Posts tagged Rise of Isengard

Well, it’s been a bit of a delayed start to the year, but I’m finally in a position to start this column up again. I plan to make my first few columns of the year guides to the Update 5 instance cluster. They’re going to be both general guides and include lore-master specific tips. I’ll be covering the small group instances from a T2 perspective and the raid from T1, because that’s what I’ve been personally doing. I know many people are quite familiar with these instances by now, but hopefully this will help some people who might have been struggling with getting the T2 hard modes or the raid.

Without further ado, I’ll start on Fangorn’s Edge and Dargnakh Unleashed. The trait recommendations and some specific strategy are from a lore-master’s perspective. Note, I had a few screenshots for this post, but the uploader seems to be broken for me atm – I will try to upload at another time.

Fangon’s Edge

Diseases/wounds? Nothing major
Stuns? No
CC required? No
Can a lore-master heal? Yes, but it’s only recommended if you have a strong tank. The last boss in this instance is easier if you don’t have a main healer (or if you have a RK that can switch to DPS), so it’s not a bad one to have a go at healing if you’re confident in your tank.
Trait setup: 4 Red, 2 blue + one other depending on the group’s needs. You are constrained from using AOE skills in the final boss so there’s no point taking 5 red. If you’re main healing, 3 blue with the limrafn pet should be sufficient, if you’re doing DPS then either the secret of tar (which is quite useful for the final fight), a 5th red, without capstone, or improved sop:command are all good choices.
Recommended pet: Limrafn if healing, bear if DPS (or raven if you have a fire RK doing DPS).

Strategy: The first parts of this fight are really quite simple. You have to play a bit of frogger to get past two patrolling columns of mobs. It’s not necessarily possible to dodge between every group that comes, so don’t be afraid to wait for a clear spot. In the lead up to the boss fights you’ll come across 3 huorns being attacked by orcs. These huorns need to be saved for the challenge condition and die quite quickly so pull the mobs off quickly either with a tank or by using a cracked earth or something. Just be sure not to root the mobs next to the huorn! Be warned that the huorn fights start at a much greater distance than you would normally aggro mobs so make sure everyone’s ready before going in to take a look.

The first boss fight, an Uruk named Undurz, is a relatively simple fight with adds + interrupts. The boss hits moderately hard but it’s nothing you can’t keep up with healing-wise as a LM provided the big 360 AOE attack is interrupted. It comes fairly infrequently so it shouldn’t be much of a problem if your tank or DPS is paying attention. Orc adds will periodically spawn near the huorns around the edge of the clearing, have the tank move over to them and pick them up, then burn them down quickly. If you’re healing, this is the time to save up your limrafn heal because the DPS will possibly take a bit of damage while burning the adds down and the tank damage will obviously be up too. Feel free to use your AOE hits here (ents is a good one) as the huorns won’t yet get hurt by you. If the tank keeps the adds near the huorns then they will help out with DPS too.

Soon after the first boss is killed, three ents wake up and you are transitioned into the two-phase final boss fight. The key to both parts of this fight is to not let the orcs hurt the ents too much becase your chances of losing an ent in the final phase go up dramatically if you let that happen. Keeping orcs from hitting the ents is the tank’s primary job in this fight (can be done by a kiting-healer in a pinch if you don’t have a tank, but that’s a fair bit harder to manage). The ents in this phase are enraged and will hit anything that’s close and/or generating threat. Don’t use any AOE skills becuase that will hurt the ents and possibly pull threat. The aim here is to keep the orcs near the ents so that the ents kill them while you’re single target DPSing the orcs down – while not generating threat on the ents. Some measure of kiting is obviously required here and there can be spike damage from lots of directions, so be prepared to use personal cooldowns. The orcs do cast a slow though, so some combination of coffee and tar will really help out a kiting tank. Also, using herb lore on incoming waves of orcs is a good idea.

In the second phase of the fight, three trolls appear and each lock on to an ent. If they manage to kill one, then you fail the challenge mode and the relevant troll will go and beat up on another ent – greatly increasing the chance of a second one dying. If the ent kills its troll, it will start hitting on another troll. The ents will no longer aggro onto players, but can still be hurt by your AOE attacks, so stick to single target damage. The strategy here is to have the tank keep the orcs off the ents (kiting is the best strategy) while the other two players figure out which ent is most in danger of dying and quickly DPS the corresponding troll down. Remember that once the ent is 10-15k morale above its troll then it should be able to win the fight on its own, so if you have a second ent that’s about to die then don’t be afraid to switch over to another troll. The trolls will never aggro onto a player except with a force taunt – so keeping a bear taunt up your sleeve for a situation where an ent is about to die is a good idea. The tank should be able to stay up with you throwing beacon of hope across, particularly if you help out through debuffing and slowing (tar) the orcs. Using a root when the orcs are in a safe spot is a good idea too.

One final thing to note is that if you do die during the first phase of the final boss fight and your party doesn’t have an incombat res available, then simply retreat and quickly run back (note that the “frogger” mobs are gone and you can run straight up that middle path). I speak from personal experience when I say that if you have a solid tank, it is possible to get back in time to continue the fight sucessfully.

Dargnakh Unleashed

Diseases/wounds? Watch out for the -fire resist wound in the first boss fight
Stuns? Yes in the final fight. Unfortunately the “stuns” in the first boss fight are actually cowers, so sop:r can’t prevent them. There are some relatively minor stuns in the first two encounters which you can protect against.
CC required? No
Can a lore-master heal? Yes, in theory, but you’d want to be pretty confident and have a VERY solid tank. If you have backup from another lore-master, captain or a DPS-traited RK then you would be fine, but it’s a fairly healing intensive instance.
Trait setup: 5 red, 2 blue, unelss healing in which case you’d want 5 blue and probably 2 yellow (improved fire lore and wind lore probably, to help reduce damage from the troll).
Recommended pet: Limrafn for both bosses if healing, if DPS then raven or bear for the first boss and limrafn for the second. The eagle isn’t a bad choice either if you’re DPSing and your tank doesn’t have a short-cooldown interrupt.

Strategy: The opening two encounters involve you trying to do damage to the big, enraged, troll Dargnakh using environmental effects while he is also being beaten up on by orcs. In the first room you have to line up some ballistae; pick up bolts, run to the correct ballistae and then right click to fire it and just watch out for orcs – make sure the tank is keeping them off you or whoever is doing the ballista. In the second room you have to pick up torches and light barrels of exploding fire at his feet. He will be fighting against some orcs though, who tend to aggro on the torch bearer, so be ready with personal healing cooldowns/pots and have the tank aggro orcs if absolutely necessary. Generally though you only want torch-bearers to go down the stairs into the main room because you want Dargnakh to stay down there fighting orcs, not aggro onto your group members – he hits quite hard. Eventually he will fall below the necessary morale level (even if you do nothing!) and you’ll break through out of the room to the first boss encounter, the Angmarin Huva.

I really enjoy the Huva fight, there’s lots for a lore-master to do and our DPS is quite well suited to it. The basic idea is that as you cross certain morale thresholds on the boss, he will wake up pairs of the healing sorcerors who are trying to keep Dargnakh alseep. Let the boss build up a good amount of aggro on the boss and then when the adds come, quickly pick one and have both the tank and DPS focus it down. As a lore-master, I recommend using herb lore on the adds when they first spawn and make sure the tank moves the boss away from the rooted angmarin, then DPS one of them down – you should be able to either kill it or outright or almost there by the time the initial root moves off. If you’re doing heavy burst damage to take the add down, your tank might lose aggro so be prepared with a bear taunt. The boss periodically does inductions to cast damaging fire puddles which should be interrupted. The adds also do healing induction which it may be impractical to interrupt, but they can be stunned so play smart with your stuns and the healing shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Also, do clear the wounds that are cast because they have the potential to increase incoming damage quite a bit.

The leadup to the final fight has another environmental effect interlude, this time you need to kill the named orc butcher to get his bucket of slops which will attract Dargnakh to certain spots on the map (they glow, it’s pretty obvious). Once you’ve repeated this process three times he will break through into the final room of the instance and one of the odder fights in the game where you finally take down Dargnakh. If you’re going for the T2 challenge condition, this fight has absolutely no DPS requirement. The only reason anyone needs to do damage to the boss in this fight is the tank, to keep aggro. The tank’s job is to position Dargnakh at the pillars in the corner of the room, which will be destroyed by Dargnak when he does his periodic (appx every 60s) AOE smash attack. While the tank is doing his thing (check out TenTonHammer’s great guide for a tip on boss and healer positioning), it’s your job to debuff and heal to the extent you can. Dargnakh does two special attacks – the 360 degree AOE smash, which has to be avoided by everyone including the tank, and a ranged rock throw. This throw does a decent amount of AOE damage, so make sure to stand away from both your other party member and your pet. Keep all of your debuffs up on Dargnakh, including wind lore, but try to time your fire lore so that it’s up for the big smash attack. I’m also pretty sure that Dargnakh does occasional stuns to the tank, so make sure to keep stun protection up because getting stunned during an AOE smash attack would be no fun. Anyway, don’t waste your power on DPS, be prepared to share if for whatever reason your healer is running low and play smart with your Limrafn’s special abilities and this should be a winnable fight (although quite a difficult one if you’re main healing!).