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| Dead. |
However, frustrated with our lack of success in Firelands, Mountain Top put together an off-night raid last night to take another crack at Shannox before the weekly reset. Sadly, both myself and our regular Death Knight Tank were unable to attend due to family issues.
They one-shot Shannox and killed Beth'tilac as well for good measure. Grats, Mountain Top!
The difference, as it turns out, was changing tanks. The Protection Warrior that replaced our regular DK tank was able to block a great deal of the incoming damage that was insta-gibbing our DK, which made the healing in the last phase a lot smoother and easier to deal with.
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| Also dead. |
Don't get me wrong, our DK is a great tank and there is no one I would rather heal when the going gets tough, but reading the Blood DK forums over on Elitist Jerks confirms that a lot of DK tanks are having problems coping with the damage spikes in this encounter. The self-healing that the Blood spec uses to tank is seemingly less effective during intense, burst damage than the reliable mitigation from blocks that a Paladin or Warrior can expect.
It's no excuse, and it doesn't really change anything for next week when our Death Knight will be back getting beat on by Shannox. We'll still need to figure out a way to prevent him from dying.
But the bastard and his dogs are dead, and that makes me a happy Paladin.
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| Next up: Admiral McSpinnypants |
We just downed him this past week as well! And I was tanking him on my DK so I know ehat you are talking about!
ReplyDeleteFor me, it as a matter of trying to manage my cooldowns. It's a pretty long fight, so if I have to use them early on, it's not a big deal. They will be back up before he hits a frenzy. On the first frenzy, I'd try to hit my trinket first for extra dodge, and then my Icebound Fortitude hoping to string the avoidance/mitigation for as long as possible to give the beakers a chance to adjust to the increased damage.
We Split our DPS between Shannox and Riplimb at this point so are kinda slow on killing the second dog. With any luck they are off cooldown at about the time the second dog goes down.
Then it's trying it again to help the beakers compensate for the Double frenzy damage coming in.
I could probably do better using my bone shield every cooldown, so I'll try to work on that in the future.
But yeah.. It hurts. A lot!
Congrats to MT in the kill!
Hopefully we'll get Beth as well next week!
Beakers? Really?
ReplyDeleteHealers**
Any other typos are property of Apple iPhone Autocorrect.
>.>
LOL! I admit that while reading your first comment I figured that "Beakers" was referring to a slang term for healers that I wasn't familiar with. It kinda fits, if you think about it.
ReplyDeleteWe had absolutely no problem healing through a single stack of Frenzy, especially with the tanks clearing their stacks virtually every spear throw. The problem arises when Riplimb is dead, there are two Frenzy stacks and no way to remove them because the Riplimb tank is hopelessly behind in threat and unable to taunt. The bursts that result will smear a tank very quickly, and a DK has very little means to mitigate any of that incoming damage. It seems that a shield tank makes this fight laughable, whilst a DK makes it a much harder challenge for the healers due to the mechanics of the class.
I will Sacrifice on the tank each time a dog dies. This helps quite a bit with the frenzy until the other healers have a chance to move from from their assignments.
ReplyDeleteWe're at the point, now, where flame spirals during the final frenzy are killing people too quickly for the raid healers. Using personal mitigation is good for one, but we take two or three. I had much better luck being ~10 yards from the flames - any closer and I'd be 2-shot from their spawn and final explosion. Tranquility and lots of cooldowns are highly recommended.
Admiral McSpinnypants is fun. Remember to have everyone who CAN taunt do so on the Spinners. Make sure you have healers assigned to the web tank (2 probably), the Drone tank (1 or 2), and the dps killing Spiderlings.
Save your AoE healing cooldowns for the last phase. Burn and loot.