I sat down today and told myself–told myself–I was going to write the next “chapter” in my 4 Characteristics of a Great Tank series, and then I got sidetracked and completely forgot. Mea culpa, friends.

In lieu of a wall of text, enjoy this short and sweet filler feature. Bonus: there’s about 20 Vindication questions in here. (Which I hope doesn’t reflect a disconnect in the tankadin community between folks that know it’s an amazing talent and folks who still think it’s for Ret. Short answer: Vindication = amazing!)

seal of righteousness or vengeance for tanking

Vengeance by leaps and bounds. You get so much more threat from the dot and stacking proc than you would from Seal of Righteousness.

how much does stamina increase pally spellpower

0 per point. Our spellpower comes form Strength now thanks to the change in 3.2.

3.2 vindication for protection paladins

I was curious to see what happened if I googled this specific phrase, and I’m happy to see this page with RD as the second link:

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

does vindication stack with other pallys?

No, and it doesn’t stack with Demo Shout/Roar either.

how does vindication work

Vindication can proc from all our direct attacks (melee, Avenger’s Shield, Shield of the Righteous, etc.) and from Seal of Vengeance damage. The effect lasts for 10 seconds, and generally it can be assume that as long as you’re continuously attacking during that 10 second period, Vindication will be up.

While it’s awesome that Vindication is passive, the only downside is it’s single target. HotR and AS can feasibly spread it around, but to keep it up 100% you’re going to have to devote your attacks to one target. There’s the rub between this talent and the warrior/druid shout.

judgments of just vindication stack?

Yes. Please have both in your spec!

best tank leg enchants 3.2.2

There’s only one choice, Frosthide Leg Armor. Find a friendly LWer to do that for you.

can anub’arak be beat with one off tank?

Normal-10? Yes. Heroic-10? Yes. Normal-25? Yes. Heroic-25? Excepting some super geared, passively unhittable, ubermensch tank, no.

how to get away from icehowl charge

As soon as you hit the wall, hold down your right mouse button and strafe left/right key. Pick whichever will get you away from him faster (ie, if he’s to your right, pick the left, and v/v). As soon as you unstun you’ll run off in the proper direction, to safety, with plenty of time to spare.

how to use different voice vent

I can only imagine the intent behind this question.

is it worth it for tankadins to be jewelcrafters wow

Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

quel vs ardent guard

Ardent Guard (Heroic) > Blood and Glory > Quel’Serrar 25 > Ardent Guard > Quel’Serrar 10

titanium plating any good for tankadins?

Only for a shield specifically devoted to a threat/dps set. 81 block value is nice, but you’ll get more (EH) mileage out of the BC-era 18 stamina enchant.

So as you might have guess from my post late Thursday night, we finally (finally!) killed Anub’arak on heroic 10man mode. Hallelujah.

The night itself started in a way you knew we were clearly meant from great things. The first wipe of the night happened on Beasts, the worms specifically, because we lost a few too many dps to silly crap and would never have beat the enrage timer.

49.

We went back in and had a clean run through Gormok, the worms also went smoothly, and then lost a dps to an acid cloud. We kept going though–only one dps down, couldn’t hurt us that much, right?

Get through worms, Icehowl comes out. We’re plugging along, dodging charges and getting our licks in. Getting a little too close for comfort to the enrage timer. 30 seconds left before we all go splat and Icehowl goes for a massive crash. He leaps back to the middle, faces Cendra and charges. I get the hell out of dodge, but Cen doesn’t make it. He gets one shot, Icehowl gets all red and inflammatory and immediately goes after Demo.

I don’t know why but I through myself on the sword, taunting Icehowl, bubblewalling and popping trinks and doing my best to live through the enrage. He of course squashes me, but by the time he gets back to Demo the soft enrage dissipates. 11% left, easy mode. Two dps and yours truly are dead, though, so it’s going to be close considering how close the enrage is looming. Of course, at like 2% left he hard enrages, and leaps back to the middle to massive crash. We lucked out! We just need to dodge the charge and we can finish him off with ease.

He then slammed into the ground and killed everyone except for Demogar. Shit.

Icehowl charges the only one left, Demo, and slams into the wall, stunned. 41k hp left. Make or break time. Demo plugs away with what little damage a tank can muster and just as Icehowl stands up to crush Demogar under his blood-spattered fists, he falls over dead.

I wish I had a screenshot. Obviously that means none of this happened.

We all run back in, buff up, and start Jaraxxus. This fight goes well until we lose a dps to Legion Flames and another melee getting zapped by an undispelled Nether Power, and then a portal spits out two Mistresses of Pain. I manually wipe the attempt with a DI. Obviously, it wasn’t going to go well.

48.

Another attempt on Jaraxxus which did not go much better. Lost a melee dps to a Legion Flame, barely got a portal down. It looked like we weren’t going to make it but somehow by the skin of our teeth we pulled out a kill. It was really sloppy, but a kill is a kill.

Once the loot is distributed we pulled down the champs to mark them up. And oh boy did the comp we were facing look like it was going to hurt. There was a Ret Pally, Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, Warlock, Rogue, and Boomkin. The order I delineated was priest > ret > rogue > shammy > lock > boomkin.

So we pulled and while we were focusing down the priest, the paladin snuck in the back and one-shot all the clothies. Game over.

47.

Ok, new kill order: ret > priest > rogue > shammy > lock > boomkin.

We barely manage to kill the ret pally, but by then we’d lost a lot more folks to the other dpsers.

46.

Bah, another wipe. It’s obvious now that our damage wasn’t being done fast enough.

45.

DPS needs to die first: ret > rogue > lock > priest > shammy > boomkin.

Switched it up a little. I stayed as prot and did my best to lock down the shaman (but mostly focused on cutting down his totems). Demo went Arms and helped bring down the focused target. This time the Ret blew up almost instantly, then the rogue, the lock, etc. The shaman was getting heals off, but he couldn’t save his buddies.

I think the valuable lesson here is on heroic mode to ignore the healers in terms of kill order and just have them be hassled so you can focus on bringing down the heaviest hitters.

So champs went down and then we knocked out the Twins in short order as well. No wipes on that boss, which was a nice change of pace, haha.

After Twins we made a quick roster shift and one of the healers stepped out to let another dps come in since we like to two-heal Anub.

Once down in the cavern below, we get buffed up, everyone got pumped, and then we ran screaming into the fray hoping to shatter Anub’s confidence and make him flee the battlefield. Alas, he stood his ground.

We pushed it to phase 3 in short order (Anub was at like 55% when he first burrowed) and things were going somewhat swimmingly, but we got overwhelmed and wiped at 8%.

44.

Suddenly it dawned on us: holy hell, we can do this.

Formed up again and started the next attempt. Another quick push to phase 3, those we only got it to 13% this time. No matter, it was obvious we could do this.

43.

Alright this was going to be THE attempt, dammit. Pull out all the stops, just get it down.

DPS was amazing, getting Anub to 50% when he burrowed for the first time. Scarabs were decimated quickly, spikes were kited expertly. It was like a ballet of pain.

Once phase 3 hit, we all kicked it into high gear. The adds that were up were ‘sploded and dps turned their wrath on Anub himself. We got him down to about 3-4% when Demo bit it and I taunted Anub only to die in about two hits from trying tank a new set of adds and the big guy all at the same time. People started shouting in vent encouragement to the dps still up–2%!! 1%!! .5!!

And then that disgusting creature reared up and keeled over dead. It was done. Anub was dead.

Everyone cheered with a passion I haven’t heard since the first time our ragtag 25man raid killed Kel’Thuzad for the first time. What an amazing feeling. No tanking stuff dropped unfortunately, but it’s ok, Anub was dead.

I sat there in my chair, grinning like an idiot, for about 20 minutes.

(Side note: I know I said I was going to do a strategy guide, but I don’t feel right writing it until I have some nice screenshots and diagrams to go with it. It will happen this week. Probably Thursday since we’re doing heroic 10man on Wednesday this week. Many apologies for being a tease.)

Now, my guild hasn’t downed Anub10 heroic yet, unfortunately, but if all the blood, wipes, and tears have imparted anything to me, it’s how to tank the Burrowers like an effin’ pro.

The little (ok, not so little) buggers have a pretty set pattern. Twice per above-ground phase they come up in pairs and b-line for the raid member with the highest global aggro. As the OT in this fight your job is manifold: one, to pick up the Burrowers, two is to position them on ice where dps can kill them, and three is to not die to their various tricks.

Now on top of that delicious sundae of pain may I offer this cherry: you can handle interrupts on both of them as well. No seriously, you can.

Let me back up. On the first point you need to grab the attention of the Burrowers before they dig a hole in the face of some unlucky Resto Druid. To do this make use of our two best ranged attacks–Hand of Reckoning one and Avenger’s Shield the other. This’ll drop enough threat on both that they’ll follow you back to the ice patch that Anub should be tanked by.

Once you have both adds wailing away at you you want to get them dead center on the ice (well, maybe no dead center, but their hitbox needs to be sitting completely on top of the permafrost). Then open up on both until dead.

At this point your guild’s strategy may differ. The way mine does it is I hand of freedom myself and run off to pick up the next two adds and bring them back to the same permafrost patch while the MT and dps wrangle Anub towards the back of the room and off the ice. Now that I have the Burrowers all to my self, the responsibility for dealing with the Shadowy Strikes falls on my spiky, crimson shoulders.

How does one person not only watch but interrupt two Burrowers? Simple! First, glyph Holy Wrath to have a 15 second cooldown. Use that when they start to cast and you’ll easily interrupt them both. How can you tell when either is casting if you’re not currently targeting it? Also simple! Face them away from the raid, and if a Burrower is looking to gank one of your raiders, he’ll turn and look at them. Also they’ll start glowing all shadowy, but either way, it’s a huge warning sign.

I’ve yet to see them attempt a Shadow Strike more than once every 15 seconds, I always had my Holy Wrath up when needed (although Arcane Torrent made a fine off-GCD back up, and yes it does interrupt). Moreover, I’ve never seen a Burrower cast Shadow Strike when Anub was underground.

As for the third responsibility above (that is, staying alive) you have a powerful tool at your disposal: Block. The way the mechanics of the Burrower’s fearsome Expose Weakness attack is currently programmed, they’re debuff’s additional damage is applied to the unblocked remnant. Thus, if you’re block capped and shave say 3000 off of a 4000hp hit, the remaining 1000 damage is multiplied by 225% assuming you have a full nine-stack and you “only” take 2250 damage. This is definitely a fight you want to stack block value in!

Now, if only the rest of the fight was this easy.

Well last night wasn’t a complete wash. We got Twins down, and rather easily so once we worked out the kinks in our strategy. Anub we were not so lucky on. Phase 2 was a mess, and that we’ll need more time with.

We had Phase 1 down pat, the shifting of Anub over, dragging the second set of Burrowers away, etc. But time and time again Phase 2 was a cluster-you-know-what. People I think kept panicking and rather than paying attention to spikes or helping kill the Scarabs, they were too busy running around like a chicken with their heads cut off. It also didn’t help that the Burrowers kept Shadowy Striking when I was trying to drag them into position and thus wasn’t on my game to do interrupts. Gah.

The Glyph of Holy Wrath is awesome in this fight (awesome idea, Yoggie). Though… I think I still have it on… eek.

But, Quel’Serrar, Serrar. We’ll put in more attempts this week and hopefully have a better time of it.

Oh, also, had an amusing run in with another pally. This guy initially apped to my guild, and was rejected because we heard he was a little overbearing/bossy. Moreover, he’s currently the leader of his guild, and I’m not a fan of aiding and abetting someone ditching a whole guild of people that trust him as their leader.

So lately he’s been whispering me trying to discuss various things and obviously ingratiate himself with me to get a second shot in the guild. And it almost worked! I was feeling kind of guilty, thinking “oh, he seems like a nice guy” and it wouldn’t hurt to let him reapp. While talking I mentioned casually I wanted the Libram of Valiance for a threat set (I mean, we all have different sets for different situations, correct?) which he interprets as me saying “I can’t hold threat evar HALP”.

So, bless his heart, he looks up my armory and immediately lets me know he’s discovered the problem–my spec is crap! You heard it here first, folks.

Now I’m not the be all-end all of pally tanking. There are folks far, far smarter than I and far better at “the biz” than I am. I’m just the lowly messenger. However, I was a bit incredulous at being told I was “doin’ it rong.” This kind soul informed me that my threat is bad because I have too many points in Ret. Oo-kay. He goes on to let me now SotP is the superior threat talent and I should really be going into that, rather than Crusade.

Nevermind the mountains of data at Maintankadin, this fellow knew the score.

After that episode I grabbed any lingering guilt I had, stuffed it in a box, and pushed it right out of the sewer pipe leading out of Dalaran. It’s the carrots’ problem now.

Tuesday night we basically repeated what happened last week, when we killed everything up to Anub’arak but couldn’t down the last boss before everyone had to split because of lateness. So Anub rolled over to last night and we rolled in to take him out.

What screwed us up Tuesday night was too much experimenting with some pretty fail alternate strategies. We tried using AOE to burn down Burrowers and damage Anub at the same time, which was slow. The DK tank also suggested making the pursued person run far away and get bubbled or something, but that just spread everyone out, and turned out to be pretty fail as well.

What did work was what we did last week: kill 1 add from first pair of Burrowers, I hold the other 3. Also, we burnt Bloodlust once the first add was down, so we could assuredly make the enrage timer. I think with this strategy, on the attempt that we killed him, we only had two Burrow phases. I may be wrong… strong emphasis on may.

So, alas, I think that’s the strategy we’re sticking with. It’s sloppy but our tanks and heals are leet enough that it works.

With Anub down we then metered out the two groups for TOC-10 and in a short hour I racked up enough emblems to grab my third piece of T9.245, as well as a nice achievement.

Random thought: I really need to get into Heroic TOC-10. It’s a sin we haven’t started clearing that place out yet.

Now, speaking of T9.245, I think order of attack on emblem purchases will now be Headplate of the Honorbound and Liadrin’s Breastplate of Triumph with the order depending on if I win a trophy before accumulating 75 emblems. The Headplate will serve as a placeholder for when I (hopefully/eventually) win the tanking Judgement helm from the new Onyxia.

Lastly, I am proud to announce that I have officially beat Demogar to 40k hp unbuffed. Despite being disadvantaged by neither being a Blacksmith nor a cow, I managed to pick up enough gear while he was on his honeymoon to close the gap and sprint across the finishline.

Of course, the gear that got me to that point is horribly lacking in hit, so I probably won’t be rocking that much stam outside of sitting in a Demolisher on Flame Leviathan.

Woo hoo, superior stam scaling.

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[!/?]

Last night was messier than I would have preferred. We started off with VOA25 and burnt down the three guys in there pronto, mostly scoring some pvp crap. Then we hopped over to Coliseum and started to make our way through it.

Beasts went down somewhat okay, but more people died to silly stuff than I’d like. Jaraxxus was a huge cluster-you-know-what. Two dps pulled off of the DK tank and got killed, and a few others bit it from standing in fires or the incinerate AOEs. The entire attempt was a slow attrition on a ranks and I saw the specter of an enrage wipe looming ahead. We probably downed Jaraxxus with less than a minute left on the enrage timer. Sloppy, sloppy kill.

For Faction Champs, we are basically still learning the fight, and it’s pretty difficult so I’m not going to offer any criticisms of our performance. We did kill them all in probably one of the more epic boss fights I’ve ever done. I think at the end of it were were looking at about 11 people left standing.

The order I put forward (and I’m open to suggestions on this) was burn down the priest first, then the druid. The holy pally was being handled by a rogue, so we skipped her and downed the enhance shammy next. Then the warrior (who I hate), dk, and rogue. Back to the pally, then hunter, shadow priest, and warlock.

I spent most of the fight following around the shaman, taunting him when possible, and cutting down his totems. My main goal was to keep him from getting a windfury proc and one-shotting a healer. I used shield tosses and Arcane Torrent to contribute to the healer burn. After the shaman was dead I shifted attention to the melee, trying to keep them occupied and off the squishies.

Like I said, pretty epic battle, and definitely a kill we earned. Thankfully the Champs coughed up the Juggernaut’s Vitality, which puts me at 39.1k unbuffed health. Delish.

Speaking of gear, I’m having a huge issue with hit rating right now. I’ve been eagerly gobbling up 245 gear, but in doing so I’ve been steadily losing hit. Earlier last month I was capped at 263 on the dot, and now I’m at a measly 108. To remedy this I can add 53 with the T9.45 legguards I’ll be getting in 8 emblems. I might have to enchant my weapon with Accuracy too. Considering the threat nerf we’re getting in 3.2.2, I really don’t want to take my chances with suddenly being so far under the hit cap.

But I digress! So after Champs we started up Twins, which was new to some people… with predictable consequences. First attempt was marked by people dying to Vortexes (I so badly want to call them “vortices”) and Twin Pacts going off. Part of that was me being a huge idiot and calling out during a Lightbane Twin Pact, “Everyone grab light and get Lightbane!!” I think I confused the hell out of people and that was not a bubble sundered.

Of course it also says something about the raiders that they didn’t have the critical thinking to recognize I screwed the pooch on those instructions and compensate. One guy even said “What? I just do what I’m told.” Great ‘tude champ. Yer gonna go far.

So first attempt on Twins was a wipe. Second time we were doing well, but somehow it all went to hell towards the end. The DK tank bought it and I ended up tanking the two of them in the center at like 30%. Somehow we lucked out and didn’t have anymore Twin Pacts, and I somehow managed to hold both through a Vortex. It was pretty crazy, but we got them down.

Then the ground fell out from under us and we got to finally face Anub as a 25man raid… and I totally dropped the ball. I didn’t do my due diligence on this guy, neglecting to look up strategies while thinking that it would be a carbon copy of the 10man incarnation. It wasn’t. The enrage timer is much, much tighter and requires a different approach.

Too late did we realize that having dps focus down both Burrower groups each above-ground phase was a bad idea. We spent about three attempts wiping that way, and only on the last one (declared as such because a lot had to scram after) did we obviously have the right approach. We pushed it to phase 3 easily, but then wiped because the DK is squishier than I am. I’m probably going to have to take Anub from him when that phase starts.

At least I know we can easily kill him tonight. A one-shot hopefully. Assuming everyone shows up.

After that disappointing conclusion to the raid we headed over to Uld10 to continue the Hard Mode Party. Our main goal, as you can imagine, was I Choose You, Steelbreaker, which had eluded us last time we tried it.

This time we had the same issue at the start, people didn’t realize Fusion Punch left a dot that needed to be dispelled, so when I blew up and the DK took over he was killed pretty quickly by being falcon punched to death.

The second attempt we cleaned that up but didn’t have enough dps to down Steelbreaker… although we definitely had the wrong approach by bringing me back to life and attempting to do a second tank switch. That just gave Steelbreaker another chunk of health and more damage to boot. To fix the strategy we had one of the healers go dps (so 2 healer, 6 dps) and we resolved to let the DK blow up if that’s what was going to happen.

So the fight starts, we hit phase 3 (side note: the three sweetest words in the English language are “ fades”) and I get my Overwhelming Power. I pop wings, go to town and at 10 secs on my meltdown the DK taunts and I bright for a safe distance. I explode, get a brez, and settle in behind Steelbreaker to do some measly dps and take over Cleansing duty.

At about 10 seconds on the DK’s Meltdown, Steelbreaker coughs up his purples.

I think tonight we’re going to follow up Coliseum with working on the Freya hard mode.

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!