The Underhold: DPS Perspective

Once again, it's the second look at a wing of Siege of Orgrimmar, this time wing 3: the Underhold.

While the main purpose of these second looks is to cover things that I missed when tanking the place, it's also a good way to see how strategies evolve and just getting a deeper sense of how a fight works.

Tonight I ran Underhold on my Frost Death Knight, and amazingly after last week, we one-shot all the bosses. I don't know if this is to be expected in these early weeks, but it's promising: you absolutely can defeat this wing without any determination buffs.

Malkorok:

I guess the one thing here is that if you're not tanking, the healers are not going to be as focused on you. You'll want to soak the purple swirls (and blow a survival cooldown when you do) but if you see that your Bulwark shield is yellow or red, you probably want to let someone else take the hit.

Likewise, it'll be a little harder to gauge where the Arcing Smashes will come, because you don't get to keep the boss faced in a particular direction, and will likely be circumnavigating him to keep yourself in a good position. Also (and this is true for tanks as well,) if you're unlucky enough to have a raid that doesn't stack on Blood Rage, you're SOL, and you're going to die.

So, just to be clear: watch his Rage meter. When it gets to about 95, everyone in the raid should stack up on the tanks. You'll get one last Breath of Y'shaarj, but if the tanks are paying attention, they'll plant their feet in a safe location. At that point, just stay put until his Rage goes back to zero, and then you can go back to your regular stuff.

Spoils of Pandaria:

Obviously, dividing the raid properly is a big part of this fight. However, the thing that I really noticed was how a change in strategy could make it a lot smoother.

My tank elected to break open each of the largest crates, defeating the boss in one and then going after the other. From there, you'll have about half the energy you need, and you will probably have plenty of time to break open more medium crates. DPS can probably afford to break the smaller crates as well, but you don't need to rush it so insanely fast. We worked our way from large to small and we finished each room with about a minute to spare.

For DPS, I guess the main thing is that you'll want to burn things down quickly, especially anything that summons adds.

Thok the Bloodthirsty:

Again, this is a pretty simple one, though I must confess that I spent much of it taking a dirt nap. In my defense, I did not die by getting trampled. Rather, I made the far more noobish mistake of going after the jailer add before the tank had gotten to it. (Though the tanks seemed very sluggish on this, and may not have realized that they needed to take him.)

Anyway, after getting rezzed, (always nice when a fight's going well enough that you can afford to rez DPS,) I think the other important stuff is to remember to favor survival. On the flame phase, you'll need to move frequently to get out of the burning blood.

Conclusion:

Maybe I got really lucky with my group, but this run demonstrated that once people get the mechanics down, I expect Underhold to be a breeze. Malkorok and Thok are both pretty straightforward. Spoils will likely still cause problems now and again, especially if impatient people pull it before the raid's been split. But overall, I think we're in good shape.