25-man: There are a few additional notes for the 25-man version that we found helpful in our clears.
Hallway
We took a smaller group of players into the hallway than we left in the Arena. We were able to successfully clear the hallway with just a single Paladin healer, though a second made it a lot smoother.
We had a single person calling out on ventrilo the left and right so the rest of us could pay attention to adds.
We used mages for sheeping the Guards while Acolytes were being brought down. Guards have an AOE knockdown, which was mentioned in the movie, but made it especially important for us to use ranged classes in the hall.
The first Runic mini-boss will not Charge if everyone stays in melee range of him during the encounter.
At the end of the hallway we had a healer run down to help in the Arena while we cleaned up a couple guards; this aggro'd Thorim and started Phase 3 even though the healer had not engaged Thorim. In other words, simply running and jumping off should complete this phase.
Arena
In the Arena we stacked as many AOE classes and healers as possible. We used Rogue AOE interrupts to help reduce damage and disarms on the Vrykul to prevent Whirlwinds.
We kept the Vrykul clearly away from everything else to prevent Whirlwind from killing nearby players unexpectedly.
UI/ADDON INFORMATION:
Lore's UI (10 Man Videos): Lore's UI
Ciderhelm's UI (25 Man Videos): Ciderhelm UI Information Please post any questions about UI/Addon's in their respective threads and not in this thread
Agreed, this was balanced a lot harder on the heroic. The mobs with knockdowns in the gauntlet and the fast respawn rate up to the second mini-boss proved pretty tricky, and the arena team, while stable enough for a while, seemed to get a lot of mobs very fast. We got him in the end, but the 25 man notes helped us a lot.
Best strat is to overload the arena with dps, have 2/3 tanks tanking everything near the middle, and nuke the shit out of everything.
Have just enough dps in the gauntlet for them to reach thorim within 30 seconds or less of his enrage. If you get there erlier than that 30 second window, subtract a dps and see where you stand afterwards.
The fight is one big trial and error pain in the ass... especially from a tanks point of view. Being able to pick everything up with 8 fps on my end wasnt easy.
Note: One thing the mages in the gauntlet did was sheep the first two mobs at the bottom of the last stairwell and rushed up to the second giant golem. Just have a tank pick them up after they run all the way back to the arena once Thorim is engaged, and its a nice time saver.
In the 10-man, when I engaged the second mini-boss in the hallway, he stopped summoning adds.
In the 25-man, he kept spawning them after I engaged him. Is this normal? I'd love to hear suggestions on dealing with that, I had a lot of trouble. I'd get knocked down while tanking the second boss and get wrecked.
We did the 10 man version this weekend and he was pretty much a walk in the park after getting a grip of things. Look a few tries but then we nailed it the first time Thorim actually was engaged.
We tried 25 man yesterday however and had some issues to say the least. Not sure if we where poorly balanced but the arena seemed to run us over. We're going back there for a serious look tonight but where a bit stunned at the difference compared to 10 man. 3 tanks seemed more stable but around the 3 min emote (hard mode marker) we more or less got over-run.
Should one have more dps out in the arena and let the tunnel-group move a bit slower perhaps?
Its a catch22 - the faster you move through the gauntlet (aka more DPS) the fewer the amount of adds you need to deal with. But doing that makes the DPS in the 'pit' less, so there is more chance of being overrun.
We 2-shot 10man and then wiped 2-4 times in 25 before moving to do Emalon. As the MT for the pit section my plan is to make a macro that targets adds in the order of danger, that way I can press 1 button to switch to that target, toss a quick skull on them, taunt and then start my rotation to include t-clap etc.
One big thing to stress to all the DPS in the pit, they need to choose their targets extremely carefully, and if they all focus your target, it should make it so you have 4-5 guys up at any given time and not 9-10 guys with ~50% health.
Survival of the Fittest
Increases all attributes by 6%, reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 6%, and increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 33%.
The special strike the boss does reduces defence by 200 which thus will increase your chance to get critically hit, even if a bear.
any1 got any tips with dealing with so many adds in 25man version?
im used to using nameplates but soo many commoners its quite hard wish i could stop commoners nameplates showing up, im finding it helping to keep turning it on and off any1 got more tuos that might help?
What we did on 25 man was that 10 people went for the hallway and the rest was stacked on top of the two tanks in the very middle of the arena. We kept aoeing everything down and when the Champion spawned one previously designated tank was to call it on Vent and single-target tank him so the dps warrior could disarm to prevent whirlwind and the rest would nuke him down on first priority then continue to aoe. Works like a charm.
Did this the other day on 10 and to be honest, the hard part of this fight is keeping the teams in the arena, and the ones going through the gauntlet, alive.
I was assigned to tank in the arena (Frost DK) and for our group, we decided to just keep ourselves within the circle in the middle of the arena. Whenever big groups of adds spawn, we tell everyone to hold off on AoE so I can snap-aggro all of them with a glyphed Howling Blast followed by 2x Blood Boils. Then they let all hell break loose.
For the gauntlet group, we had 1 tank, 1 heals and 2 ranged dps.
The actual fight with Thorim himself is the easy part. Tanks just need to watch out for Unbalancing Strikes. Let your tanks alternate on unbalancing strikes - Tank A gets unbalancing strike, Tank B taunts, then Tank A waits to taunt until Tank B gets the strike.
First our approach was let Tank A get the strike, Tank B taunt off, Tank A taunts off immediately as soon as the debuff fades from him. The problem here is, as soon as Tank A gets Thorim back (freshly taunted) and gets hit with the Unbalancing Strike, Thorim is still within the Taunt-immune window since he's just been taunted off so Tank B can't get aggro, leaving Thorim stuck on Tank A, with Tank A vulnerable because of the debuff. DON'T DO THIS!
We are currently having several issues with completing this encounter.
Source: Ciderhelm
At the end of the hallway we had a healer run down to help in the Arena while we cleaned up a couple guards; this aggro'd Thorim and started Phase 3 even though the healer had not engaged Thorim. In other words, simply running and jumping off should complete this phase.
Our hallway team has become very good at completing the hallway. However, as we finish we usually have 2-3 Iron Guards alive as the giant dies. We have been all running off and letting the sheep pop and then killing them when they arrive at the gate. We are currently more worried about the forcefield that appears up above after Thorim is engaged. Does anyone know at what point this forcefield appears?
Our real issue however, is DPS on Thorim himself. We are having our tanks instagibbed with 15k+ melee hits followed by Unbalanced Blows of 30k+ less than .03 seconds later. How man are people dealing with this? I want to say that this may be a DPS issue. We are trying to squeeze as much dps as we can, however getting extremely close only to wipe because of whats basically a series of instagibs is frustrating.
For phase 2, since we have two tanks, we just have one tank taunt off the other with Unbalancing Strike in heroic.
Also, for Heroic I switch to an Unholy AoE spec (I'm doing the arena as Frost in the video), because all of the passive, consistent AoE of unholy makes the arena much easier. On that one I tank all of the adds, while we have a prot warrior taunt (vigilance on me) the champions out of the group so the ranged can finish him off.
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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. -Seneca
Everyone marvels at a square egg, but only the chicken understands the PAIN.
Stupid question: does the encounter reset if you take the entire raid into the hallway?
While, I'm at it, I had a few academic questions:
could you combine defense and resilience high enough that you were still uncritable after the unbalancing strike (course if you have two tanks anyways, why bother)?
and has it been confirmed that unbalancing strike makes you vulnerable to crushing blows?
Source: Muffin Man
Stupid question: does the encounter reset if you take the entire raid into the hallway?
While, I'm at it, I had a few academic questions:
could you combine defense and resilience high enough that you were still uncritable after the unbalancing strike (course if you have two tanks anyways, why bother)?
and has it been confirmed that unbalancing strike makes you vulnerable to crushing blows?
If no one is left alive in the Arena, Thorim will launch an instant death "Big Ball of Lightning" down through the tunnel.
In order to get your defense/resilience high enough to straight tank him, you'd have other huge survival issues. That is if you could even get enough of both to counter the 200 defense skill loss.
Unbalanced strike has NOTHING to do with crushing blows. The Crushing Blows mechanic is based solely on level disparity not defense skill.
Source: Jericho
Unbalanced strike has NOTHING to do with crushing blows. The Crushing Blows mechanic is based solely on level disparity not defense skill.
Crushing Blows are in fact calculated by your *base* defense skill and the mobs weapon skill.
I was actually skeptical of Satrina's conclusion that this would leave us open to Crushing Blows, but since Unbalanced strike reduces your defense skill not rating I can see his argument. I'm just wondering if anyone's been able to verify it one way or the other?
Ulduar Thorim
they didnt try to make this one easy.
