Thok 10H- CD rotation

[lordsphinx]

Hiya Everyone,

I could really use your help with a CD rotation for the first stack phase on H Thok 10. Our group comp:

Prot Pala (can go Ret)
Guardian Druid
Holy Priest (Disc)
MW Monk
Holy Pala

S.Priest
Enh Shaman
Destro ‘lock
BM Hunter
SV hunter
Frost DK
(One of these, or the Prot/Ret Pala will sit)

As I see it, we have the following CD’s

Vampiric Embrace
Ancestral Guidance
HTT
Divine Hymn
Devo aura x 2
BoP x2
Divine Shield (self)
Symbiosis Tranq
AMZ
Lock Candies

Here’s what I’m thinking:
1-4 nothing
5- HTT
7- Guidance
9- Vamp
11- Devo1
13- Devo2+ tranq
15- BoP Monk
17- Bop Priest + Divine hymn
19- Divine Shield+ AMZ
20- Candies

My problem is that no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get us past about 22 stacks before we need to stack. Am I missing any CDs, or could they be better spaced out? I'm really missing a resto shammy or druid here, but I would like to think the 2 Devo's would help...

[Deleted]

Not really what you're asking for, but 22 stacks should be completely fine as long as your DPS is decent. You should prob just try 1 tanking it.

[Squirl]

Why is your priest playing Holy? Disc is just better. Always.

Also, I'd 1 tank + 2 heal. You don't need to push the Roar phases very high when doing it that way. As long as you have the DPS to support it (and I don't see how you wouldn't this far into the tier), it's way easier. Sit the MW (no CDs), have the Priest go Disc (better), and have the Prot Pally go Ret (solo tank; Ret still brings good CDs). Ideally, I'd have the Prot Pally solo tank (at high Vengeance, EF makes them invincible and Light's Hammer becomes a ticking AoE LoH), sit the MW and Guardian, and bring in another DPS, but it doesn't look like that's possible for you.

Get pull roar phase to 16+. Be ready to CD your tank near the end and when the Jailor enrages (don't dispel it; more Vengeance means it dies in time with less/no help from DPS). Do Fire next. Just stay stacked and moving out of the fire and towards the door; getting 5+ should be pretty easy, but you don't need to push this phase very high. Do Ice next, stack in the hallway to avoid the Yeti, and repeat your pull phase spread + CDs, pushing them up a little if necessary (since you will lack Hero this time). He should die inside this roar or fixate phase, but you can bring him to Green for a few stacks if you need to.

We usually start Devo at 5 and just chain as many as we have. You probably live off AG+HTT after that, then stack in PW:B and phase over. You can BoP the Priest at some point as well. Shouldn't really matter; their casts are short enough to fit between Roars. Save BoP+VE for the start of Red phase so you don't phase immediately.

So, that's:

Pull

• 0: Hero
• 5: Devo 1
• ~7: Devo 2 (just tack it onto the previous one)
• 9: AG+HTT
• 13: Stack + PW:B
• 16+: Phase

Fire

• ~0: Bop+VE
• ~5+: Phase

Ice

• 4: Devo 1
• ~6: Devo 2 (just tack it onto the previous one)
• 8: AG+HTT
• 12: Stack + PW:B
• 16+: Phase/Kill

In any phase, use HS/personal if a Roar is coming that will kill you.

[deadlyturtle]

What you have to consider thou is how much time you gain by pushing extra stacks, if its worth it. From what I can tell, it doesnt matter much which order you have your CD's as long as everyone is allowed to cast and they dont overlap by too much (1 second is fine). It will be the exact same dmg going on the entire phase after 6 stacks.

Worth sayin thou is IF you want to push further on the stacks without too much dmg going out you can always use personals for few extra stacks, 2x Deter(no dmg output), IB, Astral shift, etc.. which lets the healers catch up on healing if they accidently got silenced or such.

I'd suggest you survive as long as you can, push thru every phase and see if you need to improve somewhere else. For most people progressing thok the boss will be alive for quite a while, and you have to make sure you know what to do afterwards.

Oh and afaik, AMZ close to useless in the first phase.

[Adhemar]

Prot pally can basically solo tank and be like 98% self sufficient as well as bringing a double-BoP and devo - look up Theck's research on this if you have doubts, it's frankly completely broken what a protection paladin can do on this fight. If you're going to sit someone, sit the bear. Stop stacking your Devos together and spread them out, instead. You're right that not having a shaman or druid hurts, but you're also right that two devos is a massive benefit (I'd have given quite alot to have a prot pally on this fight). Use them as "catch up" times for your healers to get the raid topped back up.

We do the traditional strategy (acid -> frost -> fire). We push 27+ stacks during p1, 10+ for p2 and as many as possible for p3. We use the same basic CD rotation during p3 as p1. We have the benefit of having an extremely OP resto shaman, but here's the CD rotation my group uses:

1 Bear Druid: HotW Tranquility (only used in 3rd phase)
3 Disc priest: Spirit Shell (4 full casts with proper timing, use of borrowed time and inner focus)
4 Shadow priest: Vampiric Embrace
6 Fury warrior: RC+Demo - Holy Paladin: Light's Hammer + Divine Favor + GAK
8 Raid: Healthstones
9 Raid: Personal Cooldowns
10 Resto Shaman: HTT
12 Resto Shaman: Ascendance (HoP from Holy Paladin)
13 Prot Warrior: RC+Demo
14 Holy Paladin: Avenging Wrath + Holy Avenger + Divine Shield
17 Holy Paladin: Devotion Aura
18 Rogue: Smoke bomb (raid stacks)
21 Disc Priest: PW:Barrier
24 Resto Shaman: SLT
27 Raid: Allow transition

VE must be used early or silences will interfere with its output. We accelerate the CD order a bit in phase 3 because HoP doesn't come off CD fast enough (using the double-HoP talent). The longer you can hold damage reductions off the more valuable they become. If you're not getting over 22, try moving damage reductions to later in the rotation and make sure your healers are getting enough practice to avoid the silences. Our holy pally had to reforge some extra haste into his gear to fit his HR casts between silences.

Holy priest is basically useless on this fight. Mistweaver is pretty bad, too. If you absolutely can't get past 22 stacks, you could try the 1 tank-2 heal-7 DPS method.

There's a ton of other advice in this forum on this fight, so make sure you've gone through all of it, if you're really stuck on the fight. Doing proper research and building the CD order correctly really helped us get this fight under control without putting crazy amounts of attempts in.

Also - you have two hunters who should be doing absolutely nutty DPS on this fight. You don't need to focus so much on the stacks you're pushing as the percentages of the boss's health you're taking off per phase. We aimed for sub-65%, sub-50% and sub-35%. We all stack together and spin the boss in a circle during the fire phase and we do not attempt to push it past wherever it happens to transition (literally had one kill where he pushed on his third silence). Everyone's run out of tricks by then and the boss should be well into execute phase. The majority of damage after the 3rd stack phase comes during the next two kite phases.

[Deleted]

If your dps is ok you shouldn't try to go past 20 on the pull, i would suggest to stack at 18 and transition a few after. Keep a couple of CDs (like AG and Devo aura) to use when the bats are out of the stun and stack shortly after.
For the frost phase, use the same order of CDs like on the pull and stack at 18 or a bit earlier. You should probably have a kill there or you can stack the fire phase immediately and kill him on the last kiting phase.

Remember that you can reduce the healing the boss gets when he eats the npcs with the wound debuff. I think that the hunter is the best to do this job.

[rohendar]

You should 1 tank with prot pally + your priest should be DISC; there is absolutely no reason for your priest to be holy on this fight.

1-4 nothing
5- VE
6- Monk should TFT here + pop Xuen
7- HTT
8- Guidance
10- Devo from holy pally + DISC priest SS
12- Holy Pally Bubble/Bop himself + Holy Avenger/ALL cds spam AOE
14- Devo from Prot pally
15- Barrier (all stack)
17- AMZ follow up

Basically at 15 you all stack in the bubble, full heal everyone, and just keep healing till you get pushed into trans phase. You should be able to use the Barrier/AMZ plus AOE healing to push it to above 20 stacks, and get pushed aroun 22 stacks.

Make sure your hunters are applying Mortal Strike effect right before boss eats the NPC to reduce his healing after each trans phase!

For 2nd phase Poison: we go to 5 stacks, tank picks up bats, all stack, get pushed on 6stacks. MW monk should use Revival here on stack 5 to remove all debuffs and get everyone full HP before stack so that you can get 1 more stack before he pushes you.

3rd phase Frost: same as p1

[lifteez]

Just a quick note since the others have covered a general layout of cd times. I say try rohendars above cd rotation. But bop the MW where he says he should pop TFT and xuen. I also suggest not having the monk go xuen, because it will leave him without a cheaper chi generator (RJW) and force him to either cancel aura spinning crane kick or jab the boss. ( both not good for mana).

save bops for MW monk. never have 2 bubbles/or Devo up same time. So if Devo is up, no bops, if holy pally bubbles, don't pop any other of your raid CDs like Devo. The priest will really want to be disc. You guys have the unfortunately 3 worst healers according to logs for h thok, holy priest holy pally mw., but ive been 2 healing it on my MW with a disc priest since 570 ilvl, so I'm sure you guys will be ok. Just give the healers ample practice because this fight is tricky to maximize effiecency of healing with. Good luck , and remember to encourage personal CDs (especially when you are past your raid CDs, or use them sooner if you can't make it past early stages)

Edit: 22 stacks should be ok 3 healing. Tbh.

[Deleted]

Don't bother doing two groups. Have the priest go Disc and take Divine Star, have the monk take RJW, and simply stack permanently. After the screech damage nerf, unless your healers are awful and not putting out the throughput they're capable of, this setup is perfectly capable of outhealing the damage Thok does even at max cast speed.

I realize this may sound like an obnoxious troll post, but I'm deadly serious. RJW and Divine Star are unbelievably powerful on this fight if you stack permanently. Your MW setup has some excellent theoretical throughput, but you have to cater to it, and since 1 screech will no longer instaphase you, stacking permanently is IMHO the best way to maximize your throughput.

[Deleted]

I'd echo what others have said here with suggesting to use one tank, ideally your Paladin. The raid group I am part of finally got up to Thok recently and we originally started out with 2 tanks and 3 healers with the bat phase as the second stack. We then switched to 1 tank and 2 healers going for 20 screeches in the first stack and then 8 stacks with the fire, then back to 16 to 20 with ice. We had a few low percentage wipes here. Following that, and due to some oversleeping, we tried 1 tank and 3 healers which made the fight feel trivially easy with the above tactic, even when we executed it very messily.

As already mentioned, Divine Star as Discipline is the way to go and if you stack from the beginning this is only going to be even more effective. Having two Devos sounds like quite the luxury but I would recommend that during them your Priest uses a Borrow Time hastened Prayer of Healing followed by a standard Prayer of Healing. Don't use Spirit Shell under Devo and instead use Spirit Shell + Inner Fire (which prevents spellcasting interruption) as a separate cooldown towards the end. Without Divine Hymn, you've freed up a BoP that you can use as you desire - more PoH / timing it after Inner Fire might work on the Priest.

Barrier is also nice for prolonging the last few screeches and Pain Suppression is useful for the tank as screeches increase.

[Adhemar]

IMO, 1 stack is bad advice. Divine star can hit melee from 15 yards away so there's no reason to stack for it, and you can position your monk between groups to share RJW. What works for you guys now, with previous experience of the fight and probably a lot more gear than when you first approached the fight is probably not applicable to a new group just now getting there.

Either way, lordsphinx, I think you can tell from the posts here that there are many strategy variations that can be employed for this fight and you're going to have to sort out which one works best for your raid. You'll find this to be true for the rest of the instance. There are as many ways to do Siegecrafter as there are guilds who have killed it. If you don't know which option is best for your raid, experiment (and try not to get frustrated).

[Dracodraco]

IMO, 1 stack is bad advice. Divine star can hit melee from 15 yards away so there's no reason to stack for it, and you can position your monk between groups to share RJW. What works for you guys now, with previous experience of the fight and probably a lot more gear than when you first approached the fight is probably not applicable to a new group just now getting there.

Either way, lordsphinx, I think you can tell from the posts here that there are many strategy variations that can be employed for this fight and you're going to have to sort out which one works best for your raid. You'll find this to be true for the rest of the instance. There are as many ways to do Siegecrafter as there are guilds who have killed it. If you don't know which option is best for your raid, experiment (and try not to get frustrated).

Putting the monk in between two groups are risky. The phasing mechanic might push them over - remember, if the monk is in between 2 groups, he can link the low hp ones and send the boss into kite phase early. Visual example:

X = above 50% hp.
Y = below 50% hp.

XXYY Y XXYY

(groups of 4 obv stacked on top of each other ingame).

5x people are below 50%, and they are chained together by the monk in the middle. If it was

YYYY X YYYY

Then it'd be fine (despite almost the entire raid being sub 50%), but you can see why having the monk "in between" is risky.

[Adhemar]

Putting the monk in between two groups are risky. The phasing mechanic might push them over - remember, if the monk is in between 2 groups, he can link the low hp ones and send the boss into kite phase early. Visual example:

X = above 50% hp.
Y = below 50% hp.

XXYY Y XXYY

(groups of 4 obv stacked on top of each other ingame).

5x people are below 50%, and they are chained together by the monk in the middle. If it was

YYYY X YYYY

Then it'd be fine (despite almost the entire raid being sub 50%), but you can see why having the monk "in between" is risky.

I don't know what the range is on spinning crane kick, but assuming he can't be far enough away and still hit both groups, it's still less risky than stacking everyone (which is the strategy I was arguing against) as you just need to make sure one person never dips below 50. If all 9 people are stacked on top of each other, the scenario you give is an automatic push, anyway, so nothing lost by putting the monk(ey?) in the middle.

Up until the new item level boosts, we still had accidental phase transitions occurring if people were out of position and something went wrong with healing.

[Grameha]

Your raid make up is why your having a problem and why your having a tuff time reach 29 stacks. Not really the end of the world just have to make up the damage during the kite. Your raid team has limited off spec healing cooldowns or raid wide mitigation to sustain the healing through the higher stacks. However you have a large amount of dps that are not really effected by silence and that's total win.

First thing i would say is solo tank it and lose the druid tank have the pally solo tank it as you will need his Devo and Bop this will make it easier to get the boss lower and make up for the stacks being a bit low in phase 1 and 3.

Secondly if its possible to bring a resto sham/druid instead of the monk even if its a alt would make a huge dif to survival in those phases. Oh and your priest should be Disc for this for sure

As people have said the hardest part to heal is the 7-15 stacks with devos to cover the 15-29 bracket.


hope that made sense