Tanking Halion
Another guest post from Anafielle while Rhidach is gone! You get to deal with me all week…. so, like I always tell my 10 man, get excited!!
Several of us popped in to see Heroic Halion 10 last night.
Although the other tank was a DPS on a pally alt, he was the more experienced shadow side tank. He tanked Shadow Side earlier this week & they decided to leave him with it. This left me up in the physical realm.
Physical side tanking sucks when you are a massive control freak, like I am. I firmly believe every tank has a bit of control freak in them somewhere…
You get to sit there while the raid wipes on the hardest part of the fight… doing absolutely nothing except staring at raid frames. NOTHING. Last night, I couldn’t even really tab out to complain to twitter or walk away to get a beer (umm… definitely things I have not done while tanking normal 25) because the void zones persist in both phases. God knows the moment I looked away, someone would spawn a void zone under me and I’d die.
Shadow Side Tanking (normal)
I’m going to pause to complain a little here about our Normal Mode strat.
For Normal Halion, the strat we use involves constantly spinning the dragon throughout phase 2 and 3. The tank keeps the single orb we can see on the dragon’s left hip, which means the other orb is over the tank’s left shoulder – this in general keeps the beam at a good angle through the dragon the whole time. But we turn him throughout this phase, not just when the orbs are about to activate.
Learning how to do this was…. fun. Yeah, that’s the word. Listening to Rhidach on vent figuring out how to turn constantly at the right speed certainly was fun. It’s got to be that “talk me off the ledge,” panicked tone in his voice sometimes.
I find it way too amusing when he panics & try to cause it as much as possible. I know, I know, I’m such a good offtank.
Then he left me All Alone a few weeks ago, before we’d killed Halion, and I had to do it myself. I failed miserably. Not going to lie. It was probably the most miserable failure I’d ever encountered in my time tanking. I did just about everything wrong that could possibly go wrong. I even lost threat to some DPS. So embarrassing….
So. End result – our normal mode Halion strat is hard on tanks. At least, hard on these two pally tanks. While the jury is still out on me, Rhidach knows his freakin’ shit when it comes to tanking. When I take a while to figure something out, I assume I’m just slow or stupid. When Rhidach takes a while to figure something out, that something is probably overly complicated. My assumption is that our Halion strat is overly complicated.
But in the end, this is how we learned the fight, and we both have learned how to do it now. So why fix what’s broke? That’s how we do it.
Shadow Side Tanking (heroic)
Unlike normal mode, on heroic our tank doesn’t constantly turn the dragon. Rather, the tank sits still and repositions the dragon as needed right before the cutters activate.
The other tank told me – and I firmly believe it – that this is so, so much simpler and much easier than the constant turning we do on normal mode. In fact, he told me he had no trouble tanking heroic once he’d learned where to watch. Then the raid switched to normal and he had a ton of trouble with our “constantly turns” strat and never quite got the hang of it.
I’d heard from twitter (always an excellent source of information – and I’m not kidding) that most people who do Normal Mode also sit still for as long as possible & only turn when they’re positioning for beam activation.
Boy, that sure would be nice.
Tank Overruled
After wiping a few hours on heroic, we switched the raid back to normal. I wanted to try the “Not Moving A Whole Lot” strat on 10, but the whole 10 man raid nixed me.
“The beam will be in the wrong place!” they said. “You get four reference points on Heroic. It’s much easier. But you only get two reference points on normal. It’s not worth repositioning the dragon right just for the cutters. You’ll tail swipe someone or something.”
I wasn’t leading the raid. I didn’t want to push 9 people into something new, seeing as they’d just wiped in the shadow realm for two hours while I /danced with void zones up top. I shut up and readied my strafe keys.
Honestly, now that I have figured out how to constantly turn, it’s not TOO bad… it still sucks though. I have figured out how to do my normal rotation while turning constantly, which is something I really should never have fucked up in the first place. I still need to practice strafing in a perfect circle. I stopped and started a lot, and it’s a good thing I’m way overgeared because I got hit by the beam at least once.
I really hate this fight.
I want to see Shadow Side on Heroic, mostly because I’m a lazy tank and I can’t wait to sit my ass down a little and rest between cutters in phase 2 and 3.
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@PinkRaidFrames
10 August 2010 at 9:44 am #
The trick to the “stand and only move him when necessary” strat is to position the beam to cross you left or right shoulder (your preference but I prefer my right shoulder as it keeps the DPS outta the dragon’s breath which is more deadly than the tail) while moving him in a circle. Once the cutter appears, start moving him in a circle in parallel speed with the cutter. When the cutter disappears, take 5 steps back in the opposite direction you had been moving him and the next beam will appear in perfect position on the next cutter phase.
Damn.. once again beaten to the punch by someone with faster typing skills.
@Anafielle
10 August 2010 at 9:53 am #
Thanks for the advice on timing!
I was really concerned about what the timing was like – basically, where the *next* beam would appear once the first one was done. It’s good to hear that that second beam can be reliably prepared for by just moving 5 (?) yards over.
I really should have pressed them into trying it. But I didn’t want to force the 10m into trying anything new. I insisted on tanking normal shadow side to practice for 25s, but I didn’t want to push their patience anymore :)
One day….. one day I will do normal mode the EASY way!!
The strat my guild’s tanks use (which I found on one of the blogs I read myself, but I can’t for the life of me remember which) for tanking P2 normal, is to strafe back counterclockwise about 5 yards from the position you have him at when the Nub Cutter turns off.. that drops you at exactly the right placement for when the balls start cutting nubs again.
This makes the fight a hell of a lot easier. I’ve been Holy for the last couple attempts we’ve taken (we are a lot less progressed than you guys), and I can tell you it makes the tank healer much happier. No constant movement.. AND no sudden repositions that tail-swipe the healer and let Halion gib the tank! It is great.
Assuming the beams travel at the same speed in Heroic, the tactic should apply.
@PinkRaidFrames
10 August 2010 at 9:54 am #
Heroic RS is a real kicker. I think we spent about 2 hours on it last night. The strat is the same however for Shadow tanking and the same strategy works. However.. and this is the big issue, the cutters are a lot more unforgiving so DPS/Heals just can’t get hit with them. There really is no room for error.
Tips are: Max hitbox!; alive is better than dead even if that means stopping dps for a second; raid-wall and other survivability CDs; it’s better to run back through the cutter than to find yourself running with it while the dot ticks.
@Anafielle
10 August 2010 at 11:42 am #
Thanks!! Hearing about all y’all who do the “Dont Move Very Much” strat on normal makes me more and more confident in pushing the guild to try it sometime.
Last time I did Halion (as a casual member of a “srs raiding guild”) they did the “move him all the time” strat. As a Healer I hated it. HATED. There is a ton of AoE damage in that shadow realm, and I’m a Pally. I can’t just bounce-bounce-hot-hot like those damn druids.
So I would stop to heal the tank. And then find myself half-way in the tail. So I move. Only, because he’s still being rotated, I overcompensate and find myself infront of the dragon’s face. BREATH AND CLEAVE ZOMG.
I don’t know if my guild still does the move-move-move strat or not. I do know that the “wait for it…” strat has GOT to be easier on everyone involved.
You should keep pushing the 10 man group to try the “only move during cutter” strat even on normal. We also used to constantly circle in 10 and 25 man normal modes, and WOW was I an obsessive orb watcher while tank healing in the shadow realm. I was GLUED to the tank, so much that I ate a cleave sometimes, but if I lost sight of that leading orb I was screwed.
Until we started 10H and realized how much better the non-perpetual-motion strat is. Now we use that for all modes, and when I see the cutter incoming warning, all I have to do is back up a few steps and make sure there isn’t an orb directly behind me. I don’t care about knowing *where* it is, as long as it’s not behind me and I’m not in the center of the room. Do that and you won’t get hit! (Not speaking to tanks here, of course.) It also seems that we’ve had fewer cutter deaths by people learning the fight than we did with the old strat.
@PinkRaidFrames
10 August 2010 at 11:29 am #
Regarding the “make sure there isn’t an orb directly behind me” thing what I’ve found as a tank to be helpful and shared with our healers and dps on heroic is the best way to make sure you won’t get hit is to actually look in front of you (past the dragon).
If there are two orbs visible and evenly spaced on each side of the dragon from you you wont get it. No need to look back, just look forward and if you don’t see two orbs on each side of the dragon you’re gonna be in trouble.
Kinda like…
O———O (<– these are the orbs you should see)
————-
—–X——
—-You—-
————–
O———O
I have no idea what that is gonna look like… :-)
@Anafielle
10 August 2010 at 11:43 am #
I can NEVER see the orbs behind me! What I do is watch the orbs in front of me.
On normal, making sure the “back” orb is over the dragon’s right hip works well.
On heroic, well, I haven’t been shadow tank on heroic yet. We’ll see. I’d imagine that watching the two back orbs will do the same.
I enjoy this fight quite a bit, I just wish the gear was useful so I could justify spending time on it. The strat we settled on with our kill was the sit’n'spin but it only took about 2 or 3 tries once I started seeing the movement. I hate the shuffle/strafe but the DPS really enjoyed it, actually.
If I can find enough folks around on a bored night, maybe I’ll convince them to go in and kill him again with the spin then sit strat.
Fun fight! Too bad it’s wasted on RS. Poor, neglected RS.
saif’s last blog ..Halion
@PinkRaidFrames
11 August 2010 at 11:04 am #
I agree completely. I was semi-disappointed in the tanking loot.
I’m curious, are folks sending their melee or ranged dps peeps into the Twilight side on P3? I can see the advantages of both (and I’ve done it both ways) but I’m feeling like normal mode you should send in melee dps but heroic should be ranged dps.
Thoughts?
@Anafielle
11 August 2010 at 12:25 pm #
I completely agree as well. There’s no reason to go to RS 10 at all. The only reason why I went was because my 10 man has little else to do, and because I wanted practice for my real 25m raiding. Does anyone have anything BIS out of RS 10 or 10H? Doubtful.
We usually leave melee in the Shadow Side and put ranged on the Physical Side. On 10 man the split is a lot more dependent on who does what DPS though – and sometimes our raids end up being ranged-heavy so some ranged always stay on Shadow.
I think the reasoning behind it is that melee suffer less from the constant moving on Shadow Side.
Yep, I
saif’s last blog ..Halion
I don’t love the “rotate backwards for better beams” strat. It tends to create melee parries, and that tends to create dead tanks on hardmodes. The tank should just keep an eye on the orbs and the cutter timer, and start rotation a little bit early. Melee loses 0 DPS by moving, and having melee encouraged to stay in the back corner leads to a lot less “WTFPWN” parrygibs.
Melee causing parries just slaughters tanks on this encounter, and dead tank is a wipe – it’s not salvageable. So, imo, don’t try and cheese it by moving backwards, the one slow melee will wipe you. Move forwards early, and the worst thing that happens is the one slow melee dies. Better a DPS than a tank.