Loken (tactics)

Loken appears in World of Warcraft as the final encounter in the Halls of Lightning.

Quests
His death is the objectives of Whatever it Takes! in which players are sent to slay him and take his tongue.

Adventure Guide
''The prime designate of Azeroth was tasked to keep Yogg-Saron secure within its prison. None could have foreseen that the keeper entrusted to safeguard the world from the Old God's malevolence would be the one responsible for its undoing.''

Lightning Nova and Pulsing Shockwave
In order to reduce the damage taken from these two abilities, correct positioning and movement is required. The Pulsing Shockwave forces the group to generally stay close to the boss, but whenever he starts casting Lightning Nova (which is announced by an emote), players must run away 20 yards. The group needs to agree beforehand on a run path.

A frequently chosen pattern is the bright line on the stairs leading from Loken's initial position to a platform and from there further down another flight of stairs. On the pull everybody runs to Loken's initial position, on the first Lightning Nova everybody runs to the platform, on the next back to his initial position. This method has the drawback that people dying on his initial position can be difficult to rez, for this reason it's better to run on the second Nova further down to the end of the stairs, and then back to the platform.

Moving on the stairs has the general disadvantage that it can cause line of sight problems for the healer. For this reason some groups prefer to run from side to side on the platform where Loken starts (there are pillars on each side of him as reference points).

Arc Lightning
This boss ability has the potential to cause severe damage to the group when people stay close together. If the initial target gets the debuff and all others are within 10 yards, the probability is very high that at least one other player gets the debuff, leading to a nearly neverending chain of Arc Lightnings. To avoid this people need to stay 10 yards apart from each other at all times (this partially conflicts with the positioning required to avoid Pulsing Shockwave). Alternately, players with the debuff can try to run away from the group.

Alternate Strategies
The problem with running around is that it greatly reduces both healing and DPS, and may cause confusion. So if the healer is able to sustain about 3600 hitpoints healed per second for two minutes, all group members have over 14k health (the tank over 25k), and some form of nature resistance is available, it's possible to simply stay in melee range of the boss and not move at all. The healer in this case must AoE spam heal. This variant works particularly well with a Shaman healer (Riptide buffed 4 jump Chain Heal plus Nature Resistance Totem), quite a few groups with shaman healers report success killing Loken in under two minutes for the achievement using this tactic. Average as of patch 3.3 is around 30 seconds using the random dungeon finder.

On Heroic level, this should be preferred tactics when all members have 19k health (shield absorption incl.) or better (tank about 30k+). AoE healer a must, preferably priest with Spirit of Redemption talent, since the fight should be very fast (2mins or less = 3 Nova blasts). Often a Paladin's Judgement of Light can handle most of the Pulsing Shockwave's AoE, assuming that players stand at minimum range. Always good with 2 rezzers to rezz priest, since there will will be casualties in last Nova blast. If party members are below 16-17k at blast they will die. Highly geared players, especially with Heroism, can blast Heroic Loken in less than 30 seconds, in which case they only need to worry about one Nova.

If the healer sports some integrated self-heal (Paladin or Priests) the following tactic may be appropriate: Loken is kited on his platform as in the standard tactic. The healer is placed 20 yards away from both tanking spots, resulting in a triangle: the two tank spots are two corners of the triangle, connected by the 20 yard run path, the healer stands on the third corner of the triangle, 20 yards away from both other corners. This way, the healer continuously takes damage from Pulsing Shockwave which must be healed through (abilities like Beacon of Light or Binding Heal facilitate this).

Related Achievements

 * Halls of Lightning (achievement)
 * Heroic: Halls of Lightning
 * Heroic: Halls of Lightning Guild Run
 * Timely Death

Quotes

 * Intro
 * yell
 * yell


 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Lightning Nova
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * 75% health
 * yell


 * 50% health
 * yell


 * 25% health
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell

Trivia

 * Loken is voiced by Joe J. Thomas.