Throne of Thunder DK Tank Style

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is meant to collect useful pieces of information for Blood Death Knights attempting bosses in the Throne of Thunder. We will add some contributions ourselves and hope that the rest will come from comments in this thread

Table of Contents

• Jin'rokh the Breaker
• Horridon
• Council of Elders
• Tortos
• Megaera
• Ji-Kun
• Durumu the Forgotten
• Primordius
• Dark Animus
• Iron Qon
• Twin Consorts
• Lei Shen

Jin'rokh the Breaker

Useful talents:

• Desecrated Ground

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks:

• You can use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent the application of Static Burst.
• When Jin'rokh​ cast Lightning Storm use:
  • Anti-Magic Shell on you (combined with Death Strike, healers can just ignore you during this time);
  • Anti-Magic Zone on stacked raid.
• For Thundering Throw, you can break the stun with Desecrated Ground or Icebound Fortitude (if Desecrated Ground is on cooldown).

Links:

• Jin'rohk the Breaker Strategy

Horridon

Useful talents:

• Roiling Blood is a solid Tier 1 talent, especially if you take Glyph of Pestilence.
• Purgatory
• Chilblains can help keep the adds under control.
• Gorefiend's Grasp: will help you group up the adds
• Remorseless Winter: if your raid stacks properly, then you don't need Gorefiend's Grasp, and you can Remorseless Winter to make it easier to handle the adds

Useful glyphs:

• Glyph of Pestilence
• Glyph of Unholy Command may help a bit with add control.
• Glyph of Icebound Fortitude

Tips and Tricks:

• Smart usage of Army of the Dead without Glyph of Army of the Dead should be beneficial, but that needs to be confirmed.
• If you do not have Paladins to help reset the stacks of Triple Puncture, you can survive an extra Triple Puncture by letting a full hit through and using Purgatory + Raise Dead + Death Pact. Glyph of Icebound Fortitude is also useful here so as to have Icebound Fortitude up for more Triple Punctures (if you can time it correctly).
• Glyph of Pestilence + Roiling Blood can help keep diseases rolling on multiple trolls at once without moving much.

Links:

• Horridon Strategy

Council of Elders

Useful talents:

• Asphyxiate: this is very useful for stunning the Loa Spirits, or as an additional interrupt on Mar'la or Sul
• Chilblains works well to slow down the Living Sands (mutually exclusive with Asphyxiate)
• Remorseless Winter: can be used to AOE stun the sandstorm adds, also can be used to stun Loa Spirits
• Gorefiend's Grasp: Can be used to pull the Loa Spirit away from its target, or to group up the sandstorm adds (mutually exclusive with Remorseless Winter)

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks:

• Chains of Ice (with Chilblains) on the Loa Spirits is excellent.

Links:

• Council of Elders Strategy

Tortos

Useful talents:

• Roiling Blood
• Remorseless Winter: will allow you to Aoe stun the bats making them much easier to deal with.
• Chilblains + Roiling Blood: This combination of talents will allow you to spread your diseases among all of the turtles essentially AoE slowing everything.

Useful glyphs:

• Glyph of Death and Decay: Using this glyph will allow you to drop Death and Decay on the boss as the turtle adds are first coming out, slowing them and giving you or someone else more time to put more permanent slows on them.
• Glyph of Outbreak

Tips and Tricks:

• Glyph of Outbreak, in conjunction with Roiling Blood, is great for quick bat pickup. Outbreak one before they land and run in with a few casts of Blood Boil. This way all bats will also get the 10% reduced damage debuff in one less GCD in comparison to IT+PS+BB/Pestilence. This requires some RP pooling.

Links:

• Tortos Strategy

Megaera

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks: share your thoughts!

Links:

• Megaera Strategy

Ji-Kun

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks: share your thoughts!

Links:

• Ji-Kun Strategy

Durumu the Forgotten

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks: share your thoughts!

Links:

• Durumu the Forgotten Strategy

Primordius

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks: share your thoughts!

Links:

• Primordius Strategy

Dark Animus

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks:

• Use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent the stacking debuff applied by the Massive Anima Golem's Explosive Slam.

Links:

• Dark Animus Strategy

Iron Qon

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks: share your thoughts!

Links:

• Iron Qon Strategy

Twin Consorts

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks: share your thoughts!

Links:

• Twin Consorts Strategy

Lei Shen

Useful talents: share your thoughts!

Useful glyphs: share your thoughts!

Tips and Tricks: share your thoughts!

Links:

• Lei Shen Strategy

Changelog

• 28 Mar. 2013: Added Smushums' advice for Horridon.
• 27 Mar. 2013: Added Ceraius' advice for Tortos.
• 22 Mar. 2013: Added Rocums' advice for Durumu.
• 19 Mar. 2013: Added keefbeef's advice for Horridon and Council of Elders.
• 14 Mar. 2013: Added Storm's advice for Horridon, Council of Elders, and Tortos.
• 14 Mar. 2013: Added Goil's advice for Jin'rokh
• 14 Mar. 2013: Added Rashok's advice for Jin'rokh and Horridon.

[Storm 426]

Horridon:

Useful Talents:

Gorefiends Grasp - will help you group up the adds

Remorseless Winter - is able to stun some of the adds.

Tips and Tricks: Tank the boss near the middle of the room, and have the OT and dps stack close to the boss's mid section. Let the adds come to you and they will be much easier to pick up/ group up. As long as the group is aware of the aoe sand/poison/frost, this strategy made the fight much easier to heal for our group.

Council of Elders:

Useful Talents:

Asphyxiate - this is very useful for stunning the Loa Spirits, or as an additional interrupt on Mar'la or Sul.

Remorseless Winter - Can be used to AOE stun the sandstorm adds, also can be used to stun Loa Spirits.

Gorefiends Grasp - Can be used to pull the Loa Spirit away from its target, or to group up the sandstorm adds.

Tips and Tricks: My new favorite strategy on this fight is to use hero at the very start of the fight and burn down Sul, while using cleaves/aoe to break Frost King. you can also group Sul with Marla when she is empowered since the Loa's are damaging spirits and not healing spirits. Using this strategy we were able to Kill Sul during his first empowerment, and the fight is a joke after that.

Tortos

Useful Talents:

Remorseless Winter - Will allow you to Aoe stun the bats making them much easier to deal with.

Chillblains + Rolling Blood: This combination of talents will allow you to spread your diseases among all of the turtles essentially AoE slowing everything.

Useful Glyphs

Death and Decay: Using this glyph will allow you to drop DnD on the boss as the turtle adds are first coming out, slowing them and giving you or someone else more time to put more permanent slows on them.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Storm

[Damien 1,514]

Horridon:

Useful Talents:

Gorefiends Grasp - will help you group up the adds

Remorseless Winter - is able to stun some of the adds.

Tips and Tricks: Tank the boss near the middle of the room, and have the OT and dps stack close to the boss's mid section. Let the adds come to you and they will be much easier to pick up/ group up. As long as the group is aware of the aoe sand/poison/frost, this strategy made the fight much easier to heal for our group.

Council of Elders:

Useful Talents:

Asphyxiate - this is very useful for stunning the Loa Spirits, or as an additional interrupt on Mar'la or Sul.

Remorseless Winter - Can be used to AOE stun the sandstorm adds, also can be used to stun Loa Spirits.

Gorefiends Grasp - Can be used to pull the Loa Spirit away from its target, or to group up the sandstorm adds.

Tips and Tricks: My new favorite strategy on this fight is to use hero at the very start of the fight and burn down Sul, while using cleaves/aoe to break Frost King. you can also group Sul with Marla when she is empowered since the Loa's are damaging spirits and not healing spirits. Using this strategy we were able to Kill Sul during his first empowerment, and the fight is a joke after that.

Tortos

Useful Talents:

Remorseless Winter - Will allow you to Aoe stun the bats making them much easier to deal with.

Chillblains + Rolling Blood: This combination of talents will allow you to spread your diseases among all of the turtles essentially AoE slowing everything.

Useful Glyphs

Death and Decay: Using this glyph will allow you to drop DnD on the boss as the turtle adds are first coming out, slowing them and giving you or someone else more time to put more permanent slows on them.

Many thanks for that! I'll add them tomorrow morning. Do not hesitate to share more as you progress through the fights :)

[Goil 3]

Jin'rokh the Breaker (you miss spelled his name up the top)

You can use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent the application of Static Burst

Desecrated Ground will break the stun after being thrown.

Edited March 14, 2013 by Goil

[Rashok 0]

Jin'rokh the Breaker:

• Useful talents:

• When Jin'rokh​ cast Lightning Storm use:

  Anti-Magic Shell on you.

  Anti-Magic Zone on stacked raid.

  Note: Belive me when DK using his Anti-Magic Shell and Death Strike healers can ignore you on that phase

• When Jin'rokh​ throwing you, you can break stun with:

  Desecrated Ground ( prio )

  Icebound Fortitude ( if Desecrated Ground on CD )

Horridon (Horror):

• Useful talents:
• On adds:

  Gorefiend's Grasp yup it's cool to stack up incomming adds but if your raid members are stacking and not failing Remorseless Winter it's much useful.

  I think that smart using

  Army of the Dead without Glyph of Army of the Dead would be nice, but in time i will confirm it.

[Damien 1,514]

Jin'rokh the Breaker (you miss spelled his name up the top)

You can use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent the application of Static Burst

Desecrated Ground will break the stun after being thrown.

Jin'rokh the Breaker:

• Useful talents:

• When Jin'rokh​ cast Lightning Storm use:

  Anti-Magic Shell on you.

  Anti-Magic Zone on stacked raid.

  Note: Belive me when DK using his Anti-Magic Shell and Death Strike healers can ignore you on that phase

• When Jin'rokh​ throwing you, you can break stun with:

  Desecrated Ground ( prio )

  Icebound Fortitude ( if Desecrated Ground on CD )

Horridon (Horror):

• Useful talents:
• On adds:

  Gorefiend's Grasp yup it's cool to stack up incomming adds but if your raid members are stacking and not failing Remorseless Winter it's much useful.

  I think that smart using

  Army of the Dead without Glyph of Army of the Dead would be nice, but in time i will confirm it.

Thank you guys, I added the tips to the opening post. Keep them coming! :)

I also fixed the spelling of Jin'rokh, but I still have to fix it in all the other threads :P

[keefbeef 1]

Horridon:

Roiling Blood and Glyph of Pestilence are better than Unholy Blight. Chilblains can help your raid kite them which makes a lot of sense considering the number of adds that ignore threat.

Glyph of Unholy Command may help a bit with add control.

Council of Elders:

I prefer Chilblains (over Asphyxiate) to help with Loa Spirits and Living Sands (if your raid kites them at all).

Chains of Ice (with Chilblains) on the Loa Spirits is excellent

Edited March 15, 2013 by keefbeef

[Damien 1,514]

Horridon:

Roiling Blood and Glyph of Pestilence are better than Unholy Blight. Chilblains can help your raid kite them which makes a lot of sense considering the number of adds that ignore threat.

Glyph of Unholy Command may help a bit with add control.

Council of Elders:

I prefer Chilblains (over Asphyxiate) to help with Loa Spirits and Living Sands (if your raid kites them at all).

Chains of Ice (with Chilblains) on the Loa Spirits is excellent

Many thanks! Keep them coming :)

[Rocums 1]

For the Dark Animus fight, we can utilize AMS to prevent the stacking debuff applied by the Massive Anima Golem's Explosive Slam.

[Damien 1,514]

For the Dark Animus fight, we can utilize AMS to prevent the stacking debuff applied by the Massive Anima Golem's Explosive Slam.

Added!

[Zagam 1,982]

Added!

Added in the wrong place! It's under Durumu instead of Dark Animus. Slipping in your old age, Damien!

[Damien 1,514]

Added in the wrong place! It's under Durumu instead of Dark Animus. Slipping in your old age, Damien!

If I start making Vlad-like mistakes, where are we going?!

[Zagam 1,982]

It would appear we'd be heading down a one way street towards AWESOMENESS!

[Ceraius 34]

Tortos

Glyphed Outbreak in conjunction with Roiling Blood is great for quick bat pickup.

Outbreak one before they land and run in with a few Blood Boils. This way all bats will also get the 10% reduced damage debuff in one less GCD in comparison to IT+PS+BB/Pestilence.

Requires some RP pooling.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Ceraius

[Damien 1,514]

Tortos

Glyphed Outbreak in conjunction with Roiling Blood is great for quick bat pickup.

Outbreak one before they land and run in with a few Blood Boils. This way all bats will also get the 10% reduced damage debuff in one less GCD in comparison to IT+PS+BB/Pestilence.

Requires some RP pooling.

Thanks, I added your tips!

[Smushums 0]

For jin'rokh I believe you need glyphed ams and to cast it before the application to avoid the static debuff.

For horridon if you do not have pallies to help reset tank stacks you can survive an extra puncture by letting a full hit through and using purgatory+raise ally+death pact together. Glyph of IBF is also useful here so as to have it up for more punctures (if you can time it correctly)

Glyph of pestilence+roiling blood on council can help keep diseases rolling on multiple trolls at once without as much movement.

[Damien 1,514]

For jin'rokh I believe you need glyphed ams and to cast it before the application to avoid the static debuff.

For horridon if you do not have pallies to help reset tank stacks you can survive an extra puncture by letting a full hit through and using purgatory+raise ally+death pact together. Glyph of IBF is also useful here so as to have it up for more punctures (if you can time it correctly)

Glyph of pestilence+roiling blood on council can help keep diseases rolling on multiple trolls at once without as much movement.

Thanks, I added your tips. That said, why do you think you need Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell? As far as I can see, it shouldn't be required.

Also, I assumed you meant to say Raise Dead and not Raise Ally ;)

[Ceraius 34]

For jin'rokh I believe you need glyphed ams and to cast it before the application to avoid the static debuff.

I have succesfully avoided the debuff with an unglyphed AMS, so this is not true.

You need it glyphed only if a damage component applies the said debuff. If its a separate application (not tied to the actual damage) AMS prevents it, if its preventable.

Edited March 28, 2013 by Ceraius

[Reniat 23]

Ceraius is correct. The same is true forSlimed on the Ji-kun encounter. If AMS (regardless of glyph) is up when the DoT expires you will not gain the stacking increased dmg debuff. This means a DK tank can soak pools much more comfortably than other tanks over the course of the fight who may have 4-5 stacks of the debuff (which is +100%-125% extra damage from the DoT).

Edited March 29, 2013 by Reniat

[Ceraius 34]

Durumu

Lichborne in conjuction with self targeted Death Coils to help your healers with topping you off when you need to remove Arterial Cut. Especially beneficial at times if a primarily hardcasting healer becomes the red beam's "anchor."

Tips and Tricks - If you're uncertain where the safe spot will be at the start of Disintegration phase, use AMS to have a comfortable few seconds to find your way to it.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Ceraius

[BullDozzer 1]

A bunch of info i can come up with:

Horridon

Tips and Tricks:

Army of the Dead should be used on doors you are having issues with. It can be recommended to use on the Drakkari Door(the third door), since it would seem that the Army can actually pick up some of the Risen Drakkari Warrior and Risen Drakkari Champion, causing less diseases on the raid. Also the Drakkari Frozen Warlord hits really hard so it will highly reduce tank damage having Army tanking them. (Note: Army will pretty much lock the warlords in place, creating a pile of Frozen Orb, making it hard for melee to attack the warlords)

Council of Elders

Useful talents:

Roiling Blood/Unholy Blight: Can be helpful to collect the sandstorm adds.

Useful glyphs:

Glyph of Mind Freeze: Will give you a slighter shorter cooldown on your Mind Freeze, helpful for interupting Wrath of the Loa and/or Sand Bolt.

Glyph of Pestilence: Increases the range for picking upp sand adds, also increases the uptime of your diseases on Kazra'jin.

Tips and Tricks:

Anti-Magic Shell can be used when tanking Frost King Malakk's Frigid Assault. This will absorb the frost portion of his hits, which is quite large, but will still apply the stacking debuff.

Using Army of the Dead when Zul is casting Sandstorm will help reduce the damage you are taking from the spell itself and may also aid controlling the Sand adds, but this can cause the adds to be more spread out. If you are very sure that you can pickup the adds and rather want them stacked, you should consider glyphin it.

Pre-place Death and Decay on sandtraps before Zul casts Sandstorm. This is especially useful on the second sandstorm, if you get one since by then the sandtraps are stacked from the adds that died.

A Deathknight with Glyph of Mind Freeze and Asphyxiate is one of the best interupters and should be stuck on Zul to reduce the damage from Sand Bolts but also works as excellent tanks for tanking Mar'Li.

Megaera

Useful talents:

Anti-Magic Zone: Can be used to help mitigate the incoming damage during Rampage.

Purgatory: Can and should be choosed over Anti-Magic Zone if you are having issues staying alive. (The damage-reduction from Anti-Magic Zone is not much and having a living tank is more important)

Death Pact: This boss have tanks take huge chunks of damage over short periods (3 seconds) so a quick and big heal is the most useful in my own opinion.

Death's Advance: Making the switching and relocating faster. It is not crucial, but helpfull, and there is no other talent in the tier affecting the fight in any way.

Useful glyphs:

Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell: Is useful since this will allow you to fully absorb the breaths rather than still taking 25% of the damage.

Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Will make Icebound Fortitude available for more breaths, but makes it a lot harder to time. (Duration=Breath)

Tips and Tricks:

Use Anti-Magic Shell and Icebound Fortitude on as many breaths as possible, but do not use them on the same breath.

Save cooldowns such as trinkets and Dancing Rune Weapon for when you are tanking the Flaming Head, since Ignite Flesh is the most painful of the tank debuffs.

Try to not use any greater personal survival cooldowns during the Rampage. The healers will be aoe-healing in large amounts anyway and together with our Death Strike that will be enough to keep us topped.

Rather than using Army of the Dead before pull, use it during the last Rampage to benefit from the reduced

damage taken, aswell as (most probably) benefiting from the Bloodlust.

If you got a Resto Shaman with you, spam Death Strike during Spirit Link Totem to aid the overall health of the group. Also consider using your tier 4 selfheal talent.

Ji-Kun

Useful talents:

Death's Advance: This talent is pretty much required to be able to stay on the platform during the Down Draft.

Useful glyphs:

Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: can be used to more often mitigate the Talon Rake, but makes it a lot harder to time due to the shorter duration.

Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell: Should be used if you are absorbing many Feed Pools.

Tips and Tricks:

Anti-Magic Shell can be used when not tanking to absorb badly placed Feed Pools without taking much damage. But do note; The pool is only absorbed if a person has the Feed Pool-debuff for 3 seconds, so using Anti-Magic Shell too early (making you immune too magic debuffs) will leave you standing in the pool without removing it. (It seems like absorbing pools this way sometimes do not apply Slimed but i will not promise anything)

EDIT: added and improved information. Is thread dead?

Edited April 23, 2013 by BullDozzer

[BullDozzer 1]

Durumu

Lichborne in conjuction with self targeted Death Coils to help your healers with topping you off when you need to remove Arterial Cut. Especially beneficial at times if a primarily hardcasting healer becomes the red beam's "anchor."

Would really Lichborne+DC be better than Death Pact? i have trouble seeing how? :o

[Ceraius 34]

Death Pact is better for a quick top off, yes. But the two aren't mutually exclusive so why not have two tools for it rather than just one.

And depending on your runic power situation LB+DC could come out as more total healing but it does indeed spread out over a longer period of time. I'll have to do some ingame testing to confirm the numbers though. Nevertheless, it's still a very powerful selfheal.

And also seeing as the fight mechanics require frequent tank healing up to full, the other talents in tier two would underperform anyways. You should never go low enough to have any use for purgatory, and the fight is movement heavy when there's magic damage flying around (Color phase mainly comes to mind) so AMZ is hard to use effectively. Maybe on people in blue cone since they're standing still, but its a very minor help compared to LB in my opinion.

Edited April 26, 2013 by Ceraius

[Reniat 23]

You don't have to pick between DP and LIchborne, but you DO have to pick between Lichborne and Purgatory. Purgatory is a fantastic tool for nearly every encounter, and even with the healing taken debuff (which devalues lichborne too remember) a purgatory + Void Shift from a priest can be OP in this situation.

Lichborne + DC spam converts RP into healing, which means that less RP that can be turned into runes for Death Strike via t75 talents, and with the healing taken debuff for durumu the unadjusted shield from Death Strike is MUCH more important that the reduced heal from LB.

[BullDozzer 1]

Death Pact is better for a quick top off, yes. But the two aren't mutually exclusive so why not have two tools for it rather than just one.

And depending on your runic power situation LB+DC could come out as more total healing but it does indeed spread out over a longer period of time. I'll have to do some ingame testing to confirm the numbers though. Nevertheless, it's still a very powerful selfheal.

And also seeing as the fight mechanics require frequent tank healing up to full, the other talents in tier two would underperform anyways. You should never go low enough to have any use for purgatory, and the fight is movement heavy when there's magic damage flying around (Color phase mainly comes to mind) so AMZ is hard to use effectively. Maybe on people in blue cone since they're standing still, but its a very minor help compared to LB in my opinion.

Of course they are not mutually exclusive, silly me. Excuse me. I do not know where my mind where when I wrote that post.

Have not used LB in a while and I stopped using it because the healing from it felt next to trivial. Have you used LB-DC in the fight recently and how much did it heal?

You don't have to pick between DP and LIchborne, but you DO have to pick between Lichborne and Purgatory. Purgatory is a fantastic tool for nearly every encounter, and even with the healing taken debuff (which devalues lichborne too remember) a purgatory + Void Shift from a priest can be OP in this situation.

Lichborne + DC spam converts RP into healing, which means that less RP that can be turned into runes for Death Strike via t75 talents, and with the healing taken debuff for durumu the unadjusted shield from Death Strike is MUCH more important that the reduced heal from LB.

I was not aware that the blood-shield was unaffected by the healing reduced? Bloodshield is just a percentage of the healing from DS, and that healing should be reduced, and as a result the bloodshield should also be smaller? Or do death-strike ignore the healing-reduce?