Does the Skadi trick still work?

So I tried running Utgarde Pinnacle (normal) today. Up to Skadi the instance was cake. No deaths (or even close calls). My tank has 495 defense right now (hit 80 last night). I got to the Skadi fight and read up and saw that you can despawn the boss, run to the room at the very end of the hall, and then trigger the boss fight again and not have to deal with the ice/flames. So I tried this first - I even killed 4 harpoonists before despawning the boss to collect harpoons. I despawned the boss, ran my whole group down to the end of the hall, put my 4 shamans inside the little room the adds come from, ran my tank back down to Skadi until the encounter was triggered, and then started running furiously back to my DPS. This didn't work at all. Basically the SECOND the boss spawned the adds they instantly gibbed 2 of my DPS (not sure why they ignored the other 2). Second, the rest of them started charging down the hall which immediately aggrod my tank on his way back to the DPS - I probably could have survived long enough to get a heal, MAYBE, except they netted me and I got gibbed long before I could get to my DPS.

I decided to try running it the normal way and ALMOST made it - I got to the very last pull without even getting hit by the flames/ice, but then things kind of got messy and i lost some aggro, one of my DPS died, I panicked and got hit by the ice/flames and it was basically over. I think I could have avoided the last issue if I had used DnD to pick up all 3 aggro then ran my whole group over to the area next to the harpoons so I no longer had to worry about the flames, then taken down the guys. The fact that theres 2 casters isn't a big deal because of groundings. Another trick would have just been to run up and trinket/ele mastery/thunderstorm the last group which would have insta-killed them and brought my mana back to 100% before taking the boss down.

Anyway, once I died, I tried the first trick again and planted my DPS firmly in the back area and they still got instagibbed when the encounter started and my tank STILL got netted on the way back to the DPS. So, does this trick no longer work? And whats the best way to do this encounter with tank + 4 dps (with me controlling all 5) if so?

The trick (which still works) merely lets you avoid the freezing breaths, which imo are a joke anyways and not an issue for multiboxers. There is no way to avoid the adds, and you still need to pick up harpoons and "take down" the drake to bring out the boss Skadi. People like the "trick" because there is an achievement to kill the drake in 1 pass, and also to down the boss in 3 mins or less, and you can do both by collecting a bunch of harpoons, resetting, and doing it again.

This fight is frankly horrible for a single person, I have found it infinitely easier just running the gauntlet normally than trying to do the trick. The trick works best with multiple people since one person can aggro and run, the tank can focus just on tanking, and the others can focus on AOEing/healing and harpooning at the right time (you only have like 6 seconds to harpoon so timing is critical).

imo this is an instance that just really wants you to be overgeared for it as a multiboxer, it is quite difficult to tank, heal, aoe, DPS, AND shoot harpoons (while dodging breath trails) as a single person. I have done it once in normal and never going back, not even gonna try in heroic until my whole team is in full epics. Its ridiculously hard in heroic mode, as are the two bosses before it (for a single multiboxer). I think 495 def may be a bit low by the way, not sure if that gets you to uncrittable at 80. I did it a few days ago at 545 def, 24k hp prot pally and my shamans had 1300sd (unbuffed).

Yeah 495 is not uncrittable but more than enough for a non heroic instance. My tank actually had almost no issues and was actually the last one alive (with full health) when my shamans all died LOL.

I'm up to 515 now and climbing, once I hit 535 I will try my first Heroic. Guess if I do UP again I'll do this event the regular way, but yes on heroic no way I'll try it unless I'm heavily overgeared I suppose.

I leave the tank with 3 dps i n the last room and run a dps to aggro the boss. Soon as boss aggros I whip him around 180 degrees and hit autorun. If you point him towards the harpoons you should be ok. Then I immediately move to my tank and start healing as he will be first to get beat on. However I'm thinking that running this normally is the way to go. I just can't seem to keep my tank up with that many beating on him. He's uncrittable, but 12+ mobs on him is pretty hard to heal and if you heal too much they go after your healer. This was on heroic btw.

I tried that twice and it didn't work. Way too many mobs on my tank.

The only "trick" that i use on Skadi is to wall hug the right side (of the chain "fence"). You will never be hit from the Dragon's frost. Just slowly work your way up, making sure to redrop totems after you've gone around the pillars.

Save up all 5 harpoons before you fire them, just let the spear guys spawn and run to you. When he's in range fire them all (you may have to move to different spearguns to do it faster). Skadi is ridiculously easy.

Oh, and kill the Caster mobs ASAP (IIRC, they have a glowing heart), they will eat up groundings in a few seconds and they hurt like hell.

I tried the "trick" to see if it worked better than the normal way and I do prefer the normal way, but the trick works fine. I've only done Pinnacle on heroic, never on normal, but I assume the same applies. Basically, I had my tank stand where the mobs spawn and the dps/healer a bit away from that. I made sure that consecrate was up once the encounter started. The mobs aggroed me and it took a good bit of healing but I managed to get it done, although tanking, healing and dps'ing all while running another char down to start the event and back was more stressfull than doing the event the normal way, so I'd recommend this procedure only for the achievement.