Army twice on heroic horridon--worth it?

[Gorfion]

Hi all,

My guild got extremely close on heroic horridon last night (2% wipe), he did a dire call and one-shot the raid right as he enraged. After that attempt, everyone was trying to figure out how we could improve our dps. Another dk suggested that we use army twice in the fight, seeing as it lasts 12 minutes. I had thought that the channel time of army used when you could be attacking the boss actually led to a dps loss, but I might have been mistaken. Maybe it also depends on spec? Two of us are dw frost and one unholy.

Another question, is there any way to knock back your direhorn spirit without wasting frost runes? I had to waste so many howling blasts to keep it away from me.

[sharlez]

On ragnaros (Firelands) death grip knocks back meteors maybe that could work on the direhorn spirits also? If it does, use the death strike glyph so the cd is reset if target is immune

[Nillo]

The fight generally doesn't last 10 min and even if it does you don't want to use it for the last few % of boss hp.

[Shiira]

Ever since pet scaling was fixed it has been a damage increase to use army even if you could be hitting a boss instead.

[Gorfion]

Does anyone know if the death grip trick works? I know our ret was using her taunt successfully to knock back, I was just afraid grip might actually grip the spirit to me and instakill me. If the spirit is considered immune, using that glyph would make my life easy.

[Vereesa]

Unholy has it easy; just have your pet whack the Direhorn every once in a while. You can also drop a DnD as each time it ticks it also knocks the Spirit back.

As for Army: If you can use two Armies during the encounter (not sure how you're making it last that long, but I won't go into that) you should absolutely do it.

[Tatsh]

For Heroic Horridon I just used a simple Icy Touch Macro for the Direhorn Spirits, it worked really well, especially since Reaping now enables IT to change Frost Runes to Death Runes. For Frost I would just use Howling Blast in its place.

/target Direhorn Spirit
/cast Icy Touch
/targetlasttarget

This is also really useful to keep after you've cleared H-Horridon, as the exact same macro is perfect for Heroic Tortos.

The Death Grip idea is very clever though, if this indeed does work on the Direhorn Spirits, I wonder if it would apply the debuff from the Humming Crystals on H-Tortos as well. Either way, it's a very clever idea, people like you who come up with new ideas like this are a great asset to the Death Knight community, keep up the good work, and good luck on H-Horridon!

[damescool]

For Heroic Horridon I just used a simple Icy Touch Macro for the Direhorn Spirits, it worked really well, especially since Reaping now enables IT to change Frost Runes to Death Runes. For Frost I would just use Howling Blast in its place.

/target Direhorn Spirit
/cast Icy Touch
/targetlasttarget

This is also really useful to keep after you've cleared H-Horridon, as the exact same macro is perfect for Heroic Tortos.

The Death Grip idea is very clever though, if this indeed does work on the Direhorn Spirits, I wonder if it would apply the debuff from the Humming Crystals on H-Tortos as well. Either way, it's a very clever idea, people like you who come up with new ideas like this are a great asset to the Death Knight community, keep up the good work, and good luck on H-Horridon!

good idea, for tortos thou:

/target humming crystal
/cast chains of ice
/targetlasttarget

as chains doesn't have a facing requirement so you can just keep whacking the boss without moving to cast icy touch.

[Gorfion]

Thanks for the suggestions. As for how the fight is lasting that long, the median kill time on 25H according to world of logs is about 11min 40sec, definitely enough time for two armies. Our spread of dps is pretty wide, plus we have a rather melee heavy comp which doesn't help. Anyway, hopefully we shall get it tonight.

[bals]

really easy as frost to keep the dino away.
position the dino on the opposite side of horridon so that the dino walks under the boss to you, HB the boss, the HB cleave knocks back the dino.

[Nillo]

Thanks for the suggestions. As for how the fight is lasting that long, the median kill time on 25H according to world of logs is about 11min 40sec, definitely enough time for two armies. Our spread of dps is pretty wide, plus we have a rather melee heavy comp which doesn't help. Anyway, hopefully we shall get it tonight.

The thing with using it at the start is that you don't really profit that much from it since the boss takes 3ple damage at the end and you may need it to boost your dps against the war-god who spawns around 8min into the fight iirc.

[Gorfion]

Boss finally down, thanks all.

[Tojara]

We use AoTD on the third door when all 3 frost dudes are out. Saves healers a ton of mana and pretty much trivializes the door as all the adds will be in one neat clump for AoE spam.