Leaf-head

Heroic Shannox kill vid & tactics. Here are my notes on the fight.

In Shannox heroic, the dogs cannot be killed. Instead you must juggle them and minimize the damage they do while steadily DPSing Shannox down.

Crystal prison traps will all be used to trap Rageface and reset his stacks. The Shannox tank must be ready to kite the boss around to make sure she/she & the Riplimb tank drop Rip stacks regularly. If you have a rogue around, have him or her disarm immolation traps when possible, to reduce the chances Rageface will have the Wary debuff when you need to trap it.

One ranged DPS is assigned to manage Rageface. This person must be able to hit with a crit when it starts face-raging. Have a backup assigned for when this DPS gets raged. This player will also be the person most likely trapping the dog in the prisons. Right after each rage is a good moment to do it; with that timing the dog will not be raging immediately after coming out of a prison. The healers should pay extra attention to this player as well.

Choose the area you’ll be fighting in. Set up two markers. Left side and right side. Or near the hills, near the road. Whatever your landmarks, have two spots for the raid to shift back and forth between. When the dog is trapped on one side, everybody shifts to the other to maximize his travel time. Swap back. When Rageface is chasing you normally (not raging on you), kite him so he does as little damage to you as possible.

Keep doing this until the boss hits 35% or whatever it is. Pop heroism and burn while continuing to do the shuffle.

I found this fight much easier to heal than the normal mode: the tactics are all about limiting damage taken. There’s more steady tank damage and there’s some nasty burst damage from the loose dog, but the raid isn’t taking as much as it does when you kill dogs with the usual normal-mode tactics. If you find this fight too nasty to heal, it’s probably because you’re not managing the dogs well enough yet. You want to minimize the damage, not heal through it. (This insight was the key to solving the puzzle of the fight for us.)

As usual for us with heroic-mode bosses, our first kill netted a boatload of hunter loot. Our hunter felt this was fitting, since Shannox is a hunter himself.

The video soundtrack is Ulrich Schnauss, “Nobody’s Home”, from the amazing Far Away Trains Passing By.