That was AWESOME! - Flame Leviathan with 4 towers (AKA Hard Mode)

I had the best fun raiding last night in some time. Last night even beat Monday's Yogg kill. What was last night? It was FLAME LEVIATHAN with 4 TOWERS! It was fun, it was controlled chaos (in many cases just chaos) it was wipetastic.

A few useful things to know:
If your armour is at 0% durability, the vehicles dont care, you still get the bonus as if you were 100% durability. So save money and don't repair.

Pyrite is a rare commodity. Use it at all opportunities!

Anyway onto the strat. We set up ourselves and ran very similar to the tankspot strat and I recommend you have a look at that to familiarise yourself with this. I also recommend doing 2 or 3 towers first to practise your throwing of people onto FL and getting shutouts, as this is vital to the success of the fight.

Shopping list as per tankspot:
4 Choppers
4 Siege Engines
3 Demolishers with 2 Shut down teams ready to roll
2 Demolishers on pure DPS (have best geared players as drivers)

OK, I will write up the tips in sections, some might overlap, but I hope that it will give you 2 or 3 perspectives on the fight.

First and foremost - DON'T PANIC! There is Stuff going everywhere, beams, and fires, and smoke and rockets, and adds and not to mention FL himself as well as the pyrite! It really looks insane out there, but if you stick to your job, and don't be a hero, everyone will be fine.

Second and almost as foremost - stay alive. If you stay alive (even if your stacks drop off the boss or you get stuck behind some fire) you can keep fighting. You just cant do your job dead. This fight shows you the meaning of that more than others.

Third and pretty darn important - do your job. Don't be a hero and try to DPS the boss if you are a siege passenger. Your job is not to do that, and you will find that you will fail if even one person doesn't stick to the plan.

Vehicle jobs:
Siege engines drivers - your job is to interrupt Flame Vents, light tar and smash adds. You also need to not stand in any beams or fires. This is actually harder than it sounds. Tips on that in the adds section. The drivers should have decent gear.

Siege Engine Passengers - you guys are not there to DPS the boss. Your job is to get down pyrite, light tar, and kill adds oh and rescue anyone who got ice blocked. Believe me, these jobs are really important, as the demolisher teams will desperately need you to be keeping the adds off them and refueling their pyrite.

Choppers - you want your choppers to have over 800k each or they will die to unavoidable aoe by the end of the fight. These guys drop tar and ferry the shut down team back to their demolisher after they get spat out. Mark up the choppers and allocate them a demolisher (and hence 2 members of teams) to ferry. This is not as easy as it sounds.

Demolisher drivers (DPS) - mashing 2 is your job. You need to keep that pyrite debuff up at 10 as much as you can. You need to do this while not standing in beams and fires, and while being close enough to FL to hit him, and yet close enough to pyrite to restock. The debuff needs to be refreshed with a pyrite hit every 10s to keep the stack up. That gives you a bit of time to move around if you need. Talk to your passenger for speed hits.

Demolisher passengers (DPS) - shoot down pyrite, collect pyrite (write a pyrite targeting macro, it helps something like /tar pyrite) and keep your demolisher stocked. You are supplying the main source of DPS for FL. It is vital you talk to your driver and guide them as the driver cant see where the pyrite is always. We found grabbing pyrite at about 60% kept the stocks put at 100% most of the time with no losses (as by the time you grab the pyrite, chain it in, and tip it into the tank, the driver has used about 10-20%)

Demolisher driver (shutdown) - you have the shutdown team on board, so your DPS will be lower. Try as best you can to keep up 10 stacks on FL, but it is likely it will often drop off or you might run out of pyrite. Be aware of where your chopper is, and during a shutdown ensure you collect your passenger safely as a priority. You are also in charge of flinging them up. Aim your shooter OVER the head of FL, and as long as you get within cooee FL will actually chain them in. You also need to behave like a DPS driver. So read up on that.

Demolisher Passenger (shutdown) - there are 2 teams of you. When you hop in the passenger seat, the second guy cant get in. But you can hold 3 people when one passenger loads themselves up in the cannon, so it is a 2 stage process. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND. You will get launched as soon as FL is out of shutdown. Get up on top and do your job. When you are flung off, get onto your chopper asap. The chopper will get you to your demolisher where the other passenger should now be loaded into the cannon ready for the next shut down. You can jump stright from the chopper to the demolisher (no you do NOT have to dismount first!) and sit in the passenger seat. Wait for the driver to fling the second team up and now your job is that of the DPS demolisher passenger - PYRITE PYRITE PYRITE! When the next shut down occurs, keep your demolisher stacked, keep an eye on your chopper, and when they are getting near, load yourself up so the other team can climb on board. Rinse, repeat.

Shutdowns
Read the FL 2 towers for how shutdowns work and why they are so important. This time, instead of 1 team, there are 2 rotating teams as explained in Demo passenger (shutdown). The first shutdown, throw up 4 people so that first shutdown is as past as possible, we also use heroism. Our teams were as follows:
Shutdown 1 - Ele shammy (OH+Hero), Lock, lock, ret pally. The ret pally had a special task to smash a tower and bubble when they hit the ground and run themselves back to their demolisher (I was the demo driver in this case). We called where I was going to be, and I moved to pick my passenger up. No chopper ferry required. But a non repeatable occurrence.
Shutdown 2 - Mage Mage Boomkin (OH)
Shutdown 3 - Ele Shammy (OH) Lock Lock etc

All shutout team members were marked up, as were the demos. Choppers were watching carefully where their demos were and where their passengers were. Demos were doing the same if possible.

I cannot express how important getting the shutouts right is. You will need 3 or 4 shutouts to kill FL, but as you get better that number will reduce (2 is the lowest I have heard of)

The Towers
Mimiron - big diagonal lines of fire. This is a pain because the fire is generally where the pyrite drops. Simply avoid the fire and you will be fine.

Hodir - beams that iceblock you. Possibly the most annoying tower defense. These whiteish beams randomly wander around the field, at some point they will slow right down and follow you in a straight line for about 5s, they then stop and drop ice from the sky (hodir is nothing but original) flash freezing anyone within about 10 or 15 yards of it (yes, you can be frozen and NOT be in the beam - its aoe). Simply ignore the beams until you see them lock on then move directly forward or backward until you see them stop and they start moving randomly again. You are now safe. DO NOT TURN, just straight forward or back is sufficient to get out of the aoe burst.

Thorim - his hammer is a pain, a whole heap of AoE damage that is virtually unavoidable and docks about 1/3 your health. Siege engines save your shields for this. Demos and choppers... sorry, it means you have to be more careful about casual damage from screw ups! At all times try to stay out of the blue beams crackling with electricity, they hurt.

Freya - lasher adds, big and small. You can kite the adds into tar, or hope that someone is paying attention and kill them. One pyrite throw clears out a LOT of adds, and is occasionally worth it. Otherwise, siege passengers and demo passengers need to keep on top of them.

The pull
Before the pull we spend a goodly amount of time cluttering the field with pyrite so the demos can park themselves early on and let loose while there are fewer towers running. Demos launching people get in range and get ready to launch. The one demo NOT launching someone starts the pull, and BAM its on for young and old.

The fight
Stay alive, if that means dropping your stack of 10 then do so. Avoid AoE as much as you can. This fight is about staying alive, and doing your job. Don't be a hero, please! If everyone executes their jobs perfectly this becomes an amazingly smooth ride. Enjoy it, FL is, in my opinion, the best fight in the entire instance.