Heroic Trial of the Crusader Encounters

[Zabbu]

I Well tanking Gormak last night he has a nasty habit during the last round of taunts of hitting for 38k Impale, 15k Melee and 10k bleed tick.

I know a few times even with last stand up (hitting near 70K) I would just drop with parses not adding up. We chalked it up to lag or an "invisible" hit.
Our DK was seeing this too, where all the combat log would show is a 38k impale hit then death. 100%->0 in one impale.....

Even going through the standard ui combat log, the damage did not add up to lethal.

Just curious if any other tanks were seeing this in 25?

do you have a log of this?

We did notice while looking through our logs that when parried he his attack speed is as low as 1.2

We also noticed pets causing parries and the parry haste.

Maybe this is whats happening to you?

[Antimonic]

It seems weird pets would consistently be causing parries since they default to attacking from behind.

I believe the whole Icehowl issue comes from the room being more ovular than circular. There were parts of the room that we consistently had people escape from, and then there were parts of the room where people would get smashed long before they came unstunned.

When we started to try to get people to congregate near the mob-entrance we finished the fight easily. I think that tends to be the longest distance Icehowl has to travel. Even if I'm wrong with that assumption there still exists one reason that using the wall would theoretically give you the best chance of escaping: it is the only part of the room where the wall is straight. This allows you to truly move perpendicularly to the charge path. Most of the other room locations require you to move at approximately 45 degree angle to his charge.

I would also recommend using left/right mouse to move forward then spin your camera. Holding strafe/forward doesn't work straight out of stun which means you have to spam the button, but left/right mouse button does.

[Alystira]

A few question's on the 25man Gormok fight. Regarding the the Snobold's, are there only 4 total that come out or when you kill one a new one will spawn? Also, how did you handle the snobold's (3-4 ranged dps or melee)? It seemed our healers were getting the snobold's the majority of the time making healing more stressful. Thanks.

[ItZMuRdA]

A few question's on the 25man Gormok fight. Regarding the the Snobold's, are there only 4 total that come out or when you kill one a new one will spawn? Also, how did you handle the snobold's (3-4 ranged dps or melee)? It seemed our healers were getting the snobold's the majority of the time making healing more stressful. Thanks.

I believe there is only 4 regardless of how many you kill. The only exceptions I've seen are if someone uses an immunity or some sort of ability to knock the Snobold off of their back, or if someone with a Snobold dies. In that case, the Snobold runs around freely attacking people based on threat, and one seems to respawn in its place on Gormok's back as the 5th snobold, which he then throws at someone, as well as getting 5 stacks of his buff.

That being said, I'm not sure if this is intended or not but you probably are best off just sticking with the 4 that he throws out to begin with, killing them as necessary, and making sure their targets don't die or that they don't become removed from their targets, as more seem to spawn if they do.

[BrokenMind]

There's a few extra things that should be mentioned for some of these bosses.


Northrend Beasts

Icehowl
Players no longer recieve the speed debuff when Icehowl does his charge, making it much more vital to be moving as soon as possible (runspeed enchants, and any speed boosting abilities help a lot here).



LORD JARAXXUS

Nether Portal and Fel Volcano
These now have their own HP, and have to be killed, otherwise they constantly spawn new adds.



FACTION CHAMPIONS

These guys have gotten themselves PvP trinkets, have more HP, do more damage, do more healing, etc. They also make more use of CC themselves, and are immune to Taunt, having no threat table so to speak, picking targets at will.



ANUB'ARAK

Frost Orb
There are only 6 of these for the entire encounter now, they do not respawn.

[Imanohealu]

So, we have only been in Heroic 10 man once this week, but our dps didn't appear to be enough, and me(Disc Priest) and our druid healer are planning on 2 healing NR beasts, anyone had success doing this?

[Morghax]

we failed with great holy paly and disc priest
I was tanking and the majority of wipes occurred when Gormok had ~+60% (and/or more) dmg buff and impale transition happenned... my 48 k buffed HP did not matter and was being wasted from 25 k impale, followed by 15 k melee - + a tick of impale now and then and sometimes due to simply not being full on transitioning (tried going around that with LS / SW on transition but meh...)

on "successful" Gormok we were consistently getting to worms ~30 seconds ahead of their anticipated spawn time, thus we are going to try with 3 healers next time...

[robbon]

we started heroic 10 man last night 3 healers (shammy, 2 pallies) 2 tanks (druid, pally) and 5 dps.

Could only get gormok to 40% before worms... more dps required.

[Spiritus]

I updated the Wall o' Text to reflect confirmed differences between reg & heroic ToC.

Things I'm looking for:

(1) Confirmation on how Touch of Darkness/Light is removed/avoided.
(2) Confirmation on only 6 Frost Spheres spawning during Anub'arak.
(3) Confirmation on abilities of the Nerubian Ice Darter.

[Pruke]

I can confirm there is only 6 frost spheres that spawn on heroic Anub. Can't recall the name of the spell the adds cast but if it is not interupted it hits 1 shots the person. Target is random does not have to target the tank who is tanking the adds.

[Fayre]

>> Confirmation on how Touch of Darkness/Light is removed/avoided

This is a portion of the combat log from our 10 man last night:

9/5 19:49:12.281 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE,0xF1300086C00083B0,"Eydis Darkbane",0xa48,0x010000000002D59E,"Achron",0x514, 67282,"Touch of Darkness",0x20,2004,0,32,914,0,0,nil,nil,nil
9/5 19:49:14.281 SPELL_AURA_REMOVED,0x010000000002D59E,"Achron",0x5 14,0x010000000002D59E,"Achron",0x514,67223,"Light Essence",0x1,DEBUFF
9/5 19:49:14.281 SPELL_AURA_REMOVED,0xF1300086C00083B0,"Eydis Darkbane",0xa48,0x010000000002D59E,"Achron",0x514, 67282,"Touch of Darkness",0x20,DEBUFF
9/5 19:49:14.281 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED,0x010000000002D59E,"Achron",0x5 14,0x010000000002D59E,"Achron",0x514,67177,"Dark Essence",0x1,DEBUFF

Basically, the Touch of Darkness debuff is removed when he changes from Light to Dark Essence.

[Spiritus]

I swear I think there are gremlins that sneak into my posts in the middle of the night and remove my updates.

Wall o' Text yet again updated.

[Sergey]

We did 24 attempts at this (did about 10which were totally wasted), so about 14 solid attempts. We had 5 near the end where we brought Icehowl out, and just purposely wiped if we lost dps due to unlucky fires and such.

Anyway, we had 1 good perfect attempt (most of it). We got him to about 43% before the 2nd charge... Rogue got targetted, DC'd... We got him to 25% before he enraged (his 10sec enrage is def healable). We would've got him to about 5% before wiping, so I don't see my raid doing it without getting luck of RNG and perfection, atm anyway.
Does anyone have any advice on the worms? We can't get them down before Icehowl comes out (generally Dread is on 5-10%, else we know we won't make it). We're hoping for better gear in Norm ToC to help make up that extra 1% dps we need.

Because next week we'll be doing Jaraxxus hopefully, any tips or such for that? Currently I've heard just 2 tank healers and 1 raid healer, with 1 tank healer just on the Incinerate Flesh target during that, and we need all dps but a rogue (or warrior?) on adds for interrupts. Apparently Mistress oneshots most dps, is it DoT or instant and how would you deal with that?

Not asking for epic win strategies here, just advice please

Edit: Icehowl, is swiftness pot needed or can we hope for lucky positioning + Pack Aspect (55 yards, 2/3 of the instance)?

[Bonedruid]

I came up with a strategy that worked quite well for Gormack last night, only had 1 tank death on a perfectly timed parry gib in 20+ attempts and used only 2 tanks.

Uses 2 tanks, requires 3-4 healer/ret cooldowns (3 with a druid, 4 with a warrior since barkskin can be used twice), 3 palies and a warrior or bear that can hit 65K+ with last stand/survival instincts. Let us make a transition with no stacks on the tank.

One thing though is there is zero cushion if there is a parry hasted swing around impale time so after we had the 1 parry gib the off tank move to the side so they could keep threating/dpsing with out hasting and I made sure to stop attacking a second or two before each impale.

For worms we came close to getting them cleanly but we split melee into a mobile/stationary group since a splash on melee when they were all stacked up was pretty much 2-3 deaths until we split them. All ranged on Acidmaw until he dies. Ranged tank for acidmaw when stationary so we could tank swap burning bile to bring it to the raid and then tanks split when dreadscale was stationary. The 50% damage enrage is pretty trivial if your healers can keep the tanks up through Gormack, we never had a tank death on the enraged worm when all the healers were up.

Beasts 2 tanks

[Antimonic]

OK, we cleared 10 man for server first over the weekend. Anub'arak was enjoyable difficult. A couple things I noticed:

Twins

• Touch doesn't seem to have an aoe component, and is really only truly dangerous if you get in the middle of too many orbs. It's definitely forgiving enough for you to take 5-6s to get to a portal.
• The shields during twin pact take a decent amount of dps to get down. We tanked the two between portals, and had all dps switch. Melee was able to just turn around.

Anub'arak

• We saw everything everyone else has mentioned. There is an ability called Shadow Strike that if not interrupted will hit someone for 40k+. It's an 8 second cast so there's really no reason to miss it.
• It's best to stand on the other side of permafrost when kiting anub. Standing on it will get you smashed for a ton of damage.
• Phase 3 is not the easiest part of the fight anymore. Jeeeez.
• Also, at least in 10 man, there is no new type of add; there's just the added add ability.

We did a 2 heal strat to kill him; DPS to 54% range before first burrow. I'd be curious to know if anyone was able to 3 heal.

[gacktt]

How big was the nerf on beast's enrage?

Our 10man's (I wasn't on) are on anub and doing fine, but our 25man still haven't done beasts cause there's always 2-3 people who dc's and makes us lag behind the enrage, perhaps if they added a 1min or so overall we could get it done with a couple of disconnects.

[Copernicus]

How big was the nerf on beast's enrage?

Our 10man's (I wasn't on) are on anub and doing fine, but our 25man still haven't done beasts cause there's always 2-3 people who dc's and makes us lag behind the enrage, perhaps if they added a 1min or so overall we could get it done with a couple of disconnects.

Approximately-

2:35 for Gormokk
5:48 total for the two Wurms (don't know if their timer is separate from Gormok's if he dies early).
9:19 total for Icehowl (once again, don't know if timer is separate. It's possible to go slightly further during Berserk).

My best guess would be timers of --

2:35
3:15
3:30

For the three phases.

[swelt]

Previously if you didn't get him in 3 charges he would enrage right? So does this make it 4?

[crafty]

Previously if you didn't get him in 3 charges he would enrage right? So does this make it 4?

Based on my experience last night, he enraged shortly after the 3rd charge. In fact, we wiped to his enrage once on a relatively clean attempt. This leads me to believe that the time on Icehowl was not actually increased.

The following two changes seem to counteract each other, with the net result being more time to DPS the worms, but the same amount of time on Icehowl.

-Icehowl now comes out later
-Icehowl now enrages later

Note that Icehowl now becomes active about 10 seconds after the worms come up from their 3rd burrow. We had some downtime between P2 and P3 last night whereas on our first kill we had no downtime at all.

[crafty]

EDIT: The comment about 2 mistresses was, in retrospect, incorrect. With proper positioning and macros we were able to burn the nether portals and get a single mistress in 25m.


Notes on the Jaraxxus hotfix based on my experience in 25 man last night.

- We were unable to kill the Nether Portal before a 2nd Mistress of Pain spawned. I expect the intent of the encounter now is to deal with 2 mistresses on each portal. A very skilled raid with proper targeting, cooldowns, and/or bloodlust may be able to kill the portal with only one spawn. My guild was unable to.

- You are guaranteed one additional Infernal spawn from each volcano post-hotfix.

These changes combined have the net effect of extending the encounter quite a bit. Enrage still shouldn't be an issue, but in the end a raid will need to come up with more damage to compensate for 3-4 more Mistresses and 3-4 more Infernals and healers will need to deal with the damage output from said mobs.

Legion flame still appeared to be more dangerous than anything the adds did to our raid.