The not-so-epic conclusion to the Coliseum

Yesterday my server came back up at around 8:40 server time. Usually we start raids at 7 server, so we were pretty delayed. I understand that the extended maintenance was because of extraordinary reasons (supposedly the Blizzard techs were doing a raid on Door Boss), so I wasn’t too miffed the Col25 raid was delayed for so long that we pushed it back to tonight.

They actually brought Lightninghoof down again this morning, which is good and necessary, because Door Boss was definitely not dead. More like pushed to phase 2.

Ildara, Cendra, and I somehow managed to slip past DB and get into Zul’Gurub on our first try last night (for the return of our weekly mount runs). Part of the desire to go there was also farming raptors for the pet, which the RNG gods surprisingly shined their countenance upon us and let drop. Grats to Ildara on her baby, giant-headed raptor!

After ZG we flew over to Blackrock Mountain where I was fully expecting to get into Molten Core after one-shotting Door Boss. Alas, we went on to wipe on him for about 15 minutes.

Hopefully they finally fix this ridiculousness with the extra maintenance today. I’m really itching to get back to farming my right Binding of the Windseeker. (Time’s running out!)

Hrm, I need to back up a little.

We did actually end up raiding Col10 last night, right as the servers came back up. I through together a quick run and we totally roflstomped the place. Aside from a sloppy first attempt on Beasts, everything else was a one-shot. Even Anub!

Amusing bug, the corpses never despawned, which was slightly annoying. However, also amusing when the Lich King strode into the Coliseum to taunt Tirion, walked into Icehowl’s corpus, and then the recently deceased Yeti began to castigate us for building a tournament on top of a Nerubian empire. [HIS] EMPIRE.

So then the floor collapsed, and poor Icehowl and Friends joined us in the cavern below. Requiescat in pace, my furry foe.

… Right–where was I? Anub. Oh, what a nub he is. Now, I’m not one to bandy about such terms, but I think it’s fair to say this gentlebug was quite the loot pinata.

The whole fight consists of three phases: Anub above ground, Anub underground, and Anub at <30% health.

In the first phase appoint a dps to bring down the frozen orbs that float above the fight. Doing so will drop patches of permafrost on the ground. Movement is reduced by 80% on these, but it’s a good thing because adds cannot burrow through permafrost and regain health, and Anub’s spike on phase two cannot penetrate these spots.

For tanks, one is going to tank Anub in as big a permafrost patch as you can manage. If Anub’s hitbox is completely in permafrost he can’t burrow and start phase two. Try to make that happen. Moreover, an add tank is needed to pick up Burrower adds and bring them to Anub and tank them on permafrost. All dps need to burn down the adds asap to make life easier. If adds are not tanked on permafrost they will go underground and regen lots of health.

One thing to look out for is every so often Anub will freeze the tank on him, which means no avoidance. That’ll be a neat little damage spike.

Now, after a while Anub will burrow (unless you have enough permafrost to prevent this) and go underground. He’ll then “pursue” someone and send spikes that them. The person with the pursue debuff should run away from the raid and stand on patches of permafrost so they don’t get spiked.

Meanwhile, scarabs will spawn, so the rest of the raid should group up and AOE the scarabs down. The bugs put a pretty nasty dot on anyone they melee, so ranged needs to be on the ball with dispatching these.

Eventually Anub will pop back up and dpsing will continue until his health reaches 30%. At this point the fight enters phase three, and Anub immediately puts a debuff on the raid called Leech Swarm that will absorb health. This part of the fight is tricky for the healers because if people have too much health it’ll just go right to healing Anub, so everyone should be left at no more than 40%.

The only two complications with this are the frozen dot that he’ll put on someone occasionally, which will need to be healed. The tank’s going to take normal damage, so they can be healed to full (better safe than sorry). Last night I was being topped off to 100% and it wasn’t negatively impacting the fight in the slightest.

Just pop bloodlust and burn this pest down, and he’ll spit up purples in short order. Very easy kill!

After Coliseum–but before ZG, stay with me here!–the raid then hopped over to VOA to try Koralon. Another unsatisfyingly easy kill. This fight is basically just “Don’t Stand in the Fire 101.” As a tank, kite him around the room and make the offtank, or a melee or two, stand on top of you to split Meteor Fists damage.

Thanks for the free loots Blizz!