Succeeding at not being trampled

FailBot has been retired, but EnsidiaFails has taken over! What remains the same is the humiliation that arises if a boss ability, if avoidable, is not handled properly.

In the Trial of the Crusader, the Northrend Beast Icehowl casts Massive Crash, which can send players scattered throughout the instance. If players do not move out in time to avoid the following Trample, the situation can become very messy (in both senses of the word!).

Before Icehowl casts Massive Crash, he jumps to the centre of the ring. That means all players will be knocked back radially from the centre. Consider the following positioning for a 10-man raid:

If Icehowl were to Massive Crash at that time, the players would be knocked back like so:

Even though the group may be huddled together, simply stepping behind the centre means being hurtled to the other side of the ring! In fact, this effect of positioning matters more as the player approaches the centre:

The raid can arrange itself in one of two ways, depending on its attitude to risk:

1. If the raid wishes to minimise the chances of a player being Trampled, it can form as a ring around the centre. This means that players are distributed evenly around the instance's edges when the players are knocked back and reduces the egression the raid needs to do. The positioning need not be concentric, as the angle from the centre matters and not the distance.
2. If the raid wishes to maximise DPS during Icehowl's Staggered Daze (which he gains when he does not Trample any players), it would want to occupy only a semicircle of the instance. This minimises running time to Icehowl after his Trample, but jeopardises more players. In the Heroic version, players do not gain Surge of Adrenaline, and so must be extra vigilant.

After being knocked back by Massive Crash, all players are stunned up until the point when Icehowl rears up for the charge. During this time, Icehowl picks a single player and faces them, marked by the following emote:

Icehowl glares at {player} and lets out a bellowing roar!

It is crucial at this time that the player identifies the target and appropriately move out of the Trample path. While stunned, the player cannot turn. To mitigate this problem, the player can spin their camera around to the desired direction of egress by left-dragging with their mouse across the screen. When the stun fades, they can hold down both mouse buttons to immediately face that direction and run that way.

Hopefully, doing this, no one will end up as roadkill!