[25] Thorim hardmode

[Lineika]

Just killed him tonight. We used 3 tanks: two prot warriors and one prot paladin (me). We taunted off each other right after disbalancing strike. After 3 stacks of buffs on Thorim we used all cooldowns, both ours and external. For this fight I used talent spec with improved LoH and glyph with -20% dmg on hand of salvation. Bottom line is that I had most "oh crap" buttons, more than warriors used. Their last stand ability wasnt really usable after first few stack of Thorim buffs. All tanks dies through the fight, but I happened to get lucky avoidance stree after two other tanks dies, so I lived up to last few % of boss HP.

After 10 stacks of buff he hits on tank like Brutallus and Sarth combined, so you need to have non stop spam heal and a lot of cooldowns before each disbalancing strike.

WWS log: http://wowwebstats.com/fduyjzs55lmiq?s=343086-410075 (sorry it's in russian)

[Karnah]

Weve been trying this the past few nights. We normally give our healers a lot of grief - and rightly so, they often dont do too well, making this fight bloody difficult.

That said, we are not even getting to say 8 stacks before tanks are dying. Many times i get a big fat uber unbalancing for 40k or more and its lights out. Our cooldown rotation is sloppy but for some reason they just wont take the time to improve it. Good idea with the loh, but im tentative still to use the salvation glyph.

We went with giving casters 1 piece of frost res to get down a bit of the aoe damage, admittedly, its a lot to deal with.

Is there something were missing, or does healing really god awful suck here?!

[fiorina]

3 tanks is a total waste of DPS

[Nadir]

My guild has had major issues tanking this with a 1 Pal, 2 War combo. It's good to see that this combination has worked for another guild. From your parse it looks like you have 3 tanks with cds and 3 external cds from healers - can you really start using them at 3 charges and not run out by charge 10+? I don't understand Russian, but from your WWS it looks like Thorim died by charge 16.

3 tanks is a total waste of DPS

That's impressive if you're solo tanking the arena on 25 man and not having any DPS deaths. However taking a Paladin to Thorim hard mode is a total waste of a tank spot. All hail Death Knights, masters of the cooldown.

[Rojhaz]

3 tanks is a total waste of DPS

Lowest we got him last night was ~500k with a DPS locked out from being AFK -_-. Lowest we could consistently get him was about two or three million before he'd start offing tanks. We would use Bloodlust almost immediately when Thorim jumps down and have him to about 50% at six stacks.

Is the arena tankable with one tank? And can two tanks taunt off Unbalancing's w/o having to constantly use cooldowns (before 5-6 stacks)? I guess I've never paid attention to when he does it compared to when it falls off. From your post it seems like it must be, but is there any control or is it a just barely hanging on type thing?

We use a DK, a warrior and myself, but if we can get by with just the DK and the warrior we can kill him easily. I feel like a poor choice for tank on this fight b/c of my lack of cooldowns.

[Splug]

My guild has had major issues tanking this with a 1 Pal, 2 War combo. It's good to see that this combination has worked for another guild. From your parse it looks like you have 3 tanks with cds and 3 external cds from healers - can you really start using them at 3 charges and not run out by charge 10+? I don't understand Russian, but from your WWS it looks like Thorim died by charge 16.

We use WMO instead of WWS, but here's this week's raid if you want one in engrish: http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/4149082. Tanks are Moothora and Spyte.

3 tanks is a total waste of DPS

That's impressive if you're solo tanking the arena on 25 man and not having any DPS deaths. However taking a Paladin to Thorim hard mode is a total waste of a tank spot. All hail Death Knights, masters of the cooldown.

We have a feral druid solo tanking the arena, so I don't see how a paladin or death knight would have any problems at all. The whirlwind mobs can be disarmed/dismantled by the way, and if they are they won't whirlwind until they have a weapon again. Not that it's a big deal; it only hits for ~10k on cloth, so even the priests aren't bothering to move out of it. It only becomes dangerous if damage is falling behind and more than two are up.

-Splug

[smeej]

Does activating Thorim HM actually require a shift in strategy, or is it just a lot more damage? For example, frost resist totems? More healers?

[Kishandra]

Activating it merely requires the tunnel group getting to Thorim in 3 minutes or less. This shouldn't change your overall strategy, except possibly dumping more dps into the tunnel from the arena. The fewer number of dps we've managed to hit 3 minutes with was 6 (2 tanks, 2 healers 6 dps), although we usually go 7 to make it guaranteed.

Once he's activated though, there's a change in overall strategy. While the usual remains the same - tanks taunt off of each other upon unbalancing strike, you need to spread out in ~5 clumps of 3 ranged players each, all at least 10 yards away from each other and the melee. This is because with the huge hp/damage increase on Thorim, chain lightning will usually kill the 4th player it chains to.

The lightning charge which you could pretty much ignore on normal also becomes a 1-hit kill shortly after Thorim is engaged, and to top it off there will be random 15k frost volleys from Sif and blizzards around the room so everyone's scrunched in a small area in the middle.

[cordelia]

We're having major problems trying to get the 3 minute timer.

(1) We're going with 3 shadow priests using MC, so we are short 3 players for the initial phase. They MC, and give Aura of Celerity, but the arena is just such a mess, because we have to send 11-12 into the hallway.

(2) We stack melee in the arena, 2 impFoK rogues, and hunters. This works on regular, but we typically have 15 in the arena.

(3) Since we have 3 shadow priests using MC, we are essentially doing the arena with like 6-7 dps, 2 tanks, 3 MC'ers, 2 healers. On regular we have 8-10 dps, and the lack of dps shows. Arena just stacks up uncontrollably.

Any ideas?

I'm considering switching arena up entirely: going spellcaster heavy: locks/mages/hunters/spriests/boomkins for AoE + 60% haste.
I'm worried about aggro, though.

[fafhrd]

There's no reason to be losing the spriests to mc. They don't have to be MCing the whole phase. They can dps with everyone else for most of phase 1. When the tunnel team is engaging the 2nd miniboss, they can start picking up mobs to MC. You certainly shouldn't be needing the haste to keep up with p1 in the arena, the MCs are for P2.

Also 3 is a bit of a stretch in terms of what you're gaining at the cost of 1 raid spot. You're gaining 20% haste, but losing 1 person who benefits from the haste, adding one more person who won't be moving and will be eating blizzards and needing heals, increasing the risk of an add running around gibbing people when MC breaks or a priest dies, and adding more hassle on the p1-p2 transition to get everyone a mob to MC before they stop spawning.

[Avengeance]

We're having major problems trying to get the 3 minute timer.

(1) We're going with 3 shadow priests using MC, so we are short 3 players for the initial phase. They MC, and give Aura of Celerity, but the arena is just such a mess, because we have to send 11-12 into the hallway.

(2) We stack melee in the arena, 2 impFoK rogues, and hunters. This works on regular, but we typically have 15 in the arena.

(3) Since we have 3 shadow priests using MC, we are essentially doing the arena with like 6-7 dps, 2 tanks, 3 MC'ers, 2 healers. On regular we have 8-10 dps, and the lack of dps shows. Arena just stacks up uncontrollably.

Any ideas?

I'm considering switching arena up entirely: going spellcaster heavy: locks/mages/hunters/spriests/boomkins for AoE + 60% haste.
I'm worried about aggro, though.

3 MC is overkill IMO, we use 1, sometimes 0 if we dont have a spriest. Although the aura of celerity stacks up to 3 times, getting 60% haste for most people would long hit the haste cap (GCD = 1), and its just all wasted. Our spriest uses Frost res gear with stamina gemming, and he sits under the Thorim platform (east on map), just behind the tanks, doing MC. In general our rule of spread in P1 is melee in arena, ranged in tunnel, with maybe 1 or 2 hunters interchanging between the 2 depending on the number of casters available. That being said, we usuallly run 6 melee in the arena, with 2 tanks and maybe 2 hunters, and a few healers.

Oh, and thers no reason for the spriest to stay in arena in p1, he can always MC after P2 starts.

[cordelia]

Interesting. Is there anyone who actually does their kill with 60% haste? I would figure it would be a huge buff, but it sounds like most guilds don't do it.

[fafhrd]

We usually do it with 2. Tried 3 a couple of times and failed, so went back to 2. I can probably dig up our parses of attempts with 3 if you really want.

The first guild on our server to do thorim25 hard did it in naxx gear with 0 MCs (or they did it when the MC aura was party wide only, either way a part of the raid at least didn't have any haste buff), so that should give you some idea of how [not] important the buff is to the fight's tuning.

[Wrathy]

From a tank perspective, we only use two.

I am outside with the adds, and we have a DK tank in the hallway. From my perspective outside, its not too bad, things die very quickly with the amount of aoe dps melee puts out. If you are having problems with killing the adds, then your dps and priests are not doing their job as the evokers bubble all of the adds, leading to tons of absorbs. Kill the evokers first. Your number one priority is the champions, but tank everything you can. In the hallway, only the melee adds are tanked, the healer add is dead before he gets to the ranged dps.

As for the Aura, My guild never uses it, we found it useless, and had problems with spriests eating blizzards, frostbolts, lightening charges, etc. Furthermore, if you are dying to less than 10 stacks you need to gear for more effective health. Last week we had thorim up to 14 because some people died that were being idiots, and It wasn't pretty but doable. If you are not killing thorim in 11-13 stacks, its a DPS problem, if you are dying before 10 stacks because you cant take the hits its a tank gearing problem.