Tanking Shannox in Firelands

Given our guild is massively progressed with 1/7 in Firelands normal 10 man, why am I posting this information? Well, when tanking Shannox I have found the strategy guides somewhat less than helpful.

They describe the first phase of the encounter fine - tank him at 60 yards from the Riplimb tank, I find the RangeDisplay mod really useful for this, simply focus the tank and you can see how far you are from him, then set raid markers on your spots. Avoid fire traps at your feet, which DBM now calls out quickly. If Riplimb is coming back with a spear and there isn't enough time for your stacks of Tear to drop, kite Shannox away a bit, but stay in range of the healers. Again RangeDisplay helps here, set your healer as focus, then make sure it always reads 30 yards.

When Shannox gets enraged, don't worry, the extra healer for Rageface should now help to keep you up. Save SI for phase 2. It is when Riplimb dies and phase 2 is entered I struggled with.

Luckily last night we nailed it. In phase 2, Shannox stops throwing his spear and will just try to kill you by stabbing it into the group which does a Magma Rupture. This hurts but also repeats if you are still in range after he has done the attack. This leads to two 50k+ hits and given you have stacks of Jagged Tear, you are likely to die. I certainly did.

The trick here is, when Shannox casts Magma Rupture, strafe away from him as far as you can before he comes after you. You have a massive threat lead from phase 1 where you are just tanking him, I had 10k threat on him with the closest DPS was 4k. Backing up is too slow and you'll be in range of the second tick of Magma Rupture, no strafing at full run speed is definitely the way to go. Plus popping cool downs and the Mirror of Broken Images is very recommended here.

Once I stopped noobing it up and dying, the kill was easy and I even got some gloves too. Plus I almost beat a mage on the DPS meters with 9k of sweet Bear damage.

How about the Riplimb tanking job? No idea, we get the DK to do that one ;-)

Image from blizzplanet.com