Weekend notes
1. Saturday I had the day mostly to myself so I decided to get a jumpstart on making my eventual Troll Druid (woohoo race changes). I rolled the Tauren Druid that morning and by the end of the night I had him at level 21. One thing that really struck me in that period was how much Druids suck for the first twenty levels. Level 1-10 is basically Wrath… Wrath… Wrath… ok… more Wrath.
Then when I got Bear Form I decided to do the next ten levels like that, since I already had the Shadowcraft BOAs equipped. So instead of Wrath spam, it was Maul spam.
It wasn’t too bad, I basically headed over to the Ghostlands and burnt through the next nine levels or so in five hours, basically spending most of the time aoe tanking groups of mobs during quests.
One hilarious mistake I found myself doing a lot: I was trying to solo Knucklerot at lvl 19 and I was doing really well, but at like 30% health I warstomped to stun him, shifted to cast hots on myself, and then… er, ran out of mana and couldn’t shift back into Bear Form. GG nub.
Once I got Cat Form however, the fun really started. Lots of fast hits, a cool looking appearance, and stealth. Boy howdy, I’ve always wanted a character with stealth.
I’m looking forward to getting this guy to 80 asap and then sitting on him until Cataclysm comes out. I doubt I’ll do much raiding with him this xpac.
2. Had some guild drama hit this morning, hurray. The fail DK tank that I’ve mentioned a few times in these pages finally flew the coop. There’s nothing really funny about what brought us to this point, nothing I can document for teh lulz here, which is unfortunate. Just long story short: Failtank got too big for his britches, and combining that with an attitude of “I’m the best, everyone else sucks” with nothing to back it up… it wasn’t meant to last.
The worst part of all this was he took a really good healer with him that I guess he was in a relationship with. I’m not really sure what their deal was, but she was really nice, so I mourn her passing, so to speak. Failtank on the other hand can get pound sand for all I’m concerned.
On the plus side though, no one seems to care in guild. I was worried he might bring other folks with him, but surprise surprise, no one cared much for him.
3. Finishing up Heroic 10man tonight. I’m not sure what to expect in terms of the last two bosses (I hear Anub is intense) but I think Twins will be ok. I would really like to clear the place out tonight (I honestly think we can do it, I just don’t know if we have enough time to get the needed attempts in with 2.5 hours for the two bosses). That may be me being pessimistic though. (What, me? Nevar!)
In any case, if anyone has some pro-tips for Twins and Anub I’d be much obliged.
Armory Feed
I have a tip for you on Heroic 10 man Anub. I’m not sure how pro it is… but does allow my guild to get Anub to 56% before the first burrowing. Have your ranged wait to shoot down all the frost patches after you have picked up the first 2 adds. If they wait to do this then the adds will not get slowed by frostpatches on their way to you at the boss. I find the hardest part of offtanking in this phase is getting those buggers squarley on the frost patch and especially if one gets to me much faster than the other. The ranged should shoot down one frostpatch though which the main tank brings the boss to ASAP. So then you tank the adds on the same patch that the boss is brought to. If you tank the adds and the boss together then the boss will take some of the aoe damage that is meant to kill the adds. Then just grab the other two adds when they come and let them take whatever damage the dps spills over from them aoeing on Anub. The DPS only directly targets the first set of adds and ignores the second set. This will also give you more people to help with interupting these little bastards since you may have a rogue close by or another melee class with an interupting ability.
I also swap in a Glyph of Holy Wrath just for this fight which is quite nice for giving you more interupting ability. :) You really have no need for the hammer glyph in this fight since you are dead meat if you have 4 adds on you most of the time.
@Rhidach
28 September 2009 at 3:25 pm #
Great tips! Thanks Yoggie!
Twins…..Pull them to the center between the two rear most portals. We put our squishiest healer between them, with the tanks and 2 melee DPS forming a protective bubble. Basically the light tank stands at the 12, light DPS at 3, dark DPS at 6, and me at 9 (with the doors they come from as the 12 position). They are tanked on top of each other all AoE attacks (swipe, blade flurry, diviine storm, etc.) rocks them both. Don’t bother changing auras for the shield – just all DPS switches.
There is also an aura/DoT that makes your DBM go crazy that you need to change (it’s an addition to what they do in regular mode) but it only lasts a few seconds, so just heal through it. The confusion will be when folks keep trying to switch because they think a boss AoE is coming.
Anub – head over to my blog and you can see a great kill video from our attempt last week. It’s shot from the perspective of our Disc priest – so you can see everything (this is 10 man btw).
What we do is shoot down 1 block – I drag Anub so just his tail is on the back of the block – all DPS stands on the ice as the adds will shadowstep them, and can then burrow. Just like the twins, have the adds tanked so that all AoE abillities hit them and the boss. We generally have Anub under 55% or so by this point.
When he burrows, burn down the last to adds but GET OFF THE ICE. He comes right through the ice every time it seems, so just swing off the ice and leave the adds on it. Have ranged drop four more blocks, leaving one up for an emergency or for the last phase.
Repeat until he pops at 30% – then just burn everything you’ve got.
Oh – the adds will cast a shadow strke type ability that is interruptible with Arcane Torrent. We have like 5 belfs in our raid, so none ever get cast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjsAloSU0yw – direct link to our kill video. Watch it in HD. There’s no explanations, and it’s not a clean kill – but unitl I can get our Tribute to Skill kill posted – it’s what I’ve got.
Good luck!
I posted some strategy on my blog along with our first kill video: http://tara.teich.net/archives/heroic-10m-anubarak-strategy
In addition to those notes our subsequent kills have taught us to stack up in phase 3 to make healing easier (I play a shaman so my chain heal likes it when people are close together). Also, you want to keep a mortal strike type debuff on Anub in p3 since the leeching swarm is a heal effect – our hunter was keeping up his aimed shot for that.
Our most recent kill shot video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hh8XUsXhd4
We got a Tribute to Insanity with that one.
So – how’d it go?
Here’s a view you should be used to – and dang do I need to record in higher quality…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkBFchsgTa4
@Rhidach
29 September 2009 at 12:04 pm #
I actually just posted, but to sum it up: sorta ok, but didn’t kill him. I appreciate all the tips and vids that you and others gave me. They were a huge help, but I think some of the folks needed to pay attention a bit more in phase 2. We’ll work on that.
We were getting him to 55% on phase 1, which was very encouraging. Just basically phase 2 is when it all went to hell.
How did you handle interrupts on the adds? Did the offtank watch them or were dps assigned to eat add to focus and interrupt when needed?
Interrupts were called by the add tank. They cast slow enough that you can call for them individually. With 4 BElfs available (I’m out of range while tanking Anub) all the CDs are up in time. Our Retadin also used Holy Wrath, and our two shamans have their /interrupt macros set to assist the OT. If your OT is a prot war, the whole thing is a non issue – since they have 11tybillion stuns/lockouts anyway. A single prot war could easily handle all the interrupts between Shockwave, Shield Bash, and Revenge.
HoJ, Holy Wrath, etc all work. Our OT runs cast bars under his enemy name plates, so it’s easy for him to catch it.
We had our rogue assigned to interrupt on one and our prot warrior OT on the other. We’re not stacked with belfs like Adgarmorix’s!
@Rhidach
29 September 2009 at 12:54 pm #
@Adgamorix: Agh! I wish I thought of putting the healers behind me so the adds have to run past me to get to the them. That’s so obvious in hindsight. We were also single targeting down adds, although like you said it’d probably be doable just to let splash damage kill them.
@Tara: Few are, sadly! I for one am envious.
Yeah – splash damage is awesome on the adds.
Rogue – Blade Flurry/Adrenaline Rush/Killing Spree/FoK
Retadin – Consecrate, Divine Storm, Holy Wrath, Seal of Command (does proc off Divine Storm, just only on the first target like other seals)
Shaman x 2 – Fire Nova, Chain Lightning
Hunter – Multi Shot/Volley
Mage – Full AoE
Funny story – we didn’t even realize that the adds cast anything until after the nerf to FoK interrupts. Oops. Took us a few tries to figure out what was going on.
As far as Belf stacking – here’s the story….
We’re Horde re-rollers/xfers/whatever. Our guild was Aliance – with everyone sporting the silly orb from MGT. As soon as the option came out, we decided to switch factions.
Retadin – Has to be Belf
Protadin – Has to be Belf
Disc Priest – Wanted to be a Belf so bad he could taste it
Mage – Racials, plus see above
Rogue – see above – plus the stelth animation
Druid x2 – had to be tauren
Shaman x2 – traditionally Shamans had lower HP, so we made them go tauren for the Stam buff
So there we had 5x Belf and 4x Tauren. We wanted to name the guild “We’re hot, you’re not” but we couldn’t get the special characters – and I think it was too long. One of our buddies xferred back, and he hated the cow/belf bow animation – so he went Troll for the racials.
So there you have it – 10 man guild, with 5 female Belfs, 4 male Tauren, and a Troll….and only one female player IRL. Go figure.