Trial of the Crusader Strategy Notepad

[Rofldat]

Faction Champions:
By the PTR video I saw, there's 5 of them in total, a Druid(Moonkin), Disc Priest, Warlock(looks like Destro), Rogue and Paladin
it looks like the priest will just spam heal, while the lock and moonkin will just random-target firing, so the tank should only be required to tank the paladin and rogue
I'm hoping for it to actually random from classes though, instead of 1 race = 1 class like the trial of champions
at one point in the video, someone feared the 2 melee(either the rogue disable the tank, kill him, or they reset aggro, but the two melee were running around) so some of them might be CC-able
beyond that it's just focus one down at a time

Twin Valkyr:
There's 4 swirls, 2 white and 2 dark
When you run into one of them you'll change your swirl to that color
Occasionally white/dark balls will spawn, running into one will make it explode, with the ones of the same color doing no damage to you and possibly give you some benefit
running into opposite color one will hurt you
when one Valkyr make an emote, which accompanied by a color of that Valkyr, everyone must run to that color swirl, a few moments later the valkyr will do AoE that will most likely be instant-kill if you fails to be of that Valkyr's color
the swirl seems to give 50% damage increase/reduction for being opposite/same color as the Valkyr you're attacking as well(does not affect pet)
Expect them to have to be killed within small time frame together

Anub'Arak:
HOLY SHIT IT'S NOT BROWN! now he's more like his WC3 counterpart, and less of a shit color.
The first obvious things is that adds will spawn throughout the fight, seems like you either kill them off, or have an OT pick them up until his ground phase
(first phase seems like a normal tank n spank)
ground phase have a few things, but it's mostly AN again
first off, his spike does not spawn randomly, he'll pick a person and chase that person around with the spike, now and then he'll pick another target and chase the new target(so it's Stormcaller's last ability, effectively, raid should bunch up except for the chased person, so there's no spikes crossing someone)
it you lure the spike into ice patch it'll cause ice spike there, might be the key to force him out of ground
other type of add will spawn during this phase as well, it looks like they can be killed off fairly quickly
around 30-35% everyone should stop DPsing the boss and clean out the adds, because once 25% hit it's his final phase
he'll unleash the "leeching swarm" constantly doing damage to the raid ( the 25 man was tickign anywhere between 3k-4.5k) and heal him for portion of it, it'll stay active until he drops or the raid does
any more adds that spawn should be OT and ignored, since it's now a DPS race

[Kulldam]

Notes on Twin Val'kyr:

Portals
There are four portals around the room, two Light and two Dark. Right-clicking (or just touching?) a portal activates that Essence type on the player, as seen below:

Dark Essence/Light Essence
Clicking a Dark Portal gives the player Dark Essence, which absorbs Dark damage (dealt by Darkbane), lowers damage dealt to Darkbane, and increases damage dealt to Lightbane. Likewise, Light Essence has the opposite effect. At the start of the encounter, and for the majority of the fight, everyone should obtain Light Essence.

Twin's Pact
Every 45 seconds one of the Twins will cast one of two special abilities. Twin's Pact is the first and is cast at the exact same time as Shield of Darkness/Shield of Lights (Heroic: Shield of Darkness/Shield of Lights), depending which Twin cast the Pact. Once casting begins, the raid has 15 seconds to deal 175,000 damage to break the Shield and allow interruption of the Twin's Pact heal.

Since our strategy relies on everyone keeping Light Essence as much as possible, if Darkbane casts Twin's Pact, we will break through the shield by continuing DPS as normal. If Lightbane casts Twin's Pact, however, all DPS must immediately move to the nearby Dark Portal and activate Dark Essence then switch to DPS Lightbane's shield down before the 15 second cast finishes.

Dark Vortex/Light Vortex
The other big cooldown special ability the Twins have is Dark Vortex/Light Vortex, respectively. After an 8 second cast time, the appropriate twin will channel their Vortex, dealing heavy damage to the entire raid for five seconds. For most non-tanks, the total damage is enough that it will outright kill anyone who does not receive a large heal mid-cast or absorb the damage.

Therefore, everyone in the raid should be prepared to swap their Essence to absorb the Vortex AE damage if needed. If Lightbane casts Vortex, no swaps are necessary as we will all have Light Essence by default and can remain in position. If, however, Darkbane casts Dark Vortex, everyone must quickly move to the nearby Dark Portal and activate Dark Essence to absorb the AE. Once the AE completes, quickly run to the closest Light Portal to reactivate Light Essence and continue DPSing Darkbane.

Orbs
Every 45 - 60 seconds, a set of both Dark and Light Orbs will spawn on the outside of the room. They are passive and will randomly float around the room until they come in contact with a player. If they contact a player with a matching Essence buff (Light Orb hits Light Essence buffed player), they increase that player's Powering Up buff stack. If an Orb of the opposite type hits a player, it deals damage to that player and any other players within 8 yards via Unleashed Dark/Unleashed Light, respectively.

When Orbs spawn, everyone except tanks should move outward from the raid and activate a Dark Orb. Due to the (small) AE radius of the Unleashed Dark that will activate, it's important for players not to clump up while triggers Dark Orbs. The damage is such that, even assuming no resists, it would take 3 full-damage Dark Orb hits to kill even the weakest HP member, so they are not very dangerous unless multiples hit the same player very quickly and without a heal.

Every non-tank member should aim to trigger 1-2 Dark Orbs per spawn then resume normal DPS on Darkbane.

Powered Up
As mentioned above, every raid member will gain a stacking buff called Powered Up, that stacks up to 100. Once the stack reaches 100, the player will gain Empowered Darkness or Empowered Light (whichever matches the current Essence the player has active), increasing damage dealt to the opposite Essence type by 100% for 20 seconds.

There are two actual methods to increase Powered Up stacks: A) Activate Orbs that match your current Essence type (If you have Light Essence, hit Light Orbs). B) Absorb AE damage from Dark/Light Vortex with the matching Essence on yourself. Based on the videos I can find, it seems the actual rate your stack increases is based on the damage you absorb via your Essence, at the rate of 1 stack per 1000 damage absorbed. Therefore, getting an orb gives ~7 stacks, whereas a full Vortex AE gives 21-22 stacks.

Due to our strategy right now, focusing on getting your Powered Up buff to 100 stacks quickly should not be anyone's goal. The 100% for 20 seconds is nice, but having an Essence already increases damage output a fair bit and the time wasted running around trying to find matching orbs to absorb surely will waste more damage than the 20 second buff would add.

Instead, as mentioned, we should trigger Dark Orbs when they spawn so we don't end up with tons floating around and potentially stacking on someone, but otherwise everyone should ignore Light Orbs during the fight. They will active on their own as they hit people while floating.

Positioning
Positioning should be something like the following:


That provides a rough idea of our positioning. The idea is to maximize our time spent standing still DPSing. I decided to set us up to focus only on Darkbane because splitting the group really hurts DPS synergy (especially in 10-man), where one side would not get Ugra's totems or Sunder Armor or Scorch or Huggey's 13% magic boost, etc. Since the Twin's share health pools, by all focusing the same target, we will have better overall DPS.

In addition, by killing Darkbane (and thus always having Light Essence), when we activate Dark Orbs, the damage they deal will be easier to resist (Shadow damage) since we'll all have Shadow Resist buff, whereas Light Orb damage (Fire damage) may put us out of range of a Fire Resist totem or Aura.

At any rate, we all stay spread out a bit but somewhat near the Dark Portal and all with Light Essence, DPSing Darkbane. This sets us up for any of the 4 main abilities that can be cast: Dark Vortex, Light Vortex, Twin's Pact (Darkbane), or Twin's Pact (Lightbane).

In the case of Light Vortex or Twin's Pact (Darkbane), absolutely no extra action is required by anyone. The Light Vortex will be absorbed by our Light Essence buffs, and for Twin's Pact, we'll easily DPS through the shield on Darkbane before he finishes his cast.

If Dark Vortex is cast, we immediately all click the nearby Dark Portal to get Dark Essence and DPS Lightbane momentarily while the AE is going off. Once Dark Vortex is complete, everyone run to the nearest Light Portal to swap back to Light Essence then reposition in our original placement and continue.

Likewise, if Twin's Pact (Lightbane) is cast, all DPS must click the Dark Portal and immediately DPS Lightbane to break the shield and interrupt the heal. Again, afterward, swap back to Light Essence and DPS Darkbane.

Repeat until dead.

Debuffs to add to Power Auras/Grid
Nothing at the moment.

[Rofldat]

You missed one thing, if the two are near each other they give stacking buff that increase each other's speed, so the other one have to be tank away from her sister.

Range of this I'm uncertain, but the range from one vortext to another is enough for this so maybe have Khrash stand next to the other dark vortex so he can run to get it when the dark one use her AoE.

[Kheelan]

We may need to use this strat on hard mode when it opens but watching a video for 10 man on this it seemed super simple just splitting the raid into two groups.

[Rofldat]

2 things I think were the 'mistakes' we had on Twin Val
1. During the second AE, everyone got Empowered Shadow(100% dmg to Light) but we immediately switch back to light essence and DPS the shadow one so the buff became useless. If we get any empower we should use it and switch target accordingly.
2. On the Twin's Pact that went off, the twin only had 140k HP or so left when they started the cast, so unless they can't die during the pact, it would've been faster to just finish the dark one off.
(What was the time between each pact? if it's 1min each then we can call a wipe on 3rd pact when we're trying for the achievement)

An idea that I was thinking of was that we might be able to split DPS/tank into 2 group(Guide Kinz Me with Kull, Ug Hug Kil with Khrash) so that the other group can continue DPSing even during Twin's Pact(Me and Kinz having to run to the vortex then run over waste a lot of time, and with the extra damage from vortex I think 3 people should be able to break the shield fairly easily)
(Obviously if we all get empowered during an AE then we focus on just one of them)

Another random thought(for when everyone's on one color): when there's no opposite color's ball around, have everyone stack up on one spot so that any balls that hit one person will hit them all and give everyone bonus stack.

[Kulldam]

1. During the second AE, everyone got Empowered Shadow(100% dmg to Light) but we immediately switch back to light essence and DPS the shadow one so the buff became useless. If we get any empower we should use it and switch target accordingly.

The problem is not everyone will gain Empowered at the same time since Powered Up stacks at different rates depending how many matching Orbs people trigger.

That said, obviously yes, DPS people should swap targets if they gain Empowered to maximize their DPS when the buff is up.

2. On the Twin's Pact that went off, the twin only had 140k HP or so left when they started the cast, so unless they can't die during the pact, it would've been faster to just finish the dark one off.

And knowing is half the battle!

(What was the time between each pact? if it's 1min each then we can call a wipe on 3rd pact when we're trying for the achievement)

An idea that I was thinking of was that we might be able to split DPS/tank into 2 group(Guide Kinz Me with Kull, Ug Hug Kil with Khrash) so that the other group can continue DPSing even during Twin's Pact(Me and Kinz having to run to the vortex then run over waste a lot of time, and with the extra damage from vortex I think 3 people should be able to break the shield fairly easily)
(Obviously if we all get empowered during an AE then we focus on just one of them)

As I mentioned in original post, it's 45 seconds between Special Abilities (Dark/Light Vortex or either Twin's Pact). When we did things it was too early to tell if there was a pattern but now I looked through our log of the fight (first entry below) plus a number of other logs. It looks like it follows the same pattern of Freya's add spawns - in that each of the four special abilities is randomly ordered within a "four-set" and over that 3 minute interval each is cast only once, but after the first "four-set" ends, a new random seed is generated for the next "four-set" and the order can change.

In other words, we'll have no way to tell when the next Twin's Pact (Lightbane) is coming in a given four-set except of course if it previously happened, then we know we have at least 0:45, 1:30, or 2:15 until the next, depending where in the cycle it hit.

[19:37:14.271] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[19:37:58.901] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex
[19:38:44.269] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Dark Vortex
[19:39:28.914] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[19:40:14.279] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact

[22:02:51.296] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[22:03:36.343] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex
[22:04:21.709] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[22:05:06.668] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Dark Vortex
[22:05:51.378] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[22:06:36.915] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact

[20:10:38.574] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex
[20:11:23.892] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Dark Vortex
[20:12:08.879] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:12:53.464] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[20:13:38.421] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex
[20:14:23.829] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Dark Vortex

[20:59:44.541] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Dark Vortex
[21:00:29.116] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex
[21:01:14.536] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[21:01:59.158] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[21:02:44.517] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[21:03:28.798] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[21:04:13.792] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex

[18:53:15.175] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex
[18:54:00.190] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[18:54:45.217] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Dark Vortex
[18:55:29.865] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[18:56:14.844] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[18:57:00.249] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[18:57:45.256] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Dark Vortex
[18:58:29.868] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Light Vortex
[18:59:14.943] Fjola Lightbane begins to cast Twin's Pact
[19:00:00.388] Eydis Darkbane begins to cast Twin's Pact

The 3 min achievement will not be that difficult to hit. Our kill time on our first attempt was 4:01 but if you look at our log below you can see had we swapped during the heal or interrupted it, we'd have cut off some 47 seconds from our kill time, dropping us down to a 3:14 kill. Experience tells me without changing a single thing strat wise, simply having people repeat a fight they've done prior knocks off 15-30 seconds due to confidence and therefore faster button presses, less random movement, etc.

[19:39:43.928] Fjola Lightbane Twin's Pact Fjola Lightbane +1213215
[19:39:44.139] Fjola Lightbane Twin's Pact Eydis Darkbane +1213215
[19:40:30.727] Eydis Darkbane dies
[19:40:31.260] Fjola Lightbane dies

Another random thought(for when everyone's on one color): when there's no opposite color's ball around, have everyone stack up on one spot so that any balls that hit one person will hit them all and give everyone bonus stack.

Very good idea, we'll implement that next time. Probably the ideal thing is to designate a stack spot (behind our target on top of melees) and spend most of the fight there and call a spread when Orbs spawn to trigger some Dark then move back in position. It's also possible, though we'll have to test it next time with the new changes, that we could theoretically stack up full-time even when Dark Orbs are up and just rely on randomness that we won't get 4 Orbs all hitting the raid at the same time and thus be unhealable. What with Wild Growth and even a random Chain Heal from Ugra if needed I imagine without some severely poor luck we'd have enough Dark Orb hits so quickly we couldn't heal up before the next.

We'll also perfect our tank positions slightly by doing a test run or two to determine exactly how far away we must keep the Twins so they don't gain their damage bonus buff. Then we can tank our target twin (Darkbane) right on top of the Dark Portal so with everyone stacked, swapping to Dark Essence when Twin's Pact (Lightbane) is cast requires no movement to activate and ranged DPS can swap within 1-2 seconds and melee in a couple more with movement.

Also, looking through the logs I found something kind of interesting about Empowered Light/Dark. It appears gaining Empowered (100 Stacks of Powered Up) gives back a percentage of mana. Not that mana was an issue, but perhaps for Heroic it might be a useful thing especially for our Tree Druids who can move around a fair bit. I can't tell exactly what the percent is (if Wild/Khrash knows their max mana pool buffed that would help), but as you can see Wild gained a great deal more than Khrash which seems to indicate percent of total.

[19:38:38.203] Khrashdin gains 1462 mana from Khrashdin's Empowered Light
[19:39:19.601] Wildhide gains 4436 mana from Wildhide's Empowered Light

Lastly, the talk is that the Twin's now have a ticking aura (similar to Steelbreaker's pulsing aura) that of course deals damage of their type to the entire raid -- 1500ish/2 seconds Normal and 2500/2 seconds Heroic. Sounds easy enough to heal considering there was shit all for healers to do before, but we'll see. Maybe that plus the other fixes will make it a challenge.

[Wildhide]

I have just over 21k mana buffed, so it looks like a roughly 20% mana return.

[Rofldat]

Stuffs on hard modes(facts for future references/personal thoughts)
NR Beasts:
-The next set of boss will spawn on a set timer, for Icehowl he'll hard enrage when his timer hit.

Gormok
-The fire bomb now cause stacking debuff that last 12 seconds and cause X000 damage every 2 seconds, where X is the stack number.
(When DBM says Fire Bomb, it means at least one Snobold on Gormok's back threw the bottle, you have about the same amount of time as General V's shadow crash to move out of possible landing area if you can see the bottle's direction)
(yes, you can completely avoid the fire patch, though the explosion damage have a bigger AE than the fire patch)

Two Jormungar
-Pretty much the same as normal in term of mechanic,
due to the increased damage maybe it's better to kill them around the same time(splitting DPS such that the melees(me Kinz Guide's pet) go after the worm on the ground while ranged group hit the rooted worm, this way the melee won't have to deal with Sweep knockback) otherwise Kull will be forced to use a cd to survive the fire breath (I dare say with the 50% damage bonus/being in hard mode give that fire breath the lethality of Mimiron's hard mode Plasma Blast)

Icehowl
-Players no longer gain speed bonus after massive crash.
as a melee, you can stand at the very edge of his hit box to avoid the knockback spin and still DPS him normally
Guidon can quickly switch to Aspect of the Pack when Icehowl jump to the middle of arena or after his stun run out, this will give people in his range better chance of not getting charged
on that note, I believe everyone should spread out to one side of the arena, that way when Icehowl charged into the wall we'll all be on one side and nobody have to run across the arena to reach Icehowl(also give better chance that you'll be in Guide's aspect range)


Lord Jarax
-Nether Portal and Infernal Volcano are now targetable mob with 189k HP for 10m and will continue to spawn its own add until killed
-Nether Portal cause a roughly 9k AoE damage when it spawns a Mistress
-The mistresses gain http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=66335 , a debuff that pretty much silence you for 8 seconds(unless it trigger from instant cast, then you have the option of eating 9k damage or silenced for 8 seconds)

[Kulldam]

Notes on Faction Champions (H):

The Problem

Though I'm usually not one to complain about encounter difficulty as I think everything Blizzard designs can be defeated, and Faction Champions (H) is no exception, I do think there's a major difficulty curve between the 10 and 25 man version, and it all comes down to numbers.

As you guys know, the 10-man fight has 6 NPCs to deal with, so that ratio means we can have 1.67 people to deal with with each NPC. To be more accurate, since we can't split a person, we can have 4 NPCs with 2 people on each 2 NPCs with 1 person on each.

Compare this to the 25-man fight, that has 10 NPCs, and the real issue shows. That ratio gives a 25-man raid 2.5 people to deal with each NPC, or in reality 5 NPCs with 3 people on each and 5 NPCs with 2 people on each.

In other words, a 10-man has only 67% more players than NPCs, while a 25-man has 150% more players than NPCs. This means nearly three times the resources are available to handle the fight and the chances of not having a given form of CC or control in 25-man is VERY low.

I point all this out not to complain (well, not entirely -- "25-man is SOOOO HARRRDDD, 10-man is EAAAASYY *WAAAAHH*"), but to illustrate that this fight, above nearly any we've taken on since becoming a 10-man crew, is going to really shine light on the gaps in our raid composition. That's not to say we can't or won't win with our crew -- we've done plenty of other fucked up crazy stuff already, but just to give you an idea of how things could be and why 25-man guilds doing 10-man are so quick to point out how simple the fight is, imagine a raid makeup as follows:

Druid
Hunter
Priest
Warlock
Mage
Paladin
Shaman
Rogue
Death Knight
Warrior

In other words, no stacking classes, just one of everything. Now take a common Faction Champion setup (2 healers, 2 ranged DPS, 2 melee DPS, 2 forms of magic dispel, 1 Bloodlust, etc.) as follows:

Shadow Priest
Hunter
Holy Paladin
Resto Shaman
Warrior
Rogue

Forgetting the made-up raid crew for a moment, given the above NPC setup, what problems would our raid commonly have?

• Unable to prevent Magic Dispel from either the Priest or the Paladin as we can only perma-lock down one target via Sheep/Sting from Kilwenn & Guide.
• Unreliable melee CC via Druid roots due to above dispel issue.
• Only able to stop Hunter and Shadow Priest DPSing 9 out of every 24 seconds via Cyclone rotation due to DR.

Now take our made-up raid group with one of every class. They would deal with the above NPC setup as follows:

• Paladin - Sheep/Sting/Trap rotation from Mage and Hunter (as we do)
• Shadow Priest - Fear/Seduction rotation from the Warlock. This would lock out both Magic Dispels on a near-permanent basis, thus outside of cooldowns, all Sheep/Fear/Roots would last full-duration on the Priest, Paladin, Warrior, and Rogue.
• Hunter - Fear/Seduction rotation from the Warlock (due to DRs, staggers the casts so Fearing the Priest while Seducing the Hunter and vice versa).
• Shaman - Death Knight or Warrior interrupts heals (like we do now).
• Warrior - Entangling Roots/Taunt-Stun rotation from Druid and Warrior/Death Knight
• Rogue - Kill Target

Obviously that's just an example and I didn't even have to use the Priest's AE fear cooldown which is every 30 seconds.

The main thing you'll notice is that by adding a Warlock and a Priest it causes a chain (non-)reaction where one additional NPC can be locked down which prevents dispels of another CC which prevents removal of another CC and so on.

Soooo, what do we do?

Well there are a number of things we can try, but some basic smart tactics will go a long way.

First, we should spread out in the room a great deal more so there's less clutter and it gives ranged/healers a clear indication of when a melee NPC is near and/or targeting them.

Second, we should probably always kill one of the two Magic Dispeller classes first since the sooner that is done, the sooner we can rely on magic-based CC more heavily.

We should come up with much more reliable kiting methods for the melee DPS. A few options:

• Rofl gripping away a target and Chain of Ice rotation
• Kilwenn speccing Frost and Frostbolt spamming to keep snare up
• Kulldam Hamstring spamming to keep snare up
• Ugra Frost Shock spamming to keep snare up
• Huggey or Wild entangling roots

The real key I think may be forming small teams that work together, similar to how Kilwenn and Guide CC one target, and being very vocal between teams. Our deaths usually come from a non-full health (though sometimes full health) player getting targeted by a ranged DPS at the same time one of the melee DPS gets in range and crushes their skull in.

To combat that, the first thing we should try is having one person assigned to each melee DPS to announce that melee's target every time it switches. If we spread a bit more as mentioned before, and have two people working on snares for each melee, the person who gets announced should have time to react from hearing their name in Vent and moving away quickly.

So imagine the above scenario and we split off into melee teams of two people: One primary and one secondary player. The primary player stays on that melee target full-time to keep snare up and announce in Vent when someone is being targeted and should run away. The secondary player keeps their melee on /focus frame and has a macro that casts their ranged snare on that focus target without changing their current target, so when the primary player calls for it in Vent, the secondary can quickly throw up their snare and continue DPSing the main kill target.

For example, melee team 1 is Kulldam/Huggey and we're on the Rogue. I am keeping the Rogue hamstrung near full-time but in the event he gets away (shadow steps or vanishes or what not) and is out of my snare, I call to Huggey in Vent who immediately hits his /cast [target=focus] Entangling Roots macro and boom, Rogue is rooted until I can get back to him. Meanwhile I'm announcing names as the Rogue changes targets so when he goes for Wild, he can run away before the Rogue reaches melee range and it's too late.

Likewise, melee team 2 may be Rofl/Ugra on the Warrior (perhaps not since Rofl doesn't talk in Vent, but you get the idea). Same deal applies -- Ugra would not worry about the Warrior unless needed, then he'd hit his /cast [target=focus] Frost Shock macro and go back to DPSing the Shadow Priest or whoever we were killing.

That leaves us with 8 primary people for 4 NPCs. Kilwenn and Guide are on the Paladin and should be communicating in Vent when the other needs to take over, but otherwise between CC they are full-time DPSing the Shadow Priest.

Khrash is full-time healing/dispelling and killing totems when possible (Khrash: You should look into the options of Decursive and see if it can prioritize debuffs so the first thing it shows is when someone is Sheeped or Feared or whatever, then moves down to minor DoTs and the like) as is Wild.

Normally we have Kinzie full-time DPS on the kill target for Wound/Snare poison, but I wonder if we shouldn't have Kinzie on the second healer full-time as between kicks and kidney he could almost certainly lock out nearly all casts, even if it's a Druid healer.

If we did that, we'd have Ugra/Huggey/Kilwenn/Kheelan/Guidon on full-time DPS on the Shadow Priest, which would leave us with the Hunter as the only uncontrolled NPC. I suspect we could outheal the Hunter's damage, especially if we have Wild throw in a double-cyclone chain every 15 seconds.

Sooo, to sum up, this is how our theoretical fight should go every time (regardless of the NPC makeup):

• Wildhide: 0 - 10 seconds, Cyclone the non-kill target Ranged DPS. 10 - 25 seconds, heal as normal. 25-35 seconds, repeat.
• Kulldam: Full-time, hamstring Melee DPS #1 between Stuns and Disarm. Call in Vent when Melee DPS #1 switches targets and ask in Vent for secondary snare if needed.
• Rofldat: Full-time, Chains of Ice/Death Grip Melee DPS #2. Use a /rw macro to announce when Melee DPS #2 changes targets or ask for Secondary snare.
• Huggeybear: Full-time DPS on Kill Target. Use /cast [target=focus] Entangling Roots macro when called by your melee team member.
• Ugra: Full-time DPS on Kill Target. Use /cast [target=focus] Frost Shock macro when called by your melee team member. If opposing team uses Bloodlust, tab target through all NPCs spamming Purge to get rid of it then back on Kill Target.
• Kheelan: Full-time DPS on Kill Target. If Kill Target runs away, utilize Bear Charge/Cat Charge to snare/daze.
• Kilwenn: 0-15 seconds, Sheep Healer #1. As you're casting Sheep #2 (which should last 5 seconds), announce in Vent to your partner Guide to prepare Freezing Trap, so he has time to run over to the Healer #1 while it's sheeped and get the Trap under. 15-30 seconds, DPS on Kill Target. 30-45 seconds, repeat Sheep process.
• Guidon: 0-10 seconds, DPS Kill Target. 15-30 seconds (or when Kilwenn asks), Freezing Trap underneath Healer #1 while sheeped to Trap before Sheep breaks and target runs off out of Trap range. Wyvern sting as backup in the event Trap fails. 25-30 seconds, inform Kilwenn CC is about to break and to Sheep in X seconds. 30-45 seconds, repeat.
• Khrashdin: Full-time healing, beacon on yourself or Kheelan (as the only melee on kill target, likely to be attacked the most). Dispel important debuffs primarily (CCs like Sheep, Fear, Wyvern Sting, Trap, Hammer of Justice, etc.) and ignore other debuffs unless no healing is required and can spare the GCD. Kill totems if no healing or dispelling is needed. Save Hammer of Justice for an emergency (for example, Guide can't CC and Kilwenn's sheep is on DR).
• Kinzie: Full-time dps/interrupt on Healer #2 (Druid or Shaman). Keep Mind-numbing and snare up to maximize cast time and give you every chance to interrupt heals.

Pretend You're in an Arena, Use Mods!

If you don't have these mods or similar already, everyone should download and setup CCTracker and DRTracker. CCTracker may be unnecessary if you already have a mod to track your debuff durations on your focus target, but DRTracker will be invaluable to this fight.

They do just what it sounds like: DRTracker will create a little countdown bar when a CC spell expires on a target and show the time left on the DR (i.e. How long until you can cast the same effect on that target for full-duration), the percent of the DR (That is, the percent of full-duration your next cast would last), and the name of the target/spell that was used.

Before things changed, this type of stuff is how Druids would lock down Warriors in Arena matches, so I'll give a few screenshots to show as an example.

In this first shot, you can see I left the anchors showing just to make things clear, so I've cast my first Cyclone in my rotation which lasts for 6 seconds.


In the second shot, my first Cyclone just ran out and with about a second left on it's duration, I started casting my second Cyclone so it hit shortly after the first ended. This second Cyclone lasts 3 seconds. Now on the left there is a new DR bar showing a DR for Cyclone is now active on the Wolf and it will be gone in 16 seconds (it's really 15 but the mod shows 16 to be safe due to lag). It also shows 50%, which means the next cast of Cyclone (the one I already cast and is active on the Wolf) will be 50% normal duration, or 3 seconds (which it is).


Shot three shows my second Cyclone ended so now my Cyclone DR for the Wolf shows I have 13 seconds until the DR ends and my next Cyclone cast will be 25% of normal duration (basically 1 second, so not worth to cast). Therefore, I've cast Entangling Roots, which will last 10 seconds and bring my Cyclone DR down to 13 seconds before my second Roots is cast.


I've now cast my second Entangling Roots. Normally, you would see a DR Bar for Entangling Roots for the Wolf on the left, but because this is a PvE target, Roots has no DR and thus it won't show up. But, in PVP or on Faction Champions, in this fourth shot there would be a Roots DR Bar showing 16 seconds left and next cast will be 50% duration (which I just cast in this shot as my original 10 second Root would've just wore off). You can also see my Cyclone DR is nearly complete on the Wolf which means in under 3 seconds, I can recast Cyclone at full duration and the pattern continues.


In this last shot, I've cast a new Cyclone just as the DR was ending so the cycle starts again. Once this cast nears completion, I'll cast a second Cyclone, then a 10 sec root, then a 5 sec root, then repeat with a 6 sec cyclone. Again, normally you'd see a Roots DR bar if it were a Faction Champions/PvP fight.


I implore everyone who CCs at all to install these mods and set them up. A quick guide to set them up:

DRTracker

1. /drtracker ui to open the config
2. Make sure "Show Diminishing Returns > Show Enemies" is checked. It may be useful to mark Show Friendlies too, but it may be too many bars so start with just Enemies checked.
3. Under "Enabled DRTracker inside" make sure Everywhere Else and Raid Instances are checked.
4. Under Bar Display, check "Show Anchor".
5. Now type: /drtracker test
6. See if the bars are large enough and move the anchor as needed. If size is wonky, change the Display Scale.
7. Finally, if you want to filter only your own CC types, go to Enemy DR Filter and uncheck everything that isn't your own (so for Druid, I'd only check Controlled Roots, Controlled Stuns, Cyclone, and Hibernate).

CCTracker

1. /cctracker ui to open the config
2. Make sure "Enable CC Tracking for > Enemy CC" is checked.
3. Under "Enabled CCTracker inside" make sure Everywhere Else and Raid Instances are checked.
4. At the top, check "Show Anchor".
5. Now type: /cctracker test
6. See if the bars are large enough and move the anchor as needed. If size is wonky, change the Display Scale.
7. Finally, if you want to filter only your own CC types (an absolute must imo as you'll get way too many bars otherwise), go to Enemy Players > Spells and uncheck everything that isn't your own (so for Druid, I'd only check Entangling Roots, Cyclone, Hibernate, Pounce, and Maim).

Obviously you don't have to use these mods at all normally, but have them installed and setup so next time we do Faction Champions, you're ready to go. I suggest dropping down into Crystalsong Forest to test the mod out on some random mobs once you're setup to make sure it's working as you want. Any questions or help please let me know.

[Rofldat]

Heroic Twin and Anub'Arak's observation on videos:

Twin:
1. New ability enter the fray "Touch of Light/Darkness"
-from reading wowhead/watching video, it simply requires you to switch to appropraite essence quickly(DBM will give you the warning similar to Vortex), but even with minor delay there's no raid-wiping effect
2. Everything, obviously, hits harder
-aura is now 2500 damage
-the orbs number is uncertain, but they seem to spawn a lot more now.

Personally it seems that splitting raid DPS might be a good idea to avoid having any Twin's Pact go off, since the movement time + switching color can take up to 3-5 seconds for some of us.

Anub'Arak
-The only thing that's obvious is that the burrowers now spawn in pair, and the new ones immediately spawn after the old one die.
-No seriously, every video I see of him being killed look the same as normal except that extra add(the 25m have 4 adds instead of 2 on normal)

Every video I've seen opt to tank Anub on a permafrost and the adds on/next to him so any AoE on Anub(my Howling Blast, Ugra's Chain Lightning, Kil's Living Bomb, etc) can hit the adds.

It doesn't look like the difficulty really ramp up very high on those two. Well, not compare to faction champ at least.

Next thing in the brainstorm: how to get Resilience Will Fix It.