Faction Champions

This is what I would consider, the first real "boss" in ToC. To beat them, you actually need to use wit, skill, ZOMG CC, and be able to adapt on the fly to any situation.

In short, I loved this fight.

There is plenty of detail out on the web about "you need to do this and that to this particular mob". Urgh. I waded through it and my brain imploded. So much unnecessary detail!

So, here is a sure fire way to beat these guys.

Shopping list:
2-3 tanks
6-7 healers
Interrupters (rogues, enh Shammies, mages)
CC (mages, hunters, rogue sap, shammies, druids)
DPS

Resilience? Not in PvE!
First of all, the biggest misunderstanding of this fight is that you need resilience. While this fight behaves like arena PvP, the mechanics are still for PvE bosses. You don't need resilience. Think of it like a PvE boss being MCed by the opposite faction and wailing on you in a chaotic, arena/BG kind of way (also this means MC wont work, as for the analogy, they are already MCed). So with that in mind...

How do you Tank these guys?
These guys do seem to be tauntable, and will pay attention to you for the amount of time taunt works for (which is mostly 6s I believe). But the upshot of this fight is there really is no aggro table. They will go your clothies first, no question. Healers, be ready for that, bubbles and BoPs on standby....

Ok, so you can't tank them, what CAN you do?
This is where it gets fun! You can start the fight without pulling so you can have a look at the combination of champions you have. It pays to know that these guys cheat somewhat. They almost play fair, but not quite. First not fair thing is that they have 2.4 million health or so!! No player I know has that! Spells might cast faster, CDs are a bit shorter, and they will use all the PvP abilities you probably no longer have on your spell bar. Press P and drag yours out! Anything that gets you out of CC, or slowing effects. All interrupts and CC you have at your disposal, all your stun abilities, get them out and use them - they ALL work on these bosses (except MC, cos like I said, this fight plays like these guys are MCed by the opposition players!). A great example is the pally Seal of Justice, never works on bosses, but it works on these guys to great effect!

But the fight has random people? How can I put together a strat?
Well, short answer is, you can't. But you can have a few rules to help you put together your strat for that raid ID. The overriding factor is that you can heal through their damage, but you cant DPS through their healing (at least, not yet!).

So rule number one: Focus fire down Holy priests/resto druids before anything else and chain interrupt Holy Paladins/Shamans.
We found that once the healers were under control being either dead or with a team of rogues kicking and enhance shammies interrupting, the fight was a lot smoother. Stop their healing, and their team will start dying. Allocate your interrupters to ensure the healers are removed from the fight. I can't stress how important getting this right is. The priest and Resto druid HoTs are not dispellable, which makes them very difficult to deal with. Killing them first is your priority!

Rule number 2: Sap and CC are your friend!
Look at what is there, and think about your own team. Who are the most annoying and hardest hitters? Top of that list is often a hunter or mage. Sap pulls are great here, sap them out of the fight for 10s, which is still better than nothing!

Rule number 3: Mark them up and have a kill order
Mark up the mobs before hand, and make sure that your DPS know their jobs. Either chain sheeping that diamond, or going hard on the skull then x, or interrupting the square. Generally, have your tanks calling the kill order and trying to keep the current target focussed on them as much as they can (this can be difficult). A good rule of thumb is pick your current focus target, and make sure all the rest are CCed in some manner. Just like the old TBC heroic days in Shattered halls.... Ah... nostalgia! Just don't forget about diminishing returns.

Direct from one of my RaidLeaderExtraordinares, HairyHippy, here is our DPS order (his note is in the comments below, but for those that cbf clicking through):
1. HoT healers (holy priest / resto druid): important as YOU CAN'T DISPEL THEIR HOTS
2. DoT / Fear dps clothie (warlock / spriest): fears suck and that damn spriest likes to 'cherry pick' people on low health (NERD edit - yeah, like the rogue I was healing on the pally interrupt team. I think he was splattered about 5 times in one fight, used up ALL the BRezzes! I even had Bacon and BoPs on him, so clearly that cherry picking can be dangerous)
3. Rogue: Shadowstep friggin hurts and has a nasty way of pissing of your ranged and healer classes. Kill the bitch.
4. Cast Healers (Resto Shaman / Holy Pally): Since all the really dangerous dps is out of the way at this point, may as well take down the other healers. This will free up your interrupt teams to help dps down the remaining mobs.
5. Mage / Hunter / warlock & hunter pets
6. DK
7. MS Warrior

Rule number 4: Dispel, Dispel, Dispel!
There is going to be a lot of craziness going on, fears, slows, sheeps, hexes, poison... you name it, it will happen. Healers need to be on top of dispels. Mass dispel, poison cleansing totems, tremor totems (to break fears) all of these things need to be sorted out and prepared before you engage.

Rule number 5: Be prepared to change your plan
Your original plan may not work. That is fine! Adjust your totems/auras/kill order/CC targets based on how you went on the previous attempt. Is that warrior more of a pain than the warlock? Sap the warrior instead! Pet getting you down? Smash it first. You are probably never going to go into the same fight twice (their group will vary per raid ID, ie the line up will change with each hard reset of the instance and your line up might change during your alloted raid time due to DCs or whatever) so it is quite likely that you will have a different strat every time, as well. Half the fun of this fight is thinking on your feet and adjusting as you go.

And that is about it guys! This has to be my favourite ToC fight thus far, and I can only hope that the next one will be even better.

Stay on top of the healers, CC, dispel like crazy and focus down your kill order and you will have this in the bag.

Northern Beasts

Here are the gotchas for Northern Beasts as best I can remember them.

Shopping list:
2 MTs
1 OT
6-7 healers
Rest DPS

Phase 1 - Gormok
This is a 2 tank fight, with tanks taunting off each other when they get 2-3 stacks of impale. Everyone else spreads out and smashes him a lot. There are annoying little creatures called "snobolds" that are often called out as Kobolds over vent. When someone has one, ranged need to DPS it down. The kobolds stun and interrupt and generally make life annoying for the person they are climbing on. Apart from that, it's tank and spank.

Phase 2 - Not one, but TWO Jormungar Worms
As their names suggest, Acidmaw and Dreadscale throw out poison and fire respectively. Also, one of them can move, and one is stationary at any one time.

So, 2 tanks - one on Acidmaw, one on Dreadscale. One of the worms will be "mobile" and the tank with the "mobile" worm needs to kite it around, just like Grobbulus as they will drop the same green blobs of goo. The other worm will be stationary. Periodically both worms will burrow under the ground and swap who is the "mobile" worm. Their abilities remain unchanged. So in one phase, Acidmaw might be moving and dropping goo, and Dreadscale staying still. They will both then burrow under the ground and come back up. This time Acidmaw is stationary and Dreadscale is moving and dropping goo. Just make sure your tanks remember this.

Now, the real trick to this bit is fire and acid. At some stage, Acidmaw will breathe a paralytic poison all over the raid, and Dreadscale will breathe fire in an arc in front of him. For some reason beyond me, the fire decurses the poison. Yeah, I know, weird but true. OK, so for 25 man we get an offtank in front of Dread to take the fire debuff - it is their job to run around like a dickhead and decurse all the people who are bright green. If the tank of Acid got the green, the OT runs there first. It is the job of everyone with the green to head toward the OT as soon as they get the green. The longer you have the green, the more paralyzed you become until eventually you cant do anything. In 10 man, it is the green people's responsibility to get themselves to the tank with the fire buff (as there are not enough people to run it around)

DPS the two worms down evenly to get the achievement (not as hard as you might think)

What about the Zerg Acidmaw idea?
There is another school of thought which is much more of a Zerg strat, but may not prepare you for hardmode as well. Still 2 tanks, but all DPS zergs Acidmaw. Why Acidmaw? so the poison is removed from the fight as soon as possible. If you are having issues moving the flame around the group, you may want to try doing this. Healers will have to work a bit harder on the tank left on Dreadscale, but I hope that should not be an issue for you.

Phase 3 - Icehowl
This guy is not as straight forward as you might think. First up, tank and spank. Hold him in the middle, try not to stand in front of him as he freezes people.

At some point Icehowl will crack it with the raid, and do a massive stomp, stunning everyone and throwing them to the wall. Icehowl will then give someone the evil eye - note who that person is! He will then back up, and while he is backing up you are freed from the stun and are so scared that you run faster. Run the hell away from the person he is targeting. Strafe, use your mouse, anything, but do not keyboard turn or you will die if he's targeting you.

Now, Icehowl ain't too bright, he doesn't notice that you actually run away and he charges at where you were when he first gave you the evil eye. Now, if you were paying attention, he should be charging at a blank wall. 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 - HUNTERS!! TRANQ SHOT STAT!

However, if you run away and he hits a blank wall, Icehowl is stunned and takes increased damage. Smack Him Hard!! Eventually, he will shake the stun off and go back to the tank and spank phase. Tank be ready to pick him up.

As always, be careful with aggro in the increased damage phase, make sure the tanks are ready to taunt if necessary.

That's it! Pretty straight forward fight. Good luck!