Heroic Northrend Beasts: Please no more skeletons.

You may have noticed that Lathere and I haven’t mentioned raiding for weeks. It’s not because we’ve been taking a raiding break. We’ve both spent too much time looking at the bricks on the walls of Trial of the Crusader lately.  Not exactly inspiring stuff.

For the last few weeks we’ve been working on Heroic 25 Northrend Beasts, the first boss in a “Tribute” run. Heroic is really a huge step up from Normal difficulty. The first night of wiping had me convinced that we needed a heck of a lot more gear before we’d be able to beat it. But we’ve been wiping on it pretty much each raid night since then.

Somehow (and don’t ask me how) we beat the enrage timer, shitty server lag and killed Northrend Beasts on Heroic mode. And, to be honest, the only reason why it was possible was because we have an amazing healing team. The fight is demanding because you are given a set amount of time to kill each beast before the next appears. The encounter sets the pace, not your raid. We dropped back to a group of 5 healers to make room for more DPS.

And yes, Lathere did a fantastic job /hug

Tips for Heroic Northrend Beasts

Since we killed him, I suppose that I’m qualified to offer some suggestions on how we did it. You cannot afford to lose even 1 person if you want to make the enrage timer.

All I can say is... thank god.

Phase 1: Levitate all the ranged/healers before the pull
Ok, this is probably a bit of a bug, but if you are floating with Levitate and you get hit by a Snowbold’s fire bomb, Levitate will break, but you won’t spawn fire underneath your feet. No moving/DPS time lost.

Phase 2: Don’t be nearby when the Worms resurface
They like to target the closest player and spit on them. Make sure that person is not you.

Phase 2: Split your melee
Melee players tend to get spat on all at once. To minimise the chances of that happening we split the melee into 2 groups, with one on Acidmaw and one on Deadscale. After killing Acidmaw you’ll come across one phase when Dreadscale becomes stationary. This is his favourite time to fire spit on the melee and wipe your raid. Try and triangulate your 2 melee groups with your tank and get everyone at max range.

Phase 3: Strafe for your life
Tuskarr’s Vitality, run speed pots, engineering tricks, whatever you need to get out of the way in time when Icehowl charges, use. He enrages if he hits someone and that’s a near guaranteed wipe. Oh yeah, watch out for those upright struts that stick out from the wall.

Why I Hated Heroic Northrend Beasts

Working on this encounter was not fun. And I think I know why:

I miss trash.

There, I’ve confessed. There is no trash to clear before starting the encounter. You don’t move forward. You can’t even muck around, because, well it’s only trash.

The same four walls.

It all takes place in 1 room. You stay there. You buff run into position and fight. Repeat. Now repeat that 50 times. The only thing that changes is the amount of skeletons on the floor.

Oh yeah. Lag.

The Barthilas server lag appeared before Anub’arak was released. And it hasn’t really gone away. Some nights are worse than others.

So what is the problem? It is just Bloodlust at 2am PDT (7pm server time)? Are Bloodlust guilds raiding at other times of the day experiencing the same unbearable lag as we are? What is the problem with Patch 3.2? Why do we disconnect in Trial of the Crusader and nowhere else?

Best Part of Trial of the Crusader

To end on a positive note, and lift my spirits, here is my absolute favourite moment in Trial of the Crusader:

Free Fall: You fall right through the floor to reach Anub'arak

When you defeat the Twins the floor of Trial of the Crusader shatters and you free fall down into Anub’arak’s Nerubian cavern. And just like in Azjol-Nerub, the fall is just so fun. I think I would say it’s my favourite part of the instance. And with Levitate, you can make it last even longer.

Note: If you have Death Knights in the raid, they will try and kill you.