Haven’t posted in a really long time, mostly because tanking in the expansion seemed to be mostly straightforward. There haven’t really been that many tricky bosses or situations to deal with (save for a couple exceptions, like Accursed Feng and Garalon). But 5.2′s Throne of Thunder is throwing out a lot more trash at us and a few people still seem to have trouble dealing with them.
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Last Stand of the Zandalari
The first section probably has the most trash and consists entirely of trolls.
I’d recommend killing the Zandalari Water-Binders first, to stop them from casting Deluge and constantly summoning water elementals with Bind Water. Followed by the Spear-Shaper and Storm-Callers, while Blade Initiates can just be AOEd down.
Get past the Crazed Storm-Caller and you’ll be up against Jin’rokh the Breaker.
On the way across to and across the bridges, you’ll have to kill some stealthed Ancient Pythons. Avoid standing under the roaming Spirit Flayers (they can’t be killed) while you kill the Tormented Spirits. Just stand at the stairs and pull them back to you before trying to cross the bridge, but don’t pull more than two of them because of Torment.
At the midpoint platform, watch out for the Soul-Fed Construct. Its Spiritfire Beam can really ruin your raid. Once you cross the next bridge and kill Stormbringer Draz’kil, you won’t have to deal with the winds anymore.
After Horridon, even more trolls.
Kill the Gurubashi Berserkers first due to their Bloodletting, and then the Farraki Sand Conjurer so Sand Elemental stop coming. There are also Amani’shi Flame Chanters and Drakkari Frost Wardens, but they’re not really a problem. Don’t run off right away after you kill them though, because once the entire group is dead they’ll turn into Shadowed Voodoo Spirits.
Now you’ve got more Zandalari: The High Priests and Prelates are both healers, so interrupt Light of the Loa when possible. The Prophet‘s Visions of Demise is also something that would be helpful to interrupt. The Warlord has a cleave attack, so face him away.
Make sure to clear both sides before engaging the Council of Elders.
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The Forgotten Depths
The second section has a wide variety of trash. Getting to the first boss, Tortos, means killing all the Vampiric Cave Bats packs first. You can safely AOE them all, but once you start getting the groups with Greater Cave Bats, make sure to have people interrupting Sonic Screech whenever possible.
And before you can get to Meagara…a giant cave full of trash. You’ll need to go through and hit each of the three bells being guarded by an Eternal Guardian (their Siphon Life being rather annoying). And while you can probably avoid most of the wandering trash, you’ll probably still need to deal with a couple of them. Cavern Burrowers like to use Sonic Call, bringing any Shale Stalkers you might’ve avoided to the party. Fungal Growths and Mist Lurkers are easy enough to deal with, just don’t face them toward the raid.
Most of the trash in the tunnel leading to Ji-Kun can be avoided as long as you watch your step. Corpse Spiders will spawn from the web piles on the ground, while Bore Worms pop out from the yellow glowing bone piles. There’s also a couple Bow Fly Swarms to get past.
Watch for the most dangerous trash though: Gastropods. These cannot be tanked, they’ll fixate on a random player and slowly inch toward them, and their Abrasive Radula means that anyone caught in its path will die instantly.
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The Halls of Flesh-Shaping
Not a lot of trash here, but what it does have can be tricky. Roaming Fogs shouldn’t be a problem, but the Eye Sentries will yank random players into their circles. Kill them as quickly as possible while constantly moving to stay in the “safe” zone.
Hidden Fogs will jump onto the platform, but they’re not too bad unless someone decides to aggro several of them at once. Doing so will activate a bunch of Pale Fogs who constantly cast Pierce the Veil. Contrary to the tooltip, this ability seems to have no maximum range and does constant damage to the entire raid. Having several of them activate can quickly wipe out your entire group.
As for Durumu, if you ever get a beam on you, remember: tangential velocity. The closer you are to the boss, the faster you’ll be able to make the cone sweep the circle. Running off to the outer edge before circling will just make the fight take longer.
The next part is a bit of a gauntlet full of Quivering Blobs, just gather them up as you move forward toward Malignant Oozes. Kill the oozes first since they can heal themselves, and be careful with the blobs. You could AOE them as long as there aren’t too many of them, but their explosion can wipe out most of the raid if you kill a bunch of them all at once.
Clear up the remaining Blobs and you’ll be up against Primordius.
Once you open the doors to the Dark Animus, be prepared to face the Ritual Guards away when tanking them because of their Shockwave.
There’s also a group of six Ritualists in the room. They may all look the same, but if you watch their hands you can see some with glowing hands: Those will cast Long-Range Ritual Lightning, while the others will cast Short-Range Ritual Lightning. You could just AOE them all down at once, but killing the Short-Ranges first will make things easier.
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The Pinnacle of Storms
Very little trash in the final section, thankfully. Iron Qon‘s disciples, Manchu and Weisheng will be patrolling around groups of Untrained Quilen. It’s usually a good idea to pull Weisheng while he’s separated from the Quilen because of his Triumphant Roar, it’ll make it much faster to kill the Quilen later.
The room before the Twin Consorts has several Shan’ze Celestial Shapers, they’ll be casting Lightning Lash but it shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Before facing Lei Shen, you’ll have to deal with two pairs of Lightning Guardians and Thunder Lords. The most important thing here is to stop attacking immediately whenever Conductive Shield goes up on your target. It’s not a bad idea to run out of the Guardian’s Lightning Storms either.
