Blood DK vs HC 10 man Dark Animus

[zer0xfr]

Hello

My guild is starting progress on HC Dark Animus this week, and I knew about the fact that a blood DK could tank both massive with relatively ease, provided my health pool was high enought (I reckon I can get atleast 1 mil for every soak), so I thought I would be in a fine spot. However I hear reports saying that it is no longer possible to remove the stack with AMS. Our tanking setup is Blood Death Knight and Guardian Druid.

So my questions is - Can anyone verify whether you CAN or CAN'T remove the stacks?

If it no longer works do anyone have any tips for the tanking on this boss? The guild is currently not able to 3 tank it effectively, our only choice for 3rd tank is an undergeared warrior with little experience.

Also a more detailed guide / tips for handling the Anima wouldn't be frowned upon

[Deleted]

did it wednesday, worked fine. u just need at least 1 point ams after the smash to be safe.

[Deleted]

so how we do it is fill up 2 massive, and 2 larges before the first anima siphon.
so should have boss + 1 add on a tank , and 2 massive on the other tank, with 2 inactive larges filled.
at the 4th siphon you need to go kill the 2 larger inactives and put their anima into the 2 massive. (4th siphon the baby one becomes inactive) so now its just 2 massive, and the boss.

if you don't reset your stacks should have your bear taunt off since you cant last to the next ams reset, if he can cleave and get 2nd on threat (or have him start on the adds til all baby ones have been killed and you can double taunt the adds off him) you can bop/ salv to reset stacks.

go with VB unglphed as its an extra cd to use with AMS.

[zer0xfr]

Thanks for the tips so far. Greatly appreciate it. Also thanks for verifying that you can indeed soak after 5.3.

I have another questions in regards to glyphs. How does AMS glyph interact with it? I know from normal you can remove it without glyph. Is it advised to use it or not use it for this fight on hc?

[zer0xfr]

After personal testing, I can varify you can't reset the stack anymore!!!!!

However you can block a stack from applying and hope it runs out. But it wont be dispelled anymore!

[Enosh]

yeah noticed that behavior today too (well on normal that is) ^^

I mean it doesn't change anything, since iirc it always does another slam after the debuff runs out but still was strange ^^

[Wreckage827]

Hey looking for some advice for a blood tank who will be tanking 2-3 of the smaller adds on Heroic Dark Animus. What abilities/rotation do you shoot for in order to kill them the quickest?

Sorry I don't have the slightest idea what Bloods rotation is just trying to help out a buddy.

[Tojara]

AMS does work still, it just prevents application, thus they fall off.

We haven't killed Dark Animus on Heroic yet but I use full DPS gear and forges on the boss thus far. Most of our wipes are because of our other tanks or poorly managed matter swaps.

My full DPS gear is optimized for 2H frost as well, so all gems/forges are haste > crit > mastery currently. I tank two small adds at the start and as soon as one dies I taunt one off a healer and again tank two small adds and a massive. I should at the very least reforge the crit back to mastery to make it a bit more consistent, but this setup seems to be working fine for me a the moment.

Strength pot on the pull. Bone shield running (obviously) and DRW immediately. Ghoul is out immediately and about half way through my DRW I pop VB in case I have to death pact (they hit fairly hard). Bone shield goes up again as soon as it falls off and usually the first add is dead in about 12-15 seconds. Rarely do I die at the start in this setup. Because you're health is ping ponging like crazy blood worms are popping left and right, especially with I high haste setup. They see me nearly die and they just explode.

I try and save IBF for when I taunt an add off our resto druid (so I have two small) and the massive golem. At that point my vengeance is incredibly high and I can kill one of the small ones during IBF, and at that point you aren't really in danger anymore.

It depends on the healers you have though for CDs and what your overall strategy is. There really isn't a secret per say, but you have to be incredibly aggressive with CDs when you're tanking 2-3 of the small ones. Even through CDs they hit incredibly hard. Blood DKs are probably the easiest tank to heal once things settle down and it's just you with a massive. That is assuming you don't completely mess up your AMS.

[zer0xfr]

Mione - It is a 10 man strat. You can basically make it pretty much everyone is free to focus on boss after less than 2 mins of the encounter. By speed filling up the 2 massives. I know it makes it so that more matter swaps are going on, but it simplifies the tactic so much and basicly makes it so people only have to focus on anima font from very early on. Makes the dmg req extremely low (atleast in the inflated gear we have now), so it just because a very valid and viable tactic to use, and only requires extra execution from the massive tank.

The reason you wanna tank 3 (maybe 4) linked is for insane vengeance counts so you have fill the massive almost by yourself. It works really well. + You dont need the extra cooldowns you use on the add tank for the start of the fight anyway.

[Tojara]

We did it this way because it was the most optimal way of doing DPS. There is no need for targeted defensive CDs until past the third minute of the encounter (when it comes back up). The faster we kill the adds under incredible vengeance the quicker people get on the boss and the quicker the boss dies. We don't have many raid CDs for jolts in our 10 man so the fewer jolts we deal with the better. For reference we killed the boss in 4:34 this week (it was slightly sloppy) as to minimize jolts. Maybe other 10 man composition have more raid CDs, but we found jolts were the only hard part of the encounter.

Everybody in our groups pre-pots and pops CDs/lust on the pull. When the first massive starts putting out matter swap all of our small adds are dead.

For reference we do kill our small adds at roughly the same time. We just put more load on tanks (with lots of CDs) because those CDs have little use at the start. More on tanks means some DPS are free at the start meaning the boss dies quicker. It might be different on 25 or other 10 man compositions though.

[Tojara]

Pretty much instantly. I tank 3 for my guild (we had a disc priest last night and with barrier/pain suppression I could get away with full DPS gear/haste centric build). I kill the first one in roughly 8-10 seconds, and the other two are dead by the 25 second mark. Matter swap happens instantly or 2-3 seconds after it's active so we do get in early one. We do pop all CDs at the start so all of our DPS can kill their own individual anima golem before they get swapped (which would otherwise make it messy).

We have a DPS who is freed up (hunter) who sits the farthest away. We let the first matter swap go to duration to give people time to finish their last golem. (So like Massive is active at about 10 seconds, casts matter swap like 2-3 seconds later and then matter swap lasts 12 seconds). When the hunter sees the swap debuff about to end he simply uses deterrence on that one. Overall it gives the few DPS assigned to anima golems enough time, because I would agree that it could cause problems to have early swaps when small anima golems are still being dealt with.

The second tank only deals with two adds and thus his first add dies a little slower than mine. This is on purpose so that the matter swaps don't happen at the same time and have a good 6-8 second delay between the two that go out (which we do to match dispel CDs).

We do three tank it for anybody wondering. Lots of options really. Three tank/two heal, three tank/three heal, or two tank/two heal.

There are so many different ways to do the encounter depending on what you have. We only realistically had one solid raid wide CD for jolts and they were the major factor for our guild. Soft enrage wasn't an issue so we didn't go through the hoops of killing the filled large inactives after the fourth siphon to extend the enrage.

[Deleted]

When does it start putting out matter swap? It pretty much casts Matter Swap nearly instantly after being activated in 25man (like let's say it does 2 melee swings then matter swap)

in 10 man you need the tank to kite the massives around the room which takes time, the actual dpsing the active adds is done in relative short order. in 25 man you bring the adds to the massives, in 10 man its the other way around.