By the skin of our acid-drenched mandibles
We did indeed kill Anub last night, finally. And I wish I could say “ok, this is how you do it” but I’m not really confident in our strategy (despite it working) so instead I’m going to tell you what not to do.
One offtank isn’t enough
We did the fight last night with two tanks. The DK (who, while being more squishy, is bad at picking up adds) took Anub, and I rounded up the critters. That’s all well and good, but to maximize dps on Anub we were doing a strategy where the first Burrower to pop up got nuked down, and I held the other three from that phase, which were would then burn down as soon as Anub submerged.
Seems all well and good, but be prepared for this delightful little debuff. With three Burrowers on me I was looking at a full stack of this pretty quickly. Not only that, but this buff also kicked in for them as well. 300% damage buff along with a 300% attack speed buff. PURE AWESOME.
It was only by the skill of the healers that I was allowed to live. I should have been gibbed so many times (the AD debuff was just about constantly up) but somehow I made it. I’m sure being a bit overpowered this patch has something to do with it. Also, again, having amazingly awesome healers goes a long way.
Anyway, long story short: two off tanks recommended. One grabs the first two Burrowers, one grabs the other two. Tank them 12 yards apart ideally.
Don’t try to help with scarabs
I made the mistake of running around, throwing taunts, and trying to keep healers alive under constant scarab attack. And then Burrowers came up and I had a full 40 stacks of this. Avoid scarabs if you’re a tank.
Don’t stand on permafrost to avoid impales
You’ll take some damage if you just stand on a permafrost when an Impale is headed your way. Instead, put the permafrost patch between you and the incoming spikes and you’ll avoid the hurt. We lost a few people during phase 2 because they got taken out by an Impale through a permafrost.
Don’t burn down adds until phase 2
DPSing Anub while he’s up is really important in this fight. Because the burrow phases last so long you really don’t have room for more than three of them. Past that you’re looking at an enraged Anub coming up. Splitting dps on Burrowers is just asking for hitting the enrage timer.
Don’t push to phase 3 until Burrowers are dead
At 30% Anub basically steals everyone’s health over 40%. Combined with Burrowers piled on you doing god-knows-how-much damage, you’re looking at a dead offtank and Adds Gone Wild. So make sure dps understands that all dps needs to stop on Anub at like 35%, then Burrowers burned down, then back to the boss to push him to phase 3.
Ideally, execution of each phase should look like this: MT on Anub, two OTs on Burrowers. Each time a pair of Burrowers comes up, one offtank grabs them, the second grabs the second pair. Burrowers are held until phase 2 where they are marked and burnt down. During burrow phase, everyone stacks up to AOE down the Scarabs, which tanks avoid taking any acid stacks. Rinse and repeat until Anub hits 35%. At that point, adds are dealt with until they’re dead, and dps pushes Anub into phase 3. Anub is then burnt down.
Great success[!/?]
Armory Feed
We would pull one set of the adds to Anub and then have whirlwind, chain lightning, fan of knives incidental damage help burn them and the boss at the same time. Also, during phase 3 you can let the adds burrow, you don’t care if they heal, you just want them out of the way.
@honorshammer
10 September 2009 at 3:22 pm #
I don’t think Paladins are really overpowered this patch, though that seems to be the popular thing to say. DKs were hit too hard by the nerf bat and are a bit underpowered right now. However, the changes in 3.2.2 will likely remedy that. Paladin’s are not significantly ahead of Druids or Warriors. Warriors continue to be the go-to tank for World First kinds of guilds.
Cool. Thanks for the pointers. I’ll have to search if you have articles like this on other bosses.
Nice round up. A some good pointers, you do it more or less the way we have taken him down as well.
I know its a few post back, but I so agree with you, that off-tanking is the most fun thing. There we have to work to succeed… :)
Just so you know…I never switched off Anub to go after the adds, and I think a few other DPS followed my lead. To be honest, I did not know about the vicious debuffs you were getting while the adds were up, and I was tired of hitting the enrage timer. I figured that one or two Rogues, who were often slowed by the permafrost speed debuff, were of better use hitting the boss rather than slowly running after an add that would probably be down by the time I got my first combo point anyway. Perhaps you would have had an easier time if I (and the couple others) had quickly dismissed that first add and then returned to the boss…but then again, we did lose most of the raid within a few seconds of killing the boss, so maybe the extra DPS put us over the top….I guess it will remain a mystery.
P.S. I did, of course, attack the adds the second that Anub went underground.
@Rhidach
11 September 2009 at 12:32 pm #
@Falowin: You bastard! … Nah, it’s fine. We killed him, and we know better next time. DPS was pretty light that night because of the fillers we had to bring in, so you probably made the right decision.