The Light and How to Swing It: That burning sensation while first tanking Firelands

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Here it is, the first week of the new patch, and we brave heroes have begun to roam the sulphuric wastelands that make up Ragnaros' domain. We need to wade through a sea of endless trash, smash down roaming Molten Lords, and begin to topple the Firelord's lieutenants one by one.

In today's post, I want to go over my initial impressions of the new raid -- specifically, what the trash is like, an in-depth look at how my group dealt with our first boss, and a bunch of other myriad little things I noticed over the overpowering stench of burning raider corpses. I'll also teach you the fun new game that's all the rage: "Spin the DPS."

Burning trash

The first thing you'll see when entering the Firelands are the endless legions of trash assembled before you. While this seems overly daunting, as long as you don't overly pull, the trash is pretty much a joke. Most of the larger packs are more akin to Wrath-style AOE-fests, rather than the opening trash of Bastion of Twilight. Moreover, thanks to the change to crowd control abilities not aggroing mobs, you can really whittle down the pack before you go after them.

But, really, CC is not particularly required. When I tell you it's an AOE-fest, believe me; keep a good polish on those Inquisition buttons.

There are a very varied number of trash mobs, each with interesting abilities. For example, the Molten Surgers require you to keep the raid spread out. Surgers do damage to the area they charge into (not split; everyone takes the same amount of damage), so if the raid is stacked up, that's a huge amount of damage going out, and healers will get overwhelmed.

Then there are the Molten Lords, which have a stomp with a knockback that you can jump to avoid (but otherwise, you'll see a chunk of your raid taking a tumble backwards). Make sure not to tank these big lugs anywhere near the edge.

You'll see packs of Flamewalkers channeling a fire elemental in a lava pit. You want to pull the melee mobs standing with the summoners (Subjugators, I believe), and as the add's life trickles away, he'll remove the shields protecting the summoners. Have DPS switch to those and burn each as they become available. Otherwise, the fire elemental will be fully charged after a period of time and could likely wipe your raid with AOE.

Spin the DPS

My very favorite adds are the Turtles that you'll see in packs of three in several spots -- a Patriarch, a Matriarch, and a baby turtle. The Patriarch puts up a damage reduction shield and breathes (so face away from raid), while the Matriarch and baby will do a "Shell Spin" that'll knock back anyone that they touch. Therefore, you need to hit them with some ranged attacks and kite them around a bit. Be sure to play Spin the DPS and pick off any ranged players in the back of the group who aren't watching the turtle's position.

Avoid healers, or you'll pay for that on Shannox!

Lastly, keep in mind that there are mobs padding every which way at varying speeds, so if you're not very careful, you'll have a pair of Molten Surgers bursting into your line of fire with little notice.

Summoning the hunter

While killing trash, you'll get a series of warnings about a horn in the distance. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, Shannox will come forth and begin padding a large circle around the central area of the Firelands.

When preparing for the fight, my guild cleared out a large area south of the westward stretch of the road where we could deal with Shannox. Be sure to gain a familiarity with the terrain -- and specifically distances, because they will come heavily into play during the encounter.

Up until launch day, the assumption with Shannox was that you would use a tank swap to drop stacks. However -- surprise! -- it turns out Blizzard added taunt immunity to the very last testing cycle. This requires a far different tactic.

Keep 'em separated

One tank goes on Shannox, and one goes on Riplimb. The second dog, Rageface, does not have a threat table. In my raid group, the Shannox tank (me) went just south of the road, while the Riplimb tank took his quarry south by the hills, keeping the utmost care to be around 45 yards or so away. The reason for this is if Shannox and Riplimb are more than 60 yards apart, they gain the Separation Anxiety debuff and will likely one-shot your tanks.

But why do you want to separate them so much? Shannox has an ability where he will hurl his spear over to near where Riplimb is. Riplimb will then go fetch the stick and bring it back to Shannox. The goal here is to increase the time it takes Riplimb to bring the spear to Shannox and then to get back to his tank. The longer it takes, the better.

The reason you want to elongate the amount of time the fetching takes is because both Shannox and Riplimb will be stacking a debuff, Jagged Tear, on your tanks that increases in damage with each subsequent stack. If you handle the spear tosses correctly, you shouldn't ever end up with more than three stacks.

Moreover, to help you elongate the fetch, make sure to save slows and traps for when Riplimb is on his mission. Whenever he is slowed or trapped, he gains an immunity to each for a period of time thanks to Dogged Determination and Wary. You'll want to keep those buffs off him so you can get him to step on a Crystal Trap or eat some slows while your dog tank gets their stacks to fall off.

Speaking of traps, if you're the Shannox tank, watch out for the Immolation Traps that will steadily be dropped at your feet. You'll often have to kite back and forth and weave around them.

The heat of battle

The way we handled the flow of the fight was to burn down Rageface immediately. While this results in a 30% attack speed increase for Shannox and Riplimb, your healers will be grateful for the breather in not having to constantly pour emergency heals into whichever unlucky soul is getting his face raged off at the moment. The damage increase by the boss/dog is very manageable.

Part of how to manage the damage is, of course, intelligent cooldown usage. Your biggest threat is going to be the Arcing Slash (which does 125% weapon damage), so you want to time your cooldowns to mitigate those hits.

I personally wasn't able to completely nail down the timer on the Slash, though I know with a certainty that he will immediately slash once Riplimb brings him his spear. Therefore, be sure to pop Holy Shield and another cooldown (I also used Word of Glory here) when the dog is about to hand off the baton. You can't dodge or block the Slash, from the looks of it, so the goal should be a cooldown and WoG to smooth it out, followed by Holy Shield on of top that to brace yourself against the followup melee attack.

I also made a point of popping Guardian of Ancient Kings when Rageface first died, to smooth out the transition to an additional 30% attack speed for the healers. A major spike always seemed to occur there. It's a long fight, you'll have several opportunities to use GAnK as it continues. You definitely want to have it up for phase 2, though.

In any case, once Rageface is down, your DPS will start bringing Shannox and Riplimb down in tandem. Keep dropping your stacks and mitigating damage, and be prepared for the moment when Riplimb keels over. That's when the damage really ramps up. And then, of course, when you push Shannox past 30%, you enter hell mode.

Phase 2: Hell mode

Entering phase 2, if on Shannox, you need to coordinate with the DPS to let your stacks fall off before Riplimb is killed. You really do not want to head into phase 2 with any stacks on; that's a recipe for disaster.

Once phase 2 starts, the Riplimb tank is basically off the hook, and the Shannox tank kicks it into overgear. Because there's no taunting, you need to do your utmost to survive or else it's surely a wipe. Continue to kite out of Immolation Traps, like before, and prepare yourself to sidestep from the rings of flame caused by Shannox striking the ground with his spear (with Riplimb dead, he'll just jam it into the ground).

As the last percents trickle down, your damage intake will be going through the roof, with Jagged Tear piling up and no way to clear it. Save GAnK for that last 10%, when your healers are leaking sweat onto their keyboards. Make good use of Holy Shield, and pour all your cooldowns (and available external cooldowns) and Holy Power into keeping yourself alive. Eventually -- as they all do in good time -- Shannox will keel over dead and cough up his purples.

The Light and How to Swing It tries to help paladins cope with the dark times brought by Cataclysm. Check out our protection 101 guide and our suggestions for protection paladin addons.