Hey guys, first post here and this is a great forum by the way.
I was always under the impression that during the HuHu fight that as MT I was to wear quite a bit of NR resistance gear. We typically have me and another warrior swap agro after two debuffs which works well by the way.
The last few times we have killed HuHu we went no NR gear at all ( me and another tank) and just put on our best mitigation gear, this works better than having a load of NR gear on it seemed. We have killed HuHu the last 5-6 times we have tried. Any one else doing it this way? For all i know you are all doing it that way and i missed the memo :)
This is a pretty narrow topic for a thread. Short answer: Yes. As a rule, on basically any resistance fight in the game except Geddon, Firemaw, and Rag, you probably want your MT wearing less resist than the other people being exposed to the damage, because of the importance of physical damage. (This is true from Vael on up through Sapphiron.)
The easy way to do it is to use DM or SWStats to see the source of damage taken by your MT after a wipe (or a kill, even), and how much came from which sources. If your tank is taking 75% of his damage from melee attacks, then gimping armor and def in order to get more resist is a poor choice.
Hmmm, I always thought the dangerous portion of Vael's damage was fire, especially when flame breath (name?) stacks up to do 4.5k per tick on top of its 4.5k per cast. It was usually spikes that killed our tanks on our very early tries, rather than a steady increase in melee damage. I may be wrong though since we didn't actually parse any combat logs, just looked over his abilities, their damage and their frequency.
Kinda off topic, but I guess this thread is pretty narrow and it's all been covered.
My guild just had our first night working on Huhuran. I'm confused on one thing though, aren't the tanks also considered part of the NR soak group?
I mean, they're going to be in close melee range so they'll take the poison volley right? Is it just that the MT will need boatloads of extra healing because he doesn't have max NR?
Our general rule of thumb for tanks is to wear only good NR, which pretty much means the purple stuff out of AQ40, and the Craftable NR blues, as well as the legs from the Calling. Everything else is best tank gear for the slot. If I simply get stacked too high and she's not coming off me, I use a Limited Invul Pot to turn her over to the next tank.
I always followed the same approach on Vael, FR usually in the 200-250 range (thankfully, most of the Might and Wrath I was wearing at the time had FR on it, so got the best of both worlds). Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I wore my regular tanking gear except for Dark Iron Helm, Legs and Gloves. Those tossed in with a Shaman totem, and FR was fine for Vael. The big thing with him was that, unlike Ony, his fire breath was partially resistable, with Ony it always seemed like an all or nothing deal. Other than that, we have the group shaman drop Windfury for the tanks (since our rage gen is a little gimped from NR gear) and Nature Resist totem at 30%. Haven't had a tank die on her in months.
Hmmm, I always thought the dangerous portion of Vael's damage was fire, especially when flame breath (name?) stacks up to do 4.5k per tick on top of its 4.5k per cast. It was usually spikes that killed our tanks on our very early tries, rather than a steady increase in melee damage. I may be wrong though since we didn't actually parse any combat logs, just looked over his abilities, their damage and their frequency.
Kinda off topic, but I guess this thread is pretty narrow and it's all been covered.
That's exactly what I thought as well. When we were learning Vael way back when, I chose to take the max FR route and a fellow tank chose a mix, usually topping at around 240ish FR. He would generally die prematurely and I convinced him to try out max FR and it seemed like the healers had an easier time dealing with the damage.
From what I gathered, Vaelastrasz melees fairly slowly. Since his Cleave cannot crit, Improved Shield Block generally would last two hits from Vaelastrasz making critical auto hits from him a much smaller factor. Also, Stoneshield pots would help offset Cleave/auto-attack damage while the FR would help offset DoT/Nova damage.
Huhuran's a different story of course. Her attack speed while Frenzied/Berserked is ridiculously fast.
No, the point is that Huhuran's melee output goes up sharply due to the berserk as well, and that from 30% to 0%, the MT will take far more melee damage than nature damage. The melee damage also has the potential to be much spikier due to crushing blows, whereas the nature AoE is steady damage.
Basically, whereas it makes sense for a DPS warrior and NR soak to wear some really ghetto NR gear, your MT is really best off using only good epic NR and blues like the Cenarion Reservist's legs and such. You end up taking more damage with 300 NR and gimp armor/def than you would with 160 NR and excellent armor/def.
My guild just had our first night working on Huhuran. I'm confused on one thing though, aren't the tanks also considered part of the NR soak group?
I mean, they're going to be in close melee range so they'll take the poison volley right? Is it just that the MT will need boatloads of extra healing because he doesn't have max NR?
Well the tanks are also the focus of the majority of the heals, so it's ok if they eat a little bit extra damage and if you're bouncing her between tanks, they actually *need* to. Sometimes it's really hard to generate enough rage to pull her off another tank, autoswing rage gen alone won't do it in NR gear, so taking some poison damage actually helps.
My guild just had our first night working on Huhuran. I'm confused on one thing though, aren't the tanks also considered part of the NR soak group?
I mean, they're going to be in close melee range so they'll take the poison volley right? Is it just that the MT will need boatloads of extra healing because he doesn't have max NR?
No. Myself and my OT stand outside the hitbox and outside the 15. I wear one or two bits of Epic NR, most of her damage is melee as previously noted. We are handy backups when the sponge start dying, but we aren't part of it intentionally.
My guild just had our first night working on Huhuran. I'm confused on one thing though, aren't the tanks also considered part of the NR soak group?
I mean, they're going to be in close melee range so they'll take the poison volley right? Is it just that the MT will need boatloads of extra healing because he doesn't have max NR?
We put our two tanks into soak groups, however the MTs wear considerably less NR (for the reasons outlined above).
If you use a PoH strategy, the tanking Warriors will be getting PoH heals on top of direct heals. Also, setting up a Shield Wall rotation makes the Poison Volley damage on the tanks trivial.
My guild just had our first night working on Huhuran. I'm confused on one thing though, aren't the tanks also considered part of the NR soak group?
I mean, they're going to be in close melee range so they'll take the poison volley right? Is it just that the MT will need boatloads of extra healing because he doesn't have max NR?
We put our two tanks into soak groups, however the MTs wear considerably less NR (for the reasons outlined above).
If you use a PoH strategy, the tanking Warriors will be getting PoH heals on top of direct heals. Also, setting up a Shield Wall rotation makes the Poison Volley damage on the tanks trivial.
Yeah, she's usually stuck on me by the time she hits 30%, and that's when I pop Shield Wall. If it fades before she dies, I pop an invul pot to turn her over to the next tank, who also shield walls, and she dies shortly thereafter.
You can definitely count your warriors as part of the 15 frontliners, but as several have mentioned, NR comes second to physical mitigation. Your two tanks (or however many you use) should be catching more than enough heals to reduce the poison bolts to a minor issue anyway.
My guild just had our first night working on Huhuran. I'm confused on one thing though, aren't the tanks also considered part of the NR soak group?
I mean, they're going to be in close melee range so they'll take the poison volley right? Is it just that the MT will need boatloads of extra healing because he doesn't have max NR?
Putting your 15 soackers inside the hitbox and your tanks on the borders assures that they can outlive the beserk mode (loosing 3-4 priests on sponge healing really hurts) and that your tanks wont get sleeped, thus better agro swaps.
Just to clarify. Use no NR gear at all...none. Seemed to work very well is all. Also helps to have Last stand and the Life Giving Gem ( take you into the 13,000 hp area) then after that is wearing off...a 15 sec shield wall. This is at 30 % and lower.
Yeah, she's usually stuck on me by the time she hits 30%, and that's when I pop Shield Wall. If it fades before she dies, I pop an invul pot to turn her over to the next tank, who also shield walls, and she dies shortly thereafter.
We do exactly that, but with BoP instead of Invuln. Pots to force rotations. :) Works flawlessly every time!
Just to clarify. Use no NR gear at all...none. Seemed to work very well is all. Also helps to have Last stand and the Life Giving Gem ( take you into the 13,000 hp area) then after that is wearing off...a 15 sec shield wall. This is at 30 % and lower.
I wouldn't necessarily say none whatsoever. If you have any of the epic NR pieces from AQ40 or the green dragons, you should definitely utilize them. But, as Gurg mentioned, you only want to use quality NR items (not crappy greens or weak blues).
The biggest thing for us that lead to cleaner Huhuran kills was better adjustment into the Berserk. We used to just say "ok 30% don't let anyone die go" and we'd manage to kill her, but she'd wipe out half the raid.
So this is our pre-Berserk strategy:
1. Clear DoTs @ 42%
2. Warlocks put up Curse of Doom
3. Stop DPS @ 31%
4. Allow a tank transition
5. Wait for a Wyvern Sting to come in and wear off.
6. Bring her to sub-30% with the new tank Shield Walling immediately.
7. As SW wears off, the current tank gets BoP'ed (or Invuln Pots), forcing Huhuran onto the other tank.
8. Tank #2 Shield Walls.
9. If she's still alive, Tank 2 just Last Stands / Lifegiving Gems / blows pots to stay alive as long as possible. If it takes too long, he'll eventually die and it'll go back on Tank 1 who'll LS/LGG and try to stay up as long as possible.
The biggest thing in this fight, in my opinion, is a clean transition to Berserk.
Odd. Since they fixed Grounding Totem a while back (RIP :( ), we just burn her to 50% with one tank (who wears more NR), swap to a second tank (with less NR and more physical mitigation to handle the Berserk) who probably gets aggro by 40% (we back off until he does, if needed), wait for the first tank's DoT to wear off, and then burn her from 30% to dead with no other tank swaps or anything of the sort. Usually the MT will shield wall towards the end. Managing a tank transition sub-30% just seems like it'd be messy, but hey, if it works, it works. The MT also counts as a soak, also (groups 1-4 consist of 4 soaks + 1 nonsoak priest each).
The biggest thing in this fight, in my opinion, is a clean transition to Berserk.
It really depends, if your DPS is good enough, it's not really necessary. We've gone into the Berserk with me stacked above 5 before, and as long as the current tank turns her over when his shield wall wears off, he won't die. She's usually sub 10% by the time my shield wall fades, so if you're bringing some serious pew pew to the fight, just go ahead and burn her down. However, for folks just learning the fight, your steps are spot on.
Parsing the combat log for the relative amounts of physical and nature damage is a poor idea to determine what gear to wear, you need to look at the last lines and figure out what really kills you. Huhuran is extremely similar to Vael in that respect, it is neither melee nor magic damage, it is almost always a combination of both, typically two crushing blows and a completely unresisted tick or cast.
So what can you do against this? The first answer is of course maximize your hitpoints, which would point to your tanking gear. Now the problem is: your tanking gear cannot reliably prevent crushing blows from mobs. Its higher armor rating will help reduce their damage, but that amount is quite small and you can even replicate that effect with a stoneshield potion. Your nature resist gear however *can* reduce the rate of unresisted magic attacks by a very large amount.
That is the reason to wear nature resist equipment. You will reduce the number of damage spikes from nature damage to the point, where they will almost never occur at the same time as melee damage spikes. You will take more damage on the average, but you will survive.
Putting your 15 soackers inside the hitbox and your tanks on the borders assures that they can outlive the beserk mode (loosing 3-4 priests on sponge healing really hurts) and that your tanks wont get sleeped, thus better agro swaps.
Sleep improves your aggro swaps because dispelling it provides your offtank with additional rage.
We just dont have the soakers to not use the warriors. Warriors+rogues+Hunters is 14-17. On occasion with a trial rogue low on nr we have even used warlocks as soakers to make the 15. The hunters are dpsing so cant be inside the Hitbox. After a ton of early issues with locks and fire mages Aggroing post 30% we take it very gently often we will spend a minute between 35-30 just to get the timeing right.
11/07/06, 11:03 AM
Similar Threads
