The Forgotten Depths

Today the second wing of Throne of Thunder opened up on LFR, and I have to say I'm liking it a lot.

One could call the Forgotten Depths the "beast wing" of the raid. This isn't an area fortified by trolls or mogu. It very much feels like a ruined part of the castle that you're sneaking your way through.

Difficulty-wise, I definitely noticed that demands on the tanks are much simpler, which was honestly a nice break after the craziness of the Last Stand of the Zandalari.

Initial Trash:

The trash leading up to the first boss is actually very simple, yet due to our ignorance, we did manage to wipe on them. Basically, you start in a cave, where there's a measly three pulls of bats, all of whom are in Tortos' room. The bigger bats will periodically silence anyone nearby, so tanks should hold them away from healers.

Tortos:

Tortos is an enormous turtle/tortoise who has become so encrusted with minerals that he actually blocks the path forward. Tortos doesn't move during the encounter, but has one of those mechanics that forces you to have a tank on him lest he does raidwide aoe. The main tank needs to get their active mitigation up every time Tortos bites, because this hits very hard.

The off-tank spends the fight gathering bat adds that don't have a huge amount of health, but can be a threat to healers.

Anyway, the main mechanic here is that periodically he'll summon three spinning turtles that do damage to anyone they spin into. DPSing these guys down to 10% will turn them inert, and you'll be able to perform a special action that kicks the turtle in the direction across from where you're standing in relation to them. This will both interrupt the enemies it hits and also increase the damage they take.

Tortos has a raidwide AoE (whose name I can't quite recall) that needs to be interrupted in this manner.

The other mechanics are that over the course of the fight, more and more stalactites fall from the ceiling, and you need to dodge them. Tortos will also occasionally stun the raid (not sure if this is the thing you need to interrupt or something different,) which of course makes dodging stalactites harder.

This is not a terribly complex fight, but it's in a relatively small room, so it can feel a bit crowded. On the other hand, the small room does make it easier for the off-tank to pick up adds. DPS should prioritize little turtles, then bats, and then Tortos himself.

Trash before Megaera:

After defeating Tortos, you need to make your way through a giant cavern filled with various fungal elementals and bog beasts, as well as shale spiders and those ring-based tunnelers. This can be a huge slog, but I'm sure we'll find efficient paths as we get familiar with the area.

Anyway, what you need to do is find the various Bell Guardians - ghostly Mogu who guard bells that you need to hit and destroy. Once all the bells are gone,  you'll be able to fight Megaera, who is at the far end of the cavern.

Megaera:

Ironic that in a China-themed expansion we get a classic Greek monster, but this fight is cool enough that it's fine.

Megaera has three kinds of heads, each of which pop up at set slots along the shore of an underground lake (Fire, Frost, and Venom from left to right.) At any given time, two heads are active while others remain at the back of the cave, damaging from afar.

In LFR at least, tanks can simply take one head each cycle and let the debuff stack up (it shouldn't get higher than 3.) These debuffs are dealt in an AoE cone, so tanks should face their bosses away from each other.

Meanwhile, dps is going to work on a single head at a given time. Once a head is killed, the other heals to full and Megaera takes about a seventh of her health in damage. After this happens, two of the same kind of head grow back, but for now they stay at the back of the cave.

After the new head comes in, Megaera does a raidwide AoE that people should stack up for and use raid cooldowns to deal with. When this AoE is finished, you return to the normal phase.

My raid kept the Frost head alive, as supposedly the Frost abilities in the back of the cave are hardest to deal with. Meanwhile, while I swapped between Frost and Fire each phase, my co-tank swapped between Venom and Frost, which seemed to work out once we knew where they were popping up and which way to face them.

The heads at the back of the cave will shoot various abilities at random raid members. The Frost and Fire abilities will leave patches that cancel each other out, but presumably this is not something one needs to use on LFR, as we never killed a Frost head.

Once seven heads have been killed, Megaera dies.

Trash before Ji-Kun:

Now we get into what appears to be the palace's sewer system. This is a really cool area where you climb the drainage system up to Ji-kun's nest. Along the way, some of the trash is a little tough to deal with. Little packs of flies will summon worms that burrow to become immune to damage (not sure if you just have to wait them out or what.) Spiders will also descend from the ceiling and create patches of deadly gas (unless that's the flies.) But by far the most dangerous things here are the Gastropods - giant snails that will auto-kill anyone within melee range. Obviously, this means that ranged dps needs to kite these things and burn them very quickly. When you reach the top of the massive climb, you'll be able to jump far across to the central platform in an enormous, cylindrical room, where Ji-Kun's eggs are. Breaking the eggs will summon the boss.

Ji-Kun:

I should note that as a tank, I am very ill-equipped to describe this fight, as the tanks really simply stand there and swap the boss.

However, my understanding of how the rest of the fight works is this: a small group of dps and a healer need to jump down to the lower platforms, where some of Ji-Kun's eggs sit. Killing the eggs will prevent hatchlings from appearing, though if they do hatch, you can kill them as well. At some point after killing one of these things, you can grab the feathers they drop and thus gain the ability to fly. You can now get back up to the main platform, and you can also fly up to the higher nests.

I wish I could say more about the mechanics here, but there's something to do with getting in the way of the food Ji-Kun gives to her chicks, taking some damage but also getting a buff. Also, if you don't deal with the adds, things will escalate and get pretty crazy, with hatchlings and such creating their own adds or something.

It seems very complex, but a tank basically just needs to deal with the boss and not get blown off the platform.

In Conclusion:

Throne of Thunder continues to seem pretty darned epic, and some of the environments in this segment are really awe-inspiring (particularly Ji-Kun's area.) I've generally been a fan of Mists' raids so far, but if tier 14 was a set of solid, if not superlative instances, Throne of Thunder really does seem like it might be one of those raids we look back on with great nostalgia and hold up as an example of how to do a raid in World of Warcraft.

We've now seen half of it on LFR. Here's hoping parts 3 and 4 keep up in quality! (Super excited about the next segment, as both Durumu and Dark Animus, at least by their models, look incredible.)