Talk:Shirrak the Dead Watcher

Shirrak ? WTF ? The French are never gonna let this boss rest in peace oO-- K )  (talk) 04:12, 1 November 2006 (EST)

Channeled Spells
I found out just today, that in fact arcane missiles, had increased cast time resulting in less missiles overall. So it's safe to say that the debuff affects channeled spells as well. --User:Slayman 23:33, 08 June 2007 (CEST)

cast time debuff
Does his cast time debuff take effect before or after talents are applied to shorten casting time? That is, with the .5 second reduction on greater heal that a priest can get from the holy tree, does a greater heal take 7.5 seconds or 8.5 seconds to cast with a full 200% debuff?

Oh well, I'm probably fighting him for the first time tonight, I guess I'll find out myself... --Scrotch 18:34, 31 January 2007 (EST)

Tanking Strategy
Hi I didn't want to add this to the article because I didn't know your policy on new edits, but we just ran this instance the other day and found that having a rogue tank him works quite well. We have all DPS stand facing his boss, the rogue at the top of the stairs, and the healer at the bottom of the stairs out of range. I was the healer and I had no more then two debuffs on me and no deaths. Another alternative is to have a warlock drain life tank it (but that should only be used as an alternative). Hope that helps! ~Jarianna (Mal'Ganis)

Heroic Shirrak

 * Got a couple of questions about taking on Shirrak in Heroic mode (also applies to normal as well).

First of all, does anybody really know just how exactly his bite debuff works? I can tell it's a melee range PBAE DoT that ticks for ~650 and can stack. Standard procedure for melee DPS is to go in until you get it stacked to 2 and then get out, wait for it to fade. However, from time to time he pulls people in before the debuff has faded and reapplies it, making it into a potentially fatal 3 stacks (~1800/3s). Also, sometimes he applies bite just once every ten seconds or so, or even lets it fade naturally before reapplying. However, sometimes he decides to ramp it up and applies two or even three stacks within 10 seconds, and it's hard to keep up even a ~15000HP tank with the -cast time aura factored in with a ~3000/3s DoT ticking away.

Moreover, one of my friends plays a rogue and he's expressed incredible frustration with this encounter, to the point that he feels he's a burden to me (healer) and the tank because he's basically a mana sponge who can't even DPS full out because of the debuff stacking fatally. Quite frankly, I can't tell him he's not a liability, because he is. I guess this is more due to faulty design than anything, but bringing a rogue to Shirrak just seems to be the start of a wonderful migraine.

Second, is it possible to tank Shirrak with a Shaman's earth elemental? AFAIK, his bombardment doesn't target NPCs (including pets), and the elemental is immune to bleeds, so all a healer would have to deal with would be his relatively low melee damage. I know for a fact that it works on normal, but I haven't been able to persuade anyone to try it in heroic. Has anyone attempted it before? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by.

Channeling
I suspect that blizzard broke the channeling ability of this fight when they changed spell haste rating to affect channeled spells as wells. Sucks to have casters now.

Shaman as Healer
I've tried this numerous times as the only healer, with a full Restoration build, and it's impossible to heal through when you have 4 others in melee. The carnivorous bite-pull thing means you lose 3-4 seconds of casting time, and if you already started healing 4 seconds before, it wastes 8 seconds of healing AND end up with 4 stacks of the debuff thanks to being pulled on top of him. Basically this fight is biased to healers with HoTs, such as druids and priests. --Sleuth 11:52, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have also tried (non HC, level 67) healing this as a Shaman and wiped horribly. Admitedly nobody told me how the damnd debuff worked beforehand (and I got called a noob to boot. Joy of pugs) but it seems pretty nasty. Should it be mentioned in the article that Shamans as healers have a hard time? Otherwise, the only advice I can give is to keep the tank stacked up with Earth Shield, use a lot of riptide, and you get at least one shot with nature's swiftness. Wasn't enough to save my group :( Darien Shields (talk) 13:24, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

Encounter broken?
So basically, before channeled spells were affected by the debuff, there were a number of strategies:

- Warlocks and Hunters could let a pet tank and heal it - Warlocks, mages, shadowpriests could DPS with their instants + channeled spells (Drain Life, Arcane Missiles, Mindflay)

The way it is now, Warlocks, mages and shadowpriests simply don't do any damage. And the only viable solo healer is the druid. All other classes need a backup, and shamans can't heal at all.

So we have 3 healers who can't solo heal this, we have 1 healer who can't heal this at all, and we have 3 DPS classes who can't DPS.

All melee DPS is screwed too, due to the bleeding debuff, and becomes a liability. This affects: Shamans, Rogues, DPS Warrs, Retri palas.

Perfect matchup would be: Hunter, Hunter, Hunter, a druid healer, and any tank. Or another BM hunter's pet.

So the whole encounter only works for TWO CLASSES. What the vuck?