Kael'thas Sunstrider is the last, and most complicated boss of Tempest Keep. He has no less than five phases, each as cunning as a weasle and sly as a fox. On top of that you will be dealing with four incredibly pain in the arse adds that you will need to defeat twice. In patch 2.4 Blizz made up a bit for his difficulty by making it possible to reach him directly and also increased his loos to 3 Tier 5 Chest Pieces.
The Abilities of Kael'thas and his sidekicks are fairyl danuting at first. His advisors are resurrected in Phase 3 effectively giving them double their health! Perfecting the tactics required to defeat the final boss Kael'Thas need to be learnt by every member of your raid.
- Thaladred the Darkener
- Around 280k health
- 3-4k Melee on plate plus 2.5k every tick for 12 seconds
- Gaze – Fixes aggro to a random person in raid; 9 second cooldown
- Psychic Blow – 4-5k damage plus knockback to his current target, 30 yard range
- Silence – Silences anyone within 8 yards
- Lord Sanguinar
- 290kHealth
- 3-4k Melee damage on plate
- Bellowing Roar – A 35 yard AoE fear around him, 1.5 second cast, fortunately does not reset his agro!
- Grand Astromancer Capernian
- Around 200k health
- Fireball – 6-7k single-target fire damage
- Conflagration – Randomly targets a player within 30 yard range causing disorientateand dealing 600-900 dps and 300 damage per second to all players within 8 yards of the debuffed raid member. Capernian does not attack any players with conflagaration.
- Arcane Explosion – Deals 4.5k Arcane damage and has a knockback effect with a slowing debuff. This only occurs when players are within melee range, so get your ranged attack on him!
- Master Engineer Telonicus
- Around 275k
- Bomb - 7-9k fire in a small AoE centered on current target's location, 1.5 second cast
- Remote Toy – 60 sec debuff placed on a random player, periodically stuns the affected player for 4 seconds
- Kael'thas Sunstrider
- 3.6 Million Health
- Around 4k Melee Damageon plate
- Fireball – 2.5 sec cast, between 16-20k fire damage, interruptible
- Flamestrike – 3 sec cast, and around 3k fire damage per second AoE for 10 sec
- Summon Phoenix – Summons a Phoenix
- Arcane Disruption – 1750-2250 Arcane damage and a 10 second disorient to every raid member, 20 sec cooldown
- Shock Barrier – a shield which absorbs 80k damage, lasts 10 seconds and stops spell interrupt abilities
Phase 4 specific abilities:
- Mind Control – Mind controls 2-3 people in the raid
- Pyroblast – 4 sec cast, 45k-55k fire damage, interruptible, 60 sec cooldown; begins casting immediately after casting Shock Barrier
Phase 5 specific abilities:
- Gravity Lapse – All members of raid are teleported to him and then swim in the air for 30 sec
- Nether Beam – 1850-2150 arcane damage to a random target, jumps to nearby players, damage doubled for each jump (So Spread Out!)
- Nether Vapor – Small black clouds floating in the air near Kael'thas. If touched they add a stacking debuff which reduces max health by 10% each time, stacking up to 9 times, to 90% reduction.
Raid Composition for this fight is drastically important, you will need
- Main Tank
- Fire Resist Tank (With at least 150 fire resist for use as Conflag target during Phase 1 and Phoenix tank in Phases 4 and 5)
- 2 Off-Tanks
- 6-7 Healers
- 5-6 Melee
- 10-11 Ranged
Ranged damage dealers are much much better than melee in this fight since there are mobs which cause large amounts of damage to melee (Thaladred and Capernian), and the Phoenix eggs are muchmore easily killed by ranged who do not have to run to the Eggs.
Phase One
In the first phase you can take a quite relaxed pace in killing the advisors, each one has a tactic to take him down with relative ease.
- Thaladred the Darkener - Sets his Gaze on a raid member thus giving him 100% agro for the fight. For the duration of the gaze he will walk toward that target, who must run away and kite him while ranged DPS attack Thaladred. For brief intervals between gazes, or if the gaze target dies, Thaladred may melee or follow the target with the most threat. Nobody should be closer than 10 yards when a gaze shift takes place.
- Lord Sanguinar is a simple tank and spank boss, made interesting only by his fear ability which does not even reset agro. DPS, particularly Ranged, must remember to let the tank keep agro during fear.
- Grand Astromancer Capernian casts Arcane Explosion if there are people in melee range, making this another ranged-only fight. Conflagrate must be avoided by everybody except her tanks. One possible setup is to have a fire resist tank stand rather close to her (remaining 15 yards away outside Arcane Explosion range) to take the conflagrations, while a Warlock kills her from 30 yards away. This tactic needs two healers on the warlock, and one on the fire tank. Alternately, she can be tanked by two warlocks which take turns - when one is conflagrated, the other takes over. Warlocks tanking her must not have Nether Protection, Since se will run forward to melee, and then cast arcane explosion, if one of her spells is resisted.
- Master Engineer Telonicus is the least dangerous of the advisors. His Remote Toy debuff can be fatal if placed on a tank in phase 2 as it reduces threat generation, so delay killing Telonicus until no tank has the debuff. In phase 3 the debuff is rendered useless by the staff's anti-stun aura.
Phase 2: The Weapons
when you have killed all the advisors Kael'thas summons seven legendary weapons. By killing and looting these weapons all raid members can equip themselves with legendary weapons for the rest of the fight. The weapons are multi-drop but unique so one player can, but should not, pick up one copy of each. Killing the weapons is a mixture of AoE and focus fire. There should be an AoE kill zone, where most of the weapons are held, while the remaining DPS concentrate on one weapon after the other. Here's an overview of the weapons in a reasonable kill order:
- Netherstrand Longbow ~210k HP
Has a Multi-Shot attack and drops its agro list if any melee or pet attack it. Preferably tanked by a hunter facing it away from the raid to avoid Multi-Shot hitting others. This is the most dangerous weapon and should be killed first by all hunters and ranged DPS which are not contributing to the AoE to avoid the tanking hunter losing agro.
- Staff of Disintegration ~170k HP
Low melee damage, attacks with Frostbolt and Frost Nova. It likes to cast a Frost Nova, run away 10-15 yards and then start to Frostbolt. It's a highly desirable item because its "use" ability grants immunity to the Remote Toy debuff, and it increases the damage output of casters.It has low health and dies much faster than the other ledgendary weapons
- Cosmic Infuser ~280k HP
Deals little melee damage but heals itself and friendly targets, which can and must be interrupted. The melee damage dealers should control and kill this
- Infinity Blade ~210k HP
Hits for an average amount but attacks very fast. Has a Thrash ability that grants it two extra attacks periodically.
- Warp Slicer ~290k HP
Hits for around 1.5K every 2 seconds on plate and applies a stacking rend DoT. Each stack ticks for an additional 500 damage every 3s for 15sThis can be can missed, dodged or parried.
- Devastation ~230k HP
Frequently Whirlwinds, which one-shots any non-tanks. Needs to be tanked away from the other weapons either near the edge or away from the AoEs. Not very useful for most raid membersso doesn't really matter if itdoesn't die quickly.
- Phaseshift Bulwark ~290k HP
Deals a high amount of damage and has a shield spike ability which when activated can reflect a lot of damage to a fast attacking melee DPS. The Phaseshift Bulwark has much higher HP and armor than the other ledgendary weapons. You can do phase 3 without it, but the Tanks will not be able to manage Kael'thas without it in Phase 4
Tank Assignment List:
- Axe - Main Tank
- Sword and Shield - Main Tank
- Mace + Dagger - Offtank
- Staff - Offtank
- Bow - Hunter
The weapon corpses despawn after 60 seconds so must be picked up swiftly, the weapons looted despawn after 15 minutes or when the fight is reset.
Do not worry if you still have a couple of weapons alive at the start of phase 3, you can wrk around the problem
Phase 3
Two minutes after the start of Phase 2 Kael'thas resurrects his advisors. The tanks and their healers should start to move to the corpses of their previous targets several seconds before Phase 3 Hits, so that they can immediately pick up the advisors.
Advisor tank list:
- Sanguinar - Main Tank
- Telonicus - Off-tank
- Capernian - Warlock & Tank (With Fire Resistance)
This is pretty much the same as before, Thaladred and Capernian should be avoided by melee. and the four advisors can be safely attacked by ranged. Since Thaladred is worst, ranged DPS should take him down first. One melee damage dealer with the Infinity Blade should put the weapons debuff on himwith care, the player must be aware of incoming Gaze shifts, move away before the gaze shift and return to DPS when another person has teh gaze..
All other melee damage dealers should concentrate on Sanguinar first and Telonicus second.
After Thaladred is down, ranged DPS can either help the melee group at Sanguinar, or start on Capernian. The decision is group dependant and depends on teh strength of your melee dps.
When all other adds are down all DPS should focus on Telonicus .
Phase 4: Taking matters into one's own hands
When Phase 3 has been going for 3 minutes Kael'thas joins the fight. You should be ok if one advisor is still up, two or moer however and chances are you will wipe.
Fireball is cast regularly and should be interupted asap by any class that can.
Mind Controlled characters can be sheeped, probably the besty way to avoid the problem. It's also possible to use the Infinity Blade with low damage attacks such as hamstring to dispel Mind Control.
Flamestrike needs to be avoided, you will notice a glow on the ground vaguely similar to Consecration, move well away fromt his when you see it (You have around 3 seconds)
Every 30-40 seconds Kael'thas will summon a Phoenix. The Effect for this is the same as flamestrike but much shorter.
Phoenix handling
When the Phoenix spawns you can either kite it with a ranged damage dealer, or simply have your fire resist tank keep control of it. The Phoenix continually casts a hellfire ability which damages itself for around 5% of its health, as well as damaging everybody around it for around 3.5k fire damage per second, This means it will stay alive for 20 seconds before killing itself. When the Phoenix dies it will cast a knockback ability and then turn into a Phoenix egg. This egg has around 70k Health and must be destroyed very quickly. IF you dont take teh egg down within 15 seconds it will spawn a new Phoenix.
Pyroblast
Every 60 seconds Kael'thas casts a the sequence of Shock Barrier, three Pyroblasts and an Arcane Disruption.
Even with all the possible mitigations in effect, Pyroblast damage can be up to 23k fire damage. Tanks with the Phaseshift Bulwark can use it to absorb one Pyroblast. If the damage dealers are up to it, the best course of action is to burn down the shield fast enough to interrupt the second pyroblast. If you cant make this a tink with around 20k Health can just about live through one pyroblast if it has the Infernal Protection buff from the Cosmic Infuser, a Fire Protection Potion or Nightmare Seed and PW:Shield). If your raid group keeps failing to get th shield down before the second Pyroblast it is likely your group is not up to kael.
Event Cycle
In summary, there's a 60 second rotation which takes place over the entire phase:
[0sec]->[20sec](MC + Arcane Disruption)->[40sec](Phoenix + MC + Arcane Disruption)->[60sec](Shock Barrier + 3 Pyroblasts + Arcane Disruption).
Flamestrike happens at random times through the phase.
Phase 5
When Kael'Thas Reaches 50% health phase 5 will start. At this point a small cutscene will begin, when this occurs you should defeat the remaining phoenixs.
In Phase 5 he stops using Mind Control and Pyroblast, instead he casts a random selection of Gravity Lapse, Nether Vapor and Nether Beam. Gravity Lapse teleports the entire raid to Kael'thas' position and up in the air from there. In order to avoid the Nether Vapor debuff and Nether Beam chaining, the raid must immediately move away from Kael'Thas and Spread Out to avoid taking extreme damage. Near the end of the 30 sec duration, people should try to keep close to the ground to minimize falling damage, but must not get too low, else they take damage and get launched back up high in the air.
Kael'thas has a permanant Shock Barrier up during a Gravity Lapse and the phoenixes evade, making any attempt to cause damage futile.
When Gravity Lapse ends the tank must be given time to regain agro, so it may help if the DPS go after any remaining phoenixs rather than return straight to the boss.
Mages should also counterspell the first fireball after gravity Lapse!
If you manage all this, Congratulations! You have defeated one of the toughest bosses before the Black Temple.
