Anubisath Defender

Overview

After killing Princess Huhuran you must kill 5 Anubisath Defenders before you can move on to the Twin Emperors. They have about 450,000 health each and are the most difficult 'trash' mobs in the game. While you fight these guys they will continuously summon either flying adds with 6,500 health that you kill or beetle adds with 38,000 health that can be offtanked, ice trapped, or feared. The adds cap after four are spawned, and despawn after about a minute, regardless of how much health they have.

These mobs have a large respawn timer of about 12 hours, and will also respawn after a 'soft reset' of the instance.

Abilities

When a Defender is pulled, it will flip a coin 4 times to determine what abilities it will use during the fight. What follows are the 4 sets of abilities the defender will choose from, choosing 1 ability from each set, for a total of 4 abilities. The Defender will reset its abilities if the raid wipes or the hunter pulling it feigns death. This means that immediate recognition of the abilities by the raid is needed in order to survive.

Set 1: Meteor or Plague

Meteor is a targeted AoE that will deal 15,000 fire damage players within the AoE. The damage is split between the players; 15 players will take 1000 damage each and 30 players will take 500 damage each. Fire resist can reduce the amount of damage taken from this spell. Meteor has a radius of 8 yds.

Plague is a random targeted nature based DoT. When a player is afflicted with plague he will damage nearby raid members in addition to himself. Plague cannot be cleansed. Nature resist can reduce the damage taken from this spell. Plague has a radius of 5 yds.

Set 2: Shadow Storm or Thunderclap

Shadow Storm is spam of AoE shadow bolts that do ~1000 damage. Shadow resist can reduce the amount of damage taken from this spell. This spell also has a dead zone; meaning the Shadow Bolts can be avoided if you stand close. Shadow Storm has a range of 25-45 yds.

Thunderclap is a short ranged nature based AoE that emanates around the Anubisath Defender. There is no attack speed debuff from this spell. Nature resist can reduce the amount of damage taken from this spell. Thunderclap has a range of 10 yds.

Set 3: Reflect Arcane & Fire or Reflect Shadow & Frost

Reflect Arcane & Fire will reflect arcane and fire spells back to the user, doing arcane or fire damage.

Reflect Shadow & Frost will reflect shadow and frost spells back to the user, doing shadow or frost damage.

Set 4: Enrage or Explode

Enrage is a standard enrage used near death (10% health), combat by adding extra healing for the MT.

Explode is only used near death (10% health), causing the Defender to explode, inflicting a lot of damage.

(Note: If a single hunter is using his pet to pull it is possible for the pet to die, the hunter to die, and the defender to re-roll his abilities in the split-second between the hunters death and a second member of the raid tapping the defender. To prevent this have a single designated player buff the hunter who pulls the defender the moment you are aware of the defenders abilities.)

Strategies

For Meteor & Shadow Storm everybody stands in the dead zone of the shadow bolts and divides the meteor damage between the entire raid.

For Plague & Thunderclap the rogues and warriors use the high nature resist gear they farmed to do Princess Huhuran and everybody else spreads out. It helps to have a designated area where the plagued run to, and have designated healers for plague victims.

For Meteor & Thunderclap have the whole raid, except the MT, bunch up 20yds away from the mob. The top one in aggrolist should not get meteor, so it shouldn't be a problem for the MT to have nobody next to him, unless he has problems holding aggro.

For Plague & Shadow Storm is tougher than the other combinations. Spread out as far as possible inside the Shadow Storm radius and leave some space where plagued players can move to. Anybody positioned wrong or reacting slow can do severe damage to the raid.

Generally, if a hunter pulls with pet, there is a high probability in case of Meteor, that the Defender will nuke the MT as soon as he is in aggro range. Therefore it helps to have 2-4 Warriors standing next to the MT upon pull.

In case of a plague it is possible to have the tank and the rogues far enough apart that the plagued rogues don't damage the MT.

If your guild has problems dealing with them, there is also the easy (read: lame) way to do it: Tell the whole raid to equip FR. Then have multiple hunters pet pulling the defender such that more than one pet is on the mob's aggrolist. In this case the defender should start using Meteor/Plague right away. If it is the plague, reset it, and try again.