Faction Champions (10 Player)

[Luskan]

n 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.


YouTube - TankSpot's Guide to Coliseum: Faction Champions (10-man)