Our raid schedule this week was thrown off a bit when three of us – the warrior main tank, a feral druid who off tanks (and MTs Morogrim), and I – all had personal things to do on Saturday night.

The raid leader found some replacements, and they had some fantastic success in TK and SSC. They one shotted Solarian, Void Reaver, and Lurker. Yesterday, we re-assembled with the usual crew to go after the rest of the bosses that we can kill in SSC – Hydross, Morogrim, and FLK.

Although it was a troublesome night due to some disconnects on my end – we had a nasty thunderstorm which ended with my wife’s car submerged in 3 feet of water – we managed to down all three. We had a few problems with FLK, and I’ve got a better grasp of what to do and what not to do during the fight.

Some Observations

Paladins are threat machines. If you’re a tankadin, you probably know this. On one pull, we decided to move the Hunter and Shaman adds to a different location. I went to the correct spot, but the warrior that was supposed to pick up the Shaman was a bit late.

By the time he got there, the Shaman had been misdirected to me with a Multi-shot, and my Consecration and Holy Shield had done their job. The Warrior tried to overcome the threat, but he quickly became rage starved and announced that his healer should switch over to me. /flex

So be careful before you throw down the max threat. Someone may need to pull a mob off of you, and if you start too early it may be impossible (if the mob is immune to taunt).

Pets are sneaky. Normally, it’s easy to pick up the Hunter’s pet when it spawns. I have Consecration down anyway, and nine times out of ten that picks him up. Otherwise, I hear the sound (the typical summon pet whistle) and tab target to taunt/judge the pet.

On one pull, I was a bit slow getting back into the corner. I hadn’t yet thrown down the Consecrate, and I didn’t hear the sound. The Fathom Lurker got away, smashed a healer, and caused some chaos. We kind of recovered, but eventually wiped later in that pull. Whoops.

Da Shaman Hurts. I usually tank the Hunter, who’s a panzy. I can easily tank him and his pet with a Druid throwin hots on me. This became a bit tenuous when I had to pick up the Shaman (on more than one occassion).

The Shaman hits harder on typical melees. His normal melee is roughly 4-5k. He also gets a windfury proc occassionally, in which case he sets off three melees in rapid succession. Although chances are you’ll avoid one or two of those swings, it is entirely possible to only block all three and get nailed for 10-12k damage. Ouch.

Tips for the Protection Paladin

I’m going to assume that you are either tanking the Hunter or the Shaman. It’s certainly possible to tank Karathress as well, but I don’t have much experience with that (although I did pick him up for a couple minutes towards the end of one bad attempt). It’s unlikely that you’ll be tanking the Priest, since she has a heal that needs to be interrupted – and a warrior can help with that.

For the Hunter…

Get yourself into a corner. The Hunter spawns one of two adds. The Sporebat add has a nasty knockback effect which will launch you all over if you don’t find your way into a corner. I typically go into the left corner of the alcove in where Karathress and his friends spawn.

Start Consecrating ASAP. The Hunter will spawn his pet pretty early in the encounter. If you haven’t started Consecrating, it’s possible to miss the add entirely and not notice as he goes to destroy a healer on the other side of the room.

Typically, I run to where the Hunter is, turn him around, and start Consecrating. As soon as the pet comes out and is on me, I back into my corner and continue to tank there.

You can also create a simple macro to target the pet, to avoid trouble with tab-targeting. The macro tries to target each of the pets, and if either pet is alive it will become your current target.

/target Fathom Sporebat
/target Fathom Lurker

Keep the Shaman Close. If there’s a chance that your Shaman tank will die, this will make you the second tank by default. If the Shaman is standing in your Consecrate, he’ll come after you rather than run wild through the healers. Not essential, but a good precaution to prevent a complete wipe.

Kill the Pet After the Hunter. Each time the pet spawns, there’s a chance that it’ll get away and kill a healer. When the pet is alive, though, it does little damage to you and is just a nuisance.

Make sure your raid does not DPS the pet at all while the Hunter is alive. You’ll never lose the pet if you continue to Holy Shield/Consecrate. Once the Hunter is dead, though, make sure they kill the pet. One time, the raid jumped from the Hunter to the Shaman and left me to slowly DPS the Sporebat down by myself.

For some reason, the Lurker tends to die during the fight whereas the Sporebat always lives to the end. I’m not sure why – they both have 170,000 hit points. It may just be errant raid damage. However, if the pet does die, you’ll have to be ready to pick him up again.

Finally, the Hunter continues to make the Call Pet sound, even if the pet is already out. The sound can be confusing, because he doesn’t actually summon another pet unless the previous one has died. Eugh.

As for the Shaman…

Look Out Windfury! When the Shaman gets a windfury proc, he will deal three blows in quick succession. Each of these hits will deal 4-5k before block is calculated. If you get unlucky, you’ll eat all three swings as blocks and take 10-12k damage.

He also casts an instant Frost Shock for ~4k damage.

Due to this burst damage, your healer needs to be on his toes and keep you above 15k health at all times. If your health goes below 75%, start yelling and screaming.

Tank the Shaman And the Hunter? Well, this is possible. I did it multiple times last night, with varying success.

On one attempt, a second healer never jumped over to me. Therefore it was one Resto Druid frantically trying to keep me alive. That ain’t gonna happen.

The key to surviving these two is to keep topped off at all times. You will occasionally take a ~12k spike due to Windfury, so your two healers should keep you as close to topped off as possible. Speccing into Ardent Defender and wearing a Commendation of Kael’thas will give the healers a little cushion to work with.

With some good gear, a Resto Druid for HoTs, and a Paladin for Big Heals, you should be fine. I wouldn’t advise tanking both if it’s not necessary, but it’s certainly doable. And you can /flex for everyone afterwards.

Good luck, and hopefully your Pants drop. No such luck for me, yet…