Holy crud. This is so hard.
I’m looking for all build/trinket advice possible. I have one trinket that’s really good from emerald nightmare (AOE pool of dps) but don’t have another.
I can’t get through the first phase, even.
Any advice in general on how I can have an easier time? I find that boomkin affinity is too tough to swap back and forth.
I’m a 2488 IO and a 2100+ arena duelist, so I like to think I’m okay at this game… but WOW
You kind of have to do that, unless you want the first phase to be an 8+ minute slog…
That said: If you have the Claws of Ursoc at exactly 50 ilevel, you can apply enchants to them that come from before BFA… though Force Multiplier and Versatile Navigation were what I went with. (Yes, you can apply enchants/oils to both parts of the artifact.)
If you really want to min-max and have a level 45 leather wearing friend, you could drag them through BC instances to have them trade ilevel 50 gear for you that has 2-3 sockets in them – you won’t be able to put SL gems in them, but I think you’re able to put in BFA epic quality gems into them since those are ilevel 50.
I personally have done this challenge without any crazy stuff like minmaxing trinkets, pots that do insane damage, etc.
It’s all about practice & choosing when’s the best time to go back in and deal damage to the boss if you’re not doing the moonkin form strat(I did mine in bear form at all times and completed this 15min in on day 1 release when servers came up(the fight wasn’t 15min, my first attempt I got knocked off by an infernal at 10% on kruul 
). so mine was done before any nerf was in).
also, pay more attention to where your galactic guardian procs are going to. if you’re using that talent(I did). it’s a waste to use it on the eyes/infernos if you’re struggling with boss damage.
mainly make your decision on when to damage the boss based off, are the purple adds spawning soon, do you have barkskin up for it, or do you need to interrupt/typhoon drain life soon.
if infernals happen to be on the boss, don’t be afraid. never stop moving, and if you’re in range to be hit by an infernal, never strafe left/right if you know the cast is coming for the knockback. you’ll just make it easier for them to hit you.
there’s plenty of ways to cheese this. you don’t have to, but if you don’t, then you better be really good at the spec & know when to make certain decisions. you don’t HAVE to go in moonkin form at all. it does make it easier, but it’s not required. if you’re struggling with when to swap & do damage in moonkin form, just stick to bear form. if you’re using certain cheese items such as trinkets that do a lot more damage than they should, you will be able to phase and be just fine.
Ghost Dragonling whatever trinket. Its an Eng Trinket which can be bought off the AH, then pop a few Cogs in it. Last i checked the Trinket was real cheap, but the dragon proc did a lot of damage.
Phase 2 never leave bear. Pop everything and go Ham. When he goes to cast Anni, grab an orb…if you can’t get to an orb intime use one of your CD’s
I feel your pain!
I finally got my bear a few hours ago on my 57th pull. The last 3 attempts including the final one i ran with the following:
Talents: 1/3/1/3/2/2/1
Trinkets: laser trinket from HFC / seed pod from EN
Enchants: lightless force and dancing steel with shadowcore oil
Consumables: Unbridled Rage Potions, smothered shank food, flask, scroll of battle shout, veiled augment, drums
RL Consumables: Beer, Tobacco, more Beer
I tried to spend the least amount of gold possible, but those unbridled potions were so crucial along with drums.
The key to success (for me at least) was pumping in moonkin form as much as possible along with thrash and seed pod to push out of Ph1 with only 1 infernal up. Then with kruul its just a matter of kiting in a circle and leaving space for me to grab an orb.
Tried to stun and keep him off the first annihalate as long as possible. I got him to 2% so many times and would panic and hit a CD too early. Gotta stay level headed for sure which is a challenge in itself.
You’ll definitely get it, I believe!
A lot of guides will tell you stack as much +Agi as you can and I tried it by using some old PvP Craftable gear with +agi gems/enchants etc. There are plenty of guides out there that can tell you how to obtain it easy (via gold). There are several trinkets listed that are easy to farm up as well (i.e. EN trinket).
Focus on getting “the dance” down in P1 and P2 that helps more than anything BUT when I got my kill I had a wild hair and just stacked as much +Vers as I could from current SL Gear (ZM gear has a lot of Vers on it) and used the Legion Bear Weapon with double enchant., runes and +ver food. No drums or pots used for the kill (I ran out). I actually killed him and was alive at the end with about 50% health instead of the NPC’s finishing him off.
I can’t reiterate enough about getting a good feel for the dance instead of just trying to bull through the encounter.
This 100%
Until you are hitting the soft enrage (too many tank busters in p2), gear doesn’t matter.
If you are dying to damage throughout the fight, you need to be using frenzied regen, maybe popping out for regrowths, using barkskin, etc more effectively.
If the little arcane adds are killing you, focus on holding the gcd so you can instantly incap roar the cast. Make sure you have rage to stack a couple ironfurs for them after you stop their cast—their melee hurts iirc. Plan out your defensives if you need to; just make sure the timings will allow correct defensives in p2.
If you are getting knocked off, you need to stay on top of killing eyes and keeping infernals positioned well so you can see them all (the fight is completely doable with a bunch of infernals up—you just need to keep eyes on them so you can dodge.)
If you get all that down and really are hitting the soft enrage, (I forget what it should be—4-5 busters? If you’re getting one shot before that it means you aren’t correctly rotating your defensives) to get more damage, make sure you are using drums, damage potion, on use trinkets/items and lining them up with incarn. That will compound the damage as much as possible. When it’s all rolling make sure you are keeping uptime on the boss.
You can also squeeze out more time in p2 by using mighty bash and orbs to cancel the tank buster cast as late as possible. Even though he recasts, every second kruul spends on the first cast that you cancel is free dps time.
Keep moonfire up 100%
Make sure thrash stays at 3 stacks and mangle in incarn otherwise.
Always be pressing something to damage kruul. Swipe if nothing else is up, spam moonfire if you were forced into ranged.
highly recommend not using siege gear, and just stick to shadowlands. one scales down, the other doesnt scale up… and for me it was a difference from 8k hp to 12k.
as for trinkets… my #1 dps source was
pretty decent, and if you’re lucky it can proc a socket.
other trinket really popular is of course the pod
i think blood spattered scale would be ok too… trinkets dont really matter so much as you knowing exactly when to use cooldowns. cant just pop everything at once… patience,
collect your rage, use self heals, time the barkskin, and ironfurs, and instincts or whatnot… just keep your cool and stay close to orbs.
took me forever, but i blame using siege gear (agi gemmed)… the day i switched to shadowlands i got it. drop that pod at beginning and every cooldown right under, keep thrash stacks on him. and macro the skull bash (@focus). and update the /focus soon as kruul lands (i had a macro), you have to interrupt his heal, or it’s gg.
i used boomkin affinity, just go ham at start, less to deal with later if you kill it faster boomkin also gets you an interrupt or way to reposition the mobs with typhoon.
also highly recommend you check out the addon for dbm for mage tower… has great warnings.
It’s definitely possible to get ilevel 50 gear with tons of sockets on it, but you’d need outside help to obtain said gear – namely a level 45 leather wearer that’ll trade stuff he gets in BC instances to you. [EDIT: this is no longer accurate with the leveling ilevel rebalancing…]
…that said, I do have to slightly question the effectiveness of doing so, since some multi socket gear seems to have less secondary/primary stats on it, and sometimes the stats you gain from sockets doesn’t cover the shortcoming… 
I finally got it! Not proud that it took me 168 tries, but here’s my takeaways:
It really is about the dance. You just need to get really comfortable with the chaos. For me, that was really tough. P2 knockbacks ended up being the bane of my existence.
I kept blaming trinkets or gear, but it really is a mechanic fight.
I saved all of the orbs until the last minute I needed them
I really focused on aoe nuking the infernals down with the boss, dancing around them, and stopped getting knocked off so much
Popping incarn right as the phase started felt way better than holding it. That’s what I did when I eventually got it.
You really need a plan for each annihilate. First I did ironfur, second I just did Barkskin, third I did Survival instincts, and fourth I did SI + Barkskin. And when fifth came, I locked him in 4 orbs worth of extensions while I nuked him down.
As far as the damage, it felt overwhelming for like the first 120 pulls. But you get really comfortable with weaving frenzied regens on CD as well as boomkin regrowths (especially topping yourself off WHILE getting aggro from nether adds!
Good luck for anyone else trying to attempt it!
Congrats man, enjoy your fel bear
This seems hard but it isn’t. It took me 40 attempts, then I got the trinket you mentioned and it took me 5 attempts with it. It’s just a matter of getting used to all the adds and things to deal with, once you do that it gets 100x easier. I would suggest not using consumables until you have fully learned the fights.
Now for the actual advice. When you see the eyes just sunfire or moonfire them and you can pretty much forget about them if they aren’t casting at you.
Just do a cycle of using trinket, barkskin, trinket, bark, trinket, bark, etc. . You want to wait for the purple adds to stack on you and the boss when you pop trinket so you can cleave it all down, sometimes you can even kill without using incap roar.
The infernals are just a keep moving check, if you keep moving side to side then you shouldn’t really have a problem with them, try to throw a couple dots on them if possible but it’s not the end of the world of you don’t. You want to try and keep them taking cleave as it will help if you are having trouble with them.
The big caster guy is just a loser who hits you with wet noodles until you die, the only big thing with him is kicking his drain life and dpsing him when you have nothing else to do. You want to kill him as you finish killing the vortex adds, if you don’t Kruul starts off harder than needed.
Kruul is simple in theory, but by the time you get to him your adrenaline is pumping and you’re probably not thinking the best. So for him you want to kick his twisting reflection (if you don’t just jump off edge because you won’t kill him). The first annihialte you can just tank it at full hp and then frenzy regen it. Second Annihilate you want to use barkskin+frenzy regen. For the third (people got upset at me last time I said this, but it worked for me so 
) you want to just use your orbs up, when he is about to cast annihilate you want to just pop a quick orb and then keep dpsing him. Keep moving side to side as the infernals will camp the orbs if you just move predictable in a straight line towards the orbs.
Speaking of orbs, I forgot to say that you can use 2 before you get to kruul. You can maybe use 3, but if you have to use 3 it’s gonna be a very very tight squeeze on kruul. I like to wait till the 3rd wave and then pop trinket+orb to just do massive damage to everything.
EDIT: woops I just saw that you got it. Congrats!
For me, I tried a few times until my gear was 100% broken (Repair bill 1200g). I am clearly doing something wrong because I get maybe 3 stacks of that debuff that reduces my HP. I go in with 13K, 3 stacks gives me less than 5K HP, and those dumb adds hit me for more than 5K (per add) and 1shot me in bear form.
Tried the boomkin form to stay out of the debuff area, but then when first infernal spawns it immediately punts me off the platform. I was standing to its left and slightly behind it and still got punted, guess having something called latency also exponentially increases the stupidity of this encounter, seems like I can be outside and have 60ms world server latency, but as soon as I go inside, 270ms. Also in moonkin form still can hardly do more damage than in bear.
Funny now they gate many things behind huge achievements, then at some point they say… hey lets give everyone that because why not (talking about flying in Kul’Trias). But this they keep as a dumb level challenge. Why not make a tanking challenge a tanking challenge instead of a do everything exactly right and hope you dont get punted off the platform challenge while healing the clown NPC that you cant let die and doing enough DPS to not get 1 shot my the bosses enrage tactics.
I find it interesting that in legion timewalking dungeons and raids I get scaled back to have around 22k HP. But in this scaled i am scaled back to 13K hp.
I would have been nice to have the extra form look, but I just dont have the patience to beat my head against the wall after I noticed that if I stand in the debuff area for more than 5 seconds just one of the adds can 1 shot overkill me from full hp. They can also almost 1shot the NPC you have to keep alive as a tank.
Alternate bear druid form isnt that important to me to be bothered continuing to try and bash my head against the wall. I feel like its a dumb encounter that is tuned to have gold spent on it.
Feels all forms of broken to me.
The thing to remember about this fight is its really a lot less about DPSing the ‘boss’ and its more controlling the encounter.
Both times I’ve gotten the form, I didn’t do anything fancy. Didn’t use pots, drums, etc. I didn’t do boomkin at all except on the pull when I did HotW + Convoke. Especially now, you have more than enough defensives. Convoke is a good defensive. between that, Rage, and barkskin, you should have a defensive ready almost all the time.
Moonfire everything, strafe, kill adds, interupt and use defensives. When I would interupt, I’d stay in and dps a bit until I got to the stack limit I wanted and then I ran out and let them drop. Always strafe, almost looking around, tagging the adds, etc.
If you are standing still, that is why you are getting punted. That’s why you should always be strafing around. If you do, you’ll be side stepping the infernal punt.
I did it with the gear my guardian had on. It’s a mechanics fight not a gear fight. Just need to study and study every mechanic and practice
Never stand still. Balance affinity and build for moonfire spam but always stay in guardian. Moonfire spam eyes and use incap roar to interrupt the ghosts and thrash them down. Always prioritize the interrupt on the boss heal. Dont worry about dps on the boss in p1 the other parts are more important. Also, use a phial like glacial fury as it provides a ton of damage in that fight. Save all orbs for p2 and chain them after incarn and your interrupts are on cd. Tier sets are also active now in mage tower.
How many pulls did it take you to get it? I want the skin, but not 50 pulls bad.
I dont remember how many pulls but it was like 3 hours or so of attempts. Once you can reliably get to p2 it wont take long. Also, there is a dbm addon for mage tower that is extremely helpful. Dont forget pots of power either and use them when you incarn p2.
Took me about 17 tries when it came back
Took me about 200 tries the very first time
For me the kicker was to use an orb every other interrupt. Once you can get those interrupts down, the fight is done for
I didn’t take boomkin or starsurge. I did take bear arcane and moonfire talents. completed a couple weeks ago never left bear. Take typhoon with head butt. Spam moonfire like crazy. Also use dis roar on the three ghost arcane guys when they start to cast.
Also, the infernels are just there to screw with your head. They really are nothing to worry about as long as you keep moving. Once you figure out how harmless they are becomes a lot easier
Once you get the first phase it just clicks.
The second phase is way worse. You need drums and well fed and potion with flask. Use your barksjin for first apoc and survive instincts for next two. You have to interrupt the other thing he did that makes him heal. Also save orbs and use them in second phase.
It takes a little luck and repetition.