The Stone Guard

[Guest Pitipoanca]

Good tactics ICY-VEINS ! I followed all your guide in DS and everything worked perfect. But last night i followed you taunts tips, but tanks have found them very hard to execute. Based on your guide i've searched a way to do this without so many taunts. Made a video to explain my pov. Sorry for video quality, hope you will get the ideea . Waiting some feedback from you.

http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeRgm_HuPc8

[Clisis 5]

Here is a question i havent yet been able to see answered -

Can one Ice block or BoP out of jasper chains?

Unfortunly no, my officer in my guild is a mage and he tried multiple times in our 25 man group

[Clisis 5]

What I can say about the chain's is this. STACKING with buddy's for the whole fight works! our dps as a group was little off the enrage timer at 8 and 1/2 minutes with our best attempt being at 2.5% left or 5 Mill so everyone was about 200k damage off which sucks lol. We have it next week!

Edited October 5, 2012 by Clisis

[Krazyito 521]

We killed him on 10 man this week using a very unorthodox strategy. We had Jasper, Jade, and Amastyst. Here's our log: http://www.worldoflo.../?s=5106&e=5497

We tried the traditional strategy and found that our tanks (I'm the bear and main tank, and a Paladin OT) had alot of problems executing it, but that even when we did everything right we could still reliably expect the healer's mana to give out at 60%.

The strategy we used had all 3 dogs on one tank. I'd start out pulling 2 and then at 30% I'd trade one with the other tank. Then when the first doggy overloaded I taunted the doggy on the off tank, thus giving one dog at ~66 energy, one at ~33 energy, and one at 0. We bloodlusted, and I tanked all three the rest of the fight (until I died at 2% and the pally picked them up for the last 20 seconds).

The fight is quite a bit different using this strategy. You will get 'bad' overloads that will do a crap ton of damage to the raid, although you will never have 2 bad overloads in a row. When these happen you need to have the raid topped off before they go out, and then heal the raid back up right after. However, only one tank is taking damage from rend. Rend is such a huge amount of damage that your total damage taken is not actually higher with this strategy, it's just spikier and spread out to the raid more. Raid healing should be more mana efficient, and dps will of course be higher on three mobs than on two.

This strategy would never work on 10 man heroic, and I don't think it would work on 25 man, but on 10 man normal we found it far superior.

Can I see your armory? I'm surprised you were able to survive whit glyph of FR and not using lacerate all fight >.<. I was spamming FR when I was only tanking one..

[Guest Griphus]

Can I see your armory? I'm surprised you were able to survive whit glyph of FR and not using lacerate all fight >.<. I was spamming FR when I was only tanking one..

Search for Ronada on US Bloodhoof (I'm his guild leader and was coming here to post about our crazy strat as well).

[Vlad 411]

I am taking all suggestions of improving the strategy for taunting the guardians into account. But currently, I am a bit stumped as to how the guide could be made more clear or easier to understand in this regard.

I'll let you know if I can come up with something. And of course, your suggestions are more than welcome.

Thank you, everyone who contributes :)

[Peelyon 416]

Apologies for what may be a simple question, but can the same guardian overload twice in a row??

[Guest Sid]

Hello Everyone,

Our tanks were having a lot of problem tanking this so I had to carefully analyse the fight and look at the taunting scenarios.

Here is how it goes.

At any given time two things can happen.

One of the dogs( u will know which before it happens -(except on the first one ) starts to petrify or the dog with the OT petrifies.

IF the dog with the OT starts to petrify - he taunts the dog that didnt cast the last overload( as the dog just overloaded has nearly zero enrgy) from the MT. IF the dog with MT petrifies the OT does nothing .

I hope it makes it bit simpler for tanks

[Clisis 5]

Or this could make it as simple as possable. There is a default Blizz UI frame for these dog's. Whatever one if peterfied make sure it goes to the lowest energy one. Stay together for chains. Stay out of mines and pools GG you win loot.

[Vlad 411]

Apologies for what may be a simple question, but can the same guardian overload twice in a row??

I mention in the guide that this cannot happen, but I assume you are asking for independent confirmation. Well, it's not really independent if it's coming from me, but I'll re-state that I haven't seen this happen ever. If someone else has (and are sure of it), feel free to post :)

Hello Everyone,

Our tanks were having a lot of problem tanking this so I had to carefully analyse the fight and look at the taunting scenarios.

Here is how it goes.

At any given time two things can happen.

One of the dogs( u will know which before it happens -(except on the first one ) starts to petrify or the dog with the OT petrifies.

IF the dog with the OT starts to petrify - he taunts the dog that didnt cast the last overload( as the dog just overloaded has nearly zero enrgy) from the MT. IF the dog with MT petrifies the OT does nothing .

I hope it makes it bit simpler for tanks

Why would you not want to get the guardian that just overloaded (and has lowest energy) next to the one that is casting petrification?

Or this could make it as simple as possable. There is a default Blizz UI frame for these dog's. Whatever one if peterfied make sure it goes to the lowest energy one. Stay together for chains. Stay out of mines and pools GG you win loot.

The principle for managing the energy of Guardians optimally can best be summarised as always have the petrifying Guardian next to the Guardian with the lowest amount of energy.

The best strategy is to rotate the Guardians, always moving the petrifying Guardian next to the lowest non-petrifying Guardian. The ideal time to move the Guardians is every 25 energy in 25-man, and every 50 energy in 10-man and LFR.

This is what is currently said in the guide (including the bolded part). I think this is quite clear.

I'm not trying to be defensive, I really am looking for ways to improve the wording or the strategy. Thanks for all the comments :)

[Guest Smazenka]

Hi we tried wednesday 1st 25 men run, not very sucessfully (best 55 percent) , but i found something that is not mentioned in guide or not very clear, Statues on solid state not only doesnt gain energy they also lose some, At least at 25 normal. Anyway it doesnt matter very much. Thx for excelent guide. And wish us luck today at night

[Guest Ronada]

Can I see your armory? I'm surprised you were able to survive whit glyph of FR and not using lacerate all fight >.<. I was spamming FR when I was only tanking one..

Here's my armory, although my gear has changed over the past few days. http://us.battle.net...f/Ronada/simple

Once I had three dogs on me, I think it's more effective to swipe thrash swipe mangle than to lascerate. I haven't done the exact math, but I ranked 2nd in the world on wow-logs for guardian druid dps (the extra vengeance helped too), and the fight was in every way a dps race. It does generate less rage though. I was using Savage defense much more often than Frenzied Regeneration, and perhaps that was a mistake, as Rend isn't dodgeable as was such a large chunk of my damage. I'll remember that for next time.

[Krazyito 521]

Hi we tried wednesday 1st 25 men run, not very sucessfully (best 55 percent) , but i found something that is not mentioned in guide or not very clear, Statues on solid state not only doesnt gain energy they also lose some, At least at 25 normal. Anyway it doesnt matter very much. Thx for excelent guide. And wish us luck today at night

I can confirm this for 25 man at least as well

Once I had three dogs on me, I think it's more effective to swipe thrash swipe mangle than to lascerate.

well you didn't lacerate the entire fight o.O

Edited October 7, 2012 by krazyito65

[Peelyon 416]

Cheers Vlad for your answers. I'm loving all the discussions and such. I think the fact that this boss is causing so much debate is a good thing. Really looking forward to our raid tomorrow and taking a lot of this onboard!

[Vlad 411]

I've added the mention that energy decays slowly when Solid Stone is up.

And you are welcome, Peelyon. Even though this thread does not have very many views, compared to the guide, I do hope that people who need to dig deeper into alternative strategies and so on can check the discussion.

[Kaluun 1]

Just to say I thought the strategy was very clear. We had a quick go at it on Wednesday, when people weren't really geared up yet, and got the strategy pretty much sorted out after a few tries. We couldn't really get near a kill due to gear not being where it would have needed to be, but never expected otherwise. The shards certainly did a whole lot of damage; sounds like our combination (not having the chains) is perhaps the hardest one to deal with?

One question: I've read mention a few times of having a hunter use deterrence to detonate a few of the traps, which is a strategy we'll probably try tonight - the room certainly does get filled up with pools and traps very quickly otherwise! If there is a good strategy on dealing with the traps, it may be worth adding to the guide, apart from that the guide seems to be spot on.

[Peelyon 416]

Kalunn what we did on Wednesday (going back in tonight) was just use hunters deterrance on non cobalt protection, and then just used people with every man for himself if they had cobalt protection. Helps clean the room up loads!

[Krazyito 521]

Kalunn what we did on Wednesday (going back in tonight) was just use hunters deterrance on non cobalt protection, and then just used people with every man for himself if they had cobalt protection. Helps clean the room up loads!

Shadow priest dispersion, any druid using stampeding roar (after he gets rooted), etc

[Zagam 1,982]

A tip for those without these Cobalt Traps I'm looking forward to next week...

For Jade, Jasper, and Amaethyst, have your MT and whole raid except OT stack on the two bosses (petrifying one + lowest energy one) and kite slowly around the room. Move only fast enough to not have people standing in the Amaethyst Pools. This completely erases the chains damage and mitigates a large portion of the fight. Upon doing this, we one shot it with relative ease. However, your caster DPS will take a large hit (I was lowest at 42k, and I haven't done 42k on anything since Firelands) because moving and casting is not their strong point. As long as your tanks swap appropriately, by the time your raid kites back to the original position, those pools will have dissipated (80 second duration).

[Peelyon 416]

Finally got a kill last night, our tanks were struggling last Wednesday to understand the in's and outs of the strategy (they seemed to over think the encounter) we managed to get a realtively smooth fight.

However we moved from an average raid ilvl of about 450-455 to around a 460 for last night as well which obviously made things a lot easier. For those that are still progressing on this the main thing is not to panic. "Bad" overloads are survivable as long as you pop personal and healing cooldowns, so dont panic and it will just click after a while.

Looking forward to trying the Jasper chains if they are on EU side next week!

[Kaluun 1]

Hi all,

We didn't manage to get a kill on Monday - I think part of the trouble was that one of our healers was still undergeared. Hunter using deterrence for the traps certainly helped a lot. We got them down to about 20% on our best try though, so I'm confident they will finally fall tonight!

For those who have done this fight already, do you do something as tanks to try and minimize the time that three guardians are active while taunting, such as counting down to the taunt so that it happens simulataneously? It seemed that, when it was necessary to taunt fairly often, sometimes too much energy would be built up to avoid an unprotected overload, which would lead to a wipe every single time. This was a particular issue when the boss that started out on me (as off-tank) was the one that started petrifying, because an additional swap would be necessary before the first overload. Although perhaps, reading some of the comments, we shouldn't be so perfectionist as to try and prevent *every single* "bad" overload during the fight, but rather focus on everyone being prepared to deal with it using cooldowns so we survive it when it happens?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to what I hope will be a somewhat more forgiving combination of dogs tonight!

Thanks for all the help, in any case!

[Peelyon 416]

Kaluun we found that a good start was really important. If you waste energy early on, or you end up with a number of guardians on similar energy levels it can really make the fight awkward later on.

The main thing is not to panic. Just continually keep raid chat going telling the tanks which guardian is petrifying and which has the least energy. It sounds really simple (and when you get the hang of it it really is) but getting your head around it may prove a little harder when you are worried about everything else.

To help our tanks I ensure noone dps'd any guardians until the first taunt was made and the guardians were in the right spots. This meant the tanks didnt need to worry about aggro early.

Start the fight well and youll have it down in no time!

Edited October 10, 2012 by Peelyon

[Krazyito 521]

This is the only fight I have to tank in my 25 man raid because it requires 3 tanks. Our 3 tanks are a Paladin (main), Warrior (Main/off), Druid (Me, Off spec) Here is my basic understanding I will put it into terms of only 3 guardians since most people here run 10 mans.

Have the main tank (Tank A) taunt and tank 2 of the guardians (preferably 2 that are close by each other) and the off tank (tank B) taunt the single one. Wait for the petrification.

1) If one of the Tank A's guardians is casting it, wait till about 20-30 energy and SWAP the non casting one with Tank B.

2) If Tank B;s guardian is casting, then immediately do a SWAP, it does not matter which one Tank B taunts off Tank A. Now at this point you have one at higher energy then the one is casting, so at about 20-30~ energy (or an amount HIGHER then Tank B's current guardian) on the higher Tank A guardian, just do another swap with Tank B.

The very first one or two overloads is the trickiest because you don't know which one is going to be first and an undesired one will start with more energy. Just remember, if Tank A has a guardian that is HIGHER then the petrification guardian, do a swap when the Tank B's guardian has LOWER energy then the undesired guardian.

Lets say, in the middle of the fight, Tank B's guardian begins to cast. Tank B should then taunt the HIGHER energy guardian off of Tank A, while Tank A taunts Tank B's guardian. If both of Tank's guardians have higher energy then the current casting one then wait for the casting guardian to have more energy then Tank B's guardian and then do another swap.

You need to have the mind set of "I want all the guardians energy to be relativity low or about the same EXCEPT for the current casting one." With practice you can juggle the energy bars around.

Edited October 10, 2012 by krazyito65

[Guest Matt]

Hi

Your guide's tooltips say: "Cobalt Petrification: ...reducing the Arcane damage they take by 90%"

and "Cobalt Mine: ...inflicting 95,000 Frost damage"

Then your strategy section (6.3.2) says "The idea(sic) time to purposefully detonate Cobalt Mines is during Cobalt Petrification, since the 90% damage reduction renders them practically harmless".

Can you please clarify how Arcane damage reduction renders Frost damage harmless in this instance

[Sneakyferret 12]

My group does not start til this coming Tuesday, but i did end up getting picked up by another guilds run earlier. We have yet to clear the boss but progression on its hp is going nicely. Definitely bad if a dps dies too early in the fight, because of that we could not beat the enrage timer when we had everything going nearly perfect.

Wished us bear tanks had a active mitigation for this fight tho, instead of having to rely on frenzied regeneration.

Hi

Your guide's tooltips say: "Cobalt Petrification: ...reducing the Arcane damage they take by 90%"

and "Cobalt Mine: ...inflicting 95,000 Frost damage"

Then your strategy section (6.3.2) says "The idea(sic) time to purposefully detonate Cobalt Mines is during Cobalt Petrification, since the 90% damage reduction renders them practically harmless".

Can you please clarify how Arcane damage reduction renders Frost damage harmless in this instance

The way it works is, the guardian that is casting petrification only deals 10% of its total damage with all its skills and attacks, regardless of elemental type.

Edited October 11, 2012 by Sneakyferret