Firelands Raid first impressions & Hunting Shannox

So far we’ve spent 1 Sunday and 1 Thursday in the Firelands raid and have successfully killed the 1st boss, Shannox, twice. Before I go into that, lets talk about the new raid instance.

The Firelands is an outdoor raid (you can mount up), which is at the south of Mount Hyjal and features Ragnaros as the end boss. The area inside actually looks pretty cool, if you’ve been to the new daily Molten Front area, you’ll be quite familiar with the theme.

One thing that immediately stands out is the amount of Mobs. There are a LOT. They don’t pose too much of a challenge though, other than a time sink. In most new raids we usually wipe more times on the trash than the first bosses but in this case I don’t think we’ve wiped even once yet. The only thing to be wary of is pulling more than 1 pack – an increased risk with the level of mobs around.

With this in mind, make sure you have MD up on a Rogue so you can blame any pulls on him! Stupid Rogues.

When you kill enough Mobs the first boss, Shannox is summoned….

Boss 1: Shannox

Shannox is a weird firey naga hunter that comes along with 2 dogs as pets. Unlike us pro hunters, he can trap his own pets! What a noob! He does shout out our MM “Go for the Throat” talent though, which is a bit cooler than us.

I’m still working on perfecting the strategy but I can safely say this isn’t a good hunter fight. Lots of movement and targets getting into/out of your deadzone and in/out of your range. I suspect this might be a better fight for SV over MM as DoTs would help out a lot. This is backed up by the top 10 classes on this boss being Locks, S.Priests or a Boomkin.

Phase 1: Kill Rageface

Rageface, one of Shannox’s pets, is your first target, who you’ll nuke until he dies. Simples?

Things to bear in mind:

• Blow your CDs here if you’re not being “Face Raged”
• Don’t stand in traps (they arm after 2 seconds of landing)
• Don’t stand in the rings of fire (you can stand between the rings)
• Stand away from everyone else as this will reduce your DPS downtime through targets running into/out of your deadzone.
• Try and time your movements to when you’re not shooting steady shot (try to keep in range of the target and healer at all times). You’ll probably want to move all the time this happens to maximise your coverage.
• When the dog runs into a trap, don’t stand there thinking “Hmm, i’m lagging, my shot’s aren’t working” – which I have done a few times – quickly switch targets to the iceblock to break it.
• When targeted with “Face Rage”, feign death or deterrence. The dog will stick to you until someone hits it with a 30k+ crit. Again, more DPS down time as he is in your deadzone.

Once dead, you’ll move over to dog 2…

Phase 2: Kill Riplimb

Same as before but he won’t “Face Rage”. He will however move around a lot, quite annoyingly, so make sure you’ve kept your distance from everyone else (but in healer range). If Rapid Fire comes back up, save it for P3.

The key to Phase 2 is that Riplimb needs to die when Shannox is at 35% so be prepared to target switch.

Phase 3: Kill Shannox

He will be on 35% and you want to be close to the other DPS so you can benefit from some AoE healing but don’t get in too close as the tanks have a tendency to move the boss around and you don’t want deadzone issues.

You’ll want to use your CDs here but try and use them as soon as heroism ends (if you have it) as it’s likely to be used at the start of P3. I believe there is a greater benefit to not stack these two haste buffs.

As in the previous phases, don’t stand in stuff and it should be job done!

Loot

While Shannox is a hunter, he drops mainly plate, which makes me wonder what he’s up to. He drop a hunter helm, the Scalp of the Bandit Prince. It’s probably best to ignore the socket bonus on this and to reforge the mastery off but for most of us (myself included) it will be a nice upgrade.

He does drop 2 AGI daggers (2? WTF!) but we benefit more from an AGI 2 hander so it’s best to pass on this if someone else needs it. We’ll get our weapon some other time!

So far we’ve done this boss on both visits to Firelands and no helm for me yet 😦

Next up is Beth’tilac, so stay tuned!