As promised, here’s my guide to Thorim. We beat our head against this guy so many times learning him that I understand half of our healers are off with mild concussions.
Essentially, the fight has two phases. In the first phase, roughly half of you will be working through a gauntlet to reach Thorim, who’s gleefully standing up out of reach and shocking people below in the arena. Those people will be busy handling an ever increasing number of adds who jump down from the benches. After you reach Thorim, he jumps down into the arena for the second phase, where you can kill him.
The pull for this fight involves killing the gladiator type mobs who are locked in endless combat until you enter- the enrage timer doesn’t start until they go down. Nothing tricky here, just kill the healer (a dark rune acolyte) first. Once they’re down, the enrage timer starts, and someone should be standing by the switch to open the door to the gauntlet.
Now you’ll either be in the gauntlet group or the arena group. If you need to decide who goes in what group, the most important factors in the gauntlet are single target DPS and crowd control, and the most important parts of the arena are AOE, threat management, healing debuffs, and dispells. Rogues’ wound poison healing debuff combined with tricks of the trade and fan of knives are so valuable in the arena that you want to leave as many as you can in as possible. Hunters can go either way. We have decent AOE DPS, but our agro transfer for this is lame (3 targets max, low threat transfer) and our healing debuff (aimed shot) is single target.
The Gauntlet
Speed is the key for the gauntlet. The arena will get overrun if you take too much time. Have misdirect on your tank up before the door opens, and pull trash as quickly as you can get to it. [edit: doing this in under 3 minutes causes hard mode]
The first two trash pulls are easy, consisting of dark rune warbringers. Make sure not to AOE if you have a mage for sheeping. You’ll need to watch the first miniboss (the runic colossus) as he will blast either the right or left side of the hall while you take care of trash. Just like that stupid flying vykrul, Skadi, in Utgarde Pinnacle.
The whole group should collect on the first miniboss’s feet (at minimum range) to avoid his charge. Other than that, tank and spank. Once you’re through him, you go through the wall behind him and take on a few groups of adds. Single target the dark rune acolytes because they heal, and once they’re all down, CC or AOE the rest while you run up the stairs to engage the second miniboss, the ancient rune giant.
The second miniboss is a tank and spank, except he will randomly place an AOE damage debuff called rune detonation on a player, so be ready to strafe a few yards if your neighbor gets this. Use volley and multi-shot in your rotation (without sacrificing your big shots) to make sure you finish any remaining adds at this time, or else they’ll come with you in the second phase. If you have the time to finish them before engaging, all the better because the mini-boss makes the adds hit harder and gives them more health.
If at any time before you finish him your arena group wipes, Thorim will helpfully wipe everyone with a giant ball of lightning.
The Arena
While this is going on, the arena group will be handling a massive quantity of adds. The best strategy here is still pretty much chaos. Your dispell classes should be on the lookout for runic shields and runic mending from the dark rune evokers. The mending is a hot that can be spell-stolen, so mages should be watching for it. Everyone who can should be interrupting heals (even at the expense of DPS), and you should target the dark rune acolytes and evokers first because they go down fast and heal. After that, you should focus fire the vykrul looking dark rune champions, as they whirlwind.
Try to stay in the middle of the room to avoid Thorim’s passive attacks. He will charge orbs which will shock players who get too close. Also, his stormhammer will [edit: misread this originally, thanks Zab] increase the cast time of people around the target by 8 seconds, and stun the target.
A final note on the arena- if you have priests, try to keep a dark rune warbringer mind controlled. This provides a very nice buff to the raid, aura of celerity. I’ve read reports that you can get three of these auras simultaneously. Never seen it in person though.
Thorim
Now, once you have the last miniboss down in the gauntlet, run to Thorim (along the walls- the big lights on the floor will stun you for a long time), hit him once, and he will jump down. Everyone from the gauntlet group follows, and the fight is now a fairly easy tank and spank. Thorim will apply a debuff called unbalancing strike that forces the tanks to switch. Keep vent clear so they can do this quickly.
The only other complication is that he will randomly cast lightning charge on a sixth of the floor, between him and a orb. This can one shot you. If you see the ground where you stand start to crackle with electricity, you have a couple of seconds to run out of the effect (cone shaped) to safety.
There you have it. Now go collect your T8 shoulders!
Euripides
jurgwena
lemli
eidotrope
pherra
femaledwarf
Shadowstreak
My hunter is usually put in the gauntlet group, so I don’t get to exercise this trick much, but if you are in the arena group you can Viper Sting Thorim up on his platform overlooking things, for a pretty constant stream of mana throughout phase 1.
There’s a few bosses where we can do that- freya is the other obvious one that jumps to mind :) Thanks for the tip!
In 10mans, I’m in the gauntlet. It’s much easier for ranged. Also since I’m not MM, my AoE is a bit weaker than somewhat weak MM AoE. … no trap damage never gets too high. ;-)
You might mention that if the Gauntlet group is too fast, you can trigger hard mode. You need strong ranged DPS to move through the Gauntlet fast. Take those acolytes down first, and there’s little need to sheep. The tank needs to be pulling ahead of kills to keep the group moving along.
IMO, this isn’t really a tough fight once you have your groups balanced. Every guild, depending on their composition, finds some bosses easier and other harder.
Finally, this boss is where you get your T8 helm. Shoulders drop from Yogg.
Thorim drops helms in 25-man and shoulders in 10-man.
My mistake. Good clarification. :)
I agree that this is a raid leader check more than a heal, dps, or tank check :)
I’ll update the hard mode trigger, thanks.
We usually have more people in the arena than in the gaunlet, since the gauntlet is considerably easier to handle. Generally no more than two gauntlet groups in 25-man, and no more than 4 people in 10-man. In fact, I’ve solo-dps’ed the gauntlet before in 10-man, although I wouldn’t recommend that as a rule.
“On the other hand, his stormhammer will increase the haste of people around the target for 8 seconds.”
His hammer applies a deafening thunder debuff which increases cast time, not haste. It has an 8 yard (think the radius of consecrate) area of effect when it hits. This pally healer hates the arena, especially when folks clump up instead of spreading out around the ring.
“The only other complication is that he will randomly cast lightning charge”
Don’t forget his chain lightning. It doubles in damage as it hops from player to player. In 10man you can spread out and stop it from hopping. In 25man you clump up to limit its damage just to the clumps.
Finally, each time he does his lightning charge on a section of the room his attack speed and damage is buffed. If DPS doesn’t think its a race and phones it in — not watching the floor and dying is popular — then the fight can get nasty for the tanks and healers before the deceptive hard enrage timer.
Woops. Fixed. Thanks!
This is one of my favourite fights. I love the gauntlet, and have never been switched out of it. The other hunters have been moved, but I handle the MD that pulls the second miniboss down so the little guys stop spawning. All this fight needs is a good group balance. That, and a rogue! The fan of knives interrupt is truly amazing here. We wiped a few times when we first tried this, then went to a different boss and came back the next night with a rogue, and the difference was massive.
We had a new player at one point ask why we always took down the Champions first, and he was informed that they whirlwinded…He thought that they summoned more mobs or something. Then our guild leader informed everyone that no, it is not because they whirlwind that we kill them first. It is because we are racist against them. We’ve been calling them “Champies” ever since. :P
yeah, we have our rogues use fan of knives to apply their poison.
On 10-man I usually stay in the arena to dispell the evokers and i wanted to know if a macro like /cast Tranquilizing Shot [tar=Dark Rune Evoker] would work because there is usually only 1 evoker up. On 25-mans we leave mass dispelling for priests. Thank you.
I imagine it would- I’ll test and let you know.