N00b Tanking LFR in Dragon Soul - Part 2

So you've lifted the Siege, and it's time to make your assault on the Destroyer himself. As you head up to the top of Dragonrest Temple, you'll meet Thrall and the Aspects charging up the Dragon Soul to attack Deathwing. After some RP dialogue Deathwing will unleash his ultimate weapon, Ultraxion. First there will be waves of twilight drakes, pick up as many as you can and be especially wary of the ones blasting swathes of blue flame across the platform. These guys must be taunted or interrupted ASAP. Avenger's Shield is brilliant for this. Once the trash are down Ultraxion will arrive and suck the raid into the realm of twilight. You'll also get a special button on your screen called Heroic Will. This button will shift you OUT of the twilight realm for 5 seconds or until Hour of Twilight or Fading Light complete. Your co-tank will likely tank Ultraxion from the start, but be ready with your taunt in case some trigger happy DPS jumps the gun. Thrall gives you a buff which halves the cooldown and doubles the duration of all your defensive abilities. This means you can and should have Holy shield up 100% of the time (at least the time you're actually tanking). It also means that you can soak every one of the Hour's of Twilight (which are 45s apart) by alternating Guardian of Ancient Kings and Ardent Defender. You can increase your survivability with Divine Protection regularly and throw a few Divine Guardians out there to help out the healers. All of this stuff isn't terribly dangerous on LFR but the one thing you REALLY need to concentrate on is Fading Light. It is a debuff of varying duration that is cast on Ultraxion's current target. If your co-tank gets it, taunt ASAP. If you get it, wait until there is <5s remaining on the debuff and press your Heroic Will button. You don't need to cut it fine or anything just wait until there are 3-4 seconds remaining and click. If you are still in the twilight realm when it expires you WILL DIE, not bubbling or damage reduction can save you.

Once Ultraxion is dead, there'll be a little video of Thrall shooting DW with the Dragon Soul. Deathwing is injured and flies off, hop on the Skyfire and chase him down. On the boat there'll be a bit of RP and then some Twilight Elites will drop down on the deck. Pick up the one that your co-tank doesn't and tank it over on one side near where the dragons get pulled in to the harpoons. The Dreadblade elite does a cleave so make sure you point it away, and if you have a choice, pick up the slayer. The slayer spawns on the Starboard side (the right hand side, facing the front of the boat). Once the elites and dragons are dead Warmaster Blackhorn will jump down. If your co-tank doesn't pick him up, taunt him and tank in the middle of the boat. Watch your co-tanks stacks of Sunder Armor and taunt off at 2/3 stacks, and then as soon as your stacks fall off there after.

With the Warmaster Dead (and hopefully giving up his nice shield) it's time to parachute onto DW's back. You'll either have to tank a Hideous Amalgamation or collect up bloods. If you are on Amalgamation duty, tank it right near the front of the area (it can be a bit confusing at first, zoom right out and look for DW's head). Wait until it has about 20-30% health and then run around dragging it through pools of corrupted blood until it has 9 stacks. Once it has 9 stacks, pop a defensive CD and tank it near the front edge. When it starts casting Nuclear blast, leg it to the far side. Help kill the tendon and then repeat. If your co-tank picks up the Hideous amalgamtion, run around picking up the bloods (look like the slimes from Yor'sahj) and stack them up just back from Amalgamation so that the main tank doesn't have to run far to get stacks. This is a very easy fight on LFR, you just have to be careful of people accidentally killing an extra tentacle and spawning an extra Hideous Amalgamation. If this does happen, pick it up and go tank it in a corner away from the pools and just let the bloods go where they will go. Avoid getting aggro on them as if the HA gets stacks it hits much harder. Once you've removed 3 plates DW crashes into the Maelstrom and it's time for the final fight.

This fight consists of 4 platforms which each correspond with a dragon aspect. You start on the green platform (Ysera) and this is usually where most groups will start on LFR. You'll notice you have a bonus button, this is a nice little damage reduction button, but it is only available on the first platform. Next you'll usually go to the Yellow/Bronze (Nozdormu) platform, which reduces the speed of the Elementium Bolt. Then Red (Alexstraza) which burns down the blistering tentacles. And finally Blue (Kalecgos) which is a DPS boost. On each platform there will be a limb of DW at the start. 5-15s after you start on the platform a Corrupted Mutation tentacle will spawn at the back of the platform. This must be tanked. If you start on it you need to pop some defensive cooldowns when it start casting Impale, if your co-tank starts, you must taunt it just before Impale is finished casting, don't worry it will still hit the original target, but you need to tank swap for the impale debuff which will kill the tank if you take two impales in a row without massive damage reduction cooldowns. When the tentacle is down, switch to the limb and help DPS. Pick up the bloods when DW casts Hemorage. Once the Red platform is dead you'll need to single target attack the small blistering tentacles that spawn as they are immune to AoE, but the DPS should be taking care of that. Once the 4 platforms are down you go back to the Green platform and Focus down DW's head. Little tentacles will spawn that need to be killed ASAP. They cast Shrapnel on various raid members. If you are one you can use the green button to handle it (although as a tank you should be able to just soak it). The thing you REALLY need to look out for is the two Elementium Terrors that spawn. Pick one up (your co-tank will take the other one) and drag them into the big yellow swirly. This will slow them down and help you survive. You might want to pop a couple CDs as the stacks of Tetanus climb. Use them from weakest to strongest, and use Emerald Dream and Holy Shield and Trinkets etc... to keep the damage down.

Congratulations. Do this all a few more weeks and pick up some good 384 quality gear and you can find yourself a proper raid to try :)

Stepping into LFR as a n00b tank

So you've put in the time and effort and grinded (ground?) rep and gear to the point where you have the 372 average iLevel gear. Said gear is all genuine tank, PvE gear (ie it doesn't have intellect, agility, haste or crit on it, it DOES have dodge, parry or Mastery on it, is Strength / Stamina and it's all Plate). You've put (at least) blue quality gems in all the slots and maximised your Combat Table Coverage and Stamina as much as human(oid)ly possible. You visited your friendly neighbourhood Enchanter, Leatherworker and Blacksmith to get all your enhancements, including a trip to Deepholm and Vashj'ir to visit the Therazane and Earthern Ring Quartmasters for the shoulder and Helm enchantments. And you're ready to Look For Raid. What do you need to know about tanking in Dragon Soul on LFR?

Ctrl-i and queue. The Siege of Dragonrest Temple is easier than the Madness of Deathwing, so I would suggest starting there.

First thing you need to do once you zone in is find out who the other tank is. This is pretty important information as you don't want to be wasting taunts on your fellow tank rather than the healers getting pasted. The easiest way to find out is to hit O to bring up the S(o)cial pane, and select the Raid tab. Now look for the little shield logos next to the players. There should be two, one coloured in and one outline. One of these will be next to your name, and the other person is the other tank. Don't worry about the Main / Assist designations as these are random. Once you've established who the other tank is, I like to mark myself and him to make it nice and clear who should have monsters pounding on them for eveyone involved. While everyone is still buffing up, zoning in, take the time to quickly inspect the other tank. If he's sporting a lot of 397 or greater gear, especially tier pieces, it is fairly safe to say that he is an experienced raider. Look especially for 403 weapon / trinket as this will mean that he's killed Deathwing. You can skip this step if you see a "Destroyer's End" title. If he's sporting a range of PvP gear / 346s you're going to be in a bit of trouble and you'll need to step up a bit more.

Anyway, you've got into a LFR group and you've lucked into a tank who seems to know what he's doing, let's get killing stuff. Almost all the trash is in groups of 2 or 3, see what your co-tank pulls and pick up 1 or 2 of what's left. After no time at all, you'll reach Morchok. This is one of the easiest raid bosses in the game to tank. Just go and stand right on top of your co-tank and DPS to your hearts content. If your co-tank get's 3 stacks of Crushed Armor you can taunt off and tank for a bit. When he starts channelling black blood, leg it behind one of the rocks that falls down around the edge and wait till he's done. Rinse and repeat.

Once Morchok is dead, head into the temple itself and hop on one of the dragons. Just follow everyone else. You'll either end up at Warlord Zon'ozz or Yor'sahj the Unsleeping (see below). Warlord Zon'ozz is also known as the Ping Pong boss, but it's a pretty rubbish game of ping pong on LFR mode. For the trash before the boss, pick up the Biggest mob and tank it. It's a massive tentacle. The rest of the raid should burn down the eye first and then the other smaller adds and finally your tentacle. For the boss, your co-tank will likely tank the boss and there is nothing for you to do, so just DPS as best you can. If you are tanking the boss, just tank him where he stands, on normal you have to point him at the raid and then away, but on LFR it doesn't matter much at all. I have heard it said that if the ball doesn't point at the raid it doesn't gain stacks which might mean that you don't do quite as much damage in P2 but I can't confirm or deny this. To play it safe it might be worth pointing the boss towards the raid until he spawns his Orb and then turning him around after it is out.

The next boss is Yor'sahj the Unsleeping (or the blobby boss as my raid calls him). Just kill the trash, you should group up and spread out and kill things in certain orders, but on LFR you either have a strong leader or you just muddle on. This boss is almost a 1 tank fight, so if you have strong co-tank, let him handle most of it. But watch is stacks of Void Bolt. If he gets 3, taunt the boss. Be especially wary of this if you are letting a Yellow slime through as the stacks will rise much quicker. If there is a black slime and you aren't currently tanking, pick up as many adds as possible to take them off you're squishier members.

After Zon'ozz and Yor'sahj are dead you will head up to the top of the temple and from there into the Eye of Eternity. Be wary of mass summons to the EoE, these are likely from jokers pulling you into the WotLK version of the raid. The trash for this boss is actually a bit trickier than most of the stuff we've seen so far. I always whisper my co-tank and say I'll take right, he can take left. Just pick up the group on the right and try and drag it towards the middle to help your healers get range on both of you. I say "try" and drag it, as there are a few casters around who will need silencing with something like Avenger's Shield in order to get them moving. Don't just stand in Blizzards and AoE. The last trash mob will be a big guy on his own, head for the edge ahead of the boss fight. If your co-tank is tanking this fight, there isn't a whole lot for you to do, but you can still be very useful if you keep a close eye on the DBM cooldown for Focused Anger and stand off a bit when it's almost ready, as soon as she starts casting it taunt from outside of melee range and she will immediately stop casting. Your co-tank will likely pull back immediately, just crack on with the DPS. In P2, be very wary of the ice walls (assuming you've just killed a pylon, rather than being electrocuted). She's dead, collect 250 Valor Points and hopefully go Gem and Enchant all the tasty new gear you just got. Coming soon, Madness of Deathwing half of the LFR.

Heroic Raiding begins

So with big DW down a couple resets ago, and one reset to change from the Monday night raid to the Thursday night raid, Heroic mode can begin for Ironshield. The rest of the team tried it last week, but gave up in favour of the full clear.

After a brief hiccup where we realised we hadn't selected heroic mode until after we'd pulled Morchok, leading to our first ever Morchok wipe and a second round of trash, I stepped into heroic raiding.

Pull one went pretty smoothly although I wasted some cooldowns early on as I expected a bit more damage to start. And then underestimated the enrage damage and took a massive hit from mid health as the boss hit 20% and we were wiped. We rebuffed and had a bite to eat and had another crack. This time I hung onto cooldowns until stomp 3 / 4 when the healers were having a harder time keeping up with crystals. I also managed to remember to move towards the crystals when they formed to help the soakers maintain range while soaking. Every time it started to look a bit hairy we got a black blood phase and the healers could casually top us off while regenning some mana to boot. The next thing we knew he's down in single figures and our health is all green. He toppled with a bit of an anticlimax considering the amount of strategizing we'd been doing leading up to it.

Just to rub it in a bit he dropped plate healing boots, which means that my best item is a pair of boots for a spec I don't even have yet. I'm going to have to learn to heal soon at this rate. I've got LFR 2pc, assorted 397s and 410 feet now for holy. At least our hunter got some useful loot, though I assume it's going to cost her a fortune to gem them now. Another reason to prefer tanking, my gems are yellow and increasingly blue. Everyone else has to fight over Reds.

Our attempt at going 2/8H was somewhat less successful. It seems jumping into heroic Yor'sahj with no planning and almost as little knowledge is not really a great idea. We made to to the second bloods one time, but that was the best we managed. To the strategy table! We finished off the evening with a few Firelands bosses to get some more Legendary components. Beth'tilac in particular feels really easy now.

Death of Deathwing

As the title implies, the 42nd downed Deathwing this Monday. On the second night that we had seen him, and with almost an hour left of raid time. Ironshield and 7 other team members got wasted with the last pulse of his blood AoE, but the DK tank, and a healer - (I think) managed to shield / survive it and he keeled over. Next week, HARD MODES. I managed to witness our raid's first kill of about half of the Dragon Soul bosses so I feel quite involved this tier.

This leads me to wonder, are these nerfs coming too fast? I know this topic has been done to death, but hey this is my blog, I can flog a dead zhevra if I want to. The 42nd is a pretty casual outfit. We started with the philosophy of not forcing people to join the guild in order to join the community, and as far as I know the recruiting has been done much more on a social and attitude related bias than performance (or God forbid, gear). We raid two nights a week for 3 hours. I personally only usually do one of those, but 2 usually happen every week. We fairly regularly pick up a stray from one of the teams other guilds to make up our ten, but there is usually a core of at least 8 who regularly raid. With this setup, is +-8 resets really too many to be killing the tier end boss? Especially when you consider Christmas and New Year were in that slot. I acknowledge that Blizzard sees more data than we could ever hope to, but I personally expected to spend more time than this on progressing this far.

Blizzard have told us that some guilds have hit a wall. And I can believe that, but only really because they progressed too far and far too quickly. As far as I know, all the hard mode raiders on my server went 7/8 on the very first reset, and most killed Deathwing the next week. This isn't a hard core progression type realm by any stretch of the imagination. So my conclusion is, are these nerfs coming early because ultimately the raids were under tuned? At least the first part? But even the last few, this DW kill didn't feel nearly as epic as the Ragnaros post 30% nerf kill. Yes Ragnaros was a massive amount of dance, and the seemingly unrelated phases felt disjointed, but killing him felt EPIC.

DISCLAIMER : the only "data" I base any of my conclusions on is my own experience so conclusions may vary :)