This has been discussed in the Heroics thread off and on, but that thread is rather large/unwieldy and this trial is, I hope, worthy of its own topic due to the difficulty level. It is this trial in particular which makes keying a guild for TK a logistical feat; the others will be done by players coincidentally, but this one will only ever be done by players who are striving to complete it.

This trial is extremely difficult to one-shot as learning wipes are inevitable due to the complexity of some of the pulls in Halls and the erratic behavior of the two later bosses. CC of one form or another (I've done it exclusively with fear, and in a fear-free group with a rogue and mage) is a necessity, DPS is important, invuln pots are a valuable tool, MC/seduce are (currently) near-useless, but overall group composition is somewhat flexible. Solo healing it is an absolute possibility as the instance is largely a test of dps and control; there is virtually no spike damage and tank healing is relatively easy for a heroic.

The pulls are simply a matter of practice, finding out how your group handles them best. There are a few things you need to know:

Legionnaires, Reavers, and Heathens are the only mobs that will hit a tank for significant damage in heroic. Sharpshooters have an extremely powerful viper sting which will cause healer mana to evaporate. There are two hallways of legionnaire pulls; in the first one, killing a mob before a legionnaire will summon a non-elite Fel Orc Convert, in the second one, killing a mob before a legionnaire will aggro a much nastier Reaver.

What I really want to discuss, are the bosses.

Warbringer Omokk is some combination of untuned and poorly designed, and appears to be bugged and will hit significantly harder on future attempts if you wipe (some sort of enrage? or part of the fire buff stays permanently). Nobody's figured out how his aggro mechanic works, if it works in any non-random manner, and the fight is just a dps burn assisted with a little kiting, a few invuln potions for dps without any other defense, and a little luck. Don't try to control this fight, it's not possible, just heal through it and burn him down.

Kargath Bladefist on heroic is extremely melee-unfriendly. He hits the tank for the same miserably low numbers, but the adds are stronger and his blade dance does double damage. If anyone has successfully killed him with two melee dps, I'd like to hear about it. If melee wants to survive they need to time the blade dance and run away from the tank, as a blade dance while he has sweeping strikes up will cause ridiculous amounts of damage as it chains like the old WW-SS combo. (I doubt this behavior is intended, because SS+blade dance does absolutely hilarious amounts of damage. Cloth will literally instantly die. Spread out C'thun style.)

Even if melee dps successfully survives they will spend a lot of time evading his attacks and as a result do the dps of a wet noodle, and thus are probably better off on add duty. The ranged adds on heroic also have the ultra-viper-sting and thus cannot be ignored in a full-out dps burn unless your dps is excellent. A bad blade dance can still deal over 10k damage to cloth, but since this is over the course of a few seconds heals should be landing before people die.

As an enhancement shaman I am extremely glad that I can put on healing gear and stand at 40 yards in heroics as necessary. Sweeping Strikes and 360 degree cleaves need to go, NOW.

Did it with two melee DPS (rogue and feral druid being myself with Prot warrior tank and shadow priest and holy paladin as the other two classes). Rogue stayed on Kargath the entire time I killed the first few adds then just ended up tanking a bunch towards the end.

If you keep the far enough away or LOS'ed from your mana users on the stairs its not an issue. Someone basically has to be doing something about them you can't just ignore those adds essentially.

I (holy Priest) did it today with a Druid (feral), Paladin (holy) and two Mages (deep frost and arcane/frost). With that amount of crowd control, the trash wasn't a problem ever and with 2x2x iceblock + limited invulnerability potions, the last two bosses weren't a problem at all. You would think dps would be a bit low with that kind of setup, but I think we killed Kargath in around 45 minutes with 3-4 wipes on the way (1 to Kargath, the rest to trash).

The conclusion that I make from that is that high dps is not super important. If you just pull fast and drink a bit after every pull (only drink to full on the really big ones), you should easily be able to get by with two main healers. Remember again that the executioner uses a new ax for each prisoner, it's only that quest that gives 25g that has to be done in 55 minutes, so you have plenty of time.

As for the melee issue. DPS warrior... just say no. No crowd control and just as vulnerable as a rogue to Kargath's blade dance (more armor, but no dodge or evasion emergency button), and speaking of rogues... You will probably only ever do this once as a rogue, so it might be worth it to respec into improved sap for this one occasion. Yes it sucks, but you do what you gotta do, right?

One thing that I've been pondering though is what's the best main healer for this place? Priest worked OK for the really big pulls since I could use fear, but man am I squishy. And not being able to remove that Viper Sting when I get it (shit always happens, so you gotta plan for it, right?) is pretty annoying.

My best guess as to Warbringer O'mrogg's threat mechanics is that he simply resets the threat of whoever currently has aggro to zero (or possibly whoever leads the threat list, accounting for aggro thresholds). I'll have to run it with a group where everybody has KTM to verify that theory, though.

I'm not sure how that could be turned into a viable strategy for him, though, unless there is a way to force the deaggro.

I've had very good success with having an OT save up rage for after the first deagro O'mrogg does and just generating as much threat as he can after that. He usually switches to either myself or the OT for several switches after that... only coming off sub 10% when we just burn him.
I've always had two tanks for my runs and we all brought invul pots as well and it was never a major issue.

I have heard/theorized that O'mogg generates two different threat tables dependant one which "head" is dominate at the time. Other things come into account though, like if one head takes additional threat from ranged/magic damage or from healing. Dunno, would like to, this just seems like a complete mystery.

it's just wrong, tried some things like that, he definitely does not go for lowest aggro. I've finished the trial and the 55 minutes quest twice now with different groups. We tried to learn what the ogre really does, but gave it up after a while. Both groups I did it with had a Paladin and we brought Limited Inv Potions. First aggro swtich got BoP'ed and after that we used pots, if he switched to a cloth user. It shouldn't take more then 4-5 switches at worst and with good dps, you can get him easily down in three.

For Kargath we did two different things. Once the group had a tank and a rogue, so the rogue just stood in the entrance area and killed adds and the other dps, a lock, helped him out if he needed to catch up. That meant it turned into a fairly epic fight, but healing was np with two healers.
The other time we had tank, pala, mage, lock, priest and lock/mage sucks for the adds. That time we tanked him close to the bridge and the warrior picked up the spawns. The first 3-4 both casters zerged them down, after that we ignored them, the warrior tanked them and we feared a bit and just nuked down the boss. That plan is much better imo, Kargath doesn't have that much hp and he dies fairly quick, even with two healers in the group.

Spoiler: How to attune slackers.
The trial is finished by killing a lvl 70 trash mob behind Kargath. Given that most guilds only have 3-5 good tanks, some more good healers and a lot more dps, it will be difficult to find good groups for everyone if some people don't go again and again.
Well, the way the trial is set up you can easily 'exploit' it. Clear the dungeon with a good group (did it in less then 45 minutes both times and even if you don't do executioner yourself, you get 4 badges from that) and then leave after Kargath and let five people needing the trial get in.
The executioner for the trial is a lvl 70 elite trash mob. He doesn't hit hard at all, he has low hp, you don't even need a healer for that dude. So you can always attune five people per instance. Although that's not exactly working as intended.

Still better then alcatraz, where Millhouse just stands around and completes the quest for everyone. You can easily attune the whole gulid in one empty instance. Gnomes. :/

And there is no aggro reset. After doing a shattered halls run every day for 2 weeks, we must have tried every possible way to min/max the aggro of everyone. An aggro reset theory is hollow, 2 aggro lists theory lacks too, and definitely its not a reverse either. Interchanging 2 random players is somewhat possible, but that doesnt give any dependable info; it's still random.

If it helps in your theories; when I tried soloing it till the second switch, to maximize threat on both heads, he just charged our second healer at the third switch and never came back to me, never; even invul pots on everyone didnt keep it on me, he went back to someone else after 6 secs.

For Kargath, regardless of your setup; tank all the ads, and kill him fast. The ads dont engage in combat until they step onto the platform, so you dont have to worry about healers building a ton of aggro when they finally get to you. He has close to 200k hp, but goes down fast enough.

From a Fraps I took with KTM showing, O'mrogg appears to perform a combination of a threat wipe and a Lava Annhilator-esque random threat assignment. I only have a few data points to work with, since not everyone in the group had the threat meter on, but he appears to assign 3-5k threat to a random target and reduce other players' threat to zero. The tank was able to reliably regain aggro after around 10 seconds by having the new target stop dps or healing.

However this was on normal mode only. On heroic mode we resorted to Blessing of Protection, Limited Invulnerability Potions etc.

How exactly do you use KTM to test an aggro wipe? Is there a certain line the addon uses to capture it, or something like that?

Believe it or not I did mine in a PUG, it was of course all very good people (warrior, hunter, priest, warlock [me], mage) but we didn't wipe once and just took it carefully and methodically. The second boss wasn't too hard for us, when I got aggro I took a invuln pot and when the mage got aggro he just kited around in a circle for 15 secs or so.

On the last boss, we pretty much ignored the adds - no fears as we didn't want to pull in assassins, instead nova, hunter pet, warr try to tank some. It is tough, I believe the mage died near the end. Healthstones, health pots, and just all out max DPS on the boss helps. Kargath dies pretty fast as long as you can push out heavy damage and stay alive.

Realistically I think the instance depends on a very, very good tank. If you have one you are golden. If your tank is undergeared you will have problems.

By the way I don't know if they fixed it, but if you have a shaman or warlock you can pretty much skip the 2nd and 3d boss. Just run right past Korgath into the area with the executioner (your whole group), go behind a bit, everyone die, then rez up and kill the quest guy. Its pretty dumb and I would imagine they have fixed it by now, but in case some of your groups are having serious trouble.

Its kind of like the entire I-did-strat/lbrs/etc-in-a-raid bugs, people who are playing now have a big advantage in keying over people months from now who will not be able to cheese stuff like Milli in arca or Shat Halls.

Actually at feugen, you die if your threat level isnt below both tanks. I dont think it's an aggro transfer between players, maybe interchanging aggro lists so that one tank always tanks the same aggro list, but that is unlikely too.

My wild guess would be one big aggro list, and they were attacking the highest threat target in their safe-for-raid zone. That might explain how sometimes feugen turns to a rogue and oneshots him; if stalagg tank lands one moment before feugen tank does, and they both attack the highest threat target, one might be a rogue. That's at least what we believed.

I don't see what the huge commotion is about, we did it quite easily. The only part annoys me is Om'rogg and the fact that you as a healer or tank probably need to do it multiple times. That you are actually able to 'leech' it makes it better though. Just form a daily group of the best possible setup, have 20 minutes to spare and get 5 people who need the quest in.

If my theory is correct, then he'll pick on players in order of their position on the threat list (assuming nobody catches up fast enough, but that can mostly be controlled for). Plus or minus aggro thresholds. That's pretty much how Kenco came up with his explanation for Onyxia's fireball aggro wipe, as you may recall.

My explanation is like this... it's a little lengthy, and maybe should be shunted into a thread of its own.

Lets just say on Stalagg, caster side, threat list is:
Warrior A (4500 threat)
Highest Ranged DPS (3000 threat)
Warrior B (0 threat - since he's building aggro on Feugen)

On Feugen, melee side, threat list is:
Warrior B (5000 threat)
Highest Melee DPS (4000 threat)
Warrior A (0 threat - since he's buliding aggro on Stalagg)


On the throw, Stalagg sees who's highest on his aggro list, swaps that threat value with what Feugen has on his list for the same dude. Likewise, Feugen sees who's highest on on HIS aggro list, swaps that threat value with what Stalagg has on his list for the same dude. In short:

On Stalagg
Warrior A (0 threat)
Highest Ranged DPS (3000 threat)
Warrior B (5000 threat - carried over from Feugen pre-throw, ends up tanking)

On Feugen
Warrior B (0 threat)
Highest Melee DPS (4000 threat)
Warrior A (4500 threat - carried over from Stalagg pre-throw, ends up tanking)

This I agree with, and can be demonstrated by the switcharoo. Lets say

On Stalagg
Warrior A (4500 threat)
Highest Ranged DPS (3000 threat)
Warrior B (0 threat)

On Feugen
Warrior B (5000 threat)
Highest Melee DPS (4750 threat - woohoo, look ma, damage meters!)
Warrior A (0 threat)


And after the swap
On Stalagg
Warrior A (0 threat)
Highest Ranged DPS (3000 threat)
Warrior B (5000 threat)

On Feugen
Warrior B (0 threat)
Highest Melee DPS (4750 threat - oh shit, pasted)
Warrior A (4500 threat)


When doing Thaddius, even when DPS was pacing themselves and ensuring both tanks threat levels were way higher, a problem arose, that during the throw, Feugen may, as you said, decide to paste a rogue for no reason, or Stalagg runs happily into the caster group. This was a really odd issue, but a hypothesis and solution we came up with seemed to work for us.

The hypothesis: Consider skills like Iceblock and BoP which momentarily declares someone an invalid target without dropping their threat. The mob goes off in search of the 2nd highest stays on the 2nd highest even after IB/BoP wears off, and only snaps back to the initial guy the moment that guy does something that modifies threat value. (This phenomenon also happens mobs with fear mechanics, like a druid trying to tank Galvagar (*sob*) or Moroes & Gouge.) We assumed this was happening post-swap. The tanks had the highest respective values of their mobs post-throw, but they needed to do something to grab the mob's attention away from the 2nd highest.

Our solution, was to save Shield Block, and pop it the moment the throw occurs. It somehow counted as a self-buff, nudging the threat values slightly and locking Stalagg/Feugen onto their new owners. (Naturally, this doesn't work if DPS isn't solidly below -both- tanks - as demonstrated above Feugen will just paste the highest threat rogue anyway)

We never got to Kel'Thuzad, but in our few months of farming Thaddius, every time a rogue/caster got pasted, it was traced back to the tank forgetting to do the Shield Block nudge we proposed.




Now, how does this pertain to O'mrogg?

It doesn't. Hahah.

But, someone mentioned a hypothesis in the other Heroic thread which I feel is worth pursuing to confirm/deny, based on the mechanic of a mob swapping threat values between two people. (Or in the case of Stalagg/Feugen, the same person on different tables)

Lets say, on the emote, O'mrogg chooses a random person, and swaps the tank's threat with that random person. The effect we see is that he goes chasing after that selected person, with the tank tearing hair out trying to regain aggro.

How do we figure out if this is what's happening? If the above hypothesis holds true, it should follow that:
- The harder the tank goes all-out before the emote, the harder that it will be to grab aggro back after. (Since tank is pulling far ahead, the new guy gets his humongous value after the switch)
- The less threat that randomly picked guy has, the harder it will be (for the tank) to grab aggro after. (Since tank is dropped to a low threat value after switch, he has further to go to get back to the top of the threat list)

In other words, aside from special modification to Kenco's meter mod to simulate the hypothesis, gathering data if its easier to pull off DPS vs healers after the swap, if going all out vs staying only slightly above dps threatwise makes a difference, etc etc. would start pointing us to a 'yes' or 'no' answer regarding the hypothesis.

Phew, I feel like a looney out of an asylum... but that's my fair crack at trying to figure out this fatface.

I'm not sure if this helps the discussion about O'mrogg or not, but I can add to it with my own experience.

We did it a second time a few days ago (after failing the first time for spending too much time on O'mrogg) and while we did wipe again on him, something of a miracle occured. I stole aggro a few seconds before an emote/switch and while I was getting ready to be smashed, he switched target back to the MT. He had the MT targetted for most of the fight that time, to 10-15% after which all three DPS in the group died (Mage, mage, shadowpriest, holy paladin, prot warr) and the paladin and tank took him down the last 2-3%.

You probably want to do Heroic shattered halls the full run through with no consumables, and killing everything despite the time limit. This is so that you can do the trash easily enough for when you do pot up and make the run for 55 min. It's totally doable without consumables, but for the first time, you really need to get strategies down for minimizing time wasted on pulls and doing the bosses effeciently. It will probably take you the second run with consumables/flasks in order to do it under 55 min with ease.

My group comp was:
Holy priest (myself)
Paladin
Warrior (prot, with concussion blow and improved revenge to stun trash mobs)
Hunter
Warlock

Consumables were Titans, Rumsey, Elixir of Mastery, etc etc sta buff items

Gauntlet - Tank gets solid aggro on each wave, when mobs are under 50% tank moves on to next group. Heal over times are not used because tank aggro on adds is slowly built. Not worth a priest taking dmg at that point. Paladin helps immensely. Use fade if deciding to group heal.
Gauntlet boss - burn down 2 guards quickly, and pull boss back into gauntlet. He may fear so it is important to tank him in that open area. We had the tank stay in berserker and we killed the boss without a single fear. It may have been luck but we were fully flasked up at that time.

Trash - Skip the side packs that do MS, it's not worth the time doing them. Have paladin tank the hunter at ranged while the dps kite/kill one dog while the other dog is tanked by the MT. Once both dogs are dead, have the warrior tank the hunter. Remember the hunter hits harder at melee so it's a bad idea for the paladin to move close if he has built aggro on him.

In each pack after the hunter, have a priest MC the casters, you can get either the darkcaster or the healer. It's important that you dispell the target you plan to MC because the acolyte buffs shadow protection on them before hand. Priest, shield before the pull and make sure you have tank control the melee mobs away from you to avoid cleave. Once you MC the darkcaster, start nuking the legionaire and standing the pet in cleave if able. The reason to MC casters is because they remain stationary after MC breaks. At most you want to MC the same guy twice, because of diminishing returns and by then most of the trash should be dead. After the darkcaster dies, MC the acolyte and help heal the group. The warlock in the group should have put curse of tongues on the acolyte at the start so he doesn't do too much at the beginning of the pull.

From then on repeat until you reach the area with rogues. Use hunter to flare out/ or perception out the rogues.

O'mokk - Pretty much assist healing on the person getting hit. I did this before Mending was nerfed so a priest tanking can no longer spam himself with mending. For whoever is tanking, put renew and immediately spam flash heal on them. Your war should be able to regain aggro after aggro switches, if not something is wrong. On our 55 min kill attempt I was the only one that died, probably due to some lucky crits, anyway the guy died pretty easily with everyone flasked.

Warblade - You want the group spaced in such a way that if he were to chain, he would not chain 2 people over and over. So the room is a square. We had the hunter in the middle of the north, warlock in south by the stairs, priest just north of the warlock about 1/3 of the room north of the warlock. Paladin on south west area, and tank in the western half of of the room. I was close enough to the warlock so that if Warblade bounced to him, he would bounce to me. If I was too far, then Warblade would bounce onto the warlock 2-3 times, surely killing him. I also needed to mending myself to ensure that on a bounce, I would survive. Just remember again Warblade can't bounce evenly to all party members if they are bunched up, or very spread apart. That's probably the best advice I could give in avoiding a double bounce or triple bounce onto the same person.

Lastly, the warlock soloed much of the adds, if an add got loose, the hunter picked it off as it went into the center onto the priest. Pretty easy otherwise, if you pot up and make a serious go at it.

That actually makes some sense. I'm an Arms Warrior, so when I run instances my guildmates like to fuck with me about aggro. =o Basically on this fight we had one case where the Warlock pulled aggro, and I got it back, then he did his emote and switched targets, and I was able to get back aggro easier then I've ever done before.

Maybe the ability is a forced taunt in reverse?

When we did this, someone pulled aggro right before the emote happened... and it went back to our tank and stayed on him for the majority of the fight.

Did it today and completed it with 15min left, not a single wipe. Was our third try.
We tried the strat on Kargath that someone posted here (MT tanks him at gate and pick up all the adds and dps the boss down) worked pretty well for us.
On Kargath we had a feral druid heal only until first head switch and he got the aggro then.
Used fire pots to be save and had invul pots ready.
Group setup was prot tank, feral druid (tanked most of the time), rogue, fire mage and a priest.

Currently KTM doesn't react to O'mrogg's yells, although you could edit KTM_Bosses.lua to do so. To get my data I paused the video just before the yell and recorded the threat values, and again just after the tank regained aggro. From there it was just a matter of running the numbers.

I don't think a threat swap is consistent with the relatively small amount of threat that the tank needs to generate to regain aggro. By the first transition the tank had a threat margin of more than 10k, but was able to pull aggro fairly quickly.

I did it first try with a prot warrior/resto shaman/holy paladin/2 subtlety rogue group. The warrior, paladin, and rogue A had almost all KZ PVE gear. Shaman was still using mostly t3. I was using mostly the best heroic 5 man blues I could scrape up being unable to do raids. We zoned in to just to the nightbane quest for the other 4 people and hand no real intention of making it. Had about 5 minutes left when we completed it after one wipe on Kargath and one wipe on the gladiator hallway where the tank zoned out to repair his weapon in Thrallmar.

The hero of it was the warrior easily. Having a reliable tank cover 3 trash mobs on every other pull is much more valuable than having refreshable CC. On our first try on Kargeth we didn't even come close, but the second time we just let him pick up all of the adds for the fight and it was easy by comparason.