Filed under: Raiding

---

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions!

Throne of Thunder has been out for a good long while now, and many of us have been raiding its depths every week. Personally, though, I took a short break from raiding at the launch of patch 5.2, and had only seen many of these fights on LFR. It wasn't until recently that I picked the raiding game back up and joined a new group, though with them working on their second heroic boss I was a tad behind in terms of progression. So I did a bit of research and, through trial and error each week, have crafted a short list of notes for each boss, including talents, glyphs, and special abilities to look out for.

Usually my "default" talent build is something like 221223, with Mass Exorcism, Double Jeopardy, and Templar's Verdict glyphed. In my summaries below I will try to emphasize the usefulness of certain talents and glyphs, whether they deviate from this core build or not.

Also, these tips are primarily for normal mode encounters in Throne of Thunder, though some of them may be applicable to LFR and parts of heroic.

Earlier this week, WoW Insider's Matthew Rossi argued that there is no point in distinguishing between hardcore and casual players, and that doing so actually detracts from the game. I, however, don't agree and will be presenting a counterpoint in this article. So, if you haven't read Rossi's side yet, be sure to check it out first.

Now before I explain why I think the distinction between hardcore and casual is useful, I think it's necessary that we all be on the same page as far as what hardcore and casual actually are. I found Rossi's argument against the usage of these words particularly flawed because he was working around an assumed and rigid definition of what a hardcore player and a casual player are. Toward the end of his article he pointed out that the casual/hardcore metric doesn't work when you consider the various ways in which some players are engaging with the game. Not every player raids, he explained, but that doesn't mean they can't be hardcore.

Now, I agree with that for the most part, but I disagree with his understanding of hardcore and casual. You see, hardcore and casual are not and have never been part of any metric. It's actually impossible for them to have ever been since the definition of casual and hardcore is subjective. Ask any two people what kind of behavior distinguishes a casual player from a hardcore player and the answer will be different in some way ... And if the definition of something varies from person to person, it can't logically be used as a standard of measurement.

Vanilla raiding was not mechanically more difficult than current raiding. In fact, in terms of encounter difficulty, raiding in World of Warcraft has never been as challenging to remember and execute as it is right now. Fights like Lei Shen, Twin Consorts, Iron Qon, and Durumu ask players to learn mechanics and execute awareness at a level rivaled only by fights like Mimiron's Firefighter mode. And I'm not even talking heroic difficulty for those fights. Yes, it was often harder to get 40 people together, I'm not disputing that. But that's not design difficulty, that's social difficulty. The argument that WoW was objectively harder back then is beyond absurd.

I was there for all of those raids. I've raided in vanilla, in BC, in Wrath, and in Cataclysm. I've done hard modes and heroic modes since they were introduced. I'm neither the cutting edge progression raider nor someone who raids occasionally for fun -- I've been everywhere from a raider pushing for realm firsts to one leading a semi-casual 10-man while tanking. One thing I can and will say with absolute certainty is this: every single expansion to World of Warcraft has increased the complexity of the raid design.

This is a topic I know will get me into trouble. Classic WoW is known as "classic" for a reason, after all. Being the opening foray into the MMO that has since become the standard for the entire industry, WoW's first incarnation is filled with memorable encounters. The raid bosses we battled back then are the yardsticks by which we have judged pretty much everything that has followed.

I know it's tempting to say something like Ragnaros or Onyxia or C'Thun, because those are the big bad end boss fights that remain etched in WoW players' collective consciousness. I've always tried to stay away from the obvious answers, though, because, well, they're obvious. I don't think there's anything particularly interesting I could write about Ragnaros or Onyxia that hasn't already be said better by someone else. When I sat down to brainstorm about this topic, I ran through many of the classic bosses, testing my memories of them, and after a while I hit upon what I knew would be my personal answer to this question: Vaelastrasz the Corrupt.

Huzzah! Pinnacle of Storms, the final wing of Throne of Thunder Raid Finder, is open this week, and that means you're almost done. If you're just venturing into ToT Raid Finder, we recommend you head over to our 5-second guides for the first, second, and third wings. This wing is mostly downhill in terms of difficulty, especially after the Durumu pre-nerfed maze business, but can still prove to be a challenge to Raid Finder champions clueless on strategy. And just for you, we've put together a quick guide for the final wing. We accept cookies and high fives. (Thanks Zhonya for the help!)

Iron Qon

Tank swap at two stacks of Impale. Stay off of fire, ice, or lightning lines on the ground throughout the fight, reposition the boss as needed. During the lightning phase, move out of and away from tornadoes once sucked in. Move the boss to the back of the room. Stay spread out during lightning phase. During ice phase, move to hit the boss on his unshielded sides. Stack in his final phase for healing.

While perusing Wowhead's blue tracker the other day I stumbled across this thread on the EU forums about the LFR loot system, its frustrations, and potential alternatives. Community manager Draztal is pretty active in the thread, which is nice to see -- there is plenty of back-and-forth and, despite player accusations of just parroting Blizzard policy, Draztal has a lot of good points to make about the nature of effort and reward.

The truth is that WoW has never consistently rewarded players for running dungeons or raids. I still get a little involuntary curl to my lip anytime I think about Burning Crusade-era heroics, particularly Magister's Terrace, and how often I ran them trying to get some piece of gear, and how often my groups wiped and nothing I needed dropped anyway (and all those useless PvP gems).

I agree it's frustrating to run LFR and only get gold, though I did have to sit down and think about why, in particular. After all, I killed Saurfang in Icecrown for probably upwards of three months before I finally got the Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff. During all that time it never occurred to me that my failure to receive loot was an indication that the entire system needed an overhaul. After a couple minutes ruminating, though, I think the answer is pretty obvious: loot is the only real reason to run LFR (with the exception of just experiencing content, for those who may not have the opportunity to raid otherwise).

---

I wrote a KYL this week talking about Uldaman, and one thing became clear to me very quickly - there's a ton of things we haven't done in Uldaman yet. We barely explore the place at all, really - the Map Room we find during the dungeon clearly shows many, many more buildings than the few we actually explore, and it's telling that the Reliquary dig and the Explorer's League digsite are half the length of the Badlands away from each other. Furthermore, the long Wrathion quest chain makes it clear that there was a lot going on in Uldaman - the Eye of the Watchers used to purify Wrathion's egg comes from Uldaman.

Uldaman is often referred to as one of three Titan cities along with Uldum and Ulduar, but unlike those two it has barely been explored due to its position buried beneath the Badlands. It's possible that the original Uldaman complex reaches as far as Khaz Modan (both Gnomeregan and Ironforge are settled by beings that would have traced their descent to Uldaman, and the troggs flooding into Gnomeregan are escaping from Titan vaults that are part of the Uldaman complex) which would mean that its size rivals the Storm Peaks Titan complexes that were part of the Forge of Wills inside Ulduar or the vast Uldum ruins.

It's over. We'd predicted that we would get him this week, and after two pulls it was done. We are now the only people in the world to have killed the last boss of tier 15.

---

Apparently 七 煌 switched to 10 man after downing Lei Shen in 25 and that made all of Ra-Den's abilities work as it if were 10 man (except they had 25 people there fighting him) [...] The guild supposedly reported the issue to Blizzard so there isn't any actual exploiting going on, just a bug due to the different way in which 10s and 25s are handled in Asia (different lockout etc).

---

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

I always agonize over breaking set bonuses. You can sim it out all you like, you can run dummy tests, you can hit up LFR to test it out, but at the end there's always that brief period of self doubt over abandoning a set bonus for overall higher stats. My current raid had something like four warriors, four hunters, and a fair amount of shamans and monks so I'm not even trying for tier right now, instead focusing on overall upgrades. So last night, after getting a nice DPS ring and breastplate, I decided to break my Tier 14 4 piece set bonus.

To be honest, my performance seems to have improved, and I find myself wondering if it's because I raid as arms, since we don't get the double-crit on Mortal Strike that fury gets on Bloodthirst. I did do some LFR after the raid as fury, but my weapons are significantly below my arms weapon (since I can't use a polearm with Titan's Grip and I haven't gotten squat for SMF in two tiers of raiding) so in the end it felt like a wash. Heck, in order to even test TG I had to do an item restore on my upgraded Starshatter.

One of the issues facing us as DPS warriors is the idea of maximum DPS by spec. A lot of people will use sites like Noxxic, look up what the maximum DPS is for their class by spec, and just spec that. It doesn't work, and they get frustrated. Based on a conversation I had in LFR last night, I'm doing everything imaginable wrong by speccing arms as a DPS warrior, and I found myself forced to defend my spec choice even while outperforming everyone else. In fact, it seemed to irritate said person that I was doing what he said couldn't be done. Now, let me be clear that this isn't Noxxic's fault - it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, and it's a worse craftsman who tries to use a power drill as a belt sander. But let's talk a bit about the difference between your DPS in a perfect vacuum vs. your DPS in an actual raid situation.

The third wing of Throne of Thunder Raid Finder was unlocked this week after a short break from the last one. After our previous 5-second guides to the first and second wings, how could we abandon you now? You've almost made it through. If you thought the beasts in the Forgotten Depths were rough, just wait until you meet your new friends in the Halls of Flesh-Shaping. Here's a quick rundown to quickly share with your Raid Finder buddies (thanks for the help Lucid guildies!).

Durumu the Forgotten

There will be a tank swap, taunt at around 4 stacks of Serious Wound. Step into Life Drain to intercept. During phase two, the raid should split itself between the yellow, red, and blue cones. Move each cone around until the three fog adds are revealed, and kill them. Move out of Force of Will and pools on the ground. During the third phase, be patient and navigate the purple maze while keeping ahead of the death beam. In the maze, stuff on the ground hurts, so stick to the cleared melee or ranged path. Tip: Point your camera downward to better view the cleared maze pathing.

Primordius

Kite the boss to prevent him from picking up too many Living Fluids, and kill them. Tank swap at around seven Malformed Blood stacks and avoid dragging him over the purple Volatile Pools. Only tanks should stand in front of the boss. Collect the red Mutagenic Pools on the ground dropped by Living Fluids to become mutated, DPS the boss. Avoid the red pools when you are mutated.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

This has been something of a wild month for me. I started it playing a tauren warrior, and I'm ending it as a worgen. I've spent the month raiding Throne of Thunder and thinking about warrior gear I need to pick up as we progress through the place. The weird thing about gear is, it's really just a means to an end. You get gear to get better to progress through harder content, that's pretty much all there is to the gearing cycle. Each new patch, each new raid opens up new angles for progression, but it's really always heading towards that brass ring of "Beat X boss, get Y gear to beat Z boss." Until the expansion ends, anyway.

As one of the largest raids we've seen in a while, Throne of Thunder has a lot of gear. We covered six bosses last time, taking us to the mid point of the raid. Now we get to look at the remaining bosses. The Halls of Flesh Shaping and Pinnacle of Storms await. As before, I'm just going to list the 522 gear that drops in normal 10/25 - thunderforged variants are 6 ilevels higher, and thus are usually the best option in normal raids.