[10] Cho'Gal (one tank, two healers)

This post is dedicated to tanking this fight using one instead of two tanks.

I don't usually have anything new to contribute to the community. But seeing as there isn't a Cho'Gal thread yet I thought I'd share my experiences. Normally we're a 25 man guild but over the holidays we were short people. So we did it on 10 man.

I won't cover the fight mechanics or strats because nothing changes as far as that goes. And there are plenty available. Instead, I'll cover what it took to stay alive and get the job tank as the tank.

Healing and External Cooldowns
No matter what healing comp you end up using, try to use a healer that has external cooldowns they can provide (Paladin or Priest). We had a lot of attempts using a Druid/Shaman healing combo and RNG tank deaths would be the cause for just about every wipe. Your cooldowns alone simply won't be enough at current gear levels. When we replaced the Driud with a Paladin, it made the fight easier. Aura Mastery, Beacon, and Hand of Sacrifice were incredibly valuable.

Tank Gearing
TLDR: Gear for avoidance and block without ignoring stamina. Use tank trinkets with stamina/avoidance/mitigation stats. Use a resistance flask, not stamina flask.

Details:
This is the first fight I've encountered where combined avoidance and block chance are extremely important. Stamina is important as well but you'll find yourself frequently in a situation where even 40k more health won't have saved you from another unblocked hit. In a worst case scenario (with a single stack of a mind control buff), Cho'Gals melee alone can hit you for 90k.

If you don't have two powerful stamina trinkets with avoidance procs or on use effects, then mastery trinkets with avoidance procs would be the next best choice.

I also highly recommend a resist flask instead of the 300 stam flask. As you'll see below, it's usually a combination of incoming damage that kills you, not the melee hits alone.

Spec and Glyphs
TLDR: Remove your single target AS glyph. Use WoG glyph. Grab 2/2 Eternal Glory and optionally 2/2 Improved Judgement. Get Divine Guardian.

Details:
Make sure that you do NOT glyph your Avenger's Shield to hit one target. You want it to hit three targets so that you can help remove mind controls. Use the Word of Glory glyph to boost your WoG healing. Otherwise glyph as you normally would.

Correction: Belloc pointed out that Holy Wrath doesn't interrupt the Corrupting Adherents like I thought it was. Thanks!

For spec, make sure to grab 2/2 Eternal Glory. It's very useful here as you'll be using WoG for 95% of the fight. While not required, 2/2 in Improved Judgement is very useful to get a threat lead on the large adds when they spawn. You'll be sitting on your Avenger's Shield a lot due to saving it for MC's so having a ranged pickup besides taunt is useful. Also get Divine Guardian. Everything else is your standard tanking spec.

Specific Tanking Details
Follow the basic guides already out there. But keep the following in mind:

• Save your Avenger's Shield to help break MC's. If it's on melee, just throw it at the boss, melee will usually get hit too. Be prepared to do a quick jump + turn and throw your shield at ranged if it's on them. Sometimes the raid will get the MC's taken care of before you, kudos to them when they do. Because you're never MC'd, you have an advantage.
• Put up Seal of Insight as soon as you're comfortable with your threat lead. Right before the first add spawns seems like a pretty good time.
• When picking up a large add, threat has the potential to be an issue. Use tricks/md's if available to your raid. Try to stand in one spot for a few seconds to build threat before kiting the add to where he is supposed to die.
• Be ready at all times to interrupt Depravity from the large add. Good communication is key. I've found that many times the two melee we had interrupting would not have one available due to breaking each other out of MC's. You have Hammer of Justice available depending on if you used it for an MC.
• I've found it counter productive to use Word of Glory on anyone but yourself except in the most dire of circumstances. Trust your healers to manage the raid damage and keep healing yourself to help prevent RNG.

When you're most likely to die
Any combination of the following cause the most tank deaths:

• The 3 Shadow Nova Pulses.
• Small adds spawning (especially later in P1 when there are more)
• Failed MC's so the boss has one or more stacks of Twilight Worship.
• Large add being tanked.

Individually they are not a threat.

There is one specific time, just after the boss summons the second set of small adds where three of these happen in the same small time frame. This is where I use our strongest cooldown (GoAK) and keep Lay on Hands at the ready.

Managing Cooldowns

• Setup a rotation around the 3 Shadow Pulses for Aura Mastery and Divine Guardian.
• If you have a Paladin healer with 1 min 30 sec Hand of Sacrifice, use it for each Large add when it spawns. The cooldown on HoS is perfect for it, it'll be up every time.
• I tend to use Divine Protection reactively, sometimes I use it after HoS ends and the Large add is still beating on me. I sometimes use it just before the Large add spawns to try to keep my health levels high when it finally gets to me.
• I save Ardent Defender for those scary times when the dangerous abilities overlap.
• I ALWAYS use GoAK at the time mentioned earlier in the prior section.
• No matter how you manage Aura Mastery and Divine Guardian, just be sure that they will be available again sometime during P2.
• Avenging Wrath is well saved for the large adds if you can manage it.

You'll be making plenty of use of your on use trinkets, healthstones, and lay on hands. I pretty much had to lay on hands myself every attempt. Do what you can to have some personal cooldowns up in P2 but it's not always possible. Ardent Defender is the best P2 cooldown, call out to your healers when you use it, they can opt to spend a GCD on a DPS instead of you and it can make all the difference.

Embarrassing kill video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G7SM4XpiLY

I'm embarrassed to post this because I committed the cardinal sin and stood in a blaze in P2. Didn't even realize until I watched the video. But in the interest of sharing more information I'm posting it. Incoming damage on the left. And you can see most of my cooldowns on the green bars to my toons immediate left. We have an amazing boomkin and I had to salv her a bit into the fight due to running Seal of Insight.

I might be missing something, but how is Holy Wrath going to interrupt the Corrupting Adherents?

Belloc wrote:I might be missing something, but how is Holy Wrath going to interrupt the Corrupting Adherents?

Edit: Well I'll be damned. I just went through the combat log and Holy Wrath isn't interrupting at all. Must have seen the daze above their head from a well timed kidney shot and thought it was my holy wrath. I'll update the post. Thanks for noticing!

I'm definitely going to watch this video but wanted to give my initial feedback on this post...

Dont try this... Unless you have to, there is no reason that on 10 man a 2 tank set up, 3 healz, and 5 dps isn't plenty enough. Like I said I'll watch video and I completely understand the reasoning for what some ppl's initial reaction will be is to say why not use 3 healz, and still just 1 tank. The answer for that is fury of cho'gall will get to high.

Unless you have insanely pro healz/ overgeared tank ( which I'm considered overgeared) this would make the encounter fairly difficult. Instead people should learn to do this the right way that way when your attempting heroic mode you know the right way.

Watching video now and then I'll add more to this post.

Basically in order to do this you have to have really good dps. Ideally you should be only getting 2 adds with 2 extra dps. compared to the three. Either way its impressive. I was wondering though can you bubble those fury of cho'galls off? Or another suggestion would be to bubble taunt? And it would make them fall off perhaps at least?

Thats an insane amount of damage to be taking for healers. It leaves almost no healz open in the last phase.

Either way I liked your video, but I wouldn't suggest this strat to the general populus. I'll end up giving it a go though. Having a disc priest, and hpali heal, and then our resto druid can go boomkin i suppose. I mean then again dont fix what isn't broken.

I mean wow that was impressive for sure. I should know wether or not you can bubble off those fury of cho'galls, but I dont think you can or I'm sure you would have?

Also what was that buff that looked like Hand of Protection that you were getting?

2Cute2BeStr8 wrote:Dont try this... Unless you have to

It might surprise you to tell you that I agree 100%. We had debates in raid leader chat about it. I was on the losing side of the debate The general consensus *seemed* to be that our DPS wouldn't be able to handle 20 small adds and a burn phase. You can see our DPS in recount to the left. Except for the boomkin, very average.

2Cute2BeStr8 wrote:I was wondering though can you bubble those fury of cho'galls off?

Great question. I tried it very early in our attempts, doesn't work unfortunately.

2Cute2BeStr8 wrote:Thats an insane amount of damage to be taking for healers. It leaves almost no healz open in the last phase.

My counter proposal to bringing 1 tank was to bring 3 healers for this exact reason. Wasn't accepted. I felt we could still manage 4 adds and the P2 burn and the RNG tank deaths would have been reduced. Honestly, we just didn't have prime pickings for people so had to settle a bit.

2Cute2BeStr8 wrote:Also what was that buff that looked like Hand of Protection that you were getting?

I'm not sure which you mean. Can you point out in the video where it's at?

I wouldn't consider myself overly geared for our level of progression. I'm probably average. Unbuffed stats are:

160k health
36178 armor
10.58% dodge
11.77% parry
53.05% block
2.52% hit
15 expertise

Actually, one other tip that seems to help a ton in P2 is to put the boss against the wall, but not facing the wall. Have him facing parallel with the wall. It seems to clump up all the tentacles better making for REALLY easy melee dps on them.

It might surprise you to tell you that I agree 100%. We had debates in raid leader chat about it. I was on the losing side of the debate The general consensus *seemed* to be that our DPS wouldn't be able to handle 20 small adds and a burn phase. You can see our DPS in recount to the left. Except for the boomkin, very average.

Frost mage really trivializes those adds definitly seems like with the ability to bring two extra dps frost mage would be okay. The boomkin I'm sure was an excellent edition for tons of things on that fight.

My counter proposal to bringing 1 tank was to bring 3 healers for this exact reason. Wasn't accepted. I felt we could still manage 4 adds and the P2 burn and the RNG tank deaths would have been reduced. Honestly, we just didn't have prime pickings for people so had to settle a bit.

Don't know how many attempts you guys did, but I'd still say even the two healers would still be fine once you have a little bit more gear. I'd also suggest getting the hellscreams reach trinket over a stam one. Again this is if you are trying one tank. But like he said this really isn't an ideal way of doing it for now.

Great question. I tried it very early in our attempts, doesn't work unfortunately.

Another trick here would be to have a DK go blood presence and taunt right as he is about cast fury of cho'gal. Then you taunt back right after, worst he'd take is one hit, and then your stacks would fall off. Also if anyone wants to test if bubbling as he cast makes it not reapply that would be awesome. Either way there is very very little chance of the dps dieing. Even a hunter could distracting shot the boss. We just need to have our timers a little bit more dead on. Due to the fact that it is a cast, he will continue to cast it on whoever he initially was putting it on. So you couldn't have a DK/ hunter taunt while he was casting you'd have to do it right before. Either way as long as he has no flame orders there would be no danger of that person dieing.

I'm not sure which you mean. Can you point out in the video where it's at?

2:08 there is 18 seconds left on it. and then at another point in the video which I didn't bother to look up cause once you see it at 208 there was 18 seconds remaining so I know it wasn't a BoP.

Also looking at your armory helped me to get that earthen ring- agi ring, which is definitely an upgrade. So thanks for that. And also unless there is a new resistance flask out I'd still almost suggest using a stam one.

That buff is just Holy Shield.

inthedrops wrote:That buff is just Holy Shield.

That would trip me out.

I had to get used to the armor buff on the exalted ring from ashen verdict.. Cause I'm like omg someone just BoPed me and I'd go to declick it

Inthedrops... if your colleagues are worried about DPS on the adds, perhaps suggest that your warlock switch to demonology. Felstorm + hellfire = what adds?

To make it even easier, you can kill the adherents in one of the side cubbies (where they spawn) and LoS the adds around the corner (and into a frost trap or earthbind totem), at which point a felguard will be waiting and spinning them to death. This is yet another fight (Halfus whelps, Magmaw adds and Maloriak adds) where a single demo warlock will make all the difference (and multiple demo warlocks will completely cheese).

Our group gets 4 adherents (and 4 sets of blood) and it hasn't proved to be an issue yet.

Just some food for thought

Bubble does work to cancel one of the debuffs (the physical debuff, if memory serves). The second debuff persists through bubble.

After putting a couple hours on this guy tonight, I have no idea how 2 healers have the mana to keep you alive with Fury of Cho'gall stacking up to 8 by the end. That's insane.

PsiVen wrote:After putting a couple hours on this guy tonight, I have no idea how 2 healers have the mana to keep you alive with Fury of Cho'gall stacking up to 8 by the end. That's insane.

Apparently you can have someone (plate dps/hunter) stand at max range and taunt just before he does Fury, and eat it. That avoids it hitting the tank, making it much easier. From the video, he's taking 60k hits towards the end, and I can't see any debuffs on the screen (though that could be blindness), so he's probably avoiding it somehow - I would assume by doing this.

We just used two tanks, so I haven't tried this. The dps check isn't too bad, even with 2 tanks/3 healers.

You can see in the video that he has an 8-stack at the end. It's not going anywhere.

Last night we were wiping pretty badly to the berserk, not sure what we're doing wrong but pushing into 25% P3 at 9 minutes is just too slow. We were able to peel it back to 8:15ish by blowing Heroism on the pull, but the videos I'm seeing were more like 7:00.