1. #1

    10 Heroic Thok - Comp Issues or Strat Issues?

    My 10man raid has been working on Heroic Thok for about 2 weeks now. After quite a bit of trial and error, we're able to make it through the first phase and first kite phase pretty consistent. We open the poison door first. We completely hit a wall though during the second stack phase whenever bats come out, though. Incoming damage just goes through the roof and I feel like the healers just fall apart.

    Comp. We currently 1 tank, 3 heal, 6 DPS

    Guardian Druid
    DPS Warrior (OS, Prot MS)

    Mistweaver Monk
    Disc Priest
    Holy Paladin (Ret OS)

    BM Hunter (me)
    Fire Mage
    Destro Lock
    Elemental Shaman
    Frost DK

    For the first phase, we form a triangle on the boss's side. One group is the Warrior, Monk, Paladin, and DK. The second group is the Mage, Lock, Shaman, and Priest. I'm alone at the third point. When we reach 18 stacks, I move between the other two groups and we usually end up phasing around 22-23 stacks. For the first kite phase, we kite Thok across the middle of the room two times, then down the hall once, then to the back of the room near where he spawns. We open the Poison door second. Thok being at the back of the room when he fixates to the poison door lets us transition to the second stack phase seamlessly.

    This is where we have problems. Everyone stacks on the boss's side as a single group. The bats come in, and our Frost DK gets aggro and holds them in the group and we try to stun and burn them down the best we can. Incoming damage during this phase seems to be ludicrous though, and we end up dying every time. We just can't seem to survive once the bats are out.

    Here are logs from our attempts. I know the Shaman's DPS is low; we're working on it.
    worldoflogs.com/reports/6z9e1dkic3y2e6yx/
    worldoflogs.com/reports/k4anr8v75h0ihycs/
    worldoflogs.com/reports/cttlul2rd3ezfo1k/

    I'm kinda at a loss at how to fix the situation. I'm open to any/all ideas.

  2. #2
    Mechagnome Styxxa's Avatar
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    We solved this issue by doing a couple of things:

    1. 2-heal. I was quite surprised myself because I thought if there was any heroic encounter that required 3 healers, this would be it. Nope. 2 good healers with the OS healing cooldowns was all that was required to take the 1st and 3rd stacking phases to 25+ stacks and get us through the bats quickly. Best part about it was we barely had to deal with fire on the ground because thok was down already.

    2. Positioning for bats. Seems like you got this under control. The transition from kiting has to be seamless and I would recommend stacking all together, as you mentioned, to push blood frenzy "naturally".

    3. Specific cooldowns for bats. For one, I would let the tank get the aggro on the bats. With a destro lock, ele shaman, frost dk, and warrior, these bats should not be an issue. Tank should get an external (pain supression) and devo aura should be saved for when the tank has aggro and you're ready to nuke. With devo aura up, the lock, shaman, and frost dk should be able to do it. The lock can use glyph of unending reslove for his own personal devo aura every screech phase and should use it here afer devo aura to continue on the bats. At this point, blood frenzy should happen, and if the bats aren't totally dead, they're almost dead, so your warrior can help finish the job.

    So yeah... If you want to continue 3-healing for safety, I would just recommend to push the bat phase into blood frenzy as quick as possible (i.e. Pain suppression, Devo Aura, nuke bats some, get to blood frenzy, then finish them off while kiting). It sounds like your healers are keeping it going too long during the bats, which makes them really hard to kill with all the interrupts, and just exponentially increase the damage on the raid.

    Hope that helps.

  3. #3
    I haven't checked your logs but you didn't mention whether your shaman uses AG while killing the bats or not - obviously they should be as AG is a phenomenal raid CD with CL spam. Try to either time devo aura with it or get your Hpally to BoP the shaman just beforehand so they can freecast for max healing. If they use AG early in the first phase (around 4-6 stacks) and you get 24+ screeches then it should be back up for the bats, if not then just save it.
    Also, is your warlock using supremacy or sacrifice? If they are supremacy then they can use an imp which will help out hugely with dispels in the poison phases.
    Finally, make sure your dps are using their second dps pots and maybe holding cds to nuke the bats fast.

    Also, when the boss is about to eat an npc make sure you put widow venom on him for an 11mil-ish reduction to his healing from eating them.
    Last edited by Lether; 2014-02-24 at 09:56 AM.

  4. #4
    We have exactly the same healing comp and our healers decided after ~100 pulls that they are not healing bat phase, we get 25+/25+ (opening frost). Once frost phase is over thok is at <10%. If DPS are not able to kill it before the next door needs to be open we usually open fire and go FFA, first 2-3 screeches are not killing anyone, and thok is dead by then.

    You may want to try it too, as if you don't get to 15+ screeches on poison phase you are esentially healing the boss with the extra transition

  5. #5
    no reason to ever do the bat phase. get bats, and end it. you could (possibly? never tried it.) just do Pull->Fire door to 5 stacks->Ice Door->Dead
    If you're certain you can kill it in 2 doors then why not skip the 5 from poison and put it on the fire door, more dps both from the buff and from not having to kill bats.

  6. #6
    With your setup these bats should be dead in 10sec max. Kill the bats and finish the phase, blow raid cd for the bats to mitigate the spike of damage.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Ganrokh View Post
    My 10man raid has been working on Heroic Thok for about 2 weeks now. After quite a bit of trial and error, we're able to make it through the first phase and first kite phase pretty consistent. We open the poison door first. We completely hit a wall though during the second stack phase whenever bats come out, though. Incoming damage just goes through the roof and I feel like the healers just fall apart.

    Comp. We currently 1 tank, 3 heal, 6 DPS

    Guardian Druid
    DPS Warrior (OS, Prot MS)

    Mistweaver Monk
    Disc Priest
    Holy Paladin (Ret OS)

    BM Hunter (me)
    Fire Mage
    Destro Lock
    Elemental Shaman
    Frost DK

    For the first phase, we form a triangle on the boss's side. One group is the Warrior, Monk, Paladin, and DK. The second group is the Mage, Lock, Shaman, and Priest. I'm alone at the third point. When we reach 18 stacks, I move between the other two groups and we usually end up phasing around 22-23 stacks. For the first kite phase, we kite Thok across the middle of the room two times, then down the hall once, then to the back of the room near where he spawns. We open the Poison door second. Thok being at the back of the room when he fixates to the poison door lets us transition to the second stack phase seamlessly.

    This is where we have problems. Everyone stacks on the boss's side as a single group. The bats come in, and our Frost DK gets aggro and holds them in the group and we try to stun and burn them down the best we can. Incoming damage during this phase seems to be ludicrous though, and we end up dying every time. We just can't seem to survive once the bats are out.

    Here are logs from our attempts. I know the Shaman's DPS is low; we're working on it.
    worldoflogs.com/reports/6z9e1dkic3y2e6yx/
    worldoflogs.com/reports/k4anr8v75h0ihycs/
    worldoflogs.com/reports/cttlul2rd3ezfo1k/

    I'm kinda at a loss at how to fix the situation. I'm open to any/all ideas.
    On our first kill (long time ago, so even more viable now), with 3 healers, just burn bats asap. We took only 5 stacks on that phase(transition at 5th stack) and finish the bats on kite phase. It is more than enough to kill the boss. No need for massive cds, just coordinate dispels well enough. Dispels are the most important thing in this phase. Start with mass dispel to get it on cooldown asap. Then next 2 with single dispels and so on.

  8. #8
    It also helps if you misdirect the bats to a tank as soon as they are in range of you (if you aren't already). We found it's easier if you have the groups stack on bats once the boss gains a few stacks.

  9. #9
    Get your warrior to tank and have the druid go DPS. Warriors get 1mil+ Shield barriers and can mocking banner the bats. This will allow your healers to focus more on the raid.

    Also if you can't get pass a point then throw more CD's at that point. You don't need to be going to 23 stacks on the first phase so save a CD or 2 for the bats. If you send your warrior as tank you can have the Pally bop the druid and he can tranq.

  10. #10
    To win when the bats come save AG for it, BoP the shammy and have him go to town. Aim to break the phase then as well. Finally, you can stun the bat that enrages, hes the one that does the aoe as far as I know.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    How we did it:

    1 tank, 2 healers, 7 dps. First phase to 29-30 stacks, we made sure to have perfect CD rotations. 2-3 tries in and this was very easy.

    We managed to get Thok down to 45-50% this way. During the bat phase, we never switched to the bats, instead we all stacked on the same point and managed to get up to 15 or so stacks. Once he enters the phase, we nuked the bats down together while one person ran away. This was actually the hard part for us, but after 5-10 wipes we realised that the boss was so low anyways that we didn't need to try push another 25-30 stacks.

    After that, position yourselves well in the Yeti phase. We had him down when this ended, but unless your dps is low, you should have him down soon after that. You can probably stay stacked on the fire phase and push him fast, then kill him during the kite easily. If he's at 3-4% during the kite before fire phase, I recommend not opening the jail since he heals for a good chunk.
    Last edited by mmoce8f8bee469; 2014-02-26 at 09:32 AM.

  12. #12
    our guild 2 tank 3 heals this. phase 1. get to 29-30 stacks. kite thok for 5 focuses. open poison door. once bats come out. everyone stacks. healers can spam the hell outta heals while our hunter misdirects the bats to the tank. all dps blow cds on the bats just to get them down. i also use shadowfury to aoe stun them if its needed. afterwards we just head to ice then fire. we can still do 30 stacks in poison phase and ice, bats just need to be handled properly.

  13. #13
    Wanted to bring an update to this situation. We've decided to go with the 1 tank/3 heal strategy, going Frost > Fire > Poison. We've had a few sub-20% wipes, one as low as 12%. I feel like this is the working strategy for us. We just need to get to the poison door with everyone alive.

    My main issue right now is that I feel like we don't have a way of consistently getting through the fire door with everyone alive. We handle the boss in front of the fire door. We have 3 marks set up; one in melee, one at ranged, and one in between. The melee are at the melee mark, and the ranged are at the farthest away mark. As fire spawns on the two groups, both groups move toward the middle mark, until we eventually meet and stack there to phase the boss. While this usually works, sometimes we have people struggling to find a stacking point, sometimes the yeti charges into the area, etc. I feel like there should be a better way to handle this fire door.

    Also, healing comp remains the same at Disc Priest/Holy Pally/Mistweaver Monk. We've replaced the Ele Shammy with a second Destro Warlock due to the Shammy pulling poor DPS. We're able to push to 24-25 stacks in phase 1, but during the blue door we struggle to get to 15 stacks when I feel like 20 is possible. Is it possible to hit 20 in this phase as well with our healing comp, with just better cooldown management?

    Here's the logs from our recent round of attempts;
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/f3rqe51sr1osf2xy/

  14. #14
    The Lightbringer Radio's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ganrokh View Post
    Wanted to bring an update to this situation. We've decided to go with the 1 tank/3 heal strategy, going Frost > Fire > Poison. We've had a few sub-20% wipes, one as low as 12%. I feel like this is the working strategy for us. We just need to get to the poison door with everyone alive.

    My main issue right now is that I feel like we don't have a way of consistently getting through the fire door with everyone alive. We handle the boss in front of the fire door. We have 3 marks set up; one in melee, one at ranged, and one in between. The melee are at the melee mark, and the ranged are at the farthest away mark. As fire spawns on the two groups, both groups move toward the middle mark, until we eventually meet and stack there to phase the boss. While this usually works, sometimes we have people struggling to find a stacking point, sometimes the yeti charges into the area, etc. I feel like there should be a better way to handle this fire door.

    Also, healing comp remains the same at Disc Priest/Holy Pally/Mistweaver Monk. We've replaced the Ele Shammy with a second Destro Warlock due to the Shammy pulling poor DPS. We're able to push to 24-25 stacks in phase 1, but during the blue door we struggle to get to 15 stacks when I feel like 20 is possible. Is it possible to hit 20 in this phase as well with our healing comp, with just better cooldown management?

    Here's the logs from our recent round of attempts;
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/f3rqe51sr1osf2xy/
    I'd prefer Fire>Frost>Poison, you don't have to worry about the Yeti in fire that way. If your raid team reallly struggles with the Yeti, then Fire>Poison>Frost might be even better.

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