Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Learn2Tank

That statement is directed at me actually. We keep having issues with the main tank of cykos dropping like a rock. It's almost as if he's a paper tank sometimes. And I go back and look at the stats, it's hard to tell what went wrong.

I wish I had learned to tank so I could offer up advice. I SHOULD learn to tank. I just never enjoyed it much so I never studied it much. Now I'm realizing that a raid leader probably should know as much they can about every aspect of the game. I have the healing, dps part covered but I need 2learn2 tank. :)

So here's the break down of last night's raid. Once again, cykos brings ENTIRELY new peeps to the raid. They have yet to bring a consistent group since the first day we started to raid with them. (nov13, nov13, nov13). Anyhoo, the healers were new, not incompetent but just new.

We got to Azgalor and about 25% left on the bosses health, the tank drops like a rock. (me, being dead from getting curse of doom *The target dies after 20 seconds and spawns a Lesser Doomguard*, can only watch as this happens. doubt I'd been able to help anyhow)

Oh yeah, one more thing about this fight, he does a Howl of Azgalor, 5sec aoe silence on a 15sec cooldown.

so here's the last 5 seconds of the tank's life:
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 8077 Physical. (666 Blocked)
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 6374 Physical. (536 Blocked)
Paladin Flash of Light heals Tank for 1723.
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Tank gains 512 health from Druid Regrowth.
Tank gains 1038 health from Druid Rejuvenation.
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 8486 Physical. (536 Blocked)
Tank gains 840 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Paladin Flash of Light heals Tank for 1716.
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 7460 Physical. (536 Blocked)
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Tank gains Shield Block.
Tank gains Reinforced Shield.
Lifebloom heals Tank for 1728
Tank Dies

DMG TAKEN by TANK: 30,397
HEALS on TANK: 11,762

So I can only assume the two resto shamans, two holy priests, and the other paladin left on him were silenced during that time.
I also see no Healthstone or Healing pot used by the tank.
Also, it appears the tank took no crushing blows.

It seems like this is a two part problem. One, not enough HOTs on the tank and two, how did the tank take that much damage in 5 seconds? Normally he avgs about 10k per 5 seconds of time.

Case of bad luck or what? It's hard for me to tell. I need to get a tank to look at the date for me.

7 comments:

celticlucas said...

I'm not sure of the fight you were in, but it looks to me from the piece of data you provided that the healers were just a little bit slow, enough to cause the death of the tank.

You mentioned they were new, but not incompetent. My guess is that they were still learning the mechanics of that particular fight, and were slow in getting off heals. Does the AOE have a range or does it effect the entire group regardless? If this is the case then the healers need to remember to stay out of range of the AOE, or at least move in and out of range to get heals in. (This might not be efficient, as again, I dont know that fight)

But that's quite a bit of damage in 5 seconds of fighting. And the tank could have provided a bit of help in taking a pot.

It's both a give and take world, these encounters. The few raids I've led, I have always told people "we can only help those that help themselves". That means knowing the theory of the fights, coming prepared with consumables, and being prepared to wipe a few times during the learning process.

Brian said...

We had the same problem back when we were in Hyjal. Make sure there are no melee in front of azgalor when they are fighting him. Whenever they get parried, it resets his swing timer on the boss causing massive, unhealable damage.

Once we got our melee to stick to the back or back/side, we had ALOT less problems healing it.

Teagan said...

We found a feral druid worked well for this fight.

The damage he was taking seemed pretty normal to me.

Azagalore doesn't do crushing blows.

He cast sheild block at the end. I'm just hoping that he was refreshing it rather than casting it for the first time. Had he had it up it would have blocked more damage.

But overall the damage doesnt seem excessive.

Some priest hots on him would have helped a bit and he could have used his emergency buttons (last stand etc) but yeah I don't entirely believe it was the tanks fault.

Try using a feral druid for this fight next time see how it goes. While a warrior is fine we ind that a feral druid is better =)

Alachia said...

combination of two things, I've determined. One, inexperienced healers who know how to deal with clutch situations.

AOE slience is 99yrds btw, so you can't avoid it. You just have to prepare for it.

The tank needed to stop attacking during the silence. According to the logs, he had to parries thus resetting the swing timer of the boss..thus getting hit hard too fast. That's why it was over 30k dmg in 5 seconds.

Cylena said...

Having the tank avoid causing parries during silence is a good thing, for sure.

Also, get your healers some Shadow Resist pieces (Black Temple quest neck and crafted Cloaks) to help resist the Silence. I personally go into that fight with the neck, cloak, and usually wrist pieces. Combined with Prayer of Shadow Protection (Priests should refresh this on the raid around wave 5 or 6 - no excuses!), and with my tiny bonus for being a Forsaken, I have about 200+ SR going into the fight, and with that I generally resist about 75% of the silences (I do the same thing with Kaz'Rogal, and resist a lot of his man-draining Marks as well).

Cylena said...

'man-draining' = mana-draining... possibly the best typo ever.

Alachia said...

lol. man-draining. I'm def. spec'd for that. hahaha.

yeah, we've done this boss several times no problem. I have just never seen our tank go down so fast before.

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