Heroic Blackhand P3: Smash soaking

[Drutt]

We just started on heroic Blackhand recently (completely new guild so took us time to get everyone sufficently geared - we started Highmaul about a week before BRF came out!) and have P1 and P2 down. We're now starting on P3.

It seems fairly straightforward and we've already got him down to 13% inside 25 attempts total, so I anticipate a kill quite soon.

I wanted to know if it is feasible to soak Smash with less than most of the raid. It seems that if we can reliably soak it without having to use the ranged, some of the melee and the healers, then our DPS/HPS will increase due to additional uptime.

I have been considering using a group of 5 out of a raid of 15-16 to soak each MSS: current tank, two rogues, Unholy DK, Ret pally. We'd rotate personals (elusive-feint, divine purp, AMS/IBF) and externals (barrier/devo aura) to make sure each person has a minimum of 20% damage redux every time.

As near as I can tell the upfront damage from MSS is about 130-140k if soaked by 5 people on heroic. Does that seems accurate to the more experience on this forum? I'd like to keep our ranged and healers out if possible, simply to focus on DPS and HPS during the last burn.

Realistic?

[Kaiten]

5 would be more than enough. Sending your ranged + healers in there is a massive dps/hps loss

[Radish Spirit]

Radish wisdom from the past.

[Tygerlily177]

In Heroic, we had melee and range soak the first two or three with barrier and smoke bomb, and we had our tanks solo soak the last two. We tried using a smaller group to soak initially, but it was dangerous if one or more players were targeted with slag bomb or if someone stood slightly out of the smash circle. It was also easier to coordinate one raid cooldown than multiple personal cooldowns.

[RyanEX]

Wouldn't it be a bigger loss for melee, since they have to cover the entire distance back to the boss?

Don't most melee have ways to get back in close almost instantly? Except for pallies of course. Warriors Intercept/charge, druids pounce, rogues shadowstep, monks can transendence and that flying kick of theirs...so no, unless you're running 3/4 ret pallies it shouldn't be that big a dps loss.