Before even initiating combat with Anub’arak, there is a moderate amount of preparation work which must be done. First, nature resistance enchants should be acquired for the cloak and helmet slots on both offtanks as well as the main tank. The offtanks will benefit drastically from using specialized block-heavy equipment in this encounter. Due to the way increased-damage multiplier debuffs interact with blocked attacks, the effectiveness of block value is drastically increased for the offtanks in this encounter. Offtanks should strive to reach 101.6 percent combined avoidance and block chance on their character sheet, to ensure the level eighty-two crypt fiends will not inflict unblocked hits. This ensures damage is consistently reduced, rather than risking sudden surges of drastically increased damage.
Once the block-avoidance threshold is reached, increasing block value into the 3000-point range is ideal. Stamina is a surprisingly poor stat for the offtanks in this encounter. While the encounter is hypothetically possible and has been completed using deathknights or druids as offtanks, it significantly increases the damage the offtanks will be receiving, and thus the difficulty of the final phase.