Our second night of attempting Mimiron10, after about two hours of wipes, Mimiron hit the floor, and there was much rejoicing! I got a sexy new t8.0 tank helm, and someone else got the Fusion Blade. The other tank got a fun new toy, and I got a trophy (if you don't get the joke, think what "ground" and "gear" mean on their own, in the context of WoW. It's hilarious.)
Astute readers (really anyone who hasn't been living under a rock) may have noticed that if the aforementioned helm is an upgrade for me, then I really don't have much ground gear. I'll admit, I'm being a lazy bum and my guild probably suffered more wipes than it needed to because of me. Incase you have been living under a rock, patch 3.2 was last week, and everything gives Emblems of Conquest (or better) now. Meaning I could theoretically be running around in some much better tank gear for the low, low price of 191 Emblems. That would be 5 days (about) of Heroic grinding, or less if you raided at all this week or had some leftover from Ulduar hardmodes (which is E Z Moade, by the way).
Also giving better gear is the new Trial of the Crusader 5man, which has both Regular and Heroic modes. Due to my general apathy for trying to play in the post-patch-lag-mayhem, I have only cleared H ToC once, but I've farmed the regular a bit. Both give a whopping five (5!) epics per run of a particularly high item level, and the heroic comes with Emblems on the side.
Aside: The regular can, as you might expect, be run as often as you like, and is an excellent source of enchant mats (which are probably freefalling in price on any server.) Speaking of which, since BoPs are tradeable now, PuGs are treating disenchanting differently. On my server, about half of all PuGs open greed roll, and the enchanter buys the BoPs at the end for about half the shard's price (usually 2-4 times over vendor value, still benefitting the nonenchanters.) Also on the subject of BoP trading, much private selling or manipulating of loot has been going on. Often when in a PuG raid with guildies, we will all roll on a loot one of us wants and pass to them if any of us wins, likewise, good epics often get secretly auctioned off via whisper after loot has ended. It might be frustrating as a raid leader, but again, hilarious. Great way to make money too.
Much like Violet Hold, ToC has a random selection of bosses, and thus a huge variety of loot; expect to farm it until your face turns blue only to have the guy next to you gear out in a single run. Since you're liable to be there a while, time for some how-to on ToC. The dungeon has four bosses, to which I will dedicate a section apeice below.
The first boss is a tag-team of the dreaded Wall of Text coupled with the Interminable Wait. It casts Intense Boredom with rapidly increasing frequency throughout the fight. If hit, a player will often AFK or tab out to write a blog post. Losing one player to Intense Boredom will not wipe this encounter, but it will make the next encounter much more difficult, as no known spell can remove this effect. The best defense is an ingame distraction, such as trolling General chat, or spamming /silly (these do not protect your party members). Addons such as Peggle for WoW can combat the Intense Boredom, however they can also cause many of the same problems. A small fraction of this time should also be spent buffing up and getting a lance and mount (both available around the walls) for the second encounter.
The second boss consists of three trash packs followed by a triple boss randomly chosen from a set of five champions of the opposing faction. The first half of the encounter is fought on the Argent Tournament jousting mounts. Some people may have some experience with them from the dailies, but I did not, and I would imagine there are others like me.
The mounts have four spells: a melee swing (which will not auto-cast - spammable), Shield Breaker (a weak ranged attack that is used to lower your target's defense - shares a cooldown with Charge), Charge (a very strong charge attack which also breaks defense - shares a cooldown with Shield Breaker), and Defend (which repairs your own defenses - cast it on cooldown). To be edited: Links to be added above next time I go to ToC.
To deal maximum damage on these mounts, make sure to focus fire with your group, use Charge to inflict your damage, and cast a melee swing when your charge hits. If you can't get far enough away from the group target to charge it, spam your melee swing on it. Assign a regular target to focus since marking will be difficult given the limited time between trash spawning and the fight beginning (E.G. "all charge the center one"). During Wall of Text, you should mark the bosses with a kill order before they all spawn. A good kill order is Dwarf > Gnome > Dranei > Nelf > Human, but that's just my 2c.
When you joust the bosses, their mounts are vastly stronger than yours, so if your mount is getting banged up, feel free to ride to the walls and grab a fresh one, you can jump directly to a new mount without getting off. Once a boss has been knocked to the floor, assign one party member to stand on it, if you don't trample them repeatedly, they will sneak over to the wall and remount, much like you can. When all three bosses have been knocked off their mounts, phase two of this fight will begin.
When phase two begins, one of three things will happen: either you run out of the instance, or two DPS die and then release spirit and fly back, or you wipe and you all fly back. This is because damage you dealt during the mount phase generates threat... and it carries over. Most likely you will start with threat... on one of them, and the other two (or maybe three) will go roflpwn your party. I really recommend running out. I don't really know all the bosses, but they're not that hard on regular, just keep your eyes open and communicate with your party and it'll be fine... on regular. Practice at least once on regular before attempting Heroic. When downed, a loot chest spawns with one epic.
Boss three is preceded by the Wall of Text returning, but it's much weaker this time around, tank and spank it. Some easy trash also spawns in three groups, target the Lightweilder first, the Monk last, and if a lolwell appears, have your DPS nuke it. The boss you get is random, I have fought two different ones, Eadric (a paladin) and Argent Confessor whats-her-name. They hit fairly hard, and both have some special abilities to watch for. Eadric will occasionally stun a party member and them smite them for massive Holy damage, and he will also explode with light, blinding anyone still facing him when the cast finishes. Argent Confessor will summon a shade partway through the fight, when she does (or a bit before for DoT-users) stop all DPS on her, she reflects all damage until the shade dies. While the shade is alive, she will also mass-fear the party from time to time. Shadow resistance is helpful on this fight. When killed you get another chest with two epics.
Boss four is a Death Knight and has has three phases. Both Shadow and Frost resist buffs are useful on this fight. In the first phase, his ghoul will leap around alternating between the squishiest DPS and the healer, kill it or taunt it, pick one. Meanwhile the boss will use strong magic and melee, as well as some disease DoTs, cure them if possible. When killed, he will come back as a ghoul, apparently he missed all the nerfs we've gotten, lucky sucker... Phase two will begin, he summons an Army of the Dead. Drop D&D, and pop a cooldown if necessary, the damage is actually rather light, as long as you get the mob in front of you. Finally, when killed he will return as a ghost, he will throw magic around at the party, there's not much you can do for them besides burn him or use AMZ if you have it, save it as late in the fight as possible if you do; you'll need it more later on. An interesting note, the spells he uses are shadowfrost, so Shadow resist or Frost resist alone will be largely useless, only mitigating his DoTs. Kill and loot for two more epics.
Some other changes to note: the new BG rocks, Koralon will not be added to VoA until the next Arena season starts, and the first boss(es) of the new raid dungeon is available (the Northrend Beast Encounter is easy enough - if you have the gear for it; it has a very high gear threshold for tanks by last patch's standards, fairly attainable with heroic grinding now.) Also don't miss out on epic gems for your new gear, you can get the raws for 10-20 of your leftover Emblems of Heroism, and get the cut done for free from a gullible guildie. Also for your new gear, enchant prices are at record-breaking lows, slap some on, things that once cost over 600g are now around 100-200. Naxx10 is going out of style, by the way, most guilds on my server are discontinuing it, although I'm sure pugging will be just as possible as before. Maly10/25 has become highly puggable as well, thanks to the recent nerf where the drakes are much stronger.
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