Through a Glass, Darkly - Boomkin Guide: Part Two

Through a Glass, Darkly is part of a chain quest to obtain the legendary Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. I will be splitting this guide into two parts. The first part of the guide will be regarding preparation and the second will be a short walk-through about the entire encounter.

Why, hello there, Miss Blue Blingy!
Part Two:Through a Glass, Darkly - Boomkin POV Guide

Welcome to Part Two, which is a walk-through of the quest Through a Glass, Darkly. This guide is aimed specifically toward the Boomkin class. I mention this first and foremost due to the recent changes in the instance to accomodate a moonkin's inability to purge/dispel magic. Basically, we got more adds to deal with at the end than the others. Either way, I hope it is useful in some regard.

Moving onward, the instance is separated into three unique portions, the beginning, the rift, and final boss. Each portion of the instance has various mobs and mechanics that you will need to overcome. If at any time your boomkin is killed then you will restart the portion that you had died within. Keep in mind that you can repeat the portions for as long as you remain logged within the game. Don't forget to read the first part of this guide in regards to important notes and warnings about the quest.

 You go first little hatchling. I'll stay here...
The Beginning

As you come into Coldarra a short cinematic will occur. Afterwards, you find yourself beak to snout with Tarecgosa, herself. Show her the Timeless Eye and she will ask you to accompany her into the Nexus. The interior of the Nexus looks to be the same but there are a few changes to the layout as you'll soon discover.

Once inside, buff up/eat consumables and then speak to Tarecgosa. She will turn into her elf form to accompany you. One of the things you will note is that you now have a passive health/mana buff. So long as you remain near Tarecgosa you will benefit from it.


As you follow Tarecgosa into the corrider(shown in the above picture)a Nexus Warden ventures forward. She will then cast a spell upon your boomyness to turn you temporarily invisible. Follow her past the dragonkin(whom keeps going forward on his own way) and into the room where your first mobs are to be engaged:


Encounter:
Icebound Sentinel x1
Magic Hunters x 2

Tarecgosa will focus on the Sentinel. Quickly put the Sentinel as your focus and get ready because two dogs are on their way and fast. A Magic Hunter appears on the left side so start to DPS him. Kite as much as you can and do not stay still. Keep your DoTs up on the Sentinel. Keep kiting as the hounds have an annoying silence lock that will of course prevent you from casting. Not only that but the Sentinel casts an ability underneath your feet that erupts a heavily damaging ice spike. You do not want to stay stationary. By this time the second hound should have arrived. Keep him off Tarecgosa and keep damaging the Sentinel until it's downed.

Note: If at any time Tarecgosa's health falls to 10% she will iceblock to protect herself. Any remaining mobs will focus on you.

After these adds are destroyed Tarecgosa will start moving again. Follow behind her carefully and take note of the hallway with smoke fumes as it will turn up again. Don't run through the fumes you will take heavy damage.

Encounter:
Icebound Sentinel x1

Magic Hunters x 2

After clearing that small bit a Sentinel and two Magic Hunters will away you. Again, Tarecgosa will engage the Sentinel. Hibernate one Magic Hunter and DPS the other down. Keep DoTs up on the Sentinel until the last dog is down and then switch to the Sentinel.

Should you find yourself in combat(very buggy instance btw) and lacking health after that fight then now is the time to heal up. Quickly throw a rejuvation and Lifebloom x 3 upon yourself. Two Nexus Wardens will immediately arrive. This is where Tarecgosa encases you in ice and then pretends to hold you captive. The heals will continue to tick away as you are frozen. As soon as the Nexus Wardens move on a Sentinel appears. Do no engage it! Also, do not follow behind Tarecgosa as she runs after the Sentinel.

This is because your second add encounter in this section begins with three adds.

Encounter:
Magic Hunters x 3

No time to waste here as all three hounds will silence lock and maul you to death. Also, thanks to that frozen encasement we have a temporary movement buff. Thank you, Miss Dragon. At any rate, root one dog, hibernate the second, and kite/DPS the last. Use of an un-glyphed typhoon and talented slow to mushrooms is especially handy here to control the active dog you are DPSing. Keep a rejuvenation on yourself as needed.

Gauntlet of Doom Encounter:

Keep moving but don't run into the walls of smoke!
After the three dogs are killed then proceed forward but careful you are about to enter a gauntlet through a hallway filled with the previous smoke fumes plus several adds frozen in ice. The encased adds will unfreeze and attack as soon as you go near them. If the adds reach you, be warned, they will hit like trucks. Luckily their health is very small. I found a single moonbeam is enough to kill them. Navigate upwards and be wary of the smoke plumes as you do not want to run through them. The point is to keep moving forward. Use starfall if it is off CD or rampage through with a kitty sprint and drop mushrooms at the end. Detonate! If your health waivers too much then keep a rejuvenation as you battle forward. The reason is that once an add is killed, the they do and will respawn at a high rate. The last thing you want is to deal with adds that you had just killed ontop of any new ones that have broken out.

Ceredos is no ordinary Magic Hunter..

The Librarium Encounter
Sentinels x 2
Mini-boss: Ceredos

As you enter the Librarium you find Tarecgosa is being bound by two Sentinels. Although these Sentinels are elite monstrosities they are also at half-health. Enagage only the first Sentinel. It has the same abilities as the previous you have encountered earlier. As soon as the second Sentinel is activated then Tarecgosa is unbound and helps you to DPS it down. Also note that you are finally receiving her passive aura again, hurray!

Afterwards, she will lead you a little to the side where you come across an ice wall. It's here that you must protect Tarecgosa while she attempts to shatter the wall with her flames. Protect her from what exactly? The mini-boss Ceredos of course! He is a larger form of a Magic Hunter. He has the same abilities plus a bonus spell that deals arcane damage in a straight beam. This can be interupted with Solar Beam or easily dodged to the side. Keep him kited, use treants if you'd like, and DPS him down. He does not hit for hard but he will silence if the gap is closed between you two.

With Ceredos down, the ice wall is at last shattered.

Welcome to the second portion of the instance; the Rift!

Note the clickable orbs - they are important
Thankfully, this portion of the instance is a sigh of relief compared to the first part.  Here, you will be jumping from a small round platform that will move and rotate around bigger platforms that hold Twilight dragonkins upon them. The idea is to engage the mob, DPS it down and click on the white orbs to mitigate their biggest attack. This is also where you get a first glimpse at Thyrinar, the final NPC boss.


Encounter per platform:
Twilight Riftweaver
Twilight Spellbinder x2

Noteworthy: Around each platform are four orbs. They are primarily there to help you deal with the damage from the shadow nova spell the Riftweavers(Male dragonkin) cast. Two orbs is ideal to have on you before the un-interruptable cast is finished. It will put you under a dome that mitigates half the damage dealt to you.

Let's begin!

Click on the small platform before you. It will begin to travel and take you to the first larger platform with a Twilight Riftweave upon it. DPS him down. As soon as he is dead you can jump onto his platform. You can tell this by hovering your mouse over the platforms and a green vehicle arrow will show. Once you jump onto the larger platform two Spellbinder(the female dragonkins) will arrive. They have low health so put DoTs on one Spellbinder and then focus DPS the other. By the time you are down with the first the one with your DoTs has either keeled over or is close to it.

Now there should be a small round platform to your right. Jump onto it and it will immediately take you to the next fight. Off in the distance you see Tyracgosa and Thyrinar duking it out. Nevermind that(at least for now) and take down the Riftweaver. This one will cast standard Shadow Bolts(which can be silenced) and also the Shadow nova. Once you see this then click on two orbs to form the protective dome around your boomkin. DPS as usual. Rinse and repeat.

At a certain point, Thyrinar will come near you to say 'Hello!' in a devious manner. Quickly jump to the nearest platform. The platform you want comes into view on the right-side. Thyrinar is not happy to see you and attacks the platform you're standing upon with a flame breath. If you do not jump to safety then the platform will crumble and you wlll fall to your death. Our dragon friend sees this attack and quickly aerial pounces Thyrinar whom seemingly falls from sight.

Once you are safe, the platform will take you to a last bout with a Riftweaver. As soon as he is killed the platform will then drop to the ground. Don't despair when you see scores of elite dragonkin running around the bottom where you land. Tyracgosa will swoop in with a blizzard storm and freeze all the enemies. If any buffs have fallen off then now is the time to refresh them. Get your macros and potions ready there is barely any time to spare. Go up the ramp that leads to the final encounter of the instance.

            Evil, crafty, infuriating...Thyrinar!

Final Boss: 
Thyrinar, servant of Deathwing
Twilight Invader x # (They actually keep coming one after another)

This encounter has been modified for a Boomkin. The fight we experience is slightly different to the other classes. This is due to a Boomkin's inability to purge/dispel the Twilight Restoration spell that Thyrinar casts upon himself. It's a huge heal and damage reduction spell that made it nearly impossible for Boomkins to successfully down him. Blizzard in their infinite wisdom then added an in extra bonus of adds in order to not trivialize the fight. Hurray?

Onwards! Scurry up the ramp and meet up with Tyracgosa. She is happily unaware that Thyrinar is now sneaking up behind her. He was not put out of action earlier and swiftly imprisons our dragon friend.

The bad news is that Thyrinar is now focused upon your boomkin. The good news is that his health is not full and despite Tyracgosa's incapacitation she still gives us passive help with two auras at different stages of the fight. The first aura is the same health/mana regen that we had but the second comes around 20% of Thyrinar's health which gives us a massive 100% haste buff!

Thyrinar  - has two abilities to watch out for in this fight. Twilight blast, which is interuptible, and Twisting Twilight, which is a laser beam that follows you around and leaves a trail of damaging fire. All we have for room to manuever is the initial platform that we are standing upon. Be careful to not fall off as you move around.

Twilight Invader - Thyrinar summons an add which comes up the ramp that you used earlier. Extremely annoying. Not only can this add counterspell our casts but it closes the gap between us with a charge. If that wasn't enough the Invader also casts Fire nova which deals heavy damage.

The fight in its basic form is thus:

Thryinar continually casts Twilight Blast.
He moves to a different position then casts Twisting Twilight.
Thryinar begins to cast Twilight Blast.
Summoned add appears and runs up ramp.
Thryinar moves to position then casts Twisting Twilight.
Summoned add appears and runs up ramp.
Rinse, repeat.

Noteworthy: Although Thyrinar is the baddie of this encounter it's actually the adds that pose our moonkin's the greatest threat. If you have time, you can run down the ramp as the summoned add starts to run up.  Start dpsing it as it doesn't attack you until it reaches the top of the ramp. If you do this, just beware to not forget about Thryinar casting Twisting Twilight. The last thing you want is to entrap yourself upon the ramp as I had done shown in the picture below:

       Yep, I wiped at 8%. Talk about frustrating moment!
I mentioned in the first part of the guide that I had to unlearn my healing mentality. A good portion of my wipes was due to standing still and healing myself to full. If you are alike myself and attempt to fully heal your health bar you will wipe. Not only are you standing still and taking more damage you are also not DPSing the boss. Lesson learned!
 There are various ways to handle this fight but the one method I found to be stable and successful is thus --  DPS the adds as soon as they are summoned. Keep Thyrinar as your focus and refresh your DoTs on him. That's all there is to it.

The Fight

So, when the fight begins you want to interupt Thyrinar's Twilight Blast immediately. Solar beam his cast. He will start to fly down to where you are standing. Pop your CDs - this is where you want to burn down as much health as possible before he casts Twisting Twilight. When the Solar Beam's silence effect wears off he will begin casting his shadow bolts again. Barkskin at this point and keep your DoTs up.

Thyrinar will then coast a bit to the side to get in position to cast Twisting Twilight. As he does this through-out the fight you will have a few seconds to continue casting at his body. A warning message from Tyracgosa will alert you to the laser beam attack. As soon as it starts you want to run along the outer ring of the platform. The reason to this is that his cast will end before it closes the ring and it will leave you a great deal of room to manuever.

By this time a add will be scurrying up the ramp. If you can chance it then try to get behind the add to DPS it down otherwise this is where your kiting skills come in handy. Even though the add is priority you want to keep refreshing your DoTs on Thyrinar. Everytime Solar Beam and Starfall is off CD then cast it. I can't stress enough how important it is to always keep your DoTs ticking on Thyrinar.

If your DPS is excellent the add will go down in no time leaving you a short space of time to continue DPSing at Thryinar. Should your gear be more alike mine(mainly healing gear) you will find yourself kiting the add for a small period of time.  I even found myself kiting the add through a Twisting Twilight!

Save your treants for the second or third add. If you try to put them against Thryinar they will simply stand at the edge looking off into the distance. Whatever you can use to keep the distance between you and the add the better. Mushroom slow, typhoon, roots, hibernate -- these are all excellent CC. Use them to widen the distance and quickly DPS the add before another appears.

Finally at 20% or so Tyracgosa will grant you the blessing of the blue dragonflight. A massive 100% haste buff. If your health is low then pop a healing potion or use that time to throw a rejuvenation and Lifebloom x 3 on yourself. Nothing more than that as you absolutely want to use this buff to burn the rest of Thyrinar health!  If at the end of the buff duration the boss is not killed then the fight keeps going. The routine continues per normal. Do not lose sight of your goal. Keep DoTs up and continue using Solar Beam/Starfall on CD. Watch out for the beam and DPS the adds that arrive. Keep doing this until Thryinar at last dies. And he will!

A ton of my skellies and five add bodies, phew!
As his lifeless body plummets to the nether we find ourselves with Tyracgosa. Click on the Timeless Eye and watch the unfolding scene.
Congrats! You have successfully completed the quest
This concludes my Through a Glass, Darkly - Boomkin POV Guide. May it help your boomkin to complete the quest.

Thanks for reading and Happy Questing!

Special Thanks to: the savvy and witty, Zapwidget. Even though you mentioned to me that your speciality lies in tank instructing it did not stop you from helping this resto/boomy out. Honestly, thank you! If it wasn't for your guidance I would never have had a chance to make this guide for others. Much love and gratitude!
 

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