Heroic Tortos Advice

[Thiassi]

My guild is currently working on heroic Tortos. We have tried killing the bats and the kite strategies. When we kill the bats I feel like it's a waste for our dps potential on the boss, but when we (I, since I'm BrM) kite, my group thinks it would be better to kill them. I know I need more practice on kiting the bats since last night was the first time I kited them, luckily bats weren't the causes for all the wipes . Okay, my question is, how did you get your first Heroic Tortos kill and what way do you feel is the best way to do it now that you've killed him?

[Deleted]

We kite them with a frost dk who get aggro and an affly lock that use the 70% snare (i think is 70, not sure tbh). We never did the killing strat since this worked well from the beginning. But with the actual gear , killing them should not be a problem.
With misdirection+lock snare+dk frost snare is not that hard. Keep in mind that with this strat you have to kill the turtles very fast since a knockback on the kiter can be easily be a wipe. GL

[Deja Thoris]

Kill the bats. The fight has a fixed pattern, dps doesn't matter at all unless you meet the mini dps checks inbetween such as killing the bats before a quake stomp.

Sure, people kite them but meh, get too close during a stomp and you are dead. Get knocked into the air by a turtle and you are dead. I just don't see the point. It's a simple matter to kill the bats.

[jsz]

We have never killed the bats. We easily could at this point due to gear but we can kill the boss faster without.

[Digitaldisco]

Our group uses a BrM+Hunter to kite the bats. We have a resto Druid that pretty much just chases our Monk around and make sure he stays up. We tried killing the bats a couple times but we felt like RnG played to big of a roll in that strat. Good Luck!

[Pippo89]

My guild is currently working on heroic Tortos. We have tried killing the bats and the kite strategies. When we kill the bats I feel like it's a waste for our dps potential on the boss, but when we (I, since I'm BrM) kite, my group thinks it would be better to kill them. I know I need more practice on kiting the bats since last night was the first time I kited them, luckily bats weren't the causes for all the wipes . Okay, my question is, how did you get your first Heroic Tortos kill and what way do you feel is the best way to do it now that you've killed him?

We firstkilled him last week with following setup:
Tanks: Warrior (me), Paladin
Healers: Disc, Paladin
DD's: Feral, DK, Fire-Mage, 2x Hunter (SV for the bats), Elemental Shaman (our third Healer)

Tanks:
Our pally tanked Tortos while I took care of the bats. Shockwave versus Bats makes it easier.
As in our case, you MUST make sure that your hunter (if you got one. or a rogue) misdirects the bats to the bat-tank.
It really sucks if they change their flight path and fly towards a healer or someone else. MD was very important for us and it took a few tries for our hunter to understand that he must do this in time.

As for you, well if you are a Brewmaster I'd try to kite. If my Piercing Howl wouldn't have 10/15yards range only, I'd also try it.
If you tank them, just make sure you pop a def cd when they break your shield and refresh it when a few bats have been killed. Make sure someone kicks a turtle for the damage buff. Two good melees are sufficient, and sometimes a supporting range DD (serpent sting spread or a few chain lightnings)
Note: We always killed the first bat group without a turtle debuff.

Just don't use all melee offensive cooldowns on the same bat group. E.g. Feral uses Berserker at group 1, DK burst on group 2, tank-burst on group 3 and so on. At least we did it that way.

Healers:
3 are too much. Turtles survive for too long, as do the bats. Pick the healer with the best dps-spec for respeccing.

DD's:
As I said above we had two melees. They were responsible for taking the bats out fast enough. Perhaps you already figured out, but if the Ground Stomp is incoming and there are still bats alive, that's too slow. They must be dead before the Stomp occures.

With 4 range dd's, all have to focus on the Turtles. One of them can help the bat group from time to time.

All:
Don't spread too far, but neither too close.

Stay away from the immobile turtles after Ground Stomp. If you are not the assigned kicker, but standing near the immobile turtle after a Ground Stomp, a falling rock may (one-)hit the kicker. Which is a wipe
The green circle isn't well visible below a turtle and besides that, Non-Kickers have no reason to stand so close to a turtle.

In our case, the disc stood in the middle, the holy pally near the melees. Ranges had to make sure they stay within 30yards range for Prayer of Healing.

Focus on Tortos as soon as he drops below 20%, but make sure you have 2-3 turtles ready for kicking.

Good luck.

[Valored]

Kiting the bats is a strong strategy if your DPS is low, if you run 3 heals, or if you have a hard time getting all the mini turtles down in time. We have a frost DK kite with help from a hunter with MDs. Gorefiend's Grasp is great for the DK to take in this situation too.

We have done it with a BrM tank kiting them, just make sure that they are constantly slowed or they will eat your face off. They will eventually die from splash damage from yourself so they won't stack up infinitely. When you do the kiting strategy however, make sure members don't use random AoE such as Starfall that could pull aggro off newly spawned bats, making it more complex than it has to be.

Learn a safe kiting path and stay away from mini turtles, try to keep your debuff up (the shell) and it should be a GG.

[Thiassi]

Thanks for all the advice. It looks like we will be trying the kiting strat more, unless everyone is just against it. I need to figure out the best kiting path it seems. The biggest problem I'm having with kiting is that the bats almost always spawn on the opposite side of the room from me (if I'm on the east side, they land on the west and if I'm on the west they land on the east). Is there a rotation they follow or is it just my luck that I noticed?

[Deleted]

Our first kill was with a Frost DK kiting the bats. Took some practice but worked fine (2 healed). Now, we (me as bear tank) just tank them and our dps helps killing them.

Kinda hard to give you anymore pointers, when we don't know what your gear is like, what combination of dps you have and whether or not you're 2 healing it. If you can, log it next time and post it. That way it's a lot easier to point you in the right direction.

[Kulldam]

Thanks for all the advice. It looks like we will be trying the kiting strat more, unless everyone is just against it. I need to figure out the best kiting path it seems. The biggest problem I'm having with kiting is that the bats almost always spawn on the opposite side of the room from me (if I'm on the east side, they land on the west and if I'm on the west they land on the east). Is there a rotation they follow or is it just my luck that I noticed?

There is no rhyme or reason to where the bats spawn, but you can somewhat dictate where they're likely to be by forcing particular player(s) to stand in certain areas of the room. Namely, bats will typically agro onto healers since they have a slow flight animation to reach ground level after spawning, and are subsequently building threat as they move down. Therefore, if you really want, you can have one or both healers stand somewhat centered and when bats spawn, they will virtually always move toward one of those healer players right away. The danger of course is this means a healer is likely to get eaten very quickly if you as the kiter can't pick them up immediately, before the chomping actually begins.

One way to alleviate this issue that my group uses is to use a Fade-type mechanic on the primary healer that usually gets threat (which is me as a Mistweaver in this case). I glyph for Retreat, which causes me to temporarily fade and drop threat for 10 seconds after using my Roll ability. Thus, when bats spawn (indicated clearly in my UI), I heal a bit to build threat, then when they come down a bit and are about to get into range of me, I Roll/Fade out and drop my threat. This causes the bats to immediately switch to a new, second-highest-threat target and saves me from being destroyed. Meanwhile, our Monk tank/kiter has already built up threat since the bats were initially coming down to a known area/location, so regardless of which direction they run toward after I Fade, they can be easily picked up with thrown kegs and that's that.

Other healers may or may not have access to such Fade-type abilities, though obviously Priests have actual Fade, Paladins can Hand of Salvation themselves or others (though the CD is fairly long), and so on. At any rate, it's a potential option depending on your raid to somewhat help control bat locations early on.

The other big thing is to make full use of any Hunter and/or Rogue for the temporary threat misdirect if you have one in the raid. Remember that by not killing bats, you gain a ton of otherwise missing damage on Tortos himself, so the slight personal DPS loss for a Hunter or Rogue to swap to the Bats for a few seconds and misdirect some threat to you as you kite is a drop in the bucket for the raid overall, and well worth it.

If you still want more info, I'd suggest one of the Heroic Tortos guides I've put out, which can be found here for the Quick Guide, and here for the Full Guide. Good luck!

[Deleted]

We kite them with a frost dk who get aggro and an affly lock that use the 70% snare (i think is 70, not sure tbh). We never did the killing strat since this worked well from the beginning. But with the actual gear , killing them should not be a problem.
With misdirection+lock snare+dk frost snare is not that hard. Keep in mind that with this strat you have to kill the turtles very fast since a knockback on the kiter can be easily be a wipe. GL

we have been doing the samething since our first kill.
so if you can do it, i can recommend trying it.

[Nzete]

We have a brewmaster kite the bats. Our prot pally runs without a shell to make sure that his self healing will have the initial threat on all bats. They all run to the same place for the brewmaster to get them and if the prot pally takes a hit it isn't fatal (resto shaman and holy priest getting hit are both fatal).

[Deleted]

We solo tanked using 3 healer with little difficulty of killing the bats. Had a hunter MD to me until my threat was sufficient for my healing to pull them towards me.This is coming from a heavy haste build prot pally however, but if your co-tank is that it may be worth you just going offspec. This was the logs for my first kill.


http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2576&e=3004

[boonefhh]

This is coming from a heavy haste build prot pally however

[Spotnick]

If you know how to kite and stomp well, it's a lot easier to do that than killing the bats. However any mistake will result in death and most likely a wipe.

[Thiassi]

Dont have any logs :/ but our comp is

Tanks: Me BrM and prot war
Heals: MW, Disc, and resto sham (ele OS)
DPS: Hunter BM/SV, UH DK, Frost Mage, Demo Lock, and Boomkin raid mascot.

My Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...e/Dorje/simple

We raid Wen/Sunday, so I'll let you know how it goes later this week.

[Deleted]

I am thinking about gearing my DK for this kite method, as I think it'll be a lot easier than killing them. My DK is not very geared (502 ilvl mostly dps gear), but I wouldn't imagine that to be a big issue.

1. Are there any tips that I could get for kiting as a dk?
2. Should I gem for stamina in order to get a bigger shield for stomps and stuff?
3. Does Death Grip give me a buff from crystals (i mean it knocks back meteors on raggy ;P )
4. Is it worth it to have people spread some dots onto the old bats in order to kill them (my computer is quite weak and may not handle the amount of bats well) - thinking about firemage pyroblast dot or random Thrash or Rain of Fire AoE.

[Deleted]

Our method is the healers standing close to the head of the boss so the bats always go to the boss, so that I (the bat tank) can pick them up fast, and position them next ot the head. Then onwards we proceed to chainlightning and cleavespam the bats down, all the while other ranged focus down the other turtles. Keep in mind that this allows the bat tank to help out on the boss dps, since he will 99% of the time be maxed on vengeance.
Also - you can use the turtles to debuff the bats for extra dmg taken.

As stated before, the dps requirement is not really the issue in this fight. Hell the actual damage mostly comes from the tanks. The dps are there to mostly kill the turtles and the bats. Only later on, when you start to outgear the fight, you will have more time for the dps to go on the boss.

And i will advise you to get a elemental shaman for the heroic progression. Chain lightning alone will help you on alot of fights. I think just earthquake + chainlighting spam and the bat tank whoring vengeance is enough to kill them.

Good luck.

- - - Updated - - -

I am thinking about gearing my DK for this kite method, as I think it'll be a lot easier than killing them. My DK is not very geared (502 ilvl mostly dps gear), but I wouldn't imagine that to be a big issue.

1. Are there any tips that I could get for kiting as a dk?
2. Should I gem for stamina in order to get a bigger shield for stomps and stuff?
3. Does Death Grip give me a buff from crystals (i mean it knocks back meteors on raggy ;P )
4. Is it worth it to have people spread some dots onto the old bats in order to kill them (my computer is quite weak and may not handle the amount of bats well) - thinking about firemage pyroblast dot or random Thrash or Rain of Fire AoE.

Most important tip: never get hit by them.
The entire idea of you kiting them revolves around the idea of constantly slowing them/lightly CCing them. By the end of the fight there will be so many of the bats there, that even if you are in melee range for 0.5sec, you will get hit by most of the bats, wich will (most likely) get you globaled.

And as an added note, gemming stamina for this is pointless, as it will increase the damage you get from the stomp. All tortos abilities (with the exception of autoattacks) are % of your max hp based. The more health you have, the more damage it does to you. Guardian druids get a win card here, as they can stack mastery to reduce damage taken on this fight all around, since all damage here is physical, including the stomps and bites.

And dont stress over deathgripping hte crystals, as you wont really have anything to spend your runes/rp anyway, since for bat aggro you only need 1-2 abilities. So you can simply icytouch crystalas as you pass them.

[Thiassi]

Update: We downed him after our 12th attempt! Once I got my kiting route figured out it became really easy to kite. Thanks for all the help! Trying for Primo next since my RL thinks that's the next easiest one.

[Pippo89]

Update: We downed him after our 12th attempt! Once I got my kiting route figured out it became really easy to kite. Thanks for all the help! Trying for Primo next since my RL thinks that's the next easiest one.

Congratulations and good luck on Primordius. We downed Council yesterday and aim for Primordius or Twins next