So we're doing hard-mode Thorim last night. We spent a large part of our first night balancing our groups to get enough DPS in the gauntlet. We wanted to setup the gauntlet in such a way that we could get an extra 15 seconds left over so arena could clean up or start cleaning up any fresh waves before we pulled Thorim.

On night 2 (last night) it was down to a science and we consistently got into the Thorim phase of that fight, however it proved to be too hard. People were (eventually) dodging the laser beams like pros. The healers were able to heal through the added frostbolt damage (although from time to time someone might get frostnovaed/frostbolted quickly and killed).

Our biggest problem was.... tanks dying. At 2 stacks of his bonus damage debuff he one-shot me (autoswing and unbalancing strike at the same time). I have 42k health raid buffed. Looking at Grim Reaper later it was found that when Imbalancing Strikes hit I was @ 39K health and that the overkill on the damage was 1k damage. So presumably if I was fully topped off for this unpredictably spikey damage I would have survived with 1,000 hit points. After I died the attempt went on for a little while longer until Thorim melee swung the tanks to death.

We had similar attempts all night and it seemed to be the biggest reason for us wiping all night. We'd be doing really good and then ONE-SHOT. Our DK tank has 45k health buffed and until our final attempt he had not fall victim to this one shot. However at only 3 stacks Thorim Unbalancing Strikes+melee swung the DK and Sif cast a frostbolt volley at the same time, instantly killing the tank.

I understand blizzard wants hard modes to be hard.... but this is just ridiculous. It feels like this encounter is entirely RNG based and a kill comes after 3-4 days of bearing your head at it and praying that unbalancing strikes doesn't happen in close proximity with melee swings.

I only have experience with 10-man, where you have to start rotating cooldowns at about 8 or 10 stacks. Two stacks seems fairly early to be in one-shot range, but if that's what it is then that's when you need to start rotating cooldowns.

Anyways, we're going to be working on this the rest of the week as well so should be a good time.

As with basically all hard modes, it's immensely easier if you use a DK tank. I can get 48k unbuffed and +5000 armor over Warriors which simply survives better.

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Q u o t e:
As with basically all hard modes, it's immensely easier if you use a DK tank.

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Sadly, this is true.

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Q u o t e:
As with basically all hard modes, it's immensely easier if you use a DK tank. I can get 48k unbuffed and +5000 armor over Warriors which simply survives better.

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48k unbuffed huh? Impressive.. with BiS pre-Ulduar gear and a few Ulduar upgrades, I can only get up to 49.5k raid buffed.

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Q u o t e:
As with basically all hard modes, it's immensely easier if you use a DK tank. I can get 48k unbuffed and +5000 armor over Warriors which simply survives better.

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Agreed... and we need more DKs to admit with such unabashed pride to their OPness and suitability for hard modes. That way, you can be nerfed again, lest you steal the fun of all the hard modes in Ulduar as you did with Sarth3d.

Edit: he must mean 48k buffed; unbuffed is clearly ridiculous.

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Q u o t e:
As with basically all hard modes, it's immensely easier if you use a DK tank. I can get 48k unbuffed and +5000 armor over Warriors which simply survives better.

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Presently I can attain 41k HP entirely unbuffed (No personal buffs, no consumable buffs) but that's making significant choices in favor of stamina over other valid survivability stats.

In other words, I don't believe you.

He clearly meant buffed.

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Q u o t e:
He clearly meant buffed.

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We've been working on this for a few hours now. To save you some grief, we've found it best to start rotating cooldowns around the second growth, and have at least one cooldown constantly up. When the first tank's cooldowns runs out, the next one will taunt, rotating his. Around growth 8-10, you'll have to start overlapping some of those cooldowns (whether it be with sacrifice, pain sup, or whatever it may).

Also, I'd recommend having everyone in your raid wearing at least 1 piece of FrR, but no more than 2. Frost nova -> Frostbolt volley will cause many deaths almost instantly (well, .30-.80 seconds, but you get the drift).

Yeah, I meant buffed. Someone here is claiming 49.5k buffed and I'm drawing a blank on that one, seems impossible to me unless you're assuming Vampiric Blood is up.

I would strongly recommend your DK tanks go for a 23/44/4 spec for hard modes, the AE aggro is pathetic but it's the absolute best at surviving and the single-target threat is still pretty good. Having 35% uptime on a near-60% shield wall is just amazing.

Our druid solo tanked Thorim for our kill. We killed him at 14 stacks. Our druid has 56k HP raid buffed.

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Q u o t e:
Our druid solo tanked Thorim for our kill. We killed him at 14 stacks. Our druid has 56k HP raid buffed.

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druid armory link plz

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kil%27jaeden&n=Sudhir

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Q u o t e:
As with basically all hard modes, it's immensely easier if you use a DK tank. I can get 48k unbuffed and +5000 armor over Warriors which simply survives better.

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Its tough to read these posts. Im just happy the other tanks' cooldowns are better.

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Q u o t e:
Our druid solo tanked Thorim for our kill. We killed him at 14 stacks. Our druid has 56k HP raid buffed.

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Stamina sounds about right with 4p t8.5 and nothing socketed but stamina gems. Good to know its soloable, it would make our kill a lot simpler if we could do this. Did he use any frost resist gear at all, or just the straight up tier stuff?

ya it's possible to solo tank it. cycling defensive c/d's on the tank for unbalancing strikes later in the fight is a good idea :P just letting it straight up hit you as his buff stacks get into the teens is pretty bad.

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Q u o t e:

Stamina sounds about right with 4p t8.5 and nothing socketed but stamina gems. Good to know its soloable, it would make our kill a lot simpler if we could do this. Did he use any frost resist gear at all, or just the straight up tier stuff?

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He also uses glyph of barkskin for this fight.

He actually has 52k in the gear he logged out on, which means he's probably using some Polar gear. With potentially some resilience in there too.

Looks like a potential win for druids thanks to stupid itemization tricks and bad balance of glyphs!

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Q u o t e:
He actually has 52k in the gear he logged out on, which means he's probably using some Polar gear. With potentially some resilience in there too.

Looks like a potential win for druids thanks to stupid itemization tricks and bad balance of glyphs!

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Hey, druids need to be the best tanks on something. :)