[3.2 PTR] Trials of the Crusader, normal mode, 5-box; [updated with kills]

So I decided to mess around on the PTR a bit to see how the new 5-man stacks up against boxing.. and the result wasn't nice.

I only did two attempts before seeing what the problems were with boxing it, and since I'd fraps'd the second attempt I decided to share my failure with you all.. and in the process hopefully come up with a workable strat to overcome the first event.

For those that dont know, the first event is a scripted jousting debacle, exactly the same as the Argent tournament dailies. There are three waves of 3 trash elites (75k hp each) then 3 bigger elites (190k hp each) that you have to joust to death. Not sure if there is anyone after that.. I kept failing during the 3 'boss' elite's as you can see in the vid.

The trash is dead simple, you can usually burst one to death in about 2 seconds when the wave starts, but the other two take alot longer due to them always being close.. you cant get to a valid charging distance. So it involves alot of thrusting (er.) and running about to try and gain some distance.

Anyway, the thing that I failed on at the end was that the 3 miniboss guys, once you kill them, need to continue to be trampled or they get back on a horse and rejoin the fight.. as you can see in this vid i failed to coordinate successive trampling and got pwned when Zulgore rejoined. And also they were focussing some of my guys faster than i could get shields up on them, so they lost their horse, and got pummelled by mounted bad guys..

Maybe the strat is just to be more coordinated and jumping off a near-dead horse for a new one quick enough, or maybe not running as much and trying to get some distance and sheildbreak+charge more. Not sure.

Anyway, take a look at the vid and let me know any comments, I'd be interested to hear how other boxers would handle this event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3poh0AZzM

(It only completed uploading about 30 mins ago, so you'll have to wait for YT to finish its processing to get full quality, I uploaded it at 1280x720@25fps)


Edit: Rewatching it myself, I wonder if i could just dismount and straight-up tank/dps the last three.. the damage im taking at the end when im dismounted and stunned isnt that big.. easily healable (esp when blocking/dodging etc). So quick dismount, weapon switch, tank/spank. Something I'll have to try tomorrow I guess.

In before Keyclone ninja embeds it :)

Thanks for sharing this. I haven't gone to the PTR yet to try it because I think it will likely be changed.

I hav an idea. Why not put all your toons in a circle, facing toward the center. Then you don't move at all and just spam (in order) 2 (throw spear), 1 (melee blow) and 4 (shield up). This way if your toon is far from the target, will throw the spear, damaging a lot, if he is close enough, he will melee and shield up.
This should make a quick work of the trash. For the big ones..as soon as one dies you could move one of your toons of top of it for a quick trample.
Maybe it works?

I suspect we'll have a way to do this multiboxed before too long. Consider heroic Oculus. ;)

Other videos I've seen of this, the mobs are dying a LOT faster. It seems maybe your other toons are barely hitting them maybe? Hard to see what's going on.

Also there's no need to dismount to get on a new horse, you can just click and hop on a new one (I bet an interact keybind would work as well...)

You need to break autofollow and tank with 1 horse, charge with the other 4( a 2nd autofollow key is handy here, one that only includes your 4 shamans, not your tank ). Autofollow is not your friend here, you should have 4 horses constantly charging the mobs while 1 horse tanks, your "tank" will change often due to the amount of dmg the chargers do. If you absolutely can't handle changing mains rapidly then you could probably kite them around with autofollow like your doing but at the very least your followers could be doing a lot more thrusting from what I see in this video, their doing nada 90% of the fight while you try to solo it with 1 dude.

Some interesting ideas guys.. and yea i suck at vehicle combat which is why it seems like the shammies are doing nothing hehe.

I did one attempt tonight and managed to get them down, mainly by dropping their follow, running ahead, getting them all to charge, then either turning them all so they can charge again, or gather them up using follow then dropping follow again.

i did run into one funny moment where two of them charged themselves straight out of the instance.. i had to run them back in and get them back on horses whilst trying to make sure the 3 left inside didnt die..

I managed to fluke dismounting all 3 minibosses, but with one of my guys already dead, and having lances equipped, i quickly died.

Now the good news.. Once you dismount them they dont despawn, they just hang around waiting for you to re-engage them. Awesome.

So I came back in, equipped all my proper weapons and killed them fairly easily. I didnt fraps the jousting component because i figured I'd fail and i was just trying a few different things..

Currently working on the second boss, ive just been unlucky thus far, and my failed attempts are no where near as interested as my failed jousting.. will post a vid once they're all down.

Thanks for working on this and sharing your strats.

If you figure anything great out let us know, could save us all a lot of trouble.

The "don't get on horses at all" strategy might work. I know that's how I've done it on the jousting dailies.

Just finished uploading the vid of downing all the bosses.

Disclaimer: I didnt research the bosses before going in and I could have made it easier on myself if I did; since I didnt know what to expect. Most of these kills are 2nd or 3rd attempts (which is why the 3 packs of 3 priest-type mobs before the second boss is not shown). X-Perl is currently majorly broken with 3.2 which is my unitframe mod of choice.. I had to search for a 3.2 compatible one and found Perl Classic.. which I hate, which had an impact on me being aware of what was going on with HP etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxMGAcUpkH0&fmt=22
Cant work out how to embed.. but if someone does.. make sure it's the correct aspect ratio. That little one up there doesnt do it justice ;)

Some notes:

* Will need to make a macro to equip main weapon once all 3 bosses are trampled, lances dont help dps one bit. Also probably help to have a macro to equip lance (same macro maybe?)
* Had orientation issues with my guys during the ground-phase of the first 3 boss trio, one of their abilities sends them walking short distances in a random direction (dont think it was fear based).
* Had to stack my guys for Paletress (2nd boss) since she drops a fear and they can scatter.
* The "Memory Of .." mob which spawns during Paletress receives a renew which I only noticed when playing the video back post-kill. Can probably (hopefully) be purged to result in a quicker kill.
* Black knight encounter was fairly easy so long as decent AOE is present for the army of the dead. The other phases were dead easy.

I've not tried heroic thus far.. I'll do norm a couple more times, maybe fraps a successful jousting run and then attempt heroic. But if it hits live as-is.. its 5 free ilvl 200 epics per run without a 24 hour lockout (i reset and went back in). Thats some crazy gear normalisation headed our way.


One last thing, I checked out the possibility of just not jousting and killing the last 3 whilst they were still mounted.. you'd need at least one horse up to break their shields, 3 stacks = 90% reduction in damage taken, so it just doesnt seem like it would be very efficient. I'm sure with practice the jousting event will become easymode.