Trial of the Grand Crusader Tips and Tricks, Part 2
Rather than updating the first post, I’ve decided to make a new one, because it’s easier to keep them at a right article size that way. In this part, you can find more detailed tactics for Faction Champions and Twin Val’kyr encounters.
For tips and tricks on the two previous fights, you can check the first part of this guide – it has been updated a bit since the posting.
Faction Champions
This fight is so random. If you have the right raid setup, and the Champions spawn with an easy enough setup as well, this can be a piece of cake.
- Kill the totems. Make a macro for it, make your melees right click them, make your tanks right click them, make your resto druid moonfire them, but you need to kill the totems.
- Dispel, dispel, dispel. If you have a dispel button and a free GCD, you should probably press that very button.
- The enemy NPC’s are not tauntable at all, making it a little bit harder to control the melee ones.
- Note that you still can taunt the warlock and hunter pets – on one of the tries I’ve left one of them attacking me all the time for free rage – as a tank they don’t do a lot of damage to you, but will still run away so be sure to taunt them back.
- The most sure-fire way of killing them for us was to kill one of the healers )while keeping the two melees and the other healer under CC), then kill both melees (keeping one of them and the other healer still under CC), then finish off the other healer. At that point you’ve practically won.
- Which healer to kill first depends on what you get and what you have. There are two spots for their healers. If one of them is either a resto druid or a paladin, and the other one is a priest or a resto shaman, you should probably CC the paladin/druid and have everyone kill the other one first. If you have for example a druid and a shaman, and you don’t have a warlock to make CCing the druid very simple, you should CC the shaman instead and kill the druid first.
- Next will be their melee dps. Take out the most annoying one first – their annoyance is ranked like this: rogue > warrior > paladin > shaman > deathknight. After you’ve killed them both, you have just eliminated the thing that can most likely kill you pretty fast.
- After the melees are dead, kill the other healer. After he goes down, start killing their ranged dps, again with the most annoying ones first, which will be: mage > hunter > warlock > shadow priest > boomkin.
- Did I mention killing the totems and dispelling things yet? Yes? Then I will do it again, because it is VERY important. Kill the totems and dispel things (especially the paladin bubbles).
On a side note, the Faction Champions have a strange threat mechanic that can be possibly used to tank them, but while I’ve been able to confirm that it does indeed work, it’s not that easy to use (as they were still running for the casters), so in the end we just went and killed them with normal tactics. I’m including that link though just in case someone is interested.
Val’kyr Twins
We’ve spent a lot of time on this encounter trying out various strategies, until we found one that works. Well, actually there is also another one that works as well, the door tanking one – but as it requires a lot of luck and nothing else, I will neither use it or recommend it. This one is easy enough.
A bit of explanation of the positioning diagram above (and yes you can click it for a larger version).
- Both tanks take a dark or light portal each, aggro the bosses and position them with their backs to the center of the room, making some space for the melees to live in.
- Melee dps should be using dark or light portals (not all the same one), and attack the right boss for the debuff they have.
- Dark and Light soakers – these two ranged DPS will each take a different debuff and attack the respective boss, while making sure they grab all the orbs of their color that are going towards the tank and melee groups. You don’t have to be too zealous in doing this, but it helps a lot for the people in the center of the room to not be spammed by random colored orbs.
- Caster DPS and healers – take a debuff and stand next to the other portal – as in, if you’re going to stand near the light portal, you take the dark debuff.
This positioning makes it easy for everyone to switch dps to the shielded Val’kyr if needed, and lessens the amount of orbs in the center. And now, off to the fight.
- There is one new mechanic in the heroic mode of this encounter, and it’s called Touch of Light/Darkness. It causes AoE damage to people around you and disappears if you change your debuff color. So go and do that. Remember that especially if you are a soaker DPS, you probably want to change back to your previous color afterwards. This ability is never cast on tanks.
- Dodge orbs if they are not in your color. This is very important, because otherwise it’s a big chunk of damage. If you are surrounded by wrong orbs, of course it’s better to run through one rather than getting exploded by all of them, but in most cases it should be easy enough to just move out of their way. Don’t finish that cast (especially if you’re a dps), just move. It’s a bit more tricky for the melees and tanks, but unfortunately they have to do it as well.
- While grabbing orbs that are in your color, please be sure that you are not doing it close to the other colored people. That’s especially important for the two soaker DPS – if there’s a light orb close to the dark tank, let the tank dodge it rather than run into it and make the tank take the completely unnecesary AoE damage.
- If one of the Val’kyr shields itself, everyone need to switch and DPS it. The shield can take more damage in heroic mode, so if you have Heroism availaible, you might want to save it for this ability. Same goes for trinkets and other DPS cooldowns.
- When one of the Val’kyr does the shield, the other one hits for a lot and really fast – this is a good time for that tank to use his defensive cooldowns and to get more healing on him.
- While switching colors for the Vortex ability, remember that you need to switch back after. Also, be careful while running to a portal – there are two of them for a reason, so don’t make everyone run to the same one and then all die because there just happened to be a few wrong colored orbs on the way. Switching a color is not a reason not to dodge orbs.
- If you get the positioning right, and then can dodge orbs like pro dodgeball players, then the fight is not that much harder than the normal mode.
And that’s it for now. Right now we are still working on Anub’Arak, so the next part will probably come soon. See you next time!
Just a little update
This will be a short one, but the Twin Val’kyr in our ToGC-10 are finally down. After some time of figuring out the right strategy (and then a few bad encounters with the bloody Faction Champions), we finally executed the strategy and got them down in a few tries.
No tanky loots unfortunately, but I scored a pretty sharp looking sword I can swing around. Offspec thing (won over another offspec obviously), so it probably won’t see that much use, but still I dps from time to time and it’s a very decent upgrade over my current Stormedge. And it has a nice metric ton of extra armor penetration, so even if it’s an agility based thing and not an axe, I’m happy.
I’ll make a post on Twin Val’kyr strategy this week as well, as I’m the one that does boss notes and tactics on bosses in the guild – so that’s two birds with one stone.
We also had a few tries on Anub, and made it to the third phase and around 25%, but we need some more training with placement of the Frost Spheres and kiting the boss around them. And possibly Heroism, as our resident shaman is currently afk due to real life.
Well, there’s always the next week.
Face, meet Shield
Yesterday there was no raid due to the lack of healers, so I’ve been kidnapped and forced to do PvP. Specifically, 2v2 Arenas with our resident holy pinkadin.
Hmmm. “Forced” sounds kind of wrong, like I didn’t like doing this, which is not true at all. Let’s try again.
Yesterday there was no raid due to the lack of healers, so our resident holy pinkadin Tuttebel invited me to have a lot of fun in 2v2 Arenas as a prot warrior – holy pala team.
Okay, this is a lot better and is at least honest, this can stay.
I’ve been already doing a lot of Battlegrounds on my warrior as prot, and I liked it a lot, so I agreed for doing some arenas to see if it would be fun as well. We started on Tuesday after the raid, just to get a few games done for her weekly points, but strangely enough we didn’t lose as much as we were expecting to.
During these few days I’ve tweaked my pvp spec a bit (note that I might not have it on armory currently, because at the point at which it was written I was respeccing my tanking spec for it – seriously Blizzard, make it cost another 1k or make it even 10k gold, but I really need a third spec) and got some better gear (and a little more resilience), so this time it went much better.
We did about 30 games of which we lost about 11, most of them at the beginning where I was still running around a bit like a headless chicken. Once I stopped that and got used to the arena maps and staying close enough to my healer to be able to Intervene her if needed, it went much better. Of course, we have a low rating of 1100 and something (especially me, since I’ve just started this week), so obviously the other teams aren’t the best either. Still, it was a lot of fun and you can expect some posts about it if we get somewhere with this.
There was a few noteworthy things this evening.
Facing a double rogue team was fun, but we won that one pretty fast – fortunately two plate users with a protection warrior, a rogue is not a big problem at all if you manage to survive the initial stunlock and burst, as I have just about the same amount of stuns availaible and an advantage of a ton (for pvp at least) of armor and avoidance.
We also faced one team of a cat druid and holy pala. That fight was… interesting, if that’s the right word. It lasted for 26 minutes, in which time I was trying to a) get the paladin healer low on mana (not an easy job when he has like 25k of it and I’m not a dps), b) get the kitty off Tuttebel’s face, while the other team was doing more or less the same. Fortunately the other healer went OOM faster, and then it was only a matter of silencing and stunlocking him and getting some lucky Shield Slam crits at the same time – and after the enemy paladin went down, finishing off the kitty was just a formality. Fortunately we only encountered them once in a whole evening, but I have to say that these were really cool and fun 26 minutes.
Speaking of Shield Slam crits – we had one team with a pve geared arcane mage. Have I mentioned already that I absolutely love low resilience targets? Here’s why.
That’s just a little over 11k in one hit, from defensive stance. Before you start thinking that protection warriors are overpowered, remember that a decent amount (700-900) of resilience reduces that to 5k on average, and on top of that I only have about 30% of crit chance on Shield Slam, and I really need to have procs, cooldowns and some setup in order to do so much damage. Still, seeing a mage’s health go down from 80% to 5% in one blow is just awesome.
I’ve also almost single-handedly killed a retri paladin and a deathknight. They both went for Tuttebel first and somehow bursted her down pretty fast, but I was able to dps down first the paladin, then finish off the deathknight with me having about 1k health left. Very lucky.
Of course this post would not be complete without mentioning the worst enemy you can ever encounter as a warrior – a discipline priest. If they’re any good, they will spam Power Word: Shield, making you unable to get any rage, and therefore unable to do any damage. If paired with a ranged dps class, like a hunter or a warlock, it’s not an easy team to deal with – unless you’re good at playing hide and seek with them. We didn’t manage that yet, but there’s always next time!
Many Turkeys! Handle it!
So, the newest event in World of Warcraft has officially started. The Pilgrim’s Bounty, based on the real Thanksgiving, is a quite short, one-week long event full of cooking and many turkeys.
And then, even more turkeys. Handle it!
I’ve already almost finished doing the achievements on both of my primary characters – the only real thing I have left is shooting some poor rogues with the Turkey Shooters you get from the dailies. Unfortunately that will have to wait a while for tomorrow when the dailies will reset, since I don’t have enough shooters – but I’m already prepared with all the necessary food made and waiting in the banks.
It’s a bit silly, because once again I’ve done over 90% of a world event’s achievements in less than one day, but I guess Blizzard makes the events for everyone, not just for our achievement hunting group that will stay up half a night doing that stuff.
A bonus from the event – since you have to cook everything yourself, there are special recipes covering cooking from 1 to 350. That means you can skip Azeroth and Outland cooking altogether, so I’ve finally leveled my druid’s cooking skill over the 240 or so it has been on for a while. And on 350 skill you can already start learning the Northrend trainer recipes, so I guess I’ll be doing some extra fishing during the week.
Oh, and we finally got the Onyxian Whelp today as well – and she’s, well… Can’t really say she’s cute, because she looks like a whelp after all (only with Onyxia’s miniaturized head), but the random animation she has is absolutely awesome. She makes an emote “Onyxian Whelpling takes a deep breath…” and runs around puffing smoke out of her mouth. Oh well, still a long way to go, little one, but it’s a good start!
Patch 3.3 Impressions
With the latest patch finally showing up in the background downloader, it usually means it’s release is coming quite soon. I won’t be playing the guessing game this time, but the downloader being active usually means from a week to a few. I was putting off writing this post for a while now, mostly because due to the live game (and other not game related activities) I was not online on the PTR this time. But, the time has finally come.
Good:
- The new raid instance and the heroics. I love new dungeon content, especially if it’s something like I hope Icecrown will be – fun, challenging but not impossible, and if I get a few extra good quality stories with it, I will be extra happy.
- The revamped LFG system. Cross-server pugs? Random dungeons, along with a tool that don’t require me to spend most of my time in Dalaran when I’d rather be wasting my time farming stuff or doing quests? Pretty much awesome. Plus, you can’t go wrong with tanking for pugs – it’s always entertaining.
- The Quel’Delar questline – it might not be a legendary (and being a tank on my warrior I’ll probably won’t get the orange axe anyway), but it looks very cool and promising. Besides, I already have two Quel’Serrars, so it’s only appropriate that I’d get their sister blade, even if it will have to be of the two-handed variety.
- Quality of life improvements – things like removing the level restriction on meeting stones, various changes for early leveling, changes to the map and quest tracking… it all adds up and it’s removing various annoyances from the game.
Bad:
- The gating system. I really hope it will somehow work out, but seeing the news that we’re gonna only have the first four bosses availaible for several weeks… I can only hope that they will provide enough of the required fun and challenge in that case. Not to mention the limited tries on the last bosses on each wing, though that might be something not that bad really, since it will make us really focus and figure out what we did wrong.
- Changing the Master Angler of Stranglethorn. While I like the Kalu’ak Derby itself, I feel like adding it to this achievement is kinda making the Stranglethorn fishing tournament pointless. I know why it’s been done, but still, they could do it in a different way, like adding a new meta achievement for at least one of both tournaments and then adding this new meta to the Salty one.
- Restricting raids to players above level 10. While I understand it’s meant to be a quality of life change for new players that might not be aware of what a raid group is and what it does (and trust me, everyone did try to quest while in a raid at some point), it’s a bit disappointing because it will restrict fun playermade events.
Ugly:
- The tier sets. The rogue one is once again just weird, and while I know that geists are really an appropriate look for Icecrown Citadel, it’s still not something I’ll want to see. The warrior stuff is pretty mediocre, as I really liked the look of T9 shoulders, and the druid headpiece… let’s not mention the druid headpiece.
Apparently I’m a worst warrior up to date.
At least, that’s what Chronis of <Loot and Run> on Deathwing-EU says, so it must be true. Right?
I’ll show you the whole conversation, because I made me smile on an otherwise dull evening.
Chronis > logic.
Especially after I explicitely told him I was soloing stuff, yet he kept going, babbling something about HP reg not working in raids. Which it obviously does, because why wouldn’t it.
The ignore & insult at the end is also a classic.
Tanking Questionnaire
A little something I’ve found, strangely enough, browsing around World of Matticus’ comments for some post. That pointed me towards Askevar’s post (I love that blog’s name. All tanks should.) and further towards Koriel of Whatisboom and Tarsus of Tanking For Dummies (who had two additional questions about encounters, so I grabbed them as well). Well, since lately the warrior is my most played character, I think I can join as well. So, here it goes.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Vrethir, protection warrior for life. I’m using a mixed 15/3/53 spec that includes both Deep Wounds (for threat) and Improved Disciplines (with glyphed Shield Wall, for our 10-man hard modes). It’s not the best choice, but it works and saves me gold I would have to use for respecs.
What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
All of the above. Raids (10-mans and some more 25-mans recently) and five-man instances are what I do the most, since I’m mostly a PvE player. Running battlegrounds as a protection warrior is also very fun and enjoyable. No arenas yet though, maybe someday.
What is your favorite encounter to tank, and why?
Mimiron (including our tries of Firefighter). It’s a very varied fight, and you have lots of things to do, so you can’t be bored. Hard mode of Hodir is also not as boring as it might seem. Single-tanking the third phase of our Yogg-Saron fight was also very enjoyable.
What is your least favorite encounter to tank, and why?
Loatheb, Vezax (since I’m usually on boss duty due to cooldowns), Ignis (if we’re doing the speed kill and I’m on boss duty again) – from a tanks perspective they are both tank and spank fights that are simple and boring. I have to admit I like to do these once in a while for a change, but I prefer something where I can use more of my abilities.
What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
That definitely must be Shield Slam. It combines a ton of aggro, dispels, and dps in one handy tool.
What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
A warrior uses pretty much everything he can, but if I have to choose one of the least used it would be probably Mocking Blow – it’s only useful once in a blue moon if my taunt misses and the boss absolutely needs to be on me right now.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
Mobility, because the Warbringer talent is full of awesome, and I would not like a tanking spec that does not have it (which is also one of the reasons why I have an arms offspec, not a fury one – but that’s not really tanking related ;] ). Single-target tanking comes as a very close second, but none of the other tanks are as mobile as warriors are.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
AoE tanking. Yes, I can do it and not get the dps killed in a process, but it’s not what I like or what the warriors are good at. Sure, we can get some initial aggro with Thunderclap followed by Shockwave, but at that point we’re waiting till they come off cooldown, flailing wildly at both tab and the cleave button.
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
Facing the boss, introducing my big shield to his ugly face (or whatever he/she/it might have instead. I’m not picky). Or picking up the adds, if there aren’t too many of them.
What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
I don’t mind tanking alongside any class at all, as long as there is a good player (with his brain mostly intact) behind it. I say mostly, because apparently if you’re tanking, you can’t be 100% normal. ;)
What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Just as I don’t have a preference, I don’t really have a least favourite co-tank. Do your job and you’re fine with me.
What is your worst habit as a tank?
Showing up to a heroic run in my block value gear (which is not bad in itself), and laughing at the DPS I’ve outdpsed afterwards. Usually when I’m looking for another pug DPS to a 5-man instance, I’ll put a message in /trade saying “LFM DPS <insert instance name>, must be able to outdps me” or something similar.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Non-tanks pulling stuff before me. Do that, and I will just stand there waiting for you to die, and pick it up afterwards. I’m the tank here, if I wanted you to pull something, I’d ask you.
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
Mostly yes, and the current expansion did a lot of good things for protection warriors. We still lack some more decent AoE tools – while Thunderclap and Shockwave are good, once they’re on cooldown we can only tab around the mobs wildly and spam Cleave, which is not cool at all.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Omen is obvious here. Also Recount is very useful, especially the Deaths part of it and the detailed information about what happened before I died – it helps me to quickly find out if it was my mistake or somebody elses. It could be a bit better though, as it doesn’t show the cooldowns I’ve used, only heals and incoming damage.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
It’s a bit hard to choose something, so I’ll go with Tarsus – we’re no longer THE main tank. I can do any job in a raid, and while I personally like tanking bosses (and adds to some extent), I’ll go and tank that 15 whelps that just showed up.
Also, there is that ganking thing, since Deathwing-EU is a PvP server. Oh look, a lone warrior, let’s gank him! Well, if I’m not afk, and you don’t have friends, there is a very high chance that this will not end well for you. A chance, because I am of course not invincible (and will most likely lose versus a good PvPer, which I’m not), but I’ve taught enough Hordies their lessons both during my leveling as protection and while running around as a level 80.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
Use all of your availaible tools. Warriors have a tool for every occasion, learn how and when to use them.
If it can be disarmed, you should do it. If a spell can be interrupted, you should interrupt it. A warlock is doing a lot of threat? Put a Vigilance on him, and Intervene him if you have a chance. A Nerubian Burrower is trying to submerge and there is no blue stuff anywhere near? Stun it, you have 3 different stuns to use.
Don’t just stand there and mash Devastate.
Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
EH of course, but I like balance, so I’m not stacking it blindly. Still, it’s needed just to survive things like ToGC, and with the introduction of the Sunwell Radiance-like aura in Icecrown, that’s not going to change anytime soon.
What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. While I have a druid character, I’ve never really tried the feral playstyle on him – I’ve got a rogue and a warrior, why on Azeroth would I want another?
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
I use a lot of macros that combine different abilities in one button – and even then I’m running out of easy to reach keybinds. Other than that, I use Satrina Buff Frames to have a separate buff bars with important buffs and debuffs – important being the things I have to watch out for, like Sword and Board proc or Demoralizing Shout and Sunder Armor timers.
I also use Grid all the time, even in heroics – it’s much easier to see the healers mana on it, and much easier to choose a dps to Intervene or put Vigilance on it. This gets more tricky in 25-mans, but with enough practice you can do it quickly.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
My main gear set is mostly balanced – it has decent Stamina, not bad Avoidance values, almost capped Hit and Expertise. If I need to change something, I carry around other pieces of gear – like the Brewfest Stamina trinkets, which I will equip if the encounter is mostly about high unavoidable (or magical) damage that my dodge trinket will be useless on. If I need more threat, I can switch one ring back to the Emblem of Valor one at a cost of some health.
Soloing as a Protection Warrior, Part 2
This is the second part of a soloing guide targeted at protection warriors. It focuses on raid and dungeon bosses that we can solo and that are either fun or drop valuable things such as rare mounts or pets. You can also read the first part of this guide, and I have at least one more part in writing – which will take us to Molten Core and maybe somewhere else. ;)
Onyxia
Since the 3.2.2 patch changed the old instance into an anniversary level 80 raid, it’s pretty obvious she can’t be soloed right now. I would still advise you to find a group for her and try to get two items which are absolutely awesome for soloing other bosses.
The trinkets in question are [Purified Shard of the Flame] (and its 25-man counterpart of the Shiny variety, which gives slightly more HP5 – you could get both for even better effect) and the [Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman] you can get as a reward for turning in the new Head of Onyxia quest. Of course, the Shard is part of a caster set, so be mindful and please don’t take it from a caster that would like to complete it. Fortunately my raid group had no issues when I told them I want it for soloing, since the only other roll was a shadow priest that maybe wanted it for PvP. :)
Worn together, that’s a decent boost in avoidance and, what’s important to us here, 611 HP5. This means you will regen 244 health every 2 seconds, because that’s how HP5 works. Unfortunately it doesn’t show at all in the combat log, so you have to believe me when I say so. To compare it to a glyphed Bloodthirst – it heals me for about 1600 health, over about 6 seconds. Unglyphed would have about the same regen value.
What it means is that on my gear level (ToC-10 stuff with some emblem and crafted pieces) I no longer need to change my spec for soloing most of the bosses, including Attumen the Huntsman in Karazhan. As said before, with a normal protection spec you are going to kill them before they kill you, and the steady health regen is really helpful.
Attumen, High Priest Thekal and Bloodlord Mandokir, we meet once again.
The first part of the guide was written when my warrior had much inferior gear than he has now – being mostly stuff from heroics and some entry raid epics. That was also before the emblems dropping in heroics changed from Heroism to Conquest.
With all the new gear, it becomes possible to kill these bosses with a standard Protection tanking spec. Having Devastate, Shockwave, Damage Shield and Sword and Board availaible means you’re simply going to try (and should be quite successful at it) killing them faster than they can kill you.
Even the raptor packs before Mandokir are not really a problem – sure, they stack their dot, but with over 30k health it’s gonna take a while before it kills you. It will deal about 1k damage per 3 seconds after it stacks high enough though, so don’t forget to bring some sort of food with you.
Magisters’ Terrace
Equipped with the health regen trinkets I’ve tried my luck in getting the Phoenix Hatchling pet and another mount drop. First run was on normal difficulty to try and see how it goes.
Trash mobs weren’t really an issue anymore – the multitude of stuns and interrupts makes it pretty easy to deal with them. Remember to also use the Magic Dampening Field that the Sunblade Mage Guards are putting down to your advantage – your HP5 doesn’t care about it, but it reduces incoming magic damage by half, which can still be handy.
Before engaging the first boss, aggro all the adds and kill them – if you just engage the boss, they will join the fight as well. Selin Fireheart himself is easy – just ignore the crystals and keep beating on him. Remember that he can use Drain Life, so be sure to interrupt it as soon as he starts channeling it.
Vexallus, the second boss is right after Selin (well, after a bunch of wyrmlings which you can simply pull all and AoE down). On the normal mode he’s not really an issue – just dps him down, killing the appearing sparks with Devastates, as they can’t be damaged by any AoE. You will get low on health here due to the fight mechanics – just use Last Stand with Enraged Regen and continue dpsing the boss/sparks.
Next set of trash packs is a bit harder – more annoying casters, so keep your Spell Reflect up, use the Dampening Fields and just kill them. Remember that you can skip half of the first room and everything around Delrissa – they won’t join the fight unless you get feared into a pack.
Priestess Delrissa is a simple fight for a level 80, so I won’t write much about it – just look on the enemies, if it has a mana bar it probably does nasty things, so it needs to die first. If you made it so far, you probably won’t have any problems with them. After her it’s only one more trash pack before you meet a real zombie!
Now, you get to slap poor Kael’thas Sunstrider around. This is not as easy as it seems, but it’s mostly annoying. Be sure to kill the Phoenixes and their eggs when they spawn, avoid the Flamestrike Kael does once in a while, and keep dpsing.
After you get him to 50% health, he will start doing Gravity Lapse. If you get to this part of the fight, you have already won, as he stops doing anything else. There isn’t much you can do to him in this phase – just avoid the floating spheres, and when it ends, immediately charge the boss and do some damage. Repeat until he finally dies.
Magisters’ Terrace, heroic mode
Before entering, make sure that you’ve done the attunement quest in the normal mode of the instance. It just requires you to clear it once and loot Kael’thas’ head, so it’s not a big issue at all.
Up to Vexallus, nothing really changes from normal mode. Be aware that the trash casters can and will kill you if you’re not careful and quick enough, or pull too many of them at once. Selin Fireheart is still a pushover, he just has more health.
Vexallus is the first real challenge here. He has more health and will spawn two sparks instead of one – so you will stack the overload debuff twice as fast. The way I did it, I killed first 4 sparks and then popped all the cooldowns and tried to finish the boss before he and his arcane friends finish me. It was a successful tactic, but I ended with about 400 health out of 34k, so it might require a few tries to get some lucky Shield Slam crits.
The fight with Priestess Delrissa doesn’t change much when doing it on heroic mode – she and her adds hit for a bit more and heal for a bit more, but it’s still quite easy.
Kael’Thas is even more annoying than on normal mode. If it takes you too long to get him to second phase, he will cast a 10k shield on himself and start casting Pyroblast, which still does about 40k damage. He will also throw around a crazy amount of Fireballs, each taking about 4.5k of your health if they happen to hit you. None of this damage can be partially resisted by fire resistance, so forget about taking your MC gear and trying to do it slowly – it just won’t work.
What you should do instead, is ignore everything that happens around you (even the Phoenix that will spawn during the fight – leave it after you get to the second phase, as its damage is really low), keep Spell Reflect up, interrupt the Fireballs when the reflect is on cooldown, and hope that you can do enough damage to push him below 50% before he does the Pyroblast. If you manage to do that, you will probably win, unless you fail badly on the Gravity Lapse and dodging the spheres.
Good luck with the rare drops, and what’s most important – have fun while taking revenge on this annoying instance!
Trial of the Grand Crusader Tips and Tricks
Not really a full-featured guide this time, this is rather a collection of tips and tricks our guild put together while doing our ToGC-10 runs.
Of course in this post I’m going to assume that the reader is fully familiar with normal Trial of the Crusader tactics, because the basics of the fight are the same. But since you have to clear the instance before even starting the heroic mode, it should not be a problem, right?
There is also a second part of this guide, talking about the next two encounters – Faction Champions and the Val’kyr Twins.
So, let’s get started.
Northrend Beasts
The main difference in this fight is that all beasts now have a set timer that they will enter the arena. This means your raid needs to have enough DPS to clear each phase in about 2:30, and this means that absolutely nobody can die. If you can kill Gormok, you are probably good enough to go at least up to Twin Val’kyr, as the two next encounters are a bit easier.
Gormok the Impaler.
- The tank with higher HP starts tanking, gets the first Impales and the last which hurt a lot. Gormok cannot be disarmed on heroic mode, so your tanks class does not matter much.
- Turn the boss around, so that the melee dps group will be near the center and the tanks with their backs to the wall. He does not cleave or anything, but it makes it easier with the Snobolds.
- Always taunt after the other tank gets two debuffs. Timing doesn’t really matter as long as you don’t fail (and even with 3 stacks you can still make it), because your current debuff will drop off a second before the new one gets applied. Announce your taunts on vent or you might not get heals. :P
- Do not taunt if you don’t have to. Taunting after two debuffs is already very close to hitting the diminishing returns on taunt and messing things up, taunting any more often will make the boss immune to taunt for sure. Been there, done that.
- Cooldowns usage (at least for protection warriors): first time you have aggro, Shield Block will be enough, he doesn’t hit that hard then to waste a cooldown. Second time, Shield Block and dodge trinket. Third time, Last Stand + Enraged Regeneration. You shouldn’t need a fourth time if you’re an offtank, but if you do, Shield Wall. If you get to the fifth time somehow, the worms will be already there and you will die anyway.
- Cooldowns usage on 25-man is a bit different as there are three tanks there, but similar enough. First tank does not need to use anything special, second one can use some minor cooldowns like Shield Block and a dodge trinket, third tank needs to use one of their stronger ones (for warriors that would be LS + ER), because at that point Gormok will probably already have 3 stacks of the damage increasing buff. The next round of tanking is Shield Wall and asking for external cooldowns if you don’t have any of your own.
- For any other tanks – whatever works for your cooldowns, but I can assure that you will need something after Gormok gets 3 stacks of his buff.
- Kill Snobolds, because the faster you kill them, the less fires you get. If you get a snobold on you, run and stand right on top of the melee group. They will have to change their target from the boss, because the Snobolds are immune to AoE (such as Whirlwind or Divine Storm) if you’re not targetting them. The tank that’s not tanking Gormok at the moment can help with that, at least I usually throw a few devastates/revenges when I can, just don’t forget you will have to taunt. :)
- Don’t ever bubble or iceblock the Snobold away – it will go back to the boss, and later to another person, increasing the buff stacks on the boss yet again.
- You shouldn’t need Heroism for this part, but as you’re learning, it might be useful. If Dreadscale is entering with Gormok on about 200k HP (of course on 10-man), you’re good.
- Using Amplify Magic on both tanks helps here a lot with healing, as there is not a lot of magic damage being thrown at them. Just make sure they know to click it off (or use /cancelaura macro) before they start with the other phases.
Acidmaw and Dreadscale
- For the Dreadscale tank: at first you’ll be the only one with a fire debuff. From the start, aggro the worm and run away with it to the right side of the room. Then turn it and kite it slowly towards the other tank. That way you will make some room without the poison cloud for people to run to you. Don’t kite the worm away from the Acidmaw tank, it’s bad and will lead to a wipe.
- Don’t forget to cancel Amplify Magic if you were using it on Gormok.
- Using Heroism in this phase helps, especially right after the Acidmaw tank gets some aggro. The faster Acidmaw dies, the better this phase goes.
- Dreadscale’s Enrage is not a big issue, normally you shouldn’t waste anything on it other than Shield Block once in a while and a dodge trinket if it’s off cd after Gormok already (remember that the extra dodge is of no use on Icehowl since Ferocious Butt stuns you and you can’t dodge anyway).
Icehowl
- No speed buff after Massive Crash, so be awake and run away. If you have a hunter, you might make him change his aspect for faster running, but it should not be needed.
- A little trick that helped me and our priest to do it properly – when Icehowl is jumping to the center, position yourself at a point of one of the little stars (not the big NESW ones). If you do that, you will be thrown to the middle of the wall between two pillars, and it’s a lot easier to strafe away from the boss as you don’t have to lose time navigating around a pillar or a doorway. It might sound silly, but it really helps.
- Ferocious Butt kinda hurts – he usually does it after he comes out of the stun, but not only then. I saved my cooldowns for that, better safe than sorry.
- Healers NEED to heal people that got frozen, and people NEED to properly spread around the boss, especially healers. The Arctic Breath on heroic does 30k damage (20k on normal), so it WILL kill most people. This was the reason of us losing the dps in this phase, and the enrage timer is pretty tight.
- I tend to tank Icehowl on the side of the wall wherever he hits it, or at the doorway where he enters, and not drag him back to center. This makes it a lot easier for melee dps to stay on him, and saves time.
Lord Jaraxxus
First of all, check out the following screenshot, as it makes it much easier to explain.
- Tank him on the wall under one of the Alliance shields, this way you only get portals on the sides of him and not 360 degrees around like you would have him tanked in the center. Dps and healers spread out in pairs in a half-circle from one column on the wall to the other. A good raid positioning is key on this fight.
- If you get targetted by Legion Flames, run away from the raid and then back. If a melee dps gets them, run to one of the columns and back, it should be enough. Remember that you have two seconds before the flames start damaging you, so if you start running as soon as you get the DBM warning, you should not take much damage or none at all.
- Nether Portal and Infernal Volcano that spawn adds NEED to be nuked ASAP. If you let them spawn more than one Mistress of Pain, you might as well wipe. ALL availaible DPS must immediately switch to the portal, including melees – the portals/volcanoes have 189k HP (again, 10-man version) and need to die in about 10-13 seconds.
- While nuking the Portal, be aware that you shouldn’t accidentaly aggro a Mistress of Pain if you’re not a tank. They hurt.
- Mistress of Pain does more damage and have an additional ability - Mistress’ Kiss. Read the tooltip and act accordingly – if you only have one school of casts and no instants you’re screwed, sorry. ;) This debuff can’t be dispelled in any way, and it will silence all your spell schools if you have more than one, so you just have to wait.
- Nether Power stacks need to be spellstolen/dispelled/shield slammed immediately, unless there is a Nether Portal or a Volcano at the same time – in that case nuking the portal is much more important.
- Incinerate Flesh needs more spam healing to take it off, and Burning Inferno almost kills you. Don’t let that happen.
- If you get an infernal coming your way (they do that all the time, turn into a ball and fly to a random person), run the hell away from it, as it will kill you with its hellfire AoE (interruptable).
And that will be it for now. On our last tries, my guild stopped at Twin Val’kyr, so I will update this post when we progress further. We’ve killed some more and we’re now working on getting Anub’Arak down. The second part of this guide explains more about the Faction Champions and the Twin Val’kyr – check it out as well!