Heroic Shannox Discussion

[Outbackjack]

Just to tip my hat towards the upcoming nerfs to Firelands, but without inciting the wrath of the shoutbox, I figured we could begin separate threads for the discussion of the early Heroic bosses in the Firelands.

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Heroic Shannox

Boss Abilities

Shannox

• Throw Immolation Trap: Shannox launches a fiery trap at the feet of a player. The trap takes 2 seconds to arm, and triggers when stepped on thereafter, dealing 52,529 Fire damage immediately and 21,012 Fire damage every 3 sec, and increasing all damage taken by 40% for 9 sec.
• Crystal Prison Trap Effect: Shannox launches a prison trap at the feet of a player. The trap takes 2 seconds to arm, and triggers when stepped on thereafter, encasing the target in a block of magma crystal, preventing all movement or other actions. Only by destroying the crystal prison can a trapped player be freed.
• Arcing Slash: Shannox causes 125% of normal melee damage in a wide arc up to 1 yards in front of him, and inflicts Jagged Tear on those he strikes.
• Jagged Tear: Shannox's Arcing Slash leaves a Jagged Tear that deals 3,000 Physical damage every 3 sec for 30 sec. Stacks.
• Hurl Spear: Shannox hurls his spear in the direction of his hound Riplimb. The spear deals 126,072 Physical damage to anyone it strikes directly as well as 52,530 Fire damage to all enemies within 50 yards. The spear strike also triggers a cascade of molten eruptions around the impact point, which deal 52,530 Fire damage to enemies that are caught in them. Riplimb will then break off from combat, fetch the spear, and return it to Shannox.
• Separation Anxiety: When the distance between the huntsman and his pets grows too great (~80 yards), both become extremely agitated, increasing their damage and attack speed by 100%. Lasts 4 seconds.

Riplimb
Shannox has two hounds. Riplimb will attack the target with the most threat. In Heroic Difficulty, Riplimb cannot be permanently slain while his master still lives. When his health reaches zero, he will collapse for up to 30 seconds, and then reanimate at full health to resume fighting.

• Limb Rip: Riplimb bites savagely, dealing 175% of normal melee damage to an enemy, and inflicting Jagged Tear on those he strikes.
• Jagged Tear: Riplimb's Limb Rip leaves a Jagged Tear that deals 3,000 physical damage every 3 sec for 30 sec. Stacks.
• Feeding Frenzy: Both Hounds gain a stacking damage buff when they successfully hit a target with a melee attack. Each stack increases damage done by 10% and the buff lasts for 20 seconds
• Separation Anxiety: When the distance between the huntsman and his pets grows too great (~80 yards), both become extremely agitated, increasing their damage and attack speed by 100%. Lasts 4 seconds.
• In Heroic Difficulty Riplimb cannot be permanently slain while his master lives. When his health reaches zero, he will collapse for 30 seconds, and then reanimate at full health to resume fighting.

Rageface
Shannox' second hound. Rageface cannot be controlled, and will dart about from enemy to enemy, changing targets periodically.

• Face Rage: Rageface leaps at a random target, stunning and knocking them to the ground, and begins to viciously claw at them. This mauling initially deals 8,000 Physical damage every 0.50 sec, but the damage dealt increases over time. While so occupied, Rageface is 100% more susceptible to critical strikes (you will crit him when he is Face Raging). Rageface will continue until his target is dead or he receives a single attack that deals at least 40,000 damage.
• Feeding Frenzy: Both Hounds gain a stacking damage buff when they successfully hit a target with a melee attack. Each stack increases damage done by 10% and the buff lasts for 20 seconds

Source: Dungeon Journal/Normal Shannox discussion

10 man tanking POV

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• I haven't changed the damage numbers from Normal mode yet because I don't truthfully know what they are. I'll update the numbers when I find them.

[Outbackjack]

A lot of what we learned in this revolves around handling the two dogs differently. The raid itself has to manage Rageface and coordinate with the assigned Face Rage breaker to get him into traps. After trapping Rageface we cleared the area around Rageface for several yards to make sure he couldn't just immediately melee someone coming out of the trap and refresh his Feeding Frenzy buff. And for the love of Pete, keep him away from Immolation Traps when you can to prevent Wary from being applied.

Riplimb kiting, for me, clicked when I figured out how to get the most distance traveled every spear throw. We started with having a Shadow Priest help slow Riplimb but eventually I was able to do it on my own with Piercing Howl and lots of Heroic Leap/Intervene + Charge to Shannox. I haven't tanked Shannox, but I know our Paladin tank has started getting good at "kiting" Riplimb when he's trying to return the spear to Shannox. I'll try to get his exact comments in text to add to this, unless someone else wants to chime in on that.

[swelt]

Couple of tips:
- Arcing Slash and Limbrip abilities can create nasty bursts on the tank (especially in 25 man). This becomes more of a factor if you didn't manage to reset a dot stack after a spear. Healers need to be aware. Tanks can time minor defensive cooldowns for the moment that shannox gets the spear or the moment when riplimb reaches his tank (e.g. pop shield block just before then to reduce that predictable spike). Never let demo shout or equivalent drop off. This also means that the shannox tank needs to be careful (again, more in 25 man) when kiting shannox away from riplimb not to outrange healers or take too many hits in the back, as once he does catch you he's going to do a big burst.
- Glyph of Long Charge can be handy in this fight.

[Kemanorel]

As one of my guild's Rageface dog-sitters on heroic, I've noticed it is better to reset his stack of the buff by using distance and avoidance abilities (I'm a hunter, so deterrence) for the majority of the "Rage" fixate and trap him toward the end of the fixate than to run him immediately into a trap, as the damage buff lasts a few seconds longer than he will remain trapped. Also, he won't gain stacks while he is face raging, so sometimes a tick or two of it before breaking can be a smart decision.

I'm noticing that at least for us, the success or wipe on this fight hinges A LOT on dog-sitters doing their job well.

Edit: Also, on heroic, Rageface becomes 1000% more susceptable to critical strikes, according to the tooltip in-game.

[Esarael]

What Kemanorel said is very much correct. I'm the Rageface trapper on my raid, and as a Mage you have very nice mobility with Blink (and Improved Blink) to allow you to control Rageface's movement and avoid getting hit by him. After breaking Face Rage, you generally have two choices:

1. Trap Rageface right away. In this case, it is very important that you do not allow Rageface to melee you (thus refreshing its stacks) before he is trapped. To that end, ensure you have a safe distance from the trap you're using in order to avoid that tricky lag hit.

2. Do not trap Rageface right away. In this case, you can wait until there's 3~ seconds left on the debuff before trapping Rageface. After the trap breaks, there will be still some time left on his Feeding Frenzy, but he should jump and Face Rage someone very soon after freeing himself. Use that opportunity to break Face Rage and gain a lot of distance from him. His stacks should fall in the time he takes to get to you.

As a mage, you can also Ice Block in an emergency, when there's <10sec left on your debuff that forces Rageface to attack you. He will continue attacking you, but his melee attacks won't refresh his Feeding Frenzy and after Ice Block's has run out he will probably pick another target to attack. This is best done after you have gained some distance from the raid, as it will force him to walk a long path before being able to attack another raid member.

[Kerchunk]

Our best bet was using a Hunter to babysit Rageface.

It didn't work out well for us. We only gave it about 10 pulls but I think 60% was our best attempt... Face Rage just kept killing folk.

Anyone have any advice for a 10H raid w/ no Mage to assign to this? Is there some advice to give to the Hunter to help him break Face Rage more effectively? Deaths by FR were our #1 issue and I don't know enough about his class abilities to know if it's a strategy issue or Hunter are just not ideal for the job.

[swelt]

I believe hunters are a common choice for it, because if trapping fails they might also be able to achieve a reset of the buff by using deterrence. In our 10 man, we use a shadowpriest for it. I'd suggest that almost as important as class, is that you pick a player who you can trust.

[Outbackjack]

I believe hunters are a common choice for it, because if trapping fails they might also be able to achieve a reset of the buff by using deterrence. ... I'd suggest that almost as important as class, is that you pick a player who you can trust.

We started with a Hunter and got our first kill with it, however that Hunter then main-switched to his Paladin and now we have our feral Druid do it (damn well, too). To horribly paraphrase Swelt's last sentence, "bring the player, not the class."

Face Rage will absolutely be the mechanic you have to learn to complete this encounter, once you have that down you will confidently walk into this fight every time. I wish I had better video of our Druid handling Rageface, but he tends to be on the other side of the field from me.

[Kemanorel]

I get to dog-sit, on my hunter, but I've seen our arcane mage do quite well at it while also maintaining decent dps on shannox as well.

ANY sufficient sized crit can do it, and most classes have some sort of hard-cast nuke that can suffice (casters) and melee can usually manage as well, however a ranged class is preferrable due to his annoying leap, but either redundant melee or one with a charge type effect could probably manage.

As far as getting him to drop the buff, what works best for me is to try and break Face Rage with some distance between me and the mutt, and kite him for a few seconds before trapping, as the stacking buff lasts slightly longer than a trap's duration. Trapping him immediately resulted in lots of, "GTFO Rageface!" on vent, but very rarely stacks being successfully reset.

[kasanagi]

I had a few attempts on my hunter as the dog sitter, you just have to save Chimera shot for the face rage, since nothing else will instantly do enough damage. Later on we switched to a boomkin and worked out really well with travel from.

Biggest problem with Rageface for our raid had been the immolation traps, anyone have a trick or two to avoid these RNG madness? I've read that you can get Riplimb to take the traps, but since it is being tanked 80 yd from Shannox, I'm not too sure how this is done?

[Outbackjack]

Riplimb running over Immolation Traps is equal parts luck and planning. The Riplimb tank can somewhat control how Riplimb runs back to him after returning the spear. But it really is just a whole lot of luck if he zigs instead of zags when running near an Immolation Trap.

There are times that we need to have our Rogues disarm some of the Immolation Traps when it really starts getting crowded up near Shannox, keep that in mind if your raid comp allows it and you're running out of options.

[Esarael]

In my 10man, we don't have access to Rogues, but like outbackjack said, they can disarm traps, every 15sec if I'm not mistaken, and they need not be stealthed to do so. Use them if you're having trouble with Immolation Traps, since this fight is more about control than about DPS.

What I do in my raid is we mark three positions and have the Riplimb tank hold Riplimb on one of the vertices. The Shannox tank alternates between the other two spots, depending on where Rageface is trapped (remember that raid members should get away from Rageface once it's trapped, so that it does not renew Feeding Frenzy as soon as it breaks free from the crystal). I insist on that ranged remain always outside the triangle determined by these 3 vertices, so that the middle area (internal to the triangle) is more or less Immolation Trap-free~, which makes it easier for me to kite Riplimb where I want.

Still, minding your position in relation to other raiders (and naturally, traps) is probably the best you should do. Once again, this is a fight about control, and not DPS.

[rwhitmarsh]

Myself and a mdps dk take turns eating the traps, as long as u time them smartly between hurl speara and call out to healers when u eat them..this fixed most of our wary problems. Also, if a crystal prison trap happens to get thrown on melee we alert our tank to move shannox about 15 yards to avoid the /sigh accidental puppy trap

[Fetzie]

We move the boss as soon as any trap spawns in melee range of him.

[Alkapwn]

My question is for hunters that baby sit Rageface. Can all our little tricks be used to slow him? Concussive shot, Ice Trap and the rooting stuns you get form a PvP spec and from a Spider pet?

[Fetzie]

You cannot stun Rageface or reduce its movement speed to zero.

[Outbackjack]

It can be helpful to use pets that can reduce attack speed or attack power, though.

[Fetzie]

Paladin tanks can take rageface into focus and apply the 20% attackspeed debuff at range by judging it.

[BryceE]

My guild is having some issues on this fight sadly. Our very first attempt we managed to get it down to 2% and haven't been able to get it there again. Our best attempts are around 20%ish.

We usually have a bear tank riplimb and myself on shannox (pally). I'll wait til I've got like 3-4 stacks of jagged tear then I start kiting shannox while rip is returning the spear and all I hear on vent is stop moving the boss, we can't dps him -_-. That's currently the only way I can get my stacks to drop off. If I listen to what they say on vent my stacks never drop off. Same for the rip tank.

And our ranged seems to be unable to get any of the 30k crits needed to break face rage or they don't get away in time when rage is frozen to reset the stacks on him. We'll notice his stacks are really like .2s from resetting and boom he leaps on someone and resets them.

Our makeup 99% of the time is the following:

Bear
Prot Pally
Disc Priest
Resto Druid
Resto Shammy
MM Hunter x2
BM Hunter
Shadow Priest
Destro/Aff Lock

All our dps is anywhere from 19k-27k at the end of the fight.

[Esarael]

Leave one hunter at Rageface duty and one as backup. Observe that when Rageface leaps, and while he is Face Raging, he does not gain stacks of Feeding Frenzy. You should have your raiders use Rageface of focus so that when he fixates on someone and his stacks are about to fall off, that person can kite him just enough for his Feeding Frenzy stacks to fade. Also, when he is trapped, everyone should move away from the Crystal Prison.

Tanks have to kite dogs/Shannox on his fight; tell your DPS to position themselves better and deal with it. This fight is all about control, not really about DPS; with that much DPS, you're not really getting close to the Enrage timer.