Siege of Orgrimmar Preview: Thok the Bloodthirsty
You can sort of guess what this boss will do if your raid group wipes. There won't really be any corpses of your group left when Thok is finished. Patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar will feature a trend that started in patch 5.2: Fighting raid sized dinosaurs!
Know what's more worse than fighting dinosaurs with laser beams? A hungry one. Read on to find out about other dietary alternatives for Thok the Bloodthirsty.
Thok is a multi-phase boss that you'll get to later on in the Siege of Orgrimmar instance. Let's go over what he does and how my raid group dealt with him.
Phase 1
For the tanks, I hope you're great at the lateral shuffle. Thok's Fearsome Roar will dish out around 200k damage in a frontal cone which applies a debuff. They'll be taking 50% more per debuff stack. Tag out and in as needed. Ensure that Thok is facing to the side while the rest of the raid is somewhere to the side of him. If the raid stands behind him, they'll be hit with a nasty Tail Lash. In other words, assume standard issue dragon slaying position with the raid on the side.
Thok has a gradual energy build up. When he reaches full, he'll discharge and inflict serious damage to everyone that also interrupts spellcasts (Deafening Screech). Whenever that gets discharged, his energy regeneration rate goes up. Speaking of AoE, Thok has a shock collar around him that will also deal periodic damage to random players.
There is one last thing that makes Thok a little dangerous. In most multiphase fights, the next phase is either triggered due to time spent or damage dealt to the boss. In this case, Thok has a special mechanic called Bloodied. If a player falls below 50% health, Thok can smell their blood. If 5 or more bloodied players are within 10 yards of each other, the scent of blood overwhelms Thok and he starts going into a frenzy. For our purposes, we wanted to push into the next phases as early as possible which is why we stacked up. It has the side benefit of ensuring that we wouldn't get overwhelmed from Deafening Screech either.
Phase 2 - Frenzy for Blood!
Thok will immediately roar and knock away any players standing in front of him. He can't be tanked and he'll fixate on players at random. Fixated players need to start running and putting some distance between them and Thok before they become his next lunch. Anyone caught dies immediately. After several (seemingly long) seconds, he'll switch to a different player and begin hunting them instead.
That initial roar of Thoks is going to attract the attention of a Kor'kron Jailer. Your party needs to take him out as quick as possible. When the jailer becomes neutralized, your raid members can grab a key and open up a cell with one of the prisoners below. They'll try to help you throughout the fight.
By the way, the longer you take in neutralizing the Jailer, the faster Thok will move.
Prisoners of war
Akolik starts off as an appetizer and will attempt to attract Thok's attention. He ends up being successful and gets gobbled up. Thok then gains his powers. Thok's Fearsome Roar gets replaced with Acid Breath (It's around 400k damage in a frontal cone which reduces armor effectiveness by 20% a stack). Keep healing cooldowns available for this one specifically.
Corrosive Blood - Deals ~40000 damage at first before ticking for 20000 damage every 2 seconds for 30 seconds. The numbers aren't final and will most likely to continue to change.
Waterspeaker Gorai will be freed next. Remember helping him out back on Kun-Lai Summit? I wonder how he got captured. Gorai and his followers will help heal your party. The Waterspeaker is also going to try to distract Thok and ends up being served as a main course. I guess Thok has a taste for seafood. Thok's Blood Frenzy stops and his roar gets replaced with Freezing Breath. It deals around 200k damage to players in a frontal cone. After 5 stacks, the player is entombed in ice.
Icy Blood - His skin starts to freeze and crack spitting our plumes of ice. Players will randomly receive around 120k damage but will be coated in ice. Similar to Freezing Breath, if they receive 5 stacks, they'll be frozen in ice.
Warmaster Montak is about to be the final course. The raid's weapons will be empowered with additional fire damage. Of course, Thok craving some extra spicy food will eventually devour the Warmaster. His roar will be replaced with a Scorching Breath dealing approximately 200k Fire damage in a cone. The flames will cause a DoT on affected players for around 75k damage every 2 seconds.
Burning Blood - Thok's Skin is coated with oil that deals around 80000 fire damage to random enemies and leaving fire puddles at their feet. Stay mobile.
The one thing I'm not sure about in the encounter is if we were able to decide what order the prisoners could be freed in. We died fairly early on and weren't able to get as far in the testing as we'd like. it could be random, a specific order, or an order at the raid's discretion. I suspect healers are going to have a field day with all the incidental damage that's going out. Everyone needs to know what's happening at each stage of the encounter and to react accordingly. With enough practice (and DPS), Thok should eventually fall. Too bad about the rest of the NPCs he ingests though. Logically, one would think he'd eat Warmaster Montak first then go for Waterspeak Gorai to help chill his breath a little.
There's a neat achievement towards the end that involves Thok getting eaten by a supposedly really massive snail [Mega Snail vs. Giant Dinosaur]. You have to pop the cage open somehow and let the snail out and avoid it long enough for it to eventually feed on Thok's corpse. I thought the snail trash leading up to Ji-Kun was bad. This must be the mother of all snails or something.
WoW Insider Siege of Orgrimmar previews
