[Joacimcans]

On Tuesday i saw a minor update to ToC
"The Anub'arak encounter has been changed on all difficulties. Anub’arak now attacks faster, the Nerubian Burrowers should hit a little harder, and their Expose Weakness ability now caps at 9 stacks."

I thought hmm thats kind of strange they just buffed the hardest encounter in the game, but shrugged it off as i won't likely see it any time soon.

Then i got to looking around and found Premonition's Kill video and i think i just put 2 and 2 together.

Premonition :: Sen'jin (US) - Videos and check out the world 3rd Anub'arak kill from Xav's PoV.

The best reproduction of his gearing gemming/enchanting i could put together is chardev.org v6 ~ a World of Warcraft character planner

The stats are just marginally off from what is shown in the video either due to chardev not quit having correct stats or Xav might be Gemmed differently.

So First off congrats to them for figuring out a work around to having 3 tanks for the encounter, but i am curious if this strategy is now dead in the water since they buffed the damage of the burrowers.

Ps. it makes me sad that Xav can fraps at a higher res than i can play WoW at.

[Trondhjem]

Yeah, the Damageshield numbers are pretty impressing.
But please explain, what exactly does the unhittable set do? Each hit against you is either be parried, dodged, missed or blocked, isn't it? So whats the special use in this case? You dont avoid the stacking debuff so its just for being able to take many "low" hits from the adds while staying healable?

[Blackbull]

When tanking the 4 adds in edc25 HM, you face two problems :
- the stacking debuff (up to nine)
- the proximity buff off the 4 adds (haste)
I think that the unhittable set shines when dealing with the second point.
Whatever speed the mobs are hitting you at, you WILL have those 2k-2k5 (4k-5k when crit 60% of time + shield block) for EACH attack.
That's a VERY HUGE amount of mitigation.

Too bad you cannot achieve passive hit without sacrificing a LOT of HP (nearly 10k fullbuffed in my case :/ ).

[Bishoptwo]

The bonus damage from the stacking debuff WOULD NOT be calculated if you blocked the attack.

Each mob would attack you ever .25 seconds.

Shield block up, you take no damage for 10 seconds.

Shockwave, no damage for 4 seconds.

Holy Wrath, no damage for 1.5 seconds.

you have effectively just now taken no damage for 15.5 seconds.

SBV trinket and as long as you arent the unluckiest person in the world, the adds will die shortly after the holy wrath stun

and you just did like 5k dps, as a prot warrior.

I haven't done Heroic 25 Anub this week yet but I'm assuming this is dead w/ the buffs they received. I understand it but it makes me sad, tanking that was really fun.

[Warloco]

Source: Blackbull When tanking the 4 adds in edc25 HM, you face two problems : - the stacking debuff (up to nine) - the proximity buff off the 4 adds (haste) I think that the unhittable set shines when dealing with the second point. Whatever speed the mobs are hitting you at, you WILL have those 2k-2k5 (4k-5k when crit 60% of time + shield block) for EACH attack. That's a VERY HUGE amount of mitigation. Too bad you cannot achieve passive hit without sacrificing a LOT of HP (nearly 10k fullbuffed in my case :/ ).

Actually the reason he used block gear was because the damage modifier applied after block was deducted.

IE:
Damage = (Damage - block) * (Stacks * 0.25)

Example data:

Damage = (3000 - 2000) * (1 + (9 * 0.25)) = 3250

For a non block tank, this would work out as:

Damage = 3000 * (1 + (9 * 0.25)) = 9750

[Edgewalker]

Don't theorycraft if you havent done or dont understand the fight, misinformation is worse than no information at all.

[Joacimcans]

Actually to those of you who are talking you should probably go and watch the video first. the reason block gear was used is because the debuff is exactly that a debuff on you so if you don't full block the damage on you then it is modified in the video Xav actually died at one point i am guessing it was some kind of server side lag and it put the mob not in front of Xav. Also if you DL the vidoe and watch it you see at times it says 21 attacks block giving xav 105 rage because with the frenzy buff of having all of the mobs that close together their attack speed is stupidly fast and any hits that would get through would spell a quick death for the tank.

Sadly Premonition hasn't made thier WoL public for this week so idk if this strat is dead or not. Ill keep checking World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis and seeing if they decide to later in the week maybe.

[onyx]

Single tanking is still very much alive.

[Joacimcans]

Does anyone know the magic Block Value number since the change?

[onyx]

I hover around ~3000 without any raid buffs.

[Kazeyonoma]

without spoiling any of the joy's of Premo's discovery, but blocking the damage incoming from the monsters does greatly increase the survivability of the tank, 102.4% is ideal, but I ran with only 91% and 1550 sbv in 10 man (significantly easier of course but still) and I only took 100k damage for the fight from adds. Very much so, still an alive and well strategy. The hardest part is still handling interrupts and in 25 man having 4 adds is tough.

[drae]

Almost makes you miss the old FoK.

[Splug]

Source: Kazeyonoma 102.4% is ideal

They're actually level 82, so 101.8 is the target.

-Splug

[Kazeyonoma]

oooo, 101.8, good call. Well that makes it a little bit easier to achieve, too bad i'm still only at 91% =(

[Orange]

So I don't see any real evident answer here, or maybe I am just not seeing it. Is block the way to go for 25m Heroic Anub counter? People in my guild keep saying no, yet when I look up the tanks of the top guilds I occasionally catch them in block gear. They maintain their defense and I see their talents are PVE talents, (eliminating the possibility that they are pvping). If you do have a definitive response please link your source, as I am currently "doing my homework" on the encounter. Thanks!

[Magnuss]

Yes Orange, block is a very strong way to get through the encounter. Is it the only way? No. Does it help? ABSOLUTELY! The kill for my guild (Spike Flail) came after the maintank paladin had a respectable block set. That being said, there is alot more to the fight than surviving the damage from adds, so having a block tank does not by any means mean that you will beat the encounter.

[Badga]

Source: onyx I hover around ~3000 without any raid buffs.

ditto on that the more the better. i'm at 3259 unbuffed with still unhittable. although i have to be raid buffed to get unhittable i farmed ZG for a while and got the voodoo dolls for the leg/helm enchant that each have 30 block value on them too. block value is amazing for adds.

[Thaak]

Source: Kazeyonoma oooo, 101.8, good call. Well that makes it a little bit easier to achieve, too bad i'm still only at 91% =(

You can cheese out some with Elixir of mighty defense, elixir of mighty agility, and blacked dragonfin. Since i didn't plan out an unhittable set, i had to resort to that when i decided to make one the other day.

[Zothor]

Source: Magnuss Yes Orange, block is a very strong way to get through the encounter. Is it the only way? No. Does it help? ABSOLUTELY! The kill for my guild (Spike Flail) came after the maintank paladin had a respectable block set. That being said, there is alot more to the fight than surviving the damage from adds, so having a block tank does not by any means mean that you will beat the encounter.

For the record, while I obviously can't say with certainty that it's the only way, it IS the only way I am aware of that has been frapsed, disclosed, or publicly proven. This is how the world first kills handled it after the Holy Wrath nerf, and to my knowledge continues to be how every guild with 25man Heroic Anub down has done it.

If anyone has video evidence that it can actually be done without, I'd love to see it, but I suspect to do it without you'd need insanely high gear levels of 258 ilvl stuff across most of your raid.

[Aggathon]

Source: Zothor For the record, while I obviously can't say with certainty that it's the only way, it IS the only way I am aware of that has been frapsed, disclosed, or publicly proven. This is how the world first kills handled it after the Holy Wrath nerf, and to my knowledge continues to be how every guild with 25man Heroic Anub down has done it. If anyone has video evidence that it can actually be done without, I'd love to see it, but I suspect to do it without you'd need insanely high gear levels of 258 ilvl stuff across most of your raid.

Paragon did it with 3 tanks. What they did is there is a very small range in which you can drop 2 frosts, have 1 tank on each frost, still have AoE in range of all adds, but each add only has 1 stack of the debuff. Its really hard to get the positioning down correctly, and this is how we did our first week or so of tanking it, then we decided to go with the 1 tank strat because it is easier to group up the adds and thus faster AoE. Faster AoE = more dps on anub = anub dies faster = no enrage = everyone happy.