Heroic thok tips

[Drsolders]

My guild just downed spoils after like 50 attempts and did some attempts for heroic thok, which is looking a lot better than our early attempts on spoils tbh.

We are getting him in p1 to around 20-22 stacks( i heard you are supposed to try to get as close to 29 as you can?) boss around 68%
1st p2 around 9-11 speed buffs

but the second p1 is where its getting us, the bats are just ruining our lives, should we just try to blood rage asap and deal with the bats?

Our comp:
Blood Dk
Prot War (debating making him go dps)
rdruid
rshammy
disc priest ( going to go holy)
destro lock
shadow priest
bm hunter
fury war
ret pally

Also what cd rotation would you recommend? We are thinking about it and maybe you guys set it up for us as to when to use what.

Again thank you for your help, I don't see this boss taking us long at all but the faster, the better.

[Hanec]

Hey

We normally solo tank this fight with a Paladin, but I don't think it would be a problem for any other class to solo tank it as well so that might be the first change you can think about.

From a healing perspective, i would stick with the disc priest, cause you already have 2 class's that can give you good throughput, so going with shields would be a better bet in my opinion. Getting as close to 29 stacks as possible is ideal, but 20-22 is not a deal breaker...once healers get used to the fight they will start pushing close to 29.

As for the bats, if you using your blood dk to solo tank it, just start with him dropping a death and decay on the group to help with picking up the bats, get the hunter to MD what he can and wait a second or 2 till they all on the tank. As soon as they on the tank shadowfury and then shortly after use remoresless. during this time, just focus on getting them down as soon as possible so that they dont get off many aoe attacks.

[Inthislzon]

Judging by your DPS (~68% on 20 stacks) you might want to give a try to just ignore poison.

Open frost, stack again inside the corridor, same positions as phase one (this totally negates yeti) and just repeat P1. Kite the same way and it should be either dead or sub-10% when the time to open comes.

Should you need to open, just open fire, stack all on the same spot, transition on the first-second screech and nuke him down.

The hard part about doing it this way is that you need to hold up to 27 stacks, and open on 13 speed stacks (4.5 paths, 5th one finishes, 6th one is just half done)

[Revi]

Killed it tonight after 20 tries or so (been on a long break), and we found it was really just about maximizing dps. Prolong first p1, end second p1 quickly (while bats are about to die), prolong third p1, and at fourth p1 he needs to be low enough to just nuke. We ended a bit behind on dps in last p1, so we took him to p2 and just zerged him down while kiting for the last few %. Our tank and healer setup was identical to yours btw, so that should be fine.

Not sure why you'd be struggling with bats, but when they spawn just have the current off-tank pick them up and have your dps nuke them down. Don't stay in that phase any longer than you have to, can start kiting before bats are completely dead if needed.

[Kerinsky]

I've only done this fight on 25 man and we killed it a while back even before working on spoils since our healing comp was really good for it; that said the bats are still the hardest part of the fight for us and will absolutely wipe us if we don't focus and control them. We save all our personal survival CDs, 1-2 minute cooldown damage boosts and 2nd pots to burn them down, we have a tank swap with misdirects when the bats come out so our guardian druid with high vengeance from tanking Thok is on them for more damage. Finally we set up an AOE stun rotation which is probably the biggest key, get them in a pile take a bit of damage while Thok is still casting slow then when he ramps up stun them and just slaughter them. Our left/right clumps for healing put all the dps with short range AOE damage we can in the same group so the bats go down fast.

I wish I could help more with CD's but it's not my forte and I know the fight is vastly different in 10 vs 25, going to only 20-22 stacks makes me cringe and 68% sounds high at first transition if you're all around ilvl 573 like your sig but I know you just can't reasonably push to 29 stacks back to back like a perfectly set up 25 man can. I guess the other advice I can offer is to plan healer/survival CDs a lot around when the cooldowns will come back up in the second clump phase. Even if something starts going wrong for us early in P1 we *never* push early because the CD's we need for bats would be coming available again late a few minutes after and cause a wipe anyway.

Knowing 10/25 is different 9-11 stacks of speed buff still sounds low, we did 13-16 first transition in our last 3 kills. You may also want to have a precise strategy for when you end the phase, I don't know if our tank is always use the key X seconds into the phase or at stack Y of the speed boost but it is something very specific like that. If stretching the kite phase lets you get more CDs back off cooldown you may need to lengthen and optimize this phase to the hilt as well. We wanted our kite phase to last as long as we could possibly reasonably guarantee the fixates wouldn't get eaten so we decided exactly how long that was, then where we wanted Thok to be at the end of it and designed the whole phase backwards from there. For us it's sending the first fixate down the hall, then alternating each fixate. Make sure everyone understands the fixate mechanic and its implications. Watcherdev tweeted "Thok will target one of the 3 farthest non-tank players within 150 yards." We send 3 healers down the hall for the first fixate, and then re-position healers on the far side of the melee clump from Thok for each fixate after. Our first fixate target has to be very careful not to run too far because a double fixate and screw things up (and a double fixate is pretty much always the fault of the person being chased) We leave all our melee on thok for the first 2-3 fixates with only 1 tank on the jailer, if you ever kill the jailer and your melee are standing around doing nothing waiting for the correct time to end the phase first tell your range to do less padding on the jailer and more on Thok (Seriosuly, a DK, pally and 2 warriors will never have problem killing the jailer in time, ranged should never touch the first jailer unless it's a dps boost on Thok somehow), then consider leaving skilled/mobile melee on Thok longer during the kite. On the other hand at some point if you have a melee that will always die you just have to give up and tell them not to try to dance with a dinosaur. That said as much as we optimise dps on Thok for the first kite phase for the poison kite we stay clumped up for healing and dispels, we usually let this kite phase last about as long as the first to let CD's come back up but ranged do not chase the boss much, just pinging him when he runs by, we have had time we just push the poison kite phase early if we think we can burn him, or transition him again at low stacks and kill him during fire. Alternatively you may be able to skip opening poison altogether.

Finally your hunter needs to make sure they have Widow Venom up on Thok before he eats each prisoner to help mitigate his Mending, at the end of the fight that's 2-6% less health you have to burn through depending on how many prisons you open.

[Tech614]

Have the DK solo tank the fight, just making it a lot harder on the dps check 2 tanking the fight. This adds pressure to the DK tank but makes the fight immensely easier/faster. TBH I'm not sure how hard it is to solo tank on a DK, but it's pretty faceroll on brewmaster/pally from personal experience.

The war will probably gain 100k dps switching to dps, and the DK should gain 200-300k dps from the vengeance gain. It's a lot more of a dps difference just just simply gaining a dps.

Judging by your DPS (~68% on 20 stacks) you might want to give a try to just ignore poison.

68% on the first transition even for 20 stacks is incredibly low. We where sub 55% on progression only getting to 24-26, he was usually sub 50% on attempts that pushed to 27-29.

[Deja Thoris]

If you are getting to ~22 then banner and cry a little earlier (roll them so you have the last one up as you stack at say 22), then barrier and stack so you can stack without breaking.

Make sure your shadow priest takes divine star and also mass dispels the second door on CD, thats where a lot of damage comes from. Save minor Cd's for bats and nuke the crap out of them. Stun the ones that get big, they are the ones that shit on the raid. Also look at what tricks people have, lock could unending resolve and f&b the bats for instance.

You also need to log and post logs!

[Eetabee]

In addition to the suggestions above, after poison door make sure EVERYONE kills that jailer quickly. No need to extend that kite phase because poisons are still going out. Kill that jailer ASAP and open another door to stop those poisons. Then you have most CDs back for ice door and it should be a kill.

[Littlepinch]

Don't forget to control the bats - What my group did for them was rotate stuns on the bats ( we had me a hunter aoe stun them, then had our 2 locks aoe stun afterwards ) this way the bats never really did anything before they were dead.

[Darkfriend]

In 10m, we just push the boss a few seconds after bats drop and AoE them down as the boss is chasing after people.

[Tolstyj]

Same healing comp as OP:
0-9 stacks: minor CD's
10 - Devo+Tranq
12 - HTT + Earth elemental channeling
15 - Ascendance
18 - Barrier
21 - SLT

As for bats save BoP for one of dps and try to chain stun them.

[Overdispersion]

Why is your disc priest going Holy? Spirit shelling during devo and barrier is so useful. That and the extra dps during frenzy.

[Farabee]

My 25H guild is having serious issues with the bats. The damage just ends up murdering everyone and we can't seem to burn them down fast enough despite pushing Thok to around 60% when first kite phase comes out. I've even switched back to my AOE spec I use for Spoils with DP and LH to no avail. Stun rotation doesn't seem to work well, they become immune far too fast.

[Toastiekins]

You can try saving your lust for the bat phase, that way you're helping everyone (healers to heal, dps to yadda yadda) get through the bat phase. For your stun rotation make sure you're using long duration stuns like Capacitor Totem and not 1s stuns like Shadowfury. Make sure to get on your raiders to use their healthstones when they dip low during this phase as it can get out of hand in a hurry.

[Kerinsky]

Farabee, if you're at 60% before the first kite phase and the bats are a big problem I would suggest at least trying skipping them a couple times. Do poison first and focus on living during the kite above dps on Thok, then do fire and burn him down. It's totally workable albiet somewhat more chaotic than bats. Give it a few shots and see what feels better.

[wrynil]

That disc priest should stay disc.. Even more so if you are 3 healing it <_<

Remember to have your hunter use widow venom or what ever its called before the add is being eaten.

[freedumb123]

I don't like this thread.

[Gande]

Reiterating to hope you see it.

Don't do poison. Just do frost next, and open fire if you need to open another one.

[Drsolders]

So if anyone else knows, are the bats and yeti attached to cages (ie if I open poison i get bats, frost yeti) or is it tied to the number of opening (ie first open bats will spawn, second yeti)? If we could skip the bats altogether this fight would most likely be done in less than 50 attempts.

[Deja Thoris]

So if anyone else knows, are the bats and yeti attached to cages (ie if I open poison i get bats, frost yeti) or is it tied to the number of opening (ie first open bats will spawn, second yeti)? If we could skip the bats altogether this fight would most likely be done in less than 50 attempts.

Bats are tied to posion, yeti to frost so you can skip the bats.