Heroic Thok

[Peatzah 0]

So we made it past spoils in very few wipes, and spent a good majority of last night wiping to Thok. We're having some problems...I have a lot of questions. Sorry for the wall of text.

 

The furthest we made it last night was the 2nd phase when the bats come down. That combined with healing the screeches is just too much for us. I'm not sure if we have an incorrect rotation of raid cds during that phase? I dont know the exact order, but I think we're starting dev auras around 5-7 stacks, chaining two of them, then (i dont know the exact names of abilities, i also could be horribly wrong) shaman cd, rogue (smoke), disc sheild, then transitioning around 20-22 stacks. I'm also glyphing UR to chain that onto the end of the 2nd dev aura.

 

Does this rotation seem optimal? I understand the concept of the larger healing cds in the later stacks, but I feel like having dev auras in the later stacks to be able to actually cast something would highly benefit us.

 

As far as kiting we're not doing anything fancy, just going down the hall and back to the other side. Have you guys had any use of your portal? I've found its mostly useless because it just despawns. Its pretty rough trying to keep myself in range of my portal to keep it from despawning AND worrying about everything else going on in the fight. My placement is probably terrible though, I was just putting it down the hallway. Maybe a better spot would be from the first stack point to the beginning of the hallway?

 

I can't really say anything about the yeti, as we haven't made it that far yet, but are there any tricks for the bats? My first thought would be just F+B them down. Is farming embers for more CBs to Thok (when I have backdraft charges) more important?

 

Lastly, did any of you go with a different reforging plan for this fight? I've been mastery > crit > haste for all fights before this. My armory in my sig is still set up from last night, so thats why I was using. Does haste benefit me any more for this fight? Those screeches are killer once they're past 7 or 8 stacks. I probably have a lot more questions, but this is all I can think of right now. Sorry again for the giant wall of text, I just want to be prepared for this next week's attempts.

 

Logs here:

Don't mind the kill on normal thok, it was pretty dog sh*t terrible. We're not normally that bad.

Warcraftlogs

Worldoflogs

[Storm 426]

Are you guys single tanking the fight? I don't have experience in 10man but that seems like it would be rather difficult. We originally tried single tanking 25m but we were using like 8 healers to do it, and it was still sketchy. If you two tank the fight then the screech and stacks become the only real mechanic you really have to worry about. Bats especially will be like a small break.

[Peatzah 0]

We are single tanking with a Monk tank and 3 healers (disc, resto shaman, holy pally). Is there a huge advantage to two tanking it? I'm not the RL, but my understanding is that two tanking will really only help out in gathering the bats when they come down.

[Zagam 1,982]

Two tanking reduces the stress of the healers having to tank heal and increases their ability to focus on raid healing.  Tanks have enough survival mechanics that their deaths shouldn't be where progression starts.

 

Your Disc Priest needs to go Holy.  Sanctuary and Circle of Healing > absorptions.  Your Disc also can't spam Prayer, so his healing is limited unless he uses a resource. Your Resto Shaman's pure focus should be keeping ES up on the tank who is tanking and using Ascendance with Hand of Protection and keeping Healing Rain down at all time (after using Unleash Elements for +40% to Healing Rain). 

 

Stack Phase 1 + 3 should be where you're using all your defensive CDs.  Phase 2 should be DPS CDs (second pot, Bloodlust) to blow up the bats before they become problematic.  As soon as the bats are dead, stack and push phase.  In P1 and P3, use Devo's later in your rotation.  They need to cover as many screeches as possible.  Using them at 5-7 is a mistake and poor CD management. 

 

You shouldn't need to reforge any differently.  The time gap you have when he is at 20+ stacks of his screech is ~1.8 seconds.  There should be no issue to getting an Incinerate or Immolate in between.  You can easily get CB off by consuming Backdraft since you won't need to for Incinerate.  For the bats, you'll want to make sure you have UR glyphed so you can use it more often.  When the bats land, start Rain of Fire, use your 2nd potion, Fire and Brimstone:Immolate, Fire and Brimstone: Conflagrate x2, UR, FnB:Incinerate spam until they are below 20%.  Havoc Thok and begin Shadowburning each add.  Use the glyph to enjoy doing 4M DPS for 6 globals.  In your 10 man, you should be carrying the bat damage by a WIDE margin.

[Peatzah 0]

Two tanking reduces the stress of the healers having to tank heal and increases their ability to focus on raid healing.  Tanks have enough survival mechanics that their deaths shouldn't be where progression starts.

 

Your Disc Priest needs to go Holy.  Sanctuary and Circle of Healing > absorptions.  Your Disc also can't spam Prayer, so his healing is limited unless he uses a resource. Your Resto Shaman's pure focus should be keeping ES up on the tank who is tanking and using Ascendance with Hand of Protection and keeping Healing Rain down at all time (after using Unleash Elements for +40% to Healing Rain). 

 

Stack Phase 1 + 3 should be where you're using all your defensive CDs.  Phase 2 should be DPS CDs (second pot, Bloodlust) to blow up the bats before they become problematic.  As soon as the bats are dead, stack and push phase.  In P1 and P3, use Devo's later in your rotation.  They need to cover as many screeches as possible.  Using them at 5-7 is a mistake and poor CD management. 

 

You shouldn't need to reforge any differently.  The time gap you have when he is at 20+ stacks of his screech is ~1.8 seconds.  There should be no issue to getting an Incinerate or Immolate in between.  You can easily get CB off by consuming Backdraft since you won't need to for Incinerate.  For the bats, you'll want to make sure you have UR glyphed so you can use it more often.  When the bats land, start Rain of Fire, use your 2nd potion, Fire and Brimstone:Immolate, Fire and Brimstone: Conflagrate x2, UR, FnB:Incinerate spam until they are below 20%.  Havoc Thok and begin Shadowburning each add.  Use the glyph to enjoy doing 4M DPS for 6 globals.  In your 10 man, you should be carrying the bat damage by a WIDE margin.

Thanks Zagam, that really does clear a lot of things up. I was actually pretty confused on when the best time to use 2nd pot/hero was. First thought is just to blow hero at the start and save 2nd pot till execution like most other fights.

 

Quick question on DS lineups though. As of my attempts last night, I would blow DS on the pull, then it would come back up during the first kite phase. I would then pop it right as bindings procs and unload about 3 chaos bolts during that kite phase. Am I right in thinking that it would be better to havoc thok during kite phase (remember it's glyphed), use up all my embers shadowburning the jailer, save that 2nd DS until bats come down, then havoc should be up again once theyre in execute? It's probably better lining up CDs with the appropriate part of the fight rather than lining up with procs on this boss, right?

 

Do you have any recommendation on the proper lineup of cds with our comp? I've just been trusting what the RL has come up with, but there's always room for improvement.

[Zagam 1,982]

I'd need your comp to make that call...

 

As for Havoc, you can use it in both places.  As soon as he enters Blood Frenzy, Havoc him.  Cleave onto the Jailer like a boss (Immolate, Chaos Bolt, Incineratex2) then CB Thok with procs up.  Havoc will be back up for the bats.

[Peatzah 0]

Our current comp for this fight is Monk single tanking, Paladin/Disc Priest/Shaman healing, Ret Paladin (normally our main tank)/Frost Mage/Destro Warlock/Assassination Rogue/Shadow Priest/Fury Warrior. We also have a blood/frost dk that tanks some fights, but he's on the bench for this specific fight.

[Zagam 1,982]

Hmm...

 

Tank - Monk

Healers - Paladin, Priest, Shaman

DPS - Fury, Shadow, Rogue, Destro, Frost Mage, Ret

 

I'd bench the Shadow Priest unless he's your best player.  In fact, you might have a better time with Thok if he went Holy.  This would only be viable if your other DPS were amazeballs. 

 

At all points, Healing Rain and Sanctuary (Holy Priest) should be down.  Your Paladin should be focusing on keeping tanks up.

 

At 4, I would use Hand of Protection on the Shaman and let him Ascendance.

At 6, I would use Rallying Cry + Healthstones + Personals

At 9, I would use Smoke Bomb

At 11, Paladin pops CDs to heal

At 12, Healing Tide

At 14, Hand of Protection Holy Priest for Hymn

At 18, Devo 1

At 21, Devo 2

At 24, Demo Banner

Collapse when necessary

[Strife 6]

Also if you aren't rotate any AoE stuns you have on bats.

 

That's what we did in my 10M progression although we're still on Thok, but generally we didn't have any issues with bats.

 

And not necessarily helpful, but I switched to Aff on my progression since I was pulling way better numbers, just can't get into Destro as much for this fight :x As the bats came in I was just SS dots to them, hunter misdirects to tank, and I use my soulshatter agro dump if they come towards me. Was pulling alot better damage numbers on them this way and way more on thok during progression although we were only getting him to about 30% or so, but I hate destro also :/

 

Then again, I wasn't using Backdraft CBs when his screeches got fast so that would probably help...

 

We 1 tank/3 heal it also in my 10M, think it's the best option overall assuming you have a good cooldown rotation.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Strife

[Soulzar 42]

Wall of Text, Hopefully some helps.

 

Our raid is almost identical to yours, so I will outline what we do.  Unfortunatley I am not overly familiar with out cooldown rotation but could probably get you that info since we also single Monk tank and Disc, Pally, Shammy heal.

 

Here is our first Kill from our tanks PoV to give you a better idea of my text wall below.  I fraps this kill to, but I didn't post it since I fudged phase 1 badly and didn't want everybody to see how bad I was getting interrupted  Bad enough half my kill videos have me fat fingering the honor pane or something stupid like that lol.

 

 

Talents I use:

 

Glyphed Unending Resolve for 8 Seconds of push back protection.  I generally use this as soon as soon as Acceleration no longer alows me to cast more than one Incin between interrupts or if I get a proc.  It will be specific to you when you find it most beneficial depending on when your raid gets its Devo's.

 

Glyphed Havoc to copy 6 shadowburns to Thok during Bat phase and to shadow two Chaos Bolts or ! and 3 shadowburns from jailor to Thok.  I time this for the part of his kite where he can get out of range as jailor willl always be in range.

 

Burning Rush if you do not already have it, in the off chance you get picked for kiting (Gateway strat involves you positioning yourself to not kite, so gateway does not despawn)

 

Grim of Supremacy for your imps Mass dispel.  Can be of GREAT help to your healers not having to spend globals dispelling, addtional support during kite phese where one of them may need to run our of range of the stack point.

 

Soul Link, but make sure you have your pet standinign the AoE healing or it can die.  Additionally, you may need to tell him to "move to" your stack point as he can end up out of range for his dispel on your group if left to just follow boss and stand wherever.  Flee seems 100% broken.

 

Stats:

 

If you are already Mastery > Crit >> Haste, stay that way (I think you mentioned above you were.)  If you are Mastery > Haste > Crit then I would advice reforging out of haste and into crit.  I wont support that by math, but IMO with your cast intervals regulated by the ~1.8s between screeches, you can not chain cast to gain the benefit of haste so you may as well get rid of as much haste as you can for another secondary that is not held back by the fight mechanic.

 

 

Kite:

 

Below shows the basic 5 point kite that we use.  While its not shown, group stack point during kite phase is on the grate int eh middle of the room, towards the hallway.  This allows ranged to pivot and always be in range if not kiting which will keep dmg high with less need to chase him.  Gateway shoudl be setup just at the end of the "x" outline of the great, by the intersection of Kite path 1 and 5.  After Thok has picked his 3rd fixate target, our Disc priest will take the gateway in an attempt to bait the 4th kite.  If it pick them, they are already down the hall and kite normally.  If Thok decides to pick somebody in the stacked group, they take gateway and the priest is down the hall to run with them to keep them topped up and give them bubble/feather sprint.  We had troubles in phase 2 with the hallway kiter having to kite before getting a dispel, this ensure they wont die alone.

 

Important to this however, it your gateway being there or you are all dinner.  You can not go move than ~25 from the end near your stack point or it will vanish, so you need to game it so that he never picks you.  Do this by always being closer than others.  When he gets near the end of his second kite, range can be an issue without going too far from gateway, so you can havoc him and keep casting on the jailor.

 

 

Bat Phase:

 

Your Dark Soul will come off cooldown during the first kite phase, you need to save it for the bats unless you are using AD.. but I use KJC.  At the start of phase two, you have time to unload some embers while you still have time between screeches, but you should have a few embers banked as well as both Conflag charges.  I like to F&B Elements which does not generate embers in return, which is why I like to ensure I have enough banked embers that I wont fizzle out doing so.

 

Second pot used here and I generally get up Immo, Elements and double conflag before I hit UR and AoE to victory.  Once they get into execute range, Havoc and shadowburn till they are dead.  By this time I am always OBv full embers and at elast one conflag off Cooldown, so I try to use those backdraft charges to immediately sneak out a backdraft Chaos bolt so that I do not remain capped.

 

Remember, use your imps mass dispel on cooldown.  Ask you healers to remind you to dispel if you don't think of it.

 

Once you get more comfortable with the kite, you can take your gateway down the hall to chase Thok on the 4th kite and then teleport to a safe spot off to the side of the hall where it starts opening to main room once he changes fixates and starts heading back down to the hall towards you.

 

IMO, saving hero for bats is a waste, especially if you are one tanking.  Your Monk will have high vengence and between the two of you, bats will melt.  it is MUCH better served on Pull with all cooldowns rolling.

 

Pull (w/Hero):

 

Standard opener of dumping two CB's upon hitting 2 embers.  Your second CB should be done casting one or two globals before the screech and I refresh Immo with trinket procs, drop RoF and conflag will be coming off CD basically as he is screeching, so I hit it.  Burn up to another ember and get that CB off before Dark Soul drops.  One more CB with Bindings proc before screech.  From this point I build embers until I eitehr get a trinket proc, or until his screeches come frequent enough that I can no longer cast two incins between, then I use my UR to dump all my embers.  our only devo is used a few screeches after my UR wears off, so I use it to dump a few CB's as well.  You have two devos in your group, so you will get 3 opportunities to dump embers on CB .. work best with how they are used to fit your UR in to your benefit.

 

While we can cast just about everything between screeches with no haste, Backdraft CB's are tight.  It is easy to build embers, not as easy to spend them which is why I dedicate Devo's and UR to dumping embers, regardless or procs.

 

Fel Flame, RoF, and Conflag are your go to when he is screeching.

 

Eg.  Incin > RoF > Incin > Conflag > Incin > Fel Flame .. Repeat

Edited January 13, 2014 by Soulzar

[Peatzah 0]

Thanks a ton for all the advice. I'm going to bring a lot of these topics up to my RL. Hopefully farm goes well today so we can get some solid progression on Thok later this week.

[Calol 5]

Heroic Thok makes me want to beat my head against a wall. 50 or so wipes just this week... Not including the previous weeks. And I'm sure Blackfuse will be worse.

[Typecast 16]

Just to expand on Soulzar's section on kiting, this is how I handle gateway tethering. 

 

The large opaque green area is your workable zone.  If you step out of the green area, you will need to resummon your gateway.  The pink square is where I place one of the gateway ends (on the edge of the grill, with a maximized distance between gateways).  The numbered circles are the areas I stand at after each fixate.  With the raid standing in the middle of the room for fixates 1-3,5 and by the gateway for fixate 4.  Using geometry, I know the group will be further away from Thok than myself and they are in the "pick me" range (20m x Fixate# +/- 5m).  

 

Fixates

1. You can kite this if you want.  The entire kite path is in your safe zone.  If you kite this fixate, make sure you are close enough to the boss not to get reselected for fixate 2.  
2. Never kite this fixate.  Kiting this fixate will cause your gateway to despawn due to being out-of-range.  You will not have time to get back to your gateway location and drop a new gateway.
3. Kite this if you want.  If you place your gateway end in the middle of the room on the grate border, you basically have the entire jail cell in your safe zone.  The image above shows the arrow stopping before it reaches the jail cell on fixate 3, but realize that this is where the boss stops.  Whoever is kiting this fixate needs to be in the cell area and typically in the corner furthest from the gateways.
4. You can kite this if you want, but you'll likely despawn your gateway by going out of range as you run further down the hall.  A tip: We force Thok to always select a healer here by having the healers be on the side of the gateway furthest from Thok and the rest of the raid near the gateway on the side closest to Thok.  Now you don't have to send two people down the hall.
5. Same with fixate 4, you'll start in the safe-zone but Thok will chase you out of the area forcing a gateway despawn.  Avoid fixate if possible.  A tip: Have someone with decent self healing and a speed boost bait the fixate by standing in the middle of the room (where Thok starts the fight) while the rest of the raid either chases Thok to dps or groups up at the next phase 1 location.  We have our HPally and Rogue both stand in the middle and whichever one is fixated runs to the grate in the back of the room.  The tank should open the prison cell at the start of this fixate.

Cooldowns

For stacks during the fight, our progression route went 24-26 accel > 14-15 frenzy > 10-14 accel (green) > 14-15 frenzy > 20-22 accel (blue) > 14-15 frenzy > 6-10 accel (red) > must kill before 18ish frenzy.  If you follow the above kite path above for phase 2, you are guaranteed to always get 14 frenzy stacks and the 15th if your tank was slow opening the cell.  As for when we used our cooldowns, we just chain them during the fight (Our Comp - Brewmaster, RSham, RDruid, HPally, Ret, Rogue, Lock, Lock, Spriest, Hunter).

• Devo

• Devo

• BoP RSham

• BoP RDruid

• Smoke Bomb + Spirit Link

• HTT

First Phase 1 we start cooldowns at 6 accel.  During the green door, we just chain BoPs for the bats then heal for as long as we feel comfortable doing so without other cooldowns, then just push.  Bats should die quickly and if you feel the need to take mortal coil over shadowfury, utilize the infernal awakening stun.  For the blue door, start cooldowns at 4 accel stacks.

 

Edit: As for screeches, the shortest amount of time from the end of a screech to the end of the next screech is 2.4 seconds.  This 2.4s period of casting windows begins around the 6th stack so if you are confident in yourself in casting chaos bolts (pyroclasm'd or not), go for it, but during progression, ember tap comes in quite useful as your healers are learning.  The amount of time Thok takes to reach 100 energy to gain an accel stack is roughly 18s, 10.8s, 7.2s, 4.8s, 3.6s, 2.4s... and frenzy stacks every 5 seconds.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Typecast

[Calol 5]

Can you force Thok to target someone besides us on the fixates? We run two locks so potentially we can run two gateways in case one of us gets targeted. But it would be nice to not get chomped if the tank takes to long to open the cell and transition.

[Zagam 1,982]

As a Warlock with Gateway up, you should NEVER be fixated.  Ensure this by making sure you are always closer to Thok than someone else. 

 

We also don't even use Gateways anymore.  They're not entirely essential.  We only kite up and down the hallway by having pre-selected Fixate targets.  Most people struggling with the encounter don't fully understand Fixate.  Once you do, all the nuances used to get over it (kiting paths, Gateways, etc) go away.