Freehold

To try and stimulate some discussion of trinity comp strategies, here are my notes from my initial Mythic +0 run of Freehold. I use a blood dk/resto druid/BM Hunterx3 composition.

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On a fundamental level, this instance is pretty straightforward, with easy enough trash and pretty easy-to-understand bosses.However, the problem is that when the bosses go wrong, they almost immediately cascade out of control, and RNG elements don't help manage this.


Skycap'n Kragg: Phase one is incredibly straightforward: Igroup up the entire team and just sidestep out of the boss's telegraphed charge.


Phase two is a bit harder. I spread the team widely and position the boss roughly in the centre, so that his Azerite Powder Shot only hits one character. Then, when vile bombardments creates bad under somebody or sharkbait tries to divebomb somebody, I move the entire formation slightly to the right. When I run out of space, I move back a bit, then go left and make adjustments so nobody ends up standing in bad. Interrupting the boss' heal is,of course, really important.

EDIT: With another couple of kills on this guy, I actually find it much less chaotic to spread the team evenly around the encounter area pre-pull, mark each team member to be able to quickly identify each then manually move them each out of the bad with a quick window shift. Makes P1 slightly harder, but P1 is easy.


Council o' Captains: Not sure it matters a great deal which captain is on your side: the fight is a bit of a clown fiesta regardless. This is one where I have everybody on follow and desperately kite the boss around,weaving out of mechanics when necessary. If Raoul is up, nuking the blackout barrel is incredibly important.


I generally try to nuke Eudora to death first: Grapeshot is a lot of difficult-to-avoid damage and the fact we are moving around most of the time makes it difficult to heal up. Resto Druid is an MVP here: Rejuvenation +Photosynthesis does a great job of keeping everybody up alongside Swiftmend for spot healing whilst remaining 100% mobile.


I believe it will be easiest when Eudora is on your side: Thestun doesn't require you to do anything special to take advantage and itremoves grapeshot as a factor. I believe this will be happening next week.


Ring of Booty: An incredibly easy fight on normal mode. The chum mechanic makes it significantly more prone to catastrophic meltdown. My strategy is my standard one: have everyone follow the tank and run around like a madman. This makes normal-mode RoB the easiest normal mode boss in the game,as the sharks aren't fast enough to do anything, and Shark Tornado (inexplicably not called Sharknado) is incredibly easy to dodge it you are mobile.


On mythic, however, they are incredibly quick and need to get kited through the chum. Note: The chum slows you, but doesn't actually do damage. Sadly, if you just go and stand in the chum, the shark doesn't seem to eat the chum when he lands on top of it. The shark actually has to move INTO the chum in order to hit the trigger for him to eat it. This requires a bit of finesse, positioning yourself so that when a shark gets thrown out, you can immediately step through some chum so he chases you into it. Once he does so,its easy. The problem is that if it goes wrong, it goes wrong really quickly:as you are all stacked up, the shark tends to kill the entire ranged stack at once. Immunities (like Turtle) might help mitigate errors.


I get the feeling this fight might be a little bit like an easier Serpentrix this expansion: difficult to get the hang of initially, but a strategy that I can execute flawlessly later in the expansion once I've had some practice. I'm also giving serious thought to gathering an Azerite set for each character that has a movement speed bonus on each one. With Mythic+0 gear,it should be about a 15% increase to base movement speed, if your stats are high enough, and fights like this one might very well be a LOT easier with it.


Harlan Sweete: Easy. I position the ranged group in a stack well away from the pile of gold, and tank him somewhere in the middle. When the cannon barrage comes out, I move the ranged group as a unit to the side, then forward, then to the other side and so on to cause the flames to fill the back of the area. By stacking the entire group up, the buff he gets at 60% doesn't make a huge difference. If the swiftwind saber happens to be going towards the ranged stack, by positioning as far from Sweete as possible gives the most time to dodge. In addition, when the adds spawn, it gives you as much time as possible to nuke them down.


On high tyrannical keys, the tank damage that he does upon reaching 30% is going to be crazy. Bloodlust and external tank cooldowns will need to be saved for this moment.

My experience is on a 5x prot pala team, haven't tried switching one or more to healing, no need to.


- freehold:
Trash: Lots of it. on the way to the last boss you have to wait for CDS. if ravagers get a cast out its pretty much over. Blinding light is your best friend and will make some of pulls extremely easy.

- Kragg:

lots of healing and pre casting HOF is the way to go, you have to taunt cycle and use cooldowns to deal as much damage as possible, then switch to running around and healing. all cds + hero is a must to get that 25% hp down fast before the charges ruin you. (we have to take it on all alts.)

- council

so far i did Raoul and Eudora as allies. Roul is the hardest, he does nothing for you since you cant take his buffs due to movement requirements, so might as well not be there. the trick is using CDs to bait the flying scimitar into a fast reset, otherwise the damage it does, paired with other AOE will kill you really easy. Jolly is a real pain to deal with, next weeks he should be the Allie so it will be an easy week.

- Ring

only hard fight is the ogre, those sharks are VERY annoying, and once he spawns them you have to just run around and focus on staying alive, no way you can tank that damage. tyrannical week will end you. all cds should be up along with hero, so the trick is to do as much damage as possible before the sharks force you into running around taunt swapping and eventually killing him with swirling hammer damage...

- Harlan

very easy. its easy for us to stack the bombardments and as tanks we can easily survive the suicide bomber(ignore him). just dont get knocked back into the fire or it will be a one shoot.

the trick is to burst him with CDs, and then controlling your damage so you only enter last phase when cds are ready again. on last phase taunt swap and rely on judgement healing to recover alts, save hand for damage spikes.

Freehold +6 in season 4, affixes weren't too bad.
https://youtu.be/TuXp-IX0dio

Freehold +11 complete in Season 4. Would have been in time but from the video I realized on the shark boss my hunters were not shooting (I forgot to repair!). Missed the timer by a few minutes due to it. It's also super important to click the portal to the Awakened bosses at the same time and make sure your not in combat prior. None the less - it was worth it and fun.

https://youtu.be/690rhgBtjQM

I just ran Freehold yesterday for my first 120 dungeon and couldn't get past Cap'n lol... first time I have ever tried it obviously but watching these videos helps SOOOOOO much for me and strats. My ilvl on my tank is 320, so tryign to work on getting geared before I run them any more. Please keep posting more and more dungeons, I love it. You have some serious skill, I'll be there someday soon!

320 ilvl is pretty tough! I'd definitely run a bunch of world quests and do the storylines to get some easier pieces of gear. You'll be there too!

Soon brother.... check PM plz

woiw nice ellay so u use a prot pally 3 DH and the shammy,, shammy just for the Heroism?

The Shammy is good for heroism, but also brings to the table easy group heals. I think a different healer may work better but I'm still on the fence. I need to try others.


Additionally I did a +10 this week, with the worst affix possible QUAKING.

Alright, I decided to make a new team. a Melee team. I had no idea it was going to be this powerful so quickly. My ilvl is literally 435~, which going from that to my main team which is 465~ is a massive difference.
I did a +8 not even thinking I could complete it. I'm really liking this team!! 4x Blood DK and a Holy Paladin. My overall goal was to get this team to maybe do a +10, I think that seems quite possible :)




Also.. I had an extra empty slot on my screen so I added a face cam.. :)