Post by Demonjay on Oct 15, 2008 16:58:02 GMT -1
Guide to Defeating Thorog
Disclaimer: This guide is as accurate and complete as we can possibly make it, but as with any encounter, there are certainly other ways to approach killing Thorog, some of which we may not have tried. We have used this strategy to defeat Thorog with 100% success since our first kill, so it definitely works. If anyone reading this notes any inaccuracies or errors, or has suggestions on ways this strategy can be improved, please send a private message to Demonjay or post your ideas here.
Any kinships, individuals, or websites interested in reposting this guide are welcome to, please have the courtesy of acknowledging Preying Mantis as the original author. We hope you will all find this strategy helpful!
I. Preparations
So you're ready to kill Thorog? I am assuming that you've already killed Storvagun, Zaudru, and Grisgart to obtain Drugoth's Crown, Drugoth's Staff, and Drugoth's Ring, so if you haven't done that already, you'll need to go take care of that part first. There are many other strategy guides around on how to defeat those bosses, so that discussion is beyond the scope of this guide. Also note that you do not have to defeat those bosses in your current instance to summon and kill Thorog as long as someone already has the parts needed to summon Drugoth. In other words, if you have the Drugoth parts from another Helegrod run, and just want to kill the dragon, that works just fine.
Before you start there are a few preparations that need to be done, and the first and perhaps most important is your voice interface. I originally started raiding in MMO games before voice was really used much, but now that I'm used to it, I can't imagine doing a raid without it. I'm sure it's possible without using voice, but it's gonna be harder. Personally I recommend using Ventrilo, but ingame voice chat does work. Make sure that everyone can listen in even if they don’t talk (better actually if only a few selected people are talking during a raid), and that the people who will be communicating instructions can be easily heard. If necessary, turn down or turn off the ingame sounds so you can clearly hear the raid instructions, and make sure you set your microphone on "push to talk" so you don't spam the voice channel when your wife/husband/whatever decides to yell at you for playing that dumb game again!
A. Things to Bring With You
1. Flask of Conhuith, otherwise known as fear potions. Make sure you have a full stack, especially if you're new to Thorog and it may take a few practice attempts to get him down. He will use a fear effect during the fight that you MUST remove, so these potions are not optional - every single person needs to have plenty of them. Raid leaders, I would suggest you bring plenty of extras, or assign someone to bring extras, since it's inevitable that someone forgot to bring them, no matter how many times you remind everyone. Note also that you do NOT want to bring Salves of Conhuith, which are the ones you can use on yourself or a fellowship member. It's too easy during the fight to forget to target yourself when you use the salves, and that can be deadly since both types of potions share the same cooldown.
2. Brilliant or Glorious Edhelharn Tokens, also known as +5 Hope tokens. My suggestion is that every single member of your raid brings at least one, and preferably two of these. It doesn't really matter if they are the 15 minute or the 30 minute variety, but they are absolutely necessary. Thorog will give your entire raid +9 Dread, and without a +5 Hope token you'll spend most of the fight cowering, which is neither productive nor fun. The reason for so many extras is if someone dies they will lose the Hope buff, and someone in their fellowship will need to use another token to get them back into the fight after they are revived, so you want as many people as possible to have tokens that aren't on cooldown.
3. Scrolls of Battle Lore and Warding Lore. These aren't absolutely required of course, but they are easy to get and each scroll helps the entire group for 30 minutes with +5% offense and defense. There are plenty of good reasons to use them, and no good reasons not to, so I would recommend using them every time.
4. Celebrant Salves and Essence of Athelas, also known as morale and power potions. Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them. Bring em.
5. Food. You'll have a moment in between Drugoth and Thorog when you will be out of combat and can use food buffs. Every little bit helps make this an easier fight, so make sure you've got your food of choice ready to use.
6. Destiny Points. Again, not strictly necessary, but especially if you're doing Thorog for the first time, or you've failed and want to give your raid a little extra edge, spend 250 destiny points for an extra +1 hope. It stacks with your hope token, lasts for 15 minutes, and will give you a little bit more effective morale during the fight to withstand his occasional area effect attacks. The destiny point buffs can only be used out of combat, so just like food be ready to use them when you are out of combat after Drugoth disappears, but before Thorog arrives.
7. Flask/Flagon of Imladris Miruvor, otherwise known as shadow mitigation potions. These are the ones you got from the Helegrod quest Zaudru’s Brood, and when we first started attempting Thorog we thought these would be important. Well, they aren't. Use them if you want to, but if you do the fight correctly hardly anyone will ever get hit with Thorog's shadow breath attack, so they really don't matter. Your main tank should already have pretty high shadow mitigation from his normal equipment and traits (ours runs over 50% I think without the potions), so they really aren't necessary but you can use them if you want to. Note that if you want to increase your shadow mitigation for this fight, there are several traits that will add to shadow mitigation as well as increasing your Vitality.
8. Other consumables. If you're a captain, bring lots and lots of horns. If you fail a few times your entire raid may need to map out and repair, so be prepared to summon many, many times. If you're the leader of the raid, be sure to bring extras of fear potions, hope tokens, battle/warding lore scrolls, food, etc., or assign someone else in your raid to bring them. It's inevitable that someone will forget and it's easier to have extras than to make 23 other people stand around while someone goes to get something they forgot.
B. Preparing your Raid Interface
1. Show dispellable effects only. You should always be using this on raids, in my opinion, but it's absolutely necessary for Thorog. Bring up your Options menu, go to Social options, and put a check mark next to "Show Dispellable Effect Only". You'll no longer be able to see buffs on the members of your fellowship/raid, but you'll be able to easily see debuffs that can be dispelled, which is the whole point.
2. Show Health of Target's Target. I always keep this up all the time (in fellowships too), as it provides an easy way to tell who has aggro, and how much morale and power they have. With this display showing, it's very easy to tell if your target (most likely Thorog during this fight) has changed targets so you can react accordingly.
3. Raid Assist Window. You do have this up already, right? If not, bring up your Social panel, go to the raid tab, and hit the button that says Raid Assist Window. Your raid leader has already specified who is the main assist, right? So during the Thorog fight when it's necessary to kill one of the several rounds of additional mobs that come along, you'll know which to target and kill first. The raid assist window is your best friend, so use it.
4. Show Vitals. On the same Raid tab of the Social panel, you have the option to select whose vitals you want to see on your screen during the raid. I usually keep everyone up, so I can instantly see if anyone in the raid has died, needs a heal, or needs to use a fear potion. You can also use their vitals display to target them just by clicking on it, so they can be quickly rebuffed, healed, etc.
Important Note: There seems to be a new bug that was introduced with the July 11th patch that affects the ability to see debuffs on other members during a raid. It is inconsistent, but I have personally experienced it so I know it is real. The exact effect of this bug is that you may not be able to see debuffs (or buffs) on everyone in the raid, or even in your own fellowship. Here's how to tell if this issue is affecting you. Bring the Options menu back up, and under Social options uncheck the "Show Dispellable Effects Only" box. Note whose buffs you can now see. If you can see their buffs, you'll see their debuffs. If you can NOT see their buffs, you will NOT be able to see their debuffs. The risk is that if they get hit with Thorog's deadly eyeball (more on this later), you won't see it, and that makes it much harder to spot it and remove it. I have not yet found a perfect workaround for this issue, though when it happened to me I was able to leave the raid and get re-invited, which allowed me to once again see buffs and debuffs on my own fellowship, though not on the entire raid.
Ok, so now you're all ready to roll! You've got your potions and all your consumables on your hotbar, and you've got your interface all set up just how you like it, right? Okay, sometimes the default locations of those windows aren’t right where you want them, so use Ctrl + \ to move them around to your liking (this undocks the windows so you can move them around). I would also suggest that when you do this, move your OWN status bar (the one that's usually up in the upper left part of the screen) down next to your hotbar somewhere. You want to be able to easily see your own debuffs so you can watch for the "eyeball", so put your status bar someplace where you can easily see it while you're fighting. You can always move it back later if you don't like it there all the time, but for this fight it's imperative that you can see your debuffs easily and quickly.
C. Getting ready to Fight
You're almost ready to go! Just a few more things to do!
1. Kill all the hillmen in the area. I've heard that some of the High Priests actually heal Thorog if you don't kill them, but we always killed them every time, so I can't personally confirm this. Just kill everything. That way they don't ever get in the way.
2. Get rid of pets. This isn't absolutely necessary, but we have had much better success without pets around. The issue is that pets can get hit with the deadly eyeball just like players can, and it seems that they explode and kill everyone just like players do. This fight often gets a little chaotic, so I'm not 100% sure that pets will explode and kill other people (it's hard to tell when someone explodes who was the cause of it), but I do know for certain that we started having much more success when we got rid of all pets. The shadow mitigation from the LM raven and the health or power buff from the Captain pet just aren't worth the risk of them exploding and killing 5 or more other people, so I suggest getting rid of them.
3. Get everyone in position up on the platform next to Drugoth's coffin. Now is the time to use your Scrolls of Battle Lore and Warding Lore, along with your first Hope token, and have Captains and Minstrels refresh everyone’s buffs. Ideally pick one person in each fellowship to use a 30 minute +5 Hope token now, but if you only have 15 minute ones it's not a big deal. If the fight goes smoothly and nobody is defeated (there's no reason for anyone to ever get defeated on this fight if you do it right) the 15 minute token is long enough. If people do get defeated you're going to need to have someone use another token during the fight anyway to get the hope buff back on the revived person, so it doesn't really matter a lot if you use 30 minute or 15 minute ones.
4. Once everyone is ready summon Drugoth. Raid leaders probably already know this, but use the /readycheck command to make sure everyone is ready to go. Note it doesn't matter if the Crown/Staff/Ring are all on one person or on three different people, and it doesn't matter what order they are used in. You'll find little spots on the pointy things on the coffin where you use the Drugoth parts, and when the last one is used he'll pop out of his coffin. And now you're ready for Drugoth!
II. Stage 1 - Drugoth
Once you've used the last of the Drugoth parts, he jumps up out of his coffin and starts getting chatty. Once he's done explaining how you're all doomed, the fight begins.
A. Step 1 - Spank and Tank. As soon as his status bar turns red, he's just a simple spank and tank Nemesis elite with 130,000 or so morale. Make sure your main tank gets good aggro, then start the beatdown. You'll want everyone in the raid to cluster up tight (we make the call to snuggle up in our raids) so everyone is in one very tight ball. Yes, this includes Minstrels. Yes, this includes Hunters. Why Minstrels and Hunters always seem to think snuggling up doesn't apply to them I will never know. You can heal or shoot arrows just fine from up close, I promise. So get everyone to snuggle up, because after a minute or so he is going to summon a few adds, which leads us to....
B. Step 2 - Drugoth summons friends. After a minute or so he's usually down to around 40,000 morale or thereabouts, and he will summon a handful of mobs to come help him. You can handle them in a variety of ways. The easiest way it so just split off a few Loremasters to mez them (yes, Loremasters, you can move away to go do this . The adds will come from the direction where Storvagun is and they can easily be mezzed. If you don't have enough Loremasters or don't want to mez them, you can just ignore them and let them run over to you. This is the reason you're all snuggled up, so any adds that get through don't start eating minstrels or hunters, instead they run into a wall of Champion AE attacks which effectively keeps them off the squishies. I suppose you could split off and kill them if you wanted to, but once Drugoth gets down to around 3,000 morale they just run off, so there's really no need to ever kill them. Now, once Drugoth gets down to 3,000 morale he has a surprise for you...well, not really such a surprise anymore, but the first time we did it (the day Helegrod went live) you can imagine our surprise when all of a sudden Drugoth starts chatting about his little pet...
III. Stage 2 - Thorog
Once Drugoth's status bar turns green and he tells you again how doomed you all are, he and his adds will run off, and you'll see Thorog start to fly down from his perch. Now is the time for...
A. Step 1 - Use consumables. Once Drugoth runs off you'll be out of combat for 15 or 20 seconds, so now is the time to eat your food and if you wish to, use your destiny point hope buff. Nobody should have been defeated during the Drugoth phase, but if they did now is the time to revive them, while you're out of combat.
B. Step 2 - Positioning. Thorog will come down right in the center of the platform, and he can't move from that spot. He will spin around there and you can face him any direction you want (it doesn't really matter), but you can't pull him away from his spot. So now the raid needs to get in position, but before going over the positioning, let me diverge a moment to go over what sort of attacks to expect from him.
Thorog's Attacks
Thorog uses quite a few attacks that everyone in the raid needs to be aware of. Quite frankly, I don't know what sorts of attacks he uses on the Guardian he's beating on, but it doesn't seem like he really hits that hard, so I'll leave that to the Guardians to worry about. The most important attack he uses is...
- The Deadly Eyeball. This is the eyeball that I've already mentioned several times, so let me explain what exactly it is. Basically this is a fear based debuff that you'll see on your status bar if you get hit with it. It seems to hit people randomly, and when it hits you a purple beam will land on you from the sky. As soon as it hits you a white eyeball on a purple background will appear on your status bar (screenshot needed). Once it hits you, you have about 10 seconds to get rid of it or you will quite literally turn into a bomb and explode, killing yourself and anyone nearby.
There are two ways to get rid of this deadly Eyeball. One is to use a fear potion, and the other is to let a Captain use their group fear cure. Be sure you have discussed before the raid who in each group will be responsible for removing the eyeball, i.e. the Captain or your own potions. Having a Captain in each group to remove the eyeball is very helpful, but it's a waste if you both use your fear cure, then they are both on cooldown when it hits again. So decide ahead of time if the group's Captain will be primary and you'll use potions only when the Captain's fear cure is on cooldown, or if you'll use potions for your primary fear cure and the Captain is the backup for when your potion is on cooldown. Note that potions have a 15 second cooldown, and the Captain fear cure skill has a 30 second cooldown.
Unfortunately getting hit with the Eyeball doesn't give you any sort of immunity to getting hit again, so it's definitely possible to get hit with the Eyeball twice in a row, meaning you may still be on potion cooldown when a second Eyeball hits. If for ANY reason you get hit with the Eyeball and you're unable to cure it, RUN AWAY from the rest of the raid. Find a nice convenient spot to die that's not near any other players, as you will literally explode and kill everyone near you. Be nice to your raid and don't let that happen. Die alone. If during the Thorog fight you die for any reason, look at your combat log. If you were killed by a "Finishing Bite", then you or someone near you had the Eyeball and didn't cure it.
It simply can't be emphasized enough that it is absolutely imperative that the Eyeball MUST be cured every single time someone gets hit with it. It is, quite simply, the raid killer. If there are people in your raid that lag too much to see it and cure it, get rid of them. If they can't be bothered to pay attention to this debuff, get rid of them. If they are prone to going linkdead (yes, a player can still get hit with it after they lose their connection but before they leave the game), get rid of them. You can literally make a mess of every other part of this fight and still win if you consistently get rid of the Eyeball every single time. It's that important. Ok, enough said. So what other attacks does Thorog use? The next important one is..
- Shadow Breath. As soon as Thorog lands, you'll see him turn toward someone and start breathing "fire". His "fire" is actually a Shadow Breath attack, and it can hit you as many as 3 times for about 1,000 points of raw morale damage. This attack is mitigated by your shadow resistance, so it usually hits me for around 800 or so. This attack is seldom deadly to anyone other than Hunters or Minstrels, but it does hurt. So what is to be done about it?
Well, the very first thing Thorog does when he lands is to pick someone to attack with his shadow breath. The good thing about the Shadow Breath attack is that it CAN be interrupted. After his initial breath attack, Thorog will always rear up on his hind legs before doing his Shadow Breath. This is the time for Champions and Burglars to Clobber and Addle, to try to interrupt his Shadow Breath attack. If you do it right and get a little lucky you can interrupt every one of these and never have to deal with this attack, but he is difficult to interrupt, so odds are some will get through.
Thorog always turns to the left or the right when he breathes, so what do you do? Move, of course! If you see him rear up, and when he comes back down he turns in your direction, don't just stand there and take it, move! Odds are instead of getting hit with 3 waves of 800 damage, you'll just get tagged once or twice, making it much easier to heal you back up. Minstrels also watch out for this attack, since when it hits that may be time for a group heal. Note that if you look at your combat log and see you were killed by a Shadow Breath attack, this is the attack that killed you.
Since Thorog always does a Shadow breath attack the moment he lands, I also suggest that this is a good time for Captains to use In Harm's Way and Last Stand. It's not uncommon to lose 5 or 6 members of a raid to that initial breath attack within seconds of Thorog landing, and each Captain that uses IHW/LS effectively ensure that their entire fellowship will survive the first 20 seconds of the fight, which is the most risky as the Guardian is still establishing aggro and he may be bouncing around a little bit on targets. Positioning is also important during this fight, especially during the first few seconds, but I'll address that a bit later.
- Deadly Shadow Ball. This is an unusual attack he does, and it's totally avoidable. As best we can tell, the only time he uses this attack is when he becomes aware of someone attacking him from too far away - off of his platform, basically. What he will do when someone is attacking him from a long range (usually a Hunter), he simply turns to them and does a Deadly Shadow Ball attack. It kills you instantly, and there is no way to mitigate it. The way to avoid it is quite simply to stand up close to him, and never off of his platform. If you looked at your combat log and you were killed by Deadly Shadow Ball, this is the attack that killed you.
- Wing Flap and Tail Swipe. These are two small AoE attacks he does from time to time to the people in the raid clustered around him. They also hit for about 1,000 damage, but they are common damage so they are usually mitigated down to around 600 damage, at least on me. The Wing Flap obviously will hit people on his sides, and the Tail Flap hits people behind him. Some folks report they can be avoided by getting real close up under his belly or standing next to one of his rear legs, but I haven't ever been able to totally avoid them. They don't hurt that much, just heal through them.
- Chill Air and <name of this debuff needed> - These two debuffs are important primarily because it's important that you ignore them. Chill Air is a DoT debuff that does 54 damage over 4 seconds, and the other is a big debuff to Will and Fate. As tempting as it is to remove these debuffs, especially the Will/Fate debuff, don't do it. You'll need to use a fear cure to do it, and if you use your fear cure then get hit with the Eyeball, you're in trouble. Remove them after he flies off if you really want them gone to regen a little, but they will come right back when Thorog flies back down.
So how should the Raid be positioned for the fight? Well, let me first address the question of whether you should put Hunters up high on the perch near where Thorog flies off to. The answer is no. There simply isn't any reason to put them there, and there are several reasons not to. What I suggest is once Drugoth runs off, just spread everyone around the center of the platform, almost in a big circle. There are two reasons for this. One, if you're close to Thorog when he lands, you can quickly try to interrupt his first breath attack. And two, there's no reason NOT to be close to him. I've never seen anyone get hit with his Deadly Shadow Ball attack if they were standing close, and by spreading out you expose the smallest number of people to his Shadow Breath attack when he uses it. So just spread everyone around the spot where he will land, and get ready to Clobber him the moment he's targetable.
C. Step 3 - Drakeling adds. Once you're all in place and aggro is locked down on the main tank, start putting the beatdown on Thorog. Debuffs will land, but I don't recall ever seeing a conjunction on him. Not sure they are impossible, but if they are possible, they are extremely rare. You'll see Thorog rear up on his hind legs from time to time, this is a prelude to a breath attack, so try to Interrupt it with Clobber and Addle. From time to time Thorog will also turn and take a smack at a random player - some raids use a 2nd guardian to pull him right back, but that's not absolutely necessary. We do it with one guardian all the time, and just turn him right back around.
A note on Debuffs. Be sure your raid leader has assigned assistants to coordinate the debuffs used by Burglars, Captains, Loremasters, etc. so everyone knows who is responsible for keeping each debuff on Thorog during this fight. It makes the fight go a lot smoother. There is also a new bug introduced in the July 11th patch that no longer lets Captain marks stack on the same mob. In other words, Captains you’ll need to pick which mark you want to use, as we can’t put them all on anymore. Sigh.
Ok, so far so good. A couple of minutes into the fight, two Drakelings will spawn up on the stairs near where you went to kill Grisgart. You'll need to break off a loremaster or two at this point to mez/root them, and at least a group or two of DPS classes to go kill ONE of them. You'll want to kill one, and leave one mezzed for the duration of the fight. Keeping one mezzed prevents him from spawning another pair of drakelings during the next round.
A note on mezzing. Loremasters will be keeping two mobs mezzed (Blinding Flash) for the duration of the Thorog fight (a drakeling and a spider queen), so it’s important to have assignments prepared ahead of time to determine which loremasters will be responsible for which mobs, and who will fill in when a mez is resisted or broken. It’s also quite useful to designate a champion who will be used to pull a mob out of a bad spot and into a more convenient spot if a mez breaks and the target mob is in the middle of the raid where you don’t want them to be. And remember, nobody else should be attacking these mobs, ever!
D. Step 4 - Thorog flies off. Most raids will do between 90,000 and 110,000 points of damage to Thorog when his status bar turns green and he flies up to his perch. Note this is a different spot from where he was when you first arrived to Helegrod, it's up the stairs and across the bridge, past the entrance to the Drake wing. Once he arrives at his perch, you'll see that his status bar turns red again and he just sits there for a minute or so. Several interesting things happen during this phase of the fight.
The first SUPER important thing that needs to happen when Thorog flies off is to get off the platform! We generally run over to the wall right below Thorog's perch (we call this part of our strategy Hide Like Ninjas), but there are many different spots that work. The purpose of this is to avoid the healing effect Thorog uses when he's up on his perch. Basically, if you see a flurry of small amounts of damage coming off over your head, you're in a bad spot and Thorog is healing by sapping your morale. If you get everyone out of his LOS, he won't heal one bit while he's up there, and this makes the fight way easier.
Shortly after Thorog flies away, a wave of spider adds will come from the area near the entrance to the spider wing. You'll see one Spider Queen and a number of smaller spiders. Be sure your raid has moved off of the platform to whatever spot you’ve chosen to engage the spiders. Ideally you’ll all be snuggled up close again, because one of the first things the spiders are going to do to your raid is to web you all, so you won’t be able to move. As the spiders move toward you, you want one Loremaster to mez the Spider Queen while a second Loremaster roots all of them using their AoE root skill (Herb-lore). This will allow the spiders to break away more or less one a time to be killed by the raid. Do NOT kill the Spider Queen. You'll be keeping her mezzed for the duration of the fight to prevent future waves of spider adds during the following phases.
If things are going well, at this point you have one Drakeling mezzed, one Spider Queen mezzed, everyone is alive, and all the small spiders are dead, just as....
E. Step 5 - Thorog flies back down. You'll know he's on the way when his status bar turns Green again, and he will fly back down to the center of the platform. This is the time to move back to the middle of the platform and be ready for him to arrive. This will go basically the same way the first round went, i.e you want to snuggle up close to Thorog, interrupt his Shadow Breath, cure the Deadly Eyeballs, and keep handing him the beatdown. He'll use his Wing Flap attacks and his Tail Swipes of course, so just keep everyone healed and keep beating on him. Since you kept a drakeling mezzed, you won't have to worry about them again.
If all is going well, you should be able to get him down to around 70,000 morale or so before he flies off again. Same as the first time, his status bar turns green, he flies off, and the raid Hides Like Ninjas. Only difference is since you kept the Spider Queen mezzed, you won't have to deal with any spiders again. Just stand there and wait for him to come back.
F. Step 6 - Thorog comes back down for the last time. The cycle of him flying off and coming back down continues to repeat itself until he's dead, or you are. If you're doing well, this is the last time he flies back down, and you'll kill him on this round. If you've had some deaths, though, don't give up! Just keep healing and keep doing the damage, and repeat this process until he's deaded!
IV. Things aren't going well, what do you do?
Ok, so maybe somebody missed a Deadly Eyeball attack and killed 6 other people, or maybe one of his breath attacks wiped out half your minstrels? Or our main tank got a damage spike and went down? What do you do? There are a couple of options.
A. Reset the encounter. Just like Ivar and Lagmas and several other encounters, if you just run out of the room the encounter will reset. Run all the way down to the drums, don't stay on the steps. Give it a few minutes, and Drugoth will be back, and you can start over. Remind everyone that this fight usually takes some practice (I’ve heard of raids that needed 10 or more tries before success) and there’s no disgrace in regrouping to try again. You do want that Doom of Thorog Reborn title, right? Don’t give up!
B. Combat revive. If only a handful of people have died, just revive them and keep going. Remember everyone that gets revived will lose their Hope buff, so someone in their group will need to hit another +5 Hope token. The important thing to remember is that you can definitely still win even with some deaths, just don't panic, keep your main tank healed, and revive the dead.
C. What if combat revives are all used up? Well, now you have a choice to make. Minstrels combat revive has a 10 minute timer, so one choice is just to wait for a revive as soon as you can get it. If you have too many deaths, though, you'll need to decide if you want to just reset the encounter, or release and run back. Let me make a comment on releasing, since that seems to be a subject of some controversy, and a few bugs/issues as well.
First, if you choose to release and run back, keep in mind you'll have to figure out a way to deal with the 5 dread you get from death and the 9 dread from Thorog. This means a +5 Token and a Destiny Hope buff at the very least, and ideally a minstrel can remove the dread you got from releasing. Trust me, running in there with 14 dread won't do you or your raid any good.
Now, IF you do decide to release and run back, it's possible to bug the encounter and you'll be forced to reset it. The way to avoid this is to ONLY run back into the room when Thorog's status bar is Red, not when it's Green. We have also encountered a bug where sometimes Thorog gets fixated on one person and hits them with a Deadly Shadow Ball the moment they get halfway up the stairs. If this happens to you, just stay dead. All you'll earn by trying again is a nasty repair bill.
One final note about releasing and running back. I have seen some folks on the forums comment that this is done deliberately to trigger some sort of exploit and make the fight easier. It actually makes the fight much harder, let me assure you. We have had this happen once on a Preying Mantis raid when someone accidentally released, and when Thorog gets buggy like that, it's actually MUCH harder to kill him. It's sure as heck not easier. I've also seen comments that even releasing at all is in some way cheating, however I think it's safe to assume if Turbine didn't intend for us to be able to release and re-enter the fight, they would have either locked the door when the encounter started or set the respawn point to Gloin's camp or something.
I hope everyone who reads this has found it useful, and I wish you all the best of luck in defeating Thorog! He’s a fun fight, and while his loot is not worth the trouble (he drops the same stuff basically as the other Helegrod bosses at the time of this writing), it’s still worth it just for the challenge. Thanks for reading all this, and good luck!
Disclaimer: This guide is as accurate and complete as we can possibly make it, but as with any encounter, there are certainly other ways to approach killing Thorog, some of which we may not have tried. We have used this strategy to defeat Thorog with 100% success since our first kill, so it definitely works. If anyone reading this notes any inaccuracies or errors, or has suggestions on ways this strategy can be improved, please send a private message to Demonjay or post your ideas here.
Any kinships, individuals, or websites interested in reposting this guide are welcome to, please have the courtesy of acknowledging Preying Mantis as the original author. We hope you will all find this strategy helpful!
I. Preparations
So you're ready to kill Thorog? I am assuming that you've already killed Storvagun, Zaudru, and Grisgart to obtain Drugoth's Crown, Drugoth's Staff, and Drugoth's Ring, so if you haven't done that already, you'll need to go take care of that part first. There are many other strategy guides around on how to defeat those bosses, so that discussion is beyond the scope of this guide. Also note that you do not have to defeat those bosses in your current instance to summon and kill Thorog as long as someone already has the parts needed to summon Drugoth. In other words, if you have the Drugoth parts from another Helegrod run, and just want to kill the dragon, that works just fine.
Before you start there are a few preparations that need to be done, and the first and perhaps most important is your voice interface. I originally started raiding in MMO games before voice was really used much, but now that I'm used to it, I can't imagine doing a raid without it. I'm sure it's possible without using voice, but it's gonna be harder. Personally I recommend using Ventrilo, but ingame voice chat does work. Make sure that everyone can listen in even if they don’t talk (better actually if only a few selected people are talking during a raid), and that the people who will be communicating instructions can be easily heard. If necessary, turn down or turn off the ingame sounds so you can clearly hear the raid instructions, and make sure you set your microphone on "push to talk" so you don't spam the voice channel when your wife/husband/whatever decides to yell at you for playing that dumb game again!
A. Things to Bring With You
1. Flask of Conhuith, otherwise known as fear potions. Make sure you have a full stack, especially if you're new to Thorog and it may take a few practice attempts to get him down. He will use a fear effect during the fight that you MUST remove, so these potions are not optional - every single person needs to have plenty of them. Raid leaders, I would suggest you bring plenty of extras, or assign someone to bring extras, since it's inevitable that someone forgot to bring them, no matter how many times you remind everyone. Note also that you do NOT want to bring Salves of Conhuith, which are the ones you can use on yourself or a fellowship member. It's too easy during the fight to forget to target yourself when you use the salves, and that can be deadly since both types of potions share the same cooldown.
2. Brilliant or Glorious Edhelharn Tokens, also known as +5 Hope tokens. My suggestion is that every single member of your raid brings at least one, and preferably two of these. It doesn't really matter if they are the 15 minute or the 30 minute variety, but they are absolutely necessary. Thorog will give your entire raid +9 Dread, and without a +5 Hope token you'll spend most of the fight cowering, which is neither productive nor fun. The reason for so many extras is if someone dies they will lose the Hope buff, and someone in their fellowship will need to use another token to get them back into the fight after they are revived, so you want as many people as possible to have tokens that aren't on cooldown.
3. Scrolls of Battle Lore and Warding Lore. These aren't absolutely required of course, but they are easy to get and each scroll helps the entire group for 30 minutes with +5% offense and defense. There are plenty of good reasons to use them, and no good reasons not to, so I would recommend using them every time.
4. Celebrant Salves and Essence of Athelas, also known as morale and power potions. Better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them. Bring em.
5. Food. You'll have a moment in between Drugoth and Thorog when you will be out of combat and can use food buffs. Every little bit helps make this an easier fight, so make sure you've got your food of choice ready to use.
6. Destiny Points. Again, not strictly necessary, but especially if you're doing Thorog for the first time, or you've failed and want to give your raid a little extra edge, spend 250 destiny points for an extra +1 hope. It stacks with your hope token, lasts for 15 minutes, and will give you a little bit more effective morale during the fight to withstand his occasional area effect attacks. The destiny point buffs can only be used out of combat, so just like food be ready to use them when you are out of combat after Drugoth disappears, but before Thorog arrives.
7. Flask/Flagon of Imladris Miruvor, otherwise known as shadow mitigation potions. These are the ones you got from the Helegrod quest Zaudru’s Brood, and when we first started attempting Thorog we thought these would be important. Well, they aren't. Use them if you want to, but if you do the fight correctly hardly anyone will ever get hit with Thorog's shadow breath attack, so they really don't matter. Your main tank should already have pretty high shadow mitigation from his normal equipment and traits (ours runs over 50% I think without the potions), so they really aren't necessary but you can use them if you want to. Note that if you want to increase your shadow mitigation for this fight, there are several traits that will add to shadow mitigation as well as increasing your Vitality.
8. Other consumables. If you're a captain, bring lots and lots of horns. If you fail a few times your entire raid may need to map out and repair, so be prepared to summon many, many times. If you're the leader of the raid, be sure to bring extras of fear potions, hope tokens, battle/warding lore scrolls, food, etc., or assign someone else in your raid to bring them. It's inevitable that someone will forget and it's easier to have extras than to make 23 other people stand around while someone goes to get something they forgot.
B. Preparing your Raid Interface
1. Show dispellable effects only. You should always be using this on raids, in my opinion, but it's absolutely necessary for Thorog. Bring up your Options menu, go to Social options, and put a check mark next to "Show Dispellable Effect Only". You'll no longer be able to see buffs on the members of your fellowship/raid, but you'll be able to easily see debuffs that can be dispelled, which is the whole point.
2. Show Health of Target's Target. I always keep this up all the time (in fellowships too), as it provides an easy way to tell who has aggro, and how much morale and power they have. With this display showing, it's very easy to tell if your target (most likely Thorog during this fight) has changed targets so you can react accordingly.
3. Raid Assist Window. You do have this up already, right? If not, bring up your Social panel, go to the raid tab, and hit the button that says Raid Assist Window. Your raid leader has already specified who is the main assist, right? So during the Thorog fight when it's necessary to kill one of the several rounds of additional mobs that come along, you'll know which to target and kill first. The raid assist window is your best friend, so use it.
4. Show Vitals. On the same Raid tab of the Social panel, you have the option to select whose vitals you want to see on your screen during the raid. I usually keep everyone up, so I can instantly see if anyone in the raid has died, needs a heal, or needs to use a fear potion. You can also use their vitals display to target them just by clicking on it, so they can be quickly rebuffed, healed, etc.
Important Note: There seems to be a new bug that was introduced with the July 11th patch that affects the ability to see debuffs on other members during a raid. It is inconsistent, but I have personally experienced it so I know it is real. The exact effect of this bug is that you may not be able to see debuffs (or buffs) on everyone in the raid, or even in your own fellowship. Here's how to tell if this issue is affecting you. Bring the Options menu back up, and under Social options uncheck the "Show Dispellable Effects Only" box. Note whose buffs you can now see. If you can see their buffs, you'll see their debuffs. If you can NOT see their buffs, you will NOT be able to see their debuffs. The risk is that if they get hit with Thorog's deadly eyeball (more on this later), you won't see it, and that makes it much harder to spot it and remove it. I have not yet found a perfect workaround for this issue, though when it happened to me I was able to leave the raid and get re-invited, which allowed me to once again see buffs and debuffs on my own fellowship, though not on the entire raid.
Ok, so now you're all ready to roll! You've got your potions and all your consumables on your hotbar, and you've got your interface all set up just how you like it, right? Okay, sometimes the default locations of those windows aren’t right where you want them, so use Ctrl + \ to move them around to your liking (this undocks the windows so you can move them around). I would also suggest that when you do this, move your OWN status bar (the one that's usually up in the upper left part of the screen) down next to your hotbar somewhere. You want to be able to easily see your own debuffs so you can watch for the "eyeball", so put your status bar someplace where you can easily see it while you're fighting. You can always move it back later if you don't like it there all the time, but for this fight it's imperative that you can see your debuffs easily and quickly.
C. Getting ready to Fight
You're almost ready to go! Just a few more things to do!
1. Kill all the hillmen in the area. I've heard that some of the High Priests actually heal Thorog if you don't kill them, but we always killed them every time, so I can't personally confirm this. Just kill everything. That way they don't ever get in the way.
2. Get rid of pets. This isn't absolutely necessary, but we have had much better success without pets around. The issue is that pets can get hit with the deadly eyeball just like players can, and it seems that they explode and kill everyone just like players do. This fight often gets a little chaotic, so I'm not 100% sure that pets will explode and kill other people (it's hard to tell when someone explodes who was the cause of it), but I do know for certain that we started having much more success when we got rid of all pets. The shadow mitigation from the LM raven and the health or power buff from the Captain pet just aren't worth the risk of them exploding and killing 5 or more other people, so I suggest getting rid of them.
3. Get everyone in position up on the platform next to Drugoth's coffin. Now is the time to use your Scrolls of Battle Lore and Warding Lore, along with your first Hope token, and have Captains and Minstrels refresh everyone’s buffs. Ideally pick one person in each fellowship to use a 30 minute +5 Hope token now, but if you only have 15 minute ones it's not a big deal. If the fight goes smoothly and nobody is defeated (there's no reason for anyone to ever get defeated on this fight if you do it right) the 15 minute token is long enough. If people do get defeated you're going to need to have someone use another token during the fight anyway to get the hope buff back on the revived person, so it doesn't really matter a lot if you use 30 minute or 15 minute ones.
4. Once everyone is ready summon Drugoth. Raid leaders probably already know this, but use the /readycheck command to make sure everyone is ready to go. Note it doesn't matter if the Crown/Staff/Ring are all on one person or on three different people, and it doesn't matter what order they are used in. You'll find little spots on the pointy things on the coffin where you use the Drugoth parts, and when the last one is used he'll pop out of his coffin. And now you're ready for Drugoth!
II. Stage 1 - Drugoth
Once you've used the last of the Drugoth parts, he jumps up out of his coffin and starts getting chatty. Once he's done explaining how you're all doomed, the fight begins.
A. Step 1 - Spank and Tank. As soon as his status bar turns red, he's just a simple spank and tank Nemesis elite with 130,000 or so morale. Make sure your main tank gets good aggro, then start the beatdown. You'll want everyone in the raid to cluster up tight (we make the call to snuggle up in our raids) so everyone is in one very tight ball. Yes, this includes Minstrels. Yes, this includes Hunters. Why Minstrels and Hunters always seem to think snuggling up doesn't apply to them I will never know. You can heal or shoot arrows just fine from up close, I promise. So get everyone to snuggle up, because after a minute or so he is going to summon a few adds, which leads us to....
B. Step 2 - Drugoth summons friends. After a minute or so he's usually down to around 40,000 morale or thereabouts, and he will summon a handful of mobs to come help him. You can handle them in a variety of ways. The easiest way it so just split off a few Loremasters to mez them (yes, Loremasters, you can move away to go do this . The adds will come from the direction where Storvagun is and they can easily be mezzed. If you don't have enough Loremasters or don't want to mez them, you can just ignore them and let them run over to you. This is the reason you're all snuggled up, so any adds that get through don't start eating minstrels or hunters, instead they run into a wall of Champion AE attacks which effectively keeps them off the squishies. I suppose you could split off and kill them if you wanted to, but once Drugoth gets down to around 3,000 morale they just run off, so there's really no need to ever kill them. Now, once Drugoth gets down to 3,000 morale he has a surprise for you...well, not really such a surprise anymore, but the first time we did it (the day Helegrod went live) you can imagine our surprise when all of a sudden Drugoth starts chatting about his little pet...
III. Stage 2 - Thorog
Once Drugoth's status bar turns green and he tells you again how doomed you all are, he and his adds will run off, and you'll see Thorog start to fly down from his perch. Now is the time for...
A. Step 1 - Use consumables. Once Drugoth runs off you'll be out of combat for 15 or 20 seconds, so now is the time to eat your food and if you wish to, use your destiny point hope buff. Nobody should have been defeated during the Drugoth phase, but if they did now is the time to revive them, while you're out of combat.
B. Step 2 - Positioning. Thorog will come down right in the center of the platform, and he can't move from that spot. He will spin around there and you can face him any direction you want (it doesn't really matter), but you can't pull him away from his spot. So now the raid needs to get in position, but before going over the positioning, let me diverge a moment to go over what sort of attacks to expect from him.
Thorog's Attacks
Thorog uses quite a few attacks that everyone in the raid needs to be aware of. Quite frankly, I don't know what sorts of attacks he uses on the Guardian he's beating on, but it doesn't seem like he really hits that hard, so I'll leave that to the Guardians to worry about. The most important attack he uses is...
- The Deadly Eyeball. This is the eyeball that I've already mentioned several times, so let me explain what exactly it is. Basically this is a fear based debuff that you'll see on your status bar if you get hit with it. It seems to hit people randomly, and when it hits you a purple beam will land on you from the sky. As soon as it hits you a white eyeball on a purple background will appear on your status bar (screenshot needed). Once it hits you, you have about 10 seconds to get rid of it or you will quite literally turn into a bomb and explode, killing yourself and anyone nearby.
There are two ways to get rid of this deadly Eyeball. One is to use a fear potion, and the other is to let a Captain use their group fear cure. Be sure you have discussed before the raid who in each group will be responsible for removing the eyeball, i.e. the Captain or your own potions. Having a Captain in each group to remove the eyeball is very helpful, but it's a waste if you both use your fear cure, then they are both on cooldown when it hits again. So decide ahead of time if the group's Captain will be primary and you'll use potions only when the Captain's fear cure is on cooldown, or if you'll use potions for your primary fear cure and the Captain is the backup for when your potion is on cooldown. Note that potions have a 15 second cooldown, and the Captain fear cure skill has a 30 second cooldown.
Unfortunately getting hit with the Eyeball doesn't give you any sort of immunity to getting hit again, so it's definitely possible to get hit with the Eyeball twice in a row, meaning you may still be on potion cooldown when a second Eyeball hits. If for ANY reason you get hit with the Eyeball and you're unable to cure it, RUN AWAY from the rest of the raid. Find a nice convenient spot to die that's not near any other players, as you will literally explode and kill everyone near you. Be nice to your raid and don't let that happen. Die alone. If during the Thorog fight you die for any reason, look at your combat log. If you were killed by a "Finishing Bite", then you or someone near you had the Eyeball and didn't cure it.
It simply can't be emphasized enough that it is absolutely imperative that the Eyeball MUST be cured every single time someone gets hit with it. It is, quite simply, the raid killer. If there are people in your raid that lag too much to see it and cure it, get rid of them. If they can't be bothered to pay attention to this debuff, get rid of them. If they are prone to going linkdead (yes, a player can still get hit with it after they lose their connection but before they leave the game), get rid of them. You can literally make a mess of every other part of this fight and still win if you consistently get rid of the Eyeball every single time. It's that important. Ok, enough said. So what other attacks does Thorog use? The next important one is..
- Shadow Breath. As soon as Thorog lands, you'll see him turn toward someone and start breathing "fire". His "fire" is actually a Shadow Breath attack, and it can hit you as many as 3 times for about 1,000 points of raw morale damage. This attack is mitigated by your shadow resistance, so it usually hits me for around 800 or so. This attack is seldom deadly to anyone other than Hunters or Minstrels, but it does hurt. So what is to be done about it?
Well, the very first thing Thorog does when he lands is to pick someone to attack with his shadow breath. The good thing about the Shadow Breath attack is that it CAN be interrupted. After his initial breath attack, Thorog will always rear up on his hind legs before doing his Shadow Breath. This is the time for Champions and Burglars to Clobber and Addle, to try to interrupt his Shadow Breath attack. If you do it right and get a little lucky you can interrupt every one of these and never have to deal with this attack, but he is difficult to interrupt, so odds are some will get through.
Thorog always turns to the left or the right when he breathes, so what do you do? Move, of course! If you see him rear up, and when he comes back down he turns in your direction, don't just stand there and take it, move! Odds are instead of getting hit with 3 waves of 800 damage, you'll just get tagged once or twice, making it much easier to heal you back up. Minstrels also watch out for this attack, since when it hits that may be time for a group heal. Note that if you look at your combat log and see you were killed by a Shadow Breath attack, this is the attack that killed you.
Since Thorog always does a Shadow breath attack the moment he lands, I also suggest that this is a good time for Captains to use In Harm's Way and Last Stand. It's not uncommon to lose 5 or 6 members of a raid to that initial breath attack within seconds of Thorog landing, and each Captain that uses IHW/LS effectively ensure that their entire fellowship will survive the first 20 seconds of the fight, which is the most risky as the Guardian is still establishing aggro and he may be bouncing around a little bit on targets. Positioning is also important during this fight, especially during the first few seconds, but I'll address that a bit later.
- Deadly Shadow Ball. This is an unusual attack he does, and it's totally avoidable. As best we can tell, the only time he uses this attack is when he becomes aware of someone attacking him from too far away - off of his platform, basically. What he will do when someone is attacking him from a long range (usually a Hunter), he simply turns to them and does a Deadly Shadow Ball attack. It kills you instantly, and there is no way to mitigate it. The way to avoid it is quite simply to stand up close to him, and never off of his platform. If you looked at your combat log and you were killed by Deadly Shadow Ball, this is the attack that killed you.
- Wing Flap and Tail Swipe. These are two small AoE attacks he does from time to time to the people in the raid clustered around him. They also hit for about 1,000 damage, but they are common damage so they are usually mitigated down to around 600 damage, at least on me. The Wing Flap obviously will hit people on his sides, and the Tail Flap hits people behind him. Some folks report they can be avoided by getting real close up under his belly or standing next to one of his rear legs, but I haven't ever been able to totally avoid them. They don't hurt that much, just heal through them.
- Chill Air and <name of this debuff needed> - These two debuffs are important primarily because it's important that you ignore them. Chill Air is a DoT debuff that does 54 damage over 4 seconds, and the other is a big debuff to Will and Fate. As tempting as it is to remove these debuffs, especially the Will/Fate debuff, don't do it. You'll need to use a fear cure to do it, and if you use your fear cure then get hit with the Eyeball, you're in trouble. Remove them after he flies off if you really want them gone to regen a little, but they will come right back when Thorog flies back down.
So how should the Raid be positioned for the fight? Well, let me first address the question of whether you should put Hunters up high on the perch near where Thorog flies off to. The answer is no. There simply isn't any reason to put them there, and there are several reasons not to. What I suggest is once Drugoth runs off, just spread everyone around the center of the platform, almost in a big circle. There are two reasons for this. One, if you're close to Thorog when he lands, you can quickly try to interrupt his first breath attack. And two, there's no reason NOT to be close to him. I've never seen anyone get hit with his Deadly Shadow Ball attack if they were standing close, and by spreading out you expose the smallest number of people to his Shadow Breath attack when he uses it. So just spread everyone around the spot where he will land, and get ready to Clobber him the moment he's targetable.
C. Step 3 - Drakeling adds. Once you're all in place and aggro is locked down on the main tank, start putting the beatdown on Thorog. Debuffs will land, but I don't recall ever seeing a conjunction on him. Not sure they are impossible, but if they are possible, they are extremely rare. You'll see Thorog rear up on his hind legs from time to time, this is a prelude to a breath attack, so try to Interrupt it with Clobber and Addle. From time to time Thorog will also turn and take a smack at a random player - some raids use a 2nd guardian to pull him right back, but that's not absolutely necessary. We do it with one guardian all the time, and just turn him right back around.
A note on Debuffs. Be sure your raid leader has assigned assistants to coordinate the debuffs used by Burglars, Captains, Loremasters, etc. so everyone knows who is responsible for keeping each debuff on Thorog during this fight. It makes the fight go a lot smoother. There is also a new bug introduced in the July 11th patch that no longer lets Captain marks stack on the same mob. In other words, Captains you’ll need to pick which mark you want to use, as we can’t put them all on anymore. Sigh.
Ok, so far so good. A couple of minutes into the fight, two Drakelings will spawn up on the stairs near where you went to kill Grisgart. You'll need to break off a loremaster or two at this point to mez/root them, and at least a group or two of DPS classes to go kill ONE of them. You'll want to kill one, and leave one mezzed for the duration of the fight. Keeping one mezzed prevents him from spawning another pair of drakelings during the next round.
A note on mezzing. Loremasters will be keeping two mobs mezzed (Blinding Flash) for the duration of the Thorog fight (a drakeling and a spider queen), so it’s important to have assignments prepared ahead of time to determine which loremasters will be responsible for which mobs, and who will fill in when a mez is resisted or broken. It’s also quite useful to designate a champion who will be used to pull a mob out of a bad spot and into a more convenient spot if a mez breaks and the target mob is in the middle of the raid where you don’t want them to be. And remember, nobody else should be attacking these mobs, ever!
D. Step 4 - Thorog flies off. Most raids will do between 90,000 and 110,000 points of damage to Thorog when his status bar turns green and he flies up to his perch. Note this is a different spot from where he was when you first arrived to Helegrod, it's up the stairs and across the bridge, past the entrance to the Drake wing. Once he arrives at his perch, you'll see that his status bar turns red again and he just sits there for a minute or so. Several interesting things happen during this phase of the fight.
The first SUPER important thing that needs to happen when Thorog flies off is to get off the platform! We generally run over to the wall right below Thorog's perch (we call this part of our strategy Hide Like Ninjas), but there are many different spots that work. The purpose of this is to avoid the healing effect Thorog uses when he's up on his perch. Basically, if you see a flurry of small amounts of damage coming off over your head, you're in a bad spot and Thorog is healing by sapping your morale. If you get everyone out of his LOS, he won't heal one bit while he's up there, and this makes the fight way easier.
Shortly after Thorog flies away, a wave of spider adds will come from the area near the entrance to the spider wing. You'll see one Spider Queen and a number of smaller spiders. Be sure your raid has moved off of the platform to whatever spot you’ve chosen to engage the spiders. Ideally you’ll all be snuggled up close again, because one of the first things the spiders are going to do to your raid is to web you all, so you won’t be able to move. As the spiders move toward you, you want one Loremaster to mez the Spider Queen while a second Loremaster roots all of them using their AoE root skill (Herb-lore). This will allow the spiders to break away more or less one a time to be killed by the raid. Do NOT kill the Spider Queen. You'll be keeping her mezzed for the duration of the fight to prevent future waves of spider adds during the following phases.
If things are going well, at this point you have one Drakeling mezzed, one Spider Queen mezzed, everyone is alive, and all the small spiders are dead, just as....
E. Step 5 - Thorog flies back down. You'll know he's on the way when his status bar turns Green again, and he will fly back down to the center of the platform. This is the time to move back to the middle of the platform and be ready for him to arrive. This will go basically the same way the first round went, i.e you want to snuggle up close to Thorog, interrupt his Shadow Breath, cure the Deadly Eyeballs, and keep handing him the beatdown. He'll use his Wing Flap attacks and his Tail Swipes of course, so just keep everyone healed and keep beating on him. Since you kept a drakeling mezzed, you won't have to worry about them again.
If all is going well, you should be able to get him down to around 70,000 morale or so before he flies off again. Same as the first time, his status bar turns green, he flies off, and the raid Hides Like Ninjas. Only difference is since you kept the Spider Queen mezzed, you won't have to deal with any spiders again. Just stand there and wait for him to come back.
F. Step 6 - Thorog comes back down for the last time. The cycle of him flying off and coming back down continues to repeat itself until he's dead, or you are. If you're doing well, this is the last time he flies back down, and you'll kill him on this round. If you've had some deaths, though, don't give up! Just keep healing and keep doing the damage, and repeat this process until he's deaded!
IV. Things aren't going well, what do you do?
Ok, so maybe somebody missed a Deadly Eyeball attack and killed 6 other people, or maybe one of his breath attacks wiped out half your minstrels? Or our main tank got a damage spike and went down? What do you do? There are a couple of options.
A. Reset the encounter. Just like Ivar and Lagmas and several other encounters, if you just run out of the room the encounter will reset. Run all the way down to the drums, don't stay on the steps. Give it a few minutes, and Drugoth will be back, and you can start over. Remind everyone that this fight usually takes some practice (I’ve heard of raids that needed 10 or more tries before success) and there’s no disgrace in regrouping to try again. You do want that Doom of Thorog Reborn title, right? Don’t give up!
B. Combat revive. If only a handful of people have died, just revive them and keep going. Remember everyone that gets revived will lose their Hope buff, so someone in their group will need to hit another +5 Hope token. The important thing to remember is that you can definitely still win even with some deaths, just don't panic, keep your main tank healed, and revive the dead.
C. What if combat revives are all used up? Well, now you have a choice to make. Minstrels combat revive has a 10 minute timer, so one choice is just to wait for a revive as soon as you can get it. If you have too many deaths, though, you'll need to decide if you want to just reset the encounter, or release and run back. Let me make a comment on releasing, since that seems to be a subject of some controversy, and a few bugs/issues as well.
First, if you choose to release and run back, keep in mind you'll have to figure out a way to deal with the 5 dread you get from death and the 9 dread from Thorog. This means a +5 Token and a Destiny Hope buff at the very least, and ideally a minstrel can remove the dread you got from releasing. Trust me, running in there with 14 dread won't do you or your raid any good.
Now, IF you do decide to release and run back, it's possible to bug the encounter and you'll be forced to reset it. The way to avoid this is to ONLY run back into the room when Thorog's status bar is Red, not when it's Green. We have also encountered a bug where sometimes Thorog gets fixated on one person and hits them with a Deadly Shadow Ball the moment they get halfway up the stairs. If this happens to you, just stay dead. All you'll earn by trying again is a nasty repair bill.
One final note about releasing and running back. I have seen some folks on the forums comment that this is done deliberately to trigger some sort of exploit and make the fight easier. It actually makes the fight much harder, let me assure you. We have had this happen once on a Preying Mantis raid when someone accidentally released, and when Thorog gets buggy like that, it's actually MUCH harder to kill him. It's sure as heck not easier. I've also seen comments that even releasing at all is in some way cheating, however I think it's safe to assume if Turbine didn't intend for us to be able to release and re-enter the fight, they would have either locked the door when the encounter started or set the respawn point to Gloin's camp or something.
I hope everyone who reads this has found it useful, and I wish you all the best of luck in defeating Thorog! He’s a fun fight, and while his loot is not worth the trouble (he drops the same stuff basically as the other Helegrod bosses at the time of this writing), it’s still worth it just for the challenge. Thanks for reading all this, and good luck!
