Beyond Curator

Tonight was the first chance I've had to participate in the 2nd night of a Karazhan run, thanks to some raiding schedule rearrangements. :) Being able to finally experience Kara content beyond Curator was great: tonight we downed Shade of Aran and Illhoof. These fights seem a little more melee-DPS friendly than others, and here are some notes from the Enhancement perspective:

Shade of Aran
First of all, this guy is just plain tough. He's a caster who does crazy damage if you let him - we actually wiped three times before finally downing him. As a Shaman you'll be on spell interrupt duty for either his fireballs or frost bolts. The funny thing is, it seems like his casting frequency goes up if you interrupt too much, so we actually tried interrupting every other cast on the final attempt. This seemed to go better, but more research is warranted...

Flame Wreath seems to have the potential for being the biggest wiper, but with DeadlyBossMods you'll get plenty of warning beforehand. As melee DPS, you need to make sure you're in range of Aran before FW lands - afterwards everyone must temporarily stay put or very bad things will happen. If you get stuck out of melee range, throw a few heals or lightning bolts in the meantime. Take your hand off the keyboard so you don't accidentally move.

Another nasty trick is the pull-in followed by a huge AOE blast. You must run immediately to a wall after being pulled-in and wait for the AOE to go off (similar to Murmur's sonic blast). If you don't make it and die, just make sure you don't attempt to reincarnate in the middle of his blizzard spell... wait until it passes. -_-

I'd also recommend waiting to pop Heroism and Fire Elemental until at least 1/3 the way into the fight - just to make sure things are going pretty well before blowing your long-cooldown abilities.

In summary: interrupt spells, stay in melee range, avoid the nasty AOE, reincarnate wisely.

Illhoof
This satyr boss and his imp have some interesting dynamics, as you'll be switching targets often. The best scenario for melee DPS seems to be tanking them just on the edge of the green circle, so you can minimize running around between targets.

First, it's important to have a "/target Demon" macro hotkeyed to your keyboard (do I sound like Cartman?). I used the letter V as it's very easy to hit during a hectic fight. Periodically Illy will target a random raid member and shackle them in Demonic Chains, rapidly draining their health. ALL DPS must burn down the shackle ASAP or the shacklee will die (exceptions are Paladins and Mages who can bubble/ice block to escape). It's reminiscent of the final boss in Steamvault where you have to burn down the water tanks as soon as they're attackable. Melee DPS is made for stuff like this, so make sure you're in range for a quick re-target, use that macro and Stormstrike/Earth Shock for burst DPS.

Other than that, hopefully you have a kickass raid leader who will call out the current focus, as it changes frequently between the Imp, Illhoof and the shackled person. We two-shotted this fight, a nice change after Aran's beating. :) Hopefully I can finagle my way into a 3rd followup night, as I believe Chess is up next!

In other news, I tried Recount as a replacement for DamageMeters tonight. Way more options than DM had, and it reported an astonishing 1,000 ZOMGDPS for our first-place Warlock. My DPS seemed to be neck-and-neck with the mage, around 600 DPS. Fun stuffs. :)