Patch 5.2 PTR: Defeating the Twin Consorts in the Throne of Thunder
Lu'lin and Suen are rumored to be the only known female mogu that exist. These two are the last bosses that stand between you and the Thunder King himself. In the spirit of attempting to badly pronounce boss names, I believe Suen is pronounced "Swen" (and not Sue-n).
Interestingly enough, our iLevel was scaled up to 517 for this test. In many of the previous test encounters, we were at 502. That should offer some idea of what the group's gear progression should be at when they challenge the Twin Consorts.
Read on for more!
The twins are going to demand a high level of personal awareness out of everyone. Thankfully, you have the aid of the four celestial spirits to help you.
Niuzao grants bonus health to all players for 15 seconds.
Chi-Ji will show up and deal tons of damage to any enemies they're in contact with.
Yu'lon grants massive health and mana regeneration.
Xuen gets everyone to move so fast that everything seems to slow down (and allows players to avoid abilities that would have been unavoidable).
In order to call upon them, one player must interact with a spirit. I didn't see this part myself since I was healing. My understanding is that the player then gets phased out. There will be different stars on the ground. Players must run from star to star and trace the constellation that appears on the middle of the screen in order to summon the desired celestial.
In this shot below, the pattern is supposed to a sideways hour glass (though the pattern has partially faded out).
Once a celestial's powers have been summoned, they'll be on a temporary cooldown before they can be summoned again. Here's a flock of Chi-Ji's running through.
Darkness Falls: Lu'lins Luminosity
Let's dive into the first phase of this encounter. Similar to Tsulong, we're going to start off in the "night" phase. Lu'lin will be the main focus here. Suen will appear periodically and be a general annoyance.
We started off with 2 healers but quickly ramped it up to 3 instead. Lu'lin spawns Moon Lotus after Moon Lotus around the room and they'll spit out Slumber Spores in different directions (Spores are the teal gas clouds). Anyone that runs into it will fall asleep for 5 seconds. We needed that extra dispel to get them out. For developer feedback, I'd probably scale back the number of Moon Lotus up or cut down on the spores that are spawned. Something's up with the graphic too. The spore cloud visual seems way smaller than the actual area-of-effect of the spore cloud. There times where I had no business being slept but would get hit by one anyway.
Cosmic Barrage is another ability where she summons stars. Lu'lin will start dancing in place. After the dance, each stars will select a random player and crash into them for around 200k. Any players near the crashed player gets knocked back. In the shot below, you can the blue streaks from Cosmic Barrage about to strike players.
Lastly, she summons a Beast of Nightmares that's visible only to the tank that it has fixated itself to. Any player healing that fixated player gains a Corrupted Healing debuff where they take on a 30 second DoT which deals ~10000 a second. The effect stacks. The more healing you put on the player, the higher the DoT.
Note to Priests: Prayer of Mending does not trigger Corrupted Healing. Healing from Atonement does not trigger Corrupted Healing. Power Word: Shield does trigger Corrupted Healing.
This could change when patch 5.2 goes live.
What about Suen? She'll show up from time to time on a random player and drill them for ~100k (and anyone near them) before disappearing. If she shows up longer, she'll channel Tears of the Sun on random players before hiding again.
Blazing Daylight: Suen's Fury
Unfortunately, I have no idea what triggers phase transitions. I don't know if it was a set time or if it was because we knocked off a portion of Lu'lin's health. Before I knew it, all of the Moon Lotus disappeared, the room brightened it up noticeably, and we were engaging Suen.
Suen has all sorts of nasty attacks. With Fan of Flames, she'll slice at her target (usually the tank) and any fire damage is increased by an additional 25%.
Lu'lin will appear sporadically and bring down an Ice Comet around a random player. Anyone near it takes ~300k in Frost damage but the the Ice Comet stays in place. If a light is shined in the direction of an Ice Comet, anyone standing on it takes reduced 80% fire damage.
The ice comet offers occasional relief. But don't rely on it being up all the time on the phase. You'll still be exposed to Suen's attacks with little to no resistance.
That fire trail pictured above is her Flames of Passion. She'll jump from her current point onto a distant target and knock anyone nearby away. I'm not sure if there's a minimum range for this but my guess is that a tight stack is a bad idea. She'll aim Light of Day on random players. Similar to Cosmic Barrage, anyone near the player gets fried for 100k but it also instantly melts any Ice Comets.
Every 2 seconds, she'll pulse with Blazing Radiance for 50k. When the energy is released, damage from her fire attacks will also rise up. The closer Suen is to an ice comet when Blazing Radiance is running, the faster the ice comet will met.
This phase is all about juggling the ice comets and surviving. Don't forget about the celestial powers of Niuzao and Yu'lon to help increase your raid group's longevity. You're going to need it.
If you survive long enough, you'll eventually push into...
Break of Dusk: The Dance of the Consorts
Again, I have no clue what triggers the final phase. But now both consorts are going to be up. Certain abilities are kept. We didn't survive very long in this phase so I can't definitively say which ones. Unfortunately, while some abilities won't come into play in the last phase, both consorts gain new ones.
Lu'lin now has a Tidal Force. It's a giant watery bubble which envelops Lu'lin and explodes out for tons of damage. When she's channeling, she's practically immune. Her ranged and spell deflection is up by 100%. Her dodge chance goes up by 100%. If Lu'lin is near Suen, her sister gets healed for 5% of her life if she's within 10 yards from Elixir of the Jade Moon.
If Lu'lin dies, we revert back to the day time phaes with Suen. If Suen dies first, it's back to night time with Lu'lin (and you'll have to deal with Moon Lotuses, Beasts of Nightmares, and such).
Based on this, I'd put forth that the best play is to crush Lu'lin first and then deal with Suen after due to the slight chance that Suen may get additional healing received.
Whew, that's quite the information overload isn't it? As you can tell, the Twin Consorts are living up to their expectations as being a raiding challenge so far. It's a fun fight for a healer. There's plenty of opportunities for incoming spike damage and you really need to react fast. At the same time, it's rare that you'll see any instagibs (instant player deaths).
We've had to deal with Twin Emperors in vanilla. We destroyed the Eredar Twins in Burning Crusade's Sunwell. We made short work of the Val'kyr Twins in Wrath of the Lich King. We can handle these two, right?
Here's a picture of Xuen to end off this overview:
Check out the rest of our Throne of Thunder boss coverage below!
WoW Insider Throne of Thunder boss impressions
