Which raid bosses do you Barrier and which do you Block?

I've starting taking my Warrior alt into LFR and was wondering which bosses I should use Shield Barrier (SBar) and which Shield Block (SB)? I have some notes on MSV about this, but can't recall where I got the advice. I strongly suspect it was this forum but can't find it, so if someone wants to link an earlier discussion that would be fine. I don't have any notes for HoF and TES

My notes are:

MSV
Stone Guard: SBar due to high rend & high vengeance
Feng: SBar due to low melee/high vengeance
Gara'jal: SB all damage blockable (shadowy attacks ignore absorbs)
Spirit Kings: SB as 80% melee and low vengeance
Elegon: SBar as high vengeance and breath attacks
Will: SB as most blockable

What would be corresponding pointers for HoF and Terrace? My default position is to use SB, although I can see for Lei Shi, it would be SBar. However, I'm starting to be more open-minded about SBar now, after reading Theck's latest blogs where it performed better against SB than I expected. Also, last night on Elegon, we lost much of the raid through the floor and I ended up coming third on healing, which I never expected to see a prot warrior doing. I felt like a Death Knight tanking: building up rage for a big Sbar to be up for the breath attack.

Well, I'll put a few notes up top before I get into generalities. The first is that you shouldn't just say "I will only use sbar on this fight and only sblock on this fight". It is very important to know when it is a good time to use either one. Especially on fights where sblock is the primary ability you're going to want to use, it is not possible to keep a 100% uptime on sblock, so planning sbars in those gaps is important.

MSV:
Stone Guards: SBlock, you want damage smoothing here, the most damage you're going to take is from rend, but it's steady and consistent and not that much damage in LFR, You'll probably be tanking multiple mobs and sbars will get chewed up way to fast and your damage intake will be very spikey, use sblock.

Feng: Feng is kind of a toss up in my opinion. In normal even my healers couldn't really tell a difference between if I was using sbar or sblock. I would say use sbar for phases 1 & 3 and sblock for phase 2. There's just a ton of magic damage being thrown around.

Gara: Correct, pretty much sblock all the way here

Spirit Kings: Again correct, sblock here

Elegon: If you can time an sbar with the breath attack then hit sbar then, but sblock is probably going to be better overall.

Will: Sblock is good, but if you screw up a devastating combo attack, hit sbar to absorb it so at least the healers don't have to heal through your mistake.

HoF: I honestly forget the names of these bosses, I just remember the order:

1) Sblock mostly on the first boss, there's not a ton of non-avoidable magic damage damage here. I would say use sbar as an "oh crap" button if you screw up attenuation or something.

2) Most of the damage is blockable, so you should keep sblock up UNTIL you see your overwhelming strike timer come up, right before it hits, get a big sbar up there to try and absorb as much damage from it as possible. This is really the only mechanic that can kill you and really as long as you're taunt swapping at 2 stacks it should be trivial.

3) Garalon: Nothing is blockable here, it is 100% pointless to press sblock on this fight. Try to time your sbars so that they absorb the furious swipe instead of pharamone damage ticks.

4) I think probably sblock on this, especially since at one point you tank two different mobs.

5) sblock, especially if you're the add tank, you wanna keep that up as much as possible.

6) Sblock again is going to be the best option on this boss, especially during add phases. Lots of melee damage, any magic damage is pretty predictable, as long as you're taunt swapping it shouldn't be an issue.

TES:

Council (1st boss): I've only tanked this boss a few times, I've been focusing on DPSing a lot. Seems like the first guy killed is the only one that really does significant melee damage, after you kill him stop using sblock and use sbar maybe?

2nd boss: you'll probably want to time an sbar to help absorb the shadow breath, otherwise use sblock mostly. Really positioning and know the fight mechanics is far more important to tanking this boss than sblock/sbar

Lei Shei (3rd boss): Sbar for the most part here. There's no real melee damage from Lei Shei herself that I'm aware of. The adds melee though but Lei Shei's damage is probably more important to mitigate.

Sha of Fear: You want to use sblock, but you want to TIME your sblocks for his flurry attack, I forget what it's called but there's a big DBM warning and it will hit you like a truck for basically 3 times in 1 global. I don't remember the exact statistics but it is possible to have sblock up for every one of these. Make sure it is, don't really worry about sbar unless you're just floating in rage.

Thanks, that's very useful. I got to ilevel 470+ last night, so I am hoping to try some HoF or TES on LFR tonight.

On inter-weaving SB and SBar, that is something I will have to work on. (I confess I came away from Theck's latest Sacred Duty blog simulations thinking that just chaining SB or SBar might not be so bad.) With Elegon, I found that I only had just about enough rage to get a 60 rage sbar up for the breath attack and no time/rage to do much else. It did seem to pretty much negate the breath attack though, so I was happy. Likewise, with Stone Guards, I did not follow my crib notes but instead primarily used SB and found it hard to squeeze out much Sbar use in between the down times (partly for fear of delaying the next SB). I did find it interesting though - as someone whose main is a palatank, I agree with Theck's comment in his blog that the SB/SBar mechanic for warriors is more interesting than just pressing ShotR as a paladin.

One minor question - if you already have an absorption bubble from SBar, what happens if you press SBar again? I assume you lose (overwrite) your existing bubble, not that you merely add to it. I understand SBar scales with rage (so a 60 rage SBar gives the same protection per rage as a 20 bar one) but feared overwriting small 20 rage SBars, so tended to wait until I had 60 rage before casting SBar, unless it appeared to be an emergency. I have an add-on that tracks your absorb bubble and it seemed that Elegon's breath damage came towards the end of the graphic display, which usually gave me time to press SBar even if I did not have 60 rage the moment it began, although sometimes I was cutting it fine.

I THINK, though I have not confirmed this with logs, but I'm pretty sure that a new sbar will overwrite your existing bubble but ONLY if the sbar you would be pressing gave you more absorbtion than what is remaining. I have frequently put up a 60 rage sbar and tried to do a 20 rage sbar after it without taking damage and it wouldn't let me press sbar. I think it also will replace an equal absorbtion, so if you have 120 rage and you accidentally pressed sbar twice you'd basically be erroneously dumping 60 rage.

As far as I can tell Agg's expieriences mirror my own.

However on HoF Boss 5; Amber Shaper, the adds aren't tankable AFAICT they fixate on random raid members In p1 you should be taunt swapping the boss everytime a tank gets "Shape Life" and in P2 swapping the boss and monstrosity between tanks each time a tank is flung so neither tank end ups with nothing to tank. In P3 it no longer really matters, we generally leave it on one tank until we're down to one healer, then he chains his SW/LS/DS/RC/DB and the the other tanks taunts off and Chains his CDs

Lei Shei AFAICT doesn't actually melee, she just chain casts, so i'm sure beyond threat/DPS what the point of SBlock would be outside of the add tanking. Granted you're never going to get Sbars worth squat up fast enough either.

Oh, ya I think Teng is right about Lei Shei... I'll edit my most to reflect sbar.

I don't think it really matters; Lei shei ripped through my sbars like they where silk panties.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

I don't think it really matters; Lei shei ripped through my sbars like they where silk panties.

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You might be surprised how hard it is to rip silk panties unless there's already a hole in them...

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Originally Posted by Aggathon

3) Garalon: Nothing is blockable here, it is 100% pointless to press sblock on this fight. Try to time your sbars so that they absorb the furious swipe instead of pharamone damage ticks.

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Furious Swipe can actually be blocked, dodged and parried. Not sure if you still want to use SBar because of pheromones, though. I tend to simply use SBar anyway.

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Originally Posted by Hasprus

Furious Swipe can actually be blocked, dodged and parried. Not sure if you still want to use SBar because of pheromones, though. I tend to simply use SBar anyway.

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Umm... I call shenanigans, I want to see a log of this.

I don't Agg, All my logs i'm CTCing the swipe, its just on such a long swing timer that i don't think Sblock really matters, when you're only getting 1 block per SBlock, Sbar still works out better. especially if you spend significant time outside of melee range due to kiting.

weird, maybe it's just how my SCT is set up that I'm not showing it properly CTC'd.

Don't have any personal logs, so I checked a few on WoL

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-hw...=11885&e=12167

Here's the furious swipe page for one on the 8th of January, note that the warr is fury, which is why he has 0 blocks.

That's fair, one of my friends tanks it as fury in dstance.

About last in HoF, best choice is Sbar if u tank 6 add, because lot of veangence give u 1 mil absorb shield.

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Originally Posted by Schweppes

About last in HoF, best choice is Sbar if u tank 6 add, because lot of veangence give u 1 mil absorb shield.

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Except Sblock aslo scales with damage, so no.

Note about the following bosses:

Garajal: Shadowy Attack is (afaik) unblockable, and is what will kill the puppets, should they die. Maybe using a Shield Barrier here would be a good idea?

Asani (TES, Protectors, boss 3 using the non-elite order) randomly targets raid members to cast at, would just dump rage into damage moves.

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Sha of Fear: You want to use sblock, but you want to TIME your sblocks for his flurry attack, I forget what it's called but there's a big DBM warning and it will hit you like a truck for basically 3 times in 1 global. I don't remember the exact statistics but it is possible to have sblock up for every one of these. Make sure it is, don't really worry about sbar unless you're just floating in rage.

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Thrash (and on heroic also Dread Thrash) will kill you if you don't have a shield block or shield-wall cooldown up. If you don't have a mitigation CD up for it, you will take about 700k damage within 0.1 seconds on normal mode.

The arrow shooting mobs on the platforms hardly do any damage to a tank anyway, would rather focus on killing it faster so that you can rejoin the fight before the boss starts casting Reaching Strike because he isn't being tanked. Shield Barrier at Death Blossom might be a good idea though, because the healer will be hiding behind a pillar.

Gara'jal's shadowy attacks are totally blockable, just not absorbably, the damage shown as absorb in the attack summary is actually just counting the blocked damage as absorbs. Sblock is your best choice on Gara'jal. and you want it up for as many shadowy attacks as possible.

Lei Shi: [Mass] Spell Reflect works on the Spray.

see: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=4958&e=5326 (click "Paste Query Set", paste the following: [{"spellNames": ["Spray"], "targetNames": ["Rickotron"]}, {"spellNames": ["Spell Reflection", "Mass Spell Reflection"], "targetNames": ["Rickotron"]}] )

you should talent Mass Spell Reflection and glyph Spell Reflect to lower the CD to 20s, then use them on CD.


hitting SBar often is neat, but i'd advise making sure you have a 60rage SBar available towards the end of your turn tanking before you OT taunts off you. you'll have built up the most vengeance for a larger bubble at that point. due to the way the Spray debuff builds up, it's the Sprays towards the end that are the most important to mitigate. of course, if you have tons of rage saved up early on, by all means blow it on an SBar.

also reforge to hit cap and expertise hardcap (5100 rating), use DPS gear if you must. mastery, dodge, and parry aren't worth anything since the boss doesn't melee.

You really ought to be hit/exp hard capped anyway for pretty much ever boss except sha of fear.