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Be prepared for all of these fights!

Also check out the per-class tactics of all the normal encounters by paragon: http://www.paragon.fi/news/guides-dragon-soul-normal-modes

Madness of Deathwing:

Tactics: http://icy-veins.com/madness-of-deathwing-detailed-strategy

Vid:

Vid:

Differences with normal mode are explained here:

http://www.icy-veins.com/lord-rhyolith-detailed-strategy#sec-8

It doesn’t look like we’ll have to change much as 1 tank 2 healers is recommended for heroic and we use that for normal already. Now we’ll need all the dps we can do, both on the adds as on the legs. The faster we get him to phase 2 the better, meaning we might even have to burn cooldowns at some point to just get him into phase 2.

We might have to assign 3 dps to the adds, who should also be ready to do damage to liquid adds and be ready to knock them back or slow them.

Vid:

It seems like an extreme healing fight with people even out of the group during scorpion phase to do as much damage as possible. I wonder whether we have the gear for this already (especially on our healers).

Basic differences are described here:

http://www.icy-veins.com/majordomo-staghelm-detailed-strategy#sec-6

Discussion thread:

http://ravencouncil.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3377

Vid here:

Basic difference is that rageface will also have to be trapped to get rid of a buff while having the raid move away while he’s trapped to make sure noone’s meleed again before it drops off. For riplimb it basically stays the same.

For the rest, the dogs won’t have to be killed at all and once the boss is down to 30% we can mostly nuke him down while still trapping the dogs all the time.

This boss is a pushover on heroic and should be easy enough to kill on the first raid.

Discussion thread:

http://ravencouncil.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3381

Video:

Written guide:

http://www.icy-veins.com/ragnaros-detailed-strategy

Discussion thread:

http://ravencouncil.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3380

Video:

Written tactics:

http://www.icy-veins.com/majordomo-staghelm-detailed-strategy

Discussion thread:

http://ravencouncil.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3378

Transcript:

http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/06/16/alysrazor-video-strategy-guide-10-normal/

Another useful written guide with separate role tactics as well:

http://www.icy-veins.com/alysrazor-detailed-strategy

Phase 1

Alysrazor

• Firestorm - Alysrazor beats her fiery wings, bathing enemies in Fire damage.
• Blazing Claw - Claws the enemy with blazing Talons, dealing 92500 to 107500 Physical damage and increasing damage taken from Physical and Fire attacks by 10% for 15 sec.
• Molting - Periodically dropping Molten Feathers.
• Wings of Flame - The caster sprouts wings of flame, allowing them to fly.
• Blazing Power - Imbued with a fraction of Alysrazor’s blazing power! Increases haste by 4% for 40 sec. Also restores mana, rage, energy, and runic power instantly.

Voracious Hatchlings

• Imprinted - Voracious Hatchlings imprint upon the first thing they see at birth, constantly pestering the target for food.
• Satiated - Full of food. Not likely to throw a tantrum.
• Hungy - In need of food! Likely to throw a tantrum.
• Tantrum - Throwing a tantrum! Melee haste increased by 100%. Physical damage increased by 100%.
• Gushing Wound - Causes the target to bleed for 6000 Physical damage every 0.200000003 sec. for 1 min. This effect is removed if the target falls below 50% health.

Blazing Talon Initiates

• Brushfire - Summons a moving patch of flame that deals Fire damage to nearby enemies.

Lava Worms

• Lava Spew - Spews lava, dealing Fire damage in a cone in front of the worm.

Phase 2

Alysrazor

• Fiery Vortex - A fiery vortex deals massive Fire damage to nearby units and periodically creates fiery tornadoes.
• Fiery Tornado - A fiery vortex deals massive Fire damage to nearby units and periodically creates fiery tornadoes.
• Spark - A tiny spark is slowly re-igniting Alysrazor. Restores 3 Molten Power every 2 seconds.
• Essence of the Green - The spirit of Alysra is in there somewhere! Restores 10% mana on successful spell hit.
• Ignited - Ignited coals are quickly re-igniting Alysrazor. Restores 2 Molten Power every 1 seconds and deals Fire damage to nearby enemies.
• Blazing Buffet - Alysrazor is ignited! Deals Fire damage to nearby enemies.
• Full Power - Alysrazor becomes fully airborne, bathing enemies in Fire damage and knocking them back.

Positioning

Positioning is not too rigid. During phase 1, the ground dps will be split on two sides to handle initiates. Tanks will hover around the middle in order to quickly get to lava worms. In phase 2, once the raid has finished dodging tornadoes, the raid will stack at a central location to prepare to heal through the mass raid damage during blazing buffet. Make sure to stay out from in front of Alysrazor and lava worms at all times during the fight.

Strategy – Phase 1

Most of phase 1 is about properly allocating your dps and handling adds. We’ll start with Voracious Hatchlings. Shortly into the fight, via special air mail delivery, Two Voracious Hatchlings will be dropped into the fight. One tank will pick up each hatchling simply by being the closest player to its spawn point. This will cause each tank to gain the Imprinted debuff, allowing them to do 1000% damage to their Hatchling. They will need this buff to do the dps required to kill their add in time. While tanking the Hatchlings, tanks will need to move them around to consume Plump Lava Worms in order to keep the hatchlings from throwing tantrums. Be ready to use tank or healer cooldowns whenever hatchlings tantrum. Four Lava Worms will spawn twice during each air phase. This means each tank can remove 4 tantrums. All other players should stay away from Lava Worms as to not be caught in their breath. Blazing Talon Initiates will spawn 2 at a time in 4 predetermined spots. Their spawns will alternate in a predetermined pattern so dps can be ready for them each time. Split the ground dps into two teams. Each team will be responsible for handling adds on their side. Make sure to use stuns and interrupts on the Initiates to keep them from pyroblasting and sending out brushfires. It is unlikely that dps will have much free time between Initiates, but if there is any, use it to help kill the Voracious Hatchlings. It is very important that the hatchlings die before the next phase of the fight begins. Throughout the phase, Alysrazor will occasionally fly through the center of the arena clawing at the air and cleaving any players in her path. Make sure not to be in the middle as this occurs. More importantly, once she is out of the way, more Molten Feathers will have been left behind. All players should attempt to get at least one feather before the next phase begins. Each feather increases movement speed and having just one will allow spells to be cast while moving. Having three will allow players to fly, but this should be reserved only for the players assigned to dpsing the boss during phase 1. These players will begin the fight by immediately grabbing three feathers and pursuing Alysrazor into the air. They will demonstrate their starfox skills by doing barrel rolls through the fire rings she leaves behind. Each successive ring will buff the player as well as refresh the duration of their wings. There are fire clouds in the sky to avoid, but for the most part, these players must simply follow Alysrazor and fly through the rings. This will continue until the start of phase 2.

Strategy - Phase 2

At the start of the next phase, Alysrazor will begin to fly quick tight circles around the arena. As she does this, I fiery vortex forms in the center and players will have their Wings of Flame buff snuffed out by the winds. After a short period, the vortex in the center will send out many more tornados and players will need to hone their Al’akir training to avoid being hit. Having the speed buff from Molten Feathers will make avoiding these much easier. This will persist for a very short time and Alysrazor will eventually burn out. This is your magmaw head down burn phase… err. Hose phase. Alysrazor will crash with 0 molten power and will reignite and rise again when it reaches 50. The Blazing Talon Clawshapers that spawn in this phase will attempt to channel more Molten Power into her. Have your tanks lock these mobs down to keep them from casting while the rest of your dps pours all of their dps into the boss. She will take extra damage during the burn out and restore mana each time she is hit by a spell. Eventually, when Alysrazor reaches 50 molten power, she will reignite and begin to hover over the raid as she cleaves wildly. The tanks will need to pick her up and face her away from the raid. Raid damage will be very heavy as fire damage will tick until she is back to her full molten power. The raid should rotate cooldowns such as aura mastery, barrier, and spirit link totem until she has returned to the sky. Once this phase ends, phase one will begin again and the fight starts back at the top.

Discussion thread:

http://ravencouncil.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3379

Two guides that might be useful:

Ignore the bit on him being the 5th boss as I do believe you can do him before killing the first four.

Tactics from the 2nd vid (I’d say we go for the first rotation first to see if we can handle it):

Strategy

Here is the basic premise of the fight. Baleroc increases your tanks health throughout the fight, but also increases the damage your tanks take. In order to keep the tank from being killed, healers need to be able to buff the amount of healing they can do to keep up. The tank health and damage will go up on its own regardless of how you do the fight so we won’t focus on that. Here is what the rest of the raid must concern itself with. Healing players with tormented will stack a potential healing done buff. Healing the tanks will proc this healing done buff and allow healers to heal the tanks for much more than normal. Let’s break it down further. Begin the fight by deciding which suckers, err… dps will rotate on the crystals. Players must stand near crystals and eat the Torment debuff it gives off. Failing to do this will cause it to pulse for shadow damage and eventually wipe the raid. Healers cannot eat Torment because the debuff will significantly lower their effective healing. There are two basic rotations for the crystals. Four people with 2 designated to each crystal or four people rotating with 3 on each crystal. Both will work and it is a matter of what strat your guild and more importantly your healers are more comfortable using. I’ll explain both methods.

Crystals last around 30 seconds and new ones form shortly after the previous one has despawned. The way a player gains torment is by being the closest player to the crystal. Think of it like being focused. Once this player moves farther away, the crystal will focus the next closest player and they will gain torment. The previously player will then be left with the tormented buff for 40 seconds. During this time they will be killed if they gain Torment again.

Here is the basic rotation for the first method:

1. Crystal A spawns.
2. Player 1 takes torment for around 15 seconds.
3. Player 1 moves out of range and allows player 2 to take the rest of the torment.
4. Crystal B then spawns.
5. Player 3 takes torment for around 15 seconds.
6. Player 3 moves out of range and allows player 4 to take the rest of the torment.
7. This pattern then repeats.

Alternatively, here is the rotation for the second method:

1. Crystal A spawns.
2. Player 1 takes torment for around 10 seconds.
3. Player 1 moves out of range and allows player 2 to take torment for around 10 seconds.
4. Player 2 moves out of range and allows player 3 to take the rest of the torment.
5. Crystal B spawns.
6. Player 4 takes torment for around 10 seconds
7. Player 4 moves out of range and allows player 1 to take torment for around 10 seconds.
8. Player 1 moves out of range and allows player 2 to take the rest of the torment.
9. Crystal C spawns.
10. Player 3 takes torment for around 10 seconds.
11. Player 3 moves out of range and allows player 4 to take torment for around 10 seconds.
12. Player 4 moves out of range and allows player 1 to take the rest of the torment.
13. Crystal D spawns.
14. Player 2 takes torment for around 10 seconds.
15. Player 2 moves out of range and allows player 3 to take torment for around 10 seconds.
16. Player 3 then moves out of range and allows player 4 to take the rest of the torment.
17. The pattern then repeats.

Once your raid has chosen who will eat crystals and what rotation to use, the healers must be given a rotation as well. At any given time in the fight, one healer will be healing crystals, while the other 2 are spamming the tanks. This is fairly easy to split up. Healers will switch off with the crystals. This means that Healer 1 will heal all dps that eats Crystal A’s torment. Healer 2 will heal all dps that eats Crystal B’s torment. Healer 3 will heal all dps that eats Crystal C’s torment. Simply stay focused, keep count and this should be no problem. Whenever healers are not healing torment players, they should be spamming the tanks. The tanks will drop dangerously low during the encounter and healers may not always have a sufficient buff stack to keep them up. Raid cooldowns are best used during Inferno Blades as it will often lower the damage from the blades as well as torment. Use healer cooldowns such as lay on hands or nature’s swiftness during Decimation Blades to help top the tank off between hits. Some guilds may choose to two tank the fight and have an offtank taunt the boss during Decimation Blade. This will cause Baleroc to hit for far less damage since the offtank will not have high Blaze of Glory stacks. Healers will have a much easier time topping the offtank off than the maintank in this situation. DPS assigned to crystals should stay aware of their stacks and use damage reduction cooldowns such as feint or ams whenever the stacks get high.

This fight does not change from start to finish. Each player must remain aware of their stacks and buffs and debuffs. Losing focus will cause you to miss a critical moment in a key rotation. The strat and fight falls apart very quickly if any player misses their job. If you enjoyed this guide or found it helpful remember to bookmark us at LearntoRaid.com, subscribe to us on YouTube, Blip.tv, and follow us on Justin.tv and Twitter. As always, thanks for checking us out here at LearntoRaid and we’ll see you at the next boss.

Discussion thread:

http://ravencouncil.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3377

NB this is the 25-man version. See below for possible 10-man tactics.

Another one of the easier bosses which we may start with.

Abilities:
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=53691#encounter

Transcript:
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?76447-Shannox

10-man tactics:

Strat #1 - Adapting the Tankspot 25 man strat to 10 man
Have both tanks stack on top of eachother with one tank tanking Shannox while the other tries to stay as close to pulling threat as is safe. When the tank currently tanking gets to 5 stacks he stops attacking all together and lets the other tank pull threat, then keeps up as closely as possible. Rinse and repeat. Depending on raid make-up you could use several abilities to aid this transition. As for Riplimb have a plate dps kite him around.

The only potential problem I see here is the dps kiter dying since he’s not a tank or potentially losing threat since he’s kiting but shouldn’t be too big of an issue with a skilled kiter and good heals.

Strat #2 - A single tank tanking both Shannox and Riplimb then swapping both
Same as the above strat only one tank is tanking Shannox AND Riplimb while the other tries to stay as close to pulling threat as is safe. When the tank currently tanking gets to 5 stacks he stops attacking all together and lets the other tank pull threat, then keeps up as closely as possible. Rinse and repeat. Depending on raid make-up you could use several abilities to aid this transition.

The potential problem I see here is accidentally pulling threat so both tanks end up with Jagged Tear, especially at transitions, however, if managed carefully this shouldn’t be an issue.

Strat #3 - Tank Shannox and Riplimb very far apart
Have one tank on Shannox and the other on Riplimb. The tanks tank their target 50-60 yards apart from the other (world raid markers are AWESOME for this) so that the stacks fall off by the time both Shannox and Riplimb are able to reapply the debuff. Careful not to bring them much further apart however or they will both get a buff and proceed to murder the tanks. Once both dogs are dead use everything you can to get the OT up to 2nd place in threat just incase the MT dies. If tank and healer CDs are communicated and cycled this should not be an issue.

Strat #4 - 3 tanks, 2 on Shannox 1 on Riplimb
With this strat you could go one of two ways. Either do it exactly as the Tankspot video did or have the third tank tank Riplimb really far away so as to reset the stacks of the debuff. With either of these you have two tanks at the top of the threat meter when the dogs are dead for swapping or in case a tank dies.

The potential problem I see here is with three tanks you’re severely hurting on dps, especially since you’ll probably want three healers too.

With any of these strats what would be the best way to split dps? Based on what Darksend’s group did it sounds like the best way to go would be to kill Rageface, burn the boss down to 35%, kill Riplimb, finish the boss. Or once Rageface is dead splitting dps between the boss and Riplimb so that Riplimb dies when the boss gets to 30%. With only 4-5 dpsers it doesn’t seem viable to split the dps more than two ways, though I could be wrong. Which of these strats do you guys think would work best, or if none of them what would you propose? What’s the consensus on how to split the dps, or should you? Has anyone done this fight on 10 man successfully yet that would be willing to share how you did it?

EDIT - Post Fight Feedback
We dropped Shannox last night and found Strat #3 to be the best strat for 10 man. We put down world markers roughly 50 yards apart and tried to keep both Shannox and Riplimb close to these while the raid stacked inbetween. I tanked Riplimb and found that if I ran just past the marker and turned Riplimb around so my back was facing the raid and Shannox the spear marker would always be placed a little further away still. As soon as the marker was placed I would kite Riplimb toward the raid either as far as I could or optimally into a Crystal Prison Trap. With this method we never had an issue with Riplimb and Shannox being too far apart or with stacks not falling off either tank. I should note we also had a hunter using Concussive Shot on Riplimb as he brought the spear back to Shannox if I couldn’t get him into a trap. Also of note, the debuff no longer stacks on the Shannox tank once the dogs die so even if he has stacks on him still they will fall off.

As for DPS we focused all DPS on Rageface, then Shannox to 35-37%, then Riplimb, then back to Shannox. The Shannox tank should have Shannox at 30% about the same time Riplimb dies. Our biggest problem was people either not getting out of or running into traps. Even with several mess ups and people needing burst out of Crystal Prison Traps (and me dying right as Riplimb died, hehe) we still got the boss down. With some practice this fight turned out to be not bad at all and rather fun. Good luck to you all!

25-man version.

Transcript at:
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?76456-Beth-tilac

Boss abilities:
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=52498#encounter

For 10m guilds:

Our guild found this fight ridiculously easy. Our biggest problem was the stupid tank (me) kept falling down the hole in the middle of the web. Most of us had 361-363 ilvl, and the guild had done 5/13 in 10m. But we also had two backups, one healer and one DPS.

We sent up a bear tank and enh shaman with a disc priest atonement healing. Got the boss to 78% by the time the burn phase started. She came down and ate one spiderling, but we still got the burn. All in all, it was the shortest learning curve for us. That was, at least, until we came on here and read the Shannox guide and all the comments.