Thok the Bloodthirsty

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Thok the Bloodthirsty encounter guide.

[Zagam 1,982]

Looking at Thok right now.  Add 100M to 10 man.  He's at 444.9M right now.

[Krazyito 521]

We found that casting hand of protection on a player allowed them to continue casting a channel spell (such as divine hymn or tranquility) during phase one, which allowed (mostly melee) to dip the boss further down in health before the phase transition.

[Zagam 1,982]

I love that we don't raid with any Paladins.  Warlocks: casting Unending Resolve allows you to not be interrupted or silenced for 8 seconds! 

 

Killed last night in 10 man normal after 4 or 5 wipes.  As noted, he has 445M, not 345M indicated in the guide.  Can confirm NPC order of AGM. 

 

Our wipes resulted from poor personal positioning and getting eaten and bad DPS distribution.  We originally were using all the DPS on the jailer except our Mage...we then switched it to where only the DK and Rogue hit the jailer while me, the Hunter, Mage, and Ele Shaman stayed on Thok.  This made this entire fight THAT much easier as we got into P3 and the boss was at 15%.  We could have stretched P2 out longer and skipped P3.  Raid positioning and speed boosts are a necessity for his focus.  We two healed, but they felt stressed out.  Range is a big issue.  We lusted off the bat and did as much damage as possible up front.  The stacking for Bloodied is SUPER strict.  Make sure you're on top of each other.

[Krazyito 521]

So pretty much this is how I go about my 25 man for thok phase 1

 

Phase 1 (1st time)

4 Stack = PW:Barrier -> BoP Holy Priest -> Divine Hymn at 5 stacks -> Barrier 2 as 1st goes down -> BoP Resto druid (me) Tranq -> Smoke Bomb 1 + Rallying Cry 1 to allow us to phase change. That usually gets us around 12~ stacks.

 

Phase 1 (2nd time) 

4 stacks -> Smoke bomb 2 + Rallying Cry 2 -> BoP Boomkin -> Boomkin Tranq -> BoP Resto Shaman -> Resto shaman uses HTT + Spirit Link + Ascendence to control health of raid to get us to phase 2 again.

 

Phase 1 (3rd time)

Repeat the first one.

 

Phase 1 (4th time)

Repeat 2nd one, with no Boomkin tranq, but resto shaman can easily keep us going until boss is dead.  

 

we have between 5 to 6 paladins in our raid (2 holy, 2-3 ret, 1 prot) so we can usually spread 2-3 AM's per phase 1 to help casters not get interrupted.

[Guest Deepfriedegg]

I think you might want to adjust your wording about phases. Our 25 man raid group have killed Thok on second lockout in phase 9.

Yeah, I didnt think it was possible, too. Here is what hapened: In P7 we were stacked up and wanted to heal heal through Burning Blood and Deafening Screeches for as long as possible to get to P8. We did it at 7 stacks of Acceleration. Boss was at 13%.

 

In P8 Thok reached 23 stacks of Blood Frenzy and after 2 minutes of P8 (at 2% HP) he lost those stacks, finished his current Fixation (at normal speed) and entered P9, which was basically the same as P7. Because we didnt know that, we were still wastly spread out, some got hit by tail sweep, too, so it became unhealable. Luckily, the boss died just after 3rd Deafening Screech with only 5 people left :)

 

Video is below:

 

[Karsteck 5]

The nature DoT left by Corrosive Blood is a dispellable magic effect.  Our priest got good use out of dispel in that phase.  Other healers were also dispelling, since it's 44k per second for 30 sec.  So it's much more efficient to dispel than wait for it to expire.

 

 While I'm posting anyway, might as well say some more stuff:

 

 People that can spec for reduced physical dmg taken should do so.

 

• fire mage: glyph of armors for the increased defensive effect
• priest: glyph for extra armor on inner fire, and also reduced spell dmg taken with inner fire
• rogue: elusiveness with feint should be ridiculous.  glyph of cloak for reduced physical, but you'll want to cloak debuffs, not just for the physical.  Smoke bomb is a great raid trick on this fight, since it works vs. physical, and people are stacked in it.
• caster Shaman (and holy pallies): make sure you're using a shield, not an off-hand
• someone else could probably expand this list

 

 Great idea about hand of protection and unending resolve.  Disc priests need to remember that Inner Focus also provides silence & interrupt protection.

 

 We usually got to 17 stacks before transitioning out of the first phase1.  Spirit link just as PW:Barrier was ending, to make sure nobody died from uneven healing as the raid got low enough to have 5 people under 50%.  Our resto shaman kept dieing there when he didn't spirit link, since for some reason the smart heals didn't like him.

 

 Besides the obvious ways for attempts to go wrong, being slow to stack up going into a new phase1 would often result in leaving it again right away.  You can't afford to lose that much DPS time, so you might as well just wipe if you screw up a transition and basically lose a phase1.  We marked both tanks.  Our bear would take the boss, and keep it facing the way it was when it went to eat the NPC.  I'd stack up to one side or the other, and the raid would stack on me.  This usually worked well, since I don't think the boss ever fixates tanks.  So I was able to keep calm and keep my bearings, and realize which side of the room was a good one to be on, relative to the boss, for people to get stacked quickly.  If people aren't well stacked, you might not trigger a phase2, so tell your raid to huddle up, even if someone thinks everyone else has cooties.

 

 The boss can still eat players right up until the moment he chomps the NPC, so the first tank has to be careful not to actually get into position until the boss is really in phase1.  Avoiding turning the boss right as you go into a phase1 seemed good, though, to make it easier to get the raid stacked up ahead of time.  I guess you could stack under the tail and have the boss turn 90 degrees to face the tank as soon as he went active, leaving the raid at the side.  That might actually be better, since you wouldn't be losing tank-dps time, and the tank could start generating rage / blood shield / whatever.

[Guest Soulcrush]

Just wanted to share something I noticed on my flex attempt last night.

 

It seems that Divine Shield does reset the stacks of Freezing Breath and Scorching Breath. There was no need to try it on the poison debuff so I am not sure about that one.

[Guest Angelcakes]

"In addition to the items listed below, General Nazgrim drops the tokens that you will need for buying your Tier 16 Head parts: " you might want to fix this and change where General Nazgrim is to Thok the Bloodthirsty (: just thought I'd bring this up because well it's incorrect and would probably mislead players into thinking that Nazgrim drops both head and hand pieces!

[Guest frutti]

I wanted to check with you guys, how many Deafening Screeches are you getting to in P1 before you have to transition? The guide says that he casts it at about 7 seconds intervals when the phase starts, but that has not been the experience of our 10-man raid group. It felt more like 5 seconds for us, and the speed ramps up so fast that he was casting it almost every GCD by the 10th screech. We would barely have gotten him down 20% (even with heroism, barrier and devotion aura) before we are forced to transition.

 

We have been progressing steadily through the instance up until we hit this brick wall, and it's really dampening the morale of my group . Everyone we've talked to said he was rather simple, but all we are experiencing is a RNG nightmare.

[Guest Ariluz]

I wanted to check with you guys, how many Deafening Screeches are you getting to in P1 before you have to transition? The guide says that he casts it at about 7 seconds intervals when the phase starts, but that has not been the experience of our 10-man raid group. It felt more like 5 seconds for us, and the speed ramps up so fast that he was casting it almost every GCD by the 10th screech. We would barely have gotten him down 20% (even with heroism, barrier and devotion aura) before we are forced to transition.

 

We have been progressing steadily through the instance up until we hit this brick wall, and it's really dampening the morale of my group . Everyone we've talked to said he was rather simple, but all we are experiencing is a RNG nightmare.

You hold him in each p1 as long as you can, mostly to avoid having to be in the Fire Stack phase and possibly Fire Kite phase for very long. I never really counted how long between casts, but there was always time for me to cast a healing rain @ 9k haste after 10+ stacks, so I'd imagine with careful timing, your casters/healers should be able to get some casts off. I would also save any Devo Auras/BoPs for 10+ stacks to help your healers push p1 longer.

 

We get around 20-25 stacks and probably could get more, it all comes down to good cooldown managment. The better your healers (and dps with raid cds) are at managing their CDs, the longer you'll last in p1. Knowing what your raid comp is would help to give us a better idea of what you could do better to keep the boss in p1 longer.

[Guest frutti]

Our raid comp is me as a Brewmaster tank with another prot warrior. DPS roster we have a DK, mage, spriest, hunter and 2 warlocks (as a relatively casual guild, we tend to just take whoever is available that day). Healers are a holy pally, priest (with both disc and holy spec) and a resto druid.

 

We have been trying a different strategy where, instead of 1 stacked group, we had 2 separate groups of 4. While this allowed us better control of the timing of the transition (as opposed to it triggering randomly when 5 people happened to drop below 50% for a short moment), it also made aoe healing more difficult, and people will inadvertently die by the 12th Screech.

 

I've also seen some conflicting strategy on this boss. The icy veins guide says that you should keep phase 2 as short as possible, but the Fatboss guide says to drag out p2 as long as you can. They even mentioned in their video that they went all the way to 10 or 11 fixates. How is that possible, I still don't know.

 

One theory about phase 2 I've read is that he always fixates on the farthest player, but when we tested it out, that doesn't seem to be the case. At least, it doesn't happen consistently enough for us to rely on it.

[Krazyito 521]

 

Here is a video from our Heroic Thok kill.

[Krazyito 521]

For heroic mode you should add that during phase 2 kiting phase you should transition him at 7 and 4 minutes to berserk. This will ensure that you have your cool down from the previous phase available for the next phase 1.  If you open the fire door you should just stack and transition into phase 2 ASAP and just focus the boss.

Also,the closer to 30 stacks you get, the quicker phase 2 will be and the more time you can spend dpsing the boss in phase 1

[Guest Leech]

I know it is bit late to ask but can some1 add 1 tank 10m norm mechanics. I am pretty new as a tank and need some tips for def cd managing to stay alive during the stacking debuff