Klorox

Finally killed her tonight. This fight is too stressful and retarded. Encountered a couple of you lose moments:

ImageShack - Hosting :: parryek0.jpg

Overall it's repeatable, but like people have said, I don't want to do that fight again. Using 2+ ironshields every wipe to have some random shitty luck of FA port on me or FA port on the raid hurts bad. Her getting me down to 1k or so HP makes for some bad moments of panic. Think this is the only encounter in the game where I feel I am helpless in keeping myself alive other than using avoidance trinkets in hopes of some lucky dodges.

We moved our ranged camp from the center of the walkway to the wall behind the couch and it seemed to work a little better for us, although we did end up getting 3 ports on me and 2 on the raid in our next couple of attempts.

Great thing about our night, spent 2 hours attempting her and had 1/5th of our raid D/C with the authentication servers down. 20 minutes later everyone finally came back online and we proceeded to nearly wipe to the trash packs up to her at least 3 times. First pull went perfect and we killed her. Made for some rather confused people looking at how bad we were at trash.

 

Dots

They did use CoR, and on top of that, both offtanks attacked the entire time.
No reason to complain about randomness when they are turning the fight into a lottery.

You would probably be better of just using another stamina trinket, unless you need the defense. The only exception in my opinion is Shadowmoon Insignia, having a good deal of def/dodge and a useful click for when FA victims get ported on you.

 

◊ Quigon

I wouldn't just blame the players here instead of the game. Having offtanks sit there and not attack is poor design. Although granted having them attack is also poor strategy... but both things are kinda dumb.

 

Dots

Totally, and it's good that this is getting addressed. There will always be some flaws and oddities in high-end raids though. If that means it's better to have offtanks not attack, so be it.

The whole parry mechanic still needs to get looked at. It is one thing to get a hasted counter attack, it is another to go on a killing spree with instant hits because of parry chains. Blizzard could, for example, give mobs a minimum delay that will never be passed, no matter how many parries happened in the last second. Additional parries could also queue up a haste buff for upcoming attacks.

 

Klorox

I need the defense trinket. I was using Scarab of Displacement so I could use Praetorian's Legguards. I was running 24% dodge without GoA. I would LOVE the shadowmoon insignia, as I could use that in place of the scarab. It has yet to drop though.

How much shadow resist do you(r) tanks use? I've set the minimum HP I want to be 21k fully buffed. In the experience I've had with her, if she wants you to die you will die. Some combos are just not survivable regardless of how much HP you have outside of last stand. I opted for 200-250 SR buffed and as much avoidance as I could stack. Moroes pocket watch is really nice for the times where my FoL spam pallies got ported. Having a stam trinket in that slot just didn't seem as beneficial as the dodge trinket. To me, 500 more stam didn't outweigh having another oh shit button. The only time she killed me was when I got ported on/parry streaks/shitty combos like my screenshot above.

*edit* Parries can really destroy your attempts in no time. Whether they do something like Dots mentioned or reduce the attack to do 30-50% damage, something needs to be done. I could deal with a 3-4.5k hit from a parry, but having mobs like azgalor/mother who can hit for an insane amount is just heartbreaking. Nothing you can use consumables-wise makes a dent in that sort of damage. One of our attempts last night on mother I had 1 second left on ironshield and she parried a revenge, hit me for 9k in the split second it took me to chug another ironshield followed by a 9k saber lash.

 

Dots

Right now I use 243SR, 17140 HP (cow) and 46,95% total avoidance against level 73, all unbuffed. I generally favor HP over avoidance in this fight, using the Insignia to reach crit cap and DC: Vengeance.
365 SR might be better, I never tried it because I haven't crafted the legs. This setup works well as it is, so unless there is evidence that capped SR is much better, I don't plan on wasting all those mats.

 

Klorox

I think I was sitting at 47.11% avoidance with 15934HP unbuffed. SR for our attempts I've always gone low (219 buffed) and I've done fine. Healers didn't notice much, if any difference between 219 buffed and 273 buffed. Maybe I just got really lucky in that regard. According to my combat monitor, avg damage taken on beams was higher with 256 buffed than it was with 219. I could attribute that to a larger sample size (4 hours the night before vs 2 hours the day after), but the avg was 700 more damage which seemed pretty significant. I wish we had a WWS parse. Hopefully next week I can get one for you all.

Also, with that low of SR, a port on me can be pretty bad. If I'm quick on using trinkets and CD's I can stay alive so long as she doesn't parry gib me in that timeframe.

 

Dots

I used 205 buffed SR when the discussion first came up on this board. Changed it to 313 buffed SR later on, and my guilds healers said it was a noticeable difference in spike damage from the beams or when FA victims get ported on the tank spot. Besides, more SR also helps resisting knockbacks, in case you avoid too many Saber Lashes in a row.

 

Natural

Obviously the parry mechanic on Shahraz is bad based on the design, so they really needed to fix it (and hopefully the patch is soon). What surprises me is that they have the means to fix the problem, but are deciding to ignore it on other bosses and use it as additional tuning.

I understand the developer's intentions to add some randomness to a fight for excitement, but going forward we are now going to have to look at every boss and observe combat logs to detect if the parry mechanic is enabled or disabled. It's not very intuitive. Maybe they could add an new animation to NPCs that exhibit this mechanic.

 

Eylirria

Maybe it wouldnt be so farfetched to expect that one point, for bosses at least, the parry-haste mechanic would be completely dropped. They already said they aren't even happy with the level of randomness that crushing blows adds, and could possibly change how it works in the future, so, perhaps, they could do away with the parry thing and just insert additional specials/enviromental events to make sure the encounters still have the 'oh shit' element causing nasty spikes and stressful/wipe-inducing moments.

 

dukes

I think part of the issue with crushing blows is that due to the high avoidance that tanks can get towards the end/completing the t6 instances, crushing blows make up a huge amount of the hit table. In my tanking gear I'm on a little over 52% dodge without GoA (something like 58 with it, and it's likely to go higher when I regem my helm/get a new chestpiece) and if you incorporate miss rate, it's an average of nearly 60% total avoidance without GoA, or 65+ with it. This means that the 15% crushing rule gives me a ~35-40% chance to take a crushing on every hit I take, and that's pretty serious when you're looking at something that hits as fast as Bloodboil (which is the only boss in BT/Hyjal I MT, for reference) or any of the other dual wielding mobs (illidan/shahraz).

Parry strings are a fairly alright balancing mechanic for any boss that doesn't AoE silence (azgalor, shahraz if you're stupid, possibly gruul in here too), fear (archimonde), force more than the MT to be at the front (shahraz), or dual wield (shahraz, illidan, bloodboil), and those with random target mechanics and turn round are not much better either (shahraz, illidan, gruul, teron, archimonde(?), quite a few more here too but it's not a significant aspect unless grouped with one of the above) . In the case of mobs that do, it's an unnecessary aspect of randomness considering how much the tank spikes in those situations already, and those that have more than one of the above aspects is just asking for the parry mechanic to be turned off (illidan although he doesn't really need it, archimonde, shahraz especially).

 

Dots

I doubt that is the reason, considering that warriors hardly ever take crushing blows. That is just the price druids have to pay for higher mitigation. If the non-crushing bosses in BT/Hyjal didn't have other abilities that favor or even require warriors, most of them would be tanked by druids.

On a side note, Mother Shahraz doesn't actually dual wield.

 

dukes

I always just assumed she did (she has 4 arms after all) but after looking at Wow Web Stats it's pretty clear she doesn't (although she does have a massive damage range by the looks of it), which is quite weird really.

The crushing blow example I gave was just a sidenote as to why they _might_ change the mechanic - it quite significantly favours warriors as tanks (imo) because of shield block - spike damage just gets ridiculous at high avoidance levels for druids.

 

sagen

Avoidance certainly doesn't increase the spike damage a player might take. The only thing it can really do in this regard is make a boss appear to deal more spike damage, when in actuality they aren't. This is more the fault of healers making incorrect assumptions based on avoidance streaks, not so much the fault of the mechanic.

 

Ghando

This. In my experience the vast majority of MT deaths occur because he gets a nice avoidance streak and healers just stop casting. Yes, increasing your avoidance causes crushing blows to occupy a larger relative chunk of the hit table. But you're still taking less damage.

 

PsiVen

It also favors paladins (however silly the idea may seem), so the removal of crushing blows would exacerbate other balance issues. I think they're waiting until WotLK to make any major mechanic changes.

 

Sholdak

We started working on this fight last night and had serious issues with our druid OT not getting hit by Saber Lash. Our MT and other OT are both Tauren, and this was happening with the tanks wedged under a couch and standing in the center of the room.

Anyone else have problems like this with the bear hitbox? Deviates didn't seem to reliably fix this, although that might have been just a freak occurrence. It seems strange to me since both the Tauren and bear models are pretty big, and when we were using the druid as the MT, the two warrior OTs were getting hit every time.

 

Darkkazul

I have never really had a problem with the bear hitbox... then again we don't wedge under a couch. Just try to have the feral stand a little in front of the other tanks, sometimes bear/cat hitboxes are really weird

 

rits

Hi, first-time poster. I have some questions regarding the process of gathering shadow resist gear prior to attempting Shahraz. Figured this might be more appropriate in a new thread, but I suppose it can work here too.

From my calculations, the number of Hearts of Darkness you’d need for anywhere from 25 to 30 people (depending on how much of a cushion you want) to be in max Ashtongue shadow resist gear is between 225 and 270. Having been doing BT for about a month now, we’ve only had roughly 50 drop. We have made a point to clear every trash pack for a couple weeks now (up to RoS), but as of yet we have not resorted to soft-resetting to reclear packs.

What has your guild done to get around this? Is it simply a matter of dealing with whatever number of Hearts you have, and resorting to greens and maybe just brute-forcing it without full SR? Or have you grinded your way to 225+ Hearts through raid- and off-day trash farming?

I confess that since we have not yet attempted her, I don’t have a full sense of how much different amounts of SR affect the damage output of the encounter. Is there even a point to going into it without max’d SR on the raid? Will it just be a waste of time until we can get everyone full Ashtongue sets?

 

Trouble

I don't know what you included in your calculations, but I'm pretty sure a common thing guilds do is not crafting the legs. They take the most hearts and they really are more than you need, and also replace a primary gear slot that you want people using good gear in. The more common solution is the bracers, belt, boots, cloak, next, and then a few random odds and ends. Usually a head enchant, one green piece of gear (rings are best) and a shoulder enchant. Don't forget to supply armor patches for the boots and anyone who uses a green chest or gloves. A common thing people in my guild did was get a secondary socketed shoulder that was decent, added shoulder enchant (+7), then one or two void spheres (+4).

 

Thezilch

For Hearts, you'll want to start farming early. First, if you are also working on or clearing Hyjal, consider leaving Shade of Akama for later in the week. With 5 people (including mage, shadowpriest, and depoisoner), the ~6 stealth pairs and ~3 triple packs can be cleared. With 10 people and preferably two of which beings tanks, Teron can be cleared.

If you're working on Shahraz, you might then consider farming the trash leading to her, several times per day. We see more drops (and of Illidan ilvl) from trash than the bosses themselves, so there is good incentive for your raid.

We sent out 6 Hearts to all our raiders, one slot at a time, without regard to pants. She can be done with less and wearing more greens. Put your casters in crafted SR last, unless 2.2 hits before your killshot and 2.2 improves caster usefulness on Shahraz. I personally wear everything but pants and a green chestpiece to cap. I am Undead, receiving 10 SR, but I would have otherwise patched my chest with 8 SR (instead of 150 STA). I believe this to be the best path, with a helm+enchant also being a sound option.

 

Clandestine

We gave everyone 7 hearts, which is enough for everything but either the belt or boots (people picked which piece was a smaller downgrade for SR). It puts you at 240ish SR with enchants, and people worked out the last bit with BoE greens / enchants / flasks. We're letting people who would get a substantial stat upgrade (mainly the shadow prot flask users so they can use a real flask) get their last two hearts now, before we start giving them out for other craftables.

People should try to get 295 unbuffed with only one extra green piece this way. Stress that it's important to get to 295 unbuffed, because with the way resists work, it's exponentially better than 294 unbuffed, etc.

edit: yeah, definitely get casters the SR last. We actually bring a few more casters than average probably, but effectively there's no real reason to bring more than 1 Warlock, 1 Mage, and 2 Shadow Priests in terms of caster DPS if you can afford to stack melee + healers. (Although a good Felguard or Destro Warlock can actually do pretty competetive with the melee DPS, we bring 3 Locks and I specced Felguard for our first kill and did pretty well in comparison to the melee.)

 

Skulli

And use the shadow res flask. The stats decreasement by wearing a green/epic pants over normal pants is bigger than trading a dps flask for a shadow flask.

 

Saabik

The log looks a bit strange. You can see there are 28 "shield block" casts, yet 37 "reinfoced shield" which procs 100% on shield block. Obviously he did more than 28 shield blocks, and possibly more than 37 (as the log is strange). AF should have been up more, no doubt. Not sure what happened to the person doing that. He does pre-pop IS so that was up all the time.

We downed her again for our second kill tonight. I think it was 3rd attempt after some very bad FAs. Even on our kill, we had several FA's in the raid and managed to survive. I think this fight is much like Arhchimond - with each passing week it becomes less about "luck" and more about knowing what to do in certain situations. If these fights stayed exactly the same 2 months from now, they would be 1-2 shots every time.

 

◊ Quigon

I'm pretty sure you should only count reinforced shields - because shield block lasts longer than the cooldown, and about a quarter of the time it is still up when it is reapplied - and I don't believe this shows up as "gaining shield block" because you already have it. This is just a guess, but I think that is what is happening.
Still, 37 reinforced shields at 5 seconds each (cooldown) is only 3 minutes of coverage - hence my statement.