World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

There are two instances located in the predominantly troll held zone of Zul’Drak.  Both of these instances are filled to the brim with trolls just waiting for you to send back to their graves.  In Drak’Tharon you are likely to have to send them back to their graves since many of them are undead and serve the Lich King.  In Gundrak you get to learn a little more about the Ice Trolls and find out how they have been fending of the Lich Kings power in the area.

Heroic: Drak’Tharon Keep

This is the standard achievement for defeating each instance on heroic mode.  Simply make your way through the instance (while on heroic mode) and kill all of the bosses. Each boss requires a little bit of strategy, however being a mere heroic the strategies are generally pretty simple.  Brief explanations for each boss are given below, as well as more detail regarding the achievements that you can accomplish for each boss.

Trollgore – This is the first boss in the instance and is almost a pure tank and spank.  The only complications are his consume ability and the additional trolls that come down the stairs throughout the fight.  Consume is a stacking 5% damage boost that he gains for each player that his Consume ability hits. It hits anyone in LOS of Trollgore every time it is cast, which is roughly every 15 seconds. Also, if any of the trolls reach Trollgore he will turn to them and hit and kill them.  Then later on he can cast Corpse Explosion and cause significant AOE damage to anyone nearby. 

The tank should hold him in the center of the room to allow a ranged player time to kill the incoming trolls before they reach Trollgore.  Past that just DPS him down before his Consume ability stacks past the healers ability to heal the tank.

Consumption Junction Achievement

To get this achievement you have two options. You can play it safe and use LOS to avoid letting Trollgore stack Consumption, or you can use big DPS to just burn him down before he gets 10 stacks.  With most groups at this stage in the game, just DPS him full out and you should be able to earn the achievement.  To do this you need to burn him down within 30 seconds or he will reach 10 stacks. Since he does not do much damage initially, many groups have the healer DPS to start with to help out.

If you do not have the DPS have the tank find a corner to tank him by and when players see Trollgore casting Consumption run around the corner to avoid it.  He will cast it every 15 seconds.  Using this method you have a significantly longer amount of time to defeat Trollgore as he should only gain 1 stack from being in LOS of the tank each time he casts Consumption.

Novos the Summoner – This fight is made up of two phases.  The first phase has additional creatures being summoned from the top of the stairs and running down into the room to help in the fight.  Periodically crystal handlers will spawn in the two halls leading into the room and enter the fight.  While this is happening Novos is protected by a force field that prevents all damage, until four crystal handlers are defeated.  Once four have been defeated his shield will disappear, the adds stop spawning, and phase one ends.

Once phase two starts all players switch to Novos and DPS him down.  He has no aggro table and is not tankable so everyone just needs to go full out on him.  He will cast spells at random players and summon undead to assist him.  Avoid any AOE spells he uses, heal and decurse affected players while killing him.

Once you are on phase two it’s a simple fight.

Oh Novos! Achievement

This is probably the simplest of the achievements in Drak’Tharon Keep.  Simply station a player on the stairs that can AOE DPS and burn down the adds as they enter.  Many groups will accomplish this without even trying for it.  The adds do not hit hard enough for most players even to need to worry about being healed, especially if you have a blood DK assigned to the stairs.

King Dread – This big dinosaur gives some groups issues, however he really is a big pussy cat.  The two main abilities to watch for are Grievous Bite and Bellowing Road, other than that he is a tank and spank.  Grievous Bite is an attack done to the tank that causes a large amount of bleed damage per second until fully healed.  Bellowing Roar is an AOE fear that sends everyone running.  Also throughout the fight he will summon raptors to assist him, if you have not cleared out all of the closest ones.

Simply have the tank pull him out of the room so that when fears take place players are not running into additional raptors or out of line of sight.  Also make sure the tank gets healed to full as soon as Grievous Bite occurs.  If those two things happen it is an easy fight.  Later in the fight when you do get additional raptors, just let the tank establish aggro and then burn them down.

Better off Dred Achievement

To accomplish this achievement you basically ignore the normal logic of the fight, minimizing adds, and instead pull as many as you can handle each time he finishes a fear.  The best way to do this is have the tank pull him into his pen and immediately get the 2-3 raptors nearby.  Have DPS drop them as quickly as possible and then grab additional raptors one at a time.  If you have a Hunter or Rogue that can misdirect to the tank even better, but any ranged DPS can pull the next raptor and then run past the tank and let them taunt it off of you.  Kill six raptors before you finish off King Dred and you will have this achievement.

The Prophet Tharon’ja – The Prophet is a large winged skeletal serpent found at the top of the keep.  The fight is broken down into two alternating phases.  The first phase is a simple tank and spank encounter where he is tanked in the middle while DPS works on defeating him. 

Occasionally he will cast Curse of Flesh and become mortal and turn everyone in the group into skeletons; this is phase two.  While in skeleton form players have four abilities.  They have a melee attack, a taunt, bone armor, and a drain life attack.  The tank needs to use the later three to hold aggro and last through the incoming damage.  The rest of the group uses the melee and drain life attacks to do damage and heal themselves.  While in phase two he will also drop poison clouds on the ground that do significant damage.  Make sure everyone moves out of these clouds and the phase is easy.

The fight rotates between the two phases until you have defeated the prophet.  Once you have you will earn the Heroic Drak’Tharon Keep achievement and can find your way out by dropping through the broken stairs at the far end of the platform.

There is no boss achievement for this fight.