zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

This is it. You’ve skinned the beasts, banished the demon lord back to his realm, made short work of the opposing faction’s champions and clipped the wings off the twins. It’s time to face the Nerubian Lord Anub’arak, who’s back for round two.

Phase One is a tank and spank with adds. Anub’arak has a cleave attack so make sure you’re nowhere in front of him during the fight. DPS the boss, switch to the adds when your off-tank picks them up (one add in 10-man, 2 in 25) and then go back to the boss. A second set of adds will spawn shortly but we usually ignore those until the boss burrows.  The adds can also burrow and then pop back later. To prevent this, they have to be tanked on frozen ground. If they’re not, you can interrupt their burrow cast by using Kidney Shot.

When Anub’arak burrows, Phase Two begins. Kill the adds that your off-tank is dealing with then proceed to killing scarabs. These do not need to be tanked so just DPS away. They cast a stacking damage debuff on you so watch for it. If it becomes tough to handle you can use Cloak of Shadows to get out of it. The boss himself will cast spikes that chase random raid members. Just stand on frost (or get frost between you and the spikes) if it targets you. The spikes will hit the frost in a rather violent animation and then switch targets. Once Anub’arak pops from the ground, it’s back to Phase One.

Phase Three starts when the boss’s HP hits 30%. He’ll stop burrowing and will cast a life leech spell that will drain HP from the raid and give it back to him. This phase has more to do with your healers than you but the idea is to keep everyone except the tanks at 30-50 percent HP throughout the remainder of the fight. Just DPS the boss, pop your trinkets and enjoy the loot.

That’s it. I hope you enjoyed this guide to Trial of the Crusader. I know it’s delayed as hell but real life got in the way again. I was actually forced to a 3-week break from the game because of Ketsana and other shit (and when I say it’s shit, it really is shitty).

The fourth fight of TotC pits your group against Fjola Lightbane and Eydis Darkbane, the Twin Val’kyr. Four portals will spawn, 2 light and 2 dark. When you click one, you will see a matching aura on your feet, indicating what color you’re attuned to. The gimmick of the fight is knowing when to use which color.

• The fight itself is a tank and spank. Seriously.

• Install DBM or any similar addon. DBM will literally tell you what color to use if you need to switch. The version I downloaded today also tells me if I need to switch targets and it also shows when I should use Kick to interrupt the heal. We’ll cover that later, but what I want to emphasize here is that the fight is simplified exponentially by using DBM.

• You will always DPS the target opposite your color. If you’re white, you DPS black and vice-versa.

• Black and white orbs will spawn around the area. Grabbing orbs that have the same color as your attunement will buff you. Touching different colored ones will hurt you. So if you’re white, grab white.

• At certain points during the fight, one of the twins will cast one of two abilities. One is an AoE ability called Vortex. To avoid taking damage from it, switch colors to match the caster’s. If Eydis Darkbane is casting it, switch to black. If your color already matches that of the caster’s, then you don’t need to do anything.

• The second ability is Twin’s Pact, which heals the Twin Val’kyr for 20% of their health. One of the twins will cast it. The spell has a long cast time and can be interrupted, however the caster will have a shield up. Burn the shield, interrupt the spell. Remember that you have to switch colors if the caster happens to have the same color that you do so you can bring that shield down faster.

Before you go on, please read this first. The post below started as a comment on Dinaer’s thoughts on the matter and when I noticed that I had written three paragraphs on the subject, I decided to just make a post about it here.

I think the whole point of Trial of the Champion is to make Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader more accessible to players. The heroic version of Trial of the Champion drops ilvl 219 gear, sharing the item level that comes from Ulduar 10. This makes it possible for players to skip Naxx 25 and go straight to Ulduar 10.

Going back to the post title, I think we need to define what a typical player is first. Dinaer says:

Most players have a max-level character. The majority of those have been in either Naxxramas or Obsidian Sanctum to some extent. Somewhere between half to two-thirds of them have done Ulduar raids, and maybe a quarter have done any of ToC.

I know that it’s hard to define exactly what a typical player is, but if we take a look at the last part of the description, we’ll see that the closer we get to end-game content, the number of typical players goes down. Do we actually want all players to see the end-game content? I think Blizzard wants us to, given three things:

• the accessibility of ilvl 219 gear from heroic Trial of the Champion;
• the streamlining of emblems so that they’re all Conquest now;
• the rewarding of Triumph emblems via heroic dailies.

All this points to the conclusion that gearing up is easy, and that means if we put effort into it, we will see end-game content. The question here is if a typical player is willing to do all that legwork. Do we want all players to see end-game content? Of course. Should everyone see end-game content? Not if you don’t work for it first.

My two-cents. It’s something that I’ve always thought about since patch 3.2 came out and I’d like to thank Dinaer for asking that question. It helped organize my thoughts into this (somewhat) cohesive post.

The Faction Champions match is a PvP fight done in PvE gear. You’ll be up against members of the opposing faction. For this round, your ability to survive is more important than your DPS. It’s also a good idea to have your crowd control abilities within easy reach. Evasion, Cloak of Shadows, Kick, Blind, Gouge, Vanish, Dismantle, Cheat Shot and Kidney Shot are all going to be vital for the fight.

Since this is a PvP match, there are no phases or gimmicks. The key to winning is to know which target to prioritize. Obviously, healers are on top of the list. Your raid group should be able to identify which is which and mark them accordingly.

Stay away from the melee members of the enemy group. From what I’ve seen, they all have a habit of using some AoE ability such as Whirlwind that literally drops your health to half or more. On normal mode, they can be taunted, so your tanks should be able to keep them distracted.

Your targets can be stunned. It’s a PvP fight, so both Cheap Shot and Kidney Shot work. If you’re having a hard time bringing a healer down, stun him! Like I said, DPS is only a secondary concern for this match, so don’t feel bad about not using those precious combo points on a damage-oriented finisher like Envenom or Eviscerate. When you’ve stunned a target, call it out on Vent so your teammates know they can unleash more DPS if they want to.

Get ready to interrupt! Kick should be your primary interrupt ability, but keep in mind that Gouge, Kidney Shot and Blind work as well. If you have Throwing Specialization, Fan of Knives can interrupt, but it’s getting nerfed in 3.2.2 so don’t get used to it.

Regarding survivability, Dismantle works on anyone, but it’s better to save it for melee targets. If you’d like to get someone off your back, Gouge works well. Just make sure your target is facing you. You also have Blind to fall back on. If all else fails, Vanish.

Still on survivability, Cloak of Shadows and Evasion will keep you alive if you use it well. Don’t expect your teammates to be constantly on the money when it comes to dispelling debuffs on you. A well-timed CoS will remove them and grant you near immunity to spells for a few seconds. Got melee AoEing? Evade before you run away if they happen to be too close.

That’s it. Like I said, it’s a PvP fight so there’s a bit of unpredictability involved. Keep yourself alive, tweak your group’s strategy to match your opponents’ abilities and you should be able to push past them.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been raiding Ulduar thanks to a guild that’s been gracious enough to include me during their runs. Yeah, it’s a PUG, but when you’re always tagging along with them you kind of get used to how their guild works and how they do their runs. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been able to gather so far on what you’re supposed to do as a rogue in the early parts of Ulduar. Before we get into that, let me set the expectations first:

This is a guide specific to what rogues should be doing. This isn’t a comprehensive Ulduar guide nor does it outline boss strategies and abilities.

My experience is limited to the 25-man version.

For now, I can only take you as far as Auriaya. I have not had the privilege of defeating any of the keepers yet.

With that said, let’s begin.

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It’s probably very late (because saying “too late” doesn’t really cut it) to talk about it now, but I’ll tell you guys about the realm transfer.

Sinlaris and Razcien used to be in Quel’dorei. Some of my guildmates were being asked to move to Area 52 and, under a bit of peer pressure, I decided to join them. I’ll admit that for personal reasons I was hesitant to do so but these guys were my friends. That outweighed the misgivings I had about the whole thing.

So anyway, I moved. I realized about three weeks ago that it has been worth it. Aside from the gear upgrades that Sin has been receiving, I’ve been able to see content that I would have been unlikely to see back in Quel due to the number of PUGs in Area 52. For example, I’ve been to Ulduar thanks to a guild that has been gracious enough to include me in their runs.

Unfortunately, this is also the downside. When one consistently runs with a good PUG or guild, the idea of joining their side of the fence eventually comes to mind. A guildmate has already done this (note that I do not fault him for that. I’m merely stating a fact.) so a precedent has already been set. After all, you do better with them than you do with your own guild so why not join them instead right? I haven’t given jumping ship serious thought because I can’t commit to a raiding schedule due to time zone differences but the temptation is certainly there.

On a side note, our guild is planning to host a Naxx 25 run this weekend. Hopefully it will push through. I don’t know if we’ll be doing Ulduar 10 but I certainly hope that we will. The previous week’s one-boss kill on Flame Leviathan was pathetic. I mean, come on, one boss? I know we can certainly do better than that.