Halls of Flesh-Shaping

The Halls of Flesh-Shaping is the weirdest section of Throne of Thunder, but it's the one that I think has the most old-school dungeon feel to it. Here there be monsters.

There is a very small amount of trash to kill before fighting Durumu the Forgotten, but killing the last one will bring the boss to the room you're in, so beware. Large Fog Beasts will jump onto the central platform, knocking you back when they land (my co-tank, who in most ways was far more on top of things than I was, and friendly to boot, nevertheless got blown away by these twice.) Killing one will cause an invisible, smaller Fog Beast to appear.

Durumu the Forgotten:

This one here is a raid-killer, but is not terribly difficult once you get the rhythm of it (granted, as a tank, your job is fairly simple, so I might not be doing justice to the other responsibilities of the raid here.) There are two major phases one has to deal with.

The light-cone phase has Durumu shining a red, yellow, and blue cone toward a certain player. You need to use this light to illuminate various adds that are dealing damage to the raid. The longer you stay in a beam of light, the more damage it will deal to you, but this ramps up very slowly (still, it does not go away until the end of the fight.) For reasons I haven't quite figured out, the tank is supposed to stand in the yellow beam.) Tanks swap a debuff while the dps has to focus on killing those adds when they've been found. Killing the adds (which do not have to be tanked) will, I believe, cause the light cones to turn off, saving you from some damage.

Meanwhile, random people will be targeted with "Lingering Gaze," which drops a little purple slime pool that you should not stand in. These persist through the encounter.

The other major phase is his Deconstruction Beam (or is it Decimation...?) Here, most of the floor will become covered with Eye Sores, which deal heavy arcane damage. The key is that you've got to group up on the one safe spot and move around him as he rotates his beam - if you don't the beam will insta-kill you. There seems to be a kind of underlying maze of safe places to stand, so you've got to be paying attention. Eye Sores and the beam will likely be what kills half your raid immediately.

These two phases alternate, and otherwise it's a straight burn.

Trash before Primoridius:

The trash here is pretty simple - you just need to kill the various oozes scooting around. I believe they coalesce into more dangerous slimes, but honestly it was all happening so fast that I don't think there was much to look out for. I do believe the oozes will keep coming, though, so it's a gauntlet that you should try to run through.

Primordius:

The main mechanic here is that those various oozes will all be heading toward the boss. If they reach him, his evolution meter will go up. Every time it fills, he gains a new ability. People will not be able to do full damage to Primoridius at first. By killing oozes, however, they will gain various buffs, eventually becoming "fully evolved," and transforming into a Saurok. Now they should start attacking the boss, as they now deal full damage to him. Killing more oozes while already fully evolved will actually turn those old buffs into debuffs.

The tanks need to kite Primoridus slowly so as not to leave him in giant puddles of ooze residue, or his meter will begin to fill. There is also a tank-swap debuff, but the good news is that that debuff also causes you to deal a bunch of damage to the oozes every time you hit them with an attack. Therefore, the currently-inactive tank should be going around, spamming aoe on the oozes to keep them from reaching the boss.

This is one of those fights that's got a lot of crazy mechanics but is relatively simple in practice. Dps should just remember to kill ooze until they're evolved, then switch to the boss until the buff runs out.

Trash before Dark Animus:

The trash here is just two pulls of Mogu. The first is a pair of warriors who will periodically stun everyone in front of them, so tanks should face them away from the raid. The next group is apparently somewhat complicated on normal, but on LFR it's an AOE Zerg.

Dark Animus:

The main challenge of this fight on normal is that you can't kill all the adds, because doing so would put all the Anima into the boss, and he would use his "wipe the raid" ability. However, since there's not enough Anima in the room to fully power the Dark Animus on LFR, the fight becomes very simple once all the adds are down.

At first, all the Anima Golems will activate. AoE these down, and then the Large Anima Golems will activate. There are 12 of these, if I was counting correctly. The main thing to worry about with them is that they cause various players to deal tons of damage to anyone near them, possibly leaving a trail of bad stuff (the ability is Crimson Wake.) After enough of these guys go down, the two Massive Anima Golems activate. These guys continuously debuff the tanks, but I think it's less of a tank-swap mechanic than simple something to make you kill them fast enough.

After all the Large Golems are down, and maybe along with one of the Massive ones, the enormous Dark Animus will get up. If you've downed all the adds, you'll pretty much have the fight already. The only real mechanic I knew I had to look out for was Anima Ring, where the currently-targeted tank will get a ring of anima globules that tighten around them. The tank should run out of this so as to only get hit by one of the globs, while the other tank picks the boss up. Getting hit by one of these will increase the damage you take by 50% each.

I can't speak to any other mechanics here, honestly, but I get the impression that, at least in LFR, Dark Animus is a frontloaded fight that becomes a near-guaranteed win once the adds are down.

Conclusion:

3/4 of Throne of Thunder is now on LFR. Once again, I'm impressed by the creative fight mechanics of these bosses. With only the last wing left to go, I'm already very happy with what I've seen so far. Hopefully some day I'll be able to whip my guild into shape and take a few cracks at this on Normal.

Overall, so far, the second wing seems to be the easiest one to figure out and down bosses with consistent ease. This one is going to take some learning, but mechanically it's more about just figuring out what the right thing to do is, rather than fights like Horridon, where tunnel vision will be what kills you in the long run.

I'll try to run this on Oterro later this week to get a DPS perspective on the fights. Next week we go to the top and finally face down Lei Shen.