10m Heroic Anub'arak Concerns

[Squirrelnut]

I looked over our most recent Heroic 10m Anub'arak kill to see how my specialized block set stood up as the ad-tank.
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

On our kill attempt, here is the total damage I took:
melee: 49,466
leeching swarm: 232,698
penetrating cold: 39,704

I took a TOTAL of 49,466 physical damage. I have over 35k life buffed in my block set and during the entire fight only took about 49.5k damage from ads. That is like 5 heals over the 4 minute 30 second fight to mitigate physical damage I took from all the ads (even that was likely being side-ways positioning them, facing them straight on I should take less).

I am concerned that we wiped 9 times when in effect we had both healers able to put almost 100% attention on the MT & raid, what do we need to do to improve? We have had tank inconsistency so one of our druid healers has had to step in and become a tank; he was the MT on Anub'arak for this fight. Is it mainly just improving the MT tank gear or is there a different healing approach or something we need to work on? Any thoughts would be appreciated, we have found it works best to 2 heal this fight.

EDIT: Here is my block set for those interested, ~102.8% unbuffed:
Wowhead Profiler: Profiler - Wowhead
Chardev Link: chardev.org v6 ~ a World of Warcraft character planner

[Kazeyonoma]

2 heal is definitely the best way to do this, the tank needs to cycle cooldowns for whenever he gets frozen. Really whoever is your best EH tank should do the MT because anub hits hard but the healers need to keep him topped off, we had a DK tank him who's arguably our best geared tank in the guild and even he dropped low at times with our best resto druid/holy paladin healing.

Are you guys failing at anub because of the MT dying? and if so, which phase? Is the mt getting attacked by the poisonous scarabs during phase 2? There's a lot of other factors that might be in play here.

[Squirrelnut]

We down Heroic 10m every week, I am just concerned with the number of wipes we have been having.

We basically always make it to phase 3 (we have enough dps to use the burn approach and only have 1 submerge phase so kiting really isn't an issue) and usually the MT dies fairly easily in phase 3.

One week we only had 1 wipe on Anub however most weeks we see 8+. The biggest difference on the single wipe week was having a Pally MT instead of the normal druid. We don't want to over-stack one 10m group because we have a couple groups clear it each week to help gear up for our 25m so we need to improve with our current comp (druid MTing).

We make sure neither tank has scarabs angry at us during phase 2, DPS simply aoe's them down.

EDIT: I am the best geared tank but the amount of incoming damage that our healers would have to deal with would be substantially increased if I tanked Anub in my normal set instead of taking the ads in my block set. Druid OT on ads would take their full force instead of ignoring 99% of it like an unhittable warrior does.

[Kazeyonoma]

Yeah, I dunno, are the healers spending too much time healing everyone else instead of the MT? check with the healers and see if they're keeping heals on the tank. aside form maybe a wildgrowth or something, the tank should constantly get healed, like spam non-stop.

[Khue]

We had a similar problem on Anub 10m heroic. What it came down to was changing our heal strategy. While I am not the best EH tank, I do well enough to suffice for the fight. There is only really a 1-2% difference between myself and our Pally MT. Our main healer is a disc priest with a Val. We made the executive decision for him to go holy for this fight. A shammy or a druid and the disc priest maintain the group. Another successful configuration has been a shadow priest and the disc priest for the group. What pushed us over the top is a Pally on MT and he judges light on the add tank. The pally pretty much makes Anub doable at the moment. The disc priest configuration just doesn't seem to pan out for us.

As an afterthought, is it really necessary to blow a CD when ice blocked? My heal core doesn't seem to bat an eye when I get IB.

[Aggathon]

When we got tribute to insanity on 10 man I was MTing as a warrior in my regular EHP gear (roughly 31k armor and 52k hps fully buffed) and we had a paladin tank the adds. A block set is definitely nice, in repeat kills I've used it because basically the splash healing/Hots can keep me up, but it's by no means necessary. If you have a consistant paladin with pretty good gear to tank the adds, that is a very doable thing, especially if you beacon the add tank and then just have the holy pally bomb heals on the MT and let the resto druid worry about the raid.

Another thing I did as a warrior MT was I did a cooldown rotation for phase 3. With the burn strat we had enough DPS that I could be running a cooldown for the entire phase.

I started out with a combination of jugs vit trinket, enraged regen, and an armor pot. After those wore off I hit last stand, then after that I shield wall'd. Our pally also sac'd me at the end for safe measure, but anub died before shield wall wore off.
Edit: shield block on cooldown too of course.

If you have a feral druid having him pop survival instincts and barksin at the right times can be very win.

[Edgewalker]

Make sure your healers understand that unless someone has penetrating cold, they simply won't die from leeching swarm.
I think the majority of wipes are due to Anub healing too much and healers making their jobs harder than they need to be.

[Squirrelnut]

I think one of our main problems is that the druid we are having MT is really one of our 25m main guild healers. He has a decent tank set just from picking things up and has had to tank in our 10m's due to inconsistency from other tanks and having more then 1 heroic 10m group. He said he had to use his cooldowns early in the fight which tends to make me think he used them too soon and had nothing left when it really matters in phase 3.

[Aggathon]

Make sure your healers understand that unless someone has penetrating cold, they simply won't die from leeching swarm.
I think the majority of wipes are due to Anub healing too much and healers making their jobs harder than they need to be.

There's a minimum amount that the leaching swarm still hits for. I think it's around 500 unmitigated. So SOME healing needs to be done, BUT having said that if you just have like VE, or Healing Stream Totem, or JoL, or Leader of the Pack or something, you'll stay alive, the healing healers need to do is VERY minimal, you are correct.

It just makes me freak out every time I see an entire raid at 10%.

[drae]

We've been downing Anub successfully for a few weeks now. I (warrior) MT anub (I have substantially more EH then our paladin tank for 10's, he's an offspec retadin) and use the pally for add duty. He takes VERY little damage from adds, allowing the healers to predominantly focus on myself.

We use a druid and paladin to heal on Anub; our normally disc. priest switches to shadow. We also use a single burrow burn method.

Basically the paladin only heals me (with bacon on the add tank) and the druid uses down-ranked hots and wild growth to keep the raid alive. Remember the higher the raid is on health the more anub heals, so we generally try to keep the tanks topped, and everyone else ~45%. Our druid had the Penetrating cold damage showing up on his raid frames, so he knew when to roll top-level hots on a target.

MT death is never a problem (I've even survived being shadow stepped in ph.3 once or twice). Usual problem for us is the pally healer pulling aggro before the adds get to the add tank.

Oh and squirel, could you log out in your block set (or make a chardev set of it) so I can take a look? I'd like to develop one myself as we start on 25m heroic anub this week; while our Pally (not the same as our 10's) will most likely tank the adds, I'd like to be prepared if he's a no show.

[drae]

When we got tribute to insanity on 10 man I was MTing as a warrior in my regular EHP gear (roughly 31k armor and 52k hps fully buffed) and we had a paladin tank the adds. A block set is definitely nice, in repeat kills I've used it because basically the splash healing/Hots can keep me up, but it's by no means necessary. If you have a consistant paladin with pretty good gear to tank the adds, that is a very doable thing, especially if you beacon the add tank and then just have the holy pally bomb heals on the MT and let the resto druid worry about the raid.

Another thing I did as a warrior MT was I did a cooldown rotation for phase 3. With the burn strat we had enough DPS that I could be running a cooldown for the entire phase.

I started out with a combination of jugs vit trinket, enraged regen, and an armor pot. After those wore off I hit last stand, then after that I shield wall'd. Our pally also sac'd me at the end for safe measure, but anub died before shield wall wore off.
Edit: shield block on cooldown too of course.

If you have a feral druid having him pop survival instincts and barksin at the right times can be very win.

Quoted cause it's exactly what I do too, now if only our holy paladin would stop getting gibbed in ph 3 I could get insanity.

[Aggathon]

I'm currently logged out in my block set if you'd like to take a look. It's not optimal but it's over 101.6% raid buffed, so it'll give you a good look.

The neck from Kologarn, the BP from Auriaya (both 25), and the bracers from Maexxna are what I'm missing, they're quite nice, but as you can see not NECESSARY. The Lavanthor's Talisman is necessary though. get that and the gnomergan autoblocker 600.

[Squirrelnut]

Updated initial post with links to chardev or profiler to see my block set

Wowhead Profiler: Profiler - Wowhead
Chardev Link: chardev.org v6 ~ a World of Warcraft character planner

[drae]

Thanks squirrel Your awesome!

Edit: Question for you, why the dodge rating in the boreal guard over defence?

[Xianth]

Well, the majority of times the MT dies in p3 is due to a Hit -> Freeze, with an almost garaunteed hit after unless the boss misses (more so with a druid who has little or no defense). If the druid's gear isn't optimal then you're gonna have a much greater chance of taking that hit-freeze-hit and then extra rolls of the RNG dice to whether your MT healer is gonna get a heal dropped in the 2 seconds between the first hit and the second.

[Badga]

THE POWER OF RNG!!!!! that was our first week on anub.

granted that is 25 man anub but ya get the idea lol.

blizzard fixed that issue though by changing the amount he hits for and the swing timmer was altered as well but tanks gettin gibbed like so shouldn't be an issue at all.

[felhoof]

One big way that you can help the above not happen is by using some nature resistance enchants. Another is to make sure you either time your CDs to deal with freezing slash or make sure that you have barkskin up when you do. Finally, especially after the first burrow your main job should be keeping demo roar up.

[Kazeyonoma]

yeah, it made a big deal for my DK, when I made sure I kept tclap and demo shout (improved) on anub as we entered phase 3 and we breezed through him.