ToC - Faction Champions

Source: Aliena (25-man)
Welcome back to the TankSpot Crusader's Coliseum raid guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll explain the strategy we used for the Faction Champions, the third encounter in the Trial of the Crusader raid instance.

If you'd like more information or would like to learn more about downloading this movie, click "more info" on the movie information box on YouTube to head directly to TankSpot! Also, be sure to subscribe by clicking the Subscribe button to the right so you will be automatically notified as we release movies.

In this fight you face 10 NPCs of the opposing faction with approximately 2 million hitpoints each. The setup presumably changes from raid ID to raid ID, but it seems consistent in that there are always three healers. There are 14 different NPCs in total that you may end up fighting in any constellation - a DPS version of each class and a healer version of each class that has a healing talent tree.

The general idea of this fight is very reminiscent of a larger scale arena fight, or the third boss in Magister's Terrace. The NPCs work together like an PVP team and should be handled in a similar fashion.

While you're facing up to 12 mobs altogether including pets, they cannot be AoE'd down as they gain a buff that reduces damage done by AoE abilities by 75%.

No normal threat mechanics are in effect. Melee NPCs seem to pick a target at random for a certain amount of time and then move on to to the next one while the caster NPCs just pick random targets to dot up or damage, but abilities such as taunt and fade will make them drop their target temporarily.

It's hard to present an incredibly detailed strategy for this fight but I will give tips of all the things I've noticed that should prove useful:

-You should be aware that the NPCs will use most if not all of their class respective spells, especially crowd control ones. Examples are Blind, Entangling Roots, Cyclone, Wyvern Sting, Sheep and Fears (including AoE fears).

- The paladins will use Hand of Sacrifice and Divine Shield. Have a priest keep mass dispel ready.

- The moonkin will use Treants on cooldown.

- The Warrior will use Bladestorm. If at all possible, stay away from him as best as you can, especially as a cloth wearer. He also breaks fears and uses Intimidating Shout.

- The rogue will randomly focus on a target and burst it down while keeping wounding poison on. Its target will need extra healing.

- The death knight uses chains of ice, Army of the Dead and Death Grip.

- Killing the shaman's totems is incredibly helpful.

- The warlock favors casting Unstable Affliction which should be interrupted whenever possible. He also casts Curse of Agony and Corruption and Fear. Lots of fear.

- The shadow Priest favors casting Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain and even uses Dispersion when targetted.

- Any NPC that can dispel will dispel.

You want to mark the healers up before pulling and single target them down first. We put an interrupter on every healer and their only task was to make sure no heal gets off. To back this up and catch some other random interrupts, we had our rogue spam Fan of Knives with Throwing Specialization.

Alternatively, you can choose to lock them out by CCing them, but PVP duration and diminishing returns are in effect. The restoration druid can and should be banished or otherwise controlled, as he'll mainly cast instants and is hard to lock down. Since a couple heals will probably go off no matter how hard you try, you should have someone keep mortal strike or wound poison on the current kill target.

The warrior and death knight should be kited with movement speed reducing effects on them. Chains of Ice, Frost Nova and Entangling Roots are most useful on those two. As mentioned, taunts work temporarily, so should any melee NPC pick a clothie as target, they should be taunted so the clothie gets at least a breather and can start kiting. Be aware that taunt diminishing returns are in full effect though, so tanks need to space them out appropriately.

The warlock and hunter pets have very low health, but don't deal a lot of damage either. Whether you choose to kill them first or leave them up for last is up to you. We chose to ignore them as they weren't much of a nuisance for us.

Dispels and cleanses of all kinds are extremely important. On our kill attempt, we had a good 300 cleanses combined. Aim to keep druid and priest HoTs dispelled as well as NPC cooldowns such as Hand of Protection, Barkskin, etc.

Tanks are of very little use in this encounter, although the various interrupts Protection Warriors have make them an ideal choice for locking down a healer.

While it is possible to use resilience gear for this encounter, it seems that burst DPS is much more important. With 10 targets alive, it's close to impossible to keep a 100% lock on every mob, so you want to aim to kill them faster than they heal. We did not have anyone use resilience gear.

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Source: Aliena (10-man)
Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Crusader's Coliseum raid guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll explain the strategy we used for the Faction Champions, the third encounter in the Trial of the Crusader raid instance.

If you'd like more information or would like to learn more about downloading this movie, click "more info" on the movie information box on YouTube to head directly to TankSpot! Also, be sure to subscribe by clicking the Subscribe button to the right so you will be automatically notified as we release movies.

In its 10-man version, you fight a group of 6 out of 14 possible NPCs of your opposing faction with at least one healer. Each NPC has approximately 400k health. They have most if not all of the same abilities as a player of the same class would, and they will attempt to snare and lock down your raid members. All NPCs have an Aura that reduces their damage taken from AoE spells by 75%, so single target them down.
When you first engage the fight, the champions will jump down from a corner of the arena depending on your faction. Be aware they don't enter through the gates.

Our raid composition consisted of a Prot Warrior, 2 healers and 7 DPS.

The NPCs behave like a coordinated arena team and they'll attempt to focus one person at a time. If your opponent configuration is melee heavy, they'll prefer to focus down cloth wearers. Fortunately, each cloth class has an ability to temporarily drop their threat - Fade, Soulshatter and Ice Block. They'll be your best friends.

Your opponents are suspectible to Crowd Control, but PVP duration and diminishing returns are in effect. Be aware that the same goes for taunt, so it should only be used to save a clothie from getting murdered. We only used CC right at the start and when healers were in trouble.

For us, it was easiest to focus down the healer while having our clothies kite the melee NPCs around as best as they could. When the melee started focus firing a target, we concentrated our healing on that person.

Interrupts and dispels as well as concentrated focused fire are of utmost importance. Analyze your opposing team ahead of the pull and set up a fitting kill order with healers either dying first or having a set interruptor on them the whole fight. We found it more effective to burst down the first two targets as quickly as possible instead of wasting much time with CC, but it's really up to your raid synergy which route you prefer to go.

While this is a PVP-style encounter, resilience gear isn't as useful as it may seem. Losing the ability to focus down your targets quickly results in dragging out the fight, and your healers won't have the same mana efficiency they have in PVE gear.

As you can see, this was a very quick encounter for us that barely lasted two minutes. Make sure to check out the 25-man version guide for additional tips about the various NPC abilities.


Thanks for watching this movie! As always, feel free to ask questions or add suggestions either on YouTube or in the strategy thread on TankSpot.com. Also, TankSpot Donors can download all of these movies in High Definition directly from our servers -- so if you'd like to learn more about that, justclick the second link in the movie information box!

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