Anub'Arak Add Tanking Guide

[drae]

I just can't get behind the one tank strategy, it makes it a lot more stressful than it needs to be.

I think if you have a REALLY well geared block tank to do it. (Like un-hit-able and 2500+ SBV) it becomes simple to one tank it. A good warrior can get to the point of taking -almost- no damage. (Majority of damage taken is blocked) In which case it's far simpler to have one tank for adds.

We normally use the two tank strat (Cause my un-hit-able set sucks), but for Gits and Shiggles I tried solo tanking them last night on our last two attempts, the dtps was only ~15% higher. My difficulty lay in putting out the TPS on 4 mobs, (wtb more TotT. pst.) The interrupt is a non issue with the new DBM timers, just wait till ~1s before the shadowstrike and press shockwave (or holy wrath?). Oh and when you solo tank it the tanks DPS goes through the roof (reflective block) I saw spike of 4k+ DPS, as a tank!

Truly the biggest advantage of the 1 tank method is the extra DPS, melee DPS is teh win in this fight and one extra person pushing 8k dps is gonna help on both the adds and PH3. With an extra melee dps, and the tank pushing out twice as much DPS I really think the one tank method has it's advantages if your struggling on the damage portion of the fight.

Also it is my opinion it is easier to heal two targets then 3; so much of my Healing taken is over heal in this fight anyhoo. Go Go Bacon of Light.

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to do it, different ways work for different people.

[Aggathon]

@drae, I agree. I have about 2.6k BV unbuffed (so add glyph of blocking and kings buffs) and rotate between block trinkets every attempt so it's 200-400 higher.

Here's a WWS of our kill, you can see just how little damage I take.

[Pagezero]

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

This might not be true unless you have very high dodge, make sure folks run the numbers in their gear set. For me both agi enchants turn out to be better.

[Thegreatme]

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.

what I am about to say is totally opinionated because of my guild experiences, your milage may vary.

the problem that I see with this is that it's pretty common for people to pay attention to who is being focused right as anub picks a new target, after that people will just go back to killing adds and making sure they stay away from the boss. when a double focus/positioning fail occured in p2 we found that simply letting the person die messed things up because people wouldn't "expect it" and plan accordingly and then when he picked a new target the half the raid would run around like a chicken with it's head cut off and inevetably more people would die. we would rather not need to use a battle rez in a bad RNG situation that we could have simply adjusted too.

as far as making things more stressful I would disagree. when solo tanking it is only stressful for one person once the adds are on the tank, the person doing interupts. we use a warlock for interupts and he even said on vent that it was very stressful learning when to interupt because when we did it boss mod timers were off so he had to determine for which waves the the timer was off, and more importantly, by how much. But after learning it it's pretty easy for him to do and each clear his DPS is getting higher and higher because he's getting more comfortable with DPSing and interupting at the same time.
now with the two tank method it puts stress on your DK's who have to get the two permafrosts in proper position, your two tanks who need to position the adds close enough so they all get AoE'd but far enough away so they don't buff eachother, and also your two interupters (though not nearly to the extent as the interupter for the solo tank method)

Both methods work fine, both have their advantages and disadvantages, it's just up to each guild to decide which method is going to work for them.

[Aggathon]

As far as double focus goes, hand of sac/pain supression is an acceptable alternative to BoP. It makes it so that the spikes are actually healable. If someone gets double focused or for some reason a BoP isn't up, we use PS/HoS and just heal the person and everything is Savvy.

[Halandir]

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.

I understand the mechanic it's still not "avoidance" though. It's mitigation--it's 100% mitigation through block value, but it's still mitigation as opposed to avoidance. There is a difference between the two, and it's important to carefully define terms to avoid confusion.

[Aggathon]

Isn't all avoidance 100% mitigation?

E: eh, I'm just battling semantics now, it doesn't really matter, 'cuz ya you're right.

[Rak]

This might not be true unless you have very high dodge, make sure folks run the numbers in their gear set. For me both agi enchants turn out to be better.

That's kind of crazy. The block rating makes them way better than agility for me.

[Rak]

I understand the mechanic it's still not "avoidance" though. It's mitigation--it's 100% mitigation through block value, but it's still mitigation as opposed to avoidance. There is a difference between the two, and it's important to carefully define terms to avoid confusion.

Avoid can be defined as 'debar: prevent the occurrence of; prevent from happening; "Let's avoid a confrontation"; "head off a confrontation"; "avert a strike"'

Mitigate can be defined as '# extenuate: lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of; "The circumstances extenuate the crime"
# make less severe or harsh; "mitigating circumstances"'

When you are fully blocking all damage and thus taking no damage, it is avoiding the damage, more than mitigating it. I don't think nitpicking his phrasing is worth it because his phrasing was not inaccurate.

[Halandir]

@ Rak

you can define avoidance and mitigation according to the dictionary all you want. But in the tanking community, if you are using avoidance to describe anything other than solely your chance to dodge, parry, or be missed, you need to clarify that.

It's about common usage in the context.

[Mert]

How exactly does "avert a strike" describe block better than "make less severe or harsh"? :S

[Badga]

Thank you for all the responses and I was busy today so I could not get to my computer to respond as quickly as I would have liked to. Yes, I should have specified a little bit more on the reguards to the "avoidance" terms it is just reaching unhittable status in reguards to mitigation there. It isn't considered avoidance because you truely don't avoid every hit you just never take unmitigated hits. If it isn't dodged or parried it will guaranteed be blocked. The attacks being blocked is the main reason that this set can be so strong. The fact that the adds only melee swing for around 13k or so makes a large part of that damage reduced through block value. Block value makes it seem like avoidance but it is really just reducing the damage you take by a large amount. Critical block and glyph of blocking just simply reduce the damage intake by a significant amount which makes it appear as avoidance.

Now as far as cooldown are concerned and consumables go I personally think it would be better to use agility and defense elixirs as opposed to any strength consumables. Although, this all depends on your current gear as well. I perfer to gear for block value as opposed to try and get any type of block value through strength consumables the amount of avoidance you gain with those comsumables is going to be better.

I will be happy to answer any questions or concerns as well. This is just my opinion on the consumables/gems/gear used for this encounter there are many other opinions out there and I am excited to hear all of them. This is what worked for me so I thought I would share my information with all of you.

-Fink =D

[Badga]

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.

Yes, very true i didn't want to go into much detail in this mainly because this was meant as more so tanking related and the aspects on the tank mechanics of the encounter. Now if you would like me to explain the fight and its other aspects I would be more than happy to go about that as well.

[Badga]

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.

gratz =D

I am happy to be able to help you out. Oh 2 girls 1 cup!!!!! yes, again if people would like I can go into a bit more detail on those aspects of the fight however, a lot of that is dependant on the raid comp that each guild has to work with. So my directions on that may be limited for each guild.

[Badga]

updated for added macro right above the gear section that can be used to add up your stats.

[Roarc]

You could change the font to the normal forum-font as well… Not sure why people change that!

[elunesbuddy]

I use this shield enchant: Enchant Shield - Shield Block - Spell - World of Warcraft
you may want to add it to the list.

[Badga]

I use this shield enchant: Enchant Shield - Shield Block - Spell - World of Warcraft
you may want to add it to the list.

good call I completely forgot about that enchant, which is kind of funny from my part because I had that enchanted on my shield for a short period of time.

[Pagezero]

That's kind of crazy. The block rating makes them way better than agility for me.

My mistake, I was using older 62.5 agi per 1% dodge, looks like it is now 83 which does make both the 8 def better than 20 agi to gloves but 26 agi to weapon is still a bit better than 15 parry but they are very close.

Sorry about the confusion.

[elunesbuddy]

One thing I noticed regarding Gems and dodge/parry ratings.
I use RatingBuster, I don't know, it may be off/wrong but in any case last night, I was looking the 10def/10parry and 10def/10dodge orange gems. RatingBuster was reporting 0.01% avoidance difference between the 2 gems. It's maybe because of diminishing returns due to high dodge rating already. Anyone knows if parry can give as much avoidance as dodge if dodge rating is high enough? I couldn't find any 10def/10dodge before raid so I picked the 10def/10parry instead because of the so small difference in avoidance (0.01% for my red socket - to activate my meta).