Shannox

[Griff]

Blizzard hasn't had a taunt immune tank switching boss since... Hydross?

Gurtogg Bloodboil.

/weep

[TeddyTauren]

That's what we were trying to do with our OT, but the MT never died so it didn't end up mattering. The OT was getting to second, but we also have a DPS group of 2 hunters a mage a rogue and a boomkin. Lots of MD and threat drops there, I'm not sure how it would be without so many.

Also it's worth noting that shannox throws his spear near riplimb. If you have a warrior OTing or priests in the group they can leap/life grip to the opposite side of a trap to get riplimb far away quickly and still get trapped. The MT should also be watching the dog's progress so he can pull shannox away until his stacks drop. Leap was only up for every other trap though, so I ended up using it in extreme cases only (oh crap the rogue just ate that trap).
Have the OT take position by a trap and then set the MT according to where the OT is. Then keep the raid away from the OT so that rageface does walk into a prison trap. When spear is thrown walk around the trap so that riplimb walks into it. It doesn't really matter how close riplimb is to the spear, if he gets trapped and the MT is paying attention it should be long enough.

[The Leviathan]

I assumed that was given if you're doing the separation strat.

[Kensu]

We are a 10 man guild and we killed it last night without too much trouble. We killed Rageface first as this random damage was kinda a pain in the butt. Extra tank damage is way more predictable and less mana intensive for the healers overall. I was the offtank and I was resetting the stacks for both tanks as often as possible. I didn't do anything fancy, I just positioned Riplimb close enough to a crystal trap and pulled him into it as soon as the spear throw emote went out. Then I ran my pansy butt as far away as possible to reset my stacks. The main tanks stacks were also reseting as well.

We burned the boss down to 35%, burned riplimb down to 5% reset the stacks once more. Then killed Riplimb, lusted and killed the boss. Easy peasy.

[Kemanorel]

Note: when Shannox is far enough from either dog, both the distant dog and shannox gain a buff called "Separation Anxiety" which increases damage and attack speed by 100%. This may have been introduced to counter the "tank riplimb 10000000 miles away" strat.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=99835

[Fetzie]

This is how we positioned our raid


Riplimb was tanked at yellow, the boss at green. The raid was spread out in between.

We used the run distance of the dog to reset the stacks, our hunter slowed Riplimb. Both dogs were brought low, when Shannox was at 33% we killed them both, lusted and killed the boss.

[The Leviathan]

Note: when Shannox is far enough from either dog, both the distant dog and shannox gain a buff called "Separation Anxiety" which increases damage and attack speed by 100%. This may have been introduced to counter the "tank riplimb 10000000 miles away" strat.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=99835

We go from getting an encounter journal to vague distances like "too great"? Anyone tested to see what the actual distance is yet?

[Fetzie]

I was about 50-60 yards from the boss with riplimb and they did not enrage.

[Jericho]

Don't get me wrong here, the 25man videos are really nice. I just would love to see a "point/counterpoint" with a 25m and a 10m video guide posted. A lot of us have gotten used to relying on Tankspot for good informational guides and with the 25man raid guild scene dying and the 10m thriving more and more we'd love to see a video of how to do it with 10. Especially seeing that its easier to manage multitanking mechanics involved in an encounter such as this with access to a third tank. Something a ten man is probably not going to have an immediate access to.

[Kemanorel]

The person who does the large burst damage to break "Face Rage" gains a debuff called "Rage" where they get fixated by Rageface for 12-15 seconds.

[The Leviathan]

For those looking for a good 10 man strat, we got in there and got the kill in just a few pulls using the method I listed at the end of the first page of this thread. I suggest laying the fight out on the road to avoid a lot of the clutter that can cause LOS in the field.

[Vrayna]

Gurtogg Bloodboil.

/weep

Deathwhisper heroic, phase2.
Fun times.

[Loganisis]

Don't get me wrong here, the 25man videos are really nice. I just would love to see a "point/counterpoint" with a 25m and a 10m video guide posted. A lot of us have gotten used to relying on Tankspot for good informational guides and with the 25man raid guild scene dying and the 10m thriving more and more we'd love to see a video of how to do it with 10. Especially seeing that its easier to manage multitanking mechanics involved in an encounter such as this with access to a third tank. Something a ten man is probably not going to have an immediate access to.

Actually - it's probably easier NOT to use a 3rd tank. The 25m video even says in the intro 2 tanks might be possible. I run in a 25m guild, so we did run 3 tanks, but for all intents and purposes it was a 2 tank fight.



Basically your Shannox tank moves slowly along the blue line. Backup only when a trap appears under him. This slow and deliberate movement will keep any cleaving to a minimum.

The Riplimb tank tanks on red, far away from the main tank.

Blue is actually away from the road because we had some LoS issues with the rocks just off the road, so we tanked Shannox on the south side of those rocks to remove any LoS issues outside of raid members or Riplimb/Rageface becoming Crystal Trapped. And then red is as far into that corner as possible to maximize the distance between them.

The basis of this strategy is keeping riplimb slowed (mage slow, hamstring, PH, etc. Just keep him slowed). With positioning down, here's how we did it, we just had too many people stand in crystal traps for it to be clean...

1. ALL DPS Burn Rageface. the 30% attack speed and 30% damage buff is healable. We found rageface's sudden nomnom-ing of random players lead to more deaths than Shannox's first stack of Frenzy (which lead to zero deaths - immo trap tank fails lead to deaths). After Rageface dies, melee goes to Shannox, range goes to Riplimb.

2. Riplimb tank should always try position Riplimb so there is a crystal trap between him and Shannox - however this can be difficult to get when Riplimb returns the spear - so the OT must move to a spot to guarantee that on the return Riplimb will walk over a crystal trap. This is important for 2 reasons:
A) MT Jagged Tear stacks; and
B) OT Riplimb stacks.

This is how this fight becomes a 2 tank fight. With the slows on Riplimb, and Riplimb being far enough away from Shannox, the MT's stacks should reset AT LEAST every other spear toss, keeping the dot damage very manageable. And everytime Riplimb ends up in a crystal trap, the OT's stacks reset.

That's basically it. Tank them far apart. Keep Riplimb Slowed. Burn rageface to keep unexpected deaths at a minimum and then try to get Riplimb Crystal trapped as much as possible. Finally, Kill Riplimb at 31-33% (we called for full DPS switches and stop attacks to make it happen depending on which group was ahead at the time in each pull).

***

Now, in 25m we did have the luxuary of a few 'backup plans:
1. 2 Shannox tanks - however the 2nd tank never tried to gain aggro, they just needed to run their rotation as best as possible (with a warrior, you're rage deprived, though not starved, plus Vig helps) so they are #2 on the aggro chart in case something happens.
2. We had a feral cat pull off Rageface at 50% and DPS Shannox so he was #3 on the aggro chart, in case of a double tank immo trap fail so he could pop bear and finish Shannox off.

****

Other notes - DO NOT break people out of the Crystal Traps in the burn phase because if they get caught in a crystal trap, they are NOT going to make up for the DPS loss of getting them out. If they're trapped when Shannox hits double frenzy, they stay that way.

The raid will take a lot of AoE damage from Magma Rupture during the double frenzy phase, like Aliena said - alternating raid CDs (DG, etc) is going to be win for keeping everyone up. In 25m at least, this splash damage HURTS (100k isn't uncommon - I was well away from jets and took a 100k hit). It seems to be a quick cast, and as of our raid tonight, DBM and BigWigs did not have it on a timer yet. When it gets added to their times the burn phase will get much easier, but until then, anyone with a raid CD should have Shannox on Focus so they can see the cast - you're not going to have time to call it out on Vent (or even mumble if it's faster, it's a very quick cast).

If you're a healer - you're going to have to eat some heals - DO NOT choose to throw out a heal over moving out of a crystal trap. It may seem like a good idea, but a crystal healer has 0 HPS. Tanks have CDs and raids have BR for DPS/heals.

These are the things that seemed to make the fight go much smoother...

*****

I was raging yesterday, the fight seemed insane, with single mistakes by the tank wiping the raid (and as the tank, that was frustrating) - but given a second day to look at the fight, some time to absorb the mechanics (a good nights rest too) - the fight becomes much more manageable on day 2.

Shannox is not an easy fight to learn, but once you learn it, it's very much just an attention to the ground and placement fight. Avoid traps and keep Riplimb as far from Shannox as possible. The fight will make more sense the more different days you do it.

In reality, this is not a strong gear check, it's very much an awareness check. Guilds with good raid awareness will have this fight on farm fairly quickly - guilds where members complain about the RNG of the traps appearing under their feet will bash their heads against it for a long time.

[Fetzie]

After a bit of poking around in our kill log from last night I found this:

code for the expression editor:

sourceName = 'Shannox' and targetName = 'Crystal Prison Trap' or targetName = 'Immolation Trap'

This will list all trap summons in the log.

He always summons a crystal trap first. After each crystal trap he summons 2 immolation traps. You have about 25 seconds between each crystal trap, and about 8 and 16 seconds respectively after the crystal trap is spawned two immolation traps are spawned.

If you handle the crystal traps and the snares properly, Riplimb won't be hitting its tank for more than a few seconds at a time, I think the shortest we managed was about 6 seconds.

For those a bit more graphically inclined:

[Yoakie]

We used a 3 tank strategy in 25man which worked perfectly. It is advised to kill Rageface first and then DPS down Shannox to 35%. Afterwards proceedt to kill Riplimb then Shannox.

We had a DK tanking Shannox. He could stack up the Jagged Tear buff to 25 without dying! Just make good use of blood shield. Shannox does physical damage only so DK tanking is perfect.

Main difficulty is to make sure that Riplimb takes a long time to return the Spear in phase 1. There is a very well written strategy for Shannox at http://www.25man.com/firelands/shannox. This focus a lot on the important details of this encounter. Good use for people struggling here!

[Radius]

I tanked riplimb at around 60yards from the boss, when I saw the red circle from the spear come up I ran (or leaped) toward the raid. Shammy totems would slow him down and when he went to pick up the spear he had to run all the way back, then 60 yards to the boss, then 60 yards back to me. I would say he ran a total of 160 yards (through totems and traps). I didn't have to depend on the crystal traps.

[Loganisis]

I tanked riplimb at around 60yards from the boss, when I saw the red circle from the spear come up I ran (or leaped) toward the raid. Shammy totems would slow him down and when he went to pick up the spear he had to run all the way back, then 60 yards to the boss, then 60 yards back to me. I would say he ran a total of 160 yards (through totems and traps). I didn't have to depend on the crystal traps.

Honestly, you probably want to make him run through the traps - because that will use them up so your raid doesn't step on them XD

[Krulz]

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.

Worked like a charm, we had 3 healers 1 each tank and one with the dog's target, aslo every healer helping with those close to em.

So thank you^^

[Vdaan]

We were doing Shannox the other day on 10 man, and I was noticing something odd about Rageface and was talking to one of our hunter about it. We were both noticing that he would break his Face Rage attack when neither one of us was getting a single 30k+ hit (I was DPS as arms). He and I were the main ones taking turns being his target, and while he was still breaking sometimes it was coming after 2 hits totaling over 30k. The first one I noticed was a MS crit of 28k, followed by a white hit of 10k and he stopped his Face Rage. Was this just a bug or were we both just missing our big hits?

[TheBigApe]

is there a way to set the new range radar to 60 yds?
tanking riplimb and sometimes, not sure if i'm far enough...

also, last night's couple of attempts, the crystal traps did not spawn near me and rather, near shannox tank and hence had to swap positions in order for me to utilize it on riplimb...

thoughts?