Wipefest: Trial of the Crusader

Wipefest support for Trial of the Crusader has been live since the raid released, and is already helping guilds everywhere analyse the boss mechanics in their pulls and work out how they can improve their performance and continue progressing.

Let's dig into some examples of what mechanics Wipefest can automatically analyze for you in Trial of the Crusader!

Northrend Beasts

One of the simplest ways that Wipefest can help is by analyzing avoidable damage. It can also help to point out the consequence of being hit by certain abilities in case the fight isn't clear. For example, players fight Icehowl in the last phase of Northrend Beasts. Icehowl periodically casts

, charging across the arena and dealing lethal damage to anyone caught in its path. Not only is the damage from lethal, but even a single player getting hit by it means that Icehowl won't get debuffed by (which doubles the amount of damage taken) upon hitting the wall.

Lord Jaraxxus

One of the dangerous mechanics in the Lord Jaraxxus encounter is

. Throughout the entire fight, Lord Jaraxxus will frequently debuff several players with , which puts a large heal absorb on the target. If this heal absorb isn't healed through within 15 seconds, it explodes, and the entire raid is debuffed with which inflicts high damage over 5 seconds. Wipefest identifies when this occurs, and also highlights if there were any deaths that look like they were caused by it:

Because

also reduces the target's damage dealt by 50%, it's always good to heal through the absorb as quickly as possible. Wipefest also tracks the average amount of time taken to heal through this absorb.

Faction Champions

It's safe to say that the Faction Champions encounter is unlike any other boss fight in World of Warcraft. As Faction Champions plays out more like a PvP battleground, Wipefest focuses on analyzing mechanics such as interrupting healing and crowd control spells, dispelling dangerous debuffs from allies, and also purging strong buffs from enemies.

Just like in PvP, it can be beneficial to prioritize certain targets first instead of cleaving everything at once. The most important targets to kill are the healers (so that less healing goes through and prolongs the fight) and the Enhancement Shaman (to prevent

from being cast). Wipefest analyzes what order you killed the champions in, and lets you know if it looked like you were prioritizing the wrong targets:

Twin Val'kyr

One important mechanic on the Twin Val'kyr encounter is

/ . This shield prevents the Val'kyr from being interrupted until it is broken, which is important as at the same time they will start casting which will heal them for a massive 50% of their health if successfully cast. To prevent this, players must nuke down the shield as quickly as possible, taking advantage of the light & dark damage buffs within the fight. Wipefest tracks how long it took your raid to break the shield on average:

As well as if any

heals were successful:

Anub'arak

In the final phase of Anub'arak, he casts

on the whole raid. This causes 30% of every player's health to be leeched every second, meaning that healers have to go against their instincts and instead aim to keep every player's health as low as possible, whilst still being safe. What further complicates this is that Anub'arak periodically casts on several raid members, causing them to take additional damage which could be lethal if that player is already low from .

Because tanks and

targets still need spot healing, Wipefest analyzes by looking at how much healing was done to non-Tank targets who were above 25% health and didn't have to determine how often Anub'arak was gaining health unnecessarily.

Wrapping Up

This is just a taste of some of the mechanical analysis that Wipefest has to offer, alongside other features such as player scores, event timelines, guides, and multi-pull analysis.

If you get stuck, we have an article of frequently asked questions, as well as a Discord server where you can discuss with other Wipefest users.

You can find me as Yax on Twitter.

Support this tier would not have been possible without emallson and Essk!

Good luck, have fun!