So close. So very, very close.

New raid week, kill number 11 (every week since Ulduar debuted) on the Flame Leviathan, and dontcha know it, no Titanguard. Again. I hate you RNG.

Like I described in a post last week, Thorim’s been a bit of a headache for us these last few weeks. For this raid period I had a new strategy formed and ready to go, and in order to get a shot at trying it we steamrolled through FL, XT, Kolo, Auriaya, and Hodir to get to ol’ Sparky himself.

Slight diversion: After we killed Kologarn a bunch of us bounded across the bridge to hit the cache o’ loot failing to notice that a pack of rubbles didn’t despawn, and they were chewing up the healers that hung back to rez. Oops. (See screenshot above!)

Anyway, so we get to Thorim and explain my crazy scheme. One mage is designated as the Evoker Marker. It’s his job to use the following macro:

/target Dark Rune Evoker
/script setraidtarget(“target”,6)

This basically makes him immediately target an Evoker and mark it for melee. Melee uses an assist macro on the Mage to target his target and start burning down the marked Evoker. The Mage watches the Evoker like a hawk to spellsteal any Rune Shields that the mob puts up on itself.

That’s the biggest prep work that needs to be done. When in the arena, the group that’s assigned to that part of the fight will stack in the copper circle in the middle. Yes, I know there is the occasional silence, but that’s just something that needs to be worked through. The closer we are stacked the easier AOE is going to be for burning down the mobs.

So, one tank is in the middle (this was me, last night) with the arena group and one tank stands just outside. This tank is assigned to pick up champions as they jump into the fight and tank them away from the stack. champions tend to whirlwind and kill in short order any squishees. So, they must be kept away at all costs. Likewise, three ranged are assigned to kill the champions and focus on them the entire time. That way the second tank doesn’t get overwhelmed with champs.

Big game changer that makes arena easy: Fan of Knives. Have two rogues (at least) and make them spec into improved FoK and apply the glyph for it. Then just have them mash the FoK button like there’s no tomorrow, with the stack tank as their Tricks of the Trade target. It’s unbelievably effective at taking out the trash.

Last night this strategy was doing wonders during the hour of attempts we put in on this fight. Clearly the execution was just what needed refinement. We even had one attempt that we absolutely would have had, no one was dead in the arena, the gauntlet group was almost at Thorim… and then the champs tank DC’d. And the champs ran into my group and the clothies got cut to ribbons. We absolutely would have had it that time had the DC not occur.

Tonight we’ll be heading to Thorim first.

Programming note: I’m away on a trip for the next few days, which means unfortunately I won’t be blogging again until Wednesday. I’ll be occasionally tweeting, though, in desperation about how much I miss WoW. Do join me for that!