Thok HC bats phase

[Bazylov]

Hello, firstly sorry for my english, it's not my main language :P

So my raid team finally made it to thok, but we have a lot of problems with surviving bats. Our team comp:
- tank pala
- disc priest
- resto druid
- holy priest
DPS:
- boomkin
- mage
- warrior
- hunter
- shaman ele
- druid feral

We have no problems with 1st phase, we can get ~27 stacks every time. But bats are always destroying us. What should we do? Usually we are trying to nuke them down (mostly shaman with guidance and ascendance), but usually when they are using this AoE we drop to 20-30% hp and someone is dying. We tried phasing at 6stacks, and then nuke them fast, but we died while we were moving them to ice gate. Should we maybe just nuke them when they spawn? Can we somehow stun them? We also tried (only once and shaman had lags) saving bloodlust for bats, but we still just died in few sec. Idk if it was because of shaman lags or we failed at something again. When should bats die?

Any tips are welcome, problem is I dont have logs from today :/

[Marxman]

Stun lock is your best option, but your comp is extremely lacking in AoE stuns. The only good one you have is Cap Totem.

Between Reckstorm and your Ele Shaman they should die pretty quickly though.

[Deja Thoris]

BoP the shaman when the bats arrive so he can ascendance / AG. Stack at the same time so you can break him out of the phase to stop the screeches. Stay on top of dispels.

Boomies can also rape the bats if they err wave their arms or something (not helpful I know :P)

[blackhammer99]

Our 25 man strategy is to push everything forward to encompass the bats' duration in the encounter.
I would recommend that for anyone, especially in 10 man. Simply push your Devo up so people can free-cast on the bats, and use the other CDs you have planned to survive while they are up.
Because of this we go from taking 29-30 stacks to only about 25 in this phase, but it makes little difference in the end.

The bats can be stunned but only when they are nearly dead, so provided you have even AOE dps, its encouraged to drop cap around 40 percent of their health or whatever is needed for the 4-5 second window.

Another huge difference I see here is you are 1-tanking, which I have heard to be common, but don't see how this phase can be done with that in mind.
The bats need to be in range of your melee otherwise you wont have enough DPS to kill them effectively, yet the melee can't be anywhere near the front half of the boss or risk a parry, and the bats will almost certainly be swarming around the tank and Thok's face.

How is this handled? It seems to me that this makes things sub-optimal all around:
Either your melee are in the front half of the boss instead of the back half and getting parried, or they can't hit the bats.

I hope this helps, but my closing remarks to anyone who would listen would be to change your approach wholly. I sympathize with the 10 man groups that are well established and aren't excited to switch to large group raiding, but at this point I see no reason in continuing 10 man heroic progression.
I would encourage you and your guild to take some time and find another solid chunk of people and begin 25 man progression in preparation for the coming expansion.
It would open up a lot of doors on this fight as is, but more so, its far more useful to learn how to effectively lead 25-30 human beings NOW while you still have a gear advantage and are comfortable with the raid instead of wait until everything in the game changes and all the raids are brand-new.

You will find the difficulty MUCH more rewarding, and will allow for far more customization on an encounter like this, allowing the intelligent leadership among you to make plays that are simply not possible in the confines of 10 players.

[Dethh]

We break at 4-5 stacks (10 man) and the tank kites what ever bats are left to the jailer. Make sure as soon as bats come out everyone switches, this phase is all about bats and should be short. You don't have to kill all the bats before you break stacks to blood frenzy. Use aoe stuns as mentioned above.

- - - Updated - - -

Our 25 man strategy

These never work in 10 man. 1 tank is the way to go we have always killed it this way.

[Musca]

You don't need to aoe stun the bats. Just keep an eye for the one that grows bigger and gets a buff called (I think) Vampiric Frenzy and have your feral/warrior stun it single target. That cuts down a ton on the aoe damage.

We also use a blessing of protection on one of our healers during that phase so they can spam heals.

[Larynx]

1 tank 2 heal 10m. We transition as fast as possible at 2-5 stacks. Bring bats to the middle with everyone stacked and just AoE them down. The two challenges are 1) Not losing a healer when the bats spawn due to bad tank aggro, and 2) hoping a healer doesn't become fixated at the transition. Otherwise it's pretty simple to execute.

As a healer, even with two amp trinkets and less than 7k spirit, at this point in the fight I'm at nearly full mana. So really I can go full 100% throughput for the bats without much of a worry about mana issues.

[Dracodraco]

We break at 4-5 stacks (10 man) and the tank kites what ever bats are left to the jailer. Make sure as soon as bats come out everyone switches, this phase is all about bats and should be short. You don't have to kill all the bats before you break stacks to blood frenzy. Use aoe stuns as mentioned above.

- - - Updated - - -



These never work in 10 man. 1 tank is the way to go we have always killed it this way.

Our alt raid found 3 healers 2 tanks to be far more reliable in surviving the bats.
Then again, our comp for the alt raids are extremely melee heavy (usually 3 melee, 3 ranged).

I'd recommend trying 2 tanks if bats are your biggest issue. I don't know what your Ilvl is like, but being able to get the bats into melee so your kitty/warrior (assuming one of them isn't the tank) can go to town on them, too, is huge.
That said, if you want to keep using the same setup, you'll be best off using a BoP on your ele shaman while he has ascendance+AG up to AOE the shit out of the bats. Should be pretty safely keeping you alive for the 10 second duration.
Also, bats can be stunned at any time, not sure what Blackhammer is on about. It's true they don't start AOE'ing instantly, though.
Oh, and you have two good aoe stuns - hunter arrow and shaman totem. Used together they'll bring any further AOE stuns to such a low DR it won't matter anyway .

[britishbubba]

We just don't do that door.

Normal phase > Kite phase > Ice Phase > Kite Phase > Fire? (killed him in 2nd kite phase this week).

Do it that way, you never get bats, you just get a yeti that does nothing as the bats are tied to the poison door.

Bats and poison debuff are an uneeded pain. And as for comp, 1 tank (paladin/monk), 3 heals (Paladin/monk/Shaman) are the setups we've ran.

[yeryerdude]

Pre nerf we actually lusted and used 2nd pots on the bats, they melted before it was really a problem at all, helps a lot with healing too we tossed a few aoe stuns out but the bats were mostly dead before even dragging them to the melee dps (boomkin, hunter, lock aoe)

Bops on a high aoe dps were used at that point too just so they could blow them up fater, devos weren't up at that point.

[eschatological]

We actually 1 tank this, and our hunter MDs them to our BrM, and we put stuns on them with leg sweep, binding shot, cap totem. We devo and lust here too, so our shaman can lolchainlightning spam, and our lock doesn't have to blow resolve to incinerate spam. Our hunter is also beast cleaving away. Our rogue pops cloak and feint and then blade flurry and gets out between breaths, our ret doesn't move at all because lol, good luck surviving that mess up near Thok's mouth. We also have a boomkin doing whatever it is that boomkins do but most of our AoE on bats comes from the lock/shaman/hunter. Doing this allows us to push this phase to 20 or so with no CDs except the ele shaman AG during bats.

Don't be afraid to lust here. With a one tank strategy, your DPS should hopefully be fine at this point in the tier. If your mage is frost (I assume he should be for this fight?) he should be holding an orb for bats, and frost lance cleaving like a boss.

[Bazylov]

Thanks for all tips Now I think our biggest mistake was dragging bats to the ice gate while they aoe us, and phasing at 6 stacks.

Oh and I failed at dps list, we have dk, not boomking. But DK tried to stun bats with winter and it doesnt work.

[Dracodraco]

Thanks for all tips Now I think our biggest mistake was dragging bats to the ice gate while they aoe us, and phasing at 6 stacks.

Oh and I failed at dps list, we have dk, not boomking. But DK tried to stun bats with winter and it doesnt work.

Maybe all the bats aren't in range, then. But yea, if you've got 3 melee, 3 ranged, you're gonna be having a hard time getting the bats killed quick enough as half your raid can't touch them.

[Blencathra]

But yea, if you've got 3 melee, 3 ranged, you're gonna be having a hard time getting the bats killed quick enough as half your raid can't touch them.

Why not?

We just killed Thok for the first time yesterday (2 tank, can't remember if 2 or 3 heal sorry), in the bats phase we tanked him right in front of the prison we just opened. The bats land pretty much right on Thok, the warrior offtank collects them and tanks them in the middle of the melee - kitty (me) & rogue - and all the DPS AOEs them down quick (we have hunter & prot warrior stuns too). They usually die well before the boss transitions to the next phase.

[Consata]

The point was if you are 1tanking this fight, then the bats will be on the tank who is infront of the boss also tanking the boss. This means only half the raid can attack the bats as melee cant really go infront of the boss because of breath. Basicly, if you 1tank the fight then your reliying on your ranged to kill the bats which can be a rather big task for a setup with only 3 ranged.

[Blencathra]

Ah good point, I forgot about the lack of offtank with the 1-tank strategy.

[Deleted]

Go Fire - Frost - Poison. If you're having that much trouble, the fire phase is generally a better way to go, plus you get some extra damage from the debuff. If your dps is good enough you can avoid the poison phase completely and not have to deal with bats.

[announced]

ur raid just needs better aoe on the bats, and a stun on the one that gets bigger. my raid kills 80% of the bats within 15 seconds of their spawntime and i just shadowburn the rest down to 0. if its not possible just skip poison in favor of frost. thoks easily killable without the poison cage anyway now.

[Bazylov]

Go Fire - Frost - Poison. If you're having that much trouble, the fire phase is generally a better way to go, plus you get some extra damage from the debuff. If your dps is good enough you can avoid the poison phase completely and not have to deal with bats.

We will also try that, but how much stacks should we get on fire phase? ~5 like poison or more? And it is better to stack in fire and just heal through it or split into groups like normal/frost phase?

[thejeremyftw]

I have the same question as Bazylov. We've just begun progressing on Thok HC. We have an easy enough time getting through 26ish stacks on the initial pull, then we kite 4ish times and start off with poison. The bats come in and we end up getting to MAYBE 7 or 8 stacks before transitioning to kiting again and trying to clean up bats. Typically, once the bats come is when we have our issues. We've only seen the yeti once. Granted, we've only had about 10 pulls thus far and you can erase a few of those to people being stupid during kite and dying.

We usually have him around 62-63% after he eats the first adds which seems fine, but by the time he transitions after the bat phase he's only down another 8-10% which concerns me for the rest of the fight going forward.

Therefore, does Fire, frost, poison make things easier in general? How many stacks do you aim for on each?

If it helps, we typically three heal with a hpal, rdruid and disc priest. However, our disc priest was out last week so our ele shaman went resto. We tried two healing a couple pulls and didn't seem to get beyond 15-16 stacks during the first phase