Cata - Throne of the Tides

[Kalros]

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our new "Old Kingdom" and "Halls of Stone" all wrapped into one shit-fest of an instance!

Wiped a couple times on trash, particularly the guys that pull everyone in and immediately one-shot casters. Crowd Control was used at times, particularly big groups that had healers in them.

First boss: I kept all DPS and heals together, and positioned the tank so I could see them at all times. When the blue "thing" appeared, I just strafed out of it with everyone. The hardest part for me was controlling the adds. At times I couldnt gather them all up with the tank before they started killing my DPS. Eventually I was able to use a combination of Death Grip and Strangulate to get the casters to the tank (sorry all you non-DK tanks). Eventually I got him, but it was ugly. Many wipes.

Second boss: Easiest boss in the x-pac so far. Tank and Spank, move out of the void zone. Collect loot.

Third Boss: Wiped several times on this one as well. As with the first boss, I kept heals/DPS together so I could dodge the earth shatter AoE thing he did. At 50% he becomes the mind control creature. I did NOT use the kiting method, I simply let him mind control someone and burned that person down (he stops when they hit 50%). Throughout the 2nd phase he will cast these big AoE clouds. Get everyone out of those ASAP. Seems as though you cannot cast at all if you're in the cloud.

Final Boss: Ugh. The first 2 phases are a gauntlet. Phase 1 is fairly easy. Pull all mobs, burn them down. In phase 2 you get 3 Suppressors that spawn in addition to these bloodbeasts that will continually spawn. You need to DPS down the suppressors, keep the bloodbeasts away from the heals/DPS, and stay out of the black stuff. Its alot of moving, and quite frankly a pain in the ass. Phase 3 is simple once you can actually get the boss on target. You get a huge growth buff, but also a quickly stacking debuff, and the idea is to burn down the boss before the debuff kills you. This is teh best time for Heroism (Bloodlust for you Horde scum).

I will NOT be doing this place again until around 82.

[Mortrem]

I feel like crying allready at the sound of this place.

[Kalros]

2 other important tips:

1 - Make sure you have the latest version of DBM, at least on your main toon. It tells you when you need to interrupt certain spells. Which leads right into my other tip ..................

2 - Make sure your spell interrupts (Counterspell, Windshear, Mind Freeze, etc) are hotkeyed and ready to go. You'll need them.

[Kalros]

Ok, did the zone again at 81. Not AS bad, but the last boss/gauntlet can still be a pain in the ass.

[d0z3rr]

Are you in Cataclysm greens?

[Kalros]

Nah, all Lich King 251 and 264 gear

[Slats]

Cleared as well using Prot Pally, Resto Shaman, 3x Elemental Shaman. In a mix of 251/264 and some 232 gear on Shamans and mostly 264+ gear on Paladin. Didn't need CC at all, ran through the gauntlet, collected everything up and used Earthquake to smash it all.

I have a toggle key that swaps between single target DPS/tanking and AoE dps/tanking. I made use of this often. My 4x Orcs became 4x Goblins and my Belf Pally became a Tauren. Definitely this instance is harder than BRC by a decent margin but still quite easy once you get the mechanics down.

No dungeon quests to do though similar to Nexus in that you require to unlock them by doing the associated zone. If you want to jump to 45% of the level straight up go and do BRC and all its quests, remembering to open your quest log and hit the 'Complete Quest' button.

[Slats]

2 other important tips:

1 - Make sure you have the latest version of DBM, at least on your main toon. It tells you when you need to interrupt certain spells. Which leads right into my other tip ..................

2 - Make sure your spell interrupts (Counterspell, Windshear, Mind Freeze, etc) are hotkeyed and ready to go. You'll need them.

This is one thing I had forgotten to setup was my RR Windsheer. I am also using DXE instead of DBM and am just using the normal alerts the encounter gives me - also using TidyPlates Nameplates which show aggro and casting bars/spell icons easily enough and highlight when something can be interrupted.

Def. going to put RR Windsheer back on a good key.

[Enoah35]

Just done with my team of 82s. Group configuration were Prot Paladin, Destro Warlock, Arcane Mage, Disc Priest and Elemental Shaman. I used CCs mainly on packs of mobs which had 2 healers.

Using 251s mostly with bits and pieces of quest reward greens and blues. I had 1 wipe on 1st boss, 1 wipe on 3rd boss and 1 wipe on final boss. thankfully no deaths on trash but the twin colossus were just a pain in the @ss, the casters barely made it out alive.

First, third and final bosses require alot of moving, specially the final boss. had few deaths but managed to squeeze the dps to clear the instance. Of course I am 82 and fully finished Vash zone now, so can't say it could be usefull if you are level 80. Hp surely starts to feel more important to survive some encounters.

[Mooni]

Its alot of moving, and quite frankly a pain in the ass.

That's all y'all need to know.

[Mooni]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
@#$y^(@u#$*y@*#$%ytq#$ygq@*#$y*qw#$y

[Sophie Hart]

coooool...and thanks a lot for the tips...starting from scratch of coursee

[remanz]

Probably not worth my effort anymore as melee for this instance, it delays my leveling too much. I somehow manage to down the first boss. and wipe a ton on the easiest boss of all instances (the smash cast time is short, when you see him casting it will be too late for melee to run out, need to watch timers, took me 80g x 5 to know that). There came the 3rd boss, frikin bloody melee range AOE again. I wiped a couple more. Decided to call it.

I just don't see melees can do heroic when hitting 85 unless they nerf heroic and buff gear significantly.

[Kalyse]

I can't do it at all. I'm not even going to bother returning here. The final boss is too hard.

Unless I misunderstand the tactics, I just can't DPS when the stage of the black inks starts. Am I suposed to DPS here or just run away from the black slude all the time, cause if I have to run away and DPS this is impossible

[howster]

I did this instance yesterday with my team aswell.. The trash you were talking about that pulls the group and those goblin trash were annoying. The worst part in that instance was the last boss for me.. Not sure how many wipes i had there. But once your at phase 3 its just cake. Worst part was phase two.. so much aoe happening, but i found it "easiest" to mainly kite the mobs that spawn and take my time to dps down the channelers.
Annoying instance to box at level 81 atleast.

[Kalyse]

howster: Can you please explain the stages? What am I suposed to do at the stage when there is black ink everwhere?

[howster]

I can't do it at all. I'm not even going to bother returning here. The final boss is too hard.

Unless I misunderstand the tactics, I just can't DPS when the stage of the black inks starts. Am I suposed to DPS here or just run away from the black slude all the time, cause if I have to run away and DPS this is impossible

Run away from the black inks. they do eventually alot of aoe damage.

[howster]

howster: Can you please explain the stages? What am I suposed to do at the stage when there is black ink everwhere?

Sure... Phase one is ez mode.. just kill the spawns. Stay away when the big mob do he's "special attack thing" at around 25% hp.
Phase two... I mainly focused to dps down the channelers.. I tried to kill one by one but that ended up in a wipefest. What i did was kiting those mobs that spawns to guard those channelers.. they dont run as quick as you so when your at a distance dps the channeler next to you. Then run away again when they get close.. Rince and repeat till you killed the channelers.

Phase three. The mobs you kited are still there, but now you get an awesome buff that made my dps do around 300k dps. aoe those adds down and start attacking the main boss. (He's the big octopus that sucks on the glasswall.. You dont take much damage in this phase so it should be an easy match with a few heals here and there.

This tact made me finally get the instance completed.
Hope it helps.

[Zappy]

Probably not worth my effort anymore as melee for this instance, it delays my leveling too much. I somehow manage to down the first boss. and wipe a ton on the easiest boss of all instances (the smash cast time is short, when you see him casting it will be too late for melee to run out, need to watch timers, took me 80g x 5 to know that). There came the 3rd boss, frikin bloody melee range AOE again. I wiped a couple more. Decided to call it.

I just don't see melees can do heroic when hitting 85 unless they nerf heroic and buff gear significantly.

I couldn't get the third boss down due to not enough time to monkey with it, but my 2nd attempt I got him to 55%, so I'm sure it's possible as melee. The other 3 bosses are quite easy after you learn the fight for our makeup of DK/rets.

For first boss, DPS like normal (i was using seal of truth) and cleanse that crap she puts on you. It's more of a matter of moving out of the way of the blue water spout - when you get to the next phase, grip one of the casters, and strangulate the other, now kill them both while they are together and either round robin your arcane torrents or hammers. after you kill the melee, she'll go back to normal, dps again until the next transformation, pop wings and knock the crap out of the casters and then it's a simple tank and spank.

2nd boss is quite easy as well - pull him with D&D and face him opposite of your paladins and press IWT once - don't spam it, and they should stay behind him. When he casts his slam, walk your DK through him, then reposition him again to where you can dps him normally. He only slams a frontal cone, so as long as your paladins don't run wild and stay behind him, it's a quick tank and spank fight.

3rd boss - use seal of insight as the self heals make it a lot easier. dps a little and keep moving him every time he starts to cast that earth crap.

4th boss is actually the easiest one in here for our make up. You should have little to no issues getting to the last phase. Once you get to the last phase, pick one of the three casters and go to town. If you can get him to 66% or even 50%, you're good, then move on to the next making a circle around them. You can ignore the other adds entirely as they don't hit very hard and move very slow. I threw down and occasional D&D and BB to keep aggro on my tank. By the time you get back to the 1st one, all the dots on the ground should be gone, so it's simply just running a big circle between all 3. Then once you reach the final stage, you'll need to run directly to omhat (or whatever his name is) for some reason IWT wouldn't run to him. Wings or not, you'll have him dead before the dots do any real damage.


After this fight I finally hit 82 so I went back to my shammys and got them up to 81. Thinking more about this fight and other fights that'll probably be just as similiar, i'm thinking I'm going to bind an alternate IWT keybind so when I spam, my paladins will IWT and my tank will walk backwards. I think that should make a lot of these stupid movement fights a lot easier.

[remanz]

3rd boss - use seal of insight as the self heals make it a lot easier. dps a little and keep moving him every time he starts to cast that earth crap.

4th boss is actually the easiest one in here for our make up. You should have little to no issues getting to the last phase. Once you get to the last phase, pick one of the three casters and go to town. If you can get him to 66% or even 50%, you're good, then move on to the next making a circle around them. You can ignore the other adds entirely as they don't hit very hard and move very slow. I threw down and occasional D&D and BB to keep aggro on my tank. By the time you get back to the 1st one, all the dots on the ground should be gone, so it's simply just running a big circle between all 3. Then once you reach the final stage, you'll need to run directly to omhat (or whatever his name is) for some reason IWT wouldn't run to him. Wings or not, you'll have him dead before the dots do any real damage.



Zappy, I knew you were going to come up with something creative as always, lol. Good tip on SOI. I was gonna convert 1 to holy and give it a try. But I will try Seal of Insight first.

[remanz]

I did it. I can sleep well tonight. dk rets comes through again.
SOI made a difference. but probably mainly sitll just positioning. Cant eat his frontal fire AOE.
and Last boss is not hard.

[Kalyse]

Sure... Phase one is ez mode.. just kill the spawns. Stay away when the big mob do he's "special attack thing" at around 25% hp.
Phase two... I mainly focused to dps down the channelers.. I tried to kill one by one but that ended up in a wipefest. What i did was kiting those mobs that spawns to guard those channelers.. they dont run as quick as you so when your at a distance dps the channeler next to you. Then run away again when they get close.. Rince and repeat till you killed the channelers.

Phase three. The mobs you kited are still there, but now you get an awesome buff that made my dps do around 300k dps. aoe those adds down and start attacking the main boss. (He's the big octopus that sucks on the glasswall.. You dont take much damage in this phase so it should be an easy match with a few heals here and there.

This tact made me finally get the instance completed.
Hope it helps.

I don't quite know the phases, but which one is the ink phase? And what should I do in that one? I am running 1 Pally 4 Shamans, and can't stop at any time else I die. If its a simple case of constantly running away for four minutes, then I can do it.. but if I have to kill also I can't do it? I'm level 82 on all my guys also.

[dragoneye]

First off, i have the shammies follow my pal tank the entire way. I found this works well for me. I just move when there's ink to a safe spot. It's not the LK ink so there time to move. I use magma totems for P1.

I found a good thing to do is to save the fire elems when the 3 adds spawn in P2. i dont even bother moving my tank to the channelers, i just dps down the ones the elementals are not on, and then down them one by one. For the ink,

There will be one mob that is melee and I wait for that one to tank and take him down.

Once in P3 and you become buffed, I just pop all the CDs and dps, i think i had to chain heal once.

I cleared it while still at level 80 in roughly 264 avg gear. Let me know if that's worth a shot. Oh and I update the screenshots here: 5box.blog.com

[howster]

I don't quite know the phases, but which one is the ink phase? And what should I do in that one? I am running 1 Pally 4 Shamans, and can't stop at any time else I die. If its a simple case of constantly running away for four minutes, then I can do it.. but if I have to kill also I can't do it? I'm level 82 on all my guys also.

Ink Phase is 2nd phase. my dps is shamans too. It takes some time to get the channelers down but it worked to the end for me.

Oh... once you get the buff. (When you get really big) just drop magma totems and those adds that spawn should die in a second.

[howster]

First off, i have the shammies follow my pal tank the entire way. I found this works well for me. I just move when there's ink to a safe spot. It's not the LK ink so there time to move. I use magma totems for P1.

I found a good thing to do is to save the fire elems when the 3 adds spawn in P2. i dont even bother moving my tank to the channelers, i just dps down the ones the elementals are not on, and then down them one by one. For the ink,

There will be one mob that is melee and I wait for that one to tank and take him down.

Once in P3 and you become buffed, I just pop all the CDs and dps, i think i had to chain heal once.

I cleared it while still at level 80 in roughly 264 avg gear. Let me know if that's worth a shot. Oh and I update the screenshots here: 5box.blog.com

You got the trinket too :P
It will prolly never drop on my ret team.

[Tyval]

Made it through today at lvl 82, tried last night a few times but was failing on the first boss and was tired so figured a fresh brain could only help.

I consider myself with much much to learn with regards to boxing so figured my trials might help those that are in a similar position (sucky but learning : ).

First boss, avoiding the spout of course is the biggest thing, The other thing I did , partly for practice but also seemed to make it easier was sheeping one of the magic user adds. just makes it easier on healing. I was having power issues my first time in on my priest.

When I made my primary emphasis to avoid spouts, dps second, fight got much easier, sometimes I get to focused on dpsing not on avoiding dmg. The sheeping also seemed to help, and was good practice as I have never CC'd before.

Second boss, easy so nothing to add here.

Third boss. I got this one on the second time, but struggled with it (lost a few). Things seemed pretty easy until the MC part. First time my healer got MC, and didnt' have any good healing set up on my shaman so things didn't go well. Second time through things went better but far from smooth. Main issue I had is my team getting kind of spread out, and sometimes it seemed I spent all my time running out of the gas clouds..

4th boss, Cleared on second try as well. I did what was outlined above on phase two, I would dps down till had to move for ink, then move to next. Also towards the end I had lots of adds, so had to run a bit to avoid them Was getting dicey in terms of losing someone but got third down just in time before I lost anyone.

had some questions though.

On the 3rd fight how does one stop the mind control from happening exactly? is it kiting away from the guy doing the MC so it breaks, and when it does he will run towards you and then try and MC again? I struggled with this one as at some times between the absorption shield and the gas I found I wasn't dpsing that much, I think my fight time was around 5 mins...

[dragoneye]

Hi all,

Went ahead and frapped today's run on the final boss. not a perfect run because I lost track of the giant octopus and debuffs stacked a bit high, by no means perfect but worth a share. Would love to hear more ideas to perfect the strat as well!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWPufw2ImBc

[Gomotron]

Congrats to the folks that are getting this instance down.

I am still stuck on the first boss, half due to my stupidity and the other half due to my lack of multiboxing "chops".

Still, I was getting hammered by the first boss in BRC and now I can down him easily, so I continue to plug away.

[Janus]

The first boss is killing me, literally

I have a mixed team with all sorts of CC, and my DPS is not an issue (I am averaging ilvl 350 on my toons) it's all the movement in the watersprout phase :(

Anyone has any words of wisdom here ? It would be great

[Toned]

You absolutely have to dodge the water spouts.

Then during the transition you MUST CC the casters, or dps 1 and cc the other. While the tank holds threat on the kill caster + melee add.

I forget the exact name of the adds, but I made macros /target AddName /cast Hex on my shamans. I had 2 shamans more to the left during the transition so that they'd target the left, and the other 2 targeted the right.
You could also use /targetenemy considering the casters generally spawn off to the sides.

[Janus]

You absolutely have to dodge the water spouts.



I know :( but what's the best way to do that ? Micromanage the slaves? Have them on follow on the tank and drive the tank ?

The problem with CC is that the 2 casters have the same name so my shammy/mage end up cc'ing/breaking cc when I mash the cc button. What's the trick there ? I tried rooting the melee add with my druid but he appears to be immune

Thanks for the feedback. Are the remaining bosses as annoying as her to mbox?

[Kekkerer]

There is a video of this instance under Movies, have a look.

[Dorffo]

...

[Janus]

There is a video of this instance under Movies, have a look.

of the heroic version ?

I only found nolife's clear of the normal dungeon

[Janus]

Downed Naz'Jar on heroic.
Here is the killshot. Movie to follow :D

http://s4.postimage.org/fzqmvtyz/Wo_WScrn_Shot_033011_221403.jpg] (http://postimage.org/image/38cgpbdw/full/)
http://postimage.org/image/38cgpbdw/

[nobodyz]

congrats to you guys man! I really gonna give it to those who done this instance. I tried yesterday on (all 81 some cata green and some wotlk blue + a few heroic blue/purple) my prot warrior, arcane mage, resto shaman + 2x ele shaman.. I actually wiped 3 times on the mobs.. wiped on the first group, wiped 2 times on the 2nd single mob that keeps shooting green poison and kills my toons so damn fast... and wipe a third time on the 2nd such guy... i was so pissed and gave up eventually.. nv though it would b such a pain in the ass.. i guess i might come back when im 85.. seems cata is not as mbox friendly as i though... :( literally wanted to cry.....

[Setith]

Hi, I have record heroic run this dungeon :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHx0lkXxVAA

[remanz]

Does anyone know the names of those adds for the first boss ? Maybe I can target them by name. auto CC them.

[Zub]

Does anyone know the names of those adds for the first boss ? Maybe I can target them by name. auto CC them.
Naz'jar Honor Guard (http://www.wowhead.com/npc=40633) and Naz'jar Tempest Witch (http://www.wowhead.com/npc=44404) ?

[remanz]

awesome, let me try that out.

i will auto hex / repen both of them. I was close on just brute forcing it. Heal through all the damages. Then the tornado fucks me up every time since my team (all melees, including the healer) are all bunched up.

[Cptan]

/tar Naz'jar Tempest Witch

/tar Naz'jar Honor Guard

[remanz]

Well the macro didn't bloody work for some reason. I just brute forced it. Dodged all the things on screen. Strangulate + Death Grip the 2 witches, Completely ignore the melee add. Blood DK 's buff is very very noticable. Death strike hits hard and heal more. Armor buff is also great.

finally finished TOT for the first time with my all melees team. Only the first boss is hard. For the last boss, can solo with DK tank in phase 3. 1 Death Strike, I get like half of my hp back.