We had 3 rogues in our raid when we downed him. We were using a two add-tank strategy, both of whom were Paladins in block gear. Each tank was able to pick up one add each, a hunter MD'd onto one and one rogue Tricked onto the other add tank. The other two rogues were able to use their TotT on DK DPSers as the threat wasn't a problem for the add tanks and our DKs were doing the most dmg. I know a lot of rogues who will only trade tricks with other rogues. If another class is doing more dmg then for god's sake, trick them instead.

I was specced 18/51/2 with points in HnS. I used a weapon swap macro so that I used my 1.5 OH sword for my SS, but swapped to a 2.6 OH Axe for FoK Spamming. Despite lower energy regen from this weapon I found my overall dmg was much higher using this strategy. I didn't have a medium (1.8) speed dagger OH to use but this might have been a better balance than going as slow as 2.6 (a fellow rogue with very similar gear did this and our dmg was pretty much on par). I used DP on my OH weapon to keep the savage combat debuff on at all times, allowing the other rogues to go dual WP.

I pretty much just used SS and SnD on Anub, no other finishers. Instead I would generate 5CPs for making sure SnD was up during the whole add phase and then pool energy to start the FoK Spamming with as close to 100 energy as poss without capping. KS on Anub at the pull and then after each burrow phase before the first set of adds. Use of BF & AR pretty much as others have posted previously.

We also equipped the raid with Frost Protection Pots and used them at the start of P3. If you enable DBM to give you a loud warning when you are afflicted by Penetrating Cold you can CoS the first tick if you are very fast, and this will not use up the frost pot, allowing it to be used if you are afflicted when CoS is on CD.

Ehm... 3 seconds to press a button isn't "very fast". In fact, if a rogue fails to cloak the first PenCold it should be regarded an utter failure.

Frost pots are also an unnecessary crutch. Your healers should be able to deal with the PenCold when DBM marks each target for 1 healer on each PC target.

The odds that players get PC more than once are extremely high, and if your healers can't heal the 2nd PC after the frost pot is used, what's the point. You might as well learn the encounter properly from start.

I have to disagree with this. If I use a frost pot to survive PC when CoS is on CD how is that much different from using a Haste pot to increase my dps? If that is the line of reasoning your using, any consumable can be considered a crutch.

The point is that different guilds will use different strategies based on what works best *for them*. There is no "proper" way to learn an encounter, there are ways that work and ways that don't (granted some are more effective than others). We, for example prefer to bring less healers and more DPS, because we feel it makes p3 easier. Does this mean everyone needs to have Frost Pots, yes, is that a crutch, no.

Sure, the odds that you will get PC more than once are high enough that depending on frost pots for every PC wouldn't be a good strategy, but thats not what is going on here. Frost pots are being using in combination or alternated with other defensive CDs (CoS, Ice Block, AMS just to name a few), or even health stones can be used pre-emptively for the first PC tick once you know you have the debuff.

The difference is that one forgives your crap healers (once) and the other doesn't?

My guild prefers to have healers capable of healing the PC, and not relying on improving RNG CDs with frostpots. But as you said, each guild has its own tactics.

But I can't really follow your logic. Bring less healers for more dps, but require everyone to use frost pots, lowering dps.

As it has been mentioned MANY times in the previous posts, everyone has different strats, but there are a few facts that stay the same.

Everyone as far as I am aware, will take 2 burrows to reach phase 3, meaning everyone's phase 3 will last approximately the same amount of time. If I recall correctly, 3-4 minutes. General idea we use is everyone who doesn't have PC when phase 3 starts, pops their frost pot. Of course there is the 2 minute buff timer, but generally everyone would have had PC by the 2 minutes is up and it frees them of having to press it when the fight gets slightly more stressful, especially true for healers.

Using CoS on CD (when PC'ed of course) during the first half of p3 would seem ideal, especially if it can save your Frost pot that was used in our strat. But as Anub's health approaches 0 and the fight goes on and your healers are starting to stress out due to nearly invisible mana bars, it may be ideal to save CoS and ONLY use it if absolutely necessary (if you don't notice a heal/hot when PC is about to tick, a healer died or is oom). I also save my healthstone for the last 15% for any mishaps that may occur.

A haste potion adds what, 40-50 dps over a 6-7 minute fight? Maybe 100 tops. With 2-3 tanks, 6-7 healers, you're talking about 15-17 DPSing characters, so those DPS potions are providing a total of 1500-1700 raid DPS. Dropping a healer in exchange for another 7k+ dpser would be a gigantic raid DPS increase.

I am, in a large sense, going against the "my dps is the most important thing" that your post seemed to espouse. Beating the encounter is the top priority, or should be, and while having high personal dps as a rogue is often one of our highest priorities, it is very often the case that doing something that may slightly lower our personal DPS is actually better for the overall encounter.

Anub Hard is very certainly a big fight where that's the case. Anyhow, your statement was, as I read it: "it doesn't make sense to drop a healer to add dps and then use a non-DPS potion to cover for it", and I was showing that that was largely untrue. I'm making no calls on how good or bad people's healers are.

My point was that if you need frost pots you have problems with healing. And when you have problems with healing, you don't remove healers. I'm not saying that frost pots and putting your faith in the RNG Gods is a bad idea, it just doesn't solve the underlying problem: Incompetent healers.

Nevertheless, and more on-topic: You might be guesstimating the value of haste pots wrong by evaluating it over a 7mins fight considering only phase3 dps really matters.
I haven't had any reason to run the numbers, but 18 people using dps pots in a 2½min period adds up to a lot of dps.

Disabling speed pots on Aldriana's SS is a dps decrease of about 40dps for my gear. Being generous, and including the sync of dps pots and heroism and other CDs, lets say its 100dps increase per dpser, so about extra 1500 raiddps DURING p3 if you have 15 dps (and 7 healers and 3 tanks). Bring another dps of 6000dps and you get 4 times as much as the dps pots get you. I don't see how that is a crutch of any sort.

Look, the major point I was making in the first place is that using the tools available to you is not a crutch. You're arguing that using frost pots is a crutch, while using a dps pot isn't a crutch, and I fail to see the logic behind that statement (in fact you're going so far as to call our healers incompetent). We don't need the frost pots more than anyone else, we purposefully designed our strategy around using them, and that seems to be what you are missing.

This discussion has gone on long enough, and isn't going anywhere useful anymore. I suggest we all leave this at what seems to be the consensus by most: if its not broken, don't try to fix it.

I use my Haste Pots if Anub is below 5% and if Clos is ready. Otherwise you might die due to missing heal (my PC healer is oom, was too slow or simply died - whatever) or if you somehow design your strategy around it - even if I'm curious how this should work. Frost Pots can save your life or can be worthless, but I prefer to be safe instead of beeing dead, 'cause you might get in trouble if those lovely adds are still there while the next ones are coming for your tree(s). Dead rogues can't dps.

I too would like to know how you purposefully design a strategy around frost pots? Something like this?

And I mean no offence, but if you use 7 healers, which is 1-2 more than us (depending on optimal setup) and they still can't cope with PenCold then there are bigger issues than frost pot vs dps pot. Heck, a friend of mine's guild uses frost pots AND a few frost protection items. They down Anub sure, but needing that much frost protection is a clear admission of failure by the healers.
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Janinè's compromise between doubting/trusting your healers is actually the best idea by far.

First PenCold: CoS.
Second PenCold: HS.
Third PenCold: Frost Pot if CoS isn't ready again.

Frost Pot reactively is "better" than throwing the towel in the ring at p3 start, distrusting your healers by default.

Everyone has a different strat for Anub...some use two off tanks, some use one. Some use 7 healers, some use less. But automatically putting the blame on the healers because people use frost protection pots or frost resist gear is so vanilla like previously mentioned.

This is just a circular argument. Using frost resist/pot to stay alive is the same as using a haste pot to try and end the fight earlier. Both means you stay alive (hopefully you do), which means the fight ends, which means the stress on the healers end. Using items that help lower the stress and work that another raid member has to do, I cannot see how that is a bad thing...it doesn't mean "OH YOUR HEALERS ARE BAD."

I'm happy for you that your guild can do H Anub with 5-6 healers, but indirectly calling someone else's healers bad because they use more than you, that's a pretty low blow and unnecessary.

On-topic: Let's discuss how you guys deal with adds during burrows. We usually group up in front of our main ice patch, melee run out and kill adds while they run for a ranged, if they are targeting a melee, that melee doesn't go hit it and tries to kite it. But the problem that we encounter which isn't the end of the world, but is quite annoying for healers is when an add chases the person being pursued when he's far away from the raid and getting BoPed. How do you usually deal with this, do you have some ranged run out to try to kill it or you just pray it doesn't stack too high and send a couple healers out to deal with it?

This isn't exactly a game breaking part of the fight, but improving on this part to be nearly flawless means healers don't have to do anything for this and can just sit and regen!

Really, I think this whole argument is sort of silly - due to RNG, your healers clearly need to learn how to heal PC; however, while they're doing so, Frost Pots are a nice safety net. Once you have the fight on farm they may or may not be necessary, but I don't think there's a whole lot of argument that they'll help you get your first kill faster - DPS pots aren't usually going to be the difference between getting a kill and not, but losing people on penetrating cold frequently can be. So: a lot of guilds choose to use them early on. It may not be necessary later as you improve at the fight. It's not a matter of the healers being good or bad or whatever - it's a matter of giving them a little extra reaction time at relatively low opportunity cost - a safety net.

I also suggest that we drop this line of discussion. There are perfectly good places to discuss the full Anub'arak strat; this thread doesn't need to reinvent the wheel in that respect. As such, I'd appreciate it if we could try to stay focused on the rogue-specific elements of the fight and optimizing those; if this thread turns into just a generic fight strategy thread, I will probably find it necessary to lock it.

In regard to the adds in P2,

We stack up slightly south of the tanking frost, melee taking out the adds before they get to the group with the help of the ranged DPS. Targetted people move to the back of the pack and stay OOR (but within the same general area) untill their coprresponding add is dead.
Pretty similar to your strat.

As for adds chasing the persued person the simplest method we've found is having our DKs save their DG for this eventuality, simply yank the add to the melee group to be deal with (we set a rotation up for any adds at longer ranges, for a 2 step DG if required) Tranq shot, additonal stuns, COI etc can be applied if necessary to keep it there until it's been dealt with.

With this new patch, does the ideal Anub Heroic spec change? The rogues in our guild have been running with the 18/51/2 build, and it was working very well. I imagine with the patch, the ideal combat build would be 20/51/0 while using the same fight mechanics. However, does going 51/18/2 pull ahead now? It's true that we lose AR and BF + KS for the add burn phase, but at the same time we have daggers and stronger poisons so FoK should do more damage as mutilate than as combat.

Our RL has asked the rogues to switch full time to anub during the second add wave anyway, so would the increased single target damage from mutilate spec during the second add phase and anub's phase 3 benefit the loss of the fast CDs I used to previously burn adds down?

For anub I would imagine combat would still be better for add damage. Whether or not you should focus more on add damage or anub damage depends entirely on your raid strategy and other factors specific to your raid.

As far as I can tell, 5 adds is still not at the breaking point for mutilate to provide more AoE damage than combat. Plus blade flurry does add a lot to the fight as you can get significant damage on anub depending on your strat.

If your guild assigns certain people to focus on single target damage because they feel aoe is sufficient, then mutilate rogues might be a good candidate for such a role due to the large gap in damage between mutilate and combat.

From Deathbringer Saurfang, mutilate is ahead of any other melee dps in 3.3. The gap is probably of the otrder of 10%, except for deathknights. I'd say in Anub encounter it would be possible to find a niche for mutilate rogues to stay on Anub, and rely on other aoe classes for aoe damage.

Question is what does more AoE? 20/51/0 with 5 Improved or 20/51/0 with 3 Vile and 2 Improved? Or maybe some other combination.

I tried mutilate on Anub this week for shits and giggles and found that, while the DPS delta was pretty small across the course of the fight with combat (we had some severe disconnect/latency issues so we put in several attempts), having the burst on demand of the combat spec/glyphing (AR+FOK+SS) was convenient.

Across the course of the fight, with mostly the same gear between combat and mutilate (Combat weapon is Golden Saronite Dragon, Mutilate MH is Gouge (heroic)), Combat still came up slightly on top.

Then again, we also run an odd raid group, with no arms warriors and, last night, only one rogue and one hunter, so combat was still preferred to keep up the MS effect and get up Savage Combat, so this whole post might not be applicable to your guilds/raid groups.

Either way, the AoE DPS is less than the expected single target mutilate DPS, so it might well be worth considering, though of course you also need to consider things like Tricks of the Trade (though not entirely needed on our paladin add-tank with a two-tank strat, though it is on our warrior, it gives a bit of extra stability) with either "swap off and DPS the single target" or "Tricks + FOK spam".

Killing spree is convenient if you get yourself stuck on permafrost between add waves to recenter yourself on the boss.

Granted- if I can convince our trial rogue to spec combat so he keeps up SC and trickses our warrior tank, I'll talk to our RL about just sticking to the boss as single-target full time mutilate.

I too tried switching between mutilate and combat. The other rogue in my guild stayed combat for the entire fight, giving me a healthy comparison.There is quite a significant difference in overall dps between the two specs. AoE was noticeably weaker as mutilate, and the amount of damage pumped into Anub as a single target wasn't enough to overtake Combat's AoE damage. Both rogues are used to tricks the tank anyway, so I wasn't able to stay full time single targeting Anub.

Mutilate is certainly stronger on phase 3, but since we still have to handle the adds, I would say combat is still the way to go for this fight post patch. Of course, I don't have any solid numbers to provide as proof except for recount meters/WoL. Just using my own personal observations.

Ultimately, the impression I get is that as with all other strategies discussed in this thread, it is going to heavily depend heavily your guild's current/new strategy and raid composition. In our strat this week, both rogues stayed mutilate and the fight went very smoothly, granted there was a little less burst dps from us on the adds. Between the new gear and buffs to classes, we managed to to get to P3 with only 1 burrow phase, and our P3 was quite a bit easier/faster once the healers has adjusted to not having mana regen time during the second burrow phase, so that may have played into it as well. However, I haven't taken a look at the log yet, and it may be that going combat would be even more of a boon to the fight given the buffs to poisons, we'll see next week

This is something I was wondering about, too. I guess I will run with 3 Vile, 2 Improved considering I also have to keep Wound Poison up so the Instant Poison part of Improved doesn't benefit me.