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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsReady Check: Anub'arak
by Michael Gray 
Oct 23rd 2009 at 9:00AM
Here he is. The big cheese. The final countdown. The last boss (currently) available in raiding progression. Anub'arak is the final encounter in the Trial of the Crusader. If you feel a sense of deja-vu while getting ready to throw down with the big bug, don't worry -- you're not insane. (At least, you're not insane because you think you recognize the boss.)
Anub'arak was the final boss in Azjol'Nerub. And while the Trial of the Crusader version is certainly much higher octane, this raid version does share some basic similarities with the previous fight. They both have adds, some kind of burrowing action, and bugs. Lots of bugs.
Let's jump behind the cut and see how to get this done.
We're going to dive straight into how the fight works, and explain the pertinent abilities as we talk about each phase. This is because many of Anub'arak's abilities are background effects and extra mobs. It could be somewhat confusing to start talking about powers and spells without context for how they operate.
The Setup
When you've defeated the Twin Val'kyrs, there's going to be a short scripted event. (I'll try not to spoil the story, but it ends with you fighting Anub'arak.) After a bit of yelling back and forth, some argument, and a little taunting, the entire floor of the Coliseum drops out from beneath you. You and your raid will fall down to a subterannean lake. As your wet and bedraggled selves look up from the water, there's your new adversary: Anub'arak. Azjol'Nerub was just a setback.
Phase One
The first thing you'll notice are these blue, floating orbs up at the ceiling. These are called Frost Spheres. When your ranged DPS shoots them down, they'll place an area of Permafrost on the ground. The permafrost slows down your enemies, when your tank kites the enemies across the patches of frozen ground. But, additionally, Permafrost will keep things from burrowing up front under you -- or from burrowing down into the ground from above. That gets important here in a second.
You have two varieties of bugs rolling around the cave during phase one. One is basically called a Scarab, while the other is called a Burrower. The scarabs will start out neutral, and only get kvetchy if you stab them. The scarabs disappear as soon as you engage Anub'arak. Burrowers, however, will want a piece of you.
The OT will want to drag the burrowers on top of the permafrosted ground. This is so that you don't let him burrow under the ground.
Your main tank will keep Anub'arak parked in the front. Anub'arak doesn't do anything spectacular during phase one, so just keep ample heals flowing.
Phase Two
This is where Anub'arak starts doing stuff. About every minute and a half, Anub'arak will burrow beneath the ground. He will then pursue and chase down a random player (who is marked with a debuff called Pursued by Anub'arak.) Anub'arak is attempting to hit them with Impale, as well as having his Pursuing Spikes hit everyone for damage along the way. The chase will stop when Anub'arak's target kites the spikes through the permafrost.
But wait, that's not all.
Swarm Scarabs will start spawning. These guys don't individually hit for any noticeable amount, nor are they particularly difficult to kill. However, they also hit with Acid-Drenched Mandibles, which will keep stacking. If the recipient of the debuff gets too many stacks, they'll be virtually unhealable. The scarabs occasionally get stubborn and gain Determination, which makes them run faster. Kite them, and burn them down as soon as they appear.
But wait, there's one more thing!
The Burrowers will still be coming back this phase if you didn't kill them, and will still need to be controlled by your off-tanks. They're not nearly as much the focus during phase two, however. Make sure your ranged are keeping the Swarm Scarabs under control.
Phase Three
You enter phase three when Anub'arak's health hits 30%. This is when things get intense, so it's probably best to have all the other adds down from phase two first.
Anub'arak will continue to do the same kind of general attacks he has the whole time. He'll pound the main tank with Freezing Slash and Penetrating Cold. The real trick of the fight, however, is Leeching Swarm.
Leeching Swarm will take 10% of each person's health, and use it to heal Anub'arak. So, you want to keep everyone in your raid at a minimum health. Don't heal them to full, or Anub'arak will simply get that much bigger a heal. This is probably one of the most difficult fights for healers, because it asks them to go against their natural tendencies. Healers tend to heal, and now this fight is asking them to not heal at full bore. Still, once you get a hang of it, it's not so bad.
Once you've got this fight down, you've done it. You've mastered Trial of the Crusader. Now, we just have to look forward to Icecrown. Or Trial of the Grand Crusader, if you're into that sort of thing.
Ready Check is here to provide you all the information and discussion you need to bring your raiding to the next level. Check us out weekly to learn the strategies, bosses, and encounters that make end-game raiding so much fun.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
pchnts8 Oct 23rd 2009 11:04AM
Question about leaching swarm, (a) does it leach 10% of your maximum health or (b) 10% of your health at the time each dot is applied? For example, if you had 10k health, that would mean 1k dmg per tick. However, if its 10% of your health at the time the dot is applied, then the first tick would be 1k, the second 0.9k, the third 0.8k and so on (for you mathies, the nth tick woud be = [beginning health]*0.9^n). The distinction is important. I only know this fight from a range DPS' perspective and I can only imagine what a healer must think when the entire raid looks like its dying.
The strat of keeping everyone at half health to minimize Anub's life stealing would only make sense if (b) was the case. But I was thinking that if that were true, then the math would tell me that it would be a long time before this ability alone will kill you. Ticks at really low health become diminishingly small, almost negligible.
Ahhh but then there is a minimum it will leach, 250 hp. So health at 2500 appears to be an optimal point where it heals Anub for the least. And then we layer on Penetrating Cold for 6k frost every 3 sec.; have two healers blanket HOT the raid. I think a holy priest has an ability to heal more when health is under 50% and so do druids with a rejuv glyph, that should be enough to heal through that ability and maintain everyone's health at the limit, check with your healers to find out how much their spells tick for. Its a game of numbers, you don't want any more raid healing you need to control it; so no random wild growths or circle of healing or chain heals or vampiric embrace unless ppl are really low. If you are seeing health bars moving a lot, then things are out of control. Have your health meters reading numbers instead of %.
I think all I am saying when it comes to raid healing phase 3, is that even though it is recommended to keep everyone at 50%, for those willing to stretch it and kill him faster, there is a relatively large buffer between 50% and 2500 hp as long as you can control Penetrating Cold. I am assuming there is no other source of damage to the raid. The weird thing is that the healing demands go down the lower you maintain everyone's health. If the phase 3 is lasting too long or healers are going oom, knowing there is a buffer may help.
Not sure how the ability make-up changes in heroic mode, but maybe pushing health levels lower there could also help.
gurgle Oct 23rd 2009 11:54AM
Leeching swarm is based off current health, not maximum health. For normal mode your dps should be able to handle killing him with the raid sitting at half health, which also mitigates the problem of having to heal pen cold victims before the first tick. You're right that the ability alone will not kill anyone provided there is some raid healing -- healing stream totem, vamp embrace, JoL, LotP. The trick in heroic is keeping the raid at 1k health while having your healers get heals off on pen cold victims before the first tick of the dot.
hoviboy Oct 23rd 2009 12:51PM
Interesting read, but why, you know, why not give us some real tips, for those of us who are working on the Heroic mode (90% of raiders tbh considering the ease is normal mode) ?
eg about the p3 when you write "Still, once you get a hang of it, it's not so bad." Why not tell us HOW to get a hang of it?
Unless I'm misunderstood this is supposed to be a guide, still I didn't learn anything new. Well I guess the main issue is that the "ready check" articles generally come too late. Anyway this paper is far from useless and I appreciate you took time to write it.
sorry for the bad english.
Andrew Chen Oct 23rd 2009 1:14PM
this explanation is a little more than fail. fix the errors mentioned above.
Squeek Oct 23rd 2009 3:06PM
Every week I hope I don't have to post.
1) First and foremost, a warning. Do not stand near the 5-man dungeon entrance (aka the North end of the room) when the floor breaks. You will die. Bad design choice on Blizz's part as to where to put those underwater pillars. Also, if your raid is frisky and doesn't mind killing you with a sneaky Water Walking buff on you, pan your camera directly vertically so you're looking at the crown of the head of your character. This prevents water walking from acting as a ground in water. This way, even if you don't see the buff coming, you can prevent it from happening.
Phase 1: "Anub'arak doesn't do anything" phase.
As it turns out, he does a whole hell of a lot. The first, and most dangerous thing he does, is Freeze the main tank for 3 seconds. This is three seconds where anyone riding on the MT's threat will pull aggro if they aren't careful. This is three seconds where your 5-stack of threat-generating [whatever] may fall off. It's extremely important to know when this is coming to prevent it from being a huge issue. The next thing he does is put Penetrating Cold on your raid members (2 in 10, 5 in 25), which is just a generic DoT of frost damage.
Twenty seconds into the fight, the Burrower(s) spawn. It's one in 10-man and two on 25. These mobs act like Auriaya's kitties: when they're together, they increase their damage. In normal mode, it means keeping them split up in 25 and just burning it in 10.
Ideally, you will have your ranged DPS shoot down a frost sphere near Anub. The reason for this is that when the offtank picks up the burrower(s), the dps can do cleaves to hit both the adds and anub. However, don't drop the sphere directly on Anub. He is the only spider in this room that CAN burrow through permafrost.
One more burrower will spawn before he burrows for a total of two spawn times. This second add spawn is typically ignored to maximize DPS on Anub. Once he burrows, lay into the add(s) and finish them up.
Phase 2: "The scarabs occasionally get stubborn and gain Determination, which makes them run faster."
On normal mode, you should be shooting down frost spheres liberally throughout phase 1. They act as add-slowers and give your raid lots of options for where to move Anub. If he pursues you, stop what you're doing and get to an ice patch. If you can range DPS on the move, do so against some little scarabs.
I quoted the above passage because Determination is not just a speed increase. It is an enrage that makes them ENTIRELY IMMUNE to crowd control. You must tranq shot it or nuke them down ASAP. All of the normal scarabs are susceptible to roots, stuns, etc. If you have a rooting ability such as Frost Nova, be sure not to use it when someone is meleeing an add that isn't attacking them. I have to explain this to some of our off-raiders constantly: if an add can't move, it will choose its closest target rather than its aggro target to attack (unless the aggro target is also close enough to hit).
Anub will "pursue" someone. That someone needs to get on top of an ice patch. Ideally, even in normal mode, you maximize the time he's chasing you. He does build up speed as he chases you, but you have plenty of time to kite his spikes to the furthest ice patch away. If you kite him through an ice patch, though, he will break it and change targets.
When he spikes the ground as he chases someone, those spikes actually do damage. Don't be on top of them. Don't share ice patches with the target either, as you may take some splash damage.
Phase 2 is really all about kiting Anub underground for as long as possible (this is great practice for hard mode) and killing the scarabs before they touch anyone.
Anub'arak will pop back up and continue the fight from Phase 1. This continues until he reaches 30%. Ideally, you want to push him to 30% when there are no Burrowers up and you have just killed one, so no more will spawn for some time.
Phase 3: "Leeching Swarm will take 10% of each person's health"
This isn't wrong, but clarification was in order, which is why so many other comments were made about it. It takes 10% of your current health (20% in 25 if I'm not mistaken). This damage is in the Nature school, so Nature resistance will help. The heal is also affected by Mortal Strike/Aimed Shot, so use that.
Anub will continue using everything he used in phase 1, but there won't be any more burrowers. This is a burn phase. Healers, be careful to only keep the tank high on health. Nobody else should be too high on health. 30% is a decent number to aim for. If someone gets Penetrating Cold in this phase, you need to be on top of it and get extra heals on them during the duration.
Hard Mode notes:
1) Double Burrower spawns (two in 10, four in 25). You can't afford to be able to have a tank on each one, though. One tank for two. Keep them spread out as best you can on 25 as they buff each other if they're close to each other.
2) Only six frost spheres. There are numerous strategies about how to use these. The idea is to use the minimum number necessary to get him to phase 3 with one left. You can get away with only using two ice patches, or you could get away with only having one burrow phase. Either way, the idea is to drop one patch of ice next to him for offtanking the burrowers so cleaves hit both anub and the burrowers and the next patch of ice in the back of the room where you came in. When Anub is ten seconds to burrowing, the tank should drag him all the way to the back wall to maximize the time he spends underground heading for the back of the room. The first Pursue target runs to the back immediately and gets in that back ice patch. The other 9 guys finish off the Burrower, kill scarabs, and prepare to get into that front ice patch if they're the next target. One more ice patch may need to be dropped in the back of the room depending on how well you kite, and then drop one more at the front for the offtank to get burrowers tanked on again.
He builds up speed so much faster in hard mode, so you really have to be quick about getting to your ice patches, keeping in mind that you want them as spread out as possible. And whatever you do, don't kite him over an ice patch you don't want broken. For example, the main tank cannot drag Anub such that he will hit that first patch of permafrost up at the top of the room where you were hitting Burrowers.
3) Burrowers use the insta-gib ability "Shadow Strike". Shadow Strike is an 8-second cast ability that goes off faster based on the proximity of the spiders to each other (but can be lengthened again by Curse of Tongues-esque effects). This MUST be interrupted. Shockwave from the OT works great, but if you don't have a stunnable/aoe interruptable OT, you'll have to think about how your raid will interrupt. Either way, it's because of this and the buff they provide to each other that they need to die very quickly. In 10-man, you can single-target them down one at a time with cleaves thrown in to damage anub/the other one. In 25, it's all about AOE.
4) Scarabs are no longer tauntable. Not too big of a deal, but still annoying. They still enrage and become immune to cc when they do, but the normal ones are still cc-able. You really cannot let them hit you.
5) Leeching swarm takes twice as much health. Again, not too big of a deal. It prolongs phase 3, but it shouldn't be a problem for your healers to adjust.
Brittmari Oct 23rd 2009 3:36PM
Our Strategy for beating Anub'arak:
2 Tanks, 17 DPS, 6 Healers--2 healers assigned to each tank, 2 healers assigned to raid
Phase 1--Main Tank positions Anub so his butt is on the edge of a permafrost patch. Off Tank collects the 2 Burrowers and moves them to said permafrost patch. Ranged dps focus fires or aoe's the Burrowers, melee stays on boss with incidental aoe (cleave, swipe, fan of knives, etc) helping out with the adds. Once the adds are down, all dps switches to Anub'arak.
2nd set of adds spawns, off tank picks them up and tanks them on a permafrost patch away from the boss. This is important to avoid Anub immediately targeting a melee after he burrows, impaling thus destroying the permafrost patch and allowing a burrower to burrow. DPS ignores 2nd set of adds and keeps on the boss.
Phase 2--Once Anub burrows, all melee go to kill the remaining Burrowers, ranged spreads out to kill Swarm Scarabs. Army of the Dead works well for us here, as long as you pop it early enough so all the zombies are dead by the time Anub re-emerges (making your main tank really, really mad). Tranq shot or Anaesthetic poison on the Scarabs that enrage. Anyone targeted for pursuit should kite Anub'arak away from where the Burrowers are being tanked and should move to a position where there is a permafrost patch between the pursuer and the pursued.
Repeat phase 1 when Anub re-emerges, ranged cleaning up any remaining Scarabs before attacking new burrowers.
Eventually, you will get the boss to 31-40% health. If it looks like you can get Anub to phase 3 before the second set of burrowers spawns, go ahead and Bloodlust now and have all dps focus fire the Boss. If not, go ahead and kill the first set of adds, then bloodlust and off tank the 2 new burrowers.
Phase 3--Off tank any remaining burrowers. At this point, you don't need to tank them on permafrost--if they burrow now, it will just make healing the off tank easier. Everyone else dps the boss. Healers want to keep the raid between 2500 and 5000 health if possible, except for the main tank and off tank who need to be kept topped off. Anything less than 2500 is pointless, since the minimum tick for Leeching Swarm is 250. Disc priest is great here for shielding anyone who gets Penetrating Cold during phase 3, giving the other healers enough time to heal through it. Holy Nova works well too if you separate your priests into different raid groups. We find it best to assign 1 healer to each group and the extra healer on the main tank. Assign the off tank to the group with your best healer, he should be able to keep the off tank topped off while keeping the rest of his group alive.
Phase 4--Collect loot
Skarn Oct 24th 2009 4:19AM
One of the more interesting ideas I had about this fight that my raid now uses is to LET the burrowers submerge. This is mostly of use during the final 30%, but might be useful earlier on. The trick is that once you hit 30%, you don't NEED to kill any more burrowers. If you can kill them pretty quickly go ahead, or just ignore them. Pull them off the frost and LET them go under. Underground they will not be doing any damage. Now you don't have to heal the off-tank OR waste DPS on the burrowers. They stay under a fairly long time, so you should be add-free for most of the final 30%. They might come back up near Anub's demise, but without the need to kill any remaining adds, that final 30% will go all the faster.
Though I've not done hard mode yet, I think this is of particular help during hard mode. In phase 3 of hard mode, the burrowers STILL spawn. The longer that last phase lasts, the more burrowers you get, without the underground phase to catch up. Which leaves 2 options: Kill Anub before too many burrower spawn or keep switching to kill burrowers. Allowing the burrowers to submerge in phase 3 makes "kill him fast" a much more valid option.
Of course, it is up to your raid how you'd like to implement this. If you kill the burrowers extremely quickly, then there is no need to do this. But if you do THAT, then you've probably already cleared Trial of the Grand Crusader and don't need any help from me. :)
Cesar Nov 30th 2009 2:04PM
For those of you having trouble with healers on 3rd phase (heroic), on the penetrating colds
we managed to create a simulator for it
http://apps.facebook.com/penetratingcold/
Very simple, uses some addons (your healers probably have and use)
Grid, GridStatusRaidIcon and GridPenetratingCold.
Hope you like it, and helps you out!