H Thogar Progression

[SolaronTich]

Hi MMOC, our guild took our first (full) night to work on Operator Thogar last night but we weren't able to get him down. For the most part, we've gotten train timing down (with a few exceptions), and adds are, for the most part, dying in a reasonable fashion. The problem is, we're hitting the point where DBM apparently doesn't have train timing data (after train #29). This is at around 8+ minutes. Most groups are able to kill him in at least 7, so I'm wondering if we just don't have the gear to handle this yet, or if we're doing something not quite right.

Boss: Operator Thogar (Heroic)

Raid Comp:

Tanks:
DK - Blood
Warrior - Prot

Healers:
Priest - Disc
Paladin - Holy
Druid - Resto x2

Melee:
Warrior - Arms
Paladin - Ret (myself)
Rogue - Combat (normally run 3, missing two last night)

Ranged:
Shaman - Elemental
Warlock - Demo x2
Druid - Balance
Hunter - Marks (we usually have a Survival as well, but he was out last night)

How long we have worked on this:
This was our first full night of attempts, though we tried a few pulls on him last week at the end of our raid week. Total of probably around 25 attempts.

Where we are having problems:
Assuming all goes well, we start having problems following the second split phase. We separate out, kill some stuff, bring what's left to the center, then two more add trains come in, and we lust. My issue is that honestly, we shouldn't really be making it that far. When we wipe at 8+ minutes in, Thogar is still at 20-25% health. At this point, we don't know the train schedule so we really need to be killing him before this.

What are we dying to:
In our logs, you can see that Wipe 14 (our longest attempt) was caused by most of the raid being hit by a train. This is because DBM no longer had timers for the trains coming through, so our caller was in the dark. Other attempts that we got far, we died to the Man-at-arms's raid damage, and to tanks getting wrecked by the adds. For this reason, we switched to lusting at that time, when lots of adds come in just as the man-at-arms is doing his AoE shout.

Logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...0&type=summary

Here are our logs from last night. Our longest attempt is Wipe 14.

My thoughts:
My suspicion is that the firemender and man-at-arms aren't dying quite quick enough (which is causing us to take lots of damage from the man-at-arms AoE), and we are too focused on AoEing down adds and therefore losing single target damage on the boss. Counterpoint is if the adds die quicker, everyone can switch back to single-targeting the boss faster. It's also possible that we just don't have the gear (or have the gear, but not the damage throughput) to get this down currently.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[HappyLuckBox]

your damage looks low for this fight, also you want to lust on pull, so that you can do the most damage to thogar while trinks/procs are up, and no trains are coming.

as far as damage goes, people really should be doing closer to 40k on such a cleave intensive fight.
why is your hunter MM? He should be SV or bm for cleave damage.

[un_known]

Hi MMOC, our guild took our first (full) night to work on Operator Thogar last night but we weren't able to get him down. For the most part, we've gotten train timing down (with a few exceptions), and adds are, for the most part, dying in a reasonable fashion. The problem is, we're hitting the point where DBM apparently doesn't have train timing data (after train #29). This is at around 8+ minutes. Most groups are able to kill him in at least 7, so I'm wondering if we just don't have the gear to handle this yet, or if we're doing something not quite right.

Boss: Operator Thogar (Heroic)

Raid Comp:

Tanks:
DK - Blood
Warrior - Prot

Healers:
Priest - Disc
Paladin - Holy
Druid - Resto x2

Melee:
Warrior - Arms
Paladin - Ret (myself)
Rogue - Combat (normally run 3, missing two last night)

Ranged:
Shaman - Elemental
Warlock - Demo x2
Druid - Balance
Hunter - Marks (we usually have a Survival as well, but he was out last night)

How long we have worked on this:
This was our first full night of attempts, though we tried a few pulls on him last week at the end of our raid week. Total of probably around 25 attempts.

Where we are having problems:
Assuming all goes well, we start having problems following the second split phase. We separate out, kill some stuff, bring what's left to the center, then two more add trains come in, and we lust. My issue is that honestly, we shouldn't really be making it that far. When we wipe at 8+ minutes in, Thogar is still at 20-25% health. At this point, we don't know the train schedule so we really need to be killing him before this.

What are we dying to:
In our logs, you can see that Wipe 14 (our longest attempt) was caused by most of the raid being hit by a train. This is because DBM no longer had timers for the trains coming through, so our caller was in the dark. Other attempts that we got far, we died to the Man-at-arms's raid damage, and to tanks getting wrecked by the adds. For this reason, we switched to lusting at that time, when lots of adds come in just as the man-at-arms is doing his AoE shout.

Logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...0&type=summary

Here are our logs from last night. Our longest attempt is Wipe 14.

My thoughts:
My suspicion is that the firemender and man-at-arms aren't dying quite quick enough (which is causing us to take lots of damage from the man-at-arms AoE), and we are too focused on AoEing down adds and therefore losing single target damage on the boss. Counterpoint is if the adds die quicker, everyone can switch back to single-targeting the boss faster. It's also possible that we just don't have the gear (or have the gear, but not the damage throughput) to get this down currently.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

it's as you have said, the firemender and the man at arms are the main priority of adds you need to get down, have the melee sort out a rotation to interrupt the firemender asap and as soon as that add is down, so should the man-at-arms (split dps on those two can make things quicker, the smaller adds are basically fodder that can be killed off to accidental aoe, can't access logs atm but if your DK is specced to gorefiends grasp, you can group the adds together for a quicker add kill.
the 8 minute mark (aka train 29) is the 30 sec warning for the encounter's enrage, it's basically a train inc from each railroad going from the bottom to the top (from 8:00 - 8:15) after that you have 15 secs to kill the boss before all four tracks have trains on them to 1 shot the whole raid.

the only other tips i can give is to use hero at the start and pre-pot and nuke as much as you can before the first add wave comes (when we had our first kill we had healers help in the beginning as well since damage wasnt that much of an issue before the first add wave) and ofc use pots again around the 2nd split phase.

[Ryethe]

In terms of reducing encounter time you always want to lust on the pull. It's the only time in the fight where CDs, trinkets and potions will all line up.

Now that you have more experience try killing those add phases without hero. You have some awesome classes for aoe. You are correct though in that men at arms and fire menders should be prio #1.

You may want to consider trying to get some single target talents in the mix like maybe have one lock go demonbolt. This was mythic but we had an enh, a warrior and 2 demo locks on one side and there was nothing to do half the time. Barely got through one AoE cycle before things died. So basically make sure you aren't over killing the adds. Also ensure the boss is on the side with the classes that benefit single target from the AoE or get free boss damage from their AoE. Ret and ele are two examples of this.

[AdrianCC100]

It took our guild a full night to kill Heroic Operator. So many people in my raid refused to follow the addon that was spamming in raid warning where you needed to move. They gave the excuses "I don't need an addon to tell me where to go, I have my two eyes to see where trains are" And these were the people constantly dying to trains. However, once those people stopped being stubborn and followed to addon, we killed him. Unless you have some insane DPSers in your raid, losing even 2 DPS at the start is going to cause you to wipe.. You really need the boss 10% or lower after the second split.

[SolaronTich]

Thanks a lot, yeah it seems that we need to clean up our train work a bit more than I thought, and if we're not killing the boss fast enough, lusting on pull definitely makes the most sense. If that doesn't work, we can definitely have some folks switch their talents/specs up a bit to squeeze out a little more single-target DPS. Hopefully we will at least make some progress, if not get him down during raid tomorrow.

[Toastiekins]

Tell your warlocks to switch to demonbolt. Cataclysm is just worthless padding on this fight.

[Argeln]

Thanks a lot, yeah it seems that we need to clean up our train work a bit more than I thought, and if we're not killing the boss fast enough, lusting on pull definitely makes the most sense. If that doesn't work, we can definitely have some folks switch their talents/specs up a bit to squeeze out a little more single-target DPS. Hopefully we will at least make some progress, if not get him down during raid tomorrow.

We actually had the same problem as you did, then we decided to go full out single-target dps with everyone switching their talents and just focus the boss with some minor cleave to the adds. We did focus the man-at-arms of course, but other than that we just went all out on the boss - and killed him ALOT faster.

[Detritivores]

Your prot warrior has lots of room to live harder. His block uptime can be about twice what it is (shoot for 50%). Also he should not be using bladestorm if he's dying. Bloodbath/ravager would be better choices. Especially ravager. This fight wants all the ravager.

On a raid level, you guys are barely using any mitigation CDs. 4 or fewer disc bubbles/rallying cries/devo auras across all 17 wipes, some of them long enough to have included 3 of each. Use them more. You have more than enough of them to cycle through when the raid-nuking adds are up. Smoke bombs on the melee pile from your million rogues are awesome too. Also lust on the pull would be a better idea, as others have suggested. Good luck!

[Damiann]

Lust at start and imo your goal should be to down him shortly after 2nd split. Send only a tank and healer to the top track on 2nd split and have everyone else focus boss while cleaving/mass stunning some of the weaker adds.

Another trick to get some more dps time strictly on boss is to ignore the far side cannon before 2nd split and have whomever is targeted by bombs to just make sure he is placing them on outside edges (the train with the cannon will leave after a bit). This leaves extra single target dps time before the split. Make sure the offtank is ready to taunt when the trains clear after split if the boss isn't already dead.

[Pur1tas]

So first thing I see is that you use 4 healers for a 14 people raid. Either bench one or make him play a dmg spec. Also your dmg seems about fine for most of your people. The hunter though is really not pulling his weight. Especially compared to the Rogue who has significantly worse gear. Lust at the start and don't get into AoE too much. The DPS on the boss is really low for almost everyone except for your hunter. I agree with the person that stated your hunter is in the wrong spec and I would suggest him going into SV for this fight (and actually most other fights as well).

I think the biggest problem is that you are using 4 healers though. It is just a bunch more HP you need to kill without getting anything out of it.

[Deleted]

Low dps. My guild has 3 hunters, all doing 50k+ (survi, everyone) and our raids lowest dps 39k. We aren't even mythic (HM) geared.

[Isleyjr]

just kill it watch some videos and all will be well

[NakataVagrant]

Also: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...s=1692&wipes=1

Make sure you interrupt. It might not seem like a big deal but adds healing = less focused damage on the boss. On some attempts even the man at arms got healed. If you focus the mender first she should die within 2-3 casts, so you don't even need a very strict interrupt rotation.

[TheMediator]

Also: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...s=1692&wipes=1

Make sure you interrupt. It might not seem like a big deal but adds healing = less focused damage on the boss. On some attempts even the man at arms got healed. If you focus the mender first she should die within 2-3 casts, so you don't even need a very strict interrupt rotation.

Actually do NOT interrupt if your DPS is weak. Let the cast go through and DISPEL. Each cast that goes off does ~1 million damage to the main at arms. If you do it correctly, the man at arms should go down about twice as fast, meaning more uptime on Thogar.

[NakataVagrant]

Actually do NOT interrupt if your DPS is weak. Let the cast go through and DISPEL. Each cast that goes off does ~1 million damage to the main at arms. If you do it correctly, the man at arms should go down about twice as fast, meaning more uptime on Thogar.

Clever use of game mechanics. I hadn't considered that before.

[Sard]

DPS seems a little low, and 4 healers on a 14 man like this is probably one too many. My guild is is ~676 geared and the lowest on our kill was a trial windwalker who did 35k. About half of them are well over 40k on this fight (our enhancement does almost 60k and the warriors do over 50k). Definitely pre-post and lust on the pull, and have people spec single target with incidental cleave. This is another one of those fights where it LOOKS like an aoe fight but its really a single target fight. No point in mad aoe to get the little meaningless adds down if it slows you down on the big, dangerous adds.

[Fayenoor]

Ignore the guys who throw bombs from trains. Just dodge the bombs. Our raid's average ilevel is 671. We wasted several pulls trying to kill the Bomb Dudes. Then we decided to ignore them. Unless someone is standing in like 2 Bomb explosions, nothing bad should happen from that. Those trains with the bomb guys just go away after sometime.

Lust on pull and nuke boss happily.

Also, you are running 4 healers on a 14 man raid, which I think is a bit of overkill. Great deal of the damage on this fight is avoidable. Kill the firemenders ASAP.

[Deleted]

Ignore the guys who throw bombs from trains. Just dodge the bombs. Our raid's average ilevel is 671. We wasted several pulls trying to kill the Bomb Dudes. Then we decided to ignore them. Unless someone is standing in like 2 Bomb explosions, nothing bad should happen from that. Those trains with the bomb guys just go away after sometime.

Lust on pull and nuke boss happily.

Also, you are running 4 healers on a 14 man raid, which I think is a bit of overkill. Great deal of the damage on this fight is avoidable. Kill the firemenders ASAP.

Don't bombs come from cannons? Are you not killing cannons? O_o

[arcaneshot]

First order of business is to get your raiders to stop dying to trains.

Second, on my raid's first kill we actually saved Bloodlust for the end (explanation later). Ended up doing this because by the second split train Thorgar ended up being around 20-25% and we decided we didn't want the fight to last much longer past that point (especially since we ran into the train spam).

The biggest thing that helped was sending a minimal amount of people to the entrance side when the second train split happened-- that is, all but one of our tanks and one healer stayed at the entrance side. All our DPS was with Thorgar on the other side of the split (having made sure to make a final tank switch right before the split happened as per usual) with the huge mob of little adds, and we Bloodlusted that and just plain burned him to zero (ignore last Man At Arms and Flamemender, dispel if Flamemender hits the boss, although I don't think they do that).

Although to be honest you want Thorgar much lower than that by the second split, but we couldn't muster that, therefore desperation move.