Northrend Beasts HToC

Northrend beasts was a horrible, HORRIBLE encounter for a long time. It was prone to lag, disconnects and even now, still is an issue with these things. It was rumoured that the lag/DCs were an artificial barrier put in by blizz to slow progression, but I am not sure I agree. I suspect that the snobolds were poorly implemented, as people DCed as soon as the first fire bomb was thrown. This encounters lag directly contributed to many guilds collapsing (including the retiring of over half my raiding team). If you have issues with lag, turn off any tunneling services and put all your graphics settings to low. Turn off any combat log parsing mods. That should keep you usable during Gormok, as the worms seem to be fine.

Shopping list:
2 MTs
1 OT
6 healers
Rest DPS who dont DC

Phase 1 - Heroic Gormok
This is a 3 tank fight, with tanks taunting off each other when they get 2-3 stacks of impale. There are plenty of strats out there trying to make this a 2 tank fight, but I can tell you right now, use 3 tanks. You have farmed ToC for long enough by now to have the DPS to cover off the extra tank. Gormok is a noob and gear check. Don't stand in the fires, DPS hard in the time limit you have. Tanks need to rotate their CDs as the damage increases (generally on their second time tanking). Try not to get any more than 3 impales on you at the same time.

The fires are hurties!!
Prepare by casting levitate on all the healers and the ranged. I am not sure if this is as intended, but if you are levitated and a fire bomb is thrown on you, you take minimal damage, and the debuff is not put on, and there is no fire. In short, it ups DPS if you can. If you cant, here's a tip. Make your camera look at the air just above gormok. You can SEE the firebombs being thrown out... go on, look next time. If you see one come out IN LINE with your character, strafe. You can actually avoid being hit altogether if you are on the ball. More than one tick of the fire debuff on you spells death, so make sure you are active and mobile and ready to move.

Snobolds do WHAT now?
Every time gormok throws a snobold, he gains 15% damage. In heroic he throws 5 of the little buggers, and if you bubble, or cloak of noobs or something OUT of it, the snobold runs back to gormok and he throws it again. This is a Bad Thing(tm) as gormok gains an extra 15% damage buff. Trust me when I say, your tanks and healers will hate you for this! So, this means you need to run the snobolds into melee (we like our snobolders to be standing pretty much where Gormok would have balls dangling from his nethers). Melee can cop the snobold with aoe type abilities, and ALL ranged can focus on the snobold and also cop gormok in the nuts.

There is no two ways about this, DPS need to go hard or go home on this fight.

Phase 2 - Not one, but TWO Jormungar Worms
Cast a Hand of Protection on any tank with impales on them if you can manage it, don't forget to click it off, tanks! Heroic is much harder than normal, duh, but essentially the mechanics are the same, just a thousand times more lethal!

So, 3 tanks - one on Acidmaw, two on Dreadscale.

Two tanks on Dreadscale?
Yeah - this time around you will be 2 tanking dreadscale so that one tank can ferry the debuff and unparalyse anyone! Make sure the tanks call the change overs so the healers are aware of who to be healing at any one time. Make sure that the tank with the debuff has a known spot he runs to, and that anyone with the green runs there too. If the acidmaw tank gets the green, the priority is to ungreen that tank.

What should we be killing?
Acidmaw needs to DIE!

That paralytic poison has gone from being inconvenient to a wipe mechanic in heroic. So, spread out, ensure that only 1 person gets poisoned at any one time. Use range checkers and stay spread out, you have NO idea how hard and important this is. Split your melee up into groups seperated out into arse cheeks for minimal impact. Make sure a healer is on the ball if a melee gets targetted and splatters everyone in his group.

The hardest thing about staying spread out is after a burrow when everyone is repositioning. Really be on the ball being aware of where you are in relation to healers, the bosses and each other. I cannot stress enough how important it is to minimise the impact of the poison.

Your timeline is as follows:

• DPS acidmaw (if you have issues with Melee poison on acidmaw, put some melee on dreadscale, better to split DPS than die horribly)

• Burrow

• Up again, and EVERYONE on acidmaw. Use heroism. Get acidmaw down before the next burrowing.

• Burrow

• Finish acidmaw (at MOST he should be a couple of percent or you are too slow) and burn dreadscale

• Burrow

• Burn dreadscale and get ready to tank....

Phase 3 - Icehowl
This guy is pretty much the same as normal, except he hits harder and you do not get a run speed increase after the stun. Strafe, use your mouse, anything, but do not keyboard turn or you will die if he's targeting you. You really REALLY do not have a lot of time to move, so be mashing your strafe keys to get out of that stun asap.

If you get in his way you end up between him and a wall and you die a lot and squishily and Icehowl will grow red and enrage - this is almost guaranteed to wipe you as the enrage is not tranq shottable. If anyone is having issues with moving away from the charge, get them to enchant their feet with speed. Tuskarr's Vitality is the current one to use.

He has an enrage timer, but you probably wont hit it. What you may hit is the "I have a headache" timer. On the 4th stomp, Icehowl has such a headache from hitting his head against the wall he hard enrages. If you don't get him down that stun, he will smoosh everyone into a fine red paste.

Yeah, thats it!
The hardest parts to get right in this boss are:
Gormock's gear check
Not standing in fires
More than 1 person copping poison
Not getting out of icehowl's way fast enough