Anub'Arak Add Tanking Guide

[Badga]

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Anub'arak Tanking Strats

3. Gear List

4. Gems

5. Enchants

6. Spec

7. Damage Intake Breakdown

1. Introduction

Hello there tankspot community. For those who do not know me, I would like to take this time to introduce myself. My name is Finkill and I have been playing a warrior for four years now, and want to give a little back to the community after being an active forum reader for so many years. This guide is to help give a general reference to the itemization for add tanking on Anub'arak, a fight that many guilds around the world are working on at this time.

2. Anub Tanking Strats

There are multiple ways to approach this encounter from a tanking perspective and a lot just depends on the classes of tanks that your specific guild has to work with. As for a main tank choice for Anub himself there really is no wrong choice for classes to pick from, but that is a topic that could be discussed at a separate time. For the adds on Anub I would HIGHLY recommend either warrior or paladin for this role. Warriors are better from a damage mitigation standpoint because of the fact that it is far easier for a warrior to gain more shield block value than it is a paladin. Critical block is a massive amount of mitigation and if itemized properly you can obtain enough block value to reduce almost all of the add damage entirely. Paladins however are much better as far as threat goes for the adds. They also can take a considerable amount of damage in comparison to warriors. I would say the selection of these two classes depends on the strategy your guild decides to use for the encounter.

The number of tanks used on this fight will create the overall strategy and flow of the fight. You can either use two tanks for the adds or just one, and by no means is there a wrong way to approach it. There are a few pros and cons for both selections however.

Two Add Tank Strategy:

Pros-

1. Damage Mitigation

The damage mitigation between the two tanks is split even more so than with using just one which can take a great deal of stress away from your healers. If you don't quite have all of the gear in order to tank the adds or have the full unhittable set it is not as detrimental to their damage intake as opposed to using just one. By using only one add tank it is absolutely necessary that the tank has 101.6% avoidance or it simply will not be possible.

2. The Shadow Strike cast!

This is probably one of the main problems of the encounter to overcome and a large weight on the selection of the number of add tanks used. Now by using two add tanks it allows for the cast time on the adds of shadow strike to be 2.1 seconds as opposed to a 1.3 second cast when all four are grouped together. By splitting the distance between the adds and having each tank pick up two each it makes the cast a lot easier to interrupt and attack speed time of the adds reduced significantly. Basically when using two add tanks you want to just assign either a Rogue, Shaman, or Death Knight to each of the adds to interrupt the cast. As you will find it makes this specific role of the fight to be much easier.

Cons-

1. DPS

The damage on the adds as well as Anub himself will be decreased by a large amount. The placement of the adds can be very sensitive with all of them being in range of various classes AoE abilities and their buff that increases the cast time. Basically what you want to do is get them close enough for all AoE to hit them without them gaining more than two stacks of their buff. You will quickly notice that the uptime of dps on Anub will decrease and a majority of the time will be spent on adds and AoE.

2. Phase 3 Leeching Swarm

With having two tanks tanks on adds greatly increases the amount of healing done back to Anub in phase three, which could also make it quite difficult to meet the enrage timer if your guild is lacking dps. The main tank will do roughly three million healing back to Anub and each of the add tanks will do around two million, most likely a little bit less depending on the amount of time you spend in phase three. The add placement and dps is going to have to be almost flawless in order to reach the enrage timer for this fight if you decide to use two add tanks.

One Add Tank Strategy:

Pros-

1. DPS

With using just one add tank it increases the dps of the raid tremendously due to the fact that you have that extra dps slot in your raid composition in replacement of the extra tank and the adds are always going to be in range of all AoE and will get in place quite quickly in order for dps to start on the adds. As a result of the adds being in range of all AoE and Anub himself it will clear up for a lot of single target dps on the boss. The adds will take roughly 15 to 20 seconds to kill from the time they are all in place and that will give all the dps time to focus on just Anub for 20 seconds or so until the next wave of adds spawn.

2. Phase 3 Leech Swarm

As I stated above it will make the time you spend in phase three a lot less thus allowing for a easier enrage timer to meet.

Cons-

1. The Shadow Strike cast!

This is one of the main reasons that guilds tend to not use this number of tanks for the encounter because it makes the cast almost next to impossible to interrupt due to server lag, player latency, as well as individual reaction time. The only way to successfully go about the adds with this strategy is to stun and silence them during the shadow strike cast cooldown and burn them down as fast as physically possible. Now I will not go into detail on this topic unless people have specific questions on it, which I will be more than happy to answer.

2. Add pickup

Using one tank is going to cause the add pickup to be impossible to do without having Rogues use tricks and Hunters using misdirection on the tank. What you are going to have to do is have hunters misdirect the farthest add spawns to the tank and have Rogue(s) tricks the close spawns to the tank. Now how you set that up is based on the number of those classes you have available in your guild.

Videos-

Rush vs. Anub'arak (1 Tank Strat and me tanking the adds)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_kgxY35HF8

Paragon vs. Anub'arak (2 Tank Strat)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMCgKnab9Ec

3. Gear


This is simply listing the pieces that are used for the set itself, but the gear will change from player to player due to the accessibility of the gear listed. This is the warrior itemization for this fight. You need to make sure that you have 101.6% avoidance fully raid buffed before you start stacking block value.

Unhittable doesn't mean you dodge/parry/miss every hit. It means that without using shield block, every thing that you don't dodge/parry/miss will still be a blocked attack.

/run ChatFrame1:AddMessage(format("Unhittable at 102.4%% - you have %.2f%%", GetDodgeChance() + GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() + 5 + 1/(0.0625 + 0.956/(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)/4.91850*0.04))))

Run that macro with whatever gear you have equiped


Head-

Avoidance - 5 man Heroic Halls of Reflection - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50311
As a side note, this new helm does provide more avoidance (slightly) however the tier 8.5 helm does have less stam, which will help more in phase 3. This selection is a personal choice, no selection is wrong in my eyes.

Block Value -Tier 9 - Hellscream's Greathelm of Triumph - Item - World of Warcraft

Neck-

Avoidance - Maly 25 man Quest Item - Nexus War Champion Beads - Item - World of Warcraft

Block Value - 25 man Kologarn - Necklace of Unerring Mettle - Item - World of Warcraft

Shoulders-

Avoidance - Tier 7.5 - Valorous Dreadnaught Pauldrons - Item - World of Warcraft or Burdened Shoulderplates - Item - World of Warcraft

Block Value - Faction Champions 10 man Heroic - Sunreaver Defender's Pauldrons - Item - World of Warcraft

Cloak-

Avoidance - BoE 10 man Iron Council - Cloak of the Iron Council - Item - World of Warcraft

Block Value - 25 man Nax Trash Drop - Shadow of the Ghoul - Item - World of Warcraft

Chest-

Avoidance - Tier 7.5 - Valorous Dreadnaught Breastplate - Item - World of Warcraft

Block Value -25 man Auriaya - Unbreakable Chestguard - Item - World of Warcraft

Wrists-

Avoidance and Block Value -25 man Nax Maexxna - Bindings of the Hapless Prey - Item - World of Warcraft

Hands-

Avoidance and Block Value - 25 man Nax Noth or Gluth - Gauntlets of the Disobedient - Item - World of Warcraft

25 man Iron Council - Handguards of the Enclave - Item - World of Warcraft

(the ulduar gloves are stat for stat better than the nax gloves)

Waist-

Avoidance - 25 man Nax Patchwerk or Gluth - Fleshless Girdle - Item - World of Warcraft

Block Value - 10 man Nax Razuvious or Gluth - Waistguard of the Tutor - Item - World of Warcraft

25 man Ulduar Razorscale - Dragonslayer's Brace - Item - World of Warcraft

(the Ulduar belt is stat for stat better than the nax belt)

Legs-

Avoidance and Block Value - 39 Emblem of Conquest tokens - Wyrmguard Legplates - Item - World of Warcraft

Feet-

Avoidance and Block Value - BoE 25 man Nax Anub'Rekhan or Gluth - Inexorable Sabatons - Item - World of Warcraft

Rings-

Slot 1- BoE 25 man Ulduar XT-002 - Signet of the Earthshaker - Item - World of Warcraft

Slot 2 - 25 man Normal ToC Anub'Arak - Band of the Traitor King - Item - World of Warcraft

This slot has many options because of the fact that there are not many other rings itemized toward this set specifically. I use this ring myself since it is the ring that provides the most amount of avoidance that I have access to.

Trinkets-
(now there are a lot of options that you can choose from here so I will list all that would be ideal for this specific set and you can decide based on your gear accessibility)

Level 60 Nax (no longer obtainable) - Glyph of Deflection - Item - World of Warcraft

Heroic Violet Hold (this one trinket is the absolute best for the gear set) - Lavanthor's Talisman - Item - World of Warcraft

Onyxia10/25 Quest Item - Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman - Item - World of Warcraft

Badge of Justice Reward - Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 - Item - World of Warcraft

Weapons -


5 man Heroic Halls of Reflection http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50290

Shields-

Avoidance - 10 man Hardmode Hodir - The Boreal Guard - Item - World of Warcraft

Block Value - 10 man Anub'Arak Heroic - Aegis of the Coliseum - Item - World of Warcraft
(the 25 man heroic Northern Beasts is BiS for value however unless you get two of them or want to regem and enchant for every week I would just recommend using the 10 man shield)

Best Overall - 25 man Algalon - Bulwark of Algalon - Item - World of Warcraft

I personally like the Bulwark best because of the socket color and the bonus that the specific color provides. It is the only piece of gear that gives an avoidance increase with socket bonus that contains a BLUE gem. This is the slot I put my Enduring Eye of Zul in to meet my meta gem requirement.

4. Gems

For this set you primarily want to use only defense gems for your pieces, any slot you can stick a 20 defense gem in PUT IT THERE! As for socket bonuses you are going to want to ignore them except to fill your meta requirement IF they provide an avoidance socket bonus. Ignore any type of bonus that provides stamina here because the less health you have for this encounter the better. (phase 3 healing back to Anub)

20 Defense - Thick King's Amber - Item - World of Warcraft
Jewelcrafting - Thick Dragon's Eye - Item - World of Warcraft

Red Meta Requirements-
10 Dodge 10 Defense - Stalwart Ametrine - Item - World of Warcraft

Blue Meta Requirements-
10 Defense 15 Stamina - Enduring Eye of Zul - Item - World of Warcraft

5. Enchants/Consumables

Head-
Avoidance - Arcanum of the Defender - Item - World of Warcraft

Block Value - Presence of Might - Item - World of Warcraft

Shoulders-
Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle - Item - World of Warcraft

Cloak-
Enchant Cloak - Titanweave - Spell - World of Warcraft

Chest -
Enchant Chest - Greater Defense - Spell - World of Warcraft

Wrists -
Enchant Bracer - Major Defense - Spell - World of Warcraft

Gloves -
Threat - Enchant Gloves - Armsman - Spell - World of Warcraft

Avoidance - Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Major Agility - Item - World of Warcraft or Vindicator's Armor Kit - Item - World of Warcraft



Legs-
Presence of Might - Item - World of Warcraft

Feet-
Mobility - Enchant Boots - Cat's Swiftness - Spell - World of Warcraft

Avoidance - Scroll of Enchant Boots - Superior Agility - Item - World of Warcraft or Vindicator's Armor Kit - Item - World of Warcraft
(I personally like Cat's better because of the mobility that it provides. Getting in place faster for dps to start, kiting impale during burrow phase, and for add pickup as well. I feel it provides a great amount of help on this fight, but that is just my opinion. Edited for cat's swiftness)

Weapon-
Avoidance - Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Agility - Spell - World of Warcraft

Life Saving - Enchant Weapon - Blood Draining - Spell - World of Warcraft

I personally find Blood Draining to be the better enchant because in phase three your health can fluctuate quite often and the heal can be life saving at specific times throughout the encounter.

Shield-

Avoidance - Enchant Shield - Defense - Spell - World of Warcraft or Enchant Shield - Shield Block - Spell - World of Warcraft

Block Value - Titanium Plating - Item - World of Warcraft



Consumables


Battle Elixir - Elixir of Mighty Agility - Item - World of Warcraft


Defense Elixir - Elixir of Mighty Defense - Item - World of Warcraft


Food - Slippery Eel - Item - World of Warcraft

6. Spec

The spec as well as glyphs will alter depending on the number of tanks used for the fight. For the single tank strategy I would recommend using this build.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

That is the spec that I personally use and I glyph for taunt as opposed to shield wall is because I am responsible for picking up an add and having a taunt resist can cause serious problems for their placement and direction of path they come to you in.

For the two tank strategy I would recommend this build.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The only reason for not glyphing or specing into shield wall in the one tank strat is because the dps you gain from cleave is quite substantial. Now there are of course variations of these builds, however this is simply what I would recommend. Play style and strategies will alter these decisions heavily.

7. Damage Intake Breakdown

As I briefly stated before the class selection for the adds has different advantages to them. Paladins will take a considerably larger amount of damge than warriors because of how the class mechanics work. Below are wowmeteronline links to various tanks damage intake breakdowns and you can see how itemizing and strategies will differ the results.

Rush vs. Anub'arak (warrior single tank)
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

Blood Legion vs. Anub'arak (paladin single tank)
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

Vodka vs. Anub'arak (paladin and warrior tank combination)
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
(paladin damage intake)
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
(warrior damage intake)

Now those are just a few examples of the physical as well as leeching swarm damage breakdown, but they give you a general frame of reference for the encounter.

The below link is the gear that I used on my guild's first kill of Anub. This proved to work just fine aside from the fact that I was missing many of the best pieces for the set.

chardev seven . character planner . finkill


Closing

Thank you all for taking the time to read my Anub'Arak Add tanking guide I hope that it is helpful to all players that read this information. If you have any questions regarding this guide you can either post on this thread or contact me via Email at jake_ayulo@yahoo.com. Any suggestions and additional input on this would also be greatly appreciated.

[Surmaaja]

Very nice guide, good job !
What kind of consumables do you use ?

[Badga]

edited for comsumables sorry =D

[tweakedout]

great guide, very informative. =D

[Khordam]

Waistguard of the Tutor is from Naxx10, not 25. Other than that, a great guide.

[Badga]

changed ty

[Roarc]

Awesome guide, I was sitting last night doing a similar thing on our guild forum!

Perhaps the following items are worth adding:

- The Warlord's Depravity (Neck, ToT 5 man Heroic)
- Burdened Shoulderplates (Shoulders, Naxx 25)
- Signet of the Last Defender (Ring, Zul'aman)

Also, what's your take on STR vs AGI elixir? I see you promote the later here

[Mert]

Has anyone tried Lesser Flask of Resistance - Item - World of Warcraft to reduce the damage/his healing from Leeching Swarm?

[yobotra]

Very nice guide but maybe you could also add how that 101.6% is counted
or perhabs good link where to go

[Edgewalker]

My only problem with the guide is that there are really no downsides to using a two tank strategy anymore. It's more controllable, the damage intake is almost trivial even using death knight / druid tanks, the casts are solo interrupt able and don't require focus targets, and the overall healing done by leeching swarm accounts for about a 5 second difference in fight length when actually parsed out, less with ring of binding, less again when you account for the dps difference without tricks / MD / interrupters.

[Khordam]

Very nice guide but maybe you could also add how that 101.6% is counted
or perhabs good link where to go

101.6% comes from each avoidance type (dodge, parry, block, miss) dropping by 0.2% for every level the attacker is higher than you. Since the adds are level 82, you get 1.6% less avoidance in practice, which you can counterbalance by 1.6% more on the character sheet. (Well, not the character sheet really, since you don't get any accurate miss numbers there... but you get the idea.)

[Warloco]

Tankpoints2 works nice for seeing if you will still get hit.
TankPoints : WoWInterface Downloads : Warrior

Type /tp optionswin
Mobstats -> Mob level +2
Then to tank points -> tankpoints calculator

Defense +45 (Elixir)
Agility +330 (Agi food, Elixir, Strength of Earth totem, Gift of the Wild, Blessing of Kings)

After you've filled that out, look at the right hand side number behind Hit (%), it should be 0%.

[yobotra]

Tankpoints2 works nice for seeing if you will still get hit.
TankPoints : WoWInterface Downloads : Warrior

Type /tp optionswin
Mobstats -> Mob level +2
Then to tank points -> tankpoints calculator

Defense +45 (Elixir)
Agility +330 (Agi food, Elixir, Strength of Earth totem, Gift of the Wild, Blessing of Kings)

After you've filled that out, look at the right hand side number behind Hit (%), it should be 0%.

Thanks this is exactly what i needed

[Insahnity]

Anybody want to endorse Mongoose over flat 26 Agi?

[Rak]

Vindicator's Armor Kit - Item - World of Warcraft can be better on gloves and boots, and Adamantite Weapon Chain - Item - World of Warcraft can be better on weapon for pure avoidance+block.

[Rak]

Anybody want to endorse Mongoose over flat 26 Agi?

No, because it doesn't actually contribute to being passively unhittable. It's a proc and it doesn't have 100% uptime and could easily lead to you dying if you depend on that avoidance to be unhittable.

[Thegreatme]

My only problem with the guide is that there are really no downsides to using a two tank strategy anymore. It's more controllable, the damage intake is almost trivial even using death knight / druid tanks, the casts are solo interrupt able and don't require focus targets, and the overall healing done by leeching swarm accounts for about a 5 second difference in fight length when actually parsed out, less with ring of binding, less again when you account for the dps difference without tricks / MD / interrupters.

one thing that was not mentioned is that witht he 1 tank strategy you have one "extra" perma frost. this perma frost can be used in emergency situations.

Examples: a pretty obvious one is if someone gets double focused in p2, because you won't be able to BoP him you can either quickly kill the extra permafrost, or kite over the frost used for adds and then bring the extra permafrost down and have the raid adjust accordingly.
also if someone is simply not paying attention and ends up being in a position where they won't make it to one of the p2 frosts before BoP runs out they can break the adds frost and then kill the extra and adjust.

solo tanking the adds gives you more flexability in other areas at the downside of making the tanking/interupting requirements very strict. likewise for two tanking the adds, it makes tanking/interupting easier but it makes your DPS requirements/p2 execution more strict.

[Halandir]

@ OP

hey great guide, just a note on a few terms:

"Avoidance" means your combined chance to dodge, parry, or be missed by a boss attack, and is subject to diminishing returns. Thus, reaching 101.6% avoidance is impossible. What you mean when you use the word "avoidance" in your guide is really "avoidance + block %."

While I'm sure you understand the difference, you should probably be more specific in your guide so it doesn't confuse people.

[Edgewalker]

one thing that was not mentioned is that witht he 1 tank strategy you have one "extra" perma frost. this perma frost can be used in emergency situations.

Examples: a pretty obvious one is if someone gets double focused in p2, because you won't be able to BoP him you can either quickly kill the extra permafrost, or kite over the frost used for adds and then bring the extra permafrost down and have the raid adjust accordingly.
also if someone is simply not paying attention and ends up being in a position where they won't make it to one of the p2 frosts before BoP runs out they can break the adds frost and then kill the extra and adjust.

solo tanking the adds gives you more flexability in other areas at the downside of making the tanking/interupting requirements very strict. likewise for two tanking the adds, it makes tanking/interupting easier but it makes your DPS requirements/p2 execution more strict.

If someone gets double focused you just let them die and battle res. It happens so rarely it's almost a non issue, and you can still do the kite normally when it does. I just can't get behind the one tank strategy, it makes it a lot more stressful than it needs to be.

[Aggathon]

@ OP

hey great guide, just a note on a few terms:

"Avoidance" means your combined chance to dodge, parry, or be missed by a boss attack, and is subject to diminishing returns. Thus, reaching 101.6% avoidance is impossible. What you mean when you use the word "avoidance" in your guide is really "avoidance + block %."

While I'm sure you understand the difference, you should probably be more specific in your guide so it doesn't confuse people.

Actually with lavanthor's talisman proc'd block becomes avoidance for me, I can fully block or sometimes only take 500-1k dmg per hit at MOST when just lav's is up. So in that sense block (and esp critical block) does become avoidance, and with shield block up you take no damage.

As far as 1 add tank strat: My guild prefers it. Finkill was extremely helpful to me in his assistance before he wrote this guide and when my guild switched to a 1 tank strategy everything became easier(downed it last week, thanks Finkill!). Frankly with 2 tanks it becomes too buggy to try and make sure that they adds seperately only have 1 stack and it makes AoE a lot harder. You can get them in the correct range but it's pretty rough. With a good block set and good MDers it's pretty much a joke.

Finkill - you might add more specific add pickup details for misdirects, like if you only have 2 rogues 1 hunter or 2 hunters 1 rogue or 2 girls 1 cup. But those are details that are really specific per guild, the nuances of which really just have to be learned.