Ready Check: Thorim
by Michael Gray 
Jul 22nd 2009 at 7:00PM
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.
You've wrecked the Flame Leviathan. You euthanized Razorscale. You gave a cold shower to Ignis the Furnace Master. You marvelled at Deconstructor. When it came to Kologarn, you damned well shall pass. The Assembly of Iron said court was out of session, and Auriaya and her small legion of adds gave you no pause. You've asked Hodir, "Who's your Daddy?"
Now, though, it's time for Thorim.
While the Thorim encounter may not be as wildly unique as the Flame Leviathan fight, I think Thorim is probably going to be a fairly novel fight for most people. It has a similar to dynamic to Gothik the Harvester, but only in-as-much as you need to split your raid in half.
Here's the short, short, short version of the fight. You start the entire encounter by attacking the Jormungar (big worm) and associated adds in what's called the Arena. By finishing off the last of that group, you start the real fight. You'll note Thorim is standing up on a balcony. Thorim will become immediately ensconced in a sheath of power, which prevents even ranged DPS from really hurting him. To kill the boss, you need to get him to come off that balcony. But, how would you ever do such a thing?
There's now a lever you can pull, which opens a gate. As a result, a hallway opens on the side of the Arena. You can follow that hallway and kill the denizens along the way. Once you reach the end, you can rush up to Thorim and hit him. That makes him jump down.
But you can't just ignore what's happening in the Arena, while you have a team sprinting through that hallway. (The hallway is also called the Gauntlet.) You need to leave a team behind in the Arena to handle the large number of adds who will leap down from the surrounding stadium seating.
A lot of the "complication" of this fight comes from logistical balancing. If you send too much DPS with the hallway excursion, you may not leave enough behind to keep the Arena tank and healer from getting overwhelmed. If you leave too much DPS behind in the Arena, then your hallway group could take forever and a day (or, the length of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings) to reach Thorim. That means your Arena team will eventually run out of juice, and succumb to the waves of adds.
Let's start by taking a look at what you'll encounter at what happens in the Arena and then inside the hallway gauntlet. That will obviously help you decide who you're going to send where during the Thorim encounter.
The Arena
Dark Rune Warbringer
- Aura of Celerity: This buffs the Warbringer's allies with 20% increase to melee, ranged, and casting speed. If you have a Priest, you can use Mind Control to use the Aura for your own nefarious purpose.
- Runic Strike: A fairly straightforward attack that does both physical and Nature damage.
- Runic Lightning: A straightforward Nature damage attack.
- Runic Shield: A bubble that protects the Evoker from damage. You can usually blow through it pretty quickly.
- Runic Mending: This produces a significant heal to adds in the Arena. This is the ability that makes killing Dark Rune Evokers your first priority.
- Mortal Strike: It's Mortal Strike! This really is an Arena fight. And as any Arena healer will tell you, Mortal Strike is bad news. While I'd still blow the Evoker away first (that's the healer), Mortal Strike is bad enough news that you should kill Champions pretty quickly.
- Whirlwind: A point blank Area Effect attack that does significant damage to everyone around the Champion. At this point in your raiding, your melee probably already knows not to stand in Whirlwinds.
- Charge: A quick rush-and-stun that works similarly to a Warrior's ability.
- Low Blow: A light damage attack that will debuff your damage slightly.
- Pummel: Includes an interrupt and small damage.
- Commoners aren't much threat. While you don't want to let them stack up too greatly, they're your last priority for the killing.
Dark Rune Acolyte -- You faced a few of these when you first entered Thorim's area, so you're probably already familiar.
- Greater Heal, Renew: Much like your own healers, these guys will do their best to heal their comrades in arms. Their spells work similarly to the PC versions.
- Holy Smite: The Acolyte's direct damage spell, the Holy Smite isn't incredibly dangerous. However, since the Acolytes are healers, you should really be killing them first anyway.
- Impale: A strong attack, which will cause the target to bleed until you heal the affected PC to full.
- Whirling Trip: An Area Effect knock-down and stun attack.
- Charge: He will charge a member of your raid. However, if you're all stacked on one another (or "cuddled"), then he will have no one distant to charge.
- Runic Barrier: The Runic Barrier ability not only protects the mini-boss, but inflicts Arcane Damage on attackers.
- Smash: Does significant damage in a frontal cone, so keep the Colossus faced away from your group.
- Runic Detonation: This is spell cast upon the members of your raid. The affected member is unable to move, so everyone needs to get away from him or he will explode and hurt everyone around him.
- Stomp: Another knockback from the mini-boss.
- Sheath of Lightning - Reduces all damage done to Thorim during phase one.
- Stormhammer - Inflicts light damage to a player and stuns them for 2 seconds, as well as causing Deafening Thunder around them. This does moderate Nature damage, but increases casting time by 75%.
- Charge Orb - Charges one of the four orbs in the room, which causes it to zap nearby players.
- Berserk - 5 minutes after the raid started the fight, Thorim will super-charge the adds to kill everyone. This is essentially an Enrage timer.
- Summon Lightning Orb - As soon as the Berserk occurs, Thorim will send a ball of lightning through the hallway, killing everyone inside. If the Arena team wipes out, Thorim will also use this ability to clear out the hallway.
- Chain Lightning - Inflicts Nature damage on its main target and increases its damage by 100% each time it jumps from target to target
- Lightning Charge - Fires a cone in a random direction with lightning sparks. The cone will cause Lightning Charge after a few seconds, inflicting big Nature damage to players in it, and increasing Thorim's attack speed by 15% and Nature damage by 10%.
- Unbalancing Strike - Inflicts 200% weapon damage on the main target and reduces its defense skill by 200 for 15 seconds. The tank who gets this debuff will take critical strikes, so you need to be ready to swap tanks.
Okay, so here's how it all goes. You enter the Arena and clear out the big worm and the Acolytes. The big worm does a frontal cone of damage, so keep it faced away from your raid. As soon as it's all clear, hit the lever.
One group stays in the Arena. AE-capable classes are especially desirable here, since that incidental damage is very effective in keeping the area clear of Commoners. Avoid the orbs, since Thorim will occasionally charge them up so that they zap you for damage. Otherwise, you're mostly in a holding pattern. Kill the Evokers first, then Champions, then whatever you happen to have up at the time.
Your hallway group needs to progress through the two mini-bosses. You fight the Runic Colossus first, being careful to not stand in the Shockwave he sends down the hall at you. Once you get to him, tank him facing away from the group. When Colossus dies, immediately head up to the Ancient Rune Giant. The only way to keep the adds from spawning is to engage the boss, so grab him as soon as possible.
After the Giant is dead, proceed on to Thorim. You'll see some big circles on the floor as you get near the boss. Don't stand in those, or you'll be trapped in a field for a few moments. As soon as you hit Thorim, Phase Two begins. As a note, keep an eye out for Sif. If she's still in the Arena when you engage Thorim, she'll help defend him. That's Hard Mode (which we'll round up at another time.)
When Thorim himself hits the ground, welcome to a more classic DPS race. The orbs will shoot lightning at Thorim along the floor, so don't stand in that. (We're still fairly consistently not-standing-in-stuff through most of Ulduar.) Thorim hits your tank with that Unbalancing Strike, so be ready to swap back and forth across your tanks to let that debuff drop.
See you next installment for Mimiron!
Ready Check is here to provide you all the information and discussion you need to bring your raiding to the next level. Ready Check appears twice a week, with writers Jennie Lees and Michael Gray.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Taedran Jul 22nd 2009 7:07PM
Thorim is a very fun fight. I'm chief healer though, so I don't know if it's fun for DPS or tanks, haha.
klink-o Jul 22nd 2009 9:52PM
IN THE MOUNTAINS!!!
Come one someone had to say it. :D
Anywho, as DPS the tunnel is where it's at. Outside can be a bit of a blender for clothies.
pietrex Jul 23rd 2009 4:28PM
I laugh every time I hear 'IN THE MOUNTAINS'. And it's often said in a funny way by someone on teamspeak as well. The way he says is just hilarious.
wurmfood Jul 22nd 2009 7:10PM
A trick that my 10 man learned on this is to make sure to take a hunter with you down the hallway. Have the hunter dismiss their pet before the event starts (has a tendency to die in the hallway otherwise) and summon him again just after you get past the first boss. Hunter then pops into the hallway and tells his pet to attack the second mini-boss.
The pet will attack the mini-boss, getting agro and preventing new adds from spawning. DPS can then just take out the adds and then the mini-boss with ease.
eVEAN Jul 22nd 2009 7:23PM
A few questions: Are these ready checks being written from a 10 man PoV? I understand you may put what the different abilities may be for the 25 vs 10 man encounters, but on this particular fight, Thorim 10 man is WAY different that 25 man. 25 man seems to have WAY more mobs in the arena and they seem to be WAY stronger, both hp and dmg wise. How are people handling these? We seem to be falling short in the arena every time and weve been working on this guy for weeks. When we just go aoe frenzy the tank whos tanking the commoners cant hold the new waves. When we go single target mode mobs dont seem to die fast enough. We usually have say 4-5 healers in the arena, our two tanks (DK and Warr) and 10-ish DPS with them. We send 1 tank, 2 healers and the rest of our dps to the tunnel. The tunnel team usually gets just past the first golem before the arena team dies. Weve tried putting more dps in the tunnel to speed it up, hell we even tried almost all dps in the tunnel and speed clearing it, but the arena team just gets over run! Do you see anything wrong with what we are doing? Is there any advice you can give up?
-Sluggles (Evean)
jam Jul 22nd 2009 7:34PM
You're using ranged dps in the gauntlet and melee at the arena, right?
Ask rogues to use tricks targetting the tank(s), and then just aoe spam the waves down. Works for us.
darren Jul 22nd 2009 7:40PM
We spent a long time on Thorim 25. We use 2 tanks in the arena, one stand beneath Thorim and the other in the center of the room. For the one under Thorim, there is a 4 tile square right next to the center circle. If he stands in the center there, he will get most of the aggro.
The tank outside the center is responsible for holding the champions, while the tank in the center pulls as much as he can to himself. This keeps the fight relatively controlled. We use a SP to MC one of the warbringers, but we've also done it without the shadow priest when they're unavailable.
As before, inside the arena is mostly melee. We focus evokers, then non-MC'd warbringers, and then finally AOE everything else. The damage from the champion tank and the AOE damage seems to keep the champions from piling up.
killik Jul 22nd 2009 7:55PM
What happens if you send fewer people down the tunnel. since they don't seem to be having a problem.
I've only done Thorim on 10-man, admittedly, but the tunnel run is the easiest part.
bladewing470 Jul 23rd 2009 6:23AM
We just downed him on 25 man tonight. We had out best geared tank (a DK) go in the gauntlet - that group had 10 people and I think only one healer. We ended up successfully completing the fight with 3, yes 3 tanks in the arena (DK[myself], Paladin, and a Druid). The druid would mostly tank the Warbringers (maybe it was champions) away from everyone else a bit while the pally and I spammed all our AoE abilities and took everything else. Still a very tough fight - we wiped a lot perfecting this (after using only the pally and myself as tanks in the arena for awhile).
Once phase 2 began, all the tanks stacked on Thorim in the middle circle and would taunt off each other when one had the Unbalancing Strike debuff.
Also of note is that the pally and I had DnD and Consecration up as much as possible in the middle circle of the arena as a kind of "safe" tanking zone where at least one of us would be pulling more threat than the dps/healers.
Good luck on any attempts at this guy!
Dave Jul 22nd 2009 7:35PM
For a little more depth to the idea of strategy, I've found that it's best to send your best geared DPS (just one if you have that kind of group) with your best healer and tank inside the gauntlet.
If you have two possible tanks left (ie, your offtank and someone who can offspec into a tank spec) it makes the outside part go a LOT smoother. One tank can handle it, but since the outside group is NOT on a timer compared to the inside group you don't have to burn the adds down super fast, just keep them controlled.
Another good strategy we've found, is to keep the group inside the circle. You avoid the lightning orbs if you're inside the circle, so you don't have to run around AS much. Your tanks should be able to stack up on either side and pull mobs off the healers and the DPS just plows it down slowly.
Once thorim comes down, it's basically over. It's not a difficult fight as long as your tanks can swap. If you've got 3 tanks, you can even miss a swap and you might not have much of an issue. He doesn't have a ton of HP, he doesn't hit very hard, it's not difficult at all.
Hawk9hb Jul 23rd 2009 2:34AM
If you do it in 10 man, my group uses a Bear to tank cause the -def debuff doesn't really effect our Druid to the point that we don't switch tanks on
Valt Jul 23rd 2009 6:15AM
Whut? Of course it matters. Even if its talent when your base defense(400) skill lowers you become crittable unless you have resi defcap gear to take extra blows from it.
Heilig Jul 22nd 2009 9:09PM
Several Tips for 25 man:
1) Bring mages in the tunnel. Being able to cc the melee adds and kill them one at a time reduces the tank damage significantly and lets you focus down the healers more easily. Also, after the first miniboss is dead, you can sheep the first two (or 4, if you have enough cc) adds and head straight to the miniboss. You should have around 45-60 seconds after the second miniboss is dead, which is just barely enough time to clean up the adds you sheeped. To be safe, if you want to engage hard mode, send a spare dps halfway to Thorim while you are cleaning up the adds and have him start hard mode at the last second so you don't have to leave the adds up, because they will show up from the tunnel door halfway through the fight if you don't kill them.
2) Disarm the Champions. Without a weapon, they can't whirlwind.
3) MC a Warbringer. Seriously, the Aura of Celerity is like a mini-bloodlust through the whole fight.
4) Spread the hell out when Thorim is down. On hard mode, his chain lightning will one-shot people immediately. On normal, it starts happening around 30%. Losing dps to one-shot chain lightning just makes the fight take longer, and this is not a fight you can outlast since he just hits harder as it goes along.
5) On hard mode, after about 40%, you will probably need to start blowing cooldowns on your tanks. His normal melee will be over 35K. Shield wall, Hand of Sacrifice, Pain sup, etc. are the only way to survive.
6) On hard mode, wear one piece of frost resist gear. This fight is about staying alive to dps. You can't stay alive if you can't dodge things, and you can't dodge things if you're slowed by frostbolts. On that note, Mass Dispel is your daddy. An entire melee group getting frost nova'd right before a lightning charge sucks, and a single mass dispel can fix it.
Tarnak Jul 22nd 2009 9:16PM
Here's my 10man-suggestions to supplement the above post. We use this strat with 1shots most of the time. Please excuse any repitiveness to the above post, but I'm trying to make these suggestions read as easy as possible:
Our group makeup for this neccessarily includes:
1 AOE tank
3 healers
2 ranged DPS
----------
Arena:
Keep 1 AOE tank, 2 healers and 3 dps in the arena, and have them all stay in the central circle at all times -- burning down mobs as they come. Pretty simple, but the two healers are needed because of Thorim's cast-time slowing debuff.
Tunnel:
The tunnel consists of 3 subzones, two minibosses and poses the only real challenge in this encounter. The execution of the tunnel is crucial and must be done quickly and effectively to prevent hanging out the arena group to dry.
You don't neccesarily need an AOE tank to complete this area, but it doesn't hurt. So here, we use 1 tank, 2 ranged dps and one healer.
In the first zone you will have about a half dozen trash mobs lined up in rows of three. Nothing much too them, BUT in the background of zone 1 will be miniboss one who will hold up his hand to signal he's about to launch this destructive vapor at one half of the hallway. If he raises his right hand, the tunnel group must all quickly move to the left side of the tunnel. If he raises his left hand, the group must move to the right. Do what this post says, get the hell out of it. If anyone dies to this, you likely won't get Thorim down in time. This isn't too disimilar from the Skadi encounter in UP.
Once you take out the mobs in front of boss 1, you'll engage him. If you do what it says above, he's not tough.
Next you'll enter Zone 2. This part is why you want Range instead of melee in the tunnel. In addition to what's described above, you want to stay spread out by 10yards. (Use /range on your DBM.) The 2nd miniboss will have a damaging ability that will affect a target and everyone else within 10 yards of the target. You want the tank to grab the miniboss at the top of the stairs and have everyone else hugging each side of the wall on the staircase - that should establish the 10 yards range you need. Do NOT have anyone go past the top of the stairs until miniboss2 is down or your healer will lose LOS.
As it says above, burn him down quick, but I'd say you want to kill the acolytes first due to their healing abilities.
In the third zone of the hall, you just want to walk up to Thorim and force him to jump into the arena. The only thing you need to do here is hug the right side of the wall because there are orb-like objects in the center of zone3 that will hinder your path to Thorim.
----
Thorim phase:
The only addition I'd make to the above post is that the cone damage ability of his is the one we're most focused on avoiding. Get out of that Lightning Charge when you see it charging up. Get behind him even, if you can, for good measure. If it hits you, you can't expect to live.
Banthis Jul 22nd 2009 11:22PM
Another option with the first part of the tunnel is to have the tank pull the adds back around to the tunnel start. The healer can be LoS'd around the corner. Pull them over and kill them there, that way you don't even have to worry about moving side to side until you're ready to go for the mini-boss.
Not the best option if you're going for hard mode, but for normal mode it makes things cake.
belkinte Jul 23rd 2009 2:18AM
^^
what my guild does as well but we have 1 ranged, 1 melee, (enhance and ele shaman), disc priest, and warrior tank in hall. kill the Dark Rune Acolytes and have warrior just keep dps adds on him while he runs to mini bosses and kill adds with chain lighting. works for us good.
Valt Jul 23rd 2009 7:42AM
Best quote from EJ forums about the arena fight:
"Part of the mechanic for the arena fight is that the person closest to Thorim gets automatic aggro of adds. I'll assume that your arena group stands in the center circle so you can try standing on the part of the circle closest to Thorim and have the healers and DPS stand on the other side of the circle, farthest from Thorim.
Should make most of your AoE threat problems disappear."
Really helpful. No more oneshotting clothies in arena.
Volicio Jul 23rd 2009 9:47AM
I didn't see it commented on anywhere in this post, but does the gauntlet team jump down with the boss or what happens there?
Gormakr Jul 23rd 2009 9:51AM
2 small comments that weren't mentioned in the article:
1) Dark Rune Evoker's shields can be stolen/purged/dispelled
2) Disarm Dark Rune Champions - they can't whirlwind if they're disarmed
Nice article - thanks.
thottstation Jul 23rd 2009 9:45AM
I'm still so incredibly peeved that I levelled up with Thorim when he looked like a Frost Vrykul. This new guys is just... he's just a stranger to me. I don't know him.
Nice one, Bliz.