WotLK - Trial of the Champion - (ToC)

[Smoooth]

Just cleared heroic and one thing I haven't seen mentioned is using cleansing totem on the black knight fight. It keeps all the diseases off the tank and really lowers the damage he takes.

On phase 2 I just drop a consecrate and wait about 3 seconds for some aggro. I hit bloodlust and aoe with my shadow priest and it kills all the ghould pretty quick without them exploding.

Oh and spread your guys out to reduce the damage from the desecration aoe he puts on the ground. I didn't have to move at all using this method.

5 ilvl 219 epics from a 30 min heroic is sweeet.

[puppychow]

I reactivated my shamans so I could solo this place. Some notes:

First, I recommend clearing the normal version before you tackle heroic.

Make sure you are good at jousting before you do this. I have keybinds set for interact with set focus (my tank) and assist focus, every time you mount you have to reset your focus and when you change targets you have to re-assist.

On first boss, just bunch up your guys by a wall. Take all the mounts from the opposite side you are going to be (I recommend being near the door, see next point). Fight near the wall where there aren't mounts nearby, like near door.
When you dismount the 3 champions, just zone out! When you come back, they are all at the big gate ready for you but you can buff up and take your time getting ready.
The first phase/boss can be tricky, but once you get good at it you will do it without ever having to change mounts.

For second boss if the girl (guy is super easy just nuke, rotate when he does his little radiance thing), I positioned my shamans in a nook (basically along the wall there are tons of pillars) and kept down 2x tremor and 3x grounding at all times. Nuke the lady, when add comes out have your tank taunt and build some threat before nuking it. Chain heal every now and then, refollow leader after fears, be sure to keep tank healed. I tanked the add and the boss a little bit aways from my guys and she basically mostly nuked me, and grounding totems took care of a lot of the raid dmg.

For last boss, kill add/first time, then on second one lust and just focus on boss. Keep your team slightly away, drop some AOE to get adds, but just focus on burning boss before any adds start exploding. Then just move away from adds. For last phase, nuke boss and spam chain heals every now and then too, having a blood DK tank is nice since you can VB/self-heal so much in this phase, plus AMS and IBF.

Expect to wipe a few times while learning everything, but then its not too bad and you can 1-shot it all.

[Clone]

Just completed the dungeon on heroic. Black Knight took me 5 tries to work out a tactic that suited me. Phase 2 is the real test. I popped earth elementals just as he was about to ressurect then focussed dps on him whilst ignoring the adds and spamming chain heal on my group which was bunched up. Tank was away from the group. I didnt need to heal my tank in phase 2 as my dps was so fast, I also knew that I had ardent defender and lay on hands if the tank went down. As the boss died I strafed my guys away from the remaining ghouls and cast heroism and spam chain healed my group back up to full health. Then when boss respawned similar to phase 2 I just nuked the boss whilst spamming chain heal on the main group with my healer and didnt heal the tank.

I have to admit I used some flasks of the frost wyrm that Ive had in my bags forever and never needed them. My tank is also pretty well geared with 35k health when buffed. My dps where pulling about 3.2k each.

I hope this helps someone to down him, hes a nasty piece of work!

Luckily the first 2 bosses are free epix tho just like the normal version

[puppychow]

I did the heroic today (was saved yesterday on my tank to a pug), didn't find it that much harder than regular, just the Black Knight really is a bitch. Some more tips/strat refinining:

- for mounted combat, I actually now find it easier to fight in "the middle". When I fought on the walls I would miss the guys getting back up, was really annoying. I'm at the point now where I can do the entire mounted phase without having to change mounts and only losing 20% or so, in heroic. FWIW when I started last night on regular I died, A LOT, in this phase, so keep practicing! I always still run out, since its way too hard trying to tank and re-equip weapons on 5 guys.

- For second boss, I kill rogue first, then shaman, then hunter. Sidestep out of poison clouds. I actually lust on the rogue, since I want him down before more than 1-2 clouds spawn. The MT takes insane dmg here sometimes, so I have to pop a lot of healing waves.

- Black Knight is tough! Phase1 is easy tank n spank, KEEP GROUNDING TOTEMS DOWN! They absorb the little curses he sends out. Kill add when it spawns. Phase 2 I lust at start and try to burn boss, group is ~20 yards away and I try to hold onto the adds. If I have to heal too much then the adds run to the shamans and its usually a wipe, so I save my blood heal cooldowns like vampiric blood, etc for this. Strafe OUT of desecration, if you don't its a wipe. I don't pop earth elementals, that would probably make it a bit easier too. Grounding totems DO absorb exploding ghouls, but only 1 afaik so you still need to gtfo! Phase 3 is burn & heal, a lot of raidwide dmg going out and I lost 2 of my guys near the end (but a blood DK can stay alive a long time).

I currently run blood DK tank, mage, and 3 shamans (all ele), might try switching one of the shamans for my resto druid and see if its harder/easier tomorrow.

[Meshuggenah]

Which addons are you guys using to incorporate vehicle control (follow, assist, etc) into your existing macros? Half the trouble I'm having is being able to control the mounts. All my assist/follow and standard spell bars disappear when I get in the vehicle. If there were some way to add the vehicle commands into existing focus/assist macros it would make everything so much simpler.

[Smoooth]

Even though your bars disappear your keybindings will still work. Set up your macros before you mount up and use keybinds that aren't on the main bar. I use ctrl` for focus and ` for following. Then I use ] for shielding and \ for lancing and shield breaking using the two macros I posted earlier in this thread. All I have to do is mount up, focus, follow, place my guys, then spam ] and \ while mouse moving.

[Greythan]

I use Bindpad for bar-independent macro assignment. I actually use it strictly for vehicle macros at this point. Everything else I do through Bartender4. (i.e., non vehicle actions)

[puppychow]

I use Bartender4 and have to do nothing special, bar1 is the "posess" bar and flips automatically into the vehicle bar when mounted -- 1 is melee, 2 is shieldbreak, 3 is charge (never use), 4 is shield -- across all 5 toons.

I have six macros setup (i use bindpad but just a bar with keybindings set to these would work too):

F1 = /focus my_main_tanks_name
F2 = /focus shaman1_name
..
F5 = /focus shaman4_name

` = interact with target (keybindings in WoW, scroll about halfway down)
shift-~ = /assist focus macro


So I mount everyone up, press f1 (everyone /focuses my tank), target an add with my tank, press shift-~ (everyone targets the new target), and press 2,1,1,1 etc to whittle them down. Remember every time you "remount" your focus gets lost so if your tank switches mounts re-set focus again.

shamans do seem to make a big difference in the fight, between being able to take hits from adds to nature/cleanse totems, lust in knight p2, and chain heal. Will report how I do tomorrow when I take my resto druid instead of a shaman.

[king.pa]

I've just managed to clean the non heroic version of this stupid encounter.

I can't get through the 3 bosses... I've only managed to get two down....
this first "boss" SUCK a lot !!!

I've tried the "wall" method, the middle one too ... rahh this drives me crazy

[Meshuggenah]

Puppychows(I think it was you) advice to exit the instance and zone back in after dismounting the 3 champions makes this instance a LOT easier. Setting up easy to use macros for the vehicle phase makes the mounts easy, zoning out and being able to set up at your own leisure makes the second phase cake.

<3

Thanks for the tip. Got this thing on farm now.