Have you gone through the tunnel after Twin Emps?
That trash is much harder than the trash before Twin Emps.
once the tanks had their positioning down it was pretty easy after that.

That's the answer to all the bosses in AQ40, its very very easy once you get the strategy down.

As of this morning 8/13/2020:

Our gates aren't open yet. We're not seeing the turn-in rate accelerate yet either. If that blue line stays flat then we're still about a week out from the war effort completing + another 5 days for it to arrive. I'm not expecting Fairbanks to open AQ for another week and a half.

Waiting for the gates to open, they open on Sunday for my realm, and luckily I get off work just a couple hours before the gates opening so I can watch it unfold hopefully (assuming Alliance don't just lock out the whole of Silithus, and I wouldn't put it past them.)

Have you gone through the tunnel after Twin Emps?
That trash is much harder than the trash before Twin Emps.

I have now and you are correct, that trash suuuucks. :lol:

Was in AQ40 yesterday for the first time in wow classic, we did a pretty fast and easy Skeram, Satura and Fankriss, then skipped Huhu. First thing to notice: trash is pretty hard, had to use big chainheals.

Then we wiped three times on the trash before Twins, until we got the hang of it. Did two solid trys on Twins and killed them on the third, once we got a better movement pattern.
Twins were lamer than I remember them from back then, basically a gear check - I think with full WBs or Naxx gear they are a effortless fight.

That was about 1.5 hours in. Then we slowly grinded our way through the trash before Cthun, and got there a good 45 minutes later. Trash wasn't harder than the one between Huhuran and Twins, but more pulls and longer fights.

After a 15 minute break for refreshing consumes and our fatigue we continued with Cthun. Did a shaky first try, followed by a long and thrilling second try. We got him down to 21% with about half of the raid not giving up and fighting until the very end.

That was a great confidence boost and we killed him pretty flawless in the third attempt, with only three deads.

Yeah I know, no cinematic picture, but that way my guildmates get some recognition too :mrgreen:

With the Cthun kill momentum we ran back to Huhuran and casually killed her on our way back to the entrance.

Cthun felt like a satisfying and fun encounter and less chaotic and hectic than 15 years ago :razz:

Tomorrow our guild is entering AQ! I'm very excited. Hopefully we will be able to make solid progress and get C'Thun in one week.

Fth4e clears AQ40 Part 2:

Yesterday we continued to clear AQ40. We started later as planned, because our leadership wanted the full raid from the day before and some people couldn't be there early, as our normal raiddays are Wednesday and Thursday.

We started with a effortless and boring Bug Trio, then got over to Viscudus.

Viscidus is a expensive and gimmicky boss, I don't really wanna do him without totems ever.
For a solid chance you need 1-2 https://classic.wowhead.com/item=13458/greater-nature-protection-potion , a well timed https://classic.wowhead.com/item=10646/goblin-sapper-charge , and a couple of https://classic.wowhead.com/item=3386/elixir-of-poison-resistance .
And then you can add role specific consumes, like https://classic.wowhead.com/item=3829/frost-oil for all melee weapons, and as much nature resistance gear as you can fit in.

We did a botched first try, really underestimated the incoming damage. Then a very clean try until he bugged and became unkillable.
Followed by that one we killed him but it wasn't exactly the cleanest kill EU :mrgreen:

Then we went on to Ouro which is a intimidating, but not considerable challenging boss, which we also could kill on a third try, that was going pretty well.

Then we took a moment to give ourselves a pat on the back, and ported to Orgrimmar to shout "9/9 first Id" and other victory toasts.

Overall it was a fun and expensive experience, but definitely more interesting than all raids we had before!

Also finally killed Ouro, which I never did in vanilla, so I got that achievement down. :cool:

Good shit fth.

We've had a bunch of our guys switch to engineering so they can drop sappers on that fight. We've also been stockpiling greater nature protection pots for months now, so I'm hoping we got enough in the bank to last us a while.

We have been practicing visc with the cheesing poison sac method. You can farm a lot of them quickly in LBRS and everyone can use them to make quick work of dispelling the poison waves. We haven't gotten him down yet but plan to tomorrow. Our best run got him to 6% so very close! The rest of AQ is clear though so solid work with our guild. I'm happy to see how we did.

My guild got stuck on twin emps during our first excursion into 40. I think we’ll crush it no problem this week though, there was a lot of learning that occurred last week.

My guild got stuck on twin emps during our first excursion into 40. I think we’ll crush it no problem this week though, there was a lot of learning that occurred last week.

Our guild did the same, had trouble with twin emps our first attempt but the following week we almost one shot them!
Ended up killing them the second attempt. I think our strategy was flawed a little because our first go at them, tried 5 times and only got like 1 or 2 teleports before we wiped. Very bad but it could also have been it was very late. Either way we are 6 of 9 now, hopefully get cthun down soon. Had a few very good phase two attempts

Yeah we got up to twin emps last night and got continually wrecked by the caster emp deciding to stop casting and he'd run up to the warlock tank and slap him into the ground. We don't have another raid night before reset, so our next attempt is going to happen on a fresh raid ID.

Wish we knew what causes caster man to stop casting and decide to start swinging on people.

Yeah we got up to twin emps last night and got continually wrecked by the caster emp deciding to stop casting and he'd run up to the warlock tank and slap him into the ground. We don't have another raid night before reset, so our next attempt is going to happen on a fresh raid ID.

Wish we knew what causes caster man to stop casting and decide to start swinging on people.

What, the caster guy melee-ing?? lol

He has never tried to swing at me or any other player...havent seen it before/yet.
Only the arcane explosion, blizzard and shadow bolt.
But the last attempt the melee guy decided to run at me when they teleported becuase i was the closes besides the tank but some how didnt get aggro first and swung at me. Did not hit me hard.

Yeah, every attempt ended with caster man stopping what he was doing, running up to the warlock, and swinging at him.

Checking with the Warlock discord shows other raids having the same issue. A couple of ideas right now involve potential LoS issues with the warlock being on the stairs, another being that if the warrior tank is too close during the swap then possibly caster man's shadowbolt goes on cooldown and he starts swinging. Doesn't look like anybody knows for sure what causes this yet, but all signs seem to point to positioning being a problem.

What, the caster guy melee-ing?? lol

Yeah, and he hits hard too. Vek'lor hits our warlocks for 3600 damage per melee swing when he chases them down and starts swinging. I've seen warlocks on the warlock reddit reporting having health pools of 9k unflasked. I'm not familiar with warlock gearing so I'm not sure how that's possible, but our warlocks are sitting at about 5k health unflasked. We gave out flasks of Titans to them last night, but even flasked they get two-shot with that kind of unexpected melee damage.

We were also short on healing, only had 9 present towards the end so that didn't help either.

Checking the warlock discord and I see that other raids are getting swung on by caster man too. Lots of ideas why, but it doesn't seem solved yet. All signs seem to point towards positioning being the root cause though.

How much health did your warlocks have during this fight?

Here's a snip from the logs:

11,344 damage across 3.21 seconds. Over the span of about 3 seconds, he got crushed for 4.4k damage, hit for 2.7k damage, and Arcane Burst on for another 4.1k. Our man Hotsoup got a snap priest shield, had a pally and two priests focused on him and it wasn't enough. The worst part is once Caster Man is in melee range, he starts casting arcane explosion for 4.4k damage instead of shadow bolts for 1.8k.

Here's a shot of a longer fight to see the average shadow bolt damage the warlock is normally taking:

The average damage for shadowbolt is 1.8k. If Caster Man gets up close, he can start bursting for almost 3x that amount, which the healers aren't prepared for.

And oddly enough, Vek'lor started with two shadow bolts before deciding he was done casting. He cast two shadow bolts, stopped, ran over, and punched Hotsoup in the face twice then arcane explosioned him to death.

Still don't know why this happens but it happened a few times last night. Reviewing the logs, it happened less than I thought it did, but it killed the warlock every time it did and it was a quick wipe after that.

How much health did your warlocks have during this fight?

Never heard of that honestly lol I've tanked it about 8 times and he never punched me once.
I did hear your not suppose to tank him while you are on the stairs, maybe that is why he would want to punch the warlock...
I am the one pulling him so what I do is run back across the room towards the entrance and up the stairs.
I do this just to position him right in front of the torch and once he gets there I get off the stairs and spam searing pain.
He will not be up against the wall but thats where the warrior pulls the other guy to the wall when the teleport happens.
Once he teleports away I stand in front of the torch, a little to the left but not to close to the wall, enough to avoid arcane explosion.

I have around 6500+ hp without flask with 310 SR, probably more now cause I just got the staff which has a ton of stamina.
Cant wait for more gear to up my stamina so I can spec out of MD/Ruin, outside of twin emps is brutal dpsing without instant corruption and no improved life tap. The other warlock is around the same, havent flasked yet and dont feel the need its needed, and we downed them 2 out of the possible 3 times available.

OT : Very excited we just killed C'Thun last night was good night! We are no 7/9, Ouro and Visc left.

We always have the warrior be first to face the caster guy. But they don't do much and in the meantime the lock builds agro from a distance. Then the agro transitions and you're good. Since you have a warrior on each side anyway it's really pretty straightforward.

Stairs are bad and can make the twins do weird moves, you should not stand there, only as healer maybe. After pull, our warlocks stand in the triangle shaped corner next to the stairs where you get in by the way.

We also have the physical Tank next to caster Twin on teleport, but that is mostly because he stays in until the very end.
He always eats up to 3 shadowbolts on transition because afaik you get auto aggro after teleport if you are the nearest player. I would say shadowbolts do more damage though, about 3k, so our physical Tank needs some more healing even once caster Twin is there.

Also if you bring 9 healers, they better be very good - we are overall pretty geared and Twins are always a hard test for our Tanks and Healers, even though we usuallly have 11-12 Healers. We are Horde though, maybe palas really shine on Twins.

That said, last ID (clear number 4) we got to Twins with half of the Raid still having Worldbuffs and as Twins mostly demands big numbers it was considerable easier than our first 3 kills.

To be more helpful here is our last kill in WCLogs replay function https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/ZaNfz9kFRb4XHKwQ#fight=40&view=replay .