A Crypt Guard spawns at the same time that Anub'Rekhan casts Locust Swarm, so while the main tank group drags Anub'Rekhan along the east wall, the rest of the raid needs to gather and pull the Crypt Guard to them on the west side of the room.  The Crypt Guard has a webbing attack that's a lot like the web attack that the spider boss in Zul'Gurub uses.  It roots, temporarily deaggros, and silences those who are affected by it.  So, like in ZG, it helps to have a second tank, who stays a little back and will therefore be available to run in and taunt when the primary tank on the Crypt Guard gets webbed.  The above screenshot illustrates one of the dangers of dealing with the Crypt Guard.  The Guard wasn't pulled back far enough, so a group of players got webbed in a spot that was dangerously close to being in range of Anub'Rekhan's Locust Swarm when he got moved to the other side of the room.  They ended up not getting hit, but it was close.  Also, you want to pull the Crypt Guard back far enough so that those attacking it don't get hit by Impales.

The Crypt Guards also have a stacking poison dot that they cast on their immediate targets.  On a pug run I was in, I was told that like with Huhuran, shaman in off tank groups can drop grounding totems to absorb this attack.  There is nothing wrong or exploitive about this.  After all, there is nothing wrong with having a shaman using grounding totems any more than having a paladin use shields or blessings.  However, some people go overboard with these kind of tactics.  In the pug run I was with, three shaman were placed in the off tank groups to make sure the off tanks would never get hit by the poison dot.  This was crazy.  The Tichondrius group didn't do this, and we were able to heal through the dot easily.  Plus, the Crypt Guards can be stunlocked by rogues, so the tanks shouldn't get hit by many applications of the poison dot anyway.

About ten seconds after the Crypt Guard died, five Corpse Scarabs popped out of its body and were aoe'd down quickly.  As mentioned earlier, if a player dies, Corpse Scarabs will pop out of his or her body, and if they are not dealt with quickly, more people will die, more Corpse Scarabs will spawn, and the fight will quickly spiral out of control.  However, as long as you take care of the Corpse Scarabs quickly, you can recover from the deaths of one or two raid members.

Some other things we learned about Corpse Scarabs:

• Corpse Scarabs do not despawn when Anub'Rekhan resets, and they patrol out into the hallway, so be careful when you're running back after a wipe.  Make sure to pull and clear all groups of Corpse Scarabs before starting your next attempt.
• Mechanical Yetis are bad.  On our second attempt, we had four mechanical yetis out, and when they died, they each spawned a swarm of Corpse Scarabs, which wiped the raid very quickly.  This makes me wonder what a bunch of Barov Family trinkets would do.  In addition, pet deaths can cause Corpse Scarabs to spawn, so hunters tend to dismiss their pets and warlocks tend to use phase shifted imps set on passive.  Some people are reporting on the test realm forum that warlock imps are running up and attacking Anub'Rekhan even though they are set on passive, but I don't fully believe the reports, since the imps seemed to be on good behavior in the two groups with which I have fought Anub'Rekhan.  There was one incident of an overly aggressive imp in the pug group I was with, but he only attacked after Anub'Rekhan had already been pulled by the hunter, so I suspect that the imp wasn't really set on passive.

After taking down the Crypt Guard and the Corpse Scarabs, the raid started to dps Anub'Rekhan again.  The faster the Crypt Guard is killed, the sooner the raid can get back to killing Anub'Rekhan.

Anub'Rekhan started casting Locust Swarm again and the main tank group moved Anub'Rekhan back to the other side of the room along the east wall, while the rest of the raid took care of the Crypt Guard add.  In this screenshot, the healers are moving into position to heal the main tank at the end of his run.  A few mages have also jumped the gun by starting to dps Anub'Rekhan, even though they should have been helping to finish off the Crypt Guard.  Bad mages!  Bad!  Bad!

Once the Crypt Guard died, the raid began dps'ing Anub'Rekhan again in earnest.

One more transition.

Anub'Rekhan was so close to death by this point that most of the raid stopped killing the Crypt Guard in order to finish off Anub'Rekhan first.

We then finished off the remaining Crypt Guard.

We got the Gem of Nerubis, which is a fabulously drooly off-hand item that should be given to priests first (especially holy priests -- j/k).  Plus, we got the Desecrated Wristguards, which I assume is one of the pieces Paladins, Hunters, Shaman, and Druids need in order to get their tier 3 bracers.

So, we managed to kill Anub'Rekhan after only three transitions and if we had fought him a little more cleanly, we probably could have killed him after only two transitions.  However, we started off by despawning the initial Crypt Guards, which allowed us to pour a lot of damage into Anub'Rekhan at the beginning of the fight.  If we hadn't done that, we probably would've needed four transitions to kill him.

The curtains behind Anub'Rekhan don't open, and I believe they are just a prop.  We turned around to go back to a gate we had passed earlier and found that the doorway we had used to get into the room doesn't open at the end of the battle.  The only ways to get out of the room is to either hearth out or kill oneself in the slime.  Ahhh... nothing like playing in a beta.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of the Adventures of Neriad.  If you have comments or feedback, please feel free to leave them in the corresponding Lurker Lounge forum thread.  Also, take a look at other Adventures of Neriad tales, including the classics, Yarrr! and The Great Onyxia Race.