I'm not sure if the feral taunt works when BoP is up, I can't see why it wouldn't but i'd smack myself in the head if it did because healers died because of him coming out of vanish with a bop up on our first tries; I suppose I just never thought about it.

I worked around this moonfire to get aggro or the pally near me could hoj him and i'll starfire him once with a moonfire for a bit of threat and then get back into bear form. it's good to have a pally near for the hoj if the bop comes up a few seconds after and you get say, a mangle off and are worried about losing him, the pally can the hoj if you lose aggro.

That's a poorly written account of my experience with tanking the rogue as a bear. Sorry i'm quite tired. Best of luck.

Feral taunt works if Veras has the BoP, though if your Prot Pali is otherwise not usefully emplyed in the fight you are probably better to let the Paladin tank him and get your Feral to go dps for the fight. Bear in mind that Veras can string together some quite nasty strings of damage, so you may find the Feral tank makes that easier to deal with depending on who you have healing him.
I think Veras has only got away from me once due to missed taunt/BoP/parries and it's not too much hassle to get him stunned while you pick him up again.

Regardless of which tank type you use the Blessings on Veras aren't that big a deal. Something that doesn't seem to be covered in most strategy discussions I've seen for this fight is that Veras will reappear again in approximately 20 yards of where he initially vanished once vanish is over. You can see him while stealthed for a few seconds before he becomes active again; I've only seen it happen once that he got a Blessing on him while stealthed, and that was a Blessing of Spell Warding, which was annoying (As it pretty much completely prevents any method of me grabbing him).

Anyway, if you know that he'll reappear near where he initially vanished, you can simply choose to tank him a fair bit away from where most of your raid is hanging out, giving extra time Veras has to run and you have to pick him up. As Paladin you can also cover at least one Blessing of Spell Warding immediately after his reappearance once every 5 minutes with Blessing of Protection.

I wouldn't say either type of tank is superior or inferior for tanking Veras. He doesn't hit particularly hard in any case, and the higher armor a feral druid has gets balanced out by the fact that a Paladin can use Holy Shield to prevent any crushing blows Veras does. Your Prot Paladin can also provide some help on people that get Deadly Poison, though don't expect the weak healing he'll do to cover the entire damage it deals, but it should be able to give people an additional ~2k health buffer for surviving Deadly Poison and Envenom, which isn't bad. You can use the time when he isn't vanished to recover your mana (If no one's attacking him just Holy Shield and Auto-Attack with Seal of Righteousness active easily outaggros the healers due to healing aggro being split between all active targets).

02:10'11.812 Veras Darkshadow gains Vanish
02:10'18.046 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Ias for 990 Nature damage
02:10'19.031 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Ias for 991 Nature damage
02:10'20.078 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Ias for 990 Nature damage
02:10'21.093 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Ias for 990 Nature damage
02:10'21.875 Veras Darkshadow's Envenom hits Ias for 4612 Nature damage
02:10'28.156 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Eshani for 970 Nature damage
02:10'29.156 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Eshani for 970 Nature damage
02:10'30.156 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Eshani for 970 Nature damage
02:10'31.140 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Eshani for 970 Nature damage
02:10'31.906 Veras Darkshadow's Envenom hits Eshani for 4419 Nature damage
02:10'32.937 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Pripism for 846 Nature damage
02:10'33.937 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Pripism for 846 Nature damage
02:10'35.031 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Pripism for 846 Nature damage
02:10'35.296 Veras Darkshadow's Melee hits Sikozu for 2803
02:10'35.296 Veras Darkshadow's Melee crits Sikozu for 18483
02:10'35.968 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Pripism for 846 Nature damage
02:10'36.718 Veras Darkshadow's Envenom hits Pripism for 3976 Nature damage
02:10'38.265 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Tashani for 993 Nature damage
02:10'39.156 Veras Darkshadow's Deadly Poison dots Tashani for 993 Nature damage
02:10'40.031 Veras Darkshadow's Envenom hits Tashani for 5682 Nature damage
02:10'44.781 Primoo's Mangle (Bear) crits Veras Darkshadow for 1704
02:10'45.156 Veras Darkshadow is afflicted by Mangle (Bear)
02:10'45.265 Primoo's Maul crits Veras Darkshadow for 1645
02:10'45.531 Veras Darkshadow's Melee hits Primoo for 3137
02:10'45.984 Primoo's Vengeance hits Veras Darkshadow for 104 Holy damage
02:10'45.984 Primoo's Reflect hits Veras Darkshadow for 25 Nature damage
02:10'45.984 Primoo's Swipe hits Veras Darkshadow for 249
02:10'46.671 Veras Darkshadow's Melee hits Primoo for 1960
02:10'47.187 Primoo's Reflect hits Veras Darkshadow for 19 Nature damage
02:10'47.593 Veras Darkshadow's Melee hits Primoo for 4615 (crushing)
02:10'48.015 Primoo's Reflect hits Veras Darkshadow for 13 Nature damage
02:10'48.015 Primoo's Maul hits Veras Darkshadow for 741
02:10'48.640 Veras Darkshadow's Melee dodged by Primoo
02:10'48.765 Primoo's Faerie Fire (Feral) resisted by Veras Darkshadow
02:10'49.546 Veras Darkshadow's Melee dodged by Primoo
02:10'49.609 Aaraz's Sweeping Strikes hits Veras Darkshadow for 607
02:10'50.390 Primoo's Swipe crits Veras Darkshadow for 547
02:10'50.390 Primoo's Maul hits Veras Darkshadow for 726
02:10'50.640 Veras Darkshadow's Melee hits Primoo for 2954 (crushing)
02:10'51.203 Primoo's Reflect hits Veras Darkshadow for 25 Nature damage
02:10'51.562 Veras Darkshadow's Melee misses Primoo
02:10'52.031 Primoo's Swipe crits Veras Darkshadow for 546
02:10'52.671 Veras Darkshadow's Melee dodged by Primoo
02:10'53.156 Primoo's Maul dodged by Veras Darkshadow
02:10'53.578 Veras Darkshadow's Melee misses Primoo
02:10'53.859 Primoo's Mangle (Bear) misses Veras Darkshadow
02:10'54.703 Veras Darkshadow's Melee misses Primoo
02:10'55.218 Primoo's Swipe crits Veras Darkshadow for 547
02:10'55.578 Veras Darkshadow's Melee misses Primoo
02:10'55.984 Veras Darkshadow gains Blessing of Protection

Since some people in this thread had said they had never seen Veras insta gib someone during his Vanish, I decided to post a section of our WWS from last night's raid. I don't think I've died on that fight since maybe our first attempts when learning the fight way back in last August, so getting melee crit last night (as a shadow priest) for 2800 then 18k, back to back sorta sucked. Anyone know if there is anyway to prevent this? Veras didn't have BoP until well after he attacked me and was still in his vanish deadlypoison/envenom phase.

The question was asked, and I may have missed the answer, but why is it every tactic recommends putting all DPS on Gathios? Considering he's packed away in the corner with the melee and their healing, would it not make sense to have all ranged DPS damaging the Mage in some of the free space at the top of the stairs?

Malande usually gets bop and spellwarding, and uses reflective shield, so the reason for not dpsing her is pretty obvious.
Veras vanishes and resets aggro when he does, so he's not an ideal target either.
The MAGE is being tanked by a mage, who is going to be wearing high stamina + spellhit gear just to survive and not get a resisted spellsteal...so focusing dps on his target will make the ranged dpsers get threatcapped pretty fast.


It's best to dps Gathios because you have a high threat generating tank on him, and he's vulnerable to damage the longest, with no aggro resets. Of course if you get threat capped as a ranged dpser, you could switch targets for a bit then go back, but Gathios is a pretty clear choice as a primary dps target imo.

My guild successfully downed Illidari Council on the first night. I thought I would post my methods as mage tank to share with everybody. My pull method is derived from reading through these forums, so you can see a sort of summary of many methods discussed here. I hope this helps others with illidari council





Notes:


1. I did this fight with 11.1k hp unbuffed (14k buffed without cshout, imp), and 88 spellhit and arcane focus. I haven't examined wws to see my frostbolt miss rate, but my threat was quite close to healer threat. With imp, cshout, I would have 15k hp and can withstand 1 arcane bolt if spellsteal fails. Strictly speaking 15k is not necessary, but if u got lots of pvp gear it might be worth a try

2. Water elemental should be summoned from the position above. If water elemental is summoned too near the staircase, the bosses will aggro immediately.

3. Except for 1st pull, everytime you spellsteal Zerevor, you may not steal dampen magic, because spellsteal steals a random buff. You may steal one of Zerevor's other buffs, in which case you must steal again.

4. Dampen Magic buff lasts 2 minutes. Within the 2 minutes, you must re-steal a fresh buff. There is no need to click off the existing buff. You need to steal a fresh buff when zerevor casts it on himself. Read Point 3 above.

5. I had 10k mana buffed and oom several times during the fight. I had no spriest, but had shaman mana tide for me. Make sure you chain pot and chain gem.

6. Healer aggro is extremely high during the fight, and you need to ensure your threat is higher. The picture below shows me OOM, when healers threat was catching up on me. It gives you some idea on the threat mechanic of this fight.


7. Shaman standing on staircase nearby should drop wrath of air to help with threat. Mana tide and Mana spring also helpful if there is no spriest in the group.

8. The first few seconds of the pull are most crucial. In particular: after water elemental pulls and spellsteal is cast, there is a GCD of 1.5secs before you can fireblast to catch aggro on zerevor. In this window period, there is a chance that a warrior bloodrage or healer's heal might pull zerevor. It is therefore vital to land that fireblast ASAP after spellsteal.

9. Mage tank should amp magic himself. Amp magic does not enhance zerevor's arcane bolt, so there is only benefit to healing

10. I have seen in videos and on some forums that a mage who is very familiar with tanking zerevor can help with CS on LAdy Malande. To do this, create a macro for counterspell to interrupt Lady Malande, and position urself within range.

Odd, pretty sure all I do on Council is: Get bopped as a pally runs in with div shield, spellsteal dampen, fireblast, scorch a couple times.

That's it. that's the entire pull. I've never had him aggro anyone else because he was casting on the pally. You also shouldn't be going even remotely out of mana because the amount of threat you need to generate to hold him on you is minuscule. If you run out of Mana Emerald charges you simply conjure a new one mid fight. You can even Evocate if you time it properly.

it's even simpler than than for us. Just BoP the mage and the mage runs straight in (no blink or using any other GCD spell) while spamming spell steal on Zervor. Once things agro, hunter MD to ret pally and the rogue and the tank for the priest runs in and starts tanking her.

Your 11-step method to pull is very thorough, but in my opinion - unnecessarily complex. We have a easier 2-step pull method like the above posters:

1 - BOP mage
2 - Mages runs in and spellsteals, then fireblasts immediately while the other mobs get peeled off.

Works every time. Yes theres a 1% chance a spellsteal will resist, but with mana shield+fel blossom+power word shield and high base sta , you could absorb a full 15k Arcane Bolt without dying if you really had to anyway (assuming the other DPS interrupt the priests first smite, which is also very easy to do). Its also possible the first fireblast/scorch after the spellsteal could resist (1% chance) and someone gets healing agro but again - this is 1% and can happen in any pull method.

Both can work perfectly fine, its just finding out what your mage/guild is comfortable with.

Usually when I tank the mage I reposition him after getting initial agro, by pulling him as far to the left side of the room (facing the boss) as possible. Then stand half way between the mage/priest in the big gap you just created for easy access to CS the priest while taking care of your Mage tanking spellsteal/threat duties.

For this fight I put myself in the MT group for the imp buff just for the pull. After the pull is settled I swap myself into another group with a shadow priest and the 3 raid healers to help with the mana requirements. (Perks of being a mage officer).

Was looking through this thread for CoT talk. Don't really care so much about Slow, but in one post someone said that Zerevor is immune to CoT and in another it was stated that he is NOT immune to CoT.

Which is the truth?

Nothing to do, just hope it doesn't happen. We've had it happen to our mage tanking Zerevor and as far as I know, he should be doing no threat to anyone in the raid except Zerevor and certainly not enough to warrant being the target of choice.

I'm finding it incredibly hard to believe that Reflective Shield only hits for 50%. My kicks usually hit for 150-180 when they crit (depending on Sunders, usually), but I still saw a number of times where I would take damage above this from the shield.

He's immune, we tried what the poster who said he wasn't immune, and that approach did not work on our first attempts. Malande however is not immune.

You're correct, I'm pretty sure the shield reflects 150%, though it might be 200%, I can't remember which at the moment, probably something about it being 3:30.

Though that still doesn't explain what killed the shaman. Perhaps he cast Chain Lightning on Veras who happened to be next to Malande and it jumped to her and crit and just wasn't picked up on the combat log? He doesn't take reflected damage from the Earth Shock and the log doesn't show her gaining the shield, so there's obviously some info missing from it. It is easily possible to whack yourself for 5K off that shield.

I've seen loads of rogues die on the reflective shield and even shield slammed myself for quite some damage

Anyway, with some finetuning on the priest we managed to take them down and focus on illidan now (thanks again to EJ forums for some handouts)

1 prot warrior (me)
1 rogue
1 elemental shaman

on the priest

Rogue interrupting on circle of healing-only
Elemental shaman interrupting on circle of healing only
Me focussing on getting some sunders up, thunderclap, demo shout (she still hits for so-so dmg) and interrupting anything else cast on a different member but me (mostly devine wraith) and ofcourse be aware of anything stupid happening like reflective shield.

She is fun to tank but still needs a lot of focus during the 10 minutes to took us for first kill

All that happened is a cast on some other raidmember during a melee immune periode, be vocal about it and you're gonna be okay.

Our setup : Priest - east, rogue - west(feral druid), paladin on the entrance (south), mage on the spot, raid DPS spread out amongst the stairs/east part of the room between the paladin/priest (to overlap anything happening to the interrupters)

Hello all,

I have several very good sets of gear I *could* use to tank the Nethermancer, but after our first shots on the Council I'm left wondering: does the mage tank actually need high hp?

I'm not asking this because of any fears of not being hit capped or not showing well on the damage meter or going oom or anything else. I've already got that covered (if need be). Rather, I'm asking because of the simple mechanics of this fight. IMHO, it seems like you either get your HP above 15K for a bolt soak during the initial pull, or you just make sure you're on your game getting the Spellsteal off and simply rely on the dampen magic to protect you the entire rest of the fight.

If I feel confident that I will NOT take the initial arcane bolt, is there an actual need to put on loads of stamina gear? In my all-epics high hit/high hp set I believe I reach around 13K hp, capped at arcane spell hit, and over 1K spell dmg. I'm more than happy to wear this set while tanking, but it almost seemed silly to me to have the extra stam because I didn't really need it so long as I got the initial pull off. If my normal boss gear is closer to 10K hp, hit capped, and 1.3K dmg, should I just wear that instead? It also has more int/spirit to help with mana.

Thoughts?

It's really just a choice your guild should make. Ensuring that your mage tank is capable of eating an Arcane Bolt regardless of whether or not Spellsteal resists is in my opinion preferable. Even if you cap hit there's still that nasty 1% resist chance you can't get rid of. Now you can say, "What's the chances of that being a problem?", to which the answer is simply that the chance of that happening doesn't matter, what matters is that it can potentially happen.

Would the extra damage of using higher +damage gear be worth the risk of the pull going wrong due to something simple as a resist? Possibly, depending on your guild and how comfortable you're beating the Enrage timer (Which is something I've not heard a lot of guilds have issues with).

Max hp+Spell hit, you are still going to eat random divine wrath + poisons + unlucky resist, you need a good HPbuffer to work with. I don't see why you would ever focus on +dmg gear, it isn't like any healer is going to pull off you, if you have mana issues Innervate it up if necessary.

As for the enrage timer.. it is beatable with 15 healers =P

Well, after you have done the fight several times you can really cut down your hp. Having ~11k hp buffed works for me just fine now. I think most people just bop the body-pulling-mage so he will be hit by the first smite aswell. So I don't think you will survive the initial hit unless you have 18k+ hp if you have a spellsteal resist (depending on your pull of course.)

Don't worry too much about a resist, it's just bad luck if it happens. Just make sure you have 16% hit and you really don't need too much hp.

I'm frost specced because it works quite well on Council, Illidan and Z'A.

I tank with some PvP and some +hit gear. Usually at 13-14k buffed, usually with Blood Pact but no commanding shout.
With Ice Barrier, PW:S, Mana Shield, Earth Shield, Prayer of Mending I absorb about 5-6k of the first hits. Maybe enough to eat a Smite and Bolt, not sure.

I pull by sending my WE in, following it. I get a BoP, my WE eats the first bolt.
Any pet works for that, if pull gibs are an issue.
I also burn some mana before the pull and added Mana Emerald into my Spellsteal macro. Some extra free threat is nice (once had a healer gibbed due to a frostbolt resist from resist aura on the pull that I didn't see).
As soon as spellsteal connects, 1 cast of Arcane Missiles makes sure you have aggro for a bit now (unless RNG hates you and gives you 3-5 resists).

As for health in the fight - I do get pretty low from time, I guess from healers running from AoE or cross-healing. I really like having some health cushion to rely on.


I actually comfortable enough with the pull that I manage without [Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight], random rant about races, height, and LoS to the top of the terrace.


To answer your question - you don't actually need high HP. You also don't need more than 6500 HP for Naj'entus with Frost Ward and mana shield.

But health a lot helps when things go messy (healers dead, can't heal while running from AoE, covering other healers), giving your raid some buffer. When you die, you wipe. And there isn't anything else than HP that actually does anything for you in the fight.

Doh, it has bitten my ass tonight as well. No point of waisting time, etc on spell reflect then?