Throne of Thunder Fight-Specific Tips (Part 3 of 4)

Eye sea how you died there?

Welcome to the "experimental stuff" wing, where most fights are no longer about everyone independently doing their own thing correctly, and increasingly about coordinating as a group to handle mechanics that no single person can deal with alone. Don't worry, that's actually a good thing; get the mechanics right and it's hard to miss the output checks.

Durumu

A classic Beholder, Durumu is more about raid coordination than any fight so far. This is the first fight where Atonement isn't really a good option. Fortunately, Disc priests are ideal for dealing with the tank damage on this fight. Also? Do it on raid finder if you've never fought him; the "maze" is something you'll need to practice, and it's more socially-acceptable to with a LFR run than a guild raid.

• Pre-shield the Hard Stare. It does a pretty sizeable amount of physical damage and inflicts two serious tank debuffs. One of them - Arterial Cut - works a lot like the Lich King's Infest for anyone that remembers that. Basically, they take massive amounts of physical damage until healed to max. So we deal with it the same way as Infest: stack shields and laugh as the debuff never applies. Are you shadow and your raid doesn't have a priest healer? Shield the tank right before every Hard Stare anyway; your healers will love you.
• Power Word: Shield and Spirit Shell ignore Serious Wound. They're great for whichever tank has a ton of stacks. Apply liberally. Consider speccing Divine Insight for this fight; more PW:S is definitely a good thing here.
• ...so does Void Swap. Got a tank bleeding out with 4+ Serious Wound and 2+ Arterial Cut? Top yourself and hit Void Swap. Presto, everything is fix'd. I recommend holding this for emergency use like the situation described above.
• You can deal massive "damage" by shielding the Life Drain. It heals Durumu for a massive amount of health even when handled properly. While shielding it doesn't completely prevent his healing, it does prevent him from healing by about ~4-5 times the amount of your shield. For lack of a better place to use it, PW:Barrier may be useful here also.
• Force of Will can target people stunned by Life Drain. Life Grip will fix it. This works used shortly before or after Force of Will triggers. Engineers can also save themselves by using the new glider after being knocked back, but before passing the edge of the arena.

 
Primordius

It's so easy, a zerg can do it. Seriously, just ignore the blobs and zerg is a viable strat. If you DO kill the blobs (and you kinda have to if you want to Atonement heal) remember that the "bad" puddles drift towards him, and if any reach him he heals for approximately a gazillion health.

• Atonement is worthless if you're not killing blobs. 25% reduced damage dealt, plus heavy raid AoE and tough healing checks? Yeah, you can't really use Atonement without Fully Mutated.
• Twist of Fate is great if you are killing them. Helloooo 50% uptime. It's basically up the whole time you're killing blobs, letting you finish that very quickly. Definitely up the whole time at the end of the fight, right when the healing is most needed. It's a great talent here.

Dark Animus

This fight is all about coordination and strategy. If you have both, then it'll be easy to execute. If not, it'll be nearly impossible.

• Acceleration Link will mess you up. The mini golems don't hit very hard. Unless they're near another mini-golem, in which case they deal 12.25x normal damage! Then they do. The strategy we used had our tanks tanking two golems each. Sometimes, they linked. Be ready with full cooldowns and heals to deal with overwhelming damage, because if they link, your tank may go full-to-dead in about 3sec.
• Shield the Matter Swap and just dispel it. You never know who'll swap with them or how low the other person's health may be. Just toss a shield and a Mending on the Matter Swap target, then dispel it promptly. They'll take ~80%, but it's quite safe with so much proactive healing on them already.
• Halo right before Interrupting Jolt. Cascade is also a good option. The jolt deals a massive amount of damage, and the raid needs to be healed up fast. Pre-stacking shields would be a good thing, but good luck doing so; you'll likely be too busy dodging Anima Font (dodging is NOT optional.)

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Next week, I'll be posting some more detailed information about Atonement gearing, including a trinket list. Our guild is still progressing Lei Shen (20% attempt last night!) That's why I have to delay the part 4 for one more week.