Twin Val'kyr

The fourth boss encounter in Trial of the Crusader is the Twin Val'kyr (a.k.a. The Twin Loot Piñatas). Even though the strategy for this fight seems very complicated, the execution is simple, and the encounter itself turned out to be the easiest so far.

Is it just me, or isn't a raid instance tuned badly when every new encounter is one- or two-shotted? Aren't we supposed to be wiping for hours to learn a new boss and than feel the rush of adrenaline and satisfaction when it's downed? Coliseum is nowhere near that. People can slack on learning tactics, slack on execution, do stupid mistakes, and we STILL down the bosses.

The Faction Champions were tough the first week, until people managed to change their mindset from PvE to PvP. This week it was a two-shot, and on the second attempt we barely had any deaths at all.

Anyway, let's return the focus to the Twin Val'kyr. As I mentioned above, the tactics seem a lot more complicated than they are.

There are two mobs: Edyis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane. They share a health pool, so it doesn't really matter how you split your dps, but to split it about half on each is best, due to the nature of the encounter.

There are four portals in the room, two black and two white. When you click on them, you get a black or white buff. When you have the white buff, you take less "white" damage, and you do more damage to the black val'kyr. When you have the black buff, you take less "black" damage, and you do more damage to the white val'kyr. Split the raid, so that half gets the white buff and the other half gets the black buff. Target the corresponding mob and start the fight.

(Note: Darkbane is doing shadow damage, while Lightbane is doing fire damage. Fire resistance aura and Shadow protection are good buffs.)

Things to look out for:

• Black and white orbs spawn in the room. People having the white buff will get an extra stacking damage buff if they absorb a white orb, and take some minor damage if they absorb a black orb, and vice versa. If the orbs reach the boss, they will also get the stacking damage buff, so that should be avoided if possible.
• Light/Dark Vortex is a nasty AoE damage ability that does significant "white"/"black" damage to the entire raid if people are not having the right buff up. To avoid damage, everybody must make sure to have the right buff (i.e. the white buff if it is a Light Vortex). The spell has an 8 second cast time, so you have plenty of time to get to the nearest portal and get the correct buff in time.
• Twin's Pact is a powerful heal that needs to be interrupted. The val'kyr that is casting this heal is shielded by a 250k shield. The cast time for the heal is 15 seconds, so that's how much time you have to burn through the shield and interrupt the heal. To be able to burn trough the shield in time, everybody has to switch buff to the opposite of the target (i.e. switch to the white buff forEdyis Darkbane). After the heal is interrupted, everybody should return to their assigned buff and target.

A random Vortex or Twin's Pact spell is cast every 45 seconds and is announced well in advance.

We tanked the two val'kyrs close to eachother between two portals. That way the melee didn't have to move so much when switching targets during Twin's Pacts and everybody was in range of healers at all times. Everybody is also close enough to both types of portals so that they quickly can switch buff before a Light or Dark Vortex.

As a tank, this fight is a faceroll. Get the right buff, and your threat will be insane if you get some stacks of the damage buff (by absorbing orbs). Switch to the safe buff before a Vortex, and then switch back to the assigned one as soon as possible afterwards. Damage is negligible. The val'kyrs have special attacks that are supposed to hurt the tank, but I didn't even notice them.

We wiped once due to the raid leader announcing the wrong thing to do before a vortex, which caused confusion and resulted in half the raid dying. The second attempt was a clean kill without any deaths.

It will be very interesting to see how Blizzard tunes the heroic version of this raid instance. The normal mode is just too easy.