Faction Champions Heroic

So my theory on Faction Champions is to stop treating it like a PvP fight. Most people when they first see the fight think "Hey, it's a PvP fight, let's treat it like PvP".

This is incorrect for a few reasons.

The first is that from a gearing perspective, you're still dealing with level 83 mobs who need a lot of spell hit, and aren't affected in the same way by resilience. So for gearing you definitely want to be using your PvE gear and in many cases your PvE spec.

Secondly, what makes PvP challenging are unpredictable opponents who are constantly adapting and changing their strategy based on what you do. Faction Champions is a fight with predictable PvE enemies who behave in predictable ways.

Third, the health pools are completely different. In PvP a lot of the game is about co-ordinating CC, counters, and target switches rapidly to gain a kill. In Faction Champions the fight is about muscling your way through NPC opponents one at a time. The sheer size of the health pools means you're not really interested in target switching at all.

For my guild the best way to do this fight is to approach it as a PvE fight, but apply PvP knowledge to better understand the PvE mechanics of what is going on and what is likely to happen.

First and foremost we assign a tank to control each enemy melee. Since they are not tauntable, you tank your enemy melee much like you might tank something in PvP. Hamstring, Chains of Ice, Concussion Blow, Piercing Howl, Charge Stun, Death Grip, etc. Every enemy melee is handled by one of our warriors and Death Knights. Once you have done this you basically treat every enemy melee as a Buru the Gorger. Yes, they choose their own targets, but when you are chosen you just run away and kite them. Every so often they might get close to you, but your tank can use a stun or you can use a cooldown to take a hit and not die. Just imagine there are 4 Buru the Gorgers who constantly target switch - because in many respects that's exactly what they are.

Secondly, stick an interrupter on each enemy healer.

Thirdly stick some non-breakable CC on enemy DPS. This includes Cyclone, Hex, Stuns and to a lesser extent, warlock fear. Counterspells from mages are also extremely useful.

Finally, make sure there's 1-2 people who are aware they will spend 90% of the time dispelling, particularly the kill target.

From there it almost doesn't matter what order you kill the opponents in. Since you have assignments and the fight is very much about controlling the enemy melee, slowing down their ranged damage and negating their healers, just about any kill order could work.

Learning Northrend Beats Heroic

Northrend Beasts has been a real challenge.

Gormok

• We use a 2 tank rotation.
• We DPS all Snobolds immediately
• Isisnile tanks first up to 3 stacks
• I tank going to 4 stacks. In the last 20 seconds I pop both Heart of Iron and Eltrigg's Oath
• Isis tanks up to 4 stacks while I am healed through my 4 stack bleed. Isis gets a Guardian Spirit or a Bubble/Sacrifice moving into the 4th stack.
• Isis bubble cleanses the 4 stack bleed and I get a Pain Suppression as I'm taking over. I pop Survival Instincts and Barkskin moving into 3 stacks, which is about when he usually dies.

Worms

We've been bloodlusting on the first worm, Acidmaw. Our goal is to burn down Acidmaw before the 2nd submerge.

There's a lot of sources of death on worms. The most common are:

• Melee engaging before a tank has aggro on the worm
• People getting knocked into poison clouds
• Ranged standing too close to each other for burning bile.

Icehowl

Generally speaking the feeling in the guild is if we can get an attempt with 25 people standing gonig into the Icehowl phase, he'll die. So far the best we've had is 24 people standing and we wiped at 1%. The whole Icehowl phase is very straightforward we just need to work on Jormungers more.

That said, we use Frost Aura, we spread healers out, we use Shattering Throw on the second stun combined with speed potions at that time.