Welcome to my guide on the Trial of the Crusader. Please note that I will cover rogue-specific roles and strategies only, although melee DPS will probably find something useful here as well.
Northrend Beasts
The first round of TotC pits your group against 4 Northrend Beasts: Gormok the Impaler, Acidmaw, Dreadscale and Icehowl.
Gormok the Impaler
Gormok is a magnataur that carries 4 snobolds on his back. This fight is mostly a tank and spank.
- Get out of the fire on the ground.
- Kill snobolds when they hop on to someone in the group.
- DPS the boss.
Acidmaw & Dreadscale
The next fight involves two jormungars: Acidmaw & Dreadscale. The important thing to note here is that one of them will be mobile while the other is rooted. You need to identify that. The simplest way to do it is to look for the tail. If you can’t find it, then that’s not the worm you should be DPSing.
Dreadscale always starts as the mobile worm. At some point, they’ll burrow to the ground and then swap places, with Acidmaw becoming the mobile worm.
- DPS the mobile worm. Make sure you stay behind it. Stay away from the rooted worm.
- Watch out for poison clouds from the mobile worm. They look like the ones that Grobbulus drops.
- The fight’s big gimmicks are two debuffs: Paralytic Toxin and Burning Bile. Paralytic Toxin can only be dispelled by Burning Bile. If a tank gets hit with the toxin and you have the burning debuff, run to the tank to remove the toxin, then run out of the group because you’ll be doing AoE damage while Burning Bile is on you. If you get the toxin, run to someone with the fire debuff.
- Burning Bile can be dispelled by Cloak of Shadows. I have not verified if this applies to the toxin as well.
Icehowl
Icehowl is a yeti and is the final boss of the Northrend Beasts encounter.
- Again, this is mostly a tank and spank.
- Watch out for Arctic Breath. I recommend you attack him from the side and not from behind.
- He knocks back often. Make sure you’re close to a wall so that you don’t do a lot of walking back.
- His big gimmick is Massive Crash. When he does this, everyone gets knocked back to the wall and gets stunned. Pay close attention to who he targets and get ready to run. You’ll have plenty of time to move away from his charge.
- If he doesn’t hit anything, he gets stunned. Unleash massive DPS.
- If he hits someone, he enrages. Hunters can dispel this, but so can you with Anesthetic Poison.
We’ll cover Lord Jaraxxus in the next post.