Shannox

[Aliena]

Hello and welcome to the Firelands Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about Shannox, the first boss in this new raid instance. All info up-to-date as of patch 4.2., and some aspects of this encounter might become different or even irrelevant in the future.

We defeated this fight with 3 tanks, 7 healers and 15 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well. For instance, this could've easily been done with 6 healers, and potentially 2 tanks.

Shannox is a fire elemental hunter that paths the main area of Firelands. Yeah, the one with all the trash. Once you clear a certain amount of trash packs, Shannox will yell an emote and start walking in circles around the main area. He's accompanied by two hounds, Riplimb and Rageface. Riplimb can be tanked, while Rageface will kinda just run around and eat people.

All three enemies have an enrage, and your goal is to get both Riplimb and Rageface to die when Shannox is at about 30% health, or as close to that as possible. Both hounds should die at about the same time, as Shannox will enrage as soon as one of them bites the dust. Bringing Shannox below 30% before his dogs die is not recommended, as they also have a mean enrage.

Upon engaging Shannox, your raid members should be spread out, with your main tank and offtank standing on top of each other and keeping the boss turned away from the raid and the melee should stack up behind the boss. Shannox can NOT be taunted, so it's imperative that your maintank and your offtank are first and second in threat at all times. Everytime Shannox uses Arcing Slash, which is a 120 degree cone cleave, he'll inflict Jagged Tear on his current target.

Jagged Tear inflicts stacking dot damage every few seconds and lasts for 30 seconds, so every 8 stacks - or whatever number of stacks your healers are most comfortable with - your main tank needs to let the offtank pass him in threat. Once the offtank acquires 8 stacks, the main tank needs to take over again, rinse repeat.

Your third tank's job is kiting Riplimb, whose main ability Limb Rip also inflicts Jagged Tear. How does the third tank get to drop his stacks, you ask? Easy. Shannox continuously throws out traps on random raid members. Some of them are Immolation traps, and look basically like a hunter's immolation trap. The other kind of trap he uses is Crystal Prison trap, which look like they have a miniature crystal inside. Both kinds of traps will arm after 2 seconds, so everyone in the raid needs to always be watching their feet.

I found having your camera horizontal instead of using birds' eye view makes seeing traps a lot easier. Both kinds of traps can detonate when either a player OR one of the hounds steps on them, and that's the whole trick to it. Your Riplimb kiter needs to be on the lookout for Crystal traps and kite the hound over it. That way, Riplimb will be trapped long enough for the offtank to reset his stacks of Jagged Tear.

While the Immolation Trap deals a lot of damage, it's not the end of the world if a raid member steps on it. The crystal traps on the other hand will encase a raid member until the crystal is defeated, and it has several million health. Not only that, since a triggered crystal will act as a solid block, you might line of sight the tank healers from the Shannox tanks, and tank deaths are very hard to recover from on this fight.

It's important to communicate newly spawned crystal traps on ventrilo, so your kiter has an easier time luring Riplimb over one.

The good news is that if you understand how to tank Shannox and Riplimb, the rest of this fight is very simple. The only other mechanics you have to deal with is Shannox' Spear Hurl and Rageface's eating of raid members.

Spear Hurl will always land near Riplimb and is easily identified by the meteor-animation followed by rings of fire it leaves on the ground. The rule to this ability is to never stand in the meteor area and to never stand in any of the firey-looking parts right after. Basically the same as always, stuff on the ground in this encounter is always BAD.

Rageface is fairly easy to deal with. He'll run around and fixate on a random raid member for a while. He does hit fast, but he doesn't hit terribly hard, so just make sure to assign at least one healer to look out for his current threat target. He also has an ability called Face Rage, where he'll fixate on a target and deal a LOT of damage. This is broken if Rageface takes 45000 damage in a single attack - or 30000 in the 10-man version. To make sure no raid member dies to this, you should have your healer macro "Face Rage" into their raid frames and make sure to keep a good team of ranged attackers on him at all times.

Again, your target is to kill both hounds at roughly the same time, which should be when Shannox is at about 30% health. Your melee should be on Shannox himself at all time, while your ranged team's DPS should be split up among the dogs.

For each dead hound, Shannox will inflict 30% more damage 30% faster, so with both of them dead you're looking at a 60% increase in both damage and attack speed. At this point, it's recommended to add a cooldown chain to the usual tank rotation, so make sure you communicate things such as Shield Wall, Pain Suppression, Hand of Sacrifices, etc.

This is a clear burn phase, so Bloodlust, Heroism or Time Warp should be reserved for Shannox's enrage. His spear throw turns into an ability called Magma Rupture after he enrages and will now also cause every raid member to take 40% more fire damage, so it's even more important not to stand in any of the little fire eruptions after this point. If you keep executing a good cooldown chain, Shannox should go down pretty easily. As always, good luck and have fun!

I've attached footage of the whole encounter, so you can see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail.

[Arkinedes]

Thanks very much, and good job on the kill.. would you recommend using 3 tank in the 10m version? or have a ranged kite the dog?

[Aliena]

I imagine a ranged can kite just fine, but as I haven't done it, maybe someone else would be able to confirm for sure.

[Fetzie]

If you tank riplimb far enough from the boss he can take so long to retrieve the spear that both debuffs run out (no refresh on the MT when Shannox does not have his spear equipped, no debuff on the OT when the dog isn't hitting him. You can also use traps to slow stack growth on the OT. You can probably also freeze riplimb when Shannox is about to throw his spear to gain another 5-6 seconds.

[Darksend]

We used 3 tanks as well for 25 man, but apparently there is a strat that involves tanking them a billion yards apart so every spear throw is a guaranteed reset for both tanks. Also, a DPS warrior can intervene the stacks if you really really need a reset (they just need to be baller at guessing)

Another thing that I said in the other thread is that you can also have whoever is second on DPS (which if you are switching targets properly should be very clear who that person is) run far away at about 5 stacks. The next time the debuff has 10 or less seconds on it bop the tank (which will not remove the debuff) but it will take the boss long enough to run away and back that you will reset and it will not melee that dpser.

Also, has anyone else noticed a bug with getting battle rezed on this fight, now maybe the druid in my guild is just a super awesome battle rezer (he really is) but of the 4 times I died tonight 3 times I got battle rezed and was still at exactly the same threat I was at before I died. Oddly, the one time the warrior died this did not happen and we wiped because of it, but it happened enough to make me question what the hell was happening. Anyway, lemmie know if this happened to you as well., would be curious to hear about it.

[Lore]

If you tank riplimb far enough from the boss he can take so long to retrieve the spear that both debuffs run out (no refresh on the MT when Shannox does not have his spear equipped, no debuff on the OT when the dog isn't hitting him. You can also use traps to slow stack growth on the OT. You can probably also freeze riplimb when Shannox is about to throw his spear to gain another 5-6 seconds.

We did something similar - still kept 2 tanks on Shannox and 1 tank on Riplimb, but had the Riplimb tank reset his stacks by positioning himself so that Riplimb would run over a trap on his way back to him after fetching the spear. It made kiting him over the traps really easy. Also, the way the timing works out, it let him alternate between a Crystal trap and an Immolation trap to put some extra damage on him.

[TheConMan]

Tried this on 10 man last night. Had some difficulty.

I'm thinking 3 tanks is not really an option. Nor is trying to have the 2 tanks tank shannox/riplimb at the same time, as it makes the threat dump too hard to coordinate.

I'm wondering if the best option on 10 man would be to have 1 tank on shannox, 1 tank on riplimb, and have the riplimb tank w/ a friendly healer (pally beacon maybe) stay far away from shannox so that the spear run will clear both stacks. Maybe also trying to have a prison trap between dog and shannox (but from that far away, this seems challenging.

Any suggestions? I've seen only 1 10 man video posted since last night and they made it seem as though the tanks were swapping riplimb/shannox together.. But we really struggled with that. We were coordinating switching one of them fine, but then the other would get stuck for longer and both tanks would end up with fresh stacks.

[Darksend]

Something I forgot to mention, we had much more success and finally killed it by just killing random-target dog (I am terrible with their names) right off the bat and just healed through the 30% buff. This has the advantage of making both tanks so far ahead on threat transitions become a joke. We decided to do this because all of our non-tank deaths were a result of a target change-> dead

This is broken if Rageface takes 45000 damage in a single attack - or 30000 in the 10-man version.

And also in part because of this. This logic escapes me, and my raid agreed with me when we finally realized why he was not swapping targets on big crits, because crit damage is not affected that much by having 15 more players in the raid, maybe 30K is just unrealistic for 10 man but we wer eback and forth all night about how to kill the random-target dog until we finally found that little gem of information, and the very first attempt we straight up ignored the other 2 and killed him first, was our kill attempt.

[Halandir]

Another thing that I said in the other thread is that you can also have whoever is second on DPS (which if you are switching targets properly should be very clear who that person is) run far away at about 5 stacks. The next time the debuff has 10 or less seconds on it bop the tank (which will not remove the debuff) but it will take the boss long enough to run away and back that you will reset and it will not melee that dpser.

I'm pretty sure I remember BoP removing my stacks.

Also, has anyone else noticed a bug with getting battle rezed on this fight, now maybe the druid in my guild is just a super awesome battle rezer (he really is) but of the 4 times I died tonight 3 times I got battle rezed and was still at exactly the same threat I was at before I died. Oddly, the one time the warrior died this did not happen and we wiped because of it, but it happened enough to make me question what the hell was happening. Anyway, lemmie know if this happened to you as well., would be curious to hear about it.

We had issues with b-rezzes as well. Sometimes threat was dropped, other times the tank came up and had the same threat as before he died.

[Reev]

I have a feeling that the "keep Shannox and Riplimb separated and kite riplimb through the crystal trap while he's retrieving the spear in order to drop stacks" strategy is probably the one that was intended by Blizzard. Blizzard hasn't had a taunt immune tank switching boss since... Hydross? And even Hydross had an aggro wipe, making tank switching easy.

My guess: Blizzard people would figure out the spear kiting strategy and go with it. When people on the PTR figured out a taunt switch strategy instead, Blizzard decided to make the bosses taunt immune to stop that sort of behavior, but many people went ahead with a tank switching strategy anyway, using oldschool vanilla WoW tank switching techniques. The spear kiting, though, was still the intention and probably optimal.

[Halandir]

Something I forgot to mention, we had much more success and finally killed it by just killing random-target dog

Very interesting... hadn't thought of that option. Gonna file this away for my guild, could prove to be a much cleaner approach with more overall damage going out, but less random. I think it's easier for healers to keep up with increased damage on one or two targets than it is to react to random damage on random targets.

[TeddyTauren]

Yea using the strat in the video makes threat extremely delicate and requires MDs and tricks to be reserved for the tanks to help switch quickly. spear throw trapping just requires a good offtank.

Also not mentioned in this video is the fact that dogs can trip the immolation traps. So what you want to do is kite rageface over immolation traps for more dmg and kite riplimb over crystal traps to drop stacks (right as shannox throws his spear). also rogues can disarm a trap every 70 seconds. We had our rogue clearing immolation traps near the crystal traps that riplimb was about to be kited into so that he didnt trip the immolation trap instead. When a dog trips a trap it gains a debuff called "Wary" which means it will not trip another trap for 23(?) seconds. So if you keep getting riplimb hit by immolation traps he'll be wary when you try to trap him in a prison and he wont be stuck long enough for stacks to reset.

[mekell]

If you tank riplimb far enough from the boss he can take so long to retrieve the spear that both debuffs run out (no refresh on the MT when Shannox does not have his spear equipped, no debuff on the OT when the dog isn't hitting him. You can also use traps to slow stack growth on the OT. You can probably also freeze riplimb when Shannox is about to throw his spear to gain another 5-6 seconds.

Pretty sure this is the actual intended method for clearing stacks, but both (this and standard threat swap PITA mechanics) work, use whatever is easier. We didnt get enough attempts on him last night to figure this out, but we will get him next time!

[leviticusx82]

So what would the most viable strat be for 10 man? After reading the posts so far i'm seeing a few potential options:

Strat #1 - Adapting the Tankspot 25 man strat to 10 man
Have both tanks stack on top of eachother with one tank tanking Shannox while the other tries to stay as close to pulling threat as is safe. When the tank currently tanking gets to 5 stacks he stops attacking all together and lets the other tank pull threat, then keeps up as closely as possible. Rinse and repeat. Depending on raid make-up you could use several abilities to aid this transition. As for Riplimb have a plate dps kite him around.

The only potential problem I see here is the dps kiter dying since he's not a tank or potentially losing threat since he's kiting but shouldn't be too big of an issue with a skilled kiter and good heals.

Strat #2 - A single tank tanking both Shannox and Riplimb then swapping both
Same as the above strat only one tank is tanking Shannox AND Riplimb while the other tries to stay as close to pulling threat as is safe. When the tank currently tanking gets to 5 stacks he stops attacking all together and lets the other tank pull threat, then keeps up as closely as possible. Rinse and repeat. Depending on raid make-up you could use several abilities to aid this transition.

The potential problem I see here is accidentally pulling threat so both tanks end up with Jagged Tear, especially at transitions, however, if managed carefully this shouldn't be an issue.

Strat #3 - Tank Shannox and Riplimb very far apart
Have one tank on Shannox and the other on Riplimb. The tanks tank their target 50-60 yards apart from the other (world raid markers are AWESOME for this) so that the stacks fall off by the time both Shannox and Riplimb are able to reapply the debuff. Careful not to bring them much further apart however or they will both get a buff and proceed to murder the tanks. Once both dogs are dead use everything you can to get the OT up to 2nd place in threat just incase the MT dies. If tank and healer CDs are communicated and cycled this should not be an issue.

Strat #4 - 3 tanks, 2 on Shannox 1 on Riplimb
With this strat you could go one of two ways. Either do it exactly as the Tankspot video did or have the third tank tank Riplimb really far away so as to reset the stacks of the debuff. With either of these you have two tanks at the top of the threat meter when the dogs are dead for swapping or in case a tank dies.

The potential problem I see here is with three tanks you're severely hurting on dps, especially since you'll probably want three healers too.


With any of these strats what would be the best way to split dps? Based on what Darksend's group did it sounds like the best way to go would be to kill Rageface, burn the boss down to 35%, kill Riplimb, finish the boss. Or once Rageface is dead splitting dps between the boss and Riplimb so that Riplimb dies when the boss gets to 30%. With only 4-5 dpsers it doesn't seem viable to split the dps more than two ways, though I could be wrong. Which of these strats do you guys think would work best, or if none of them what would you propose? What's the consensus on how to split the dps, or should you? Has anyone done this fight on 10 man successfully yet that would be willing to share how you did it?


EDIT - Post Fight Feedback
We dropped Shannox last night and found Strat #3 to be the best strat for 10 man. We put down world markers roughly 50 yards apart and tried to keep both Shannox and Riplimb close to these while the raid stacked inbetween. I tanked Riplimb and found that if I ran just past the marker and turned Riplimb around so my back was facing the raid and Shannox the spear marker would always be placed a little further away still. As soon as the marker was placed I would kite Riplimb toward the raid either as far as I could or optimally into a Crystal Prison Trap. With this method we never had an issue with Riplimb and Shannox being too far apart or with stacks not falling off either tank. I should note we also had a hunter using Concussive Shot on Riplimb as he brought the spear back to Shannox if I couldn't get him into a trap. Also of note, the debuff no longer stacks on the Shannox tank once the dogs die so even if he has stacks on him still they will fall off.

As for DPS we focused all DPS on Rageface, then Shannox to 35-37%, then Riplimb, then back to Shannox. The Shannox tank should have Shannox at 30% about the same time Riplimb dies. Our biggest problem was people either not getting out of or running into traps. Even with several mess ups and people needing burst out of Crystal Prison Traps (and me dying right as Riplimb died, hehe) we still got the boss down. With some practice this fight turned out to be not bad at all and rather fun. Good luck to you all!

[mekell]

So what would the most viable strat be for 10 man? After reading the posts so far i'm seeing a few potential options:


Strat #3 - Tank Shannox and Riplimb very far apart
Have one tank on Shannox and the other on Riplimb. The tanks tank their target a mile away from the other (How far is far enough? Anyone know?) so that the stacks fall off by the time both Shannox and Riplimb are able to reapply the debuff.

The potential problem I see here is tank swapping once the dogs are dead because the Riplimb tank will be VERY far behind on the aggro table, assuming he still applies the debuff. This could make this strat unviable with only two tanks.

i dont think this will be an issue, if you are still getting the boss to ~35% before killing riplimb. At the 30% mark its just a soft enrage race imo. We personally will be trying #3 above im pretty sure, sub 30% or post both dogs dieing i dont think tank swapping will be neccessary. Just burn him down at this point before he stacks too many debuffs too high.

[TeddyTauren]

How far is far enough? Anyone know?
With any of these strats what would be the best way to split dps? Based on what Darksend's group did it sounds like the best way to go would be to kill Rageface, burn the boss down to 35%, kill Riplimb, finish the boss. Or once Rageface is dead splitting dps between the boss and Riplimb so that Riplimb dies when the boss gets to 30%. With only 4-5 dpsers it doesn't seem viable to split the dps more than two ways, though I could be wrong. Which of these strats do you guys think would work best, or if none of them what would you propose? What's the consensus on how to split the dps, or should you? Has anyone done this fight on 10 man successfully yet that would be willing to share how you did it?

We had 2 dps on rageface and the rest focused shannox down to 40% and then the dogs to 5%. We also moved rageface through immo traps every chance we got which might have helped with the face raging. Our tank did most of the 40%-30% on shannox i think so that when the dogs were low shannox was ready to push. killed dogs and then went from there. our tank also didnt die during the burn phase. It was getting uncomfortable, and the OT was getting MDs just in case, but it was manageable. We killed him the first time we got him to transition correctly, that's deff the easy part of the fight.

We used 2 tanks and put the dog ~60 yards away. One of our raiders said that more than 60 yards and shannox enrages. Dunno where he got that info, but we didn't exactly want to test it.
But it isn't just about distance. You HAVE to trap the dog during a spear fetch or else stacks wont drop. The dog is also slowable.

[Chobi]

Strat #3 - Tank Shannox and Riplimb very far apart
Have one tank on Shannox and the other on Riplimb. The tanks tank their target a mile away from the other (How far is far enough? Anyone know?) so that the stacks fall off by the time both Shannox and Riplimb are able to reapply the debuff.

The potential problem I see here is tank swapping once the dogs are dead because the Riplimb tank will be VERY far behind on the aggro table, assuming he still applies the debuff. This could make this strat unviable with only two tanks.

Something similar to this the easiest way. For 10 Man this fight requires 2 tanks, 3 healers, and 5 DPS.

Tank something like this:
[Shannox]--------------------------[The Raid]--------------------------[Riplimb]

One tank tanks Shannox, the other tank tanks Riplimb. Assign some DPS to try and push them even like in the original video strat. Its best to NOT have a class with built in slows on Riplimb since slows will build an immunity to being slowed. Someone with a controlled slow works the best, such as a hunter concussive shot.

When Shannox throws his spear, run Riplimb AWAY from the spear landing spot.
[Shannox]--------------------------[The Raid]----[Riplimb]-------------[SpearLandingZone]

It takes some adjusting to find the appropriate distance but the fight becomes trivial after that. If you don't have a hunter or character with controlled slow, you could pull Riplimb over Shannox Freezing trap BEFORE the spear is thrown.

When phase 2 starts, its a DPS race/keeping up the Shannox tank alive race. Kinda like phase 2 Chimareon

[drjnova]

Yea using the strat in the video makes threat extremely delicate and requires MDs and tricks to be reserved for the tanks to help switch quickly. spear throw trapping just requires a good offtank.

Also not mentioned in this video is the fact that dogs can trip the immolation traps. So what you want to do is kite rageface over immolation traps for more dmg and kite riplimb over crystal traps to drop stacks (right as shannox throws his spear). also rogues can disarm a trap every 70 seconds. We had our rogue clearing immolation traps near the crystal traps that riplimb was about to be kited into so that he didnt trip the immolation trap instead. When a dog trips a trap it gains a debuff called "Wary" which means it will not trip another trap for 23(?) seconds. So if you keep getting riplimb hit by immolation traps he'll be wary when you try to trap him in a prison and he wont be stuck long enough for stacks to reset.

Would appreciate a little more info on "Wary" if anyone has it. Some people are saying that either dog tripping a trap applies this buff to both dogs. Others are saying only to the dog that tripped the trap. Anyone have a definitive answer?

Also anyone have any information on the immune to slow buff that they gain? How long does it last, how/when is it applied.

[TeddyTauren]

Only the dog that walks on a trap gets the wary debuff.

[The Leviathan]

Ok, the boss gains 30% dmg and attk speed buff per dog that dies. Both dogs enrage if the boss reaches 30% when they are still alive.

The boss can only apply debuffs on the tank when he has his spear. Riplimb can't apply his debuff while he's retrieving the spear.

For the sake of clarity I suggest we kill Rageface fast, and live with the 30% buff on the boss. Try to stand between Rageface and any immolation traps during this to ensure he hits as many of those as possible. Leave Crystal traps free for Riplimb. With 1 tank on the boss and the other on Riplimb spaced roughly 60 yards apart. The raid will be positioned between the 2. This means all traps will be dropped between 2 tanks making it far easier to line up trapping Riplimb and easily allow for both tanks to drop stacks every time the spear is thrown.

Here's where my own little idea comes into play. Because the boss is untauntable but will continue to apply stacks after he hits 30%, I suggest that any class with an aggro drop dps the boss after Rageface dies, and those without an aggro drop dps Riplimb.

Then when we are ready to push the final phase, everyone who was dpsing Shannox drop all or as much aggro as they can (vanish, feign, shatter, whatever) and allow the tank who was on Riplimb to quickly become 2nd threat on the boss while the dps without those abilities shouldn't have threat on Shannox at all. When/if the Shannox tank dies the next tank is lined up to hold him until we collect loot.

Any thoughts on this?