Killin' Chicks (Heroic Twin Val'kyrs)

What's black, white, has a hundred pairs of balls, one health bar, and just wiped your raid? The Twin Val'kyrs. Yes, that's a terrible joke, but it's not nearly as bad as the one I briefly considered when a paladin in my guild made a tasteless joke about being black and hitting the white woman.

On normal difficulty, the Twins are an amazingly dynamic and fast paced fight, you're running everywhere, dodging balls, collecting balls, watching threat, monitoring upcoming abilities, and changing color.

On heroic difficulty, the Twins are an amazingly dynamic and fast pace fight where... you stand in one place and do DPS. Yeah.

There's actually two things you can do on this fight. Pitch or catch. Yes, I'm done with the bad jokes for this article now.

The basic setup for this fight is that the twins are tanked together in a fixed position, while the majority of the raid piles up together very tightly close to them. Two main variations have this either at the door, or at the front-left white portal. Several people are assigned as blockers, they'll have light essence full time, and their job is to intercept as many white orbs as they can, and as few dark orbs as they can.

Blocking
Hunters are a popular pick for this, because deterrence is so useful. However, most classes can suffice, and warlocks have some very strong tools to their advantage as well.

Spec wise, there's several things you want. In demo, you want Demonic Embrace, Fel Vitality, Soul Link, Demonic Aegis, and Master Demonology, use a felhunter as your pet. In Destruction you want Molten Skin and Nether Protection. Nothing else really matters, you won't be doing anything that can be called DPS. The purpose here is to maximize your survivability against massive spell damage. You will be hitting dark balls, as hard as you try not to, and you'll also be called on to eat the full brunt of dark vortex when it comes up, you won't have the chance to switch colors. Improved healthstone is useful, it'll help the raid out and give you a tiny bit of extra healing, but nothing else means anything, you can even leave the other points unassigned for all the good they'll do.

You'll also want all the health you can get - PVP gear, tank trinkets and jewelry, frostguard stuff,  everything. Our blocking warlock almost hits 40k, and he's the lightweight in the bunch, our hunters are racing to 50k.

You'll be assigned a section of the room to sweep clear of light balls. When in doubt, take a dark one too - the group will need empowered darkness less than they'll need to not be hit by light balls, which can quickly devastate a raid if two or more get through. Stay in range of the healers, both for your own safety as well as for the raid's - the farther out you are the less longer it'll take you to react  if a white ball is heading in a bad direction.

You'll always be light essence. When dark vortex happens, you'll just have to trust the healers to save your ass - you'll take a massive amount of damage very quickly, but nether protection can kick in, and resistances do mitigate it. Aura mastery fire is one of many lifesavers on this phase.

Nobody's saying don't toss corruption or CoD on Darkbane, but don't watch your timers - we've noticed the higher our soak's damage gets, the more white balls slip through. Tributes are really on the line on this fight, as is Anub'arak attempts if you're not really in a position to get one of the higher tributes.

DPSing

Useful Macros
Two things:

/target Fjola Lightbane

/target Eydis Darkbane


You'll need to be able to rapidly and seamlessly switch targets. Adding a /cast immolate is a good idea so you can switch and launch your rotation in a single action.

Spec
Destruction really rules the day here for riding the gimmick gravy train. Affliction can't really abuse the two targets well, because whichever essence you have you deal 50% more damage to the opposite and 50% less to the same. That means you're only doing a third as much to Darkbane as you are to Lightbane. The same applies to all specs - dotting the off target isn't worth it. Demo's still got it's obligatory raid support position... That does seem to be all it ever has pre-3.3, but actually, the next article in this series will change all that, and demo will be one of our featured attractions.

Cooldowns
The fight revolves around four abilities that happen at fixed intervals. Each interval, one of the twins will either bubble and begin channeling a massive 50% heal (if this goes off on heroic, it's a wipe, unless it's on the first cooldown, in which case it's still pretty bad), or they'll channel a massive AOE damage on the raid for 5 seconds.

Light Shield
This is the easiest cooldown: You're already dark essence, and you're burning Lightbane. The shield should prove no challenge to your raid.



Dark Shield
For both the door and the portal strategy, this is the make-or-break moment for DPS. This is where you're macros come into play. You may even want to pre-immolate Darkbane a few seconds before a cooldown so you can launch directly into a conflag>chaos bolt if dark shield comes up, and not waste time immolating.

Door strategy, just switch targets and burn the ever loving Jesus out of her. Heroism will be used on the first Dark Shield. If you get a second, you'll have to use your speed potion to get through it. If you get a third... Well, you would be screwed, but you're past the enrage timer by then so it doesn't matter.


Portal strategy is a bit less demanding, but still tight. You'll need to very quickly look around, ensure no dark balls are immediately incoming, and switch to light essence behind you, then target Darkbane and start burning the shield. Most guilds will have healers move out to form a shield that will absorb any incoming orbs rather than risk them hit the raid, if this is the case, don't bother checking the incoming orbs, just start killing. Heroism and potions aren't required to break the shield with a favorable essence, but time lost can still make things very tight, so your goal is to absolutely minimize time lost.

After the shield breaks, inturrupting isn't your job, so immediately head towards the dark portal accross the room and switch back, then return. While crossing, dodge ALL balls, light or dark. Other people crossing earlier or later than you may not have the same essence, so what will just splash off you could kill your buddy.

Dark Vortex
The easiest of all, you're already dark, enjoy getting free empowerment stacks.

Light Vortex
Not a serious issue for a portal strategy, but this is the killer for door strategies.

Door strats will absolutely need raid-wise divine sacrifice to even have a chance at healing the very sudden 10,000 DPS incoming on almost every member of the raid. And in 3.3, raid wide divine sacrifice is getting nerfed into oblivion. So if you're doing a door strategy, my very strong advice is to STOP, don't be that guild that suddenly lost weeks of progression work when a farm encounter was rendered impossible using their previous strategy.

Portal strategy, though, things aren't so bad. There is no healer shield this time, but there's a second of reaction time. Ensure no orbs are about to hit the raid - blockers should be sweeping the entire area between you and the dark portal during this time to ease the process. When it's safe, switch to light essence and start working your way towards the dark portal (no pressing need to DPS Lightbane, you'll want to switch back in 5 seconds anyway). As with dark shield, you'll want to avoid ALL balls during the switch - others will have switched before or after you, and what's safe for you will kill them. Healers won't be at 100% for this, and random raid damage will put people in considerable danger from the passive damage aura you suffer from throughout the fight.

The Profit
One step closer to the real gold, Anub'arak and that tribute chest. Probably the biggest prize of the fight, even if the pixels are pretty big.

Gear wise, there's the hit/haste Skyweaver robes, with three gem slots and massive stats, these are excellent to wear alongside 4pt9. There's also the hit/crit Dark Essence bindings. Not the best option in the zone, but still not terrible.

There's the hit/crit offhand, Chalice of Searing Light/Mystifying Charm. Again, a viable option, but not the best in the zone, even though offhand options at itemlevel 258 are pretty limited.

Lastly, there's the haste/crit neck Cry/Wail of the Val'kyr. With a gem slot and a good chunk of haste, nothing wrong with this neck except perhaps unfavorable socket layout for the bonus.

The Fear

This is an important fight, one of the hardest in the zone, and even though the heroic strategy involves nullifying the extreme complexity of the fight, it's still a brutal test of your raid. Don't get sloppy, don't play 90%, and don't get your teammates killed.

Tributes are won and lost on this fight worse than anywhere else.

The first three fights in the zone all have ways to almost guarantee a person's death, which can be very frustrating when Tribute to Immortality is on the line. But Twin Valk'yrs is all in your hands - the only things that will kill people is mistakes, and they'll kill very quickly. Frustrating as losing a tribute to the boss can be, losing it to yourself is far worse. Don't be that guy.