Aliena
04-02-2011, 10:52 PM
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Hello and welcome to the Bastion of Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about the heroic Valiona and Theralion encounter. The Twin Dragons have received many changes since the encounter was first released, and this video is up to date as of patch 4.0.6. I'll assume that you're familiar with the normal version of this encounter and will only go over what changes for the heroic mode.
We typically defeat this encounter with 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well. The heroic Twin Dragons have a shared health pool of 165 million and you're given a 10-minute enrage timer upon starting the fight. The majority of the fight remains the same as normal and there aren't significant new abilities to learn, however you will have to utilize the Twilight Realm in the heroic version. All abilities the dragons use will deal significantly more damage and Twilight Sentries within the Twilight Realm will summon Rifts that continually deal Shadow Damage to raid members on the surface.
The more Twilight Rifts are open, the more raid damage will increase. While it's normal that damage will spike towards the end of the encounter, killing Twilight Sentries to keep damage at bay for as long as possible is the key to defeating this fight. We assign two separate teams to kill sentries.
Our first team usually consists of 2 rogues, a ret paladin and a holy paladin while our second team is made up of 3 mages and another holy paladin. We pick these classes in particular since they can cleanse off the Twilight Zone debuff that anyone in the Twilight Realm receives. This debuff stacks the longer you're in there and will deal periodic damage as well as increase Shadow Damage taken.
If you don't have these classes available, it is now possible to send other people down. However, if you do have them available, bubbling/vanishing/icing off the debuff to stay downstairs longer and kill more sentries is still recommended.
There are several ways to enter the Twilight Realm and 2 of them are actually useful.
1: When Theralion is about to land, he'll cast Dazzling Destruction 3 times in a row. Standing in a swirly circle will take you to the Twilight Realm. However, if you get hit by a Dazzling Destruction within the Twilight Realm, it's very likely that you'll die, so try to go down with the last wave of Destruction. To make this easier, a lot of your raid members should aim to run to the same general area for the last wave of Dazzling Destruction, so the chance is greater that a swirly will spawn there and people assigned to enter the Twilight Realm will easily be able to make it. We send our first team down when Theralion first lands, and our assigned area is the doorway where we entered the room.
2: When a tank's Twilight Shift debuff reaches 5 stacks (both dragons will use this ability periodically on the main threat target, and boss mods such as BigWigs will have a timer for it), the tank as well as anyone within a 5 yard range of him will be teleported to the Twilight Realm. The tanks can bounce the dragons back and forth between them and remain at 4 stacks, but We typically send Team 2 in with a tank right when Valiona lands after her Deep Breaths in the first air phase.
3: When Valiona is about to land, she will cast Deep Breath. Standing in a Deep Breath will take you to the Twilight Realm. However, this is not a recommended way to enter the Twilight Realm.
Upon entering the Twilight Realm, you get a 6 second immunity where you're invulnerable to "bombs" - the little pink balls slowly moving around all over the Twilight Realm. After your immunity wears off though, running into a ball will likely kill you and anyone around you, so be careful in navigating your way to Sentries and portals. Your goal in the Twilight Realm is to kill as many Sentries as possible without killing yourself. Team 1 should be able to kill at LEAST 5 Sentries which greatly reduces raid damage taken up top. Team 2 should be able to pull similar numbers before having to return to the surface. This really depends on your raid team though and might take a bit of experience and experimentation to figure out. When you're done in the Twilight Realm, carefully coordinate your way to a portal and re-join the upstairs team.
Generally, the more Sentries that die without your teams dying, the better. Coordinating your Twilight Realm team is crucial to this fight (at least until everyone outgears the encounter and just zergs through it without sending people down, which IS possible, but for the sake of this video I'll assume your DPS is not quite that advanced).
As far as the upstairs portion of the fight goes, it's much like the normal encounter. You want to tank Valiona in the middle of the room with melee DPS spread out around her back half. When Blackout happens, the majority of the raid should stack up on her tail end and a designated dispeller should be assigned to dispel the affected person once enough people are grouped up. We usually have healers stay put but everyone else stack up.
Obviously, you still want to avoid the breath. Usually, 3 ticks of it are enough to kill a person. You will have to deal with 2 breaths and 2 blackouts in her first ground phase. Once Valiona takes off into the air and Dazzling Destruction happens, most people should be swarming towards an assigned general area for the last wave of Destruction (we typically use the entrance of the room), so there's a greater chance of Team 1 being able to stand in the swirlies.
Once Theralion lands, NO ONE should remain in that assigned area, as Theralion will target upstairs raid members with Fabulous Flames that leave a big purple circle on the ground. Even members in the Twilight Realm WILL take damage from standing in the circle, so having no one upstairs remain in the doorway lessens the likelyhood of the Twilight Realm team being affected.
All melee and some ranged stack up for Theralion's ground phase, but we usually have at least 10 ranged players remain at a range. Right before Engulfing Magic goes out, casters in the melee pile will stop casting so they don't blow up other raid members in case they receive Engulfing Magic. Players at range should be spread out and can keep casting.
The one exception to this is if Valiona is about to cast Deep Breath. If this is about to happen and coincides with Engulfing Magic, even ranged players should be cautious in their spell usage since they might be forced to move close to other raid members for a breath.
Obviously, if a ranged player receives Twilight Meteorite which is made obvious by the purple arrow over your head, they need to run into the melee pile to split the damage.
Once Valiona is landing again, most of the raid should be stacked up in the middle of the room for the first Blackout (this should be cooldowned with a Power word: Barrier or Divine Guardian to avoid deaths) while the current tank who should be close to 5 stacks of Twilight Shift along with Team 2 should be in a designated spot close to one of the room exits. They should be teleported down shortly after she lands, and Valiona will move to her second threat target which should be your second tank. At that point, Blackout is usually handled and people will spread out to their usual positions for Valiona's ground phase.
The tank that got teleported into the Twilight Realm should quickly find a portal and re-join the upstairs team to be ready to taunt off of the second tank before he reaches 5 stacks of Twilight Shift.
Subsequent Blackouts can either be suicided or handled as normal. This should be judged by your raid leader depending on how much raid damage is going out at that point. If it is suicided, Soulstones should be given to crucial raid members such as healers. After this point, no teams should be sent down anymore and you should be able to kill the Twin Dragons before raid damage becomes overwhelming, typically just after Theralion lands for the second time.
That's about all the tips I have for the heroic twin dragon encounter. I've attached footage of the whole encounter in case you want to see how we handled the various mechanics in detail.
Hello and welcome to the Bastion of Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about the heroic Valiona and Theralion encounter. The Twin Dragons have received many changes since the encounter was first released, and this video is up to date as of patch 4.0.6. I'll assume that you're familiar with the normal version of this encounter and will only go over what changes for the heroic mode.
We typically defeat this encounter with 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well. The heroic Twin Dragons have a shared health pool of 165 million and you're given a 10-minute enrage timer upon starting the fight. The majority of the fight remains the same as normal and there aren't significant new abilities to learn, however you will have to utilize the Twilight Realm in the heroic version. All abilities the dragons use will deal significantly more damage and Twilight Sentries within the Twilight Realm will summon Rifts that continually deal Shadow Damage to raid members on the surface.
The more Twilight Rifts are open, the more raid damage will increase. While it's normal that damage will spike towards the end of the encounter, killing Twilight Sentries to keep damage at bay for as long as possible is the key to defeating this fight. We assign two separate teams to kill sentries.
Our first team usually consists of 2 rogues, a ret paladin and a holy paladin while our second team is made up of 3 mages and another holy paladin. We pick these classes in particular since they can cleanse off the Twilight Zone debuff that anyone in the Twilight Realm receives. This debuff stacks the longer you're in there and will deal periodic damage as well as increase Shadow Damage taken.
If you don't have these classes available, it is now possible to send other people down. However, if you do have them available, bubbling/vanishing/icing off the debuff to stay downstairs longer and kill more sentries is still recommended.
There are several ways to enter the Twilight Realm and 2 of them are actually useful.
1: When Theralion is about to land, he'll cast Dazzling Destruction 3 times in a row. Standing in a swirly circle will take you to the Twilight Realm. However, if you get hit by a Dazzling Destruction within the Twilight Realm, it's very likely that you'll die, so try to go down with the last wave of Destruction. To make this easier, a lot of your raid members should aim to run to the same general area for the last wave of Dazzling Destruction, so the chance is greater that a swirly will spawn there and people assigned to enter the Twilight Realm will easily be able to make it. We send our first team down when Theralion first lands, and our assigned area is the doorway where we entered the room.
2: When a tank's Twilight Shift debuff reaches 5 stacks (both dragons will use this ability periodically on the main threat target, and boss mods such as BigWigs will have a timer for it), the tank as well as anyone within a 5 yard range of him will be teleported to the Twilight Realm. The tanks can bounce the dragons back and forth between them and remain at 4 stacks, but We typically send Team 2 in with a tank right when Valiona lands after her Deep Breaths in the first air phase.
3: When Valiona is about to land, she will cast Deep Breath. Standing in a Deep Breath will take you to the Twilight Realm. However, this is not a recommended way to enter the Twilight Realm.
Upon entering the Twilight Realm, you get a 6 second immunity where you're invulnerable to "bombs" - the little pink balls slowly moving around all over the Twilight Realm. After your immunity wears off though, running into a ball will likely kill you and anyone around you, so be careful in navigating your way to Sentries and portals. Your goal in the Twilight Realm is to kill as many Sentries as possible without killing yourself. Team 1 should be able to kill at LEAST 5 Sentries which greatly reduces raid damage taken up top. Team 2 should be able to pull similar numbers before having to return to the surface. This really depends on your raid team though and might take a bit of experience and experimentation to figure out. When you're done in the Twilight Realm, carefully coordinate your way to a portal and re-join the upstairs team.
Generally, the more Sentries that die without your teams dying, the better. Coordinating your Twilight Realm team is crucial to this fight (at least until everyone outgears the encounter and just zergs through it without sending people down, which IS possible, but for the sake of this video I'll assume your DPS is not quite that advanced).
As far as the upstairs portion of the fight goes, it's much like the normal encounter. You want to tank Valiona in the middle of the room with melee DPS spread out around her back half. When Blackout happens, the majority of the raid should stack up on her tail end and a designated dispeller should be assigned to dispel the affected person once enough people are grouped up. We usually have healers stay put but everyone else stack up.
Obviously, you still want to avoid the breath. Usually, 3 ticks of it are enough to kill a person. You will have to deal with 2 breaths and 2 blackouts in her first ground phase. Once Valiona takes off into the air and Dazzling Destruction happens, most people should be swarming towards an assigned general area for the last wave of Destruction (we typically use the entrance of the room), so there's a greater chance of Team 1 being able to stand in the swirlies.
Once Theralion lands, NO ONE should remain in that assigned area, as Theralion will target upstairs raid members with Fabulous Flames that leave a big purple circle on the ground. Even members in the Twilight Realm WILL take damage from standing in the circle, so having no one upstairs remain in the doorway lessens the likelyhood of the Twilight Realm team being affected.
All melee and some ranged stack up for Theralion's ground phase, but we usually have at least 10 ranged players remain at a range. Right before Engulfing Magic goes out, casters in the melee pile will stop casting so they don't blow up other raid members in case they receive Engulfing Magic. Players at range should be spread out and can keep casting.
The one exception to this is if Valiona is about to cast Deep Breath. If this is about to happen and coincides with Engulfing Magic, even ranged players should be cautious in their spell usage since they might be forced to move close to other raid members for a breath.
Obviously, if a ranged player receives Twilight Meteorite which is made obvious by the purple arrow over your head, they need to run into the melee pile to split the damage.
Once Valiona is landing again, most of the raid should be stacked up in the middle of the room for the first Blackout (this should be cooldowned with a Power word: Barrier or Divine Guardian to avoid deaths) while the current tank who should be close to 5 stacks of Twilight Shift along with Team 2 should be in a designated spot close to one of the room exits. They should be teleported down shortly after she lands, and Valiona will move to her second threat target which should be your second tank. At that point, Blackout is usually handled and people will spread out to their usual positions for Valiona's ground phase.
The tank that got teleported into the Twilight Realm should quickly find a portal and re-join the upstairs team to be ready to taunt off of the second tank before he reaches 5 stacks of Twilight Shift.
Subsequent Blackouts can either be suicided or handled as normal. This should be judged by your raid leader depending on how much raid damage is going out at that point. If it is suicided, Soulstones should be given to crucial raid members such as healers. After this point, no teams should be sent down anymore and you should be able to kill the Twin Dragons before raid damage becomes overwhelming, typically just after Theralion lands for the second time.
That's about all the tips I have for the heroic twin dragon encounter. I've attached footage of the whole encounter in case you want to see how we handled the various mechanics in detail.