Tengen's Blog

I was going to have separate posts for Downing Flame Leviathan Four Towers in 10man and downing Anub’arak 25man in an all-guild raid, but I decided just to clump them up to talk about another issue, progression and the excitement that hopefully comes with it (so go get a snack, this is gonna be a long one). I never watched the Ensidia video where they downed Algalon for the first time, but a former guildie saw it and told me that they all cheered when they won. I wonder how a guild as skilled as Ensidia can ever feel excited about any accomplishment anymore. I would imagine it would all feel like some boring inevitability. Even Algalon, a boss you have to unlock by clearing every “hard mode” in Ulduar except for Yogg-Saron, whom you only get 1 hour of attempts on per raid lockout before he despawns, would just feel like he was on farm status before you ever walked through his door and pulled him because you knew you were good enough. You had cleared Nax40, you had cleared Sunwell pre-nerf, Nax25 was a joke, and you had cleared Ulduar25 pre-nerf. How was Algalon supposed to feel like an accomplishment?
My guild had never done Flame+4, but I was reasonably confident that we wouldn’t have too much trouble. We had some frustrating attempts last week where we got him down to 20-ish percent with only 1 overload phase. It was a lot of bad RNG mostly, him always chasing Demolishers so they could never stack Pyrite, etc etc, and those damn flowers. After some strat searching and team-building we brought in one of our plethora of skilled mages in place of a rogue so we could have 2 ranged DPS to attack turrets and proceeded to chain-overload him in tandem with our warlock and our first attempt of the new lockout ended with him at 1% health, and we had suffered more bad RNG. I honestly thought we’d 1-shot him when he got down to 80k health, but only 1 Demolisher was alive, all the stacks of pyrite had expired, and there was no one else for Flame to chase and kill.
I was disappointed, but not disheartened. I was sure we’d get him the next attempt. Next attempt, more bad RNG, more fantastic overload work by our Mage and Warlock, and again we all die when he is at 1%. Now I’m getting just a tad irritated. Third attempt, flame glitches, we wipe at 50%. He changed targets just as we triggered an overload so he decided he didn’t want to overload and just kept chasing people. Then when the “overload” stopped, he instantly teleported halfway across the room away from all of us chasing him, and owned some face. Next several attempts had us getting chased into corners, running through fire walls, getting frozen in place and mauled by plants. By now I was lamenting our disturbing tendency to just about 1-shot every encounter we ever try then proceed to get progressively worse with each successive attempt.
Finally though, through exceptional overload work by our ranged DPS (and catapult aiming by the demo driver), some great driving, and a near-flawless execution (and two Bubble-taunts), we downed him. Many of the 10 in that run loudly proclaimed their excitement and satisfaction on vent. Not me. I was satisfied that we had finished, and may even have smiled for a moment, but the whole issue was over with as far as I was concerned. Part of it was, no doubt, due to my growing irritation over how long it was taking us, and part of it was no doubt because every one of us was in ToC25 gear. My Siege Engine had almost 2.4million health. Flame could still kill me, but what about those people who do Orbituary when they are in Uld25 gear? 2 million heath tops maybe? Being so overgeared for Ulduar that I routinely solo-tank trash pulls and we have to tell our DPS to stop attacking XT’s heart because we just want to kill him, not trigger hardmode, makes all our accomplishments feel trivial to me. Meanwhile, XT 25 hardmode has yet to be triggered. Maybe next week.
After Flame, of course, we smashed XT in the face and it was so irrelevant to me I forgot he even dropped loot. Not like any of us needed anything, but he had just become a trash pull to me. I zoned right into the antechamber before anyone even clicked on the boss to loot him. When I realized what I had done, I hated the fact that we were still in Ulduar. I love Ulduar as an instance, I think it’s a lot of fun. A hell of a lot more fun than ToC to be sure, but like Nax and Ahn’Kahet the Old Kingdom, I can’t remember when it was hard being as I am now. We go to IC and oneshot Steelbreaker and get our 3rd Archivum Data Disk, soon 3 of us will have the 10man Algalon key. We kicked Kologarn to the curb and skipped Auriaya and started smashing Hodir trash. Several times we were less than careful and ended up pulling 3 groups at once, but unlike the first times we had done that, I never felt like we were in danger of wiping, only that I was in danger of losing agro on 8 worms to the blizzard-happy mage. Eventually we got to Hodir, readied ourself for our first “real” attempt at hardmode and went in there and one-shotted it. We had about 15 seconds to spare, and I never really worried. My biggest worry before the fight, if we weren’t going to be able to hit the DPS numbers needed, would we be able to wipe it before he died and locked us out for the week. Those worries were unfounded and our holy Paladin got the nice hard mode shield and our priest got her offset T9 legs. A bow that another hunter in our guild could really use dropped and we DE’d it with regrets.
Yesterday we had a whole day for Anub’arak. We had cleared up through the Twins on Wednesday, which, for us, is pretty good. I know people who are in guilds who throw fits when ToC25 isn’t cleared in 2hours or less, but that’s not us, yet. I was excited to have a whole night devoted to killing the last thing in our guild’s way to clearing the instance. We had revised our strategy, had a big raid-leader meeting, and we got everyone on the same page. Unfortunately some people who we would normally have come with us weren’t able to make it, but we had enough guildies on, who other raid leaders had more faith in than I did, and we brought them along to round us out. We explained the strat to everyone and began our attempts. Because our overall dps is rather low, we elected to kill 1 add, offtank 3. Because the adds only get bonus damage on urnmitigated hits, I was basically taking very little damage the whole fight even though I constantly had 2 adds on me. Being unhittable (I was 103.xx after raid buffs) made me quite comfortable shouldering the burden. The first few attempts the other offtank and I had some communication issues leading us to taunt the same add, having one add unchecked killing the raid, problems moving the first add to the ice patch behind Anub’arak so the melee could hit it too, grouping up the 2nd wave of adds, etc, but by the 4th attempt or so, we had it sorted. We had varying degrees of success in phase 2 with grouping up, killing scarabs, killing 3 burrowers , having people run out, etc. Overall, however, we were reasonably consistent in our performance and on about the 6th attempt or so, we finally got to phase 3 and blew everything we had on him. We still had 2 adds up so I had the other OT taunt my add and I used Bubble-Sacrifice to lessen the raid damage. Soon our MT died and I picked up the boss and we finished him off. Only 1 person dead, the MT. It wasn’t any of the usual suspects and especially it wasn’t any of the people who I had been wary of inviting, which pleased me more than our victory.
Everyone was pleased. We had done it. We had done it as a guild. It was the first kill I can remember being legitimately excited about. Heroic 10man Beasts and Jaraxus were nice, but they didn’t feel like victories. We had killed them on 10man regular so it was the same boss. They felt like foregone conclusions to me even when we had difficulty on them initially. Even Yogg felt unsatisfying to kill on 10man (more on this in a bit).
This was not the first time I killed Anub’arak on 25, however. Back when ToC was still new, I had transferred servers for 2 weeks to play with a former guildie who had left our guild and our server in search of greener playing pastures. He found a happy home with a high-ranked guild on a high progression server and convinced me to come try it out. I was curious what it would be like to play with people who were “better” so I went. The day Anub’arak came out, I went in there with his guild and we one-shot him. I was happy at that victory because it was a victory, but it also wasn’t “my victory.” I was just a tag-along in their guild. That I was a tank, geared better than all of theirs, didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t my guild, my kill. This time, almost 60 days after the first time I killed Anub’arak on 25man, I finally had a kill that was not just “mine” but “ours” and I was pleased. I had killed Yogg on 25 with a different guild on that server the day before. It wasn’t my kill, but I was happy to have killed Yogg. I smiled then too, even though it was farm content for the guild I was with. The day before I killed Yogg on 25, I pugged all the way to Yogg on 10man and got in a few decent attempts. My former guildie had killed Yogg25 within 5 days of transferring to his new server and joining his new guild, so I took it as a personal challenge to do that same. The guild I ran with were nice people and after a rough start on Freya trash with them, I settled in and we cleared Freya, Thorim, Hodir, General, and Yogg. I was all smiles after Yogg that time, not because it was my kill, but because I had matched my former guildie. It was sort of a “look, this server really is ‘better’ than our old one, we’ve both killed yogg within 5 days of transferring and only 2 guilds on our old server have even killed him and we’re both running with guilds that have him on farm. The guild I cleared Yogg with didn’t even have their full A-team or my first kill of Yogg would have been “3 Lights” because their Holy Paladin was gonna get Val’anyr.
I took pictures of my Yogg kill on that server, but I didn’t take any of Anub’arak. We didn’t take any pictures of our Flame+4 or Hodir hard kills. We didn’t take pictures of our guild-first Anub’arak 25 kill. Was it the excitement of it that made us forget? Was is that our GM has basically abandoned his blog, so taking pictures to blog about wasn’t on his mind? Or were we all subconsciously thinking like me, that Flame+4 and Hodir weren’t really challenges, but were inevitabilities, considering our gear, and thus not really worth a screenshot?
After we killed Anub’arak on 25 a few of us headed to Ulduar to try to knock out some more hard modes to open Algalon’s door. We went to try Thorim hardmode and we wiped 4 times destroying any good feelings I had and frustrating me to no end because once again I was back in ulduar doing content I heavily outgeared and I was wiping…

I read an interesting post on Blessing of Kings (which you are now required to read in order to contextualize this post) earlier today that got me thinking about where my guild is and about WoW difficulty. Rohan basically stratifies the skill levels of WoW players and guilds and explains each strata’s access to content. As an individual player I consider myself either on the low end of the Royalty or on the upper end of the Aristoracy (as far as PvE is concerned. I’m still looking up at the Gentry with envy in a PvP setting). My guild, at least the 10man group I run with consistently in my guild, is definitely in the mid-upper Aristocracy. We’re currently working on 10Heroic Faction Champions but we don’t get a lot of time to spend on them because it’s more important to us to go back and finish off Glory of the Ulduar Raider to get our Rusted Proto Drakes before they are removed and to finally topple Algalon. In 25mans however, we are firmly in the Gentry. We finally downed the Twin Val’kyr last week in 25man because we now have two, relatively stable, 10man groups who can clear ToC10 so people have now seen the encounter and gotten comfortable with the mechanics. I still see some people running around like chickens with their heads cut off when it’s time to switch portal colors, but, hey, we’ve killed twins 2 weeks in a row now, so I guess we’re ok. Anub’arak we have yet to get many solid attempts on as we only got to try twice last week before the lockout expired. Hopefully we’ll get him down this week. But we are FAR away from clearing the Beasts in 25H (which is pretty much the entrance requirement to 25man Aristocracy). The highest-ranked Horde guild on our server still has not even downed the Beasts on 25H and their raid-total DPS is significantly above ours.

I know there are some people who completely devalue any accomplishments made in 10man because “25man is harder” but I can’t agree with that. While it is true, the more people who are in a raid, the more of them that can potentially screw up, there feels like less margin for error in 10mans. Back when I used to heal, I loved healing in 25mans because there were so many other people to pick up my slack. I hates 10mans and 5man heroics because I was much more responsible for the success and survivability of the group. When I see a DPS or a healer die in our 10man hard mode attempts (or even on Yogg+4), I die a little inside because I know our chances of success just dropped by 30%. In 25mans if 1 DPS or 1 Healer dies, we lose between 5-10% chance of success. While the 25man content is tuned to be difficult when there are 25people available to deal with it (be it more boss health or more healing available so more damage to tanks is required) thus making it technically “harder” than 10mans, I can’t help but feeling that 10mans will always be harder than 25s because each person is far more responsible for the success of the group on an individual basis than they are on 25s.

I would love to be in a guild where our 25 was as strong, or stronger, than our 10man is. I hate 10mans because there are only 10 slots and I have 15-20 people I like to play with (and the Ironbound Proto-Drake is sooooo much cooler than the Rusted) yet I also like the intimacy of a 10man group. I know I’m not the first person to ask why Blizz made it 10/25 instead of 10/20 (when it used to be 20/40 in Vanilla). I don’t think WoW is “too easy” and I’m happy that Blizzard decided to make as much raid content as possible accessible to a majority of people. I guess in BC, what we consider Hard Modes here in Northrend was the only mode. I sometimes wish I was a raider back in the guild-shattering M’uru days, or pre-nerf Illidan, just to see if I would have been able to do it. Then I remember, I’m a tank, I can’t solo these things, and my raid accomplishments are only as good as my raid group. If I can’t do hard modes now, I wouldn’t have been able to do content then. Rohan suggests a more smooth gradient of difficulty progression into hardmodes, and in a sequential dungeon like Trial of the Grand Crusader I can certainly agree, but somewhere like Ulduar where you could pick and choose not only your boss order, but who was hardmode and who was not, I see no point. My guild has IC-Steelbreaker on faceroll farm, but if we had to do Flame Leviathan 4Towers before we could get there, we’d still be stuck in our Siege tanks… In 10man heroic we could very likely defeat the twins, and maybe even Anub’arak, but those damn Faction Champs man… loll (much hate @ them for being immune to taunt making me useless that fight)

So you might be wondering what I mean by that title and it goes thus; there are achievements in this game which are entirely dependant upon you and the performance you give and then there are those where you are entirely dependant upon the performance of 9 or 24 or 39 other people. Raiding achievements are often like this. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if the rest of your team is not able to keep up with you, they will drag you down with their mistakes. The safety dance achievement in Nax is a fantastic example of this. Why they didn’t make this achievement singular is beyond me. People used to require that this achievement be linked in order to get a raid spot. In many ways this is unfair. You could have died on Heigan every time you were in Nax or you could have lived every single time, but that one guy, you know who you are, always dies and ruins it for the raid. Gear is the same way. People will scoff at people with low gearscores or a low progression piece, but there isn’t much you can do about it. Your gear is not, and (in raids) will never be a truely accurate representation of your personal performance. Even in Arenas it’s a pretty safe bet that, unless you’re in 2s, you did not carry or get carried to a rating above 2000. Your gear and your achievements will only ever be as good as your group of raiders can support.
I feel slighted by this many times. I do not consider myself a “good” players, and I probably never will, but I do consider myself competant and capable of clearing any raid content in the game. Alas, Blizzard has not buffed my class and spec into immortality just yet, so I cannot go and solo everything, thus leaving me at the mercy of the skill of other players, or lack thereof. I have a nice time raiding, especially when we are successful, but I’m constantly discouraged by my guild’s lack of ability to field a fully-competant 25man raid. Ever since the days of Nax25 we have basically been a group of 16 people or so, too big for separate 10mans, and not big enough for a full 25man, who were capable of doing the content, but were unable to finish out our roster. I play on a low population server with a near-rock bottom progression rank and on the minority faction which has a further-diminished talent pool to pick raiders from. Add to that many other guilds vying for the same raiders out of the same talent pool, and you end up with a low progression environment for all concerned.
Why not transfer to a higher population server or look for a better server? well I could do that. When I started playing WoW it was to have fun with my family. My brother got a night job so we never play together anymore, my father’s computer has gone crappy and he stubbornly refuses to purchase a new one and I’ve started getting into raiding, so we don’t play together anymore. When I decided to raid I thought, ok, I’ll give this a shot, but I’m not gonna be one of those “hardcore” people. Now I’ve been raiding for months and I’ve become “more hardcore”. Where exactly the line is between what I consider hardcore and what the hardcore consider hardcore is, I can’t say, but I’m definately not a “casual”. I still cling to some kind of superiority believing that I’m somehow better because i’m “not as hardcore as those guys over there” so I’m not really an addict and I can quit raiding or WoW whenever I want. If I transfered to a server and a guild strictly for the sake of maximum progression and kept better-dealing my way to the top every time I improved, I don’t think I would enjoy the game. As time as passed I’ve basically come upon the decision that “I came for the loot, stayed for the people.” After I got used to raiding, used to getting gear, and used to clearing things, that stopped being the primary motivator for me to play the game and to raid, it was to spend time with the people with whom I enjoyed spending time. But they can still frustrate the hell out of me sometimes.

Continuing with the guide is an introduction to the 14 bosses of Naxxramus, what mechanics they use, and where are some places you can go to get a feel for these mechanics before taking on the bosses themselves. Keep in mind this is not meant to be a comprehensive boss-strat post, there are plenty of places out there to find some of those.

Anub’Rekhan: Perhaps the first boss of Naxxramas any new raider is likely to see. Tanks will need to be ready to either tank the boss in convenient places for the raid or to grab the add(s) and keep them away from the backfield. When Anub’rekhan uses his Locust swarm ability the tank can either stand there and fight through it while healers focus on him, or he can attempt to kite the boss around the room staying ahead of the attack and taking less damage. Healers and DPS should take care to stay away from the Locust Swarm Radius at all time so they do not get locked out of their abilities and become temporarily useless in their role.
[Where to learn]: While no heroic bosses I’m aware of silence tanks, plenty of trash mobs in dungeons like The Nexus and Azjol-Nerub do. You can’t outrun those silence effects, but you can get used to how to act when most of your abilities are locked out.

Grand Widow Faerlina: Tanks again will have to deal with both the boss and a selection of adds in this fight. Faerlina has a multiple enrage mechanic that can be very difficult to heal through or survive with cooldowns if your or your healer’s gear is not good. Her enrage can be canceled if one of her acolytes is killed in close proximity to her. If your group plans to cancel her enrages this way, make sure that the adds are marked so the raid knows which is the priority target. If all the adds are killed before the boss is, there will be no way to stop her enrages and you’ll have to hope your raid can survive through it.
[Where to learn]: In Old Kingdom, the boss Jedoga Shadowseeker has a similar mechanic. She will periodically ascend to the air and call forth an acolyte to the center of her platform. If the acolyte cannot be killed before it reaches the center, the boss will descend with a large damage buff which must be healed through and mitigated through cooldowns.

Maexxna: This giant spider places a debuff on the tank which will limit the amount of healing the target can take. If this is not cleansed, the tank will not be able to survive, make sure the people responsible for cleansing this are aware. She will also periodically spawn adds, so the off-tank needs to be ready to try and get the attention of as many as possible before they run all over the place. The boss will also occasionally web a specific person in the raid and stick them to the wall. Someone must be ready to take their focus off the boss and free this person from the web so they can rejoin the fight. The boss will also occasionally web the entire raid at once while continuing to attack the tank. The tank is immobilized in this case and block, dodge, and parry will be unusable, so many cooldowns and trinkets used immediately before this happens will give no benefit, it is up to the healers to make sure the tank is full health before this event begins and to place heal over time spells to keep the tank alive. Failing that, they need to be immediately ready to snipe-heal the tank to a point where he can survive until they can cast larger heals on him.
[Where to learn]: There’s no better place to fight spiders and get poisoned and webbed up than in Azjol-Nerub. The first boss room especially has enemies which will web party members and run amok in your backfield and kill the healer. Poison-cleansing is a must. The Gundrak boss Slad’ran summons many snake adds which can be hard for the tank to control, much like Maexxna’s spiders, and these adds will randomly ensnare a party member who must be freed from this much in the way a party member is during Maexxna. This boss in Gundrak can be killed quickly in a DPS-race fashion, so it is important to take your time if you are interested in practicing the “freeing from web” mechanic.

Noth the Plaguebringer: He’s basically a big warlock and he dots the raid and kills everyone quick. Decursers need to be on the ball at all times making sure that no one is taking heavy damage over time. He will summon adds from the bone piles around his room so the off-tank needs to be ready to pick them up. It can be helpful if the raid all positions themselves in the small green circle in the middle of the room so that all the adds converge on the same place making it easier for the off-tank to pick them up. The boss will periodically teleport away and summon more adds and the whole raid can focus on killing them.
[Where to learn]: <heroic bosses with curses?> Anub’Arak in Azjol-Nerub will burrow underground every third of his health and summon adds to attack the party similarly to the way that Noth will teleport away.

Heigan the Unclean: Everyone’s favorite dancemaster. This fight is all about raid positioning, coordination, and decursing duties. Tanks need to keep Heigan far enough away from his platform that all the ranged DPS does not get affected by debuffs and curses which will heavily increase cast time, while healers need to pay attention to the tanks who will often be tanking with half their max health because of debuffs. And, of course, all the while, most of the floor is erupting causing nature damage. Every time the floor erupts all the tanks and melee dps need to move to the next safe zone or they will take lots of unnecessary damage healers will hate them for. Periodically Heigan will teleport back to his platform and EVERYONE will have to move between safe zone and safe zone as the floor erupts in sequence. This fight is heavily reliant upon raid coordination and positioning, something that definitely needs to be practiced.
[Where to learn]: While no heroic bosses make you dance, or dodge their floor damage rhythmically, there are several who you can kite to avoid floor damage such as Mage-Lord Urom in The Oculus who throws frost bombs on the ground that damage you while you stand in them. The Collosus in Gundrak also creates floor-damage tiles that must be moved out of and avoided. In the Halls of Lightning, there is a way to kite Loken around the globe in the center of his chamber to avoid his Lightning Novas that can be similar to the safety dance, but make sure you bring a tank that knows that method of kiting if that is what you’re trying to practice.

Loatheb: This boss is really for the healers. It requires only one tank, and you can be stationary the whole time. The boss does not hit very hard but he does place a raid-wide debuff that prevents all healing from being done. This is periodically let up for approximately 6 seconds, so healers need to be ready with the pre-emptive heals which land the second the debuff lifts and begin snipe-healing other targets before the effect is re-applied. Small spores will spawn occasionally and can be killed in order to create a cloud the raid can stand in to have their dps increased dramatically. DPS needs to be aware that they can potentially pull threat off the tank because of this buff, and the tank should also keep an eye on the boss to make sure he is maintaining threat.
[Where to learn]: No other boss in the game, that I’m aware of, entirely locks out healing done, so there is really no way for healers to practice for this other than getting an addon like Deadly Boss Mods which will give them a better advance warning than the ingame messages so they can pre-cast their healing bombs. Healers can attempt to practice this on Loken in the Halls of Lightning. If no one moves out of range of the lightning nova, the healer can begin their healing cast when the Nova cast is half over so it lands moments after Loken is finished casting, they can then snipe-heal the non-tanks in preparation for the next lightning nova.

Instructor Razuvious: This boss has a vehicle mechanic. On 10man anyone can assume control of his disciples (there are 2), but in 25man you need a priest with mind control and preferably a high hit-rating (there are 4 disciples). Whoever assumes control of the disciples will become tanks for the fight, so it’s usually best if tanks do the mind controlling with the obelisks in 10man because they will not be of much use otherwise. The disciples have 3 main moves, “bone shield” “strike” and “taunt”. One disciple will cast bone shield, taunt the boss, then spam strike until bone shield wears out. He will then alert the other disciple to taunt the boss off him. The other tank casts bone shield, taunts, and spams strike while the other disciple spams strike while waiting for his bone shield cooldown to refresh. All healers should heal the disciples with a few keeping an eye out for the occasional raid damage. The boss throws spears which place a large damage DoT on players which must be healed through as well as some initial impact damage. Everyone else should concentrating on DPSing the boss. Razuvious hits for way too much damage for a player tank to effectively tank the boss so it must always be done by a disciple, no amount of healing or cooldowns will really be sufficient to keep a player tank alive. In 25man, if the raid does not have 4 mind-control available priests, a tank or two must tank the remaining adds but do as little damage as possible so they can be used as spare-tanks should any of the other disciples currently being mind-controlled die.
[Where to learn]: There are several vehicle-type boss fights in the game, but the one that most closely resembles this is the Prophet Tharon’ja in Drak’Tharon keep. The boss will periodically steal the flesh from the party and turn you into skeletons with a strike, bone shield, taunt, and life-absorb ability. The heroic boss does not require priests, mind controlling, or tank-switching, but the vehcile interface most closely resembles the Razuvious fight.

Gothik the Harvester: There are a few different ways to handle this fight, but the most common is to split the raid up as evenly as possible between the living and undead sides of this boss’s room. Each room will be enclosed for more than half the fight and groups will not be able to assist each other so it is important to have one tank and one healer (at least) in each group. Adds will spawn in waves and the tanks must be ready to pick them up. There are various types of monsters that spawn so the death knights on horseback are the primary targets as they cause the most damage. Once all the waves of adds have been defeated the boss comes down and places a stacking debuff on the raid that reduces all their stats by 10%. When this reaches 100% the raid dies so you’ll need to kill the boss before then so it is important to know what damage-increasing cooldowns your raid has to maximize the damage and it is important for tanks to be ready with their defensive cooldowns as the stacks get higher and higher to avoid being killed too quickly.
[Where to Learn]: <don’t know any bosses like this in heroics>

Four Horsemen: Each horseman must be tanked in its own corner of the room, this is because each horseman puts a stacking debuff on their respective tank and once that stack is at 3 or 4, the tank must switch with another or they will die. Once the tanks switch, they will be with a new horseman and a new stacking buff will be applied while the old one expires. Meanwhile the raid chooses a priority target (what order to kill the 4 horsemen in) and proceed to kill one at a time until they’re all dead. One of the horsemen has a void-zone mechanic where he creates dark circles on the ground. If you stand in these you will take damage, so make sure you don’t stand in them. Make sure to position yourself in a way that you’ll always have someplace to move because each new circle he creates will be directly under you, but you must keep the boss reasonably in his corner or else his debuff might hit others if he is brought too close.
[Where to Learn]: There are no bosses like this in heroics, but some of the mechanics used by each of the 4 horsemen can be learned from separate individual bosses such as stay out of the dark circles (Gundrak trash) and tank-switching and priority targets and raid-movement coordination. The Collosus in heroics creates little poison pools on the ground that work in a similar manner so you could potentially practice your moment on this boss as a tank.

Patchwerk: The proverbial tank-and spank boss. This boss requires 2 tanks with high health (3 on 25man) and lots of healers and DPS. Patchwerk’s auto-attack hits every 1 second, so he does damage very quickly. He also has an ability called “Hateful strike” which will auto-target whoever has the highest health within a range of 25 yards (so even range-dps is not necessarily safe from this “melee” attack). It is imperative that both tanks always be topped off or they can be killed in as few as 2 hits. This fight is entirely pre-emptive healing, basically just pressing the button every time the global cooldown is over. DPS, this is a long fight so use your cooldowns early and often so you can get the most out of them. If there is a bloodlust, try to time your cooldowns to coincide with it for added damage. Tanks also need to be aware of how much damage they’re taking as most cooldowns will not be enough to save you, however, cooldowns that increase dodge rating are a big help, but since you are just being spam-healed, whether you get hit or not, your healers are using up their mana, so concentrate on building and maintaining as much threat and damage as possible to kill him.
[Where to Learn]: In most heroics if you gear is strong enough many fight mechanics can be ignored and you can just pound on bosses like you pound on Patchwerk, but no bosses I’m aware of require constant heal-bombs the way patchwerk does. There is not much art to the fight, so there isn’t much to do in the way of practicing for it. As a healer you could have the tank remove some of their gear so they take more damage, or just artlessly spam your heals on the tank, though your party members may suffer. Patcherwerk only ever hits tanks, this is rarely the case with most bosses in the game. If you took long enough on Trollgore in Drak’Tharon keep and he got his strength buff high enough the fight might be comperable in a tanking and healing sense.

Grobbulus: Grobbulus places an area of effect damage cloud on the floor under his feet periodically so it is important the tank be ready to move him so that everyone can get out of the way of the ever-expanding cloud. The boss will also periodically inject a member of the raid with a debuff which, when it expires, will cause one of those clouds to be dropped at the player’s feet so it is important that the injected person 1) be aware that they have been injected 2) know where to go to to place the cloud in the least-dangerous area possible for the raid so no one will get hurt by it. The boss will also spawn adds periodically for every person in front of him. There will always be at least 1 because the boss is being tanked, so all the DPS and the healers should try to stay behind the boss at all times to prevent an unnecessary number of adds from spawning each time. Healers need to pay attention to people who are injected as they will take damage when moving out of their cloud. This fight has plenty of avoidable damage so the raid needs to be aware of their surroundings to make the healers’ lives easier.
[Where to Learn]: Mage-Lord Urom in The Oculus throws frost bombs on the ground under the tank’s feet that damage you while you stand in them and the boss can be moved out of them so the melee dps and tanks won’t take unnecessary damage. Ionar in the Halls of Lightning does something similar to Grobbulus’ Inject ability in that he puts a lightning debuff on a member of the party which damages everyone within 10 yards of them and eventually expires, so if you’re afflicted with that debuff make sure to stay out of range of others so they don’t take damage too. The best place, however, is likely the 2nd boss of Hellfire Citadel: Blood Furnace. He is a floating eyeball that drops expanding poison clouds identical to Grobbulus, but he’s much more likely to die on the quick, being a lv 63 (73 on heroic) monster.

Gluth: Gluth places a debuff on tanks which decreases the amount of healing they are able to take, so a secondary tank must be ready to taunt the boss off the main tank until the debuff expires. Gluth also spawns adds from the grates at the back of his room. These zombies create a debuff each time they hit someone reducing 1% of the target’s armor. This stacks up to 99, so if it gets this high, the person kiting these adds is going to die very quickly. Thus it is important that someone with a movement speed buff kites them and maintains agro, or classes with slowing abilities like hunter’s frost trap or mage freeze keep the zombies away from people. The adds have too much health to kill so they must be kited until the boss uses a move called “Devastate” which reduced everyone in the room, players and adds, to 10% of their health. healers need to be ready with pre-emptive heals on tanks if possible, and all dps needs to ignore the boss and kill the adds once this happens. Every add that reaches the boss will cause him to regain considerable heath. It is important for those kiting he adds keep them as close to the back of the room as possible so they have farther to travel to reach the boss.
[Where to Learn]: <not aware of any heroic bosses that have mechanics similar to devistate or adds-refill-health>

Thaddius: Perhaps the grand-daddy of raid-coordination fights. The first part of the fight features 2 sub-bosses who must be killed within 10seconds of each other or one will resurrect the other. Tanks will be thrown across the room periodically so each tank will take both adds at one point or another during the fight. This is done automatically and does not require anything on the part of the tank, though healers should be aware that their current tank-to-heal has changed. Once those two bosses are dead the raid needs to jump across a gap to get to Thaddius. It is possible to miss this jump so players need to be careful. Once people are on the platform and the boss is active, he will soon cast a “polarity” buff applying a status to every raid member as positive or negative. It is each individual person’s responsibility, regardless of class, regardless of role, to check their polarity and make sure they are on the correct side of the boss. Those with the positive (+) polarity need to be on the right side of the platform, those with the negative (-) need to be on the left. The boss will cast “change polarity” repeatedly throughout the fight, it is important each person check to see if their debuff changed, and if it did, to move to the correct side as quickly as possible. If you do not move to the correct side you will damage all people around you. If you stand next to other people with the same polarity as you, you will gain a % debuff that can stack up to 100% for incredible DPS and healing. The boss has millions and millions of health so it is imperative that as many raid members stay alive and stacked up on the correct polarity in order to kill the boss before his enrage timer ends and he kills everyone
[Where to Learn]: No bosses in heroics have this polarity dynamic and no bosses in heroics use the multiple-death window mechanic.   You can however create an artificial “multiple-death mechanic” in Utgarde Keep’s 2nd boss. While the boss does not require that the two die within any amount of time, you can coordinate your group so that this will be the outcome.

Sapphiron: Sapphiron has heavy frost-based raid damage that is unavoidable and healers will have to compensate. Frost resist gear is helpful, but not required, even on 25man. He also uses a blizzard spell that moves around the room on its own slowly, so dps needs to move out of it and not take unnecessary damage. He will also periodically ascend to the air and freeze people in ice blocks; two people in 10man, 3 in 25man. These ice blocks cause damage when the target is hit but then render the encased person invulnerable. He will then cast a raid-wide aoe which will instantly kill anyone who is not hiding behind one of the people in an iceblock. Paladins can use their hand of protection ability on raid members too far out to make it, or divine shield themselves if they can’t reach an iceblock in time. When he ascends into the air and iceblocks people, the raid needs to make sure to spread out, anyone within 10 yards of a person being iceblocked will become blocked themselves. This is avoidable damage and stresses the healers, so be aware. He also spawns void zones around that people need to be aware of and move out of so they don’t die.
[Where to Learn]: Cyanginossa in the Violet Hold has a blizzard attack like a weaker version of Sapphiron’s blizzard, also it doesn’t chase you, but you can still practice getting out of the way. No other bosses really mirror the air phase or iceblock phase. Mage-Lord Urom in The Oculus comes close. He does not iceblock you but he will teleport to the center of his room and cast a large-range AoE which will hit anyone not hiding behind one of the stone walls in his area. Hiding behind these is just like hiding behind the iceblocks Sapphiron makes. While Mage-Lord’s AoE likely won’t kill a decently-geared player, Sapphiron’s will.

Kel’Thuzad: In phase one, this fight is all about dps types matching to add types. Tanks get the abominations, melee get on them as well as the skeletons, ranged on the banshees. As long as everyone pays attention and targets people it goes by relatively quickly and painlessly. Like Saphiron, Kel will iceblock people but his iceblocks work slightly different. These iceblocks will damage whoever they hit for 105% so if they are not immediately snipe-healed they will die, so healers need to be on their toes. These iceblocks will also hit people within 10 yards of the person so keep spread out. Healers need to be aware of this spread and be sure to stay in range. In the 3rd phase adds will spawn and an off-tank just needs to pick them up and hold them until Kel is dead, they will despawn when he dies. Kel will also create void zones, by the time you get here you should know how to avoid these. Kel’Thuzad will also cast frostbolts on the whole raid, these can be interrupted every time, thus interrupting classes can prevent a large amount of damage on this fight and need to be aware. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, he mind-controlls random members of the raid who will assist him either by healing and buffing him, or making your life miserable. Have fun raiders!
[Where to Learn]:The only way to learn this fight is to fight other raid bosses and use what you’ve learned in prepping for the boss mechanics of other bosses. Void zones, snipe-healing, raid positioning, and priority targets have all been covered elsewhere. Moorabi in Gundrak has a big interrupt cast mechanic that can be practiced on, but the boss doesn’t usually live long enough to make it worthwhile. If you want to practice this your group will have to intentionally draw this fight out. For Kel’s Mind Control, actually, the best place to learn this isn’t a heroic at all, but a level60 raid, the Temple of Ahn’Quiraj which requires no keys and no attunements. The first boss is 3 tank-and-spank trash pulls inside the door, 40 people can go in at once so the whole guild can practice at once as opposed to 5-man groups, and it’s far less dangerous than even overgearing northrend heroics. The Prophet Skeram will mind control one member of the raid in the exact manner and mechanics with which Kel’Thuzad does. You can practice seeing your friend become a buffed up giant red enemy who needs to be CC’d immediately and doing something about it. Since he is a raid boss he has almost 500k health but he’s not used to dealing with these mysterious plate-wearing rune users who top the charts or paladins who have been allowed to do damage since WoW 2.0 so he will drop like a rock if you set out to squash him rather than practicing mind-control strategy. He will mind control in all 3 of his phases, and can mind control pets, though he probably won’t when there are perfectly good mages, hunters, and rogues to abuse. The last boss of Arcetraz in Netherstorm in OL (you need a key) is basically a 5-man version of the Skeram fight if you don’t want to practice in a 25-man setting (silly you). If you want to stay in Northrend, Old Kingdom’s Herald Volazj is probably the closest you can get with his Insanity phases where you have to fight and kill the rest of your party rather than just crowd-controlling one of them until it wears off, but this is much closer to the Yogg-Saron MC mechanic. Or you could just 3v3 or 5v5 against alot of shadow priests.

Next time we’ll head into Ulduar and see many of these mechanics repeated, and a few new ones that don’t have much heroic preperation.

Shamelessly stolen from Dark Legacy Comics without permission

This guide is written for the benefit of the beginning raider, not the raider who was iLvl226 geared before 3.1 went live and proceeded to 1-shot many Ulduar encounters before they got the nerf stick. The purpose of this guide is to teach new and inexperienced players (and any experienced players who may want to brush up) about the various fight mechanics that comprise raid boss fights and how to best prepare and practice for them in a relatively consequence and repair-bill-free environment

Almost every fight mechanic of each raid boss in Wrath of the Lich King is shared by at least one boss in heroic and regular Northrend dungeons. While raid bosses often have several of these fight mechanics in a single encounter, heroic bosses typically only have one so it is easy to focus on the task at hand, learn the mechanic and how to handle it with your role/class.

Heroic dungeon and boss difficulty in Wrath of the Lich King has been criticized as being too easy and forgiving, so in many cases you can completely ignore the intended mechanics of a fight and just kill the boss really really quickly if your gear is good enough. If your intent is to learn the mechanics of these fights and how to handle them in situations where bosses have 4 million heath and not 400 thousand health, it might be best for you to take your time, not just wipe out the dungeon in 15 minutes, get your loot and emblems and go home…, drag the fight out a bit, and focus less on doing 4000+ DPS and more on being aware of your situation, what skills your class/role has to decrease the damage you and others take, increase the damage you and others do, increase the healing you and others take/do and if you should not be standing in that fire looking at the pretty butterfly.

3.3 is on the horizon and the free-gear train is chugging right along, this time stopping at 5-piece-tier-9 station. The 3.2 Conquest Emblem reset let as many people as possible take part in Blizzard’s newest raid, the Crusader Coliseum. Blizzard wanted more people to run heroics to make them relevant again, except most people are going in there and overgearing the instances and the bosses and be able to ignore almost every fight mechanic and kill bosses in 30 seconds. PuGs now won’t let you run the heroic daily, nevermind the Trial of the Champion, with them unless you outgear ToC10 anyway. There are, however, be some people who are still fresh-80s with mostly greens and a few quest-blues who may never have been in a dungeon before in their life and not understand their role, their class, or what it means to be part of a group. These people might be your guild members, and you may in fact be doing them a disservice by carrying them through this content on your 6k dps deathknight or 60k health druid tank rather than giving them the opportunity to learn things they’re going to need to know so you won’t have to yell at them for ruining your Safety Dance achievement later, or god forbid, your Firefighter. Please, think of the noobs. Everyone was a noob once, with your help, they can become a valuable raider. Of course, if they don’t want to learn, screw ’em.

This will list some raid boss strategy but it is not intended to be comprehensive, only to illustrate the types of mechanics used in the fight and possible ways to prepare for them before your first encounter with the boss. As someone who never raided prior to Nax25, this list could very possibly be incomplete, so please feel free to comment with contributions so I can update it to be more relevant.

Types of Fight Mechanics

Tank Mobility: Mobility is a big focus in Wrath content, especially in Ulduar. Some bosses need to be kited outside of AoE damage they leave on the ground, sometimes you just have to run away to get out of an AoE cast radius. If you are an off-tank you have to chase-down and control all manner of adds in various situations.

Tank Cooldown: (And some Healer CDs) Multiple Enrages, Unavoidable Damage, boss special abilities or just didn’t get the healing you needed in time, tanks of each class have several options at their disposal for how to survive these situations. Remembering what cooldowns you have and when opportune times to use them are increibly important once you start going up against bosses who will hit you for 20k+ damage and special abilities which can hit for as much as 50k.

Tank Switching: While you won’t run into this in heroics because of the limited number of people in a group, many bosses in raids place debuffs on tanks that reduce their armor, the amount of healing they receive, their movement speed, and other such penalties. When these stacks get too high, the tank is no longer able to be effectively healed, another tank is necessary to take over the agro until the debuffs on the first tank expire.

Adds Management: Many bosses in raids have annoying little helpers whose sole job it is to ruin your day. Primarily a concern for off-tanks, keeping adds away from your main tank and healers is vital for the survival of the group.

Priority Targets: In many encounters, especially those with adds, there are certain monsters that just need to die first or they’ll cause far too much trouble, or potentially even explode, killing everyone nearby. Some minions even make their parent-boss invincible until they are killed.

Raid Composition: Mostly a raid-leader or party-leader consideration. Some fights are easier to complete with a certain class, and some fights are nearly impossible without them. As in all things, balance and variety make the whole stronger. That’s not to say 15 paladins in a 25m raid can’t win, but the other 10 slots can’t all be death knights too… This also applies when fighting bosses where the raid has to spread out. Make sure all people are in range of at least one healer, same with people who decurse/cleanse.

Raid Positioning: A corollary to the above; sometimes “knowing where to stand” is what makes all the difference in a fight. This isn’t quite as simple as “all the dps stand behind the boss while the tank stands in front of it.” Many bosses have environmental damage and other ways to hurt people who aren’t the tank. Many of these are avoidable if you are aware of what is going on, and standing in a place that allows for you to escape these hazards.

Raid coordination: Similar to the above two, there are times when the raid will have to move as one, attack as one, heal as one, or otherwise pull off a synchronized move to make sure no one dies. When in doubt, follow the guy in front of you, hopefully he knows what to do.

Avoidable Damage: Not all damage is guarenteed, not even to tanks. You can move out of the way, use a cooldown, interrupt the spellcast, or kill that which is attacking you before it finishes casting its nuke. Most of this avoidable damage is able to be run from, so know when it’s coming, and get the hell out of the way.

Unavoidable Damage: Most damage in the game falls into this catergory so it might seem like I’m stating the obvious, but what I mean by this is “large unavoidable burst damage” the kind of thing that does 50% or more damage to the tank in 1 hit, if not outright killing them in 1 shot. While this is not strictly of worry for the tanks to be ready for the cooldowns, it’s important for the dps to use any protective cooldowns they have or be ready with healing items to take some of the strain off the healers, but it’s mostly of concern for the healers who can see this damage coming and be ready to deal with it.

Raid Damage: Like above, this is mostly a concern for the healers. It’s nice when you only ever have to heal one person, it makes things simple. When you have to help heal 25, things can get hectic. You have to worry about who needs the heals the most, who is closest to death, who is likely to survive while you heal someone else, and other things. A healer’s work is never done in a fight with heavy raid-wide damage

Decursing/Cleansing: Bosses have lots of abilities at their disposal. Some of these abilities cause massive damage, block healing, decrease damage, reduce armor, and other unpleasant effects. Fortunately, most of these can be removed. Poisons, Diseases, Curses, Magical Effects; all can be removed by the proper class. As long as you’ve brought someone to the raid who can do this job, they should make sure that all debuffs that they’re capable of removing are gone so that the raid can survive.

Multiple Enrages: (See Tank Cooldowns) Most raid bosses have an “enrage timer” that says “if you don’t kill them in 10 minutes (or some other arbitrary number) they start doing double damage and kill you all very very quickly”. However, there are some bosses with a smaller version of this ability that they can use repeatedly. The enrage attacks won’t instantly hit the tanks for 50k and you for 100k, but they’re still alot more damage than you want to be taking. These enrages can either be healed through if you have enough healers or their gear is really good; tanks can use some of their cooldowns to reduce and avoid as much of the incoming damage as possible; some enrages can be dispelled by rogues with anesthetic poison or hunters with tranqilizing shot, and some bosses have other ways in which to remove their damage buff.

Void Zones: (and other “stuff on the floor”) These you won’t run into outside of raids except in Gundrak and Drak’tharon Keep. Any time you see something on the ground that looks like you shouldn’t be standing in it, you probably shouldn’t be. In heroics and 10man dungeons, the damage these do is somewhat forgiving, but in 25man raids, these typically kill you instantly if you don’t get out right away. Don’t die, you can’t do damage or heal when you’re dead. The 8,000 damage or so you do while standing in the void zone and dying is nothing compared to the 80,000 damage you’d do if you got out of the

way and lived.

Pre-emptive Healing: There are times in fights when you can prepare for big damage and be ready already casting a healing spell before the damage even hits, so by the time the damage is taken, the spell is 90% cast and the person is instantly healed as soon as they take damage. Some fights, tanks will take so much damage that the only way you can effectively heal them is if you just keep mashing your heal button and hope it all works out in the end. Other times, you can see the big incoming damage and pre-emptively cast your heal to be ready as soon as it lands. There will come a time when you, as a healer, have become so familiar with a fight (or at least reading your DBM warnings) that you will be able to start casting ALL your heals in a timespan so that they land immediately following incoming damage. This is different than spamming your heals, though it will have a similar effect).

Snipe-Healing: There are times when you just won’t have long enough to cast a spell before someone dies. Instant-cast heal spells are there for these occasions. Know when these occasions are and save your instant spells for them. You don’t want to have just used an instant cast heal when it wasn’t really necessary only to actually need it an instant later.

Range-Check: Some attacks will cause damage to a player and anyone within 10 to 30 yards of them. Don’t stand next to these people, they are not your friend, and you will get hurt if you try to play well with others. Whoever said “No man is an Island” was the first one to die in a chain-lightning spell. Don’t be that man. Always make sure that if the boss you’re fighting uses spells that hit nearby targets also, that you are far enough away not to get hurt.

Interrupts: Players love spells, especially those people with mana bars. Bosses have mana bars. Bosses love spells too; and they love to use them to hurt you. Fortunately, just like you can stop that mage from casting on you in PvP, you can sometimes ruin a boss’ day by interrupting his spell too. This can fall under the heading of “avoidable damage” except you can’t run away from it, you have to stop it before it’s cast. If you’re a class that can interrupt spells like a rogue, Death Knight or Shaman, make sure you’re paying attention and coordinating with other players with interrupt abilities so the boss never gets any spells off. Your tanks with thank you, your healers will thank you, and the spells will never kill you either, so bonus.

Resistance Gearing: Not really a requirement in 10man situations if your gear is otherwise pretty good, but back in the Burning Crusade raiding days, if you didn’t have 500+ shadows resist fighting some bosses, you might as well not have shown up, cause you were gonna die, and quickly. In 25man ulduar, Frost resistance can be a big help in places. Fortunately frost resistance is really easy to get as leatherworkers, blacksmiths, and tailors can all craft gear that has frost resistance on it. Even in 25man content it’s not absolutely necessary as Wrath raiding is more forgiving, though it is definitely recommended.

Multiple-Death Window: This confusingly-named mechanic boils down to this: You are fighting 2+ enemies and if they don’t die within 5-15 seconds of each other (depending on your particular encounter) the one that is still alive will bring his pal(s) back to life at full health, and no one wants that. Make sure your raid is aware that coordination is required to kill these 2 enemies in a very short timespan.

Mind Control: Some bosses just aren’t satisfied with killing you themselves, oh no, to qualify for their mail-order evil license they need to make you kill each other; enter the mind-control mechanic. One or several raid members will come under AI control and proceed to spam their most irritating pvp abilities on anyone nearby and generally make everyone scream “NERF <yourclasshere>!!”

Unique Fight Mechanics: Vehicle: Some bosses don’t let you fight the way you are used to fighting, they make you get in a motorcycle or tank or ride a dragon to kill them. You have to learn how to use these vechicles just like you learned how to play your class properly. It can be annoying, but Blizzard wanted to be innovative and give players something new to do, so this is how they chose to do it.

That should cover the mechanics portion. Tune in next time for “Baby’s First Raid Instance: Nax25”