A quick Blackfuse question

[Skippy88]

At the end of our raid last night we attempted Wing 4 Flex and I had never done it before.

I was not assigned conveyor belt and the two DPS that were to kill the mines only. Everything that I have read it means I stay on the boss and avoid bad. About half way through the raid leader asked all dps to help with an Automated Shredder. We wiped but we decided for the second attempt it would become part of our strategy.

My question is this normal? It just seems like a waste to me but I could be wrong.

[Breccia]

A competent, capable tank up to the challenge of the fight should not require help killing shredders. If your team needs DPS to switch to the shredders, you're carrying a tank. Either he's blowing the tank swap, not putting the shredder into stuff that hurts it, being smashed by Death from Above, failing to bring his Vengeance-based damage to the boss, keeping the Shredder too close to the boss, or otherwise simply failing at his job.

It's not standard. It is a waste.

[Fluorescent0]

Nope, it's not normal. Your tanks should be able to handle that alone thanks to the boss' stacks.

Keep in mind that tanks do 200% increase damage per stack (so 7x normal damage at 3 stacks, which means ~140% normal damage factoring in reactive armor, and triple that during death from above).

DPSers, on the other way, do 20% normal damage due to reactive armor. (60% during death from above)

That, along with the fact that shredder can also take damage from any of the boss' abilities (laser, saws, etc.) makes it unoptimal for DPS to switch to the add and really not needed at all as long as your tank is half competent.

[Leih]

In a total emergency situation where your tank has totally fucked up and your only choice is to try and take it down with all the DPSers on it, this could be a call to make. But it does mean your tank absolutely ballsed up the strategy in some way, but in flex you could get away with it and save the wipe.

Doing it every attempt as part of the normal strategy? As the people above me said, that just means you have a clueless or very undergeared tank that you're having to carry, and it's a huge huge waste of DPS.

[Tradu]

If the tanks aren't doing enough damage(could be gear, but usually they're just not playing "aggressively" enough), helping on the Shredders is fine. Usually it shouldn't be needed, though, because the tanks get a damage boost against them AND can tank them in blades/fire to make them take even more damage.

[Fluorescent0]

Heh, gear plays very little into that, considering we're also talking Flex. I could get my shredder down as a 540ish (probably a little bit lower, can't remember exactly) monk in normal just fine with 3 stacks, and both warriors and paladins have better ways to burst them (not sure about druids and i know dks are definitely worse though)

[Tradu]

Heh, gear plays very little into that, considering we're also talking Flex. I could get my shredder down as a 540ish (probably a little bit lower, can't remember exactly) monk in normal just fine with 3 stacks, and both warriors and paladins have better ways to burst them (not sure about druids and i know dks are definitely worse though)

Well, it sounds like they're progressing on(or at least not very familiar with) Flex4, so their gear could be fairly bad as well. I agree that it's most likely bad play on the tanks' part, though, because I've never had trouble doing it on my DK tank(520 ilevel the first time)
But either way, it's flex, so if the DPS are better than their tanks, they could probably spare the DPS to avoid wiping.
I wouldn't have melee help on them ever, but ranged could throw a DoT or 2 on them once in a while, and in some cases even benefit a little bit from it.

[Skippy88]

Just to clarify some of the questions.

The two tanks are 525 Brewmaster and 530 Warrior.

The Brewmaster is our raid leader and has about 5 different characters he likes to play and bring into raids depending on the situation. He has killed Garrosh on one of his characters but not sure if it was LFR or Flex. He was complaining about only having 2 stacks and not 3. Then due to people not paying attention he's calling the raid. Then he quit the raid and left the game.

The Warrior hasn't done a lot of tanking from the looks of it on any level or tier. He's got a lot achievements though so it looks like he's been around the block so to speak maybe on a different character? He didn't talk much during the attempts.

Overall, I joined them just over a week ago. They had a bunch of people join roughly the same time so it's been talked about and pointed out people are still learning and people are still working on their gear ilvls. And hands down they are better in almost category compared to my previous raid guild but my spidey sense is tingling that the raid leadership doesn't quite know what they are doing and it's helping cause some of our wipes. Up until Blackfuse last night they have just been small things though. I forget what he asked the raid yesterday but I said aloud (not in vent) shouldn't you know that already?

[Kael]

And so it goes.

With respect to blackfuse, if your specific group (assuming you run with them) can't seem to get the shredder down the right way, you CAN swap, but you should figure out which shredders are a problem, and swap after Death from Above for a short time, particularly asking your multi-DoTters to get the extra damage in so that people who suffer more from target swapping don't have to (like an affLock vs. a rogue).

Mostly, as mentioned earlier, try to get your tanks to learn how to kill the shredder with the use of boss mechanics. The sawblades and fire, if placed 40y away from the boss (they need to be far away, yes) should decimate the adds. Do note that the ranged can screw this up - if there's no fire or sawblade far enough away from the boss to kill the shredder without it healing from proximity to blackfuse, you're kinda screwed, but DPS helping at that point is negligible by comparison.