[25] Thorim, Our Brick Wall (Please Help)

We are stuck on Thorim and have been for 3 weeks now, we get to Thorim and can't get to Phase two.

We have tried many different setups for the arena, but can't seem to find the right setup.

WWS http://wowwebstats.com/bllycqebzqv2i the first 18 tries are 25 man { http://wowwebstats.com/bllycqebzqv2i?s=34549-530847 } , the attempts after that are 10 man hard mode attempts.

I was in the Hallway half of the time so not certain but, seems like the arena is getting too many Evokers and gets over ran by adds.

I know we can get him just don't have the right setup or DPS not focussing on the correct targets.

Runic Shield is what is slowing down your arena team. Have at least 2-3 people actively dispelling or purging that shield. We run with 2-3 tanks in the arena for safety, generally a death knight who primarily is DPS goes Frost to help picking up adds. Use what AoE you can, I take casters down the hallway and leave melee in the arena, but Fan of Knives and whirlwinds clear up most of the arena trash quickly.

Well we struggled for a while on him, biggest change for us was bringing more rogues, damn things are amazing on that fight. We use mellee in arena and ranged in the tunnel. Arena is 1 big pile of people and abuse of aoe, our priests like to spam holy nova for that phase. Generally we'll have all the classes with instant cast heals (priests/droods) in arena, and 2 healers in the guantlet - usually a pally and a shammy or 2nd pally.

Evokers we have the warrior tank grab them and interupt heals / shieldslam shields with an enhance shammy and dps war helping. The rest autoattack champs while spamming aoe. I tank pretty much everything but the evokers.

Rogues + imp fan of knives = Arena easymode.

Add in a priest for mass dispels, and you're set.

Thank You for the advice, I had not considered Improved fan of knives, and we only had one Shadow priest on dispels.

I will take this advice, and hope to get over this road block.

Thanks for the help.

Belloc wrote:Rogues + imp fan of knives = Arena easymode.

Add in a priest for mass dispels, and you're set.

This

We don't have many rogues, I usually have two man team made up of war/enhance shammy in charge of evokers.

What gear set do you wear if your tanking in the arena?
Do you use your Boss/Avoidance set or do you put on a blockvalue set to maximize threat?
I also ask because the last time we were succesful the druid and warrior tank were on the boss while I was the backup tank and good thing I was since they both died but wearing a BV set would probably mean I take more hits right...

I tried tanking this a second time but somehow people always end up with an add on them especially the rogues doing fan of knives and or a lock. (wich makes me thing if I actually wore a BV set last time and this time I wore my normal avoidance set)

The setup was a druid picking up the champions and anything else that stuck on him while I tanked everthing else comming into the arena by dropping concecrate in the center, Ashield stuff outside and hand of reck/exor anything stuck on someone outside the ring. Also I would aoe taunt via grid...but we would end up failing.

Is it normal for this to be a fight where aggro is an issue just cause of the ammount of adds or do I need more practice.

I usually just tank when needed as my main spec is ret.
The non live version still has my prot gear listed: http://wow-heroes.com/index.php?zone=us ... name=eizen

Since were doing it hardmode, BV gear just wont do.
BV doesnt relly increase your threat when aoetanking so thats not a good reason to use it, also all mobs hit you weak enough to survive nomatter what gear you have, Thorim is the hard phase you need to survive with your gear, tanking in the arena is just a pain, but no real requirements.
However theres really no need to tank the small crappy dwarfs, they hit me for 250, so they wont even be close to dangerous to even rogues. You should keep consecration down somewhere in the center 24/7, but whats really important is to get aggro of evokers and warbringers, they are your only concern (if you have a champion tank).
The small adds dont do any noticable damage nor do they survive for long so just ignore them, and make sure you always get the evokers aswell as the warbringers, for this phase we use 2 priests MCing warbringers aswell, so I have to be fast on taunting those adds of the priests when MC runs out.
But for Ulduar 25man, you can pretty much forget your BV gear tbh, I use it when taking care of constructs on ignis, tanking razorscale, and Crazy cat lady cats. Its better and safer to use heavy HP/avoid gear for every other fight there imo.

Ok so let me introduce myself, my toon's name is Horanur and i am on the (A) - Arathor server, same as Majiben. I always bug him with random questions but i figured i would finally start making some posts of my own. I have been coming to the site on and off for like a year now and this is my first post!

My guild has recently re-built it's entire DPS team from the ground up more or less. Our former GM hated melee for some reason and as such we had 0 dps DK's, like 1 warrior, 1 rogue, and 1 ENH shammy. Let me tell you, doing Thorim with a team of almost exclusive caster dps SUCKED.

Anyhow we're back in action with a much more melee heavy group now including up to 2 warriors, a DK, 2 rogues, 1-2 ENH Shammy, 1-2 ret pallies, crit kitty. We are also a tad lock-heavy.

So here's the deal; we're STILL having some trouble with thorim. It seems as though no matter who i send where (i am raid leader) we have some kind of issue.
ARENA:
We have more or less mastered the arena portion, but i think evokers could be handled better (we have a mage spellstealing and DPS'ing). We generally AE the arena with melee focusing their non-incidental damage at the champs. We also have 2 hunters laying out frost traps on the 2 sides that tend to spawn adds the most.
Tunnel
Our tunnel team consists usually of 1 melee and 3-4 casters, 2 of which are usually mages for CC. A warrior solo tanks it and we have 1 paladin and 1 priest heal it. Generally we use 2 mages, 1 ELE shammy , a boomkin, and sometimes a warrior depending on how our balance is that night.

Lately the tunnel team just keeps wiping after the 1st boss. I am not the tunnel tank but it seems like someone always messes up on the CC and a DPS dies, then subsequent lack of damage finishes the rest.

It's been my experiance that the more casters you can keep out of the arena, the better since anything seems to one-shot them, but tunnel seems like it could be done so much better... maybe 2 tanks in tunnel?

Looking for some thoughts / ideas.

After the first miniboss dies, you have some choices to make.

Here's what I do:

Pull the first two mobs with exorcism and do not allow anyone to enter the hallway (basically, don't cross the door threshold). If they do, they will pull the 2 mobs on the stairs. You want to kill the first two mobs and then pull the 2 stair mobs. Sheep the guard on the stairs and burn down the acolyte. When i say burn down, I mean... pull it, get initial threat, stun it, and run up to pull the next miniboss. If you this fast enough, you won't spawn any additional adds. If you manage to spawn a guard, then just tank it and shield wall until it's dead.

Once the second miniboss is dead, kill the sheep and start phase 2.

Adding another tank will do nothing for you, to be honest. You're wiping because people are screwing up. You can either gimp yourself with another tank or you can fix the problem with DPS getting themselves killed.

I'll repeat: No one should cross the door threshold after the first miniboss. This includes hunter and warlock pets. If you pull all 4 mobs, you're bound to have someone die or waste a ton of time from adds healing.

If we have the tanks available i think i will probably dual-spec and dps the tunnel so i can see from a first-hand perspective. This sounds about right though, i will make sure that people are not crossing that threshold.

2 tanks in the arena is a must. One tank pulling our the WWers, and the second tank pretty much gets the rest, most importantly the warbringers as they are th only other mob that can really kill someone.

Evokers must be focused down pretty much as soon as they spawn. Having 3 of them up is a wipe, as they will be healing way to much. Assign 3-4 DPS to focus hem down as soon as they jump don into the arena. That should fix 90% of your problem.

Ok so i layed the smackdown on the tunnel team last night, i gave up the remaining 3 casters in the arena and the melee / tanks just ate the extra damage from mobs not dying as fast and we eventually won! It was a narrow victory but my guild most definately needed the morale boost, on to mimiron now.

I can say that this is how i optimized my raid team (25) for this fight

I will speak solely on the arena team, since that is where the nuts of the encounter is (imo)

our raid runs with 3 tanks, so we had 1 in the gauntlet, and 2 in the arena (prot pally-me and prot warrior). we also had a dps warrior become the evoker tank - i think he was arms for the fight.
I stood in the center of the arena running 969 to keep HS up and conscecrate down. I single target taunted all warbringers followed by an exorcism. the CD was always up by the next spawn.
The prot warrior stood outside the center circle and taunted the champions to him. All ranged single target FF champions, then went to AoE for the small dudes. Ranged had to immediately refocus on champions after a new spawn, which we unfortunately have to call out on vent (instead of people just paying attention). We never had 2 champions up at once ever...this is a key metric.
The dps warrior grabbed the evokers, and all the Melee FF on the evoker, and subsequently any evoker anytime there was one up. Evokers do go down pretty fast, which they then helped out with the warbringers.
All the commoners generally got picked up by me (pally), but the quick work of the ranged dps on the champions, then focusing on the commoners generally had little time with commoners up.
Healing wise, we had 1 healer on each tank, and lightwells for raid as well as 2 raid healers (totalling 5). no one generally dies.

The key is to get into the rhythm and tanks never miss the new spawn pickup. The most important is the champions, then warbringers since they really hurt clothies.
The second key is focus fire, single target. only the 3 tanks take significant damage if they arent picking up stray mobs. mob peeling is really easy since the swarm of new mobs is continuous, and consecrate ticks just arent enough against most AoE. /focus target on the tank for the dps with single target attacks helped the arena survive. you then learn when AoE is ok. Melee never on champions, focusing first on any evoker that is up, then going to warbringers. Ranged always on champions when they are up, then AoE'ing down the commoners.

Lastly, a single AoE tank can tank everything except the champions as stated earlier. I have also done it multiple times. This places greater stress on taunting and getting initial aggro. my biggest problem is the V showing tons o' mobs and then keeping the right target selected as a tank for threat purposes. my strat above has a dps warrior, and it works.

as logical as it may seem to wear BV gear, BV gear doesnt work as well with the monstrous hits late into phase 2. I wear my EH set to absorb the enormous hits, as well as telling the healers to eliminate fheals late (20k+ hits, a couple per 3 secs).