Tips for Thok (normal)

[Reinholder]

Had our first real crack at Thok normal last night and was wondering how people approach it. Was finding that my active time (and the other melee) was relatively low (between 65-70% on average). Part of it is tied to RNG and whether you get fixated (hard to attack anything when you're running away screaming) but I've seen a few logs where melee have maintained a high 90% uptime. Is this just luck or are there tricks people are using to stay on targets without dying?

[Maelstrom51]

If you have the raid besides melee stand in one place you can predict which way he'll turn and melee can stay on the boss.

[-Raer-]

When I was assassination I took Shuriken Toss and was top damage on Thok by a huge margin. Granted playing without Anticipation is extremely odd once you're used to it.

[jtstormrage]

I really like Burst of Speed. Shuriken Toss is a nice idea too.

[itsdub]

My guilds rogue had 89% uptime (without shuriken toss) on thok last week because our healers kept him in the first p1 for 77 stacks of acceleration, killing him soon after p2 ended.
So good healers will help your uptime a lot. ^^

[Stryk]

Has anyone experienced attacking Thok from behind and when he switches fixate targets to someone behind him he will 180 and everyone in his melee hit box instantly dies? There have been 1-2 attempts where he has done that in my raid and it makes DPSing quite scary.

[Sicktight]

Has anyone experienced attacking Thok from behind and when he switches fixate targets to someone behind him he will 180 and everyone in his melee hit box instantly dies? There have been 1-2 attempts where he has done that in my raid and it makes DPSing quite scary.

I have experienced that just make sure you are like 15-20 yards out from him when he fixates.

[rewynd]

Melee pretty much swaps to the guard with the key during the fixate phase. We had a general stack point just outside of the cage on the right and I hang out there awaiting a fixate. You could use ST and try to get DPS in tho. As for chasing thok during that phase, you can stay on his butt for a few seconds during each fixate to get dps in, but as soon as he fixated another char, and turns around hes going to eat you. I wouldn't recommend doing this.

[Verain]

I ran ST on Thok and really liked the results. It never really occurred to me to run anything else, as Anticipations gain is only on the order of a few thousand dps anyway, and uptime blows that away.

Our strat was to single tank, so we hold him in P1 for awhile, but not nearly as long as some guilds. We have more strong ranged than melee, however. In P2, we do all we can to keep him there for 12 stacks or so- our tank frees the guy at like 10, and we gamble that he won't take someone on the short edge twice.


For my part, I get low energy and CPs as he first fixates, then strafe out and ST. If he picks me, I burst of speed down the big hallway- otherwise, I just walk back to him. Once he begins the second fixate, I go mess with the add, who is by this point correctly positioned, and likely needs a deenrage. I normally run rotation on the add until the boss is near the 'neck' where the room spreads out, and then switch back to the boss (if we had no other melee I would probably sit the add- one of my officers demanded that "all melee get on add", which isn't always correct, and as I was raid leading I ignored him).

Most of P2 I spend throwing shurikens (we don't free the guy right away to make a longer P2), but I close to range and rupture or envenom whenever I can. I once tried staying by his side when we had perfect positioning, and got squished- clearly a boss issue that you need to work around by staying away, but I suspect it's something similar like "he instantly turns and his squish box is literally a box".

Aka:


Ranged guy in circular area. . . . . . . . . . . Boss. . . . . . . . .Target
. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Me


When the boss switched targets, I think he had a square [] that rotated, not a circle. I think he rotated instantly or nearly so, and as such, the CORNER of the square crossed over me, killing me.


Anyway, when he's about to fixate, don't be in melee. It may not be buggy, but what happens isn't what is being drawn on the screen.



I was really pleased with my performance. We push P2 just as long as we can, because the casters can actually do their jobs there, so the ST pick was really solid.

[Dadspancakes]

Did him today for the first time (on flex)..I definitely had trouble staying on him too. After the first attempt I went ST + Deadly Throw, it was so much fun lol. Granted my dps wasn't the best, I was still able to stay on him almost the entire time (besides when jailer came).

Another thing I learned....don't use shadowstep. I started laughing so hard when I instantly died.

[Koji2k11]

i shuriken tossed him to death on our first week was fun having almost 100% uptime on him :>

[Carp The Fish]

Has anyone experienced attacking Thok from behind and when he switches fixate targets to someone behind him he will 180 and everyone in his melee hit box instantly dies? There have been 1-2 attempts where he has done that in my raid and it makes DPSing quite scary.

Yes, our former DK complained about it a few times. Thok's targeting stutters for a few milliseconds between switching fixate targets, which is why I took Burst of Speed; you can stutter-step WITH Thok so that you don't get hit.

Shuriken Toss is also a fun idea, if your raid comp allows for a few of the melee to stay on the boss.

[Stryk]

Not quite sure what you mean by stutter-step. I've been just backing out of melee range for 2-3 seconds when he switches fixate targets which of course is a DPS loss. Trying to find a way to stay on him full time reliably.

[Hntr]

They must have changed something. I remember that in the first or second week of SoO, you could just safely Shadowstep behind thok's fixate. Last ID it didn't work for sure, so they must have done something. My guess is they played with shadowstep.
It seems to me that Shadowstep puts you behind the target, but somehow on creatures right in them. Because when i shs on a player i'm not in the person but behind him.

[Tisha]

They must have changed something. I remember that in the first or second week of SoO, you could just safely Shadowstep behind thok's fixate. Last ID it didn't work for sure, so they must have done something. My guess is they played with shadowstep.
It seems to me that Shadowstep puts you behind the target, but somehow on creatures right in them. Because when i shs on a player i'm not in the person but behind him.

Yeah... first couple kills, i was able to shadowstep to Thok during the kite phase. However, the last couple weeks, shadowstepping to him has just ended up killing me immediately. First time it happened, i thought it was just that I was moving forward at the time, and the couple seconds of increased speed from shadowstep made me run in front. But this past week, i made sure to not have any forward movement at all when i shadowstepped, and it still killed me.

[Carp The Fish]

Not quite sure what you mean by stutter-step. I've been just backing out of melee range for 2-3 seconds when he switches fixate targets which of course is a DPS loss. Trying to find a way to stay on him full time reliably.

That's what I meant, sorry. This is also the reason why I chose Assassination for this, so that I'd be less punished by being forced to work around Blizzard's giant, bugged, melee-hating dinosaur.

[Coldkil]

We have more or less the same problems - we would like to drag the phases as long as possible, but at certain points you just need to switch; best attempt we got him at 35% more or less with the fire adds just coming out.

Definitely trying shuriken toss next time, the guard dies pretty fast. I only find annoying that when you open the cages, if Thok is very far it takes an awful lot for the prisoners to "taunt" him, and many times a fixated guy dies. I suppose we need to refine our strategy.

[mongoose6]

I tried ST and didnt much care for it. Sub with anticipation worked best for me. If you do go with ST, assasination is your best bet.

[Reinholder]

Well we got it last night. I ended up sub with st for the kill but to be perfectly honest assassination would have worked just as well. I'm finding that I'm putting out more single target dmg as sub at the moment, but I probably pulled higher numbers as assassination with ST. I'd say the biggest change for me was running with Burst of Speed, probably the first time I'd actually used it in an actual raid and not for running through old dungeons/raids solo . Our groups biggest challenge was keeping everyone alive going in to the last door (we went fire door last), it was less a DPS issue and more a survival issue. Our kill was very messy at the end, Thok went down with the majority of our raid dead.
So yeah, for anyone that may stumble across this in the future I did find ST good for keeping some damage on the boss during his kite phase (after the jailer was dead and I'd have otherwise been twiddling my thumbs), but the best piece of advice I have would be take burst of speed. Really helps staying out in front of Thok if he fixates you, especially when he starts speeding up a bit.

[Coldkil]

Did some more tries yesterday evening, i just feel that we need to burn him down much faster than we do currently.

We are on a median 545 ilvl more or less. Should we go 3 or 2 healers? How do you manage the phase transitions? I think we can gain much more damage through this.

Any help is greatly appreciated.