Tanking Illidan Stormrage - A guide for protection Paladins

Very well dear Paladins. I've noticed that recently more and more of us mana using Tanks are getting accepted, and more and more of us are facing one which was once a big challenge for a Protection Paladin: tanking Illidan Stormrage.

Tanking this boss requires some fair knowledge of his mechanic, some quick reactions, and some brain.

As 3rd Prot paladin progression tanking this fight, i wanted to write a short guide for those of us which in the future will want to face this challenge, since our Illidan thread is full of informations, but they are fairly spreaded amongst it, and i wanted to get all of them toghether.

Very well, let's see if you are now prepared.


==================BASE KNOWLEDGE==================
First of all, the basis. You will have 2 big enemies when facing Illidan: Shear, and Enrage.

Shear:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=41032
as you might imagine, this debuff would probably get you killed easily.

• How to avoid Shear: The mechanic of Shear is fairly simple, if the attack is parryed, dodged or blocked, the debuff will not be applied. The skill itself cannot miss, and you cannot outrange it. It is possible to Intervene it but that's not really realistic, and anyway you don't want to rely on a Warrior, do you?
  In order for us to not get hit by Shear, we will have to rely on Holy Shield, but in a particular way. You will need 101.8% block+parry+dodge in order be immune to Shear. There's a very useful macro to check if you are immune to it,
  

I've always wondered (never tested)

does bubble remove sheer, if so in an enrage situation use the cancel aura macro, even if a dps dies its better than you dying
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No, Divine Shield does not remove shear, and in fact if he attacks you with Shear while bubbled it gets through ><
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Very good and informative read idd ! We've got quite some bosses left(only at Bloodboil atm, if we only could get enough stinking people to raids) until Illidan but preparation is everything and the link to this will be bookmarked until that day fo' sho'

Thanks alot for the time spent in doing this !
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Thank you; this is great.

I've also been watching the Illidan Tactical video here:

http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=72645

which provides a very thorough overview of the fight for everyone; I recommend forcing it on your entire raid.
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Excellent guide, one point, and it's a nitpick:

If you're using the Band of the Eternal Defender from Hyjal, it's proc over writes the Scroll of Protection buff.
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Oh ye that one i knew, but didn't bother writing it. I'll add it anyway.
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I don't think I've ever used that much pure avoidance on Illidan. 55% tops.
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Hihi not really, Brutallus favours EH, that's fairly normal stats in BT gear. Or well, i'm always around those.

I remind tanking him with less but i was extremely undergeared at that time.

I'll fix it anyway.

Very well written! One comment, if I may:

Well considering that the phase transition comes right after the flame burst, that's like 2500 damage if i'm not wrong, so the warrior should have at least the rage to intervene + tc.

I used to quite get mad on vent if there was no CoW or Demo shout (well, we sometimes don't have any warrior), since the damage reduction is fairly significant, from 10kish melees to 8k when i was still t5ish geared.

I added the note on both the transition and event parts, and as well emphasised it on the debuff part.
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Mm that would explain why it gets through divine shield as well -_-

"Makes you immune to all damages" my ass tbh.
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Yeah... divine shield doesn't do anything to save you from yourself.

The good news is that if you blow yourself up with JoBlood while DS'd, it doesn't eat durability. ... I may or may not have tested that unintentionally while leveling.

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