Trial of the Crusader

Ran this the other night with a few friends (last week’s monsters), I two boxed my holy priest and one of my ele shammys. We got past Gormok but had problems on Acid Maw/Dreadscale.

Boxer Strats? Hmmm

Gormok, tank and spank EXCEPT the fire bombs and his kobold helpers.. Lots of individual toon movement to keep out of the fire. Kobolds jump on the backs of toons until you get Gormok down to a certain percentage. You have to burn the kobolds, keep out of the fire, and burn the boss. Got him down on attempt number 2.

Two worms! Two tanks required, we had one mostly Uld geared warrior and a Nax 25 DK. One worm stays stationary the other needs to be kited, they submerge and then swap strategies (the kited one now stays stationary, etc.). One person in the raid gets a fire debuff that is used to clear the poison that seems to be handed out like candy to the other raid members. This was a nightmare to box. Think grobulous but with a twist, the poison will hit anyone within range when initially cast (follow is a bad idea). The poison slows you, and ramps up over time until you get paralyzed completely for the remaining duration (looked to be about 45 seconds left). As soon as you get hit with the poison you need to run close to the person with the fire debuff to clear it. IMO this would be ultra impressive to successfully box at this point. I am sure over time this encounter will get tweaked, or someone will figure out ez-mode.

It was already late when we stepped in to try this... so we called it after 3 wipes on the worms. :rolleyes: I hear Icehowl is a bit simpler than the worms.

I have not done a huge amount of research into these fights, but I understand this is considered the Northrend Beasts sequence. Gormok, Worms, Icehowl.

Gratz on the first kill!

Thanks, but sadly you have to kill the entire set of them to get loot! :(

I might go back in with a single toon just to see the fights for now. It's a new week and my better half was in there last night for a new boss on 25man with her guild. I was busy speeding through heroics so I missed which one they did. Sounded complicated as well. Naxx feels like a walk in the park from a complexity standpoint.

Is it just me or are the raid boss strategies just getting more and more silly? Pat your head, rub your tummy, play the kazoo, wear the blindfold, and run a 100 yard hurdels.... look your having a great time! I guess that's one version of design progression.

We managed to down the twin worms last night, but only had 4 people up for Icehowl :(

So far boxing phase1 hasn't proved too difficult - for the Vassals we did a 2/3 split where 2 dps would focus on vassals and 3 would stay on boss.

Worms: Burned down acidmaw (sp?), getting the poison/fire debuff trading sorted out was our biggest issue. For me running 3 toons i just needed to be sure to stay somewhat spread out and out of the AE cone damage.

Icehowl: i was dead, but it looked pretty funny!

Agreed on the rub your tummy analogy stuff.

Straight tank 'n spank is a concern of course, but getting too gimmicky in mechanics designed to add complexity is a slippery slope. Pretty soon you're playing super mario instead of a MMORPG.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fursphere

I take it you never raided BWL and/or AQ40?

Or even AQ20 for that matter.

---

has absolutely nothing to do with trial of crusader

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zal

has absolutely nothing to do with trial of crusader

---

I think he was referring to the strategies not really being all that different than what was in AQ40 etc..

Hmm your right I got burned out on 40 man raiding prior to BWL being released... I did mess around in ZG and AQ20 a bit but that got old too. 10 man is about all I can put up with and only with good friends. I normally only run raids a few times to see the fights, but raid grinding meh I'll pass.

Anyway I suppose some of the AQ40 fights were similar, however I was not multi boxing back then. Thanks for bolstering my point about encounter design progression... or lack there of. :p No matter i just wanted to start a thread on the new content in case people are looking to figure it out.

Oh and grats to Dorffo, but yeah that fire / posion stuff is what I was reffering to as very not boxing friendly. Trying to clear it on multiple toons in the time allowed is tough.

How many stacks did the impale debuff get up to if you just did a straight tank and spank? Or did you still do the tank switching. We'd switch every 2-3 stacks, there was no way we could keep the tanks alive with much more than that.

Ah see... I forgot the tanks mentioning an imaple stack. To be honest the healing on Gormok was not that bad so it didn't stick out as something of note. I suppose they were swapping at 3.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kadaan

How many stacks did the impale debuff get up to if you just did a straight tank and spank? Or did you still do the tank switching. We'd switch every 2-3 stacks, there was no way we could keep the tanks alive with much more than that.

---

We had our tanks swapping at 2/3 - one of them was a bit overzealous and was stacking to 4-5 a couple times... at which point the healers started yelling.

imo since ulduar its better just solo boxing raids with friends, guildies, and pugs. i recently re-activated my shamans to solo heroics for badges for my main, but even still I find it just faster to pug the daily heroic many times (esp if its oculus or HOS or OK).

I've done the new 10/25 both bosses on 4 diff chars so far, they are pretty easy when solo boxing and you have decent people who can follow directions - the two tanks and at least 2 healers have to be very well (ulduar25) geared, but they are by no means DPS races. I wouldn't even want to try multiboxing them. Nice thing is three of my guys have won items so far, and the raids drop VERY nice items!

For first guy, only 4 or 5 snobolds drop and then no more drop (if you look closely, the snobolds are actually on his back at the start). When the snobolds stop the fires also stop. best strat is to have all dps switch to snobolds as they come up (mark with skull the current target) then burn boss. tanks switch every ~3 stacks.

For second guy, tank them both kinda close to each other but face the worms opp ways. People who turn green just run next to dreadmaw. Kill acidmaw first, healing the second tank through enrage is easy. Third guy is a joke, just don't stand in his way when he charges (hard if you are on follow though, since he stuns after knockback and one char will be thrown one way etc).

For second boss, its a lot of complexity but not too hard. DPS adds, purge/spellsteal boss, move out of fires, pretty easy to 1 shot.

The new 10/25 mans are supposed to be puggable in normal mode, its only heroic mode thats supposed to be difficult. I've had pretty good success with pugs so far, killed every boss up in both 10 and 25 on multiple chars.

the real problems i see in pdk 25 are
boss 1 p3 => react fast enough if one of your toons is in the way of mr charge and gather your toons fast enough to nuke him effective in the 200% dmg phase.

and twin valkyres ... click fast enough on the portal to get the right color might be a real bitch.


done some planning for the next id :

boss 1 p1 : spread a bit cuz of fire .. rest of time nuke snowbolt > nuke boss

boss 1 p2 : spread 10y+ cuz of the fire debuff wich dots everyone in 8y around its primary target , bossmod tuning for flashy if u get the posion debuff . i think moving will bis pretty hard in this phase when the worms go underground and chase players.

boss 1 p3 : i think the trick at this one is to stand exacly in ONE line with all your toons between the boss and the wall so all of em got stomped to the same position at the wall and can strafe out of the way if targetet. if the stomp direction is somewhat random this phase will be grobbolus 10 with 4 toons 2.0 ;/


boss 2 : as far as i understood ill be the heal debuff overheal bitch with all 4 shamans (one player gets a debuff : somewhat like heal me for 60k in 10 sec or i explode for 25k ae dmg). other abiltys arent that bad . all 60 sec one player gets a fire debuff and has to run away a bit (bossmod flashy for this one). some uberfireball has to be kicked and a magic buff with 10 stacks purged asap (someone said quad ele shaman?) cuz his lil cute chainlightning gets very uncute (lol 40k dmg) if he has the buff.


boss 3 : faction champions ... pvp .. quad ele shamans ... no problem at all :D

boss 4 : mrs pain in the ass ... 2 valkyres .. one white , one black . 2 portals who give white/black debuff wich increases your damage to the opposite valkyre by ~50% (the blobs can be ignored in normal mode 25) . the problem is you have to change the buff by clicking (it is not targetable .. no makro here guys;/) the portal several times in the fight when one of the valkyres starts to cast an massive ae wich do much much dmg to players with the wrong buff ( ie black valkyre casts , you have the white debuff and are to slow with swiching u will die ... it is healable if one player is to stupid to change .. but i doubt 3 or 4 chars will survive it) . the main problem is everyone runs to that portal if the ae starts + it has a tiny "clickable" area .. so it will be very hard to click in all 4 windows and broadcast mouse wont help i guess.

boss 5 isnt a problem at all for multiboxing .. u have to nuke adds/boss in p1 , when p2 start he goes underground and chases one player at a time wich has to run behind some ice on the ground (he is pretty slow @ normal mode so it isnt a problem) . if the boss hits the ice he takes another target . after 5 targets he engages again and p1 starts all over.

at 30% he starts to cast some lifeleech ae .. wich is ignored => ms @ boss and nuke nuke nuke for the loot.



so if u got a good guild or enough buddys and t7/t8 pve gear give it a shot (well forget 10boxing;D) .. its not as horrible boxing wise as ulduar was. i think pdk 10 would be much harder to box as 25 (higher chance to get targetet by special abilities)