This fight is pretty easy but has a bit of a learning curve for new tanks since the boss swapping needs to be well done in order for the raid to achieve success.
Tanking & General Encounter
Important considerations:
• The dogs build energy based on their proximity to each other. • Dogs explode for raid wide damage when they hit 100 energy • Active dogs' abilities do far less damage than inactive dog's abilities
For this reason, your primary goal is to control the energy build up so:
• Only active dogs hit 100 • The explosions are staggered • Don't get turned into stone
The primary way to do this is to keep the dogs split. Have one tank take one dog, and have the other tank take two. Because you want the active dog to be the one that explodes (off colour explosions are often a wipe), you need to make sure the active dog is always the one paired up with another dog. If the solo dog goes active, that tank will pick up the lowest energy dog of the opposite pair. If one of the dog pairs goes active, you make no change. You may need to do a double dog swap soon after the pull to help stagger the dogs' energy better, or later in the fight to correct any earlier mess-ups.
Also note that the solo dog has damage reduction; DPS should always be on the pair. Because the dogs share health pools, cleaving on the pair is awesome.
Dog Abilities
You will notice that every week, this boss will vary slightly. There are actually four dogs, and one of them rotates out every week in a predictable fashion. Which dogs are present determines what additional abilities your raid will face.
The Cobalt dogputs frost mines on the ground under a person (including tanks). Move out of these and be careful not to clip the circles, as it will explode for damage and freeze nearby raid members in place. This can be especially deadly if paired with the Jasper chains. It is very easy to get a large buildup of mines during the fight, and it is highly recommended that you have someone intentionally trigger them either with a damage reduction cooldown, or when the Cobalt dog is active and there is an inate damage reduction. Make sure you warn your healers for cleansing the freeze.
The Jasper dogwill chain two raid members together and they must remain in proximity throughout the fight. If your chain looks like it's burning and on fire, you're too far. Split raid members take a bunch of damage, as do members who break their chains (although you can try to do this when Jasper is active, it's really not worth it). Chains usually seem to prioritise tying ranged and healers to melee rather than to each other, so expect this to be a pain.
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Posted Mar 12, 2013 (Patch 5.2.0)[this is for normal mode]
This fight is pretty easy but has a bit of a learning curve for new tanks since the boss swapping needs to be well done in order for the raid to achieve success.
Tanking & General Encounter
Important considerations:
• The dogs build energy based on their proximity to each other.
• Dogs explode for raid wide damage when they hit 100 energy
• Active dogs' abilities do far less damage than inactive dog's abilities
For this reason, your primary goal is to control the energy build up so:
• Only active dogs hit 100
• The explosions are staggered
• Don't get turned into stone
The primary way to do this is to keep the dogs split. Have one tank take one dog, and have the other tank take two. Because you want the active dog to be the one that explodes (off colour explosions are often a wipe), you need to make sure the active dog is always the one paired up with another dog. If the solo dog goes active, that tank will pick up the lowest energy dog of the opposite pair. If one of the dog pairs goes active, you make no change. You may need to do a double dog swap soon after the pull to help stagger the dogs' energy better, or later in the fight to correct any earlier mess-ups.
Also note that the solo dog has damage reduction; DPS should always be on the pair. Because the dogs share health pools, cleaving on the pair is awesome.
Dog Abilities
You will notice that every week, this boss will vary slightly. There are actually four dogs, and one of them rotates out every week in a predictable fashion. Which dogs are present determines what additional abilities your raid will face.
The Cobalt dog puts frost mines on the ground under a person (including tanks). Move out of these and be careful not to clip the circles, as it will explode for damage and freeze nearby raid members in place. This can be especially deadly if paired with the Jasper chains. It is very easy to get a large buildup of mines during the fight, and it is highly recommended that you have someone intentionally trigger them either with a damage reduction cooldown, or when the Cobalt dog is active and there is an inate damage reduction. Make sure you warn your healers for cleansing the freeze.
The Jasper dog will chain two raid members together and they must remain in proximity throughout the fight. If your chain looks like it's burning and on fire, you're too far. Split raid members take a bunch of damage, as do members who break their chains (although you can try to do this when Jasper is active, it's really not worth it). Chains usually seem to prioritise tying ranged and healers to melee rather than to each other, so expect this to be a pain.
The Jade dog does additional unavoidable AoE damage throughout the fight. It just means a slightly larger burden on healers, but really it's pretty negligible.
The Amethyst dog drops purple puddles on the ground that hurt to stand in. Don't stand in them, definitely don't get frozen in them.