Hi all.

Our guilds slow (but steady) move into hard mode ops has led us to Thrasher on Darvannis. We had a few good attempts last night, but a few questions about mechanics confound us a little. We've read/seen the Dulfy guide and checked a few other places, but can't find any hard intel on the mechanics around the roar/shield removal off the snipers: We tanked her in the center, and moved towards the snipers when they popped. Is there a known range you need to get within to have the roar remove the sniper shields? Some times it looked like we let the roar go off too far away to get the shield down, but I've also read that sometimes the roar didn't remove the shield at first chance...

We also had soem issues getting to the demolitionist before that. We tried ranged dps and sentinel leap, but couldn't "see" him. I think it's related to the small protuberance on the edge providing some cover. Is there a sweet spot you need to be in to target/jump to the demo?

Leap is tricky to get right, you have to have the positioning just right. Being at max range gives the best line of sight.

Have one tank bring him close but not too close to the wall where the snipers are and (possibly some dps & a healer as well if you like) stand in front of him get knocked up there. If the tank is knocked up there, it should also be close enough to knock them out of cover I think.

Also, if the roar doesn't knock them out of cover, an aoe taunt once you're up there should.

You can in fact do this fight with one tank upstairs the whole time (get knocked up the 1st time, or leap the 1st time) and the other tank stationary at a gate. The upstairs tank runs to the next group and aoe taunts. Getting knocked up there each time is the "real" way to do it though.

You can also have a sniper/gunslinger spec marksman/sharpshooter and use diversion on one of the snipers.

The way our guild does it:

1. We assign a tank, 2 ranged DPS, and a healer to go up top

2. Tank going up top starts the fight, keeps Thrasher near the middle.

3. Snipers pop, tank moves thrasher toward the snipers, close enough to get knocked up top, but not so close as to bounce off the wall. At the same time, the rest of the team moves to stand on top of the tank (he won't cleave between snipers and the knock up).

4. Thrasher knocks the team up top, other tank taunts immediately, and moves to put his back firmly up against a wall so he will never be knocked up.

The range is a bit tricky. There is a skeleton on the ground to your left as you enter the room. That skeleton is the perfect distance from the wall for the tank/team to stand to be sure of getting up top. But the team will need to stand directly on the tank, not off to either side.

Once this is done, the fight becomes pretty easy. The team up top runs around and focuses on demolitionists and snipers, with the DPS throwing out damage on Thrasher in between, and the healer up top throwing out some cross heals on the tank below as they can. You don't have to move Thrasher again, as the DPS up top can damage the snipers from behind. The only thing to be cautious of is when the snipers pop up near Thrasher, if the tank up top decides to use an AoE taunt, the tank with Thrasher will need to single-target taunt immediately.

If you miss somehow, AoEs on the snipers will still damage them, and eventually remove their shields, allowing for direct frontal attacks.

Here's a video where I tanked Thrasher:

I move towards the wall where the snipers spawn and then stay like 8-10m away from it. Hope that helps.

My group used the leap approach to get up to the Demolitionist to deal with the adds, so I'll briefly explain what we did. Again, this only really applies to a group with the right capabilities; the knock up method described by others here works regardless of group composition.

When the adds appeared, our Vanguard tank and our Focus Guardian (me) would target the Demolitionist, orient ourselves more or less face on to the wall beneath where he was standing, and then Storm / Force Leap to him from just about 30 m out. I would normally jump up in the air while standing right at 30 m, or even a bit more than 30 m (like 30.5 m), as the hop would reduce the range to 30 m and allow me to Force Leap. If I got too close (probably 28 m and in; it has been awhile since I did this fight) or came at the wall at an angle, I was LoSed by the lip of the wall, as you noted.

Once up there, the tank and I would stay up there and deal with all the adds, running to the next group as they spawn. The only time we would drop down is if the adds spawned on the opposite side, as we found it was faster to drop down, run across (getting healed as we did) and jump back up. Two small complications -- sometimes the Demolitionist would aggro on someone and run out of LoS, making it impossible to jump to him; also, we would stand on the very edge of the wall so one of our healers could heal us (otherwise we LoS our healer and we eventually die).

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Thanks for the input. We went in again tonight and succeeded in downing Thrasher in hm for the first time. We used a tank, a healer and a slinger up top and it seemed to work perfectly.

We ran around when snipers came opposite side, but called out for the dps on ground to throw in a few AoEs vbefore we could get there to kill them off.

http://www.tranquility-guild.org/forum/images/uploads/thrasherb.jpg

Contrary to what the guide claims, Roar does not remove the shields. I'm actually not sure why this belief is still held, seeing as the content has been out for almost a year. Roar has absolutely no effect on the snipers.

The shields are removed when the sniper agro on a different target from the first one they select. When the sniper spawn, they spawn with a substantial amount of threat on all targets, from which they will agro on a random one and remain on that target until normal threat rules dictate that they switch (130% of existing threat, or 110% if the new target is in melee range). This is why it is possible to drop the shields as a tank simply by AoE tanking.

This is also why it is 100% reliable to drop the sniper shields with an AoE taunt. This literally, truly, never fails. If you have a Vanguard/Powertech, they can even do it without getting knocked up on the wall (the other two tanks can do it too, though they have to stand against the wall and jump up and down a bit).

The way our guild does it:

 

1. We assign a tank, 2 ranged DPS, and a healer to go up top

2. Tank going up top starts the fight, keeps Thrasher near the middle.

3. Snipers pop, tank moves thrasher toward the snipers, close enough to get knocked up top, but not so close as to bounce off the wall. At the same time, the rest of the team moves to stand on top of the tank (he won't cleave between snipers and the knock up).

4. Thrasher knocks the team up top, other tank taunts immediately, and moves to put his back firmly up against a wall so he will never be knocked up.

This is how you do it, theres other ways to do it but this is the best most solid approach for a progressing guild at thrasher.

The only correction is on #4, after one tank gets knocked up top the other tank behind the boss just taunts and thrasher wont knock him anywhere. The tank taunting needs to be fast because when thashers target is out of melee range he ae's. The tank up top also has to be careful with ae taunts because he can get thrasher and cause more raid wide ae.

When the adds appeared, our Vanguard tank and our Focus Guardian (me) would target the Demolitionist, orient ourselves more or less face on to the wall beneath where he was standing, and then Storm / Force Leap to him from just about 30 m out. I would normally jump up in the air while standing right at 30 m, or even a bit more than 30 m (like 30.5 m), as the hop would reduce the range to 30 m and allow me to Force Leap. If I got too close (probably 28 m and in; it has been awhile since I did this fight) or came at the wall at an angle, I was LoSed by the lip of the wall, as you noted.

When using this jump method on my sentinel and vanguard, I tend not to do directly at the Demolitionist but rather a bit to the side as the wall curves. This makes the Demolitionist a bit bigger target and gives you a bit of more space to land on. I will jump in the air at about 30 meters and Force Leap to the Demolitionist.

Leaping head-on has ended up with many unsuccessful attempts; most likely to the game's lag, clipping and positioning issues.

if you have two gunslingers in Sharpshooter build they can alternate their Diversion skill from skill tree to get snipers out of shields. One gunslinger can use Diversion every other time snipers come out so if you have two of them just alternate and you don't have an issue. Two good and decently geared gunslingers should be able to kill all 4 adds with no help from tank what so ever. One gunslinger (one with Diversion on CD) gets 4th mobs and nukes him, other one throws FlyBy, then diversion, then just nuke them one by one. I would spec into improved grenades for this fight as SS and this would help me do max DPS on adds but would require some healing as you would be getting aggro on all three snipers quickly.

and gratz on the kill. What is old history for most guilds, can still be (and is) exiting content for others and its nice to see you guys try to progress thru it.