Can't win 'em all. Personal preference, but I rather kill a priest than lose half the raid to insta gibs.

I killed Sylvanas 2 times in 3.0 and had another attempt which failed, but we haven't seen any evade if we were actually INSIDE the throne room and had Detect Invisibility on the hunters. The only time she reseted, when we were trying to tank her in the corridor.

Maybe we were lucky, but for me, it's just strange to hear that many evades, while you were inside the room.

Seems to be simply a matter of where we tanked her. Next time, I'll tell the raid to go down and tank her downstairs. We stayed up on the platform, which - from what's being said here - was not a Good Idea (tm).

As far as Magni is concerned is there any knowledge on the cooldowns / frequency of his AoE Knockback and Avatar? We're working on trying to figure that out, but obviously there's large diminishing returns on repeat tries in the same night, seeing as how once you rouse up the Alliance and reform your raid in a safe spot, you've put yourself in a tougher position.

Here's my understanding:

When a mob's level displays as the raid boss skull, it can be for two reasons. One is that the mob really is implemented as a raid boss, with the whole n+3 thing and all. The other is that the mob isn't, and has an ordinary level and conventional mechanics, but also has a bit set that makes it look like a raid boss.

Remember, for ages Ironaya showed as a raid boss. But she didn't land crushing blows on 50th level people, and 50th level people didn't land glancing blows against her. She was a conventional mob "in disguise". So that right there is an existence proof that sometimes this is how mobs are implemented.

My understanding is that, at least since patch 2.0 (not sure about before then), faction leaders were like this. They were actually conventional elites of ${game_level_cap}+3, but disguised with the raid boss skull.

I have never encountered an observation or measurement that is inconsistent with the idea that the faction leaders are implemented this way.

I have also never heard of a way to determine for sure from LUA whether this is the case for a given mob, and have not seen a taxonomy of mobs that takes this "pretend-you're-a-boss" bit into account.

Anyone got more or better data?

Hypothesis: faction boss type mobs have an internal minimum level, and to everyone with an equal or greater level, they behave as n+3, while keeping their true level for anyone with a lower level. In essence, we could confirm this with ease if only we could sneak a level 60 into a BC or WotLK raid and check the attack table. Alas, level restrictions don't allow this to happen. If we could, we would have two possible outcomes. The boss behaving as 73 or as 63. And even then, we wouldn't know for sure, because there might be different sets of rules for PVP and PVE bosses. Anyway, this matters very little, as you're usually not supposed to be killing a boss unless you're in level range. In mathematical terms, the theory would look like this:

IF player level < 70, boss level = 73, ELSE boss level = player level + 3.

By applying this theorem to our faction leaders, they would be level 83 to a level 70, 83 to a level 80, 84 to a level 81, and so forth.

The only way I could possibly think of in order to prove or disprove this is to bring a mid 60s player geared to cap his hit rating on a +3 level boss on Doomwalker or DLK, and get a sufficiently long log parse, but I'm expecting raid wide spells to cause for a very, very short sample size. But it would sure as hell be easier than sneaking a level 60 into a hostile city and expecting an accurate parse.

Is it 100% confirmed that Cairne has a full AE threat drop to all tanks within range with him? I'm not entirely convinced.

Our experience tonight or rather mine tonight proved to be a bit different.

We had 2 Warrior tanks.
Both Warriors put Vigilance on each other(Myself and my partner).
I had main aggro, and he had 2nd aggro.
When Cairne would drop aggro on me, he would turn and whack my partner who was 2nd threat, this would proc Vigilance and I would taunt Cairne back to myself for #1 threat again(I was wearing 176 hit or so).

This went on for about a minute and a half, before my 2nd tank died and somebody pulled aggro, and at that point it turned into a mess.

After that point I wasn't able to re-test this theory. Because there were 30-40 filthy Horde(And I mean this with love), defending Cairne.

Has anybody confirmed that it's a full AE threat drop, or perhaps it's just a single target threat drop and because all of your tanks keep getting dropped it ends up going to your ranged?

Edit: We went back to TB again after Horde settled down. I can confirm that it is NOT a full AE drop, he drops his #1 aggro on occasion and goes for his 2nd aggro.

So a valid strat is as I described above, have 2 Warriors trade Vigilance with each other, 1 in hit gear to taunt back repeatedly when his/her aggro is dropped, and the other to be right behind that first Warrior on threat(Chain misdirects).

Coincidentally, I recommend Horde trying this for Magni.

Onyxia's Lair requires only level 50 to enter now that the attunement has been removed, and has practically non-exsistant aoe damage in phase 1, and a horde rogue can easily get +9hit for yellow attacks(Gaurd Captain trinket, Baelog's Bow, Albino Croc boots,Blackstone Ring, Doan's Mantle and 5% hit talent). I beleive we'd still be able to test bosses having a minimum level.

This works in theory, assuming his KB has any sort of cooldown, which if it does, doesn't appear to be of any appreciable length. It also requires your secondary tanks to be well out of range of Magni, which can be cumbersome with regards to threat generation, due to the level difference. Let's also not forget the lovely side-effect of being knocked on a ledge out of range of a mob. Trying, so hard, not to H v A troll . . .

It's frustrating, doable, and I'm sure will be trivialized at 80 by PuGs in quest blues.

Caine doesn't have AOE threat reduction. When we killed him, his threat reduction was on the current main target only, and is a knock up into the air. Here you go: Uppercut - Spell - World of Warcraft
You can see this very clearly on Omen.

We used 4 tanks, and just spammed taunt in addition to building threat on him in the regular way, to ensure that only tanks were at the top of the threat meter.

This could probably be done. I think I would prefer to keep multiple tanks on the threat list with taunt spam, just to lower the threat cyclone and mind control pose.

Killed him a few hours ago with about 30 alliance defending vs our 80 man raid, was a pretty enjoyable experience overall. Failed to kill Varian due to further alliance resistance, and some poor positioning on our part.

We tanked him down the hall, in the hallway to the right (facing the way varian faces) that leads toward the stormwind library. Unfortunately if he leaped a healer who was standing at max range from the tank, he'd reset. However, we didn't get royal guard respawn, so it was probably worth the risk overall. Just wish people hadn't been retarded.

Killed all Alliance bosses several times now. Having ~150 horde bears on Frostwhisper horde now.

Magni does not do AoE agro wipe. It is a cone attack, however the problem is he chooses 1 within meele range who gets targeted, and then can link all in that cone.
We used same tactic with having 4 tanks total. 1 tanking it, and 3 taunting whenever off cooldown. We had dps warriors standing directly behind the boss(oppesite of the tank!) so that sometimes he would choose the meele dps to agro wipe, instead of the tank.
The boss is quite fun due to the fact it isnt challenging tactic wise, but is being hard due to it being inside IF, and level 83.

Good luck to all who is going for it pre-wotlk, it is fun!

And as we say on frostwhisper regarding the bear
Its a ferrai amoung bears!

For faction bosses, there's no reason to believe this. All measurements have shown them to behave as if they were three levels above the current game engine's level cap -- 73rd level before 3.0, and 83rd level after 3.0. For these bosses, the simplest model is that they simply are that level. Talking about people of a greater level than 80th doesn't make sense in the context of this version of the software.

For other bosses, we know for sure it's not like this. Ironaya and The Beast both behave as if they had completely conventional levels, even though they're displaying a skull. However...

This does not actually match my understanding.

Furthermore, I remember seeing measurements on Onyxia showing that the crushing/glancing blow rates on a level 58 and on a 68 were essentially identical. I participated in tests of crushing/glancing blows with Onyixa, and I saw 65th level rogues continue to land glancing blows against her. And the glancing blow rate for rogues below 60th level was lower than one would expect as well.

Anyone got a WWS of MC or Onyxia from before patch 3.0 handy? I don't have a paid WWS account, and mine have all expired.

This is incorrect actually. His knockback is a full aggro drop for everyone within ten yards. We had quite a few melee along with myself all within ten yards, and every time Magni knocked us all in the air (the knockback), our threat, along with the current tank, was all reset back to zero.