Somehow as the ultimate casual player who has a shitty inactive guild, no one to play with, lacks friends online to do any activities with yet somehow has managed to hit ilvl 480 and wanted to check out this Throne of Thunder LFR thing, this is the ultimate guide for you. You’ve already been vote kicked from LFG because your DPS doesn’t cross heroic levels, you’re stressed out because you’ve fucked up so many times on mechanics just because you were too intent on concentrating on your rotation and people yelled at you making you hesitant to re-enter LFR. You’re the one who constantly steps in the purple thing that wipes raids during Garalon, your healer hates you because you stand in front of Lei Shi trying to DPS, you only DPS the boss during Will of the Emperor and take 150k damage from Devastating Arc because you don’t know which way to run (or even to know to run when he swings). Heck, you even wiped on the Stone Guardians in Mogu’shan Vaults. In short, you are the player that likes to be a turret (i.e. someone who just AFK fights during a boss encounter and never bothers to try learning any mechanics just so you can get loot). However, Throne of Thunder might require a little more effort than just being a typical turret and there ain’t any raid that’s going to let you get away with things anymore.
Or maybe you just want to read a full guide on the minimal amount of effort to do decently in Throne of Thunder.
At any rate, I decided to write this guide since I’ve been farming Throne of Thunder LFR on my alts for a while and steadily have found it to get easier. I’m not 100% familiar with all the mechanics, but I know two important aspects: 1) how to survive; 2) how to do reasonable DPS and avoid getting kicked.
First, let me explain some rules of how you can avoid being kicked:
- Don’t go AFK. We will kick you.
- Don’t be the “turret” guy. If something fucks up, someone will notice and we will kick you.
- Actually, pay attention to what your raid leader says on those rare occasions where they attempt to communicate to the group. It doesn’t matter how belligerent he/she is, just pay attention to him/her. More than likely, they’re assholes because they’ve done LFR so many times, they’re rainbow color in the face because they’re way past blue.
- Sign up for your role. Don’t try and get in as a healer or tank just to queue faster because we definitely will call you out and kick you.
- If you do fuck up and people notice, politely apologize. Humility is your friend.
- Do yourself and everyone a favor and get Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) from curse.com. Even if you dislike add-ons, get this one if you ever plan to step in a raid of any form because it will warn you to at minimum get the fuck out of shit.
- Unless you have something important to contribute to a group’s conversation, stay quiet. Don’t ever get into heated arguments unless it’s for an encounter. And only get into heated arguments over an encounter if you are 110% correct and have all the stats (i.e. top DPS) to prove your point. Otherwise, no one will bother listening to you (and since you’re on this page, more than likely that won’t be the case).
- Aim for a minimum of 50k DPS. Around the 480 ilvl mark you should be near that point.
- If you die on trash mobs, run back. There’s a lot of lazy people who just stay dead, waiting for resurrections. But sometimes running back can mean the difference of a complete wipe and you being singled out.
Now, that we have the basics out of the way, let’s proceed to some tactics.
Last Stand of the Zandalari
Part 1 gives you a nice intro to the rest of the LFR. When you zone in, you’ll encounter some trash mobs that block two entry points. Your tank more than likely will pull the left side. If he’s careful enough, he’ll pull them into the room you zoned into and you should DPS from that point. The thing that can wipe your raid is that the next trash pull involves a Zandarlari Spear-Shaper. The reason why you want to stay in that room is that he does a knock back. Because of the trash on the side and a patrol, you can accidentally get knocked into another group and this is where most groups end up wiping. So once that guy starts his whirlwind attack, you need to move back and out of the second room. If you end up dying, run back since the entrance is close by.
Once you clear the first 2-3 trash packs, there’s another mob who will be DPS’d down fairly easy. The only thing to be wary of his when you have a storm effect on you. If you get that, just run out otherwise you’ll damage others in the group. Then you’ll meet your first boss.
Jin’rokh the Breaker
This guy is more or less a really simple tank and spank. There’s two variations between a melee and ranged because of the Focused Lightning mechanic. Ranged and healers need to pay attention to Focused Lightning. If you get this, you need to run out of the raid asap. This little glowing spark will follow you so you want to deposit this to an empty corner.
The rest of the fight is just a DPS race. You will have these four pools of Conductive Water that gradually grow. As soon as one of these spawns, you want to head to that point asap because it buffs your healing and damage. A smart tank will kite Jin’rokh towards the pool. As a ranged, you should try to head for that point immediately. Melee might have a slightly harder time depending on the tank. Eventually, this pool will be turned into Electrified Water. So you’ll have a window to run out asap into a clear area.
Essentially, you get four opportunities to do this while trying to DPS Jin’rokh down. Pretty much once all the pools are Electrified you more or less will meet a soft enrage timer. In theory, you can stand in a clear area but by then it probably is too late.
After you slay Jin’rokh, you will run through another small gauntlet. Most the mobs leading to your next boss are fairly easy. But there are three areas to watch out for. First, you’ll encounter a bridge that has a strong wind that pushes you back. You’ll also see these large glowing troll spirits called Spirit Flayers floating back and forth on the bridge. You can’t attack them but they do cause damage so you’ll want to avoid these.
Once you reach the bridge, should wait at the foot of the stairs (just before the push back from the wind) for your tank to drag back Tormented Spirits (which look like giant banshees). They do quite a bit of AoE damage, so you’ll want to group up for your healers to keep your group intact. They aren’t hard but the again the trick is to avoid the frustration of dealing with the push back effect (because you can get knocked off the ledge. If that happens, you will most certainly be forced to run back because your healers will not be able to find your corpse).
After the first bridge, you will encounter a large Soul-Fed Construct. Before careful not to run in front of your tank as you cross the bridge (which btw you should use any movement boosters just to avoid the Spirit Flayers). As a melee, I typically run into the center of the circular area because there’s another Spirit Flayer roaming around the area of the Soul-Fed Construct. Ranged probably can stay at the exit of the stairs. The main thing to avoid is the Spiritfire Beam. I’ve been one shot by this just because of bad positioning.
Once you kill the Soul-Fed Construct, you’ll have another bridge to cross with four more Tormented Spirits to deal with. Again, wait for your tank to do the pulls. Some groups will only pull the first two mobs back to the bridge. Warlocks might create portals to the half way point so that the raid can finish off the Tormented Spirits on the other side of the bridge (you can do this because you won’t have to deal with another Soul-Fed Construct there). Again, just watch your health during this encounter.
On the opposite side, you’ll fight some hidden snakes and encounter a neat little mini-boss: Stormbringer Draz’kil. While there’s no real special tactics to this encounter, what makes him a cool little mini-boss is that you get a nice 20 Valor Point reward. So you really don’t want to miss out on this encounter if you’re Valor Point starved for the week. He’s the only remaining threat until you get to….
Horridon
A friend of mine stated that they probably should’ve made Horridon a later stage boss because of the ramped up difficulty in this encounter. When I first saw this boss, I will admit that he looked intimidating because of how tremendously chaotic the fight can get. Yet this is one of the best encounters in all of LFR just because it’ll keep you on your toes the entire time. This is a fight where you cannot be a turret and just stand around. It’s very movement heavy and will require you to change tactics at all times. In short, if you really never paid attention to mechanics before, you will need to start looking at the encounter seriously here.
Most of the fight is an add focused fight. You start off by pulling Horridon in an arena. Pretty much any time you’re attacking Horridon, you need to attack his flank. Attacking his rear and front will result in tremendous damage. Your tank will slowly pull Horridon back towards four doors where adds will pour out. Your objective once these adds pour out is to ensure that you don’t get overwhelmed.
Eventually, two critical adds that have the possibility of wiping a raid will come out. In the first half, you’ll face Farraki Wastewalkers as your most dangerous add. They can create Sand Traps, which are pools on the ground you need to avoid. You’ll want to focus on these until the Dinomancer is revealed. Once the Dinomancer appears (who should become your primary target at once in the four cases), you need to switch to him. They can mend Horridon (which always is a bad thing), so you should interrupt the mend spell then down him quickly. Once he dies, someone will grab an item from the Dinomancer which will shut the gate and prevent more adds from spawning. At that point, Horridon will charge the gate and you will have a brief moment where you can get some cheap shots on him.
The next three phases are similar where you get down the adds at the next three gates. The important difference is understanding which adds are important (outside of the Dinomancers) and avoiding the key adds that spawn traps on the ground. For the next gate, you’ll need to worry about Gurubashi Venom Priest because they can cast poison on you and summon adds that can further poison the raid. These will leave large green poisonous pools on the ground. Worse yet, the poison stacks so you’ll want to ensure that you don’t get your stacks up too high unless you have a way to cleanse yourself. I think most people end up dying on this part because they ignore the poison and healers might not cleanse them. When possible, you should interrupt their spells as that will help avoid a lot of grief.
For the third gate, you’ll face Drakkari Frozen Warlords as your priority. Again, they will drop a spell on the ground which needs to be avoided. So you’ll want to nuke these as fast as possible and avoid the Frozen Orbs. On the last gate, you’ll face Amani Warbears which carry Amani’shi Beast Shamans. These have priority because the Shamans will summon a lightning totem, which again, will summon shit on the ground that needs to be avoided.
After you close the gate and the adds die, you’ll face Horridon with War-God Jalak. In LFR, a common tactic is to just blow Bloodlust/Heroism/Timewarp and burn Horridon. If you manage to burn down Horridon, War-God Jalak will despawn. So most groups end up using that tactic. War-God Jalak’s primary dangerous move is his AoE so depending on Horridon’s health and the number of remaining members, it’s a toss up where the priority is. I tend to go with burning Horridon since War-God Jalak might end up being a waste of time.
From here on until the next group of bosses, I would argue that it’s a breeze. The remaining trash mobs are pretty easy. So I will head straight into the last encounter for this wing:
Council of Elders
This is a group of four bosses that people need to avoid tunneling (i.e. focusing exclusively on one boss) because there are some easy mechanics that can wipe a raid if people aren’t paying attention.
The way this fight works is that there will always be an Empowered Elder (aka the “Purple Guy”). He gradually builds up a resource called “Dark Power.” Once this reaches 100, you pretty much guarantee a raid wipe if there are other members who have over a certain amount of health. Most times LFR wipes on this encounter as a result of “Dark Power” being built up since people end up trying to burn down a single boss and forget about this aspect.
Standard LFR tactics for this encounter is to first burn Sul the Sandcrawler where melee focus entirely on him while ranged work on the Empowered Elder. You want to burn Sul because of two reasons: 1) he summons annoying Quicksand that causes damage and roots you; 2) he can summon sand elementals. Most people burn Sul to avoid him summoning sand elementals (which I think happens upon him becoming Empowered).
Once Sul is down, typically the better tactic is to focus on the Empowered Elder. That allows you to guarantee (or have a better chance) to avoid a raid wipe. Some things to keep in mind through this. First, High Priestess Mar’li summons two types of spirits depending on whether she’s empowered or not. If she’s empowered, she will summon a Shadowed Loa Spirit. You MUST kill these immediately because they will one shot players. I’ve seen a lot of stupid players just standing around and letting these things one shot them. Don’t be an excess chromosomed player. If she’s not empowered, she will summon a Blessed Loa Spirit which will heal the lowest health council member. Both Loa Spirits can be slowed and CC’d. So using stuns, frost traps, etc. are highly recommended as they will move quite quickly. On top of Empowered elders generating too much dark power, I’ve seen raid wipes because people won’t kill Shadowed Loa Spirits, causing many unnecessary deaths.
Another thing to watch out is Frost King Malakk’s Frostbites and Biting Cold. If you get Biting Cold, run the fuck away from the raid because it’ll damage everyone. If you get Frostbite, stack with the raid.
At any rate, compared to Horridon, I found this fight to be pretty easy. Most raids only wipe once and that’s mostly because of the two scenarios I pointed above (and generally because of the Empowered Elder). I will cover the other three wings in three separate blogs as these are taking quite a while to write and are becoming somewhat bulky.