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In this thread on the official forums (don't worry, it's not that bad) one of the tanks (Adamas) posted that for their Hard-mode kill, they used one druid - and that the druid in question solo-tanked Thorim on hard mode to 14 stacks and had 56k HP.
The druid in question is Sudhir, who you can check out here. They probably don't have their max stam setup on right this instant, so don't worry about it.
The 56k health is nice, but the big problem with Thorim isn't the high health requirement, it's dealing with Unbalancing strike. Being crittable is no fun, especially when the attacks are coming every .5 seconds and are hitting for 14k+ a hit on normally armored bears. How is he solving this?
Well, for starters, I suspect he's crittable. That's not as horrible as you might think; if the healers know that you're the only tank that's going to take big damage, spam healing someone through 25k hits is not the worst thing in the world. But my gut feeling is that while he's crittable, he's using PvP gear to deal with some of this.
But what if we use enough PvP gear to completely remove crits from the equation, even with unbalancing strike? We may still get crushed, but the crits will be gone - and they're the real danger.
First off, what you need: with 6% crit removal from Survival of the Fittest, Thorim's ability puts you 7.6% in the hole. That means you need a total of 623 resilience or similar defense to deal with this. The easy way to figure this out is with Rawr; you need a total of -8% crit reduction in Rawr in order to be safe from Thorim.
How does this gear look? Well, I decided to not go after any Furious gear. Why? Because deadly gear requires no rating requirement in any slot, and it can be bought via conquest badges if you are so inclined. Plus you get two chances to get it - from Emalon 10-man and Archavon 25-man. I am using JC and Leatherworking; JC really helps, but it's not a requirement. And (this is the important bit) I'm not using a single Ulduar-level item. If you have them, this will only be easier.
Head Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm
Neck Boundless Ambition
Shoulders Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders
Chest Polar Vest
Waist Titan-forged Belt of Triumph
Legs Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards
Feet Polar Boots
Wrist Deadly Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph
Hands Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves
Finger1 Hateful Gladiator's Band of Triumph
Finger2 Deadly Gladiator's Band of Ascendancy
Trinket1 Figurine - Monarch Crab
Trinket2 Essence of Gossamer
Back Deadly Gladiator's Cloak of Triumph
MainHand Origin of Nightmares
Ranged Idol of Terror
Health: 50801
Agility: 1180.112
Armor: 30899.22
Stamina: 4057
Resilience: 598
Dodge: 39.380%
Miss: 7.762%
Mitigation: 70.128%
Avoidance PreDR: 52.064%
Avoidance PostDR: 47.142%
Total Mitigation: 84.931%
Damage Taken: 15.069%
Savage Defense: 77.388% ~ 1586
Chance to be Crit: -8.055%
So just under 51k health, can't be crit, just a bit less than 50% dodge. Not too shabby. And again - this is pretty much bottom of the barrel. If you have access to Furious gear, it becomes a bit easier (and you get a lot more stamina).
Would I do this? No. It's not that hard of a hard mode anyway, and if you don't already have the deadly gear it's probably not worth grinding for it. (If you have the furious gear or want to get it, that's another story). The amount of resilience gems used makes a lot of this stuff pretty unusable anywhere else; I tried to make the gemming such that only the PvP gear is using the resilience gems, but it's still annoying.
But if you're bored or interested in trying something new, I'd recommend it. I'd also recommend throwing on resilience gear for this fight if you have it anyway (and it's comparable in the slot you're replacing). Having less of a chance to take crits even when you're swapping can really make a difference.
Monday, May 11, 2009
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I thought resil no longer did anything in PvE. Did I misunderstand something?
Ools - that was from an early build/blue notes. Resilience still provides 100% of its effectiveness in all PvE content.
Dang, that's crazy. Opened my eyes to something new and fun to try then. Thanks!
Ouch thats a lot of resilience needed - I misread the tooltip, thought it was defence rating, not defence skill. But it will be fun to try this, thanks for suggesting a gear list, and if I do it, i'll let you know how it goes, along with some stats on how often I was crit, how big the strikes where, and how many stacks before we downed him.
"No. It's not that hard of a hard mode anyway"
/boggle
sorry but hard mode 25 is BRUTAL. We spent 3 hours wiping sub 10% because of tanks getting crit twice in a row and killed, we had 4 tank deaths on the kill attempt (i got SSed rezed SSed again then the other tank died at 2% and we zerged it down)
10 man i will agree with you though.
I dont mean to be an ass, but dont make blanket statements about it not being that hard of a hard mode. If I look at your achievments not only have you not done it, but you havent even seen it. (no Sif achievment)
Also, there are no more crushing blows.
Also, the stats listed shows under 40% not 50% and any time you have the debuff you will have half of your defense further making you be able to be hit more and dodge less.
sorry but hard mode 25 is BRUTAL. We spent 3 hours wiping sub 10% because of tanks getting crit twice in a row and killed, we had 4 tank deaths on the kill attempt (i got SSed rezed SSed again then the other tank died at 2% and we zerged it down)To both Anon and Darksend: come on, guys. 1% of all 25-man guilds have completed this hard mode already - and this is after 3 weeks. Compare this to the Hodir hard mode, or the Freya one, or the Steelbreaker or XT or Mimiron or Vezax or Yogg hard modes. Heck, hard-mode flame leviathan has been done almost 20 times less than this so far.
Heck, Darksend - was this as hard as Sarth3D for you? It looks like your guild spent about the same amount of time on Sarth3D that you did Thorim hard mode. That's where I'd rate it, honestly; it's probably around Sarth3D in difficulty.
If I look at your achievments not only have you not done it, but you havent even seen it. (no Sif achievment)You're right. I've not done Yogg either - haven't even touched him.
This, by the way, is exactly why I hesitated to publish this article. Yes, Thorim is by far the most common hard mode completed - 4 times as many guilds have done it as they have any other hard mode. Does that make it easy? Did I say it was easy? No. But as far as hard modes go, it isn't that hard.
Also, there are no more crushing blows.This is untrue. Crushing blows happen when your base defense is 16 points less than the mob's base weapon skill. (It used to be 11 points). If your base defense is lowered for whatever reason (say...by 200 points thanks to Unbalancing Strike) you are now vulnerable to crushes. If you're not getting crushed, it's because you're getting critted instead; at least on Thorim the way it appears to work is that if you can be critted, it'll be a crit; otherwise it'll be a crush. Crits push off crushes, apparently, but that doesn't push crushes off the table when you convert it to normal attacks.
Also, the stats listed shows under 40% not 50% and any time you have the debuff you will have half of your defense further making you be able to be hit more and dodge less.I'm not entirely sure what this means, but if you're saying you'll be hit more often because of less dodge due to defense? Kinda. The disadvantage of having no parry from defense is that defense isn't as valuable, but the advantage is that when it's taken away, it's not such a huge hit. Yes, you will definitely be hit more often. I think it's still likely more valuable to not be crit but to be hit more often.
Ok, I will admit, as far as hard modes go this is one of the easier ones. I completely misunderstood what you said sorry I thought you did indeed say that it was an easy encounter. My fault I apologize.
That said, launching personal attacks against he armory of people trying to help and inform the community has no place here.
as for crushing blows, I have seen the adds crush me if one is still alive during unbalancing but i have never been crushed by the boss itself. So the logic of crits pushing crushes off the table seems to hold.
One thing you're overlooking... the power of Glyph of Barkskin. Use Barkskin when you get hit with Unbalancing Strike. That, combined with 4pc T7 to extend the duration of Barkskin, and you should be okay.
What's the cooldown on Unbalancing Strike? If it's one minute, you're certainly okay.
Hey Don -
I did actually consider that, but the cooldown on Unbalancing Strike is 20 seconds. It's good for eating one, but it's not reliable for eating more than that. It's a shame; would be nice to actually have that silly PvP glyph come in handy.
I use it, you get 1 in every 3 strikes with it.
Awww boo dont be mean to Kalon, I asked him about this strat too because I was interested in it, and he specially said he was reluctant to comment upon fights that he hasnt done. Be nice to him! He's always coming up with novel ways to kill bosses as a feral.
Thanks Kalon for bringing this to our attention. Always good to see alternate ways of looking at things. I don't give a rats ass if you haven't done these fights yet. Your opinions are usually well informed and thoughtful.
I actually know Conspiracy beartank Hyo runs with 55k HP standard in Ulduar atm... Wondering a bit about his gear, when I looked he was logged out in pvp resto gear, but anyway seems as if this 56k wouldn't really have to be a pure stam set.
Hi there, we killed Hodir Hardmode just a week ago. I've been the MT. 0 Resilience, 48k Hp, tanked until ~13 stacks, than died an DK did the rest. So its possible w/o farming all that gear.
Oh sure, it's possible, Anon. Like I said, it's not really necessary to beat the encounter, not by any means, and I'd not recommend doing this unless you had a majority of the gear already and wanted to try it. It's just a way to try it out and see if it's doable,and what you'd be like in that situation.
Honestly, I think it's probably better to stack massive stam and just soak the crits. Between the polar gear and SoTF, you should be decently off and able to take a fair amount of stacks.
I've poured over hundreds of lines in various combat logs and I've NEVER seen Thorim crush. He crits quite often during Unbalancing Strike (which comes every 26 secs since the last patch, btw).
After 10 stacks of charge, he will hit a well-geared bear for 37k crit along with melee swings every .5 secs (he hits harder AND faster as he gains stacks). So RNG can gib your tank even with 2 or 3 spamming healers.
Hodir is a significantly easier hard mode, as can be seen by the avg number of new kills per day on him versus Thorim. Not sure where you (Kalon) got the statistic about 4 times more kills of Thorim versus any other since today (May 16th) Hodir has been killed by nearly twice as many guilds as Thorim. Was it really that different on May 11th?
Anon -
The only time I've seen Thorim crush was on someone geared for uncrittability. I'll see if I can dig up the log and post it. It seems that as long as you can be crit you can't be crushed.
What changed on Hodir since this was published was that his enrage timer was moved from 1:55 to 2:55 and another raid reset was done. Giving your DPS approximately 50% more time when it was already close to being doable made it actually obtainable. I would agree that Hodir hard mode is probably the easiest of the hard modes now, and the stats on guildox back that up. It requires no special builds or gear, the damage output isn't any worse (and it's actually a bit easier given that you can reliably use all your cooldowns as a tank and mitigate a lot of the damage thus requiring fewer healers), and it just needs good DPS play and healing.
Not sure if anyone else has done this yet, but Doom [H] on US-Dalaran used a resilience-geared uncrittable Feral tank (named Darazi) to solo tank Thorim hard mode. There's a video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsmEGp9g06g
As far as I can remember, he did not get crushed. In fact, my understanding is that crushing blows were removed from the game. Magic damage is the new "crushing blow" as far as tank RNG goes.
We had two other Prot Warriors in the raid, because we were convinced that the Feral would die just to white swings after the Charged stacks got too high (having to sacrifice stamina for resilience), but fortunately the Warriors were not needed and our Feral survived the entire fight.
The Feral used a mix of Furious, Deadly and Hateful PvP gear that he already had but needed to regem for the fight. As he is an active PvPer, we won't be asking him to regem again. We killed Thorim hard mode again this week just, using the usual two Prot Warriors, with about equal stress.
As a healer, I can say that using an uncrittable bear was essentially no easier to heal than tanking the fight normally. The only thing I can say that using a solo tank is good for is if your other tanks fail at taunting quickly.
Libby, thanks for sharing - that's great to hear, and I did expect that an uncrittable bear isn't anything special compared to not. The only 'scary' part is on the tank switch, just like Brut - where healers don't know quite when to start healing the other tank. But it's not that bad, and usually at high stacks they've popped their CDs anyway.
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