Runes of Magic US / AU

ToSH for Dummies with Low DPS

This exhaustive guide is written to help those groups that are struggling with ToSH, and who just aren’t OP, and who get somewhat frustrated when they ask for advice and people tell them “Well, we just burn that.”

It’s also based on Notorious’s personal experience, and that means it’s written for (and by!) people with an IQ less than 50 and considerably less dps than the usual ToSH capable guild. I will be linking Bibby from Bteam's excellent video guides with each boss, and I’ll link the Noto version of the boss fight for comparison’s sake if we have one available.

First, let’s go over some basics. You will want to try and do this with 12 people, and you’ll want a tank with between 500-600k pdef, at least three healers, and preferably at least one of them will be a druid. DPS classes will want to have around 95-120k hp buffed. Hopefully the majority of your dps will have at least GCH weapons or crafted 70’s. No one needs to already have ToSH weapons, but they do help.

Now, can you do this with less people, or people with less gear? Yes. But it will be harder. Don’t turn anyone down because they have 90k hp, just know that they may want to pop a Unicorn.

This is crucial: make everyone buy Phoenix Redemptions, lots of them. Do not even attempt ToSH without a bunch. It’s not even worth attempting without Phoenix- they do not call this instance Tomb of the Seven Phoenix’s for nothing, ok? We still use them regularly for farming. Just do it. You will thank me later. Don’t be cheap, just use the darned things.

Ok, let’s talk trash! There’s a ton in ToSH, and you will want some mages for CC ideally. You’ll also want your druid to charm them, and/or your Champion to do his reverse shadowstep pull thing to get the patrols down to a manageable size. We use all of the above, and we have the mages do a stun rotation.

ToSH bugs need to be killed before they Spawn, or you can let them spawn if the tank is sufficient to take the hits, and farm the small buggies for their valuable TP.

Angren Scouts are what ToSH has instead of alarms like DL. Kill them. Kill them FAST. We have a mage buff and burn them, or a scout snipe them, or our druid charm them. In the early patrols, you’ll want to kill the Archers first. Archers are evil, they heal themselves and their group.

You’ll come to doors with levers needed to open them. Click any lever and run, bugs will fall out of the sky (you can’t kill them, they’ll disappear in a second, but they will kill you) or you’ll get feared around. Kneel macro is handy to keep you from wandering into patrols. The third handle will open the door.

The Angren mobs freak out if you stun them, so avoid that unless you have enough mages to keep them stunlocked.

When you get past the fourth boss you’ll run into some super evil rogue mobs- these guys hide, so it’s useful to get a mage to swap gear and thunderstorm to pop ‘em out of hide. Alternatively, your tank can pop his immune and run in and aggro them. Rogue mobs cannot be CC’d at all.

When you get to the Strong Acid Beasts after fourth boss, loot them for their Luminous Sigils, and trade these to the tank. He can use them to light up the invisible rogues in that hallway, but we do the mage trick instead, and save all the Sigils for the hallway before Thanteos Kalume. At the head of the stairs, there’s a nasty invisible Oculodemon, and he has to be made visible to be killed, and he’ll kill invisible. The only way to kill him is to make him visible, and it’s a real pain if you mess up and run out of Sigils. So, as soon as he is visible, pop a DoT on him to keep him from going in to Hide. There’s just one of these nasties, and he’s sort of a yellowy green color. The other Oculodemons are purple, and you just kill them as usual.

If you have major issues with trash, remember that the biggest thing in ToSH with the trash is to use every trick you can to cut down on the huge size of the patrols. A smart tank will be needed here too, because sometimes whole rooms will chain pull. You’ll get the hang of it.

*SPECIAL NOTE* Some bosses (and even occasionally a trash mob) remove buffs from tanks and/or melee classes in close proximity. The tank will need to watch EA especially. If you find your tank mysteriously being one-hit, have him keep an eye on EA.

Okies, Boss Timez.

Boss One: Jenny Giant (a nasty nasty wench).
Bibby and Bteam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q68Fni5gQA&feature=plcp
Noto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfavF5fyA3A&feature=plcp

Overview: Jenny is a Scout and uses Scout skills. 4 people get torches, one person with a torch also does flint. Spread out to avoid Piercing Arrow. Everyone needs to be at least 50 range from everyone else, and don’t stand in a straight line. DPS 25 percent, then the lights go out and the boss disappears. Torch people go to oil buckets, flint person clicks flint and does a fast count and all click oil at the same time. They go to the center and get flint buff from flint person. They each go to a torch and light it. The boss reappears and you dps another 25 percent. Repeat until dead.

Brass Tacks: You will need 4 people with active brain cells to do this. Everyone else can be a dummy as long as they can stand in one place and not move. This is NOT a burn fight. We have all of our mages come /p for this fight for extra cleanses (which is nice for us, since every mage in guild practically has a /p side). If you can choose between survivability and dps, choose survivability.

Pick 4 people with brains and survivability to do torches. We use (usually) our tank, one m/p, one s/k and one r/s to do this (but the mage and the rogue have unusually high stam). Choose the smartest tankiest people you have to do this part. When we have issues with Jenny, we bring two tanks. When you get good at it, you’ll be able to have literally anyone do torches, but for now, USE TANKY PEOPLE. DON’T use your healers for this in the beginning, because even though they are by nature tanky, they will be BUSY! This fight has a lot of damage to be healed through, especially when you mess up. And you will mess up.

Before you even run in, make sure everyone knows where they will stand. Assign one healer to cleanse each torchbearer, and make sure all four bearers have an assigned cleanse. Offcleansers will pick up the slack if healers die etc. Pro tip: Druids can use their AoE cleanse. Dummy tip: Assume they won’t remember to and assign people for cleanses anyway.

Countdown, music, tank aggros, people go to their assigned positions. DPS boss 25%. Dark phase. Healers need to concentrate on keeping the torchbearers up. Have your /p’s and /d’s offheal to help.

It will take a few tries for the torchbearers to get used to the timing. Skills will interrupt them when they try and click on oil, flint or lamps. They need to just persevere and keep clicking if that happens. Pro tip: supposedly you can time flint/oil between skills to keep interrupts to a minimum. This has NEVER EVER worked for us, despite us wasting two evenings experimenting, so we gave up. Dummy tip: Just have them click again if they get interrupted. Pro tip: use voice chat to time flint/oil/lamps. Dummy tip: if you have people without voice capability and/or people who don’t speak English, have the flint person make a macro for “3, 2, 1, CLICK OIL!” and hope for the best. PHOENIX IS MANDATORY FOR ALL TORCHBEARERS.

Now, if you mistime something, and bork an attempt at lighting the lamps, you can regroup and try again. In that case, have one priest run in and bubble the torchbearers in the middle when they go to get flint. The longer dark phase continues, the more damage she does, and she WILL drop a massive Shatterstar and/or Piercing on them in the middle on the second try. Third tries are NOT recommended. Just have people with intact Phoenix’s leave party and the rest switch gear and die at the door. Don’t bother wasting Soul Bond on torchbearers, they will res without their torch. So have the priests SB themselves to save time between tries.

Ok, you lit the lamps and the boss is back, yay! Some people will get hit with a nasty debuff. This debuff is a DoT that explodes. They need to be cleansed before it explodes. Cleanse torchbearers first, then prioritize cleanses on whoever you need more- like tank, healers, top dps. If you have an immune skill like Holy Aura, and you time it to coincide with the debuff ending (that’s when it blows you up) do so. Otherwise you can pop a Serenstum to save yourself if needed. Jenny will also do Shatterstar, usually in the middle of the floor. PEOPLE MUST RUN OUT OF THIS! Any idiot who stands inside Shatterstar- do not attempt to heal them, let them die- cause they are too stupid even for this guide!

Lather, rinse, repeat. Pro tip: assign dps people to use their cd’s in increments so that Jenny returns to darkphase quickly. Play instruments throughout. Dummy tip: use the pro tip, but if people can’t manage it, just dps as hard as you can til she goes down and make sure at least one person saves their buffs for 25%-0%.

Loot leet loots!

Boss Two: Letin Mocliff (aka, why people quit RoM)
Bibby and Bteam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohq6PMe6Q_s&feature=plcp
No Noto vid yet I'll try and get Walky to make one.

Overview: Burn boss to 30%. Party goes to right and left side, two people in each shield. Get bubble buff from shields, avoid AoE one-hit skill by staying inside shield when it’s being cast, and dps boss til dead. Manage adds.

Oh… if only it was that simple. If you can make it through Letin without your guild disbanding and/or people ragequitting RoM, you are doing well!

Brass Tacks: This is an attrition fight from 30% to 0%, and you will usually fail between 3% and 0%. Arrange your party wisely. It doesn’t matter if you tank the boss on the right or left side, but one side will be the Tank Side and the other will be the Bait Side.

Assign positions ahead of time. Tank goes in the middle shield on Tank side with the top dps. Healer on right and left shield with second and third best dps on Tank side. Excess healer goes in the middle shield on Bait side. Excess dps goes to right and left. Pro tip: dps jumps in and out of shields on Bait side to dps boss, avoiding AoE. Dummy tip: Oh hell no, Bait side stays in shields at ALL TIMES! Pro tip: DPS takes all adds to 10% to remove them, or ignores all adds and burns boss. Dummy tip: ONE person on Tank side takes care of WARRIORS ONLY and everyone else gets healed through damage from adds! Ok, lemme break that down for you.

First, the first burn is to 60%. You can go all out. At 60% he will drop aggro. HIGH AGGRO CLASSES MUST BE CAREFUL AT THIS STAGE! Actually, it’s super easy for even a healer to get aggro at this point, so BE CAREFUL! Tank needs to have a taunt ready to go! He has to get aggro back and hold onto it for dear life, and dps classes that don’t have three recons need to go slow and watch the threatmeter like a hawk. Sad sorry people with one recon need to look decorative for a bit and let the tank get a good solid hold before they so much as throw a DoT. The boss is randomly putting aggro-raising debuffs on people at this point, so for heaven’s sake WATCH THE THREATMETER.

Depending on how quickly you get the boss to 30%, you may see two adds spawn. THESE NEED TO BE DPS’D DOWN IF THEY APPEAR! You can’t kill these adds- if you do they will one-hit whoever they had aggro on (usually the tank *sigh*). They must be dps’d to between 9%-1% and they will go yellow and walk away. Assign one person to this task. We find it most easy to have our s/w do this. Whoever does it will need to know exactly how much damage he is dealing per hit so he can get them down without killing them. DON’T USE BLEEDS/DOTS on adds! As a mage, I find purg works well, but they have to be in range. Rogues and w/r’s have a hard time with adds because their white hits can easily kill them by accident. They should just not target adds period. Wardens and /wardens need to watch briar shield!

Ok, so get those two first adds gone quickly, then get boss to 30%. Everyone runs to their shields. NO MORE THAN TWO PEOPLE PER SHIELD! Three people in a shield = one dead person.

Dummy tip: We put our strongest and weakest healer on the Tank side and our second strongest healer on the Bait side. This is because we can’t burn Letin yet, so we use a strategy for adds that I call Bait. Basically, the idea is to keep the people on the Bait side alive long enough to keep lots of adds on that side, away from the tank and the people actually dps’ing the boss. So, you want those Bait people to live, and that means they need heals. We have all our mages be bait, and they all go m/p so they can heal themselves and offheal others. Bait people don’t kill adds, they just live through them. If a warrior gets on the Bait healer, that’s the only time Bait people should attempt to dps adds.

Because Letin is annoyingly unburnable from 30-0%, we put our best Bleed people on the Tank side. Rogues and warriors are ideal for this fight. That way he’s taking damage even when he’s casting his AoE. One person (in this case, our scout usually, or one mage if not) takes care of ONLY WARRIORS. All other adds we ignore. If a warrior add gets on the add person and flops them, someone else has to do their best to take the add out- but this is an iffy thing.

LoS is a huge issue in this fight. The people on the Tank side have got to watch that they stay in heal range, and they also have to make sure they get back in the shields as soon as the boss goes back to the center and starts his AoE cast. Tank tanks inside the shield, or very close.

Pro tip: always get the adds to 9%. Dummy tip: if you find yourself inexplicably dying from one-hits, do a raid focus and watch who’s targeting what. If some idiot is mindlessly killing adds, kick them cause they are too dumb for this guide!

PHOENIX IS ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY FOR EVERYONE IN THIS FIGHT.

Loot leet loot! Aaand… congratulate yourself, cause this is possibly the worst boss in the place. Except for sixth. Well, he’s a ways away, so…

Boss Three: Lekani (a refreshing change!)
Bibby and Bteam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-LqojkAOw&feature=plcp
Noto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_L_KZlnYEk&feature=plcp

Overview: Lekani himself frequently goes immune, and he has four statues which rotate around the sides of the room. These have to be damaged, or they will cast a buff on the boss. Unkillable adds spawn which must be healed through. He does a long-cast skill called Ancestral Fury which needs to be silenced.

Brass Tacks: After the horror of Letin, Lekani will be a breeze, but he can be a pain despite that.

You will want to assign four people to the four corners of the room, and they will dps the statue in that corner. The statues rotate, so there’s no point assigning them to a color; just assign them a corner to avoid confusion. The statues will glow when they need to be damaged, and you have your four people dps them til they stop taking damage, then they go back to dpsing the boss.

You will also want to assign backup people ready to spring into action and take over for any statue person that dies. This is a heavy damage fight, and people can easily get dead quickly from adds. Bringing along an extra healer is a good idea.

As long as every statue gets damaged each round, you just slowly dps Lekani down and won’t have issues. If you miss a statue and the boss gets buffed, things become more difficult. He heals himself, or he does more damage, or he takes less damage etc. So, JUST HIT THE DAMNED STATUES NO MATTER WHAT.

Make sure you have two mages on Silence duty for Ancestral Fury. Pro tip: pick up some crystal thing or other from the trash in the other room and use it to stop Ancestral Fury. Dummy tip: Whaaaa? Just have the mages silence the skill and whine if they all die and wipe the party.

Tanks and statue peeps MUST PHOENIX! Everyone should, but THEY MUST!

Loot leet loots!

Boss Four: Heurton (rocks fall, everyone dies)
Bibby and Bteam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of9RhZbUOCE&feature=plcp
Noto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJrVQ8ELh18&feature=plcp

Overview: Heurton likes rocks. When big rocks start falling, don’t get hit by them. As soon as they hit, run behind one and hide from the boss. As soon as they disappear, dps the boss. Avoid small falling rocks. Repeat until dead. Oh, and there’s adds.

Brass Tacks: This used to be the easiest fight in ToSH for us, until the chap 5 patch. No mechanics changed; the boss fight just got incredibly laggy for no apparent reason. Expect to have lag issues. Have everyone get nekkid and turn spell effects down, with one exception. Turn Shadow Detail to High, so you can see the silhouette of the rocks on the ground.

This fight is quite easy if you have nimble people and dps with good AoE’s and a tank with good aggro. If you don’t have those things… well. It’s still doable.

Countdown, music, run in room and stop- but do not pop cd’s. Watch the floor for the silhouette of big rocks. Don’t stand inside the silhouette. As soon as big rocks fall, get behind one. Start popping CD’s. As soon as rocks disappear, burn as much as you can. Pro tip: watch for small rock silhouettes and avoid them. Dummy tip: everyone stack on boss, he doesn’t drop rocks on himself. Repeat until dead.

Add management: this is up to you and your party makeup. We have mages, so we have our mages use a stun rotation and purg them continuously through the fight. Now, we have a high-aggro tank and we have those mages go m/s for this fight for the extra recon. Your mileage may vary. If you lack m/s’s or m/r’s, and/or you have a low-aggro tank, this won’t work. In that case, have warriors, wardens, whoever, AoE them, Briar Shield them, single target them, whatever works. Pro tip: ignore adds and burn boss. Dummy tip: Oh hell no, the adds will kill the tank.

Have someone watch for the big rocks, and have them call it so all know to run behind as soon as they fall. Pro tip: if you watch carefully, no one will ever die from a falling rock. Dummy tip: Uh huh. Use Phoenix. Use Escape Artist, use Unbridled, and get behind those big rocks ASAP. Some rocks are buggy, and you’ll die from his AoE even behind them. Avoid the rocks right in front of the boss to minimize this, they seem to bug most frequently, but the ones on the side do it too sometimes. Just use Phoenix.

Loot leet loots!

Boss Five (hard mode only): Shint Kanches (even NPC rogues are OP *sigh*)
Bibby and Bteam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXjbvLehAwM&feature=plcp
No Noto

Overview: Buff and burn Shint until he disappears. Tank must turn boss. Avoid black fog. Kill adds.

Brass Tacks: This guy is actually not that bad really. Even a low dps party can “burn” him, as long as you manage the adds. You need to do enough dps to burn through his skill Enchanted Blood, that keeps him from doing something bad, I’ve never actually seen it though. As soon as he despawns watch for the fog. You need to heal through the hits, so consider bringing extra heals.

The boss stacks some insanely bad debuffs on the tank, so keep your healers cleansing throughout, and it really helps to have both priests and druids, as their cleanses remove different debuffs. Pretty much have the healers casting cleanse whenever it’s off cd on the tank.

Burn the adds down ASAP. Single-target, AoE- whatever works. Personally I purg or thunderstorm depending on how close they are to me.

Phoenix is REQUIRED for the tank. Everyone should use it, but the tank MUST.

Pro tip: avoid standing on the black fog. Dummy tip: Phoenix. If you have too many issues with black fog, shoot me a pm and I’ll splain the long version. *coughs*

Loot leet loots!

Boss Six: Thanteos Kalume (and you thought second was bad!)
Bibby and Bteam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWJo21NO2bY&feature=plcp
Noto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXOLfivbZ8I&feature=plcp

Overview: Buff on the run and split into three groups. Groups stack on each other. Tank turns boss. Melee avoids frontal AoE. Burn til debuffs start stacking on people, then they must move or jump to cleanse debuffs. Avoid Throw Axe. Avoid Throw Shield. Serenstum/bubble Burst Bash cast with 5 stacked buffs on boss.

Brass Tacks: Oh god. Where to even start?

There is so much going on in this fight, and it’s so wonky, you’ll despair. This boss breaks guilds. If you ask one of the big scary guilds how they do this, they’ll look at you funny and say “we burn it, why?” Sigh.

If you are like us, you don’t burn. We just lack the sheer firepower to burn him before he starts doing Very Bad Things.

Ok, so. First of all arrange your groups. Burst Bash is a shared group AoE. It will hit one group and the damage is shared between the people in the stack. So, you want three groups stacked on each other, and you don’t want more than five people per group, and no less than three, ideally. If you have too much melee, some rogues will either have to stack with the ranged people and use arrows, or they have to be leet enough to dance in and out again as he casts Burst Bash. Burst Bash is a pretty short cast, so it’s quite hard for them to do this. We do one group on the boss, one on the right side and one on the left. Druids come in super handy on this fight also, since they have that awesome raid heal.

Ok, so- Countdown, play, run in, tank grabs and turns, dps buffs on the run and stacks in their groups. Burn until you start getting the debuff on you that looks like a sword hilt. It stacks as high as 10. You never ever ever want it to get higher than 2. Move, jump- whatever. As a mage, I cast a flame and jump, cast a flame and jump etc. Melee can of course just dps while jumping, lucky buggers. Healers do skill, jump, skill, jump. The more debuffs stack on the party, the faster the boss’s buffs stack on him. The more buffs he has stacked, the harder Burst Bash hits. When his buffs stack to 5, he’ll do an extra skill after Burst Bash called Royal Punishment that does 99% of your hp. This is bad. We Serenstum the first 5-buff Burst Bash, and we bubble the second. If you get three 5-buff Burst Bashes… people gonna die.

The timing on Serenstum for the 5-buff Burst Bash is to click it right before he finishes casting. We have someone call it.

Ok, next. He’s also draining your mana. While you have a stacked debuff on you, you won’t be able to pot, so jump, mana pot. Jump, hp pot if needed.

Now comes even more fun. He’ll do a yellow emote and say something like “Thanteos Kalume throws his Axe at So and So!” A big arrow will appear over so and so’s head. That person needs to run away from the party, and he needs to be careful how he does it. The boss with throw a big axe at the named person and behind the axe will be a trail of fire, following wherever that person runs. The axe itself doesn’t do much damage, but the fire will one-hit squishies and will two-hit everyone else.

Pro tip: just run to the door, everyone will be fine. Dummy tip: Don’t run through people, especially the tank. Run away from the party, to the door is ideal, but anywhere is fine as long you avoid people. People in that person’s party need to move away from them as soon as their name is called to prevent standing in a puddle of fire. DO. NOT. RUN. THROUGH. THE. TANK. If you find yourself standing in fire, and you are miraculously alive anyway, RUN OUT OF IT!

Now, despite the GIANT YELLOW EMOTE and HUGE FREAKING ARROW OVER THE PERSON’S HEAD- it is still really easy to miss. No, really. There’s so much crap going on in this fight, you can miss your name being called. So, we have someone call who’s getting the axe.

As soon as the fire disappears, everyone restacks in their groups ASAP.

After the axe, he’ll throw his shield. Same emote, same big arrow. The shield does an 8 second AoE stun, so the shield person just needs to run away from people. He’ll get stunned for 8 seconds and be fine, but it’s pretty important that he doesn’t stand next to the tank (zomg!) or a healer, mmmk? We have the same someone call who has shield so they can run.

Besides all that, it’s just tank and spank. Oi!

Pro tip: Remember to jump. Dummy tip: have someone keep an eye on the raidlist and make sure no one gets more than three debuffs on them at any time. Anyone (aside from someone stunned by shield, as they can’t jump for the duration) who gets more than three debuffs needs to be kicked, cause they are TOO STUPID FOR THIS GUIDE.

ABSOLUTELY FREAKING EVERYONE NEEDS PHOENIX!

Loot leet loots! And have an orgasm when you finally get him down.

Boss Seven (hard mode only): Cursed Faced Devourer (holy crap, can this be the last boss?)
Bibby and Bteam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euKiPMcsGDA&feature=plcp
No Noto

Overview: Retreat to the pillars and spawn the boss. Avoid blue circles. Kill adds. If you get transported, kill adds inside. Burn boss throughout.

Brass Tacks: This dude is so easy, you’ll be amazed, thrilled silly and relieved as heck. He really is pretty much tank and spank. Just kill adds inside or outside.

First of all you need to spawn him. There isn’t even any more trash to kill. Someone loots a Sparkling Pendant off Thanteos. Everyone group up between the torches at the far end of the boss room and the person with the pendant walks up to the ghost, clicks the pendant and just walks back to the group to spawn the boss. Easy peasy.

Wait for your cd’s to be up, countdown, music, burn baby burn. Big blue circles spawn, just walk out of them. Some people will get sucked into a separate instance reminiscent of the hats in the Conjurer Chapeaunoir fight. They just need to kill the adds inside and live through it. Adds spawn outside; kill these to release the people elsewhere (I just call elsewhere “inside the hat” cause… it’s easier).

Other than that, he’s a burn, even with low dps.

No one needs Phoenix on Cursed Face really, not even the tank, but til you get him down the first time, use it just in case.

Loot leet loots!!! Loot me a 118 OD Jenny’s chest will you? (will settle for 70 dura *cries*)

I hope this helps those of you who feel like you're not leet enough for ToSH. Truth is, almost any decently geared group of people can do it, assuming they have more than one active brain cell to rub together (and some who don't, Noto is living proof ). Don't give up and despair on Boss Two- you will get him down, just keep trying. Expect ToSH to take a long time, and be smart about eking out every scrap of dps outta your party that you can- even if that means keeping alts outside the instance for buffage. Stuff like Awakening of the Wild (d/w melee damage buff), the d/wd mdam buff, all the ma and pa buffs- stack em all if you need to.

Hold the instance open overnight if you have to- park a couple of alts inside. You'll have to kill patrols again, but the bosses will be dead.

Bottom line: you can do it. I know you can

I welcome both pro tips and dummy tips, and correct me if I forgot stuff or got stuff wrong, I'm just a nubmage with bad fps, so they never let me do strat anyway .

*edited to add* Thanks to Bleedingblack for this vid, which is PPK doing ToSH full 2-7, complete with wipes and trash. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9TIIYELeic
This vid is a really really really good look at what a ToSH run is really like. Most videos are of pristine clean boss kills only- this vid shows reality. This is a must-view vid.

Thanks Bangs, lemme fix that. It's Awakening of the Wild, and I am a derp. And yeah, rune draw. Our champ calls it reverse shadowstep. Cause we're derps.

And, SHUT UP GREEN!
(wuv you)

All excellent tips LadyMac. Although I have never seen him drop a rock on himself, that's a weird bug o.O

I mean, that's another thing you need to know about ToSH going in- it's wonky as all hell. Sometimes you wonder if it's bugged, sometimes it does things you've never seen before. It's not... static. Or necessarily predictable.

Sometimes you'll wipe and have no idea why. And sometimes things bug (like dying from AoE when you are CLEARLY behind a rock), and you just have to res out, reset and try again.

Quoted from "Fishtale;560466"

First off, this is a really awesome guide! Well done.

I just have a few notes of my own that'll hopefully help people.

For the party's purposes (except the tank), Boss 1 is 90% percentage based attacks as far as I can tell. Again that doesn't apply to the tank, the one with aggro will be hit with skills that need to be tanked. But for others, all you need need for torch bearers are around 90-120k hp (for bleeds) and a good head on their shoulders. Thousand Feathers, the Blast debuff, piercing shot, all % based... but the bleeds/dots caused by some of these are not, so more hp doesn't hurt (pdef/mdef makes no difference that I can tell).

If you didn't get cleansed, you can time a forestsong cake or serenstrum to be active just as a Blast debuff counts down to 0 to immune the 70% hit and prevent the following DoT. Electrostatic charge also absorbs 30% of the 70% hit to help keep you alive, substitute works for r/s if you can time it right, or the aoth salvation cape to reduce damage by 20% for 5 seconds (I have a macro for it).

Third boss, the druid's Binding Silence also works on ancestral fury, as does discharge, s/r Blinding Powder, blasting cycline, surprise attack, throat attack... just about anything that interrupts casting. However when he is immune (which happens every 20% btw), only the methods that do not cause any sort of damage will interrupt (silence, binding silence, blinding powder).

Fourth boss... yeah sometimes rocks drop on or next to the boss, not very often though!
If you mange to survive the falling rocks, but can't get behind one in time to avoid the boss' AoE, you can use a Forestsong Cake or Serenstrum to survive as well.
Rock drops also happens roughly every 20% btw, so you can remember when to expect them.

No comment on the rest really, your guide is very thorough.

Any tips contributed by Bteam count as Pro Tips lol.

In our wacky experience, hp itself doesn't seem to matter much for torchbearers, but pdef does seem to. We discovered this when the tank was the last one to die like three times in a row after multiple dark phases. Since then, when we have issues with someone consistently dying on torches (and it's almost always the one with the lowest hp- could be coincidence, could just be our luck), we'll call in one of our extra tanks and have them do it, and that usually solves the problem. Piercing Arrow, for one, is a skill effected by pdef (unless I am high- always a possibility). Blast is pure percent, but I think even Shatterstar (I need to quit calling it that, since it's actually Thousand Feathers) has a pdef modifier in it somewhere.

I think the whole "pick tanky types" thing is really a Dummy Tip because you don't see that much damage if you do it correctly, and Pros do it correctly. Dummys sort of wander around in a daze and forget to click stuff. That would be us lol. At any rate, when picking torchbearers, it's definitely more important to pick for brains first and survivability second- but survivability won't hurt you any.

A metric crapton of the boss damage in ToSH is percentage based, and I should have mentioned that actually. More HP will not necessarily save you- though it will keep you alive a lot longer on trash pulls.

I'd also like to thank the people who keep bringing up immune foods, since I left that out- which was dumb, since as a mage I use a ton of them. Immune foods are another tool in your Dummy arsenal- as are Phirius pots. Bring tons with you- ideally you want everyone in party to have a whole bunch of consumables, and here's my shortlist, let's call it the Dummy's War Chest:

1) Phoenix Redemptions (can't emphasize this one enough)
2) Instruments (even healers). Play these throughout boss fights. More dps = less deaths. Have the healers play pre-pull so your dps can play mid-fight when the healers are busy. Play before big patrol pulls. Someone should always have music off cd.
3) Serenstum and Rainbow Crystal Candy (bring a couple stacks)
4) Phirius D pots (use these when your healer is stunned/dead/healing someone more important than you)
5) Simple Repair Hammers/Golden Repair Hammers
6) Large quantities of your usual buff foods and pots, grassland etc. You'll die a lot and use a lot.
7) One-recon classes need Tranq Powder. Don't fight it, just bring it and watch the scrutinizer. Use as needed.

About the time you tot up the bill for all that, you'll realize why endgame gear is so expensive, but that's partly why you're in there.

*Edited to add: You can tell Fishtale is a Pro because he knows the correct names for skills and at what percentage the boss does them. We always use either Silence or Binding Silence (I forgot that Whooty does the silencing sometimes) on Lekani because we noticed that Throat Attack didn't always work. Instead of trying to figure out why, we just always used the silences instead. That's what Dummys do lol. We don't question things, we just beat them til they're dead.