Naxxramas Previews

[MongoJerry]

It also seems that the technique we've had most success with, which involved using grounding totems, has been deemed not to fit Blizzard's idea of how the encounter must be defeated, and so will be removed next patch. Using your initiative - or, in the case of the shaman, one of your class's MAJOR DEFINING FEATURES - is clearly a naughty exploit and must be stopped.

Let me start with this one first. The grounding totem technique has always been retarded, and I don't know why any guilds ever used it. You get some bad sleeps on your shaman, and your main tank is going to go down without anyone backing him up. It's just stupid stupid stupid.

The first 70% of the fight is designed to be easy and always has been easy. The main key to the first 70% of the fight is to have two tanks who gently pass aggro off to one another. That means that one tank builds up some aggro, then the second tank goes in and builds up some aggro, the first tank stops hitting Huhuran until the second tank pulls aggro off the first tank, and then the first tank goes back to hitting Huhuran again to try to steal aggro off the second tank. This tank switch only needs to happen about two or three times. Other keys to the first 70% of the fight are:

• The dps needs to be gentle during the first 70% of the fight, since the tanks need to be able to trade aggro with each other. This is fine, because the first 70% of the fight is not hard on mana. You should be able to do it virtually forever. Just keep the dps nice, slow, and steady.<>
  
• Do not cure poisons unless you need to wake up the main tank who is trying to gain aggro off the other main tank. If you cure the sleep, the target gets a massive nasty poison dot. We have one and only one shaman assigned to cure the sleep off the main tank who is trying to pull aggro. Everyone else is encouraged to take cleanse poison or decursive off their hotbars so that they aren't even tempted to use it.<>
  
• Healing on the first 70% of the fight is really easy. Sure, Huhuran spits out a poison volley that does a dot that does a lot of damage. But once the dot runs its course, a simple bandage or touch of a lightwell will cure most of the damage. The healers shouldn't stress about healing people who aren't the main tanks too much, and instead they should conserve their mana bars for the last 30% of the fight. A few renews scattered about to top people off should be all the healing they should do to non-main tanks. Again, you should be able to do this first 70% of the fight essentially forever, so if healers are running out of mana, your raid is doing something wrong. Either people aren't using bandages or healers are being more aggressive with their heals than they should be.<>
  
• At 32%, dps gets called off until the melee get slept. A little after the melee get slept, then the ranged dps should turn on again so that the melee get woken up a few seconds before Huhuran goes berserk. Everyone quaffs a nature protection potion to help keep themselves up and the moment Huhuran goes berserk, everyone pops their trinkets and cooldowns and goes nuts on her.<>
  [st]Equipment-wise, only the front 16 players need good NR gear, so we place our warriors, rogues and some well NR geared shaman up there. The rest of the raid can and should wear their best dps and healing gear so that when Huhuran goes berserk, Huhuran can be burned quickly and the front 16 can be kept alive well. Some groups say that prayer of healing is enough to keep people up, but I think the only raids who can do that are ones that have really good nature resistance gear -- i.e. ones who have been killing the green dragons for half a year or more. We haven't been doing that and our NR gear is spotty (better now than when we first tackled Huhuran, of course), so what we do is assign one healer, usually a priest, to heal two rogues or warriors. (The front-line shaman keep themselves up). When I'm in this role, I pre-shield my two charges and then spam heals on both of them. I can usually keep them up for a while, but after a bit, it becomes too much and I lose one person along the way. But if I can keep the other guy up, it'll usually be enough to finish Huhuran off before the raid wipes.
  
  Like Vael, the fight doesn't really start until the last 30%. I never undestood why such a big deal was made about the shaman totem trick, because it only really helps you on the first 70% of the fight, which is a piece of cake with or without it.
  
  Edit: Sorry for the badly formatted message before. As I was just finishing the post, I had to run off and I didn't get a chance to preview or edit it.