Trick I found for the second boss on (heroic) Dark'Tharon Keep

[TheBigBB]

I was experimenting with positioning for the second boss of Drak'Tharon Keep on heroic and I discovered a spot you can stand where no or almost no non-elite mobs will spawn. You simply keep against the wall in the middle of the room to the right of where the boss has his shield. The mobs spawn from 1 of 3 points, and when you stand here you are far away from all of the spawn points, and nothing comes out but elites. This makes the trash part of the fight essentially a nonissue.

[Hachoo]

Screenshot or diagram? I'm not sure where you're actually talking about :)

[TheBigBB]

_____/ / Exit
| ....... |
| ....... |
= . B . X|
| ....... |
| ....... |
|______ \
..........\ Entrance
B = Boss
X = Stand Here, against the wall

[Hachoo]

Interesting! I will have to try that! I did him on normal with no wipes and not losing anyone but I was thinking the whole time "dear lord this is going to be a NIGHTMARE on heroic".

My tank will be def capped soon so I'll try it then :)

[Multibocks]

I never found the adds an issue, it was the blizzard that kills my guys =(

[TheBigBB]

I never found the adds an issue, it was the blizzard that kills my guys =(I agree, and I got the boss out doing it normally, but without as many adds spawning (they still spawn a little) I was able to have more mana left to do massive AOE healing through the blizzard. Yeah, I am eating the blizzards. It hurts. A lot. I downed him both times I used this "trick" though.

[Multibocks]

I'll give it a shot!

[TheBigBB]

I've used this strategy effectively before, where I just eat some huge damage and pop a heroism and chain cast prayer of healing through it. I'm not sure what people running a shaman healer should do. I think maybe spreading out on the blizzard would be a more effective real strategy, so you could just heal 1 or 2 targets at a time.

[Hachoo]

Yeah that can get annoying. I think I'm going to have to finally set up 4 keys to have all shamans individually LHW a single clone - up until now I've just been targetting but that puts a huge delay on DPS.

[Lyonheart]

My problem is the complete lack of an aggro table. Seems the boss will target one of my Shaman and just DPS him/her until death. I can taunt it back to my tank, but he'll just drop me again and go back to the Shaman until the Shaman is dead.

next time I try him i will swap out my normal healing macro with a target=focustragettarget, I have issues targeting players in my group fast enough. I have made macros for each one. This will allow me to keep the boss targeted with my main, and should heal whoever he switches to.

[Hachoo]

Unfortunately that really wont work the way you want it to on a lot of bosses.

In the cases of some bosses like this one, the one that impales people, etc, his target only changes for a split second while he does something to that character, then it goes right back to the tank. In this case if you're healing focustargettarget unless you start the cast RIGHT when hes attacking your clone it wont target the clone, this is why you need individual heal keys for each clone.

[mphuie]

I never found the adds an issue, it was the blizzard that kills my guys =(

If you stand on the very right side of the chain "fence" on that corridor, the dragon's ice spell will never hit you.

[Lyonheart]

I never found the adds an issue, it was the blizzard that kills my guys =(

If you stand on the very right side of the chain "fence" on that corridor, the dragon's ice spell will never hit you.

Dragon? I think your talking about VH and this topic is about Drak hehe

[Multibocks]

actually I think hes talking about Utgarde Pinnacle where the dragon strafe's the walkway.

[Hachoo]

Ok so I tried Novos today (Heroic) and beat him on the first try. For me, doing the placement trick did help because it was IMPERATIVE that I started the "actual" fight with 100% mana (When I downed him I only had 2 shamans left that could cast LB).

Basically, I dropped my mana springs while I was killing the initial 4 warlocks, this way when they died I was at 100% mana. As soon as they died, I dropped 4x healing stream and a frost resistance totem. I smacked the boss a couple times and then trinketed and used bloodlust and went all out (starting with flameshock/LvB). Basically did a LB/LB/4xChainHeal over and over again - quite easily healed through the blizzard and frostbolts (probably largely due to the frost resistance totem). I hardly had to heal my tank at all. WIth some more mana and mp5 gear this boss will be totally easy.

[Gares]

Ok so I tried Novos today (Heroic) and beat him on the first try. For me, doing the placement trick did help because it was IMPERATIVE that I started the "actual" fight with 100% mana (When I downed him I only had 2 shamans left that could cast LB).

Basically, I dropped my mana springs while I was killing the initial 4 warlocks, this way when they died I was at 100% mana. As soon as they died, I dropped 4x healing stream and a frost resistance totem. I smacked the boss a couple times and then trinketed and used bloodlust and went all out (starting with flameshock/LvB). Basically did a LB/LB/4xChainHeal over and over again - quite easily healed through the blizzard and frostbolts (probably largely due to the frost resistance totem). I hardly had to heal my tank at all. WIth some more mana and mp5 gear this boss will be totally easy.

I might have to try this cause I still haven't beat him yet, I usually just skip him cause I know its usually a wipe.

[Knobley]

I probably just need to write a "heal target of target" macro. :)

Occasionally I see things and think to myself, "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?"

I can think of lots of times when that's going to be a useful tool.

[Zappy]

I probably just need to write a "heal target of target" macro. :)

Occasionally I see things and think to myself, "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?"

I can think of lots of times when that's going to be a useful tool.

I've changed almost every one of my macros to do the following (using the FTL, all guys are assisting my lead)

healing:

/cast [help][target=targettarget,help][player] Lesser Healing Wave

This will first attempt to heal your target, if your target is hostile, it'll then check the targets target and heal them, and lastly if it can't get a target, it'll cast it on yourself.

dps:
/cast [harm][target=targettarget,harm] Lightning Bolt

Same type of logic here. First attack your target, or assist your target.

When running heroics, this makes it very easy to simply target your tank and be able to both dps his target and heal him. For bgs, I found it to be even more useful as when places like AV or WG when there is a huge zerg vs zerg fight, it won't matter if you have an ally or horde targeted, you'll still be attacking the enemy almost every cast.

In addition, I would highly recommend setting up a macro to heal each one of your clones as well so that when a boss happens to switch targets, you'll never miss the heal on whoever needs it.

As Hachoo stated, make sure to use frost resistance totem for Novos. It'll make surviving the blizzard a lot easier.

[Multibocks]

Lot easier? Pssh, even with the totem you will still wipe... a lot.

[Gares]

yep I still haven't beaten him. Almost makes me want to craft 2 pieces of Ice Resist gear for the shammies only just for that fight because then they would have like 350+ frost res...lol should be good to go then.

[Hachoo]

Have you guys tried just running out of the blizzards? (Not strafing with your shamans, but actually running with your tank and having the shamans follow you?) Seems like this would work just fine to avoid a large majority of the damage, and healing stream totems would heal the little damage you did take back up.

[Zappy]

I've only wiped on that boss maybe three times and that was about 3 weeks ago before my gear has gotten better. The frost resistance totem will help mitigate the frost bolt and blizzard -- not by a lot, but every little bit counts. I've never died to the blizzard as you should be able to chain heal through that. You do have to be on top of the frost bolts though, so when Novas starts nuking one of your guys, you can press the appropriate macro to heal that one.

My gear is a little better now, but still not awesome by any means:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hakkar&n=Zappyzap

[puppychow]

I did this instance today and wiped once on Novos and killed him 2nd time. imo its a bit luck-based, the first time my healer got the curse, then the blizzard on top of him, then novos targeted him for frostbolt spam. he died and it led to a quick wipe. The second time my tank got the curse and the damage was spread out a bit more so I was able to heal through it all and kill him no problems.

Still, now that I've killed him once I'll just skip him and do trollgore/t-rex/skelley probably, Novos just isn't worth the waiting-around-for-adds and stuff for 1 extra badge.

I went to Halls of Stone and did the first two bosses easy, but the "event" wiped me twice and I gave up for now. I think I'm going to work on mastering UP next, I would love to get a blue proto drake mount (ANY PROTODRAKE! Stupid Oracle eggs just giving out crappy pets...)

[xtobbenx]

Never mind...Self deleted my post :P

[Multibocks]

I've only wiped on that boss maybe three times and that was about 3 weeks ago before my gear has gotten better. The frost resistance totem will help mitigate the frost bolt and blizzard -- not by a lot, but every little bit counts. I've never died to the blizzard as you should be able to chain heal through that. You do have to be on top of the frost bolts though, so when Novas starts nuking one of your guys, you can press the appropriate macro to heal that one.

My gear is a little better now, but still not awesome by any means:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hakkar&n=Zappyzap

You are wearing a lot of PvP gear so your health is pretty high, Im sure it helps when it comes to this boss. My guys have a lot of haste, but low health (only 15k) so this guy just wipes them out.

[Multibocks]

ok I finally beat this guy, heads up to those that suck (like me!) and cant kill him. I decided to go one battle without actually dpsing(just healing) and see what happened. Well my paladin RARELY if EVER got hit by the boss. Then I notice my chain heals were healing the same two people first! ARRRGGH. So then I hardcoded in the targetting to make sure it targets shaman only and DIFFERENT shaman(so tank only gets small heals from jumps). LOL I felt like an idiot when I realized that. So then I decided to go all healings totems and just remember to use my watershield buff every 15 secs or so. I never ran oom and never came close to it. I would rotate dps dps the chain heal. I also used the trick the original poster mentioned for positioning. The paladin supplied the cold resist. No shaman ever went below 50% with this setup and rotation. Oh just make sure to consecrate the ground to pick up adds (they hit for nothing, but it sucks when they are smacking your dps). I think I can reliably farm this guy everytime now.

Oh another thing, keep your dps right next to tank since aggro is not an issue in this fight (boss ignores the tank). It makes sure your tank gets healing jumps from chain heal and keeps all adds within consecrate range.

[Hachoo]

Ah, I figured you already had that set up when you were having probs. I use chain heal only to heal my shamans, so each shaman targets a different shaman - then my tank can either receive the jumps, or 99% of the time I use LHW to heal my tank. But yeah, frost resistance + 4x healing streams + DPS/DPS/Heal rotation + bloodlust + water shield + DnD/Consecrate makes this not too big of a deal IMO. More health on the shamans do help but when I took him down the first time they only had 13k health each (in fact they only have 14k now - but 17k mana - need a bit more health though I think).

[Multibocks]

No event that I have run yet had that healing intensive battle, so I never knew my shaman weren't targetting seperate shaman until now =)