Flames of Azzinoth

Ok, so we are on Illidan now and I have a few questions regarding the flames in phase 2:

1) Can you block them? I know they can crit and crush;
2) Can I get away with 364 (1 off of cap) FR buffed?;
3) Can I get away with a small crit chance of say 0.16%?;
4) How much spell damage would you recommend for tanking them?

Thanks again for the input .
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1) No and i think they cannot crush anymore
2) Probably yes
3) Yes as well, since you will anyway take resisted crits that hurt way less than a unresisted normal hit
4) Can't tell you much about this, i think Lore said somewhere he used bout 400ish?
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Ok thanks, 2/3 are now solved (forgot the def from flask, making up the exact amount >_>), what you said was kinda my intuition anyway.

Is that spell dmg buffed btw? there is no way in my gear I can get that if it isn't. I am sitting at 320 spell dmg unbuffed, so i guess spirit and oil would take it up to just under 400. Actually the extra 48 from the JotC libram would add some as well, also taking into account the extra JotC spell dmg after 2.3. I think (hope :>) I should be fine .
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2. Probably yes, but I would put capping your FR, even 1 point away, as a priority above capping your defense. As I understood it, resistance scales exponentially, so 1 off cap would potentially create alot of extra damage intake, not positive of this though.

For 5 out of 7 kills now, I've been sporting 387 spell damage, Fort Flask, Oil of course, and my threat is well beyond the prot warrior on the other flame. Mana will by no means be an issue for your role here so JotC is a must, popping your wings, etc. The other 2 kills I used my Archimonde Aegis shield and dropped my crit crap but went back to using my ALD as the extra threat I was generating had not shown a useful difference in DPS on the Flame so I opted to take less damage.

Normal scenario as follows:

1. Illidan: Behold the Flames of Azzinoth!
2. Glaives fall to the floor outside of the grate, I queue up SotC
3. I drop a consecrate, pop Avenging Wrath and Judge Crusader at the same time as the Flame has spawned by now.
4. Cast Exorcism on the Flame, queue up SoR, and by this point the hunter has already MD'ed him to me as well as I'm backing him into the first position to drop his flame patch
5. Judge Righteousness, Consecrate, and follow your chosen kite path, dropping his flame patches every 10 seconds facing AWAY from your raid.
6. Rinse, repeat, and then learn the pain of p4.
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Actually, I think they are Demon type?

I am gearing up for this encounter as we are on Illidan now, but the druid had capped fire res so for now I'm healing and probably will on our first kill.

Only have 55 badges, I think I need another 45 to get full badges set.
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* They are in fact Demons. this means you CAN Exorcism.

* tanking flames is the hardest bloody thing I've ever done in this entire game.

* Eye beams have a MASSIVE radius where they will still hit you. Err on the side of caution.

* when evading Eye Beams, ALWAYS keep moving forward in order to dodge one, rather than moving back. Because of the way they angle and the way the circle curves they will almost always hit you if you try to scoot back.

* its ok to move through the blue flames on the ground that the eye beams leave. Call out that you are doing so to your healers though, so they can heal you harder for that time. Move through it quickly.

* There are little notches in the pattern on the ground making up the outer ring of the circle. There is a notch for the furthest you can take a flame in either direction around the ring before it will enrage. Locate the notches before you start the encounter and get a feel for the spacing.
This was hard for me. Watching videos really doesn't prepare you for the real thing, and you need to just know the spacing instinctively.
I found that marking either extreme using Elune Stones right before the phase transition helped me alot.

* Its hard to see the blazes on top of consecration + blue flame, qq.

* theres so much thats bloody happening when tanking this, it can be overwhelming. Best advice is to just keep your cool when 23 other people are yelling at you.

* the most dangerous eye beam is one thats coming from behind you angled along your kiting path and then out. have your camera panned out and have other people watching from eyebeams and calling them out for you. this one can take a bit of scambling to avoid.

* bring Fire Protection Potions. No brainer. I also pre-emptively pop a Nightmare Seed right as the phase is beginning. Greater Runes of Shielding and Warding also work against the damage.
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"Misunderstanding the Tankadin is forgivable.

In many ways we are still learning to understand ourselves."

www.joanadark.tankspot.com

/console cameraDistanceMaxFactor 4
That's the best tip I can give anyone for tanking these things. Zoom it out all the way. ALL the way. Beams are much easier to dodge when you can see their entire path.

Positioning in order of importance: Don't get beamed, don't risk leashing him, don't stand in green. Avoid blue if it's not inconvenient but otherwise just ignore it, it does very little damage.

From the random times I've died to beams, I believe the actual death area is something like a 4 yard radius around the beam itself. Add latency into the mix and you had best leave them a wide berth.

If you're not sure where to go to avoid a beam, try and picture the big X that the two beams make on the ground and go from there. Haul ass across the room if you have to, stand in green if you have to, just don't get yourself beamed (and get the hell out of that green asap).

I stand in blue flames frequently, so long as you let your healers know it's generally not a big deal. Obviously don't stand in them if you don't have to, but keep in mind that if you put green flame patches in random locations all around your kite area you're going to run out of room, so try to stick to a standard rotation as much as possible.
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And then, John was a zombie.

I use a mod for this called Improved Camera. It's pretty damn win.

When it comes to Eye Beams, I felt like a bug attracted to a porch light when I was learning it. I even moved *into* an eyebeam when I was safe and died.

The main thing to know is, it's always okay to stand in Blaze but it's never okay to get hit with Eyebeam. Just jump back into your tracks to dodge beams, you can adjust. Eat a Nightmare seed if you think to.
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http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alexstrasza&n=Gavel
http://grandcrusader.blogspot.com/ Brand New!

SCT is a Godsend on this fight (there are a lot of encounters where it's just a giant spamfest while tanking, this is not one of them). Make sure you have some easily readable combat text that will let you know how much you've resisted, as well as how much you were hit for. The big thing I watch for is the flame blast for ~6-7k. That's the cue to move one patch-width over to the next spot, since that will spawn a green Blaze patch under where you're standing when you're hit. It'll save you waiting until you see the burn damage from standing in Blaze, or even later when the blaze finally draws in.

I wasn't a huge fan of superzoomed cameras. I tried it a few pulls, and I started maneuvering incorrectly. The fight HAS prompted me to up my 10 yard zoom to 30 yards, but I start having problems figuring out which way I'm facing at around 70. It ended up doing me more harm than good, so to each his own. The big thing that DID help me was turning spell effects down to about 50% so I could see the etching on the ground to continue using it while blazes were up.

Make sure you communicate with the other tank. My feral druid and I have a choreographed path we both intend to take, but eyebeams are going to send one or both of us ahead of schedule, or off the path. Since we usually dodge beams by rotating away from the center of the grate, making sure we both hit the turning point and stay synchronized is a lot more crucial than some kiting paths.

I don't think 1 FR is worth losing sleep over, but if you can easily obtain it via a flame kit on your gloves or something, it's worth doing. I'm pretty sure we had a successful P2 run where the tank group paladin was out of range from me for a portion of the phase, so I lost the FR aura. He can't have been too far out, since the flame didn't charge him... but it did prompt us to tighten up our positioning a bit to prevent a potential charge.

-Splug
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(Usually) Prot warrior: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Illidan&n=Splug

On the 1 FR issue - there has been some concern that without 365 you would still take a fair bit more damage than at 364 as resists seem to work in a "group" fashion as opposed to each point having a direct effect. Basically that 1 point ends up being worth like 2-5% chance to avoid a fully unresisted hit.

Take a look at http://www.wowwiki.com/Resistance to see what I mean (there's a similar table on the official WoW site somewhere if you're concerned about Wowwiki's reliability, but it's balanced around level 50 which is annoying and doesn't really help so I linked this one instead). From the table about halfway down the page you can see that 365 resistance vs a level 73 is required to hit the 75% cap. The theory floating about is that resistances work in 0%/25%/50%/75% groups - when you hit one cap, you're in that group until you hit the next cap. So if you're at 364 resistance you're not actually at the 75% cap and thus you're in the 50% group, and all the resistance you've stacked up to that point are doing nothing for you.

That's the theory anyway, I haven't seen any testing or actual numbers on it and haven't looked into it myself so I have no idea how valid it is. I just capped myself to be safe and didn't worry about it
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And then, John was a zombie.

Pff since when does exorcism cause threat?...

/assumedtheywereelemental
//hatesbeingwrong
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http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alexstrasza&n=Gavel
http://grandcrusader.blogspot.com/ Brand New!