Horridon 10/25 N Strategy (<500 ilvl)

[Toxigen]

DPS:
Rogue
Frost mage
SV hunter
Boomkin
Spriest

Why frost?

[Slak]

Why frost?

Really, that's what you get from our post? Because arcane blows and he is a bit too low on crit/gear for fire, so until he gets more gear he is parsing higher in frost.

The question was: "who in our dps can help out other than priest mass dispelling on first door?".

[stormgust]

So who can dispel what?

We are short a melee interrupt and it is hurting us.

Tanks:
Guardian druid
blood DK

Healers:
Monk
Pally
Shammy

DPS:
Rogue
Frost mage
SV hunter
Boomkin
Spriest

Resto shammy seems to have limited dispels, who in our dps can help out other than priest mass dispelling on first door?

You've got a shadow priest (and a boomkin), for mass dispell, as well as every healer for sunfire at door #1. As for door #2 paladin, monk and moonkin can dispell, while one tank, the hunter and a rogue with interrupts, plus a solar boom for when the dinomancer is there (interrupts all priests!). You've got a MW Monk which can single handed (revival) dispell door #3, though both the monk and paladin can cure diseases single target. To help with "tanking", make sure the dk is tanking the mobs at door #3 (i.e. have him take horridon at #2 and #4) and have him channel army of dead for the latter add waves.
Door #4 is straightfoward and doesn't really require all that much attention, just make sure do decurse the rogue.

As for the general tactic:
1 tank for the adds, 1 tank on horridon. Tank horridon closer to the middle (healrange!), and slowly move the adds towards the next door, as deemed neccesary by sand/poison pools, frostorbs (and totems). You may also want to try two healing it. We had to @raidaverage of iLvL495 using a disc/rdruid (symbiosis on paladin) [missed spellpower buff and heroism]

[Deleted]

to help whoever is having issues with Horridon, we used the following tactic (2 tank 3 healers)

dps:
dk
mage
lock
ele shaman
moonkin

Core points:
The 3 main adds and the dinomancer have fixed spots where they land, which seemed identical for each door.
Same goes for their order.

1 lands right in front of the door alone, then 2 land together on the left and right.

The main aim of the dps should be ignore everything else normally and nuke the 1st add down as soon as possible (ideally before the next 2 spawn). This makes it very easy and reduces the number of spawns.

Mark a skull and start dpsing one of 2 new ones that drop down later, TILL the dino spawns. When dino spawns switch to it and nuke to 50%, after he goes dino form switch back to skull, MC boss using orb whoever is supposed to pref a healer if 3 heal, and then take the mobs down. You DO NOT need to dps boss much at all in these phases so just focus on the adds.


I'll split details for each door so it is easier to follow:

1st door, sand trap adds
adds coming from the door are not a big threat so dps them casually, the OT just needs to make sure to face the basilisks away n pick them up
nuke 1st sandtrap add, nuke 2nd one, switch to dino, back to 2nd, kill, then 3rd, then clear the rest of the trash, done

2nd, poison adds
door adds charge n put dots so annoying but not a big threat
assign interrupts for the venom priests, if you can kill 1st priest before next 2 land u just need 2 interruptors
effusions should be nuked asap as they are more dangerous then the priests and have low hp, people seem to underestimate them (u can cleave if ure dps is enough, they just drop really fast but cast everything the venom priest does)
you only need 1 interrupt per priest, and if you are nuking effusions fast enough you should never get high poison stacks

3rd door, toughest of the 4
the small adds from the door are deadly due to their stacking dot
ignore champions, nuke the warriors which have low hp
when first frost mob spawns, lust and nuke it down, it will carry forward into the next 2 frost adds and ideally you should be able to kill most of the adds off in the lust
a DK can pop ARMY here which will take care of the champions/warriors stacking plague debuff (makes it much easier)

4th door, just kill adds dont stand in totems, simple

Last phase, boss is taking 200% more dmg so nuke away. Jalak when it spawn has 17mil hp and drops really fast, use all raid defensive cds you have during this time and save tank cds for the phase after

When Jalak is dead, Horridon hits harder so just rotate tank cds and taunt etc, call externals, zerg the boss. THE END

edit: quick post at work, so ignore the grammar and shit, if something doesn't make sense feel free to ask

[Mad_Murdock]

Can you show me a source of "You're supposed to have 500+ ilvl in order to get past the /second/ boss." Oh you can't?

But thank you, everyone, for what you've said in this thread. I have given the info to my team and we can all agree that our changes will make the gurubashi be much less painful.

From what I'm hearing, on the PTR gear was scaled up to ilvl 502. Some of those that did the fight said virtually nothing has changed or been toned down. So it's probably reasonable to assume that 502 is still the target ilvl. I'm mostly cool with that, I would have prefer Blizzard come out with a big banner saying, "We're giving you the first boss to help with the hurdles we've put in after that, But most of you will be required to run LFR for the next couple of months if you want to progress in normal mode raids"

They are basically making it like it was in Burning Crusades, which is what a certain group of people have been asking for. If you can't kill Gruuls, No need to go to SSC. Eventually, LFR will get people geared enough to proceed through previous content. So they won't be nerfing the content as much directly and the heroic raiders will get to feel special longer. Win-Win for everyone!

For the first time in MoP in considering switching to a more dedicated raiding guild, i dont really think our everchanging roster of casuals (we have no mandatory attendance) will manage to get even council down...

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. The joy of being in a laid back guild is it's laid back and you can have a night or week off reguarly, but If this is the new model and I want to avoid running LFR as much as possible, then a switch is about the only option. Sadly, my server is pretty dead. So my only real option is a transfer. Shame Blizzard won't offer account wide transfers

[Kurzior]

So who can dispel what?

We are short a melee interrupt and it is hurting us.

Tanks:
Guardian druid
blood DK

Healers:
Monk
Pally
Shammy

DPS:
Rogue
Frost mage
SV hunter
Boomkin
Spriest

Resto shammy seems to have limited dispels, who in our dps can help out other than priest mass dispelling on first door?

Door 1: magic
Paladin, Shammy and Monk should all be able to dispel the fire DoT as well as the stun from the basilisks (but that should be getting interrupted and basilisks can be stunned)

Door 2: poison
Paladin, Boomkin, Monk for poisons.

Door 3: diseases
Paladin, Monk

Door 4: curse
Shammy, Boomkin, Mage

For the second door, it worked much better for us when we just waited until the 3rd priest was near dead to start dispelling (except for the tanks). Up to that point, just roll healing cds, boomkin tranquility, spriest hymn, etc. The important thing to realize is that the damage is healable with cd's up to a point. If you don't burn mana dispelling dots that are just going to be replaced a few seconds later, you will have more mana to heal the damage.

Magic damage reduction helps a lot too such as devotion aura and glyph of healing stream. I would also recommend assigning 2 people with interrupts to focus on the first priest, everyone else should aoe/cleave to kill adds as quickly as possible. If you can keep the priests stacked together, solar beam from your boomkin will work wonders. The longer you delay the first successful venom bolts, the easier this door becomes.

[Deleted]

As mentioned yesterday (page 25), here's our Video. It's from a tank warrior's perspective. I hope it can help. For more information and tips check out my post at page 25

[Deleted]

My group was having some serious issues on 10 man, but we eventually refined our strat and got him to the final phase. We didn't kill him because a healer DC'd, tank died etc...

Fist phase is easy, group up adds, interrupt basilisks and nuke down big adds.

Second phase, Venom Priests hold priority, interrupt where possible (1 or two volleys is managable) make sure they and the effusions are single target prio. Don't just AoE and expect them to die fast, single target the priests, the melee guys do very little damage.

Third phase is trickiest. Pop hero and stun/slow the smaller guys who can't be tanked. Nuke down the bigger ones whilst kiting them along the wall to keep the frost orbs out of the way.

Fourth phase, interrupt the fireballs as much as possible, make sure the bears then the shaman that drops off the bear once dead is prio.

Always remember to keep the boss tank within range of healers. Move with the group, the swipe is so easy to avoid if your raid has a functioning brain, just be aware that you're not trapping the raid between his tail/head and a void zone. \

Remember to nuke the dinomancers down ASAP, they should go down to 50% very fast if all 6 DPS are hitting him and click the orb ASAP. (Also, interrupt Dinomancer, easy mode stuff)

Not all adds need to die before the phase ends, the little ones can easily be cleaved down from phase 1 and 2 and they don't serve as much of a hinderance. It's only really the small adds from phase 3 than can be an issue.

When final phase hits, pop CD's and nuke Jalak down ASAP, raid CD's should be back up from phase 3 here so use them along with Healthstones and personals to survive. when Jalak dies, healers focus and spam the tanks. Swap as soon as possibly (around 7 stacks usually, although some classes can go higher, as a DK tank I pop Icy Veins on the 8th puncture to survive for longer), DPS focus up for the imba single target DPS and he'll be down in no time.

The fight does take alot of practice, it took my group 2 nights to kill him, ilvl's of about 492/497 for tanks, 495 - 500 for DPS and the same for healers.

Be patient, the fight isn't overtuned, it just asks far more of your group than Jin'Rokh.

To anyone reading this, good luck! The kill will feel very good

[Deleted]

I somewhere heard some adds could be CC'ed in a way (stuns, pushbacks, etc.). Could someone be so kind to write down what adds can be CC'ed by which effects / spells?

[kilj]

You are assuming that the disease amount is based solely upon the number of mobs. I'm pretty sure we are getting more actual diseases cast on us despite having the same number of mobs.



Did you miss all those people (including the post directly above yours) that came in here around 495-496 ilvl and said they killed it in under 10 attempts on both 10m and 25m? If you are at least 496 (which is perfectly reasonable if you are a normal mode guild with some 2/2 upgrades and 496 vp stuff even with some bad rng), gear is not blocking you. Its strat and execution of mechanics, just go fix them.

Nope I did not, unfortunately my guilds average ilvl ranges from 485-490 I think its a gear issue for us....

[pokeadott]

One thing that helped us a bit was to replace our dead weight with something less... dead. We had a rogue doing tank-level dps and failing at interrupts. Cut him, brought in a third tank and killed it shortly after (after a full night of attempts, not 'zomg 5 shot u suk'). We ended up with about 80 seconds left on enrage when he died and the adds died quickly enough (Lust at Frost Troll door).

Just mentioning it for the 10 man guilds that are/occasionally are more like 8-8.5man guilds (sigh... that guy again).

[houndstooth]

3 heal: resto druid, disc priest x2
2 tank: warrior, DK
DPS: ele shaman, rogue, demo lock, bm hunter, ww monk

My strat for this fight in two words: Assist Train.

Once you get to the point where you can quickly down the big adds, you'll be fine.

We had trouble with a couple pulls of venom guys until we got the interrupts down. We had trouble with the frost guys until we kited them really far. We really only saw bear shaman twice before we beat it. It's a fun fight but I think most people find you are going to beat this one inch by inch. I dont know how many pulls we had before the kill, but it was a couple hours probably.

[Akylios]

5.2 was live for two days and there were rivers of tears due to a slightly challenging encounter. If that doesn't paint a perfect picture of the state of average level raiding...slap my ass and call me Sally.

If this was actually intentional by Blizzard, then I'd be completely OK with it. Here's the thing though, I and my entire guild haven't played since Classic (the last boss we killed before Stone Guard normal mode was Kel'thuzad in old Naxx), so we may perhaps not quite understand how 10 vs 25 man raids have been balanced in the past. What is obvious though is that the T14 normal modes were at a similar difficulty level as Molten Core was back in the day, with Garalon hilariously enough taking the place of Ragnaros as the DPS check. Even the heroic versions of Feng, Garajal and Elegon we fought were Molten Core level (as they all died in 5 tries or less), with only HC Stone Guard, HC Spirit Kings and HC Will of the Emperor being Zul'gurub and BWL level (although HC SG wound up being very easy as we had already mastered the main mechanic in normal mode). I am going to assume this was similar for the 25 man versions of the raids, although I've not tried them.

Now come T15, Jin'rokh is at a Molten Core level of difficulty, which is perfectly in line with how the normal modes were in T14, but for some reason the 2nd boss in the dungeon suddenly jumps straight up to a ZG/BWL skill level for 10 mans (unless you have a group easily able to deal with the mechanics, which is not the case for many 10 man raids). This means that the 2nd boss of the 10 man T15 normal mode raid is for some reason as hard or harder than the first 6 heroic bosses of the previous tier. But here's the thing, I honestly would not mind Blizzard actually making the normal modes more challenging this time around (it would actually fit in very well with how they did things back in Classic), if it wasn't for the fact that the 25 man version of the encounter seems to be at a Molten Core level of difficulty. So why should the 25m versions of normal modes continue with the same format in T15 as they did in T14, but the 10 man raids should suddenly get a big spike in difficulty level?

My guild shouldn't have had to wipe 30 times on Horridon before we got our kill, when we managed to kill Heroic Spirit Kings in only 15 tries in comparison. We may be super casual (all being in our early 30s and 40s these days), but we make very good progress with the little time we get to spend raiding. It's just a bit annoying to see multiple 25m guilds with much worse T14 progression than us just bulldoze through the encounter and spam general chat with statements about how Horridon was easier than the bridge trash. -.-

Sorry for the whine, just had to get this off my chest. Perhaps I should just stop worrying about what's happening in 25m raids and be happy I got a challenging encounter right off the bat instead. It's probably exactly what I should have done.

[Sesshou]

From what I'm hearing, on the PTR gear was scaled up to ilvl 502. Some of those that did the fight said virtually nothing has changed or been toned down. So it's probably reasonable to assume that 502 is still the target ilvl. I'm mostly cool with that, I would have prefer Blizzard come out with a big banner saying, "We're giving you the first boss to help with the hurdles we've put in after that, But most of you will be required to run LFR for the next couple of months if you want to progress in normal mode raids"

No that doesn't mean that. Their main focus on the PTR is making sure the mechanics all work properly so something like Sinestra doesn't happen. They just need to give you a reasonable set of gear and they can tune it however they want because if they give you 502 and it is just fine to do with 496 then you can see that if you look at a log or something and you see that there are some reasonable breaks where you have extra time. If they give you something on the low side like 490 then it just becomes harder to complete the fight and do all the mechanics and why would they want to do that?

@Akylios
I have a serious problem with thinking of anything since even WotLK at MC level or even ZG/BWL level. That level means to me that it is tuned so that 25%+ of your raid can sit there and play absolutely horrendously and you can kill the bosses. I did MC and BWL and ZG (went into aq40 and died quite badly) and I'd say about 25-40% of the people in for those kills played like crap (as in just as bad as all of those lfr horror stories). You just needed enough people to do the important stuff.

25m horridron isn't really easier. The only real valid thing I can think of is that a 25m might have multiple MW monks or people who can swap to one and a 10m might not have a bench to do that. Class stacking doesn't mean one is easier than the other though because its certainly possible to do that on a 10m also. Why exactly do you think 25m is significantly easier? Like something solid and not "omg they said it was easier than trash" which is absolutely not true (though that trash was a pain).

[Aquamonkey]

No that doesn't mean that. Their main focus on the PTR is making sure the mechanics all work properly so something like Sinestra doesn't happen. They just need to give you a reasonable set of gear and they can tune it however they want because if they give you 502 and it is just fine to do with 496 then you can see that if you look at a log or something and you see that there are some reasonable breaks where you have extra time. If they give you something on the low side like 490 then it just becomes harder to complete the fight and do all the mechanics and why would they want to do that?

On average, the self-selected pool of guilds that go through the effort of copying characters to our test servers are far more skilled and organized than the typical Normal-mode raider (and the pick-up groups that form tend to be below the target skill threshold), so there is a bit of estimation that goes into tuning Normal mode encounters. Because a disproportionately difficult Normal mode encounter presents a brick wall that entirely blocks progress, we will act to reduce the difficulty of such encounters, often shortly after they first become accessible, to avoid giving players a frustrating experience. For example, when Heart of Fear was released, we observed that even some guilds that had fully cleared Heroic Mogu’shan Vaults were struggling to meet the berserk timer on Normal Garalon; we made several adjustments to the fight to bring its difficulty in line with the rest of the instance on that first day. By the time that most others saw the encounter, it was where we wanted it to be difficulty-wise. (Source)

[Sesshou]

That blue post adds nothing to what I said. Yeah the ptr players are probably better on average than your random guild, so? The main point of ptr is mechanics and like your quote said they use some estimation to tune the things appropriately. So it makes sense to swing a little towards the generous side with the ilvl on ptr so the mechanics can get tested and enough of the fight can be done so they have data to make the estimates. Your post also mentions ptr pick up groups being often below the target threshold which is also goes towards them being on the generous side with the ilvl so those people can test also.

[Aquamonkey]

That blue post adds nothing to what I said. Yeah the ptr players are probably better on average than your random guild, so? The main point of ptr is mechanics and like your quote said they use some estimation to tune the things appropriately. So it makes sense to swing a little towards the generous side with the ilvl on ptr so the mechanics can get tested and enough of the fight can be done so they have data to make the estimates. Your post also mentions ptr pick up groups being often below the target threshold which is also goes towards them being on the generous side with the ilvl so those people can test also.

You misinterpret what they're saying. They're saying PTR raiders > normal raiders on live > PUGs on live. The PTR raiders who test the bosses are more skilled and organized than typical raiders so they have to tune down the mechanics for live, but not so much that pugs can faceroll them.

They aren't swinging things easier on PTR, they're saying PTR is harder than live because it is adjusted for more skilled players. Yes, they're testing it in 502 gear which for the last few bosses on PTR this would be swinging for the generous side. But for the first few bosses, this is swinging for the harsh side because normal raiders don't have 502 ilvl coming in nor do they have the skill/coordination of the PTR testers.

EDIT: It's not to dump on normal raiders, it's just that PTR raid testers are a self-selecting group that tend to be HM raiders looking to get a jump on the new bosses.

[Sesshou]

Looks like I did misunderstand the pick up group line, but that doesn't really change anything. It doesn't matter that normal raiders don't have 502. The blue you just quoted explains that they use estimation for the tuning of normal modes. That means they don't actually need to set ptr ilvl at exactly what their goal is. And again, if they undershoot and its absolutely brutal then they waste testing time because they will have to adjust it so the mechanics can be tested later.

You are using my terms differently than I was. I'm saying 502 is generous because it is more than you actually need to do them if they are at the level the designers think they are at. You are saying it is generous because a normal mode raid isn't going to have that much, which again doesn't matter because they clearly said they used estimation for the tuning.

[Kiry]

Horridon fight sort of feels like they just took mob health, did the math and viola it's a 10 man. That no quality check was done on the number of mobs and the number of available dispells to prevent just that - class stacking or frustration

I'm on a large server, and you can see the progress trend. nearly all the 25mans are 3+, majority of the 10 mans are 1. Meanwhile, people continue to vent and express frustration over this boss.

Our 10 man guild killed it last night. It was messy but was kill after many different strats all from this thread. So - thanks guys for continuing to offer suggestions out to other guilds.

[jearle]

Core points:
The 3 main adds and the dinomancer have fixed spots where they land, which seemed identical for each door.
Same goes for their order.

1 lands right in front of the door alone, then 2 land together on the left and right.

The main aim of the dps should be ignore everything else normally and nuke the 1st add down as soon as possible (ideally before the next 2 spawn). This makes it very easy and reduces the number of spawns.

Mark a skull and start dpsing one of 2 new ones that drop down later, TILL the dino spawns. When dino spawns switch to it and nuke to 50%, after he goes dino form switch back to skull, MC boss using orb whoever is supposed to pref a healer if 3 heal, and then take the mobs down. You DO NOT need to dps boss much at all in these phases so just focus on the adds.


I'll split details for each door so it is easier to follow:

1st door, sand trap adds
adds coming from the door are not a big threat so dps them casually, the OT just needs to make sure to face the basilisks away n pick them up
nuke 1st sandtrap add, nuke 2nd one, switch to dino, back to 2nd, kill, then 3rd, then clear the rest of the trash, done

2nd, poison adds
door adds charge n put dots so annoying but not a big threat
assign interrupts for the venom priests, if you can kill 1st priest before next 2 land u just need 2 interruptors
effusions should be nuked asap as they are more dangerous then the priests and have low hp, people seem to underestimate them (u can cleave if ure dps is enough, they just drop really fast but cast everything the venom priest does)
you only need 1 interrupt per priest, and if you are nuking effusions fast enough you should never get high poison stacks

3rd door, toughest of the 4
the small adds from the door are deadly due to their stacking dot
ignore champions, nuke the warriors which have low hp
when first frost mob spawns, lust and nuke it down, it will carry forward into the next 2 frost adds and ideally you should be able to kill most of the adds off in the lust
a DK can pop ARMY here which will take care of the champions/warriors stacking plague debuff (makes it much easier)

4th door, just kill adds dont stand in totems, simple

Last phase, boss is taking 200% more dmg so nuke away. Jalak when it spawn has 17mil hp and drops really fast, use all raid defensive cds you have during this time and save tank cds for the phase after

When Jalak is dead, Horridon hits harder so just rotate tank cds and taunt etc, call externals, zerg the boss. THE END

edit: quick post at work, so ignore the grammar and shit, if something doesn't make sense feel free to ask

Re-quoting this post because it is extremely helpful imo and close to how we do it. Speaking of 10 man here which can be at an extreme disadvantage due to makeup. We killed it with our raid group in around 12 attempts i think, ~495 iLvL, and we got better and better the more we did the attempts and learned the fight.

Will add a couple notes to the post quoted.

- We tanked horridon parrallel to each door about 20 yards away from the edge of the oval walkway in front of the door to give the add tank some more room.
- Have your dps who are responsible for the Dinomancer make a macro to target him in case they are not adept at target switching.
- assign a person to do the channeling on the orb

G1 - If you have a disc priest, mark them, have the group rotate near the disc when the debuff is going out. If not the 3 healers will need to be dispelling on CD to keep up.
If you have a lock and are slow at making the transition from G1 to G2 use the portal it can help.

G2 – Learn the areas where the priest drop.
The first Priest needs to die asap, everyone needs to target it and kill it. This priest will need 1 interupter to take care of its volley (Use your longest Cd interrupt (mage c sect) or a healer interrupt. When the next 2 priests drop down mark them with a skull and an x (assign interrupters to these mobs and have them focused. If you are having dps issues on this phase save your 3-5 minute CDs for this point. Once the priests are marked your dps priority is Effusions  Dino to 50%  Priests, but skull and X need to be interrupted during the other targets. If you have extra interrupters they could try to get the effusions volley if one tries to go off. This method you should not get higher than 4 stacks of the poison debuff (60k ~ few seconds), once the door is smashed finish up the priest and drag the remaing bloodlords to next door and start dispelling the poison (or let it fade if it is not high.

G3 – Mark a person to stack on, stack the raid up.
Burn warriors asap they have 800k and do the debuff
Once tank has the warlord burn heroism and start to dps.
Group moves together out of the orbs. Cleaves on the warlords will destroy the warriors during heroism.
Have anyone who can cure disease do so, monk dps/tanks, pally dps/tank, SP
Kite out of the frost orbs toward the final gate
Warriors can be stunned/frozen btw
See DK army quote above, thats an awesome tip.

G4 – Spread out 6 yards
Interupt flame casters, they are stunnable
Try to kill 1 bear at a time, then the caster who gets off of it
Survive until door is crashed

Last phase
Pull mini boss (17mil) to horridon and burn him while cleaving the rhino
Raid damage will go out from the War God add and get higher as time goes on so use whatever raid cds u have left as well as personal CDs
Once wargod dies horridon will start on the tank, tank cds overheal tank and burn boss

We took horridon into last phase still at ~75% and was able to beat him 1min ahead of enrage.

Survive the adds and you are rewarded with a ridiculously easy final phase.

Good luck, this fight is not easy in 495 gear or less. Our second raid will be working on it this weekend in ~ 490 gear, I will report back how we do.