Bit of raiding nostalgia here. I remember one of our “challenges” in downing M’uru in Sunwell prior to the nerf was not losing melee to threat pulls on the adds. Two melee camps were used in our strat. One at the Near Side Door (the one used to enter the boss’ room) and another at the Far Side Door (entrance to the path to Kil’Jaeden).
You had to walk a fine line to opening up early enough to have all waves dead prior to transition to the “burn phase,” and not starting so early that you ended up in a puddle on the floor.
Below is an excerpt from my old guild’s strategy thread on M’uru. The dialogue is courtesy of one of our bear tanks.
“There seems to be misunderstanding in the actual differences between near side tanking and far side.
Having done both on numerous attempts, allow me to clarify and offer suggestions.
On Far Side Door (FSD), there is about a yards worth of play room from the time they come to the door to the time their aggro tables kick in. This allows the tank to run way up infront of his dps group and start building threat. By the time they are in position, mangles and several swipes have been applied with a couple of Mauls thrown in for good measure. It also allows time to compensate for any misses/dodges/parries the adds may do. The way they stagger in is no issue either on FSD because of this play room you get. So, dps can really lay into it without much issue.
FSD tanking is about 5x easier to tank than Near Door (ND).
Now, ND on the other hand. There is little to no play room. The tank cannot stand further back, as I’ve seen it suggested quite a few times now. From the exact moment they cross that purple door, they have a aggro table. If the tank does not get (at minimum) proximity aggro, they will bolt after a healer, even with the frost traps.
Now, another thing that some don’t seem to understand. The near door adds also stagger in. Meaning.. You will see 1 zerker and a mage come through. The third add (usually the 2nd zerker) is behind the purple door.
Here’s what happens with that. Us bears have one aoe threat move, that’s Swipe, it hits 3 targets only. As said before, soon as the first two adds come through the door, the bear has to and must get aggro on them. There is no compromise here. So, we swipe and it hits the zerker and mage, BUT that third add is behind the door, and guess what.. it doesn’t get hit with swipe because it’s LoS. So, we got the first two tagged and now waiting for the 1.5 second GCD to recover. During this time is when the 3rd add comes through. If we aren’t up by that door, we will not get proximity aggro on it. It will run and tear someone a new ass. Usually as long as it turns to us first, that’s enough time for the GCD and we can then mangle/maul/swipe it and then we can start our threat build up.
Now during this, if you notice we’ve done about a swipe or 2 worth of threat, just to pick them up. Contrast this with the far door and hopefully you can see how this can be a bit different to dps. Alternatively we can mangle the first zerker, hope the mage doesn’t run off (but it does), and then swipe the 2nd zerker when it comes in, and give time to dps the first one through the door. BUT!! there’s another little annoyance with near door. And that is adds that get stuck behind the wall. And this my friends is a ripe ol’ pain in the ass for everyone. It’s usually the mage that does this and what’s fantastic about it, the mage will begin it’s casting of 8k fireballs at random people. So, the bear has to move about and try to get it unstuck while keeping the zerkers in front as to not get plowed in the butt, as it hurts.
Another thing that makes it different is the visual perception of how much threat time has been built on near and far doors. Far door you see that bear working into those adds like there’s no tomorrow, and you see the bear walking back with them and finally stop when he has them in position. This is a visual queue to start dps, in this time a few seconds have passed and probably not noticed and yet the adds get down in time. Near door doesn’t have this, you must force yourself to wait a few seconds before tearing into the adds. You have the time to wait about 6 seconds, which is about 4GCDs for the bear, which is probably a mangle, 2swipes and a maul. And still kill the adds in plenty of time.
So, this all sounds like “woah is me the poor door tank”, but in fact it’s not. There are things that can be done to work around this. First you have to be smart about your dps, you just have to. You cannot under any circumstances begin your dps just when you see them pop through that door. That’s not smart as you will most likely die. I’ve seen it time and again where dps thinks that one swipe and a mangle is enough aggro to hold it, and hate to tell you, but it’s not. You just have to give the tank a little time, not asking for 30 seconds or anything since it is a dps race. But you can start with white attacks, and give a quick glace at omen to see how much room you got. I know it’s possible to do this as I’ve tanked and dps’d the fight. After a mangle and 2 swipes (and omen showing more than 3k threat, we get there fast) you can start opening up a little. But realize near door is going to be fragile with the aggro because of it’s shortcomings.
Now, suggestions on this. Since near door aggro control is finicky, I would suggest putting the high threat dpser’s over on far door. Possibly the whirlwinding dps warrior, he would have much more threat leeway over on that side. Mostly, if they do pull aggro, they don’t really have evasion, fd, iceblock, and all those cool toys that other classes get to fix the mistake. This would probably make for a happier warrior.
Us bears could also delay the marking of the add to kill until we feel it’s safe to dps as we’re the only ones that know that a mangle has been dodged, a maul has been parried and all we got on it is a swipe. Believe me, we got the best gear we can use for that fight and it has it’s expertise, but rng is rng and these things happen.
Another thing, myself as dps when it’s allowed (though I know you’d rather have a rogue or war over a cat), would probably be better on near door. N and I had a bash rotation goings on the zerkers which kept the spike damage down with 5second stuns on a 1min CD. Also, if a mob gets loose, I can go bear taunt it back to near door tank keeping him from turning his back on the others. Usually I don’t take too much damage in the process, since I’m sporting about 64%ish dodge in cat gear. Ideally this shouldn’t be needed, but we all know how blizz loves the RNG system.
So, the TLDR version. Near Door = hard tanking which requires smart dps control. Don’t AoE off the bat when they come through the purple curtain. Start with single attack on marked target. When it’s around 70%ish or so, you can open up the blade furys, whirldwinds, sweeping strikes and what-have-you. Omen is your friend, and will give you accurate threat readings on marked targets. Put it in a place you can view it easily and quickly.
As far as the “differences” between M and N, there isn’t. Both got their jobs down and working with what they got. What dps has to understand is why far door has less threat problems than near, understand exactly what those differences between the sides are, and how to work within those confines while still getting the job done. Things like moving people around to far and near doors could possibly alleviate some of these issues.
Bit long, but this just had to be explained from one of your friendly neighborhood bears.”
I miss raiding a lot these days. We’ve now been on break since mid-May, and I have a feeling grouping back up for Firelands is going to be less than smooth.
5 of the people in my current 10 man team were on the Sunwell raid team which is probably what led to the nostalgia moment. 🙂
It’s definitely fun to remember the old times with great teams!
RogueRaider's Adventures in Warcraft 