Trinkets for Heroic Anub'arak's Adds

[Mert]

Now of course I know that unhittable sets with high block value are the "I Win" button for this fight and I have a reaonable amount of gear with Block Value on to make a half-decent set, but I'm mainly considering trinkets right now.

Before continuing I should point out that I officially have the worst luck with trinkets of any person ever - I've seen one Heart of Iron (which I was outbid for), zero Royal Seals, zero Furnace Stones, zero Impending Scarabs... etc. To my name I have the following:

Essence of Failproc
Figurine: Monarch Crab
Brewfest Trinket #1
Brewfest Trinket #2
The Black Heart
Glyph of Indomitability
Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
Moroes' Lucky Pocketwatch (my first ever tanking epic, incidentally)

The two Brewfest ones are more EH than any other combo, according to the calculator, but I'm wondering if it may be wise to use an Armor-based trinket to smooth the incoming damage a little - even if my TTL goes down slightly, it may give the healers an additional attack's worth of time to get a heal off on me, due to each individual hit being softened.

I originally thought Black Heart and Glyph may be the way to go, giving a nice EH proc and a strong on-use for the "oh shit, we kind of have all four on me" moments. With raid buffs, Glyph, Black Heart and an Indestructible Pot, I'm sitting at around 44k Armor and I have around 51k raidbuffed HP with both Brewfest Trinkets (probaby around 49k with Black Heart and Glyph).

But then, I wonder if my dusty old Auto-Blocker may be more beneficial to this fight, just to squeeze out a little more Block Value.

Thoughts / suggestions?

[Synapse]

Do their damage still go under the "ha-ha i block you lose" situation? Armor should scale pretty well there. When it gets nasty, an armor proc would definitely help if you can't get a "can't touch this" set. I don't know how avoidance would compare there.

[Mert]

It did, although admittedly I didn't have all of the gear on me for the couple of attempts we made last night - still need to dig through my bank and find my old Inoxerable Sabartons and that kind of thing.

Bearing in mind that as a Paladin becoming unhittable (with Holy Shield, not passively) is pretty easy so with that in mind would you recommend gemming Strength, Strength/Stam, Strength/Defense or some other kind of combo I've not thought about?

[Badga]

Don't use trinkets that give you stam.

Auto blocker/ony quest item trinket/Lev Talisman (go farm heroic Violet Hold)

pick from those 3

[klor]

It did, although admittedly I didn't have all of the gear on me for the couple of attempts we made last night - still need to dig through my bank and find my old Inoxerable Sabartons and that kind of thing.

Bearing in mind that as a Paladin becoming unhittable (with Holy Shield, not passively) is pretty easy so with that in mind would you recommend gemming Strength, Strength/Stam, Strength/Defense or some other kind of combo I've not thought about?

The problem is with heroic anub, the adds will chew through your holy shield charges extremely fast. You have to become unhittable WITHOUT holy shield up.

[Aggathon]

The problem is with heroic anub, the adds will chew through your holy shield charges extremely fast. You have to become unhittable WITHOUT holy shield up.

This and what Badga/Finkill said. EHP is actually REALLY bad on this fight because it causes you to heal anub for more. I personally sit at about 28k unbuffed, 36k buffed in my unhittable set. Every 1k hps you have is another 200dps your dps has to do.

[Aethelas]

Now I'm not a paladin but hey... Tried it with a nearly unhitteable set in 10 man yesterday. (100.4% but damnit I never got all that not so fancy block rating stuff!) even with less than ideal make up I mitigated a lot of damage.

So far I am going with the Onyxia trinket and Lavanthor's talisman. I am hoping to be able to swap out the onyxia trinket at some point for even more block value. In your situation I might be tempted to go for the armor trinket since block's factored in after armor and the on use is neat to push when shield block is on cooldown.

[Xianth]

Get lavanthors + and use ony head trinket with it.

[Mert]

The problem is with heroic anub, the adds will chew through your holy shield charges extremely fast. You have to become unhittable WITHOUT holy shield up.

Thanks for the comments guys. Just for some clarity, to what degree does the above remain the case if you only have a maximum of two adds on you at a time? Tanking all four is probably possible but would certainly require a passive unhittable set, but what about the relatively slow packs of two? Not trying to be argumentative or anything, I'm honestly keen to know so I can think a little more about strategy for my guild

[loquatious]

2 Adds is no problem, its routine for normal mode and requires no special gear.

1 hits every 2 seconds
2 they both hit every second
3 all 3 hit every 1/2 second
4 all 4 hit every 1/4 second (and you EVAPORATE if you turn your toon for 1 sec)

[Mert]

So far we've only been doing it in 10-man on Heroic so the way we've been doing it is that the first two spawn, we assign a ranged to nuke one down then he goes back to the boss, leaving me with three. By the time Anub burrows, my damage plus any cleave or splash damage usually kills off another one, leaving me with two.

This has worked fairly well and as long as the healers are on the ball, I can usually survive three, but it gets a little dicey sometimes. We've had some horrendous attempts at the "kite him like a pro" method so we changed to the "don't let him burrow a second time" strategy. As a result, we've dropped to two healers, so while my normal gear is usually fine, I'm conscious that I might be making it more difficult for those guys than is necessary.

Thanks a lot for all the advice so far, people - it's very much appreciated

[Xianth]

Well, we have an ice patch dropped and then have the boss half on it with the raid all inside the boss, i then grab the pairs of adds and tank them to they are inside the boss but still on the ice. This means our cleave capable people (usually DKS, rogues etc.) can hammer their multi target abilities whilst maintaining decent damage on the boss. This way you only ever have a couple of adds and theyre pretty easy to deal with - I think my "unhittable" gear only adds up to 97% ish but it's easily enough as the odd hit isn't enough to kill me.

Of course, if you are using your method for practice for 25 man then just ignore me