Normal 10-man Thok Questions

[Sonnillon]

Gave few tries on him last night and now have few questions.

We used 2 tanks, 2 healers and 6 DPS.

Due to not having both of our resto druids this week, we had a mw+resto shaman healing. Roughly 8 stacks or so in phase1, they couldn't keep people above 50% HP and he transitioned sooner then planned (8-9 stacks). We used the tactic, where people stayed stacked in phase 1. So as soon as loads of people were below 50%, he transitioned.

Second problem with healing was to heal the raid and people kiting the dino. As the out of range issue came to play, which ended in death to few kiters.

Is it worth to take 3 healers for this fight? Or will we drop below the "minimum" DPS needed to get a kill?
Some numbers from our 4 minute try, where we got to second p1 I think.
Healing done: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=9619&e=9887
DPS: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=9619&e=9887

How is it best to kite it?
I noticed last night that when people took the dino from our stacking point (left side from the entrance) to the entrance, the tanks had to take "the long way" around for not to get eaten to get to the Jailer. And also I saw some people running "out of room" once they hit the end of hallway.
Then we tried clockwise/counterclockwise kiting. I felt it was better way to go (if you leave out the fact that people boxed themselves in....), though I suspect that put kiter way out of healer range.

Also we had wlocks set up their portals for easier kiting, but the dino eats person mid portal flight x_X, so that on some players worked out them being dead...

All advice is more then welcome tactic vise. As "worse case", we'll have one melee, best case, no melee at all for this fight.

[schworck]

I would recommend 3-healing it, the added time on the boss in the normal phases should easily make up for that one extra dps you are losing. we bloodlust right at the beginning and rotate all our raid-cds in the first p1.

as for the kiting, having a ranged heavy setup is preferable so you can dps the boss while he is fixated on someone. as melee you are pretty much screwed if thok turns the wrong way. we kill the add in front of the prison we want to open next and have a rotation for the fixated players:

player a moves towards the entrance - player b moves towards the opposite end of the room - player c towards the entrance and so on. so while thok is in the entrance-path everybody else is on max range behind him and the fixated player simply kites him to the opposite site.

rocket boots help, priest shield helps.

normally i'm looking to open the prison at 10 stacks. if a play gets fixated twice in a row he's screwed^^

[kamuimac]

if i were you i would just 3 heal it - did it as healer in both 2 and 3 healing compositions and honetly 2 healing it was a nightmare for me especially dispelling the poison/green ? debuff was nightmare :/ 3 healing allows for much smoother transitions and the dps gain from 1 more dps is not sooo determining on outcome -_- (try to 2 heal it when 1 of healers get fixated x2 and then fixated again as 4th fixate >< just bleh :/)

[Sonnillon]

I think we need to perfect the kiting part. But if we'd follow what Schworck said, then it should work out better. One kiting, rest behind. As on our goes, people were still on the side (where we were stacked in stack phase). And we had our monk fixiated and I believe I mage got the beam on most tries several times...

Any good placement for lock portals?

But 3 healers is well worth a try. As once or twice we got to the poison phase, it was... bit horrible for our 2 healers as I've heard the comments. (This'll be then (at least for now) second fight after molkorok we 2 heal )

[Deleted]

You can extend a phase, 1st usually, quite a bit as you have that prot paladin, he can talent into clemency for double HoPs on the shaman to use ascendency spam healing, and also use devotion aura you makes everyone immune to interrupt for 6 seconds.

Also make sure your monk healers pops revival as soon as the poison stacks phase ends to clear everyone poison debuff and then you just need to dispel as new ones come out on the kiting phase which isnt as hectic.

[Poppincaps]

I would say that your dps is a little low. Here are the logs from our first kill (http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-xi...?s=1441&e=1940). On our kill we lost our warlock halfway through and I kinda carried the dps, but we BARELY killed him that week. It was me, our spriest, and our warrior tank up at the end if I remember correctly.

Also, since you said you have resto druids (this works for resto shaman as well) what we did for the first phase was stack two groups of 4 people on opposite sides of the healing rain on the very corner. This way, you get the healing benefits of being stacked while also having control over when you push Phase Two.

Another piece of advice I can give is if you get to the third p1 where he drops the fire on the ground, we found it was better to push him almost immediately, because with the fire and the roar people were getting destroyed. So, if he's at like 10-15% you might want to just go into phase 1 for a few roars, then stack up and transition to the last P2, but you must kill him or he'll just crush you all.

[Libertarian]

I think we need to perfect the kiting part. But if we'd follow what Schworck said, then it should work out better. One kiting, rest behind. As on our goes, people were still on the side (where we were stacked in stack phase). And we had our monk fixiated and I believe I mage got the beam on most tries several times...

Any good placement for lock portals?

But 3 healers is well worth a try. As once or twice we got to the poison phase, it was... bit horrible for our 2 healers as I've heard the comments. (This'll be then (at least for now) second fight after molkorok we 2 heal )

If you have to two heal, make sure your healers are not getting interrupted. There's a tracker on recount (not sure skada) to see who gets interrupted.

Plan your cd usage at certain roar #s. And if you're only doing like 10-20 roars, just do blue -> green -> red, so the cds are back up during green.

[Deleted]

You can 1 tank this fight very easily which makes the fight exponentially easier due to skipping a phase (Or you can take the phases as normal but open the gates quicker to remove the risk of people getting eaten). On our first kill we found that 3 heal was easier and in fact increased our overall DPS albeit slightly (This could also be because we were new to the boss and were learning it at the same time).

The focus goes onto random ranged players. It is controllable if you have 1 raider in ranged and everyone else in melee, he will go for the only ranged player. If you make 2 players go to each end of the room and the raid to sit in the middle, you can control it if you learn how so it goes back and forth between those 2 players. There is a fine line between ranged and melee though, so you might run into problems if you don't control it correctly and it might be easier just to all spread out and "deal with it".

EDIT - also, Hand of Protection your resto druid (or whichever heal benefits the most) when you get to around 8 stacks and he can do a full tranq uninterrupted. If you have multiple paladins (with the correct talent) you can HoP 2 healers on each phase and alternate between which paladin does the HoP.

[Deja Thoris]

This is definitely a fight you want to 3 heal. I'm a big fan of 2 healing but the benefits of 3 heals outweigh that of having just 2. The debuffs in intermissions are a complete arse to heal with 2 healers and the key is really to push the boss up to as many stacks as possible under bloodlust in the first phase. 25 is a decent target to aim for. We can push over 40 quite comfortably now we've had some practice.

I find melee are an advantage on this fight, not a disadvantage. Most ranged suffer from being interrupted (not hunters ofc) but even 3 melee isn't a problem at all on this encounter.

As someone said, pallies rock at this fight. Some tips:
- Eternal flame. Mandatory, SS sucks, this is not an absorb fight.
- This is a bit cheesy but quite effective. What I did as a prot pala is setup vuhdo so that a simple right click on a person applies eternal flame. I'd pull the boss and take 3 stacks (you can go higher with cooldowns, its really not an issue). As the other tank taunts I'd pop wings and throw down lights hammer on the group. Then I'd pop Holy avenger and with every CS/J I'd get 3 HP. I'd then spam blanket the raid with juicy vengeance buffed eternal flames. You should be able to get 5 or so out with HA and each one will heal about 1.3 million over its duration.
- Talent clemency for a double BoP. Decide who you want to throw them on and macro it. Get the targets to call when they want it. Be creative, even a guardian dru is a viable target for a HoTW tranq. It allows 10 seconds of free casting and completely immunes them from the physical damage of the screeches.
- Devo aura is immense too. 6 seconds uninterrupted casting.

I'll leave you to figure out the kiting part. One important thing is after the boss has eaten the npc he normally fixates on the last person he chased so a quick taunt is vital. If he breathes on the raid because you missed the taunt you can most likely kiss that attempt goodbye.

This is the first properly hard encounter of the instance so work on extending the first phase and learn to cancel casts at the screech. Then move onto the intermissions. Once you can cobble together p1/p2 in a clean manner a kill will be on the cards.

Good luck.

[Deleted]

I'll leave you to figure out the kiting part. One important thing is after the boss has eaten the npc he normally fixates on the last person he chased so a quick taunt is vital. If he breathes on the raid because you missed the taunt you can most likely kiss that attempt goodbye.

You can taunt while he's eating the NPC also, it works and gives you no risk.

[Ailylia]

I think your dps is fine if you go 3 heals it will be higher because you'll be able to push him farther before the chase phase. You really want to push 15+ stacks on the first and third roar phase IMO. Have your paladin use things like HoP and Aura Mastery on whichever healer is using their cooldown to keep from being interrupted in the later phases.

If you do this you don't really have to push your kite phase very long where it becomes a big problem. I usually open the door when he's at 8 stacks.

As far as tank positioning and picking up the jailer, I would always position Thok where he's standing and have dps/heals stack on his inner leg (toward the center of the room) doesn't matter which way he's pointing as whoever the off tank is should be ready to pick the jailer up when the main tank gets punted.

But yeah, 3 heals is the way to go. Especially with that nasty acid debuff, you need to get the healers to pick areas of the room to be in so they can clear that off players, especially when they are kiting with the debuff.

[Lumiair]

That strat Schworck mentions works great! the only downside is if the person kiting to the entrance is EXTREMELY unlucky they get trapped with nowhere to go (from experience >.>). Somewhat unrelated since you usually run with the Resto Druids, but Beerkeg isn't using Thunder Focus Tea. At all. Or even Uplift really. Uplift should be #1-#2 on healing and it's below even Revival at times when it should be shining on this fight.

[Deleted]

That strat Schworck mentions works great! the only downside is if the person kiting to the entrance is EXTREMELY unlucky they get trapped with nowhere to go (from experience >.>)

Just run to the boss before the focus goes off again then you can't be a target because you are in melee.

[Lumiair]

Just run to the boss before the focus goes off again then you can't be a target because you are in melee.

That's good to know, I didn't notice your earlier post about being able to control who gets it. Thanks for that, will definitely be using it.

[Lether]

Having a Spriest in group helps hugely with dispels in the green phase, especially with two healers.
Also, during the kite phase we had the raid grouped up next to the prison we wanted to open next to help with healing/dispelling. The fixated person would run to the entrance/back of the room depending on where the boss was at the time. We didnt have ranged chase the boss much past healing range.
Running with one melee works because they can be assigned to kill the jailer in the kite phase, and if they get fixated ranged can swap to help kill it.

[Sonnillon]

Thanks for the advice so far. Specially on the kiting part was really useful and the paladin tips on top of that.

Is really the healing rain/druids healing circle edges enough not to be "too close" for accidental phase change?

[Lether]

You can indeed stay within healing rain/efflorescence without pushing phase changes. I saw that Method used this in their heroic kill (and probably lots of other guilds too) if you split into two groups and stay on opposite sides.

[Sonnillon]

We had time for 1 pull last night. And 12ish stacks in first phase with 3 healers (mw+resto shaman+holy pala (retri's OS, not available next week)) + CDs from prot as well. Lived to see half of the second stack phase as well.
But the kiting part is the only thing which needs to be sorted. Next week we'll be running most probably with full ranged setup and we have both of our rDRUIDs back!!!

Will 2x druid + shaman be a good combo or 2x druid + mw be better? I know that both of our druids are silly good at what they do On batchwerk fights (which this is not) our mw can fistweave 60+k DPS.

[RuneeBH]

We wiped for a stupid amount of time on normal when doing this because we were trying to 2 heal, then we brought in a 3rd healer who literally hadn't seen the fight at all, and killed it in 1 try.

[Deleted]

switching to 1 tank 3 healers got us the kill fairly easy.

General tipps are (they may be mentioned already):
- let the tank tell the people when he will get frozen so everybody can switch to the iceblock quickly (also have him use a big Cooldown)
- As soon as the boss targets a NPC he will not slay anithing in his path anymore
- make heavy use of kick protection (Devo Aura, Inner Focus, maybe even 4p Resto Shaman Pvpgear, didn't test it though)
- Save BL/Hero for the moment Thok starts to target the fire NPC as you get a dmg buff while he is alive)
- let your raid stack in AoE Healing Effects
- stack two groups on either sides of the effect and run in the middle to not trigger the transition to early