shahraz and you've gotten that far, you have almost certainly over-engineered the fight.

 

Harne

From my experience, the difficulty depends almost entirely on how much SR you have. Our first partial night of pulls we probably averaged around 250 SR that was hastily crafted up right before the attempts and had a hard time surviving FAs. On our second night everyone was much closer to capped by adding a few greens and some enchants and it was no problem at all, with only a couple wipes and those caused by tank deaths. Our strategy was the same as the first night (one ranged camp), but the reduced damage taken made all the difference.

In response to a post earlier about Tauren tanks, the only problem I had with saber lash was on one pull where she insta-gibbed me. After that we had the other tanks (an undead warrior and a blood elf pally) be sure to do something to get on her aggro table as she was running over and didn't have any more problems.

 

Mideci

Sorry, let me be crystal clear, we were 24/25 capped. All but our MT. We've been working our way through Hyjal and BT quite efficiently in our opinions, but had almost precisely the necessary complement of hearts to get everyone bracers/cloak/belt/boots (of course, everyone had the medallion, minus one recent returnee who chromatic wonder flasked):

For everyone to get capped, we encouraged the following tweaks to gear (to get to 295 before priest buff):

* Shadow armor kits to boots (8 resist)
* Kara shoulder glyph on older shoulders (7)
* Shadow helm glyph (20) on tier 4 helm
* Void spheres (4) on offspec item if it made sense
* One green ring of shadow resist (15-19)
* Gift of Arthas (10)
* Brolled Bloodfin (8)

Basically people needed to find 67 shadow resist in addition to the basic pieces of gear, 10-15 of which was the cloak enchant. That left 57 more to come up with.

"Gimping" the dps or healing in this manner left us with absolutely plenty of dps to beat the enrage and running 9 healers made healer a complete non-issue. YMMV, but get the SR gear and collect your epics, is my advice.

 

Danzig

We've downed mother handfull of times now, but it seems sheer luck whether or not its a wipe.

-Several attempts, the MT took two melee hits and a saber lash consecutively and down he went. Bad luck avoidance?? 32% dodge 21% parry, 535 defense to boot, with scorpid sting up and swarm... just why? Each hit is about 9K, having 19K armor before any buffs plus pally aura. Yes, a lucky timing holy light from a pally might have saved it, or a last stand if it wasnt on cooldown but this happens regularly and very, very quickly. Too many times.

-Two attempts FA landed right on top of the three tanks; both times one of the OT's died. Bad FA on tanks plus a saber lash means one dies.

-Three attempts, FA right in the middle of the raid "ball" thats hiding in a bundle up against the wall, too many died to recover, especially if its after a beam that just landed.

Thats what.... 8 tries to down Mom? This is rediculous. Especially when you read "Mother down, 3 tries lol" and "wow so easy" and other learn2play comments. Its aggravating.

Maybe its the strat. The "raid ball" strat is based on whether or not your lucky, and FA is/isnt in the middle of the ball. But it happens ALL THE TIME. More than I'd call "bad luck". In fact, it seems almost pure luck whether or not she dies. Heh.

Also, we use the mother mod. I cant decide if this is good or bad. Without the mod, too many people dont spread enough and they die. With the mod, people get sent to the raid ball, or the latency of the 3 causes the group to not get symbols for 2 seconds or so. Standing there doing nothing for several seconds waiting for an arrow causes people to die. I love how when FA occurs theres sometimes a big lag spike after teleport and people took ticks already before their toon moves.

 

saintryan

In my opinion the key to sharaz is staying alive. As a shadowpriest I find that's hard enough as it is.
So hitting that SR is essential, even if that means a few green items, be stocked up heavy on those potions / healthstones and then just do as you normally do as a caster and cast.
It's not that hard a fight.. but the staying alive for some people can be a pain.

 

Harwin

Ports into the raid ball have of course gotten easier for us as we've geared up, since T6 adds a bunch of stamina. I'd just recommend that people be ready to slam healthstones immediately if there's a port into the ball - buys you another tick for people to get out.

Other than that we had the experience you described on many of our kills. 2-shot the very first time, with 24 people, and then a bunch of wipes on the next couple of kills.

 

Chack

Sorry for resurrecting an old topic, but I have a question regarding the 3.0 Mother:

My guild basically started Hyjal and BT about 6 weeks ago so we do not have enough SR gear. We have about 6 people (healers) with the full set (apart from legs) and maybe 10 more people (mana users) with cloak and bracers only. Most of us do not have the SR neck as we are full of alts and rerollers.

We have enough hearts to make everyone else Cloak and Bracers. This little amount of SR will hardly make a difference tho i fear. From the official WoW forums i saw some people writing that they used no SR at all and just zerged her down (after 3.0). I estimate from wearing no SR gear at all, due to new talents and the hp reduction you can maybe kill her in one quarter of the time it usually takes (theoretically, if you have everyone alive for the whole fight).

I saw a strat where everyone just stands close enough to mother so nobody gets hit by the beams. This sounds like a good strategy for a zero SR raid? I guess it will take being lucky with FA. Another option is using the hearts we have to make max SR gear for the ranged dps only and use the 1 ranged 1 mele group setup. Spending up to 8k gold on hearts for a bosses we might kill only twice seems a bit of a waste to me

 

Duilliath

We did her yesterday. Most of the people hadn't brought any SR gear or only the cloak and necklace (which is what I used).

You can have a Jewelcrafter make the necks if you want to, but we really didn't do much different than normal in terms of positioning. I would still use some SR if this is going to be your first kill. She died fast for us, but you might want a bit more DPS than you have, or a bit more survivibility. You can't fix the first bit easily, you can sort the other.

Your healers will probably be bored anyway, it might be fun for them to actually have something to heal.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Bonemage

We ran an in guild pug that was 1/3-1/2 socials and alts with little or no SR gear and little or no BT expereince, did a 3 camp startegy, both OT's had SR gear and while it was sloppy, about half the raid down at the end we managed to kill her.

 

Asmodeaan

My Guild recently did her (post-3.0). We had all killed her many times before so the experience was there. We wore no SR gear, 5 healers, and burned her. With ~4 deaths we killed her. You should be fine with minimal SR gear.