Protection and you! - Page 38

Dianora · 12/27/07, 12:22 PM

Originally Posted by jasura

We've been killing hydross for EXACTLY 3 months now (First kill was 8/13/07) and our add tanks never use resist gear. We just have 5 tanks for that fight. The two hydross tanks have maxed out FrR and NR but our add tanks have 0 resistance gear on. We just go in with our normal tanking gear. This strategy has worked brilliantly for us and we never have any problems with it.

We put all 5 tanks into one group. When the phase change happens, everyone picks up their designated elemental and drags them together. We have our deep holy priests SPAM Circle of Healing on the tank group and give them a shadow priest. What ends up happening is that DPS opens up with AOE as soon as the adds are in the middle and we nuke them down FAST. We have never hit enrage or come even remotely close. This also requires 6-7 healers MAX because AOE healing (Especially COH) is just so efficient here!

I don't see why any guild would put their members through the completely unnecessary step of gathering up resist gear for the add tanks in this fight. The hydross tanks need maxed out resists but add tanks can go with 0 if you got enough tanks to pick up 1 add per tank. Bringing in more tanks doesnt slow DPS down because the AOE can just push a lot harder and they end up having more time to DPS hydross himself.

I got drafted to do Hydross add after depletion of tanks in my guild... Went in with maximum avoidance set, zero resist gear, and did just fine.

kalbear · 12/27/07, 2:21 PM

In looking over various websites and armory profiles, I see a lot of inconsistencies in regards to this talent. The OP mentioned utilizing Improved Judgement while the GCD is active to get more total judges in over the course of a fight. Personally, I don't like this idea at all because it means you're going to have white swings hit your target without an active seal to benefit from (essentially diminishing or even eliminating the benefit of more frequent Judgements). I've run for awhile now w/o Improved Judgement and just treat HS/Judge/Consecration as all being part of my 10-second cycle, and I haven't missed it once. If anyone has a good reason to pull 2 points out of Prot for this talent, I'd love to hear it.

From the calculations I did, the first point of improved judgment works out to be about a .8% TPS increase, the second a .5% increase. The main reason you'd want to get it is for utility; it is nice to be able to judge more quickly in a variety of situations (for instance, when you're not running HS). But in terms of actual increase in TPS, it is not nearly as good as other talents you can get.

Here was the 40-second cycle that Lore figured out with improved judging and assuming HS must stay active:
0.0 HS
0.0 Judge
1.5 Consecration
3.0 SoR <- lost 3 seconds of SoR
8.0 Judge
10.0 HS
11.5 Consecration
16.0 Judge
16.0 SoR
20.0 HS
21.5 Consecration
24.0 Judge
24.0 SoR
30.0 HS
31.5 Consecration
32.0 Judge
33.0 SoR <- lost 1 second of SoR
40.0 HS
40.0 Judge <- back to where we started

This gives a total of 4 seconds of downtime of SoR (10%) in exchange for 25% more judgments. With this cycle you cannot avoid missing at least one swing with SoR, will almost certainly miss two, and could easily miss 3. Still, that's not the way to think about it statistically; think about it as missing 10% of all sealed swings. If you introduce latency into the mix, it gets even worse.

Also, while I can understand that in theory you can avoid a miss by being very careful with your swing timer, in practice I believe this to be absolutely flawed for analysis purposes. Real-world examples can't do this reliably and being off by .1s will throw this - and that doesn't even take into account parrying attacks which will speed up your swing timer and throw that all to hell. There's simply no way to avoid missing some sealed attacks with improved judgment being used. Slower swing times will decrease that risk but there's no way to eliminate it completely.

Cathela · 12/27/07, 6:53 PM

Originally Posted by Tilted

Thanks for the note. In looking your diagram over, it's worth noting that you made this work by moving the Consecration cast around as needed to accommodate the recasting of your seal, which works out to be the same number of Consecration casts you'd get without Improved Judgement during the 40-second window. In most cases this works out to be a good thing, but there are certain fights where you can't afford the 1.5s w/o Consecration down (FLK hunter pet spawning, for example). Still, it's nice to see how it can work.

Right. I was assuming a fight where crush-removal was the primary concern. FLK adds are level 72, so it's a different concern. For what it's worth though, I'm pretty sure there's some kind of delay between when the pet spawns and when it starts moving, because I'm not really religious about keeping Consecration up constantly and I've never had trouble with the add running off as long as I'm doing it once every ten seconds or so.

In regards to the Jan'alai fight (dragonhawk), has anyone tried using fire resist gear to tank the adds? Up until now I've been using a moderate amount (128) just to reduce the frequency of the debuffs in case we get too many adds up at once. But even with ~27% reduction, recount still showed roughly 2/3 of my total damage intake for the fight from fire damage. I'm up to 250 resist now with the aura active, so the next time we head that way I'm going to give it a shot to see how it pans out. My hunch is with enough resistance, you can tank an entire side's worth of spawns without putting too much of a burden on your healers.

I've single-tanked a full side with somewhere between 200 and 270 resist (not sure whether I was wearing three or four of the epic FR pieces. The rest of my gear is all T5+, so one could argue that I'm overgeared for this boss.

The main concern when doing this is getting the teleport/grenade sequence while you're gathering up the adds; the consecration stays in the same place and keeps ticking so that's fine, but when you've got ~20 birds around you it can be easy to miss one of the grenade bubbles and eat a large chunk of damage.

Anyway, once you do one side you can just bubble off the debuff before you do the other side.

Also, a Frost Trap between the torches by each bridge makes picking the spawns up a trivial task.

Oh, that's perfect; I'd never thought of doing that. Should make things much easier.

galzohar · 12/27/07, 8:27 PM

We had a paladin in badge+T4 gear, easily held aggro on an entire side of spawns when we killed 1 of the hatchers right off the bat. Then AOE can go in and clean a whole side fast. Next time he spawns hatchers you clean up the other side and you're set. Note that his fire bombs seem to despawn the hatcher or something so if he does that while eggs are being hatched you'll just have to wait for another spawn to aoe the rest (but should grab and aoe what you already have). Note that while the fire eggs are being thrown around you can still go back and concecrate again and only really have to move to a safe spot a few seconds later, so you don't get any dragonhawks loose.

Just don't let hatchers spawn on more than 1 side at a time, as you obviously won't be able to pick up hawks from both sides.

PsiVen · 12/27/07, 8:39 PM

Last time I did Dragonhawk the fire bomb didn't despawn the hatcher, it just made him harder to kill while he went to the other side and spawned everything :o

tekkel · 12/28/07, 3:14 AM

To be honest the only reason your should not maintank anything in ZA besides the dragonhawk boss is when you have a protection warrior in your group or your bear tank is heavily outgearing you. I'm one of the 3 MT's in my guild besides 2 protection warriors and we have 2 bears and 2 dps warriors around for any offtanking. I only ever tried tanking ZA together with a prot war but u lack some dps usually then. If 3 healers aren't going to keep everyone in ZA alive then either your people don't pass the retard check for the fights or the healers don't live up to the standard for ZA.

I rather have a dps warrior/feral druid to get the eagle boss down faster then go healing and let healers and dps slack on movement. And you sure as hell aren't gonna beat the timer by swapping a dps for a healer on a fight.

Questioner · 12/28/07, 11:10 AM

I almost always go with a prot warrior. I MT Eagle and Hex Lord, because he can gear swap and pull about 700 dps, and those fights are significantly easier the shorter they are, in my opinion. I OT on the other fights except for Zul'jin, where I heal. Zul'jin is laughably easier with an extra healer, it seemed to me.

On Dragonhawk, I can easily tank an entire side of birds at once. The only problem was that everyone would lag to hell and back, and if we got a bomb spawn while I have 20 birds on me...I cannot see anything and am getting like 5fps... God save my soul from a bomb.

Also....it is easier to kill the spawned lynx (because he takes more damage) than dps the boss on lynx (when they split). Not sure why you would do it the other way.

Tilted · 12/28/07, 12:01 PM

Originally Posted by galzohar

We had a paladin in badge+T4 gear, easily held aggro on an entire side of spawns when we killed 1 of the hatchers right off the bat. Then AOE can go in and clean a whole side fast. Next time he spawns hatchers you clean up the other side and you're set. Note that his fire bombs seem to despawn the hatcher or something so if he does that while eggs are being hatched you'll just have to wait for another spawn to aoe the rest (but should grab and aoe what you already have). Note that while the fire eggs are being thrown around you can still go back and concecrate again and only really have to move to a safe spot a few seconds later, so you don't get any dragonhawks loose.

Just don't let hatchers spawn on more than 1 side at a time, as you obviously won't be able to pick up hawks from both sides.

Holding aggro isn't the problem; survival is. If your group gets ported to the middle while you have 20+ birds on you, chances are good your healer just had a heal interrupted and now has to resort to instants because he needs to move to an area clear of bombs. We just dropped this guy again last night, and with my now 250 fire resist my healer (my wife) noticed a HUGE difference in my longevity. Ultimately I ended up tanking an entire side, bubbling out of the debuffs, repeating the process on the other side, then DPS was free to burn the boss. Not once was I at risk of dying.

You can do this guy with less FR than that, but you need to be far more cautious with how many birds you let spawn. This is definitely an example of a fight where extra gear turns it into a joke.

I have to disagree with the eagle boss being easier with a heavier amount of DPS than heals. Yes, it's easier to make the timer, but if you've already blown it we've found him much easier when I switch into healing gear and let someone else tank him. After the first storm, the amount of damage the raid sustains is pretty much constant for the rest of the fight. Slow and steady definitely makes it take longer, but you're far less likely to lose a teammate this way. Again, it comes down to your group's gear vs. the level of the encounter. Guilds in BT aren't going to need to be anywhere near as cautious as guilds just entering 25-man content.

galzohar · 12/28/07, 1:17 PM

The first time I got ported as a healer the hawk tank died, yes. 2nd time I told the other healers to heal the MT while I heal the paladin tank and made sure he's topped off before the teleport then topped him off again immidiately after my heal got interrupted, and only moved away from the fire eggs after he was topped off. Again you have plenty of time to do a few more things before you actually have to move to a safe spot after the teleport.
If you have FPS problems, the only solution is to try really wierd strats or get a new computer...

Boyiee · 12/29/07, 9:27 AM

Originally Posted by Tilted

Holding aggro isn't the problem; survival is. If your group gets ported to the middle while you have 20+ birds on you, chances are good your healer just had a heal interrupted and now has to resort to instants because he needs to move to an area clear of bombs. We just dropped this guy again last night, and with my now 250 fire resist my healer (my wife) noticed a HUGE difference in my longevity. Ultimately I ended up tanking an entire side, bubbling out of the debuffs, repeating the process on the other side, then DPS was free to burn the boss. Not once was I at risk of dying.

You can do this guy with less FR than that, but you need to be far more cautious with how many birds you let spawn. This is definitely an example of a fight where extra gear turns it into a joke.

I found this fight to be the easiest one in the entire instance really, it's quite quick and fun. We use a MT Prot war with me as OT prot pally. For the dragonhawk boss, we kill one hatcher and let the other one through, drop a the aoe slowing freeze at the entrance to the little bridge path they walk on for the birds - and then we let the entire side through. I put a concecrate kinda near the little torch, so that it covers the exit of the pathway and every bird comes directly to me. I pretty much just spam holy shield and concecrate while the hawks are pretty much AOE'd and dps'd down. I use Fire resist aura and it's all I need, and I make sure a healer is spamming a cleanse on me for the fire buff just incase i get breathed. It's all the resist I need, infact I've never died from it. I have no problems surviving either, we use 3 healers and they are easily able to keep me alive. One is focused on me, and if we have a druid I'll have hots which are nice. When the bombs go off and everyone is warped to the middle, the birds are still slowed from the trap usually and dont fly to me right away so there is pleanty of time for a heal if im low, as well as there is pleanty of time to find a safe spot and heal me for the healers. I then just run back to the spot, concecrate again on top of them then just wait for the bombs to pop. Right after the bombs pop the side is cleared usually and we do the same on the other side. We only go through 1 bomb on each side while having them all released.

I'm only in Badge/T4/starting t5 gear and with this strategy the fight is really a joke. Our guild is only 2-3 bosses in tk and 3 bosses in ssc and really the trash pull going to eagle up the ramp is more difficult than the dragonhawk boss fight... but that's only because we make it with timers with the warrior on top and me on bottom, and our RL is too afraid to let me go up top since we have the timer down with the war even though it would be significantly easier.

decusetfides · 12/31/07, 3:40 PM

I've tanked most of the ZA bosses as a pally (bear, eagle, dragonhawk, linx). Tanking the dragonhawk adds is not really about survivability as much as it is getting sufficient aggro on all the birds. The simplest way I've found is to clear one complete side (kill one hatcher), skip the 2nd hatcher spawn (kill both), then deal with the other side. It is also advisable to mark the living hatcher on the first spawning as it will attempt to run across to the other platform and hatch the second side.

I have a fire resist gear-set that gives me +237 FR with my resist aura active. I have about 16k hp in my resist gear and the healers barely look at me. With a full debuff stack (+90% fire dmg at x30) I take about 750 dmg per hit (per GrimReaper). The reason threat is more important is to keep your AoE alive. 2-3 well geared AoEers will take down the adds no problem and usually before the first teleport. If the teleport occurs, then the dragonhawks should follow you into the room. Staying out of the bombs, consecrate should take down the rest. The encounter is extremely easy after that, just race the enrage timer.

AoEers: mage/loc and usually an additional of either or a shaman dropping a magma totem. More DPS is preferred here so any dragonhawks that attempt to attack your AoE will die before getting there (ie the last few that spawn and haven't sat in the consecration all that long)

Gear: Full Aldor FR set + Cipher of Damnation neckpiece (Shadowmoon Valley quest reward)

galzohar · 12/31/07, 3:48 PM

Remember his "enrage" is only like 1.5X dmg which is easily healable if your healers know they need to slack less when he enrages. According to bosskillers the berserk timer is 10 minutes and in any realistic raid you're not going to reach the 10 minute mark - if you finished off all the eggs you will get him down in notime and if you're having problems with the eggs you'll wipe way before the 10 minute timer.

rozakk · 12/31/07, 8:05 PM

For janalai:
I've had issues sometimes where a port happens while several dragonhawks are still en route and a consecrate tick doesnt go off on them or only goes off once. otherwise ive never really needed to wear FR, even with an entire side on me my chance of dying to spike damage was less of a random element as was a badly timed port leading to a few unaggroed birds.

For lynx: ive tanked this 3 or 4 times now, but would spike dangerously low, and have died a couple times from incredible damage spikes during a frenzy. Just standing there while the bear MT's seems to work much more safely from what ive seen.

Generally I insist on MT'ing every boss besides the above 2, unless a prot warrior is in the raid, as i feel my usefulness compared to a feral druids is more limited when im not tanking. The extra healing i put out, while helpful, doesn't really make the difference between a win and loss, and the good dps and buffs the druid has are more popular.

For those getting started I'd also suggest trying to be main cleanser , even when tanking. I could cleanse flameshocks on the shaman phase on lynx, because people would be switching dps to the totems, giving me a stable cushion of a threat lead on the lynx cat.

On malacress I got enough of a threat lead while people killed adds that I i cleansed off all the moonfires and anything else cleansable during that fight. The healers are usually spamming a lot of raid heals, and not having to burn GCD's on multiple dispels can relieve a lot of stress on malacress.

On zuuljin of course i'd take off my own paralysis but needed to be more careful on threat that fight. On one particular kill that I MT'd i had an impossible time getting aggro on the dragonhawk phase - i'm not sure what happened but I actually had 3 people pulling it off me right away and finally the feral druid ended up MT'ing it (wearing his dps gear so was crittable but that last phase is pretty weak dps on the tank) because i couldnt get it back. but I started out with an AS crit so it was surprising to me. I'd need to check logs next fight but am guessing i get far fewer holy shield procs with the dragonhawk compared to the other phases because of his reduced melee time.
Mana wasnt a major issue so i cast a lot of holy lights during the eagle phase, which is the one phase where the extra heals can be particularly helpful, and quickly regained my mana back on lynx phase.
Because of the bear phase overpower, feral druid tanks are subject to very spikey damage on zuuljin, something less of a factor for us as well

pbob · 01/01/08, 12:51 PM

Overall, which is better, Seal of Vengeance, or Seal of Righteousness?

Ragnor · 01/01/08, 3:08 PM

SoR gives you it's max tps immediately where as SoV takes over 5sec to ramp up (normally)
SoV proc's have 17% spell resist vs lvl 73 mobs (SoR doesn't)
An unlucky resist streak means SoV will fall off
SoV has a fairly crap debuff priority and can get pushed off (particularly if you have alot of locks in the raid)

Basically SoV sucks.