Throne of Thunder Fight-Specific Tips (Part 2 of 4)

Hit 5 koopas with one
shell to get a 1-up!

Whoops! This was meant to be up last week, but it looks like I failed to hit the Publish button. I guess it's convenient though; I should probably give my guild time to clear Iron Qon-Lei Shen before I go advising about them. I'm just gonna push back parts 2 though 4 by a week.




Tortos

This is the most heavily-mobile fight you've faced so far. Work with your raid to allow you to stand still enough to make use of Spirit Shell.

• Spirit Shell softens Quake Stomp... but the cooldown doesn't quite line up. Quake Stomp does a positively-staggering - ha, see what I did there? - amount of damage to the raid all at once. Having pre-stacked shields on the raid makes it far less-likely to kill anyone. Unfortunately, Quake Stomp is cast every 50sec, and you can only Spirit Shell every 60sec. What to do? There's two common strategies. My preferred strat is to SS about 25sec early on the first stomp, relying on the actual shields' duration to carry it over until the actual stomp. Then SS as soon as it comes off cooldown for the second. Then panic with no shields on the third. Other people prefer to use SS to full-effectiveness every-other stomp. I think it depends on the other healing cooldowns your raid has available; try to line your shielding gaps up with someone else's healing cooldown.
• Halo is almost as awesome. Launching a Halo immediately before or after a stomp also goes a long way to preventing people from getting low. I strongly recommend it over even Cascade; the cooldown lines up just perfectly, whereas you would have no use for every-other Cascade.
• Remember to use Inner Focus and Archangel every stomp. IF stacks with Spirit Shell, and even if you don't have SS up, it can place ~300k of shields over one group. Archangel can help stack SS faster, but you may go over cap. Prioritize having Archangel effect your Halo.
• Atonement is good filler when you're not reacting to a stomp. You need to stack Archangel anyway, and Atonement is even a good raw HPS choice when Tortos is under the effects of the shell debuff. You can also use it to help clear out the small turtles, indirectly increasing your Spirit Shells by making it less likely for you to be interrupted later.

 
Megaera

This fight is pretty straightforward; no real gimmicks, just a raw throughput check.

• Atonement can be used from nearly 70 yards. While it's not a great choice for numeric reasons, it does permit you to stand way back if desired. Since the boss' hitbox applies both for dealing the damage and spreading the healing, you have pretty much the entire room to work with. Careful not to body pull!
• Dispel Cinders immediately. It ticks hard at the start of the fight. at the end, it may be ticking almost twice as hard. Not only that, but the first tick is a double-tick. If you can get it off in less than 3sec, it's definitely worth it. Instruct your raid to start out not-stacked so that the pool doesn't clip multiple people. This is also good practice for Heroic.
• (Obviously) Prayer of Mending is good for Rampage. So is PW:Barrier unless your raid won't stack for some odd reason. Either way, Rampage isn't a big worry, more damage comes from Acid Rain late in the fight. You can help counteract this by trying to stack Spirit Shell as Rampage ends. (Good luck with that.)

Ji-Kun


This fight drops the Caduceus of Pure Moods. Grab one and hang on for the ride, because you're not seeing anything better until the Thunder King. [Insert rant about losing one to someone with a 522 weapon here.]

• Atonement is godmode (again). Sensing a trend yet? Primal Nutriment is amazing for DPS. For you, it's doubly-amazing, increasing your Atonement heals by a whopping 160%. Minimum. As in, it increases more than that later in the fight. It's also available nicely lining up with every cast of Quills. Lie, cheat, and steal to get yourself some spare feathers, then dominate the healing.
• No feathers? Sucks to be you. If you're healing the top group, be aware that you can visually see most attacks flying towards people to wind up a heal in advance. Also, the boss nearly always uses Talon Rake immediately after the end of any of his (her?) longer casts. With damage this predictable, you can really do a lot to negate the damage spikes.
• Glyphed Binding Heal is great for healing Quills in a 3-man nest group. If you're flying (but not on the main platform for Quills) then you'll have your work cut out for you. Quills is trivial with +160% Atonement healing, but much harder with no buff and only 3 targets. I strongly recommend glyphing Binding Heal, otherwise you won't really have an appropriate tool to use. Prayer of Mending can also be used to save some mana.
• Cascade is good for Quills on the main platform. While Halo would be more appropriate due to its burstiness/cooldown, in practice you'll have really shitty effectiveness due to people's positioning. Cascade is far more effective here. If you're running Atonement, be sure not to cast it at the boss.

Next week, look for more tips - this time it'll be Durumu, Primordius and Dark Animus.