Tank Hard!

When you zone into BT you start in the sewers and work your way up to the first boss, High Warlord Najentus. Then you climb out of the sewers and into a big courtyard with Supremus at the end of it.

After Supremus your enter the foyer of BT and then there are a couple different paths you can follow. The foyer is dark and foreboding and is dominated by a huge Dark Gaurdian statue. On the right is Shade of Akama and on the back right is the way up to Teron Gorefiend. Akama’s room feels a little evil and is just right for a fight against his imprisoned soul or whatever the hell the shade is supposed to be. Teron’s area has a martial feel to it which is fitting for one of the most famous deathknights around. If you head to the back left of the foyer and then take another left you go down into the dark, dank basement which feels perfect for a crazed fel orc like Gurtogg Bloodboil.

On the near left side of the foyer you can go up to Mother Shahraz (after you kill the other bosses) through the Den of Mortal Pleasures. Lots of concubines and comfortable furniture and scantily clad statues as you make your way up to Mother. After Mother Shahraz you go through the Grand Promenade, which isn’t anything special but does contain the greatest trash mobs ever: the Random Laser Beam 1-shot Robots otherwise known as Promenade Sentinels. Then you enter the Chamber of Command where you fight the Illidari Council. These guys have a pretty neat room, and it is kinda fitting for them, unfortunately the boss fight that takes place in there is probably the most long and boring fight I have ever done. After Council you head up to the Temple Summit where you fight Illidan himself. The Temple Summit is a very neat area and just might inspire an “I can see my house from here” moment.

But in a zone that is really well designed and very aesthetically pleasing, the area around Reliquary of Souls is still able to stand out. When you go to the back left of the foyer and take a right instead of the left down to Gurtogg, you will find the Reliquary of Souls. This is may be the most unique fight in all of TBC. To get to the boss you need to fight your way through a short gauntlet. Its not as bad as the Supression Room or the soul crushing Fankriss tunnel, but it is the same idea - tanks run in and round up the mobs until they get to a stopping point and then every does AOE and when everything is dead you keep going forward because they respawn incredibly fast behind you. When my guild does it we stop 3 times to AOE before heading down the final ramp to the boss. After the third AOE you will get out of combat for a couple seconds so you can stop and drink before the boss comes out.

The area has an airy, wispy type of feel to it while being dark at the same time. There is a lot of bright blue shining through cracks in the floor and walls. I can’t even think of how to describe it and still do it justice.

During phase 1 of the fight you are against the Essence of Suffering. This poor fella has an aura that affects everyone in the room which reduces healing by 100%, reduces armor by 100% and reduces defense by 500. Sounds like fun right? It gets better - he doesn’t have an aggro table. Instead he ‘fixates’ on the person closest to him for 5 seconds at a time and at the end of those 5 seconds he will do a new range check and target the person closest to him but if that person happens to be the same guy as last time, he won’t change targets at all. Thankfully he only hits for about 1k - 1.2k during the normal part but every 60 seconds or so he enrages and starts hitting a lot harder and a lot faster. For the enrage we have a rogue take the fixate and then use evasion and after 15 seconds the enrage ends and we put a regular tank back in there. Since the aura reduces armor by 100%, anybody can tank him, but a big health pool on a druid or a lot of block value on a warrior makes life easier. Phase 1 is pretty easy once the tanks get a feel for it.

Phase 2 is the really hard part of the fight. In phase 2 you fight the Essence of Desire. Desire has an aura that increases healing by 100%, but everytime you do any damage to the boss, 50% of it is reflected back at you and it periodically reduces your maximum mana until 160 seconds into the phase you end up with zero mana. Because of the mana drain it is a huge dps race which means your threat has to be incredibly good. But that’s ok because you stacked block value like crazy for phase 1.

Doesn’t sound to bad yet does it? Well here comes the fun part - Desire is a pure caster mob and given the chance she will chain cast and never melee, but she only has 1 spell that is chain castable and if you can lock it out, she will stop casting and start to melee. That spell is called spirit shock and it is a 1 second cast that does 8-9k damage and disorients the target for 5 seconds. If she casts it on the tank and it isn’t interupted, that tank will get disoriented and the boss will deaggro and go kill someone until the disorient wears off. You have to set up a rotation for rogues to kick every single spirit shock.

To make it harder to interrupt the Spirit Shock, the boss has another ability called Rune Shield that absorbs 50k damage and increases cast speed by 100%. Mages can spell steal the shield the instant it comes up. It helps their dps a lot because they can nuke hard without killing themselves while the have rune shield. But relying on the mages not lagging or reacting fast enough is tough so we have felhunters with devour magic on autocast ready to eat the Rune Shield.

The other big ability in phase 2 is called Deaden. She will cast Deaden on her current target every 30 seconds and if it lands, it increases damage taken by 100% for 10 seconds. Deaden is reflectable and the tank needs to reflect it because a 100% damage increase on the boss will go a long way in helping your raid beat the mana drain. One of the big problems is that rogues with a twitchy finger might accidentally kick a Deaden instead of a Spirit Shock and that leads to two problems, a) your raid doesn’t get the damage increase and b) that rogue now has kick on cooldown so he can’t interrupt the next Spirit Shock.

As a tank in phase 2 rage management is everything. You need to put out huge threat numbers but still have enough rage spell reflect. I don’t shield block anymore on this fight. The boss only hits for 3-5k so crushes hit for around 4.5-7.5k which isn’t too bad and the rage you save from not using shield block makes a huge difference because you can dump all of that rage into threat generating moves instead. A lot of things have to go right to get out of phase 2 cleanly - your rogues need to interrupt every spirit shock and never a deaden and you need to reflect every single deaden and you need to generate a ton of threat so the dps can burn the boss down before they all go OOM.

Phase 3 is generally thought of as easier than phase 2 but only because it isn’t as dependant on every little thing going right. But it is just as much of a dps race as phase 2, if not more so. That means that the tank needs to put out huge threat numbers again. In phase 3 you fight the Essence of Anger and everyone in the room gets hit with the Aura of Anger which does shadow damage every three seconds and it starts at ~100 damage and increases by ~100 every tick. It also increases your damage dealt by the same amount of damage it does. So by the end of phase 3 people are doing enormous amounts of damage but they are also taking tons of damage. While that is happening the boss is hitting the tank kinda hard (5-6k) and he will be doing a frontal cone ability called Soul Scream which is a two part ability that he will cast every 10 seconds. The first part is just regular shadow damage, about 3k, but it also has a power burn component which will really mess you up - for every point of rage you have, the burn does 100 damage. So if you have a full rage bar when the boss does a soul scream, he will hit you for 10k. Since he does pretty significant melee damage and there is pretty significant aoe damage from the aura, it is really really hard to use all of your rage so full rage bar power burns are not uncommon.

Before they changed it in the last patch, a warrior could “change stances” from defensive to defensive to dump their rage right before a Soul Scream but that isn’t possible anymore - thanks for “fixing” that one Blizzard. If you don’t kill him fast enough in phase 3 then the aoe damage will destroy your raid. But since everyone also is increasing their damage over the course of the fight, the last 15% go waaaay faster than the first 15%. It is pretty common to have the aura ticking for around 3.5k when you get the first kill.

Unlike a lot of the fights in TBC, Reliquary has totally unique mechanics and the nature of the fight makes it very very intense. Add in a very cool looking area and boss and you get one of my favorite fights in WoW.

As all tanks know, you always strive to perform to your maximum potential when tanking raid bosses. As such, you should always be flasked or elixired up. [Flask of Fortification] is great when learning new encounters due to persistence through death. [Elixir of Major Agility] coupled with a Guardian Elixir are the typical tanking Elixirs.

For the most part the only debate is whether to go for the +250 hp and 10 health regen every 5 seconds from [Elixir of Major Fortitude], or the 550 armor from [Elixir of Major Defense]. I have always been partial to [Elixir of Major Defense], and I feel it is worth investigating which it makes more sense to use.

First we need to understand how armor affects physical damage reduction. From the Elitist Jerks thread, for level 73 raid bosses, the damage reduction formula looks like this:

Taking that and plugging in typical level 70 armor values, we have:

Armor DR Damage Difference
12000 50.08% 2496 51
12500 51.10% 2445 49
13000 52.08% 2396 47
13500 53.02% 2349 45
14000 53.93% 2304 44
14500 54.80% 2260 42
15000 55.64% 2218 40
15500 56.45% 2178 39
16000 57.22% 2139 38
16500 57.98% 2101 36
17000 58.70% 2065 35
17500 59.40% 2030 34
18000 60.08% 1996 33
18500 60.74% 1963 32
19000 61.37% 1932 31
19500 61.98% 1901 30
20000 62.58% 1871 29
20500 63.15% 1842 28
21000 63.71% 1814 27
21500 64.26% 1787 26
22000 64.78% 1761
So what does this tell us? Well, in my opinion, I feel the added damage reduction outweighs the added health. Some would say that the added 250 health would help you survive the burst from a boss. I would contend if a boss is coming within 250 points of bursting you down, that you are undergeared for the encounter in the first place.

You can also look at it in terms of Effective Health. At almost any reasonable combination of health and armor, [Elixir of Major Defense] will grant you more effective health than [Elixir of Major Fortitude]. The higher the ratio of hitpoints to armor, the more effective health you will gain. The only time you would gain more effective health from Fortitude is if you have substantially more Armor than health (like 6K more).

In the end, it likely all comes down to personal preference and ease of obtaining these Elixirs. They realistically are very close in terms of benefit. The ability to take more raw damage, or the ability to mitigate more. If you are a follower of the Effective Health doctrine, then you would go with Defense. If you are worried about getting burst down, you would go with Fortitude. Perhaps each Elixir is better suited for certain encounters. At any rate, as a tank, you should always be looking for ways to improve your tankability, and you should always be potted up during raids. So do those dailies, befriend an Alchemist and always have a steady supply on hand!

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I like the idea of what Bizzam did with the run down on how to tank all of the ZA bosses and I think I will go through of all the tips and tricks I know for tier 5 and maybe even tier 6 bosses. Bizzam covered Hydross already so I will skip that one and go straight on to Lurker. I want to focus on what the tank needs to do more than a whole overview on the strategy of the fight.

Lurker has 3 main abilities that he uses in phase 1 and he melees for somewhat high damage on the MT. The first ability is called Whirl and it will hit everyone in melee range for 3k or so and do a knockback. Geyser is a random secondary targetting spell that hits for 3.5k and does a 10 yard knockback to the target and anyone near the target. Spout is on a strict 45 second timer and it will pretty much kill anyone who screws it up. It does a ton of damage and has a huge knockback. If the damage doesn’t kill you, then the scalding water as you swim back to the raid will.

There are three platforms on the outside of the main ring in his room. In phase 2, adds will spawn - 2 archers on each of those outside platforms and 3 warrior mobs on the inner ring. Basic strategy is to kill the archers on the outside while you CC or tank the warriors on the inside and then you kill the warriors. After a certain amount of time or after all the mobs are dead Lurker will reappear and it is back to phase 1.

Everyone who has been into SSC has surely had someone accidentally fall into the water at some point and they will tell you that the fish in the water don’t mess around. They are elite and they will mess you up real fast. But if you clear the trash on the platforms above Lurker’s pool, then the water takes on an effect called Scalding Water and it kills all the fish. So if someone falls in after clearing the trash they don’t get attacked by fish anymore but they will take 500 damage every 3 seconds from the scalding water until they get out. Thats not really a big deal to heal through so the tank just jumps right in and the healers have to heal through a little extra damage.

Back in the day when the top guilds were learning the fight, it wasn’t obvious that clearing the trash killed off the fish, so a lot of the top guilds just did the fight with the fish in the water so you couldn’t stick the tank in there. Which meant the tank was up on the platform and could get knocked back by whirl and geyser which meant you needed to have another tank #2 on threat.

From the MT perspective, this fight is pretty easy. You just hang out in the water and try not to move. The only dangerous part is that whirl and geyser can sometimes knock you out of line of sight from your healers so after a whirl or geyser if you notice that the rhythm of healing is broken or if your healers say something like ‘omg you are out of line of sight!’, then you are probably out of line of sight. You can fix it but moving forward a bit and jumping. For phase 1 there really isn’t anything else to it. The OTs can just dps their little hearts out and wait for phase 2.

When phase 2 happens the adds spawn at the same spot every time and your raid leader should assign tanks to those spots. My guild sheeps the warriors and puts tanks on the archers to keep them from multishotting everyone. When doing that I like to stand on the spot where the warrior will spawn and hit it with a concussion blow before jumping to the outside platform. That way it won’t go one-shot some squishy before the mage finishes casting sheep. When you are tanking the warriors, you will want to stand on the very edge of the ring with the mob facing the outside because can cleave and kill people. It also helps to yell at anyone who gets too close.

The moment Lurker comes back up after phase 2, he will start to spout again so it is crucial that the MT be in the same spot as always so that spout happens in a predictable way. If the tank is out of position then Lurker will start his spout in a wierd place and will catch a lot of people off guard. If you are tanking a warrior that isn’t dead yet when phase 2 ends then you need to be ready to jump into the water to avoid spout even if the warrior is beating on you. They will hamstring the tank which makes it even more important that you are standing on the edge already since you won’t be moving quickly. If you have to go into the water with the warrior, you need to be ready to pop your cooldowns to stay alive because you will probably be out of line of sight of your healers until the spout passes by and you can get back on top.

Its a pretty simple 2 phase fight from a tank’s perspective and if you are lucky you will be rewarded with one of the best tanking weapons in the game - [Mallet of the Tides].

Well, it’s about a week late in posting, but another personal note on another first kill for our guild.  Last Sunday, we dropped Hydross on our 2nd night of attempts.

In all honesty, we would have downed this guy on our first night had I not missed one important piece of information.  During the transition from one phase to the next, I was under the assumption that it was a total and complete aggro wipe.  This is not the case, it is only a partial aggro wipe.  I am not sure of the exact mechanics, but know that it is not a 100% complete aggro wipe.

I was tanking Nature, so our Frost tank would initiate aggro.  Since I was going to pick it up after the transition, I mainly focused on conserving rage and making sure debuffs were applied.  I did not concern myself with building threat (again, I assumed complete aggro wipe).  When we transitioned to poison, every time, Hydross would be line it for someone, often going back across into Frost, spawning more adds, and ensuring a wipe.

I kept chalking it up to too many dots, or overaggro.  I did not realize that it was my fault in not having built up any threat before the transition.

After the 6th attempt of the night, I finally realized that the transition was not a complete wipe.  On the next attempt, I concentrated more on building threat with the frost tank during the first phase.  Upon the transition, Hydross stuck to me like glue, as expected.  That was the first strong attempt we had and we got him down to 40%.  Unfortunately it was late and we had to call it a night.

The next time we saw him, we were better prepared and we took Hydross down with zero deaths.  Ahhh, I love it when a plan comes together!

We used a hybrid resist prot paly to tank 2 - 3 of the adds and AoE’d them down during each transition.  An additional frost resist tank grabbed 2 frost adds during frost phase and 1 nature add during the poison phase.  This worked very well for us.

Some tips for our readers!

Tip #1 :  I learned this one the hard way.  The transition from phase to phase is NOT a complete aggro wipe, so make sure you are always building threat.

Tip #2 : Some of the strangest things can aggro him after the transition, ie, for us it was a Searing Totem.  Tell your shammies to keep ‘em in their pants because it could cause a silly wipe.

Tip #3 : Use a weapon swap macro to swap to dual wield when you are not the focus tank in order to generate more rage.  Just make sure you swap back to your sword and board before you take over tanking!

Tip #4 : Get your guild to start working on resist gear early!  This stuff is pricey and takes a while to accumulate.

Tip #5 : You can back Hydross across the transition line, but if you find you need to move quickly, strafe run instead of turning your back to Hydross.  Strafe running is very important as you can move full speed yet still block and parry.

Do you have any tips to add to taking down Hydross?

Supremeflare writes:

How do i multi tank in heroics? In normal its fine but in heroics I find I can never get enough threat on my second target with clap/cleave to keep him off the healer, where am I going wrong?

The main thing that has to happen here is that the rest of the group needs to understand that you will be splitting your threat between mobs, so they cannot just go crazy as if you were tanking a single mob. DPS should hold off for a few seconds after the pull to allow you to generate some initial aggro on both mobs.

What I do is this, shoot your SECONDARY mob first, to just give you a little extra on your off mob. Switch to the PRIMARY target as they are coming to you. Open up with a Shield Slam on your Primary, follow it up with a TClap and Cleave. Swap to your SECONDARY target to pop a Devastate, then back to your PRIMARY mob to work your threat rotation. At that point, DPS should be able to engage without much issue.

Just continue to use Cleave and swap to your Secondary target every few seconds to apply another Devastate. Don’t forget to keep up TClap and Demo Shout. You can also use Concussion Blow on your off target, as well as Disarm if the incoming damage is too high.

If I’m tanking more than 2, then I do the same except I just cycle through the added mob to Devastate.

Again, the #1 rule here is the DPS remembering that you will be splitting your threat, and they need to adjust accordingly.

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