Quick Soloing Guide: Trial of Valor

This fight IS soloable, if you’re patient. All of the tricky stuff happens in Phase One, which I will describe below.

• Phase One: in which you must bring two Valarjar mini-bosses (Hymdall and Hyrja) down to 25% health within 15 seconds of each other, or they will heal fully via Revivify. The problem is that they ALSO take 99% reduced damage when within 35 yards of each other, thanks to Valarjar’s Bond. I’ve tried brute-forcing this phase, and it looks like it would take around 2 hours that way. So, HOW does one inflict any significant damage to these Valarjar? The key lies in the fact that both of their “big” spells have a 5-second cast time, during which they will not move. Thus, when Hyrja casts Shield of Light or Hymdall casts Horn of Valor, move away as fast as you can! The non-casting mini-boss will follow you and with a little luck you’ll get one or two unshielded hits in before the caster catches up with you. After a few minutes of this dance, you’ll eventually get one of the Valarjar down to 25% health. At this point they will become immune to damage and start casting Revivify. This is your cue to drag the remaining mini-boss away and finish the job. That’s the hard part: while all of this is going on, Odyn will periodically summon a bunch of Runecallers and hit you with Unerring Blast. Don’t bother trying to kill the adds, as they won’t die before Odyn reabsorbs them anyway. Unerring Blast is the main source of incoming damage during this phase, so you may want to use some damage-reducing abilities to mitigate it.
• Phase Two: beat the crap out of Odyn. The Runecaller adds still spawn, and you should still ignore them. The main ability to watch out for is Odyn’s Spear of Light, which will shatter and create a number of Glowing Fragment. Touching these will stun you for 3 seconds, which is annoying.
• Phase Three: don’t stand in the glowing parts of the floor, and kill Odyn before he kills you.

Hymdall and Hyrja will periodically jump into the arena during Phase Two, so you get to deal with their annoying shields all over again on Odyn!

Similar to Heroic, but even more tedious due to the increased HP of each mob.

Guarm has a LOT of damaging abilites, some worse than others. Guardian’s Breath deals a large chunk of damage and places a debuff on you that makes standing in any color of subsequent breaths other than whatever you stood in for the initial breath a Very Bad Idea. Flashing Fangs is his big melee attack; have a Shield Block ready to go for this. In fact, it’s best to keep physical mitigation up as much as possible, since you’ll be taking constant double melee damage due to Guarm’s Multi-Headed buff. Guarm will periodically leap back and run around the room with his Headlong Charge attack; just watch where he’s running and keep out of the way. Roaring Leap deals a pair of obnoxious knockbacks, so be sure not to waste any DPS cooldowns if this ability is forthcoming. FINALLY, Guarm has three “lick” abilities that can be randomly cast on you: Flame Lick, Frost Lick, and Shadow Lick. Flame Lick deals a decent amount of pulsing magic damage, but Frost Lick is generally the most deadly, as you’re susceptible to taking a LOT of damage while stunned: I found it best to keep moving to make avoiding the stunning frost swirls easier.

Same as Normal, but everything hurts more; there are no new abilities to deal with.

Guarm adds Volatile Foam to the mix, which do ticking elemental damage (and will kill you after a brief time once you get two different colors of it on you). There are two ways to deal with it: try to LoS the Foam casts by hiding behind the rock near the entrance to the boss area, or burn the boss down before you die a horrible death from Mixed Elements (ignore the value on the tooltip; it’s basically an insta-kill). I’ve seen a video of a Demon Hunter using the first strat, but I found it impossible due to boss positioning and the lack of a timer for the Foam casts. Luckily, if you can do about 32k DPS, you should be able to kill Guarm before you go kablooey.

An easy, if somewhat tedious fight. During Phase One, attack Helya while avoiding any green crap on the ground. In Phase Two, kill all of the Gripping Tentacles in the combat arena (there are nine of them total). For Phase Three, attack Helya until she’s dead. There will be adds summoned periodically, but they’re not terribly important. Helya will periodically cast Fury of the Maw during Phases Two and Three, which summons a large wave that will push you back and clear any patches of gunk off the ground. Each wave deals increasing damage, but it’s not likely to be a problem unless you’re taking a very long time to finish the fight.

The fight gets SIGNIFICANTLY harder on Heroic difficulty, making survival an all-encompassing concern. The Taint of the Sea DoT will start doing heavy damage, and there’s no way to avoid or drop it. To make matters worse, Bilewater Breath in Phase One will reduce your armor to zero, you’ll be getting hit with constant blasts of increasing damage from Torrent in Phase Two, and in the final phase Corrupted Breath will make most of your self-heals ineffective. Phase Two is definitely the most deadly of the three, so I’d use your Drums and DPS cooldowns here to push through as quickly as possible.