Mommy, Wow! I'm a Big Kid Now!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Mine was good and was filled with fun social activities both in and out of the World of Azeroth. One must not forget about the adventure that awaits in real life!

A lot of my time was spent running heroics this past weekend. My main goal is to acquire the T7 chest piece and gloves. The chest piece is first on my hit list, as I'd like to replace my badge chest with it. T6 gloves, on the other hand, well, they can stay.

Don't let me fool you into thinking this post is going to be about how challenging even the easiest heroics are with a crummy healer, or how Heroic Nexus is the Mechanar of Northrend (5 badges for a full clear!). No, this post is not about any of that.

This post is about my first ever Naxx'ramas run.

"Lushious is ready for Naxx," a guildy healer said when discussing how easy it was to heal me. I've never been a healer, but I respect this member's opinion and, apparently, I am easy to heal. Now, it's hard not to let something like this get to your head. I'm not egotistical (though having a blog may immediately discredit that statement), but it's a nice morale booster.

Our official guild Naxx run doesn't start for another week, but I've been a little antsy to get back into raiding. The Guild Leader gave me blessing to run Naxx before our official time, so, with five other guildmates in tow, we PUG'd two healers and two more DPS to round out a Naxx'Ramas run that consisted of the following:

1x Yours Truly as Main Tank
1x Prot Warrior as Off Tank
1x Holy Paladin for Healz
1x Holy Priest for Healz
1x Ret Pally for DPS
1x Mage for DPS
1x Death Knight for DPS
1x Shadow Priest for DPS
1x Hunter for DPS
1x Enhancement Shaman for DPS

Let me just say this right now: Us bears can main tank Naxx bosses no problem!

The above group cleared the entire Spider Wing. It normally took us about three tries to get the hang of the bosses and formulate a strategy that worked. You can certainly go to Wowhead or Wowwiki and read about the strategies for each boss, but I would like to share with you my experience tanking each boss and what our group did to be successful for the first three bosses of Naxx'Ramas.

Anub'Rekhan
I tanked Anub right where he sits awaiting our arrival. The OT took care of any crypt guards that spawned, with DPS focusing on any adds immediately. All DPS stood in the center of the room. Once we understand the boss' rotation and I was able to play my part, we were able to down him.

During this fight I went into cat form. Crazy, right? So crazy it worked. Anub will cast locust swarm every minute and a half to two minutes or so. Locust swarm prevents any and all attacks and casts (even white attacks), on top of dealing damage. It is not good. As he casts Locust Swarm he stops and strike a pose. At this point it is crucial that no one in the party gets hit by this. The tank will want to get ahead of Anub and kite him during this phase so that he, along with the rest of the raid, do not get afflicted with Locust Swarm. So, I popped into cat form the moment he did locust swarm and kited Anub around the circumference of the room to the area where you enter. At that point I continued tanking until the next locust swarm, performing the same manuever around the room to the other side.

Now that I think about what transpired during the locust swarm phase, going kitty may not have been the best option. When Anub strikes a pose for locust swarm you have about one second to gain some ground and then he will follow at 25% reduced speed. In kitty form the 30% speed boost works indoors, so I now had a 55% speed advantage on him, not counting the one second head start. At a few intervals (one including a wipe), I was so fast that rather thank successfully kiting him around the circumference of the room, he just cut across the room taking the shortest path to get me and smacking most of the raid with locust swarm.

Next time I will remain in bear form and kite him. As long as you react in time, having the one second head start should afford you enough ground to not get hit by locust swarm, as well as keeping Anub away from the rest of the raid.

Grand Widow Faerlina
She's pretty manageable. As the tank you will simply want to tank her about 10 yards, maybe a little more, away from her cohorts. Have your OT focus on her four adds, with DPS choosing one cohort and bringing them to low health, but not killing them. The strategy here is that she will frenzy every minute or so doing massive damage to the tank. Killing one of her four adds will immediately stop this effect.

I tanked Faerlina close to the adds, ensuring that I moved her out of her AOE rain of fire when she casted it. Our OT and DPS did a fantastic job of managing her four adds, bringing each one of them to low health as needed. Once frenzy hit, they did massive burst damage and quickly stopped Faerlina's frenzy. This fight is not overly complex, it just requires excellent communication and coordination.

Maexxna
This gargantuan spider proved to be the most daunting for this group. Of course, spirits were high. We just downed two bosses in Naxx and felt like kings of the castle. Maexxna put us in our place.

I tanked Maexxna in the center of the room. As we wiped more and more I began to formulate a routine that maximized my avoidance and mitigation, because she hits hard! I will get to that in a moment, but here is what we did to down her:

For the first 20 seconds DPS just hit her as hard as they could. When she web wrapped three members to the wall, ranged DPS would focus on them to bring them back into the fray. After 20 seconds she summons spiderlings beneath her, which was quickly AOE'd and DPS'd. Then, at 40 seconds, she casts web spray which incapacitated us for 3-5 five seconds. The cycle then rotated until she reached about 600,000 health, where she enraged and beat my face in.

Web spray was the hardest part for the healz. It wasn't hard on me, I just soaked up the damage and sometimes died. The ensure that I lived through a period where no one could do anything, I made sure I had proc'd two things. The first was demoralizing roar. To further assist in taking less damage, I would also save my barkskin for this phase. These two abilities every bear will have.

Lucky for me (and maybe you, too), I still have Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch and Badge of Tenacity. I proc'd one of those right before her web spray, starting from the second web spray forward (since healz would be fatigued a little by that point). All three of these in conjunction certainly increased my survivability.

Her enrage was the tricky part. I needed big healz, else she would stomp all over me. She was hitting me for in excess of 10k damage a hit. I had even seen it hit 14k damage. Even completely buffed at 30.7k health this was a challenge for the healers. For this phase I completely relied upon Survival Instincts. Of course, the same abilities and items I used for web spray were used during enrage, if available. With Survival Instincts I had 42k health, but, again, she hits like a mack truck during this phase.

I did die during this phase, but our OT picked her up and through some awesome healz we managed to best her. This fight took more attempts than the rest, but we did down her through perserverance, intelligence, and coordination. And so can you!

And no, I did not get any loot during this time. Not even any drops remotely good for a druid bear. Today, though, we work on the Death Knight wing!

Until the next Faerie Fire pull...

-Lushious