We're Not Retreating; We're Advancing in a Different Direction

Hey everyone, I got into a little argument with some guildies last night regarding the strategy of this portion of the dungeon and was looking for some other input. At each phase, all the others wanted to do was run all the way back to the wall and wait for all adds to come to us. This works fine for the first and second phase of this fight, but on the third, we just barely made it. The fourth was not even close, we maybe had 2/3 of the adds down before the Lich King got to us and one-shotted us, consistently.

My theory, which got me the time achievement two nights ago, was to stand closer to the Lich King, pick up the adds as they spawn and slowly move them back, keeping a good 5 or 10 yards outside of his aura at all times. This may seem to be a little crazy, but my reasoning is as follows:

On the third and fourth phase, correct me if I am wrong, but not all adds spawn at once and come running, it seems to stagger somewhat. If you pick them up as they spawn and slowly move back, you get extra time to DPS the adds, since you don't stand there like an idiot and watch them walking towards you, the Lich King is also coming! I say this because once you engage the first couple of adds at the wall, you're pretty much stuck, and have to wait for the additional adds to come in. I think it would be greatly beneficial to pick them up as they spawn, to avoid already having 2 or 3 adds engaged, then have to deal with another 1 or 2 guys charging in.

Our group is by no means undergeared, we clear totc-10, ony-10 and voa-10 on a regular basis, the lowest gearscore in the group is probably me at about 2560. If this doesn't make sense, I will try to add a little more clarification, can't wait to hear your input!

im guessing this gearscore u mentioned is from wow-heroes but the strat u are using works great its what i do (pally) i stay about halfway between each barrier and conc the ghouls jump right to me and into my consecration AoE them down then nothing but big adds left kite the big adds slowly backwards so all dps can nail them it works great for me

It makes a lot of sense doing it that way. Did heroic version only once, but a random person was giving the tank some grief about not going to the wall, especially as the Lich King got closer. The tank replied we'll kill the adds sooner that way to the other player. We did it first time, the Lich King was almost on top of us and the tank, however there was a fair bit of room between us and the final wall.

We tried it my way the first time, and our Ret Pally didn't move when the Lich King got close and his aura killed him on the third phase I think, and blamed me for not going all the way back to the wall. It is a rare occasion that a dps death is the tank's fault, in my opinion. He had every opportunity to take a few steps back. On the 4th phase, there was only one add left by the time we were one-shotted, but I maintain this wouldn't have been the case if the pally had just moved and stayed alive, it would have been an EASY clear.

Using their method, we never even came close to getting all of the adds down on that last phase, I think 4 or 5 tries after we gave up on it.

And yes, the gearscore I mentioned is from wow-heroes.

the first time i did it was on my rogue to scope out the instances to see what i should do because for me it is easier to tank something once i see it done (<3 tankspot videos) we wiped once on the run cause our healer ran too far and didnt know that ice barriers pop up and block they way he ran past it so tank got owned i vanish only to find out if the lich king kills jaina he AoEs and hits everyone for a million damage and that ret pally shouldn't blame tanks hes doing the easiest thing a pally can do DPS. Till hes walked a few miles in a real tankadins shoes he has no reason to talk at all.

Should, or shouldn't? Haha =P

I faced this last night and we had some revelations.

If you're quick on your toes, you should reach the first few walls before anything catches up to you. In general you will want to to make sure Witchdoctors catch up to you and don't get stuck behind the Lich King, especially if you're relying on melee.

Once you're in the tunnel he'll start spawning heavy waves though. Just because we realized we could, we Aspect of the Packed down to the end the first time, and it took the waves time to catch up, but they did all at once. The combined crunch on the (well-geared) tank with the inability of even favorable AoE damage to kill them all before the Lich King reached us was surprising. When we repeated it, we just backpedaled down the tunnel and took out the waves as they spawned and it went much much smoother.

Just be sure, as before, to have your tank run to the wall near the end to be sure you get the witchdoctors as close as you can.

Otherwise, this encounter is designed to make you feel pressed, and your victory narrow, so enjoy the tension!

Rather than running back to the wall, which is what I am trying to avoid as I want to be able to dps adds as much as possible, I think it would be better for all dps to focus on casters first and let me tank the bigguns. Thoughts?

When I got the achievement, all dps was burning down casters first, leaving only the big adds for me to really worry about, and it was an easy clear.

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Originally Posted by Galarungi

Rather than running back to the wall, which is what I am trying to avoid as I want to be able to dps adds as much as possible, I think it would be better for all dps to focus on casters first and let me tank the bigguns. Thoughts?

When I got the achievement, all dps was burning down casters first, leaving only the big adds for me to really worry about, and it was an easy clear.

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Doesn't the bile from the abominations do more damage? I'm not sure though. It may be more of a matter of the tank and healer which you do first.

Yea, the bile does raid-wide damage. My idea is to keep the threat on the big guys, and keep them away from the group. The casters have much less HP and can go down fast, eliminating the need to run all the way back to the wall. After casters go down, just keep the bile away from the group and DPS them down.

I can take the bile damage from the adds, it's not a big concern, it's just a time issue. If we run back all the way to the wall on that last phase and wait for them to come, we have less time to dps them down before the Lich King gets there. It seems like there are two seperate waves of adds that come in, making a total of 3 abominations and 3 or 4 casters. I can usually keep one or two casters on me with "Gag Order" abilities, but I think if we can get one or two casters down from the first wave, it will make things easy as the second wave will be much easier to control, and I could run back if need be to move the casters. It's darn near impossible for a Prot Warrior to control 6-7 guys!!!

I'm trying to avoid that second spawn of guys coming at us allllll the way to the wall when we haven't even gotten the first down. There just isnt enough time in my opinion to wait for them to get to us before dps-ing them all.

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Originally Posted by Padinbann

im guessing this gearscore u mentioned is from wow-heroes but the strat u are using works great its what i do (pally) i stay about halfway between each barrier and conc the ghouls jump right to me and into my consecration AoE them down then nothing but big adds left kite the big adds slowly backwards so all dps can nail them it works great for me

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yeah use same strat, hard to get puggers to understand though, GRR

Hahaha... well, its nice to see you guys trying diferent options here. but the thing about this ach is not gs, dps, playstayle, class combinations... Few days ago, I was helping my friend to gear up and get some emblems (since I am tank and dont need to wait for group) and he is dk with gs 4400. When we got to the last part of this dungeon, some1 mentioned: "lets go behind LK". We did it, and after the last weave we got ach ... :)))

IF you have low dps your done. But like the first half on HoR you can Los them all in a pile and nuke.!

If you are struggling with the time run you have to tell your DPS to work harder.

Just start the event and run to the spawn point of the first barrier. Wait for monsters, kill monsters, run to next, repeat.

If your DPS is doing as much damage as they should wearing ilvl 232-245 items the timed run is a piece of cake.

when i tanked this i told dpsers to nuke casters 1st and i WON'T tank them
they can't kill a dps cuz they cast aoe dmg and hit like sissy :> abomination adds tanked facin back to party = easy win
and havin dk to pull casters on top of dps helps a lot :D (wtb deathgrip for warriors xD )

... i know gag order + heroic throw gives "same" effect but deathrip pull works miracles in there no wait time for add to move so u can kill it xD

as above...
im an arms dps and can easily dps the casters with no tank
i also bladestorm the little ghouls that arrive mid way through on phase 4
ive always picked up the ghouls early but done the rest hard up against the wall with no real troubles at all. all dps over 3k

just have to be fats to take them down it easier to take the same mob down with the tank that way the mob goes down faster but everyone has different ways of doing this some say be closer to them and others say stay from away from lich and pull the mobs to you etc.