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Kill Strategy: Ahune
If you hadn’t already heard, from June 21st until July 5th is the Midsummer Fire Festival. During this time there will be a seasonal boss awaiting you in the Slave Pens of Coilfang Resevoir. He is know as Ahune <The Frost Lord>.
I have noticed a lot of people complaining on the forums and in the chat channels in-game that this boss is simply too hard. So I’d like to share the strategy I’ve used for downing him numerous times now.
It’s a short run to Ahune. Two packs of Bogstroks and two single Naga Slavehandlers in the first room. A two-naga patrol in the hallway. Then the infamous four-pull right after the hallway (the one that usually lets you know if your PUG is going to make it or not). A three-naga patrol, one Slavehandler and a last group of Bogstroks on the right and you’re ready to fight Ahune.
Here’s what it boils down to.
Throughout the fight there will be ice spikes forming under random players. You will see a trailing white swirl around yourself, circling towards the ground. When the swirl reaches the ground an ice spike will shoot up and throw you into the air if you are still standing on it. Aside from that, Ahune has two phases.
Phase One
Ahune is immobile and his only damaging ability is melee so he doesn’t need to be tanked. Just don’t get near him. During this phase Ahune will have a shield which reduces all damage taken by 75%.
He will immediately summon an elite elemental - Ahunite Hailstone - which casts Chilling Aura on everyone nearby. Chilling Aura causes a stacking DoT which does 300 damage per tick per application. It stacks up to 10 times which results in 3,000 damage per tick.
Throughout phase one Ahune will be summoning two Ahunite Coldwaves. He will sometimes summon a single Ahunite Frostwind with them. These elementals have about 2,000 hit points. He summons them every 5 seconds or so at first, and progressively faster with each phase switch.
I’m not sure what the exact time is, but after what seems to be about 60 seconds, phase two begins.
Phase Two
During phase two Ahune retreats, exposing his Frozen Core. This is the time to blow all of your damage cooldowns. Any remaining elementals will not despawn and must be killed. This phase seems to last about 15-20 seconds, after which Ahune returns to phase one.
My first attempt at Ahune was on heroic for a guildie who wanted the Deathfrost enchant. It was day one of the festival and not much was known about Ahune’s loot tables and whether or not there was a better chance of the enchant dropping on heroic or not. Rather than risk it by taking the easy route, we simply did it on heroic mode with the hopes that we’d have a better chance of seeing it. Plus I had Wanted: The Heart of Quagmirran in my quest log from a few days prior.
Our group consisted of a Warlock, Rogue, Boomkin, Holy Priest (who wanted the enchant) and your’s truly.
I tanked the elite elemental between the boss and the plateau in the middle. The Warlock and the Boomkin helped me kill the elite from a distance. This meant that I was the only one with the stacking DoT.
The Rogue killed the weaker adds to keep them off of the healer since that is almost invariable who they will end up targeting due to heal aggro. When the elite was down all DPS goes to the small adds until phase two begins.
I threw out a swipe whenever I could to grab the small add that spawns near my tanking spot.
Ahune will let you know when he is about to retreat and expose his core. All of the DPS needs to ignore any adds that might remain and let the tank pick them all up. It’s vital that you do as much damage as you can during phase two.
The more phase swaps you have to endure the harder things get. The adds come faster with each phase swap and people start running out of mana. On normal mode you should be getting him down on the second Frozen Core phase. On heroic it may take three. Chances are you won’t survive longer than that.
Remember to not stand still at all if you can help it. The ice spikes not only damage you directly, but you take falling damage and it leaves you out of commission for 4 seconds or so while you sail through the air. Healers getting hit with the spikes are especially troublesome.
After two wipes while we tuned our strategy, we got him down and our Priest got his Deathfrost enchant!
It appears that the only distinct difference between regular mode and heroic mode is that Ahune has more hit points on heroic.
This seasonal boss is certainly not easy. In fact, he doesn’t seem to fit with the relative ease of the rest of Slave Pens. It’s not impossible though and it makes for a very interesting challenge.
On heroic mode you get as many chances as you need to kill him. But when you have killed him, that is your only shot for the day. On regular mode, you accept a quest to summon Ahune. You can only accept this quest once whether you win or lose, but everyone in your party can do it separately.
Since that first kill I’ve gone back with several guildies on regular mode, including a level 65 Mage and a level 62 Hunter. In one single instance I was involved in 7 separate kills. We just kept swapping people out as they used their quest to summon him. I’ve still only seen Deathfrost that one time on heroic, but I’ve seen Frostscythe of Lord Ahune four times now.
Tags: Kill Strategy
Leotheras the Blind Down
On our third time clearing to and attempting Leotheras, he has finally been relieved.
We’ve been to see him twice before and gave him a few shots both times with no luck. One of those was a 6% wipe. Last night we made our way there and got his loots on our first shot.
Gloves of the Vanquished Defender
Gloves of the Vanquished Defender
Gloves of the Vanquished Hero
Coral-Barbed Shoulderpads
Pattern: Hurricane Boots
I was lucky enough to receive one of the T5 glove tokens.
After that we swung over to say hello to Morogrim Tidewalker. Most of us had never seen him before and very few had done any reading about him. Nevertheless there was a quick explanation, I was going to main tank him while two paladins picked up the Murlocs. We only had time for one shot and although we didn’t kill him I feel we did pretty well, getting him to 52%.
Tags: Leotheras the Blind, Morogrim Tidewalker, Serpentshrine Cavern
Guide to Threat Part I: What is Threat?
I mentioned recently that I wanted to write a series of posts on threat, what it is, how it works, etc. I should say again that I didn’t decide to do this because I think I’m uber or that I understand anything in WoW better than anyone else. I just think that if I take the time to do the research and write it all down for others to read in an easy to understand manner, I will understand it much better myself. So here goes nothin’.
What is threat?
Wowwiki.com says:
Threat is a measure of an NPC’s aggression towards a player.
That pretty elegantly sums it up I think.
More specifically, threat is the mechanism in the World of Warcraft which helps an enemy decide who or what to attack. When you’re out questing with other players or romping through dungeons with a full group, the enemies you encounter need to decide who they will be focused on and threat is what controls this.
Each enemy you encounter in WoW maintains a list of all players it is aware of and how threatening they are. The player who is highest on a given enemy’s threat list is going to be the one getting attacked (with some notable exceptions).
Without the threat system, enemy encounters would be wildly out of control and players would spend more time running back to their corpses than actually enjoying the game. Especially Mages and Warlocks.
Threat is created by damage done to enemies and beneficial effects to players. Beneficial effects include healing (from spells or items including bandages, potions and health stones), buffs (such as a Warrior’s shouts), and regaining mana or rage from spells or items.
Threat from damage is applied directly to the enemy the damage was dealt to. You blast an enemy with Fireball or whack him with Mortal Strike, he gains the amount of damage you dealt as that many points of threat towards you.
Threat from beneficial effects is generated on ALL enemies that are aware of the player that caused the effect and is divided evenly amongst each of those enemies. So there’s a group of three mobs being tanked by a player in your group. When you heal that tank, the amount of health he regained (not including any extra overhealed amount) is divided in half. One half is thrown away and the other half is divided evenly among those three mobs as points of threat towards you, the healer.
And that is just the base threat system. Most classes have talents that increase or decrease the amount of threat they generate (ex. Feral Instinct). There are pieces of gear that come with threat modifiers (ex. Muck-Covered Drape). Some abilities even have innate threat modifiers built into them (ex. Searing Pain).
Now trying to do all this math on the fly is impossible. Even if you are some sort of computer-brained math wizard AND you could actually SEE what everyone in your group was doing at the same time AND you knew every threat modifier they had equipped, talented and enchanted, trying to keep up with it would be exhausting.
That’s why there are AddOns that keep track of and allow players to monitor their threat. Arguably the most popular is Omen. A popular alternative is KLHThreatMeter. I personally use Omen so that is the one I’ll be referring to throughout my guide.
And speaking of math, I think this is a good place to stop and wait for the next installment. Be on the lookout for Guide to Threat Part II: Math.
Tags: Threat
I’m still here
Just a quick update to say that I am still playing WoW and that I am actually still playing on Shandris with Vishyna and the rest of The Asylum. It looks as though I’ll be staying for good after all.
Still raiding. Got some new gears. Tanking Zul’Aman. Had a go at Hyjal Summit and the Battle for Mount Hyjal.
Will post more later. Bai.
Tags: Megalis