Okay, I've done some reading on the Heroic Iron Reaver fight. We're really close on this one -- we got her to 5% on Thursday. Our biggest challenges are handling Artillery on the tanks, and the bombs during the aerial phase. Some thoughts:
Handling Artillery on the tanks
Refresher on the Artillery mechanic: it is a 15-second countdown timer which detonates when it reaches 0, inflicting lots of damage on the tank and raid-wide damage on the raid that is lower the further you are away from the tank. It requires a tank swap. The difficulty is that the second tank may be targeted before the first tank's Artillery has gone off, so the timing can be kind of tight. Here are some strategies to handle this (link to tank discussion on mmo-champion):
Strategy #1: Wait until there are about 4-6 seconds left on the current tank's Artillery before swapping. The debuff timer is kind of misleading. Here's what this looks like: Tank A gets artillery and runs out. While he's away Tank B gets Artillery and continues tanking the boss. When Tank A's Artillery goes off he runs back in and taunts the boss, which will be when Tank B's Artillery has about 5 seconds left on it, then Tank B runs out. It's tight timing, but some raids are doing it this way. Some notes:
* The returning tank can taunt at max taunt range and still have time to close the distance before the boss moves anywhere. Just communicate that to the co-tank so he can start running out.
* One suggestion is for each tank to run to the opposite sides of the room to drop their Artilleries due to the tendency of the boss to 'moonwalk' during barrage.
Strategy #2: As Shantow noted - three-tank it. A number of raids have had success with this solution, too.
Handling the Volatile Firebombs
Several strategies suggest splitting into two or more groups to handle the firebombs to get better coverage in the room. For example, split into two groups and have one group head for the north side of the room (the gate) while the other heads south (towards where we came in). Another suggestion is to split into four groups and each take a quadrant. We have toyed with this idea in the past but not done it due to the dynamism of the phase, but we may want to give this a try.
General Positioning
Two-stack strategy: I also found a guide which suggested having the whole raid stack loosely together in melee range on the opposite side of the boss from the tanks. People debuffed with Unstable Orb (fire DoT that damages the target and anyone within 8 yards) stand just *behind* the main group, 8 yards apart from each other. When the boss casts Barrage or Blitz, it will target someone in the group. The entire group then moves clockwise a few steps to avoid Barrage and Blitz. The tanks, meanwhile, execute their tank swap on their side of the boss. Main issue I see with this is healers losing range on the tanks.
Handling Artillery on the tanks
Refresher on the Artillery mechanic: it is a 15-second countdown timer which detonates when it reaches 0, inflicting lots of damage on the tank and raid-wide damage on the raid that is lower the further you are away from the tank. It requires a tank swap. The difficulty is that the second tank may be targeted before the first tank's Artillery has gone off, so the timing can be kind of tight. Here are some strategies to handle this (link to tank discussion on mmo-champion):
Strategy #1: Wait until there are about 4-6 seconds left on the current tank's Artillery before swapping. The debuff timer is kind of misleading. Here's what this looks like: Tank A gets artillery and runs out. While he's away Tank B gets Artillery and continues tanking the boss. When Tank A's Artillery goes off he runs back in and taunts the boss, which will be when Tank B's Artillery has about 5 seconds left on it, then Tank B runs out. It's tight timing, but some raids are doing it this way. Some notes:
* The returning tank can taunt at max taunt range and still have time to close the distance before the boss moves anywhere. Just communicate that to the co-tank so he can start running out.
* One suggestion is for each tank to run to the opposite sides of the room to drop their Artilleries due to the tendency of the boss to 'moonwalk' during barrage.
Strategy #2: As Shantow noted - three-tank it. A number of raids have had success with this solution, too.
Handling the Volatile Firebombs
Several strategies suggest splitting into two or more groups to handle the firebombs to get better coverage in the room. For example, split into two groups and have one group head for the north side of the room (the gate) while the other heads south (towards where we came in). Another suggestion is to split into four groups and each take a quadrant. We have toyed with this idea in the past but not done it due to the dynamism of the phase, but we may want to give this a try.
General Positioning
Two-stack strategy: I also found a guide which suggested having the whole raid stack loosely together in melee range on the opposite side of the boss from the tanks. People debuffed with Unstable Orb (fire DoT that damages the target and anyone within 8 yards) stand just *behind* the main group, 8 yards apart from each other. When the boss casts Barrage or Blitz, it will target someone in the group. The entire group then moves clockwise a few steps to avoid Barrage and Blitz. The tanks, meanwhile, execute their tank swap on their side of the boss. Main issue I see with this is healers losing range on the tanks.