We do Sacrolash first with 2 Warrior tanks. If you need rage you just eat Blazes as the OT. MT shouldn't have any serious threat issues.

As Trouble already mentioned in post #114 unlike the explantation on Bosskillers or WoWHead says the Shadow Blades in fact ain´t restricted to 3 targets. They hit everyone within 20yd range to Lady Sacrolash so I assume your Warlock just hasn´t been close enough.

I've seen several videos of the fight and I've looked at a few WWS reports trying to figure out the best warlock tanking strategy for the Grand Warlock. I've noticed from the WWS reports there there are few resists. This makes me think that high FR gear is not effective, is that correct? Does the warlock tank just rely on high stamina gear with a moderate amount of spell hit and a high fire damage spec to hold agro? Why not have a mage do it since they have to spell steal anyway? Without using a Soul Link I see little advantage of having a warlock tank it unless a mage just can't get enough agro.

Warlocks are superior tanks because they have talents to increase their HP pool, they take significantly more healing (20%) with Fel Armor, and they have Searing Pain to generate more threat.

Because warlocks have more hp? +15% stam, +3% hp, probably higher base hp.. our gear has more hp (to get anywhere near as much stam from gear they would have to use pvp gear.. then they wouldnt have hit and threat would be horrible) Plus you have to move so much, what nuke would they use? In phase 2 you only have enough time for 1 searing pain every move. Not to mention if you do use soullink, and locks get +20%(or +26%) from heals.

What advantages do mages have? That they spellsteal it instead of a different mage in the raid spellstealing it? On;y time you could iceblock in p1 during a conflag cast and p2 during a shadow nova cast.

Ah ok... I didn't realize there was only time for a 1.5 seconds cast in phase 2... that would do it then...

I realize we get higher stamina and heals from talents, but I just felt there was something else I was missing and this is it.

Do the warlocks wear any amount of SR gear? I noticed one wearing at least the Night's End cloak.

I assume the main reason that warlock was wearing SR cloak is that it has more stamina and his normal cloak is the +shadow dmg cloak (and is shooting fire searing pains).. Plus from what I hear you can resist shadow image damage(which is basically the only way you can die p1) but you cannot resist shadow blades/nova (if you could resist would be bad since you might not be able to clear debuffs)

I clicked off shadow prot when we were working on the "original" way (fire chick dies first), but I keep it up now.

I'd honestly be hesitant of using much SR beyond shadow protection just because even with all the images hitting me and blades, I can still send up stacking to 7 or so fire in P1 which is more than I want to take. Shadow damage is your friend.

The highest I've ever gotten dark touch stacked was 5, which really isn't that big a deal.

I don't respec anymore for the fight, so I'm doing it without imp searing pain talents, with -10% threat talent, etc., and I appreciate being able to take a few additional ticks of fire via blaze in order to finish off some casts when I know my health is okay and I can shed debuffs again soon.


*Once* I died due to what may have been shadow damage: two shadowfuries in a row while standing on a blaze patch keeping me stunned long enough that a fireball hit me and 4 melee hits in that time.

But... that was only once. And it also turned out that I wasn't topped off before it, since my healer had the wrong rank of healing on their bar. I rarely dip low.

The other times I've died it's been a healer who didn't know to trinket out of the stun if they REALLY need to land a heal on me. 1 paladin healer, 1 set of rolling lifeblooms, and ~19k buffed/imp'd HP.

I was running about 19k yesterday when commanding was up, and I got gibbed once from 4 image hits, a pyrogenics hit, a blaze tick, and a shadowblades(over 21k in total I believe) all hitting between paladin heals. It was probably overkill but I specced to SL with 18k, swapped to SR neck(which was 28 stam more than my neck anyways.. I wouldn't have made this switch if I had a pvp neck), and used some shadowprot potions and shadowward and didn't come close to dying again. I think while learning the fight it is best to urge on the side of overkill survivability.

How does the warlock tank clear the Flame Touched debuff? Does someone have to always stand close to him the whole time?

Also, does the warlock tank need to wear the pvp trinket to clear conflag? I took conflag a couple of times, but I'm not sure if that was because someone did something they weren't supposed to.

Stand within 20 yards of Sacrolash and you'll eat Shadow Blades to clear your Flame Touched, and from what I've seen it's better to be safe than sorry with the PvP trinkets.

Someone asked this already. Do not give your Warlock Tank self heal stuff like Earth Shield, Prayer of Mending(was the priest heal?), Gift of the Naaru, etc. All this Abilities count as Aggro on both Twins for the person on witch they were cast on. So if u got Bad Luck the first Conflag goes for your Warlock Tank, Blaze, Dead People, Wipe...
Or in the other Strat the Shadownova goes to your Warrior Tank and u can´t reset the Debuffs quick enough.

There are better ways to protect your lock from conflag than removing earthshield etc. (think about how conflag works)

Or if you're going to do that, then at least give it to the lock after ~10 seconds of the fight when the risk of them getting conflag is zero.

I've never used my pvp trinket because I will never need it unless the raid is dead anyways, and I'd rather a stamina trinket than a trinket I will never have occasion to use.

Does this mean the warlock tank has to spec out of Soul Leech because Searing Pain can heal himself?

We actually had this problem on a few initial pulls with a GWA first strategy where I (warlock tank) would occasionally eat the first conflag. I was eligible simply because of threat on Sacrolash from Life Bloom blossoms, PoM, and Earthshield in the opening seconds of the fight. To prevent this, just don't use PoM, Earthshield, or let Life Bloom blossom on the pull. Go back to using them (if available) several seconds post-pull. By then the other healers should have far more healing threat on Sacrolash than the warlock tank can get from "self-healing." Soul Leech is so minimal it's a non-issue. Of course, if you use a Sacrolash first strategy, healing threat on the warlock tank is also a non-issue.

The impression I get is that Dark Strikes from shadow images are considered melee hits and subject to dodge, parry, miss, and partial resists (as such you won't ever get a full resist even wearing SR, in the same way someone tanking an elemental won't ever totally resist a hit) and all of the other shadow abilities (shadowfury/nova/blades) cannot be resisted at all. This is at least consistent with what I see in my logs, though of course it would only take a single data point to disprove.

Edit: as pointed out Shadow Blades can be fully resisted.

If the Warlock tank manages to fully absorb a Shadow Blade via partial resists + Shadow Ward - would it still shed the Flame Touched debuffs or act as if it were resisted?

You cannot partially resist any damage from the bosses. Only resistable damage in that fight is darkstrike and shadowfury.

I'm fairly certain that fully absorbing the damge with something like Power Word: Shield + Shadow Ward will not cause you to gain Dark Flame and you'll still be left with your Flame Touched Debuffs. I can't say 100% because I've never actually tested it with a potion or the like though.

Using a fire protection potion cuts down the number of flame touched stacks you receive on a seer, so I'd imagine it works the same way for any absorb (you need to take damage to receive a new debuff).

Actually our feral tank and myself resisted a shadowblade once, WWS shows 3,9% missed shadowblades, seems it's a melee ability with shadow damage.

Ferals can resist via predatory instincts.