We wiped on Iron Council a lot on Monday. It’s a fight we’ve done before-but always with my trusty Zoja in the back tanking the smaller bosses.
This week, we had our DK tank.
Yeah…uh…when we don’t have interrupts back there, the encounter kicks my mana bar in the nuts. Atropus? Great guy. Good tank usually. Totally not a warrior and totally not interrupting…whoever the fuck back there casts shit. I mean I know DKs have interrupts. They’ve used them on me, the fuckers. Either he didn’t have enough of them, or wasn’t doing them, or something. Regardless, there was more pain being dished out by…someone doing…something.
Sorry guys, I’m a healer. I’ll explain this in healer terms, which means I have no idea what the tank is doing back there, specifically. My world consists of green bars, and knowing that when a blue square appears in the corner of the MT’s box on this particular fight, I need to cleanse it while not letting the OT die. If there weren’t Falcon Punch jokes flying I wouldn’t even know what that blue square WAS other than “something to be cleansed”.
But back to the fight. Without interrupts, there’s more raid damage. Do you know what happens to me-and the other healers-when there’s that much raid damage?
With Boss #1 down and Boss #2 nearly dead but the fight nowhere near finished, I stand there looking at a bar where everything is dark except for Gift of the Naaru. Shadowfiend? On cooldown. Hymn of Hope? On cooldown. Mana pot? Used. Mana BAR? Gone!
Phaseroll has died.
Sidearm has died.
Macharious has died.
Kyrileanthgodwhyisyournamesolong has died.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
I actually would have kept wiping for the next hour we had slated to raid-there’s nothing saying we couldn’t have made progress on Freya, or something. Despite my calling Ky crazy for enjoying Monday night, I have no issues with a night of glass chewing. Even if it’s slightly old, we’ve killed this before glass. Progress was made-after a fashion…lessons were learned…and the healers had to really push themselves!
…but I totally had to have the bank pay repairs because I was broke!
So…interrupt interrupt interrupt! I’ll be in the corner sobbing now.
I Like Bubbles 
#1 by Rivyn on June 10, 2009 - 9:37 am
hmm, sounds like ideally you need two DKs on the boss in the back on an interrupt rotation. I just redid my secondary spec back to tank while I gather more PVP gear… I’m focusing on leveling my mage currently but if you need me I’m available for tonight (but I didn’t sign up)
#2 by Ktok on June 10, 2009 - 9:38 am
Hmm… We actually don’t interrupt the nuker, at least not in 10-man. We put our DK on Steelbreaker, and I grab the other two and drag them back. I leave the dwarf in the back by himself, and take the Rune guy to the front. We just ignore the dwarf for the first phase and heal through the nukes. Putting the rune guy near Steelbreaker also means there’s a 66% chance (repeating of course) that the power boosting rune will be near Steelbreaker. That way, it’ll show up in range for the DPS to use it much more often.
Once Steel is down, DK picks up Rune and I head back to handle the dwarf.
Anyway, that’s how we do it :D
#3 by Ambrosyne on June 10, 2009 - 10:05 am
@Rivyn – SIGN UP SCRUB. Otherwise we take Iwpnforfree. /wrist!
@Ktok – Maybe your healers are more uber, or something…but we were ALL cuddling and consoling our mana bars after that fight. We lost DPS all over the place. In retrospect, our healer comp muight just not be up to the non-interrupted nuker. We were running holy pally, disc priest, and tree-it could be that the disc priest/tree combo just can’t keep up the raid sans interrupts. A disc priest can raid heal, but it is not mana effecient, and that fight is already a mana-juggling act.
#4 by Artoo on June 10, 2009 - 11:37 am
I can’t imagine doing the Iron Council without interrupts. Our 10 man usually has a paladin and a DK tank. We send the DK to the back along with a warlock’s puppy to interrupt as much as possible.
Our healers are a shammy, a tree and a disc priest (me).
We still struggle sometimes after Steelbreaker is down because the DK can’t interrupt all the chain lightnings and all the lightning whirls. And we seem to be extremely unlucky on lightning whirls, frequently having most of the bolts hit one person, sometimes right after a rune of death showed up right under them. That’s enough to kill most of our dps in a few seconds. I’ve found that I more or less have to keep a shield up on everyone in the raid after Steelbreaker dies to keep them from getting killed before we can react to the damage they’re taking.
#5 by Light on June 10, 2009 - 12:07 pm
I’ve never gotten that far so I can’t comment much on the DK. However, I have raided (once) with my DK DPSing on Kel. If he’s using mind freeze it doesn’t always seem to work on the target. I think it’s bugged (forums are saying it is sometimes a second off (?)). Strangulate doesn’t seem to work on bosses at all and has a long cooldown. Eh.
I hate it when people don’t kick/pummel/earth shock/whatever. More interrupts please!
#6 by kyrilean on June 10, 2009 - 12:08 pm
@Amber – I could put in a “it’s long for you baby” joke, but I won’t. :D
#7 by Adgamorix on June 10, 2009 - 12:22 pm
I can’t remember if we interrupt him or not – I have to think we don’t simply because we have no real interrupts. I ‘think’ we do it like this, but tbh we haven’t done it with Steelbreaker first since the first week.
Our raid is Druid/DK Tanks, Healadin/Disc/Tree for heals, and generally a Reatadin/Spriest/Rogue/Hunter/Boomkin. All DPS is on the runemaster with me on the Steelbreaker tank (beacon on self) rolling FoL (with SS up – 4pc bonus), cleanse FP, HS/FoL, repeat. The Disc priest throws some extra in there as well on the punch (resto may be doing HoTs too..)
Once Steelbreaker is down, they move to short round. I’m fairly certain that the only interrupts on short round during the first boss part are from the DK. A WMO shows only 7 kicks from the rogue, so I’m sure we just eat the Chain Lightning and the DK silences the lightning whirl.
After shorty dies (watch the overload) all the DPS rolls to Steelbreaker. At 10sec before the MT dies to the debuff the DK taunts, get’s debuffed, and the MT runs 15yds or so away to die. Boomkin tosses out a BR, Bear Innervates the Boomkin, goes cat, and continues. About 10 sec after the DK has threat, the Ret pally will taunt (getting the debuff) and then bubbles – DK taunts back, and we now have a huge DPS boost.
Here’s a WMO (WWS, but I like it better) from our last kill.
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/4939749#damageout
And here’s a video shot from our Disc priest (if you don’t like metal, turn down the volume. I also highly recommend watching it in HD)
Get that DK to interrupt!
#8 by Isiene on June 10, 2009 - 4:17 pm
Oh my GOD! We had this exact problem! Our warrior tank had to leave abruptly because of RL issues for the summer, and we got a DK tank as his replacement. We had been having absolutely no problems healing IC before, but after our warrior left.. it was a nightmare. Raid damage was everywhere. One of the two bosses in the back (I can’t keep track of their names anymore) kept hitting the group aaaaall the way in the front, and our poor tree could barely keep up with the damage.
As a disc priest assigned to the tank in the back, I would scurry back and forth trying to help our tree and try to run back to our DK tank in the back. Quite honestly, I don’t think our DK was interrupting anything; amazingly, it was our third healer — the shaman — who stood next to the bosses in the back and kept trying to interrupt.
Recount had the shaman’s interrupt count in the 50s, but honestly, it felt as if nothing were being interrupted.
It was pain!@#!
#9 by Panda on June 10, 2009 - 8:54 pm
As a DK tank, if your is having trouble it’ll be down to one of two issues. Hit rating or cooldown conservation. You really want him to save interupts for the whirl, and strangulate and death grip to move him out of runes or get the freezes that get resisted.
It does take a bit of practice, we had our feral try and do it, but in and out charging and bashing made him look like a hummingbirld on crack