Dealing with the Rend Flesh bleeds in Stone Guard

Short question with longer ramifications.

How does your raid group reduce bleed damage?

As I understand it, any bleed effects (including and specifically, the Rend Flesh debuff on Stone Guard) can't be reduced by Armor*, meaning the druid Mastery doesn't help against it. (It does help against the melee attacks they do, though.) What I'm looking for is -- how can we reduce the amount of bleed damage the tanks are tanking on the fight, outside of the tank's own cooldowns?

- Disc priest shields apparently absorb some of the damage.
- So do pally shields.
- Hand of Purity (the Pally level 60 talent tier) looks like it'll help for 6 seconds out of every 30. This is probably the best way to go. The druid version of this isn't as good, since it's flat healing.
- Hand of Sacrifice
- Dwarven Stoneform
- Hand of Protection (of course, with the attendant threat drop...)

Also, honorable mention:
- Can one of our pally tanks confirm/deny that Divine Shield removes the bleed?
- Back in the beta, the Detox spell used to remove bleeds from the target, which would have made having a monk healer ideal for that fight. Sadly, that never made it to live.

Thanks in advance,
-Tielyn

* Of course, if Armor does reduce bleed damage, then druids should stack eight zillion Mastery and call it a day. :)

Prot Warrior, so don't know about the class specific stuff you asked...... but i usually just eat it with my face. Yes, any type of absorb (self-cast for external) will mitigate it, assuming of course the absorb isn't consumed by some other damage source, finite number is finite. I believe the bleed is also effected by armor, don't quote me on that though.

But for the most part, if your healers are competent it shouldn't be a problem. The leading cause of Tank Death on that fight is people herp-derping their ways through the fire they're not supposed to stand in and stressing the healers unnecessarily. If you avoid unnecessary damage, you've beaten the fight. I'm not saying you shouldn't strive for more damage reduction as a tank, just that in this case, it's probably not the source of your troubles.

Got our first Stone Guard kill last night with _two_ bear tanks, the other being my 454-geared girlfriend (whom I've taught all my tricks) who had slightly more Mastery and Dodge, but I wound up taking less damage overall. Healer loadout was two trees and a holy priest, so we had no absorbs either. Maybe we're a-bear-ations at this, but this section of the log says it all -- the best way to reduce the bleed damage is to not take any:

[22:07:58.772] Tielyn's Rend Flesh is refreshed by Jade Guardian
[22:07:59.758] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:00.692] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:01.638] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:02.700] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:03.641] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:04.632] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:04.725] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:04.725] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn Dodge
[22:08:05.637] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:06.653] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:07.640] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:08.633] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:09.693] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:10.613] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:10.722] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:10.722] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn Dodge
[22:08:11.717] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:12.652] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:13.702] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:14.625] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 31680
[22:08:14.625] Jade Guardian's Rend Flesh fades from Tielyn
[22:08:16.787] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:16.787] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn Dodge
[22:08:22.758] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:22.758] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn Dodge
[22:08:28.858] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:28.858] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn Dodge
[22:08:39.742] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:39.742] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn Dodge
[22:08:45.737] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:45.737] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn Dodge
[22:08:50.976] Jade Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Tielyn
[22:08:51.001] Tielyn afflicted by Rend Flesh from Jade Guardian
[22:08:51.969] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600
[22:08:53.110] Jade Guardian Rend Flesh Tielyn 39600

...37 seconds worth of no Rend Flesh after dodging two attempted applications and five straight dodges after that. What helped was 49.6% Savage Defense uptime, plus 26 Frenzied Regen casts totalling 3.1 million in heals.

M'lady love weighed in with a window of 14 seconds worth of Rend Flesh-free dodges, which amounted to two in a row, with her Savage Defense uptime at 34.8% and 14 Frenzied Regen casts totalling 2.3 million.

[22:09:46.039] Amethyst Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Telamir
[22:09:46.039] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir Dodge
[22:09:46.920] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir 39600
[22:09:47.869] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir 39600
[22:09:48.928] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir 39600
[22:09:49.943] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir 39600
[22:09:49.943] Amethyst Guardian's Rend Flesh fades from Telamir
[22:09:52.076] Amethyst Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Telamir
[22:09:52.076] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir Dodge
[22:09:58.118] Amethyst Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Telamir
[22:09:58.118] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir Dodge
[22:10:04.200] Amethyst Guardian casts Rend Flesh on Telamir
[22:10:04.213] Telamir afflicted by Rend Flesh from Amethyst Guardian
[22:10:05.214] Amethyst Guardian Rend Flesh Telamir 39600


Both of us also were Symbiosis-linked to the two monks we had in the raid, so an extra 10% dodge button was also nice to have. The real heroes of the run were the healers we had -- they kept our fuzzy butts up for the times that we couldn't dodge the bleeds, and also the DPS clued in how to stay out of stuff on the floor that time.

For next time, we'll bring a disc priest and the pally tank back in and see how well it goes. But I'm reeeally happy to get our first kill at this.

-Tielyn

Log is at:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i8mz5xhq3ekn14i5/?s=4951&e=5399