[10/25] Thorim's Arena

[Arianne]

What worked best for us in this situation was to make sure that EVERYONE knew that they were supposed to be killing champions FIRST and to get them down ASAP. The exception to this is two rogues that need to keep the evokers stunned or kick the runic mending. After the champion goes down everyone kills the evoker with either a spriest, ele shaman, or healing priest/shaman dispelling any shields if one happened to get up in the time that we focused the champions.

[Tiandelin]

I'm pretty sure that the champions only charge if someone at range pulls aggro from them. At least, that's the only time we've ever had them charge and kill anyone. If you're really set on just tanking them in the middle, you should follow Belloc's suggestion above and set up a disarm rotation on them. Note that the cooldown on disarms is 1 minute, so you'll need 3-4 attentive people on that. Personally, we find it easier just to tank them out of the group.

Your rogues were interrupting occasionally, but they were doing a rather sloppy job of it in general. Just look at the report (log browser). Tons of runic mending, even near the start of attempts when you weren't getting overwhelmed yet. Definitely need someone dispelling evokers too.

[towelliee]

Can you MC Champions and just use their whirlwind?

[Threatco]

We worked on 25 man thorim for 1.5 hours yesterday.

The arena got their job down.

3 tanks.

DK tank pulling champions out of the raid. 3 ranged assigned to champions full time.
2 paladin tanks AOE tanking the middle.

Rest of the dps focused on the marked evokers, then switched to melee AOE ranged on champions when all evokers dead.

If champions got 4+ I call a fast switch of ranged dps to them even with 1 evoker up.

We were lasting well past 30 seconds past hardmode timer.

What was failing. The gauntlet.

The week before I was tanking the gauntlet, and we were fine, the arena was getting owned. Now my warrior tank says he is confident he can do it, so I give him the spot.

Him, 2 priest healers (disc holy) 5 dps.

So often either the tank got gibbed during a stun, or a dps died to aggro/fire. Probly a second boss skull death. Ect.. We pulled Thorim once and got him to 60%. But the gauntlet people lost 2 early and took too long, the fight had about 12 people dead phase 2.

They were going to start CCing the left add on the first 2 pulls of gauntlet but too many people had to work in the am and we called it.

I am considering putting better healers in the gauntlet. We put out moonkin in there resto which worked but we lacked the pew pew outside. I didn't try shamans in there, not sure how well they do on the move. Tried the holy paladin, but he was a pug, geared but didnt have holy shock key bounded -_- needless to say he didnt heal to well on the move.

I also will tank in the gauntlet my self. I suspect the arena team knows their job well enough now i don't have to be there to lead it. I will likeley bring a priest and a druid with me. And screw CC I will get there as soon as hardmode passes.

[Dantriges]

10 man Thorim without a rogue. I wasn´t sure what´s going wrong but I finally turned over the aoe tank part in the arena to the warrior. Seems to me that their burst stuff is a lot better than my steady consecrate for the encounter. On the other hand the mobs in the tunnel come in handy packs of three for a good old hammer time.

[Tiandelin]

Really, the big threats in the arena that you need to pick up are the champions and warbringers, both of whom hit for significant damage. The evokers aren't really that bad damage-wise, and as I've noted before, even rogues can tank them without much trouble if they get aggro (they were doing about 5k per hit or so on ours). Commoners do laughable damage and are only a threat because of spell pushback and pummel, which they'll use on nearby casters regardless.

The way we do it is to have one tank (usually a warrior) pick up the champions, while I sit in the middle to pick up warbringers and everything else. I position my camera so that I can see mobs incoming from all sides and save exorcism, shield toss, and as many taunts as I can for the warbringers. You can't really afford to wait for consecration pick them up, since they can easily kill a healer or someone else in a couple seconds, and it's a lot easier to target them at range before they slip into the sea of red nameplates in the middle. Also, if I miss one or lose aggro, I can glance at Grid to see whose aggro indicator is lighting up or whose health is dropping fast and use RD on them (courtesy of Clique).

[kanst]

Everyone in here is awesome. We have spent probably 5 hours wiping on Thorim hard mode so far and this thread is full of win. I gathered up a few points from here to present to our other officers:

-Imp FoK
-Purge the Evoker
-Kill order Champ->War->Evoker
-Make sure everyone manages aggro
-Disarm Champs

Gonna stress all those points to our melee dps and hope this week goes better.

[moduspwnens]

I think we kill Evokers first, and we have a ranged or two there to kill the Whirlwinding guy. Warriors are the last ones before the weakling little ones.

[kanst]

So we finally killed this boss, in case anyone else is having issues here is what we do:

3 tanks - 1 Warrior, 1 Pally (me), 1 Feral Druid with 600 resi
6 Healers - 1 Holy Pally, 1 Resto Shaman, 1 Resto Druid, 1 Disc Priest, 2 Holy Priests (my guild just has lots of priests)
7 Melee - 4 Rogues, 1 Dk, 1 War, 1 Ret Pally
Rest ranged

All ranged go tunnel with the prot warrior, and 2 healers. In arena I tank warbringers and keep aoe down, the druid tanked champions. We had 3 of our rogues spec throwing specialization and basically spam fan of knives for the entire phase. That keeps the evoker locked down, we have a 4 person disarm rotation on the champion. Once each one is brough into the middle someone disarms them and then they are burned down. Champions and Evokers just die to the random AOE. Our kill priority is Champ->Warbringer->Evoker. In arena the shaman isn't really healing much, his primary job is to keep the evoker shocked and purged at all times. If that shield stays up it could cause an annoyance. With that set up our arena can basically go on forever. The healers tend to stand outside the circle to avoid the slow, and if adds come to them they run through the circle and reposition on the other side.

Ideally tunnel gets to the top with time to spare, we like to activate the boss right after a champion dies but before we get another one. When thorim comes in I taunt, pop wings, and get tricks of the trade and MD. My job is to put out as much threat as humanly possible before first unbalancing, on first unbalancing the prot warrior taunts and builds more threats. This whole time our feral just basically gets his bleeds up and gets his rage up. On third unbalancing druid taunts, he tanks until he is dead. At about 6-7 charges you have to start having cd's for every unbalancing, as they will be hitting for 30k+ without them. At about 11 stacks, we had the holy pally beacon the prot warrior so that there was overlap. Once the druid dies, the warrior shield walls, and taunts, he uses all his own cooldowns plus any cooldowns we have left and tanks until he dies. When he dies I taunt and use my CDs. If the boss still isnt dead you can have a stone on the druid, but if the boss isnt dead your probably not going to kill it.

On our kill attempt our druid died at 15%, the warrior died at 2% and I get to feel next to useless. While I am not tanking, I kept sacred shield on the druid, and cleansed healers when I had the mana to.

As for the rest of the raid, you want them spread out around in a circle in groups of 3 or so, we did 5 such groups. If they get a lightning charge in there area, they run behind the group to there left or right, but make sure they are far enough away to avoid chaining lightning. It will take some practice for all your ranged to figure out the sweet spots where you are close enough to avoid blizzard but far enough to not chain onto melee. When you figure that out the whole phase gets smoother. On your first kill dont expect 25 people standing, when the stacks get high, people are just going to die from damage, your goal is to make sure everyone is alive until 12 stacks or so, you have to have very good dps to get him down.

Thanks everyone for all the tips and suggestions. Hes finally dead, next week Iron Council.