Patch 5.2 PTR: Taunting Tortos
Who would've guessed Lei Shen kept a pet tortoise in his caverns? This is one of the bosses available for testing in patch 5.2's Throne of Thunder raid. Tortos isn't an ordinary tortoise. It's a massive tortoise with a bunch of mini ones behind him. Naturally, what's a cavern without some bats around for good measure, right?
Out of all the encounters tested, this ranks high up there on the fun scale. How often do you get to punt turtle shells around?
Mind the trash packs when you get to the area. There's going to be a ton of Vampiric Cave Bats flying around. At the time of testing, we killed 3 trash packs of bats. They will Drain the Weak players in your raid. When they attack targets with less than 350,000 current health, they will deal 20% of weapon damage physically and heal themselves for 50 times the damage that they do.
Tortos trash cleared? Good because now the fun can start. Looking at the dungeon journal, we knew we had to stay spread out in order to minimize the damage we took from Rockfall. You can see a blue outline on the ground which displays the diameter of the falling stalactite. Expect to move around often.
Heed the call of Tortos
Tortos will holler out and summon his little guys. You'll see Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo come shooting out underneath him (3 small turtles on 10 man with poor Leonardo nowhere to be found). They'll be spinning around from player to player with their annoying Spinning Shell ability. If they hit you, they'll knock you around. Thankfully, you can knock some sense into those spinning shells. We ended up having our ranged players all focusing one shell down. When a turtle gets low enough, they stop everything and hide in their tiny little shell due to Shell Block.
Now hang on, because we're about to get to the best part.
As this is happening, Tortos will periodically exhale with his Furious Stone Breath. It's a channeled ability. Your raid won't be able to interrupt it. If you punt something at him hard enough, you might be able to disorient long enough. I mean, if only there was a moderately sized object around that was both light and hard enough to get him to stop breathing right?
Oh wait! There is!
These inert turtle shells have innate turtle-interrupting properties! Kicking the turtle shell causes a Shell Concussion. It'll interrupt any enemies it touches and increase the damage they take from all sources by 15% for 30 seconds. The interface is quite simple. Approach the empty shell and make sure it is between you and your target. If you aim right, all you need to do is David Beckham that now glowing green shell and watch it sail true to your target. I'd also suggest having designated kickers. If you have multiple shells, have a kicker on each one with a designated kicking order ready to fire.
In order to kick it, simply approach the shell. You should see some green arrows emanating from you that shows the direction the shell will travel in. It's possible for multiple players to "lock on" to the same shell. When you see the green arrows and satisfied with the direction, press your special action button.
In our tests, we noticed that we had to punt the shell a little earlier than normal. There appears to be some wind up time plus the shell has a little travel time involved.
Here's a good rule of thumb is this: If Tortos' breath ticks once and you haven't fire the shell yet, you're too late and will wipe.
Okay, we're not quite done yet. That's the main mechanics of the encounter so far. Remember those bats you cleared out earlier? Yeah, they're not completely gone. Expect to see some bats periodically strolling in and they will chew on your healers. We kept our healers in the middle area (but still spaced out). It made it easier for our off tank to run in and grab them all together. Our mages were quick enough to use their Ring of Frost on them for additional control before we AoE'd them all down.
To help speed up the process, we did try a few experimental pulls where we drilled inert shells in their direction. While it did speed up the rate at which they dropped, I'm not sure if that's the best way to go. We only get 3 shells whenever Call of Tortos is used so we do need to use them sparingly. In addition, I observed that at least 2 shells need to be used on Tortos for his breath before more turtles came out.
If that isn't enough, Tortos has a few more things up his shell. You might think that the Rockfalls are easy mode. However, Quake Stomp renders it much more formidable since rocks will fall more often. The good news is that it only increases the frequency for 9 seconds and is a 3 second cast. The bad news is that it it'll deal physical damage equal to 100% of our maximum health.
Did someone said raid cooldowns? You're going to need them to get through it. It actually won't be enough to instantly destroy a player unless they're already low. As long as you remain diligent in avoiding shells and falling rocks, you should survive it without breaking much of a sweat. I'm also assuming your healers are going to be on the ball.
Right? Your healers better be on the ball.
I haven't gone over the tanks yet but it seems like their job is going to be a fairly stress free one. You still have to move because you're not immune to Rockfall. There doesn't seem to be any kind of tank switch mechanic in place (yet). Keep your active mitigation skills open. You're going to need it in order to properly defend youself against Snapping Bite.
At present, Tortos is the fourth boss in the instance and is bound to be a hilarious and truly fun encounter when you get to him.
If you feel really confident, you can aim for the One-Up achievement! Check out the rest of our Throne of Thunder boss coverage below!
WoW Insider Throne of Thunder boss impressions
