Rather than doing one big post with all sections of the strat, I’m going to try to break this up into thirds. Besides, if I post one part then guilt will compel me to finish the rest.
This post is brought to you by Fuzzbutt, who has actually tanked this more than once (unlike me). I did edit it to my heart’s content, however.
General Notes
Cho’gall is a 2 tank fight. The first tank to grab Cho’gall will end up being the add tank. The second tank will kite Cho’gall himself.
(/slaps wordpress and reclaims her image)
Abilities You Need To Pay Attention To
Fury of Cho’gall – aka AMG LASERS – 3 giant frickin laser beams shoot out of Cho’galls heads and give the active tank 2 debuffs. One increases melee damage taken by 20%, and the other increases shadow damage taken by 20%. It stacks.
This is your cue to swap tanks.
When it comes time to swap back, you will still have roughly 10 seconds left on your own debuff… that’s normal. Deal with it and pray for no worship stacks.
Summon Corrupting Adherent – This should (theoretically) happen AFTER the taunt swap. He spawns an adherent at one of two portals on either side of the room. I’ll go into more details of the Adherent’s later.
Shadow’s Orders/Empowered Shadows – This will empower Cho’gall’s weapon to do an aoe shadow burst every time the tank is hit. This is a good place for your avoidance trinkets, to cut down on the raid-wide damage.
Flame’s Orders/Empowered Fire – This will empower Cho’gall’s weapon, causing his melee swings to deal fire damage instead of physical damage. This is the heavy-hitting portion of your tank swap, so feel free to use minor, short duration cooldowns (barkskin, anti-magic shell, etc) to help mitigate this. Also, every time he hits you during this time, he will spawn a patch of flame on a random spot on the floor. They will invariably end up in the least convenient places ever.
Also Going On During All That Shit
Cho’gall will cast “Conversion”, MCing 2 (3 in 25 man) raid members and causing them to buff Cho’gall. This adds 10% more damage each stack. The rest of the raid should be handling this, but feel free to throw out a death grip/avenger’s shield/what have you to interrupt them as well. This is a raid-wiping mechanic if it’s not handled properly–the tanks will just take too much damage. If he gets more than 2 stacks of worship, blow a major cooldown (shield wall, icebound fortitude, etc), ESPECIALLY if he has Flame’s Orders up at the time.
(Been there, died during it, OW.)
Back To Those Adherents – Adherent Tank, This Is For You!
The Corrupting Adherent will need to be kited to a predetermined point to die (in our strat, this is the door–see image above). When he dies, he will leave a pool of blood behind, which will in turn summon 5 miniature adds. Those are for the ranged to play with.
While you’re kiting the son of a bitch, he has two abilities that he’ll be using:
Corrupting Crash – Will target one raid member and do AoE shadow damage where it lands. Has about a 3 second travel time. Causes 10 corruption. Hey guess what! The damage area is bigger than the graphic. Surprise surprise. If he’s really being a prick he’ll target the other tank with it repeatedly.
Depravity – 3 second cast, will hit any raid member in the room with shadow damage and give them 10 corruption. MUST BE INTERRUPTED. In my experience, he always does a depravity right after a corrupting crash. The melee should be following you and helping you interrupt, but he has a tiny ass hit box and they may be worshipped, so be prepared to do any interrupts you can do yourself.
You have roughly 45 seconds to kite the add to the door and kill him before Cho’gall casts Fester Blood. If the adherent isn’t dead by then he’ll do a Shadow AoE and…well…we don’t want that. He’ll cast roughly 4 Corrupting Crashes and 3 depravitys along the way.
Don’t stand in the black puddles on the ground from previous adherents, they give you more corruption points. These black puddles don’t vanish until phase 2 and are part of why you try to kite everything to this nice, out of the way spot.
Phase 2 – < 25% .
Any adherents still alive will melt away–if you know you’re close to phase 2 you can ignore your final adherent. Whoever has Cho’gall near phase change puts Cho’gall against a wall beforehand, to make it easier for the raid to kill the stalks.
This is a strict burn phase. There’s no more Empowered Shadow/Fire, no more adherent summons, no more fester blood, and no more conversion. He will still do Fury of Cho’gall, so keep an eye on that for taunt swapping. If you’re not tanking the boss then you get to go play with eyeball stalks. They have only one ability, Debilitating Beam. It is teh suck and should be interrupted (stalks can be stunned). Army of the dead is win, etc. Hopefully Cho’gall falls over dead before you do!
I Like Bubbles 
#1 by Chamsa on May 31, 2011 - 11:36 am
nice info bubbles! wheres the flow chart to stay out of pain and in the win?
#2 by SilentAlias on May 31, 2011 - 12:14 pm
Some caveats from a Paladin tank.
Flame’s Orders will also make you, the tank, look like you’re spewing lava dropplets everywhere. This is a great visual effect that tells you to pop Mirror of Broken Images, glyphed Divine Protection, or equivalent magic damage mitigating cooldown.
Fury of Cho’Gall takes him several seconds to cast – but once he starts casting it, his target is set. The taunting tank can and should taunt as soon as Cho starts casting, to prevent a post-Fury swing, or to give the add tank more time to get to the adds.
Moving Cho’Gall along the path described in the diagram is a raid choice – many raids simply position Cho’Gall between his throne and the center of the room, giving the Add tank just enough time to run back and taunt after Fury, while keeping the raid more or less stacked up the entire time.
Melee DPS should stay on Cho’Gall the entire time if possible, while ranged DPS should switch to the Big Add and the little Adds – some raid compositions do not permit this however.
As the Add tank, keep any ranged interrupts handy for worship during your kiting phase – while you will never be targeted so long as you have the add aggro, your healer very well might be. If you cannot interrupt at range, your ranged DPS should be keeping their eyes out.
Timing may be such that Cho’Gall will worship immediately prior to fury, while the add tank is running back – attempt to interrupt any worshippers on your way, but do not stop or turn back if your interrupt failed – taking Cho away from the furied tank is more important, especially if there are worship stacks incomming.
Some strategies attempt to stack Furies on the add tank (since Fury shows up on DBM timers after the first one is cast) similar to how a single tank (or dps) builds up Break stacks during the Chimaeron encounter. This is ill advised – multiple fury stacks make tanking the add more difficult, and can lead to a quick death if targeted by an eye stalk in phase 2 before the stacks have fallen off.
#3 by Cinderhaze on May 31, 2011 - 2:38 pm
I was wondering why you have a ‘cho’gall kiting path’ I’ve only see strats where you keep cho’gall tanked right on the little elevator thing in the middle of the room.. Do you kite him around so you can get melee cleave damage on the add that spawns?
#4 by Verdthandi on May 31, 2011 - 3:14 pm
One thing that we discovered that works beautifully for killing p2 adds quickly is to tank him on the throne. Everything ends up beautifully in cleave range.
And, even better as a paladin, Avenger’s Shield range for a triple-interrupt.
#5 by achloryn on May 31, 2011 - 3:42 pm
@SilentAlias – yeah, the option of kiting Cho’gall is simply a strategy our raid does. In no way is it supposed to be be-all end-all do it this way nao.
Also, Melee staying on cho’gall and ranged on the big add is as much a raid choice as moving him around the room is, and by no means set in stone, regardless of raid comp. We generally have our melee follow the big add, and ranged stay on cho’gall, or switch back and forth possibly… honestly i’m not *exactly* sure what they do. Probably some of both, depending on circumstances.
@Cinderhaze the reason we move cho’gall along with the add is to minimize the range between healers, dps, and anybody who’s worshiped at awkward positions (like when the add tank/melee is running back to taunt cho’gall)
I know moving Cho’gall isn’t really a well-known strat, but it works well for us, and here’s a video of us (Amber is in there too somewhere, but i’m the one tanking/recording the video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA0mowVVBuY i’ll warn you, my offtank tends to be a bit loud, so you might wanna turn down the volume.
#6 by Kotakh on June 1, 2011 - 10:53 am
@Cinderhaze the reason we move cho’gall along with the add is to minimize the range between healers, dps, and anybody who’s worshiped at awkward positions (like when the add tank/melee is running back to taunt cho’gall)
Thats especially important since we’re 2 healing this fight. So if a healer get worship, it helps to have the other healer in range.
#7 by Charlotte on May 21, 2017 - 3:06 am
You only have to go to a research group to see that the general public are far more cobrtfoamle with stuff they’v seen before.Just before you throw yourself through the mirror and call them all cunts.Ooooh hark at me all sweary.