Trial of the Crusader

[offive]

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. 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.

[Lyonheart]

Gratz on the first kill!

[offive]

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.

[Dorffo]

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!

[Greythan]

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.

[Zal]

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

[heffner]

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..

[offive]

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. 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.

[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.

[Dorffo]

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.