MoP LFR Tips: Throne of Thunder - Lei Shen

Oh hello!

The fourth and final quarter of the Throne of Thunder has been released in LFR as of yesterday and I am sure many people have questions or want to have a quick brief understanding of the Lei Shen fight in order to facilitate a smooth kill.

I am skipping over Iron Qon and Twin Consorts momentarily as they are fairly insignificant. Let's get straight to Lei Shen.

Lei Shen

Organization
First off, you will want to assign your raid to cover the four different quadrants of the platform. I'll tell you why later. Mark each corner and split people up making sure there's at least one healer in each group. Also make sure people are paying attention and make sure they know what group they are in.

Lei Shen's general mechanic throughout the first phase is that he needs to be tanked near one of the four lightning conduits around the room. By doing this, he will charge the conduit instead of doing an AOE to everyone in the raid.

Dangerous Ability: Occasionally Lei Shen casts Thunderstruck, denoted by a bright blue lightning circle on the ground. Get out of this circle!


Tanks: I believe you taunt off each other after each "Decapitate".


Overall Strategy
The Lei Shen fight boils down to handling each mechanic at each different conduit located on each corner of the platform, and also splitting up into groups to handle ALL of those mechanics at once in each corner. Now I will explain what to do at each conduit:

You will probably tank him starting at the north conduit, and once this conduit is charged once, you will move to the east, then south, then west and so on. As he is moving he will do his AOE since he is not near a conduit, but it won't last long as long as tanks move quickly. Heal through it.


The Conduits
Each conduit, which will be denoted by the cardinal points of the compass, N, E, S, W, each have a different mechanic tied to them when Lei Shen is near them.


North: If you get targeted by an arrow, stack with everyone as this will do HUGE damage that needs to be split.

East: Spread out, as he casts a chain lightning that spawns adds when anyone gets hit. Kill the adds ASAP.

South: Someone will get targeted by a lightning ring that will explode after 3 seconds, stunning anyone caught in it. As a healer I found this platform to be moot as there are no adds. Or perhaps it was because I was healing it.

West: Occasionally you will see pale blue circley pools on the ground. STAND IN THEM to soak lightning balls. If you do not, an add shows up and adds a lot of unnecessary damage. Don't confuse these with Thunderstruck, which is really bright.

Hopefully by the time you've seen all the conduits he's at 65%....

Phase 2: Once Lei Shen hits 65% and 30% he will teleport to the middle of the room and this is where the assigned groups go to their assigned corners. You will need to handle the stun, kill adds, and soak damage all at once in your smaller groups. Once this phase ends, kill off any additional adds and continue to kill the boss. Most importantly, someone will get targeted by the north conduit ability and must split this damage between the group.

Post Phase 2 & Phase 3: After the Lei Shen teleports to the middle (65%) he will gain lightning whip, which is a huge cone to dodge, which leaves lightning streaks on the ground. You can jump over these streaks. And after the 30% phase he gains a wind ability which is moot. Keep moving to stay on the platform, continue to mind the mechanics in phase 1 and dodge his whip.

Additional Info (Probably not necessary for LFR purposes):

One of the conduits in the room will become inactive if they have the highest charge during the two intermission phases, I believe no adds/mechanics happen in that quadrant and you only have to deal with 3. Also, each conduit gains power the more you charge them. For example, the northern conduit will begin to target additional players, requiring smaller groups to stack up to split damage.

That should cover the brunt of the fight hopefully I did not miss anything but I must go eat lunch now, goodbye and have fun.

Turny the Helpful Tree

MoP LFR Tips: Throne of Thunder - 2nd Wing

Hello my two readers!

Sorry for the week delay on posting LFR tips for the 2nd wing of Throne of Thunder: the "Forgotten Depths". I had laid out the plan in my MIND and ASSUMED that I had posted this. Guess not. So in order to facilitate a smooth and happy run for you in obtaining your gold and VP (no items for you!), here we go!

Tortos

I will again list out the CORE competencies required to downing Tortos.

1. One tank tanks Tortos.
2. Off-tank tank the bats.
3. Ranged kill Whirling Turtles, and kick them at Tortos. (He'll take extra damage)

That's it.

Ok fine you want advanced tips? If your group can handle it.....

1. Try staggering the turtles to maximize the uptime of the debuff Tortos gets.
2. If you're a destro warlock, ALWAYS have a rain of fire ticking on all the bats for a shit ton of embers. Always. Always mind your havoc cooldown and gauge it towards either the turtles, or Tortos.
3. Oh, I guess those were only Warlock tips. /shrug

On a sidenote, for the past two weeks I have joined an encounter where the group was on their second stack of LFR Fail-Buff. How is this even possible? I received a lot of hate for pointing this out, that the instance was brand spanking new...well not really. Also, if you just briefly skimmed the dungeon journal you should be able to pick out the key elements of the fight. There haven't been a TON of revolutionary new mechanics anyways.

Anyways.

Megaera - Three Headed Beast Thing

I'm not sure if it's even called Megaera, but essentially your group must ride around the cavern following Tortos and kill 3 spirits and ring their dingalings.

Tips for success:

1. Each tank takes an active head and faces them to the left and right of the group to avoid spray damage.
2. Everyone stands in between the heads.
3. If you get targeted by stuff, move out of the group.
4. Kill Order: This may vary, but I found focusing on the Venomous head, then the Burning head and just rotating between these two seven times is a fairly solid strategy. So do not even attack the ice/blue head. This prevents the ice head from doing its ability which....come on you can't expect much from LFR for people to handle this eloquently.

Ji'Kun - Bird Pooper

Again, key success factors:

1. Send a small group to kill her babies. 4 DPS and a healer is great. You'll have to fall/jump off the edge of her platform to reach the first group of eggs.
1a. After you kill her babies, they leave behind a feather which will enable you to fly.
1.b. Flying enables you to reach nests up high and allows you to intercept Ji'kun every time she casts "Feed Young"
2. I suggest if you tend to have high DPS, go grab a feather but don't waste time killing hatchlings. As she is casting "Feed Young", use your button to fly up over her head and touch her goop. You'll receive a 100% damage bonus buff for 30 seconds.
2b. You can only reliably do this if the group assigned to kill hatchlings is on top of things. Otherwise, just go kill hatchlings.
3. Everyone else feel free to soak purple stuff on the ground.

Overall, I hope you'll find this to be an amazing dungeon to "crawl" through. Don't get discouraged by the amount of adds, or the fact that you got wtfpwned by a snail (you'll see), just know that the Thunder King managed to build a nicer palace than Arthas.

Truny the Helpful

MoP LFR Tips: Mogu'shan Vaults

Now now calm down, I know I said I'd stop writing tips and reviews but let's face it, the more knowledge we have out there the better it is for all. In order to facilitate a smooth run where everyone can get their gold, item (yeah right), and VP as quickly as possible and never see each other again I am going to provide my Quick Tips for LFR.

And honestly you should not be wiping in LFR. That is just sad.

First off is Mogu'shan Vaults (MV).

Stone Guards

This is the first boss in MV and consists of 3 random dogs with varying abilities. From what I've seen in raid finder, the tanks just hold them all together and everyone just AOE's them down while the healers heal through everything. With that said, here are the abilities to take note of to save your healers some stress.

• Cobalt Mines: Activates with the cobalt guardian and is a crystal that will deal damage and root you when it explodes. Move out of the blue circle.
• Jasper Chains: If you are chained to someone, run close to them or you will burn to death. Ideally ranged would run to melee so the melee can keep poking.
• Amethyst Pools: Stay out of shit.

Feng the Accursed

The second boss has 3 main abilities that I would like to highlight.

• Earthquake: I think it's called something else but it's an earthquake. Stack up to heal through it if the tanks don't know how to use a shield. Make sure to spread out in case the boss casts a lightning fist onto the ground.
• Wildfire Spark: In P2, just keep doing what you are doing but pay attention to Wildfire Spark. If you get this debuff, run out of the group and will drop some fire onto the ground. DO NOT drop a pool of fire into the melee or ranged groups. Most likely people won't see this and you'll kill them.
• Arcane Resonance: This is probably the most important ability which occurs at P3. If you get a debuff on you and you start pulsating arcane energy, run away from everyone so no one is inside that little circle. For every person in that circle the damage increases. So if you are in melee with EVERYONE...yeah.

Garajal the Spiritbinder

This is the last boss of the 1st half of MV and probably the easiest.

• Healers take note of anyone with Voodoo doll debuff on them. They take damage with the tank.
• DPS make sure to click the totems around the room which are spawned periodically and go into the spirit realm to kill spirits, they do damage to players in the real world. ALSO click the special button you see once you are done to come back to the real world or else you die. You ALSO get a nice damage debuff aftewards. Healers can also go in to refill all their mana when they come back out.

Spirit Kings

The first boss of the 2nd half of MV. He consists of 4 "phases", which get more and more "complex" as the fight goes on.

• Qiang: PLEASE stack with the tank in FRONT of the boss to absorb his huge cleave attack, then run through the boss for his huge smash attack (denoted by a very obvious animation)
• Xian: Kite shadows and kill them as necessary.
• Meng: Group up to lightly AOE each other, and when he starts running away he will stack a debuff on himself that will slowly reflect more and more damage going from 0 to 100%. This is when you will see lots of people die.
• Subetai: Dodge his volley and free anyone stuck under his pinning arrows.

Elegon

Elegon would make a nice mount. He also deserves a real paragraph.

In P1, everyone will be inside the celestialy looking area for a 50% damage and healing received buff and pew pew pew. Elegon will spawn an add that should be nuked down.

Elegon will then begin to "Draw Power". This part is crucial. Once he is finished casting, he will send 6 orbs to the various pillars around his platform. The raid should split up and make sure each orb gets killed before it reaches the pillar. For each successful wave of orbs dead, Elegon receives a +% damage received buff, which is great for burning him down faster in P3.

IF THE ORBS don't get killed, PAY ATTENTION. If an orb reaches a pillar, you will see a pillar pop up and this is your queue to get out of the middle since the floor will completely disappear and you will fall to your death and people will call you very mean things.

Once the pillars are up, kill the pillars, stay out of lightning pools and kill the adds.

That's it. Rinse and repeat until he does this a 2nd time. After the 2nd time, stack on Elegon and burn him down.

Will of the Emperor

This is the final encounter in MV and has a lot of tank dancing and add control. I will provide tips for individual roles.

• Tanks: Your only goal here is to survive and also dodge the giant construct's "combos". They will either slash to their left or right, or do a smash. When you see them winding up to slash left, dodge right and you get a buff. If you see them raise their leg, they are about to stomp, so move back. Each time you dodge you gain a buff and once this buff reaches 5 points you get a special "opportunistic strike" ability that hits for 500k. This should be a steady source of damage for the raid since...
• DPS: Your main goal is to kill all the adds before even touching the big emperor constructs. CC rages, keep Strengths out of the raid as they stomp, and burn down Courages from behind. You are allowed to DPS the boss only when ALL the adds are dead.

Ideally, you will know if your group is good or a fail by telling how many adds are up by the time Titan Gas, a mass AOE damage phase, hits. If only one mob is just dying as this phase hits, you should be good as long as everyone is consistent. Also, anyone comfortable in melee, including hunters or healers can also deal with opportunistic strikes.

So that's my short run-down of MV.

Truny the Impatient