Introduction to the World of Warcraft Raid Guide

Welcome to WoW Raid Guide, an indepth guide to raiding in World of Warcraft the Wrath of the Lich King and beyond!
In this blog I will be writing walkthroughs and videos on how to take down those WoW raid bosses that have been giving your guild trouble, how to survive PUGs and how to advance into the end game content of World of Warcraft with step by step instructions and guides. Ontop of how to beat WoW instance bosses I will be giving boss and class information, helping you improve how you play your character and which professions may prove useful to you in and out of the instances and raids in World of Warcraft.

Monday 28 January 2008

WoW First Aid Training Guide 1 - 375 With Least Possible Mats

First aid is one of the games most useful skills, and should be learnt by all players regardless of their class. Whether you are in a battleground or a raid, throwing a quick bandage on yourself or a teammate can make the difference between success and failure, especially considering the number of AoE (Area of Effect or area over environment) spells cast by bosses in the burning crusade.

This guide will teach you the basics of learning 375 skill first aid, and getting the bandage types you require. Remember training first aid is a number one priority for all players.

But first, what will you need to get the full 375 first aid?

Well there is a minimum number of mats, sometimes you amy need more, but with luck this is all you will need.

  • Linen Cloth - 150
  • Wool Cloth - 125
  • Silk Cloth - 140
  • Mageweave Cloth - 90
  • Runecloth - 250
  • Netherweave Cloth - 110

Aquiring the cloth itself can be a rather tedious task, but there are plenty of places where you can grind it (Which I will go over in a future article)

Some players are more than certain that it can however be quicker to grind materials or items that are worth a lot more, sell tham and then simply buy cloth of the auction house over grinding the cloth itself.

Once you have the cloth required follow this pattern.

  • Learn the Apprentice First Aid skill from a First Aid Trainer.
  • 1 - 40: Make Linen Bandages.
  • Learn Heavy Linen Bandage from a First Aid Trainer.
  • 41 - 50: Make Heavy Linen Bandages.
  • Learn the Journeyman First Aid skill from a First Aid Trainer.
  • 51 - 80: Make Heavy Linen Bandages.
  • Learn Wool Bandage from a First Aid Trainer.
  • Learn Anti-Venom from a First Aid Trainer.
  • 81 - 115: Make Wool Bandages.
  • Learn Heavy Wool Bandage from a First Aid Trainer.
  • 116 - 125: Make Wool Bandages.

Once you reach this level you will need to get three books. These are available from two specific locations, one for allaince and one for horde.

For the Horde you need to travel to Brackenwall Village in Dustwallow Marsh. Here you will find an NPC called Balai Lok'Wein. Once you find him buy the Expert First Aid book, Heavy Silk Bandage Manual and the Mageweave Bandage Manual. Buying all three at once from Balai Lok'Wein will save you making this ardious trip to him again in future.

For the Alliance you will need to head over to Stromgarde Keep in the Arathi Highlands.

In Stromgarde Keep you need to find a man called Daneb Walker, again you need to buy the Expert First Aid Book and both the Heavy Silk Bandage Manual and the Mageweave Bandage Manual

Daneb Walker can be pretty tricky to find (27.58.8 for those witha co-ords addon), so here is a quick walkthrough.

  • Enter the keep,
  • Run forwards (You will go under a low bridge)
  • Take the first right turn.
  • Run straight ahead ( towards the archway with the allaince guards ).
  • Turn right
  • Run forwards, turn a lil then you'll see a bridge ahead.
  • Go over the bridge, and he's on your right side!

Once you have these books you can continue to improve your First Aid Skill

  • Use the Expert First Aid book.
  • 126 - 150: Make Heavy Wool Bandages.
  • Learn Silk Bandage from a First Aid Trainer.
  • 151 - 180: Make Silk Bandages.
  • Use the Heavy Silk Bandage manual.
  • 181 - 210: Make Heavy Silk Bandages.
  • Use the Mageweave Bandage manual.
  • 211 - 225: Make Mageweave Bandages.

Now things get entertaining. To learn the artisan first aid skill you will have to complete a quest called Triage. To save several trips back to this quest giver it is suggested that you take the remainder of your mageweave and runecloth, plus a stack or two more to be on the safe side.

The Alliance quest giver, Doctor Gustaf VanHowzen, is in Theramore inside the keep, on the ground floor at the furthest right hand side from the entrance. The Horde quest giver is called Doctor Gregory Victor and can be found in Hammerfall, in the Arathi Highlands.

The Triage quest is amazingly simple, but at the same time can be fiendishly difficult. The basic premise behind the quest is that you must save fifteen patients before six die with special triage bandages that he will supply you with. The best way to do this is to treat the critically injured first, then the badly injured. If critically injured patients start dieing before you finish bandaging them then move onto badly injured unless a new critically injured patient appears.

For those uninitiated to the world of healing.your best bet is to find a new target and select him as soon as you have started bandaging your current target.

It may help if you press Shift and V, this will bring up the healthbars of the men around you, making it easier for you to see who nee dhealing most, and which are beyond hope. If you fail all you can do is drop the quest and retake it.

Once you have managed to complete this (surprisingly fun or purely irritating) quest you can carry on, you can only learn some of the future first aid skills so enjoy the easy levelling if you brought teh mats.

  • 226 - 240: Make Mageweave Bandages.
  • Learn Heavy Mageweave Bandage from the Doctor.
  • 241 - 260: Make Heavy Mageweave Bandages.
  • Learn Runecloth Bandage from the Doctor.
  • 261 - 290: Make Runecloth Bandages.
  • Learn Heavy Runecloth Bandage from the Doctor.
  • 291 - 300: Make Heavy Runecloth Bandages.

And congratulations you have reached 300 First Aid!

Now onto 375 First aid, the skill cap in the Burning Crusade Expansion

Both these trainers are in the first zone of the outlands, Hellfire Peninsula.

For the horde visit Aresella in Flacon Watch, Here you should pick up Master First Aid, Netherweave Bandage Manual and the Heavy Netherweave bandage Manual

You have to get the same three books, master first aid and the two netherweave bandage books from Burko in teh temple of Talhamut.

Proceeding to First Aid Skill 375 is then simply a case of following these step.

  • Read the Master First Aid book.
  • 301 - 330: Make Heavy Runecloth Bandages.
  • Use the Netherweave Bandage Manual.
  • 331 - 360: Make Netherweave Bandages.
  • Use the Heavy Netherweave Bandage Manual.
  • 361 - 375: Make Heavy Netherweave Bandages.

And there you go, a fully fledged bandaging master, able to heal yourself in instances such as Gruul which can cause some severe mana draining on healers

Karazhan - The Curator

The Curator is one of the first 'real' bosses of Karazhan. Defeating him should indicate that your gear is good enough to reach the two end bosses of Kara, Nightbane and Prince Malchezaar.

The fight itself is pretty mana intensive, so you will find if the raid group is undergeared you will notice priests running out of mana too fast. If your group is having trouble with this the best way to beat him is to stock up on pots and consumables over trying new tactics.

The Curator stands at around 660,000hp and a large amount of armour, not to mention being immune to arcane spells and abilities. He has a wide range of attacks, listed here.

Basic Melee Damage: Around 3000 on a tank
Hateful Bolt: An arcane bolt that hits a non-tank character for around 4500-6000 Arcane damage.
Summon Astral Flare:Summon one Astral Flare every 10 seconds (Flare Phase)
Evocation: He stops attacking for 20 seconds while regenerating mana and increases damage taken by 200% (Evocation Phase)
Enrage: At 15% health, increase melee attack speed and Hateful Bolt cast rate while ceasing new Evocations or Astral Flare summons
Berserk: After 10 minutes, give all raid members an non-removable debuff which increases arcane damage taken by 500%

The astral flares he creates must be destroyed ASAP, if two of these are spawned at once your raid is in serious trouble. They have about 12k hp and are untauntable, but the main problem with these guys is there one major skill.

Arcing Sear is a rapid-fire chained attack which hits up to three targets within ten yards for 675-825 arcane damage each, doesn't sound like much but it recasts VERY quickly , and if more than one astral flares sending these chain lightening towards your raid you will find yourself up the proverbial creek.

The boss has three distinct phases, each of which requires significantly different tactics.

Flare Phase
Evocation Phase
Enrage Phase

The flare phase is the source of most wipes on the Curator, and are infact one of the first major stumbling blocks of new entrants to Karazhan. The most important thing to remember is to nuke these things down as quickly as possible, forget DPSing the boss. Each flare summoned consumes 10% of the curators mana. When he runs out of mana his evocation stage begins.

If you are having trouble on these adds try making sure your raid group is well spread out, as the chain lightning (Arcing Sear) cast does have a limited range. It may help if you designate a flare tank. While the Astral Flares spawn with 1000 agro on a random raid member and are untauntable a tank can get to 1000 agro fairly quickly and move the flare away from the group.

The evocation phase is where you need to DPS the Curator, make sure all the flares are down first though!

During the evocation phase the curator takes 200% more damage, allowing you significantly reduce his health. At the same time though his mana regenerates, allowing for another flares phase.

Any DPS boosting trinkets, spells or totems should be used during evocation to make best use of the 200% boost to damage taken.

Priests, during this phase use your shadowfiend when you are low on mana, it will restore your mana to full due to the increased damage taken by the curator.

Warlocks with a mod such as deadly boss mods can predict a curse of doom just under one minute before evocation starts, this gives huge damage.

Rogues can use Cloak of shadows just before arcing sear is finished casting by an Astral Flare to negate the damage, and if targeted sometime even the whole spell.

Feral Druids can be good Flare tanks due to their high armour and inbuilt resistances.

The tactics here are all fairly irrelevant when it truly comes down to it though.

This boss is purely and simply a gear test. Poor geared groups will find this boss a severe challenge, whereas the better geared groups will find this a breeze, swiping the astral flares and knocking them down in seconds.

If you really need to progress on this boss at may be an idea to stack around 200 Arcane Resistance. This will heavily reduce the damage dealt out by the curator.

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Holy Priest Karazhan Guide and Beyond!

*EDIT*

While this is a good generic healing guide it seemed many people wanted a full step by step guide to healing in karazhan. I have written a healing guide fro trash mobs and bosses in kara here - http://wowraidguide.blogspot.com/2008/02/complete-and-concise-guide-to-priest.html

Holy priests are invaluable in Karazhan. From Shackle Undead to Circle of Healing their utility is amazing. While a Paladin healer is also a preferable addition, two holy priests can heal Kara with ease.

Of course it is down to the raid leader to make sure they are utilised correctly. There are two types of Healing Priest you should bring into a raid

Circle of Healing Priests have a perfect ranged AoE heal for many bosses, as well as instant and spamable. You really should have at least one priest with this in your raid group. To make this truely effective make sure your tanks and melee DPS are in one group, with your casters and ranged in another. This allows circle of healing to be fully effective in all fights.

Ofcourse if your priest does not have CoH he will most likely have Improved Divine Spirit, another fantastically useful buff, improving mana regen and overall effectiveness on all magical areas.

Basics

Priests have to remember a lot of different tactics for each and every boss in WoW. It is a lot to handle, but after you have downed a boss a few times the tactics will come naturally. In each boss section I will be specifying the healers role if something special is required.

When raiding Karazhan Priests have to remember to gear up for it. I have seen many priests in +1k healing gear saying they are more then well geared, not to mention priests with poor mana regen because they simply tried to stack +healing to get into the raiding sector.

Let me lay the myths to rest, you may have been boosted through Karazhan with better healers before. But to main heal in kara 1.4k+ healing is what you need to be an effective, wipe free priest healer. 1.25-1.3k is doable, but isn't easy as your heals cannot keep up with boss damage. Healers with less than this really should gear up first.

After you have got to a level where you can heal kara without too much trouble (Usually around 1600, if you get upto 1800 it means you can survive most bad pulls) You will find heroics are beckoning, if for nothing more than Badges of Justice. Again, do not go into herois with less than this, some trash hit for 3-5k every 1.5 seconds, you rely on your DPS getting the mobs down before the mob grinds your tank down at a faster rate then you heal him.

Of course not all trash mobs are like this, but you really have to be careful in many Heroic instances. Some are much milder than others, Slave Pans for instance is not too hard and by using the right tactics Mechannar can be downed quite easily. In either case though 1600 +healing should be the minimum.

If you are having trouble in heroics take a look at what is going wrong. If you are running out of mana chances are the DPS are simply not good enough rather than your mana regen being poor. On the same note if the tank is going down before you get your heals off the problem is more likely his armour. However if he survives a few hits but your heals are not healing him to full health the problem is most likely your own.

Rotation

Priest rotation is mainly used in high end raids. Although rotating your prisets has not been as much of an issue as it was back in the days of Pre Burning Crusade it still does help, and can be required for weaker groups.

Priest rotation is a fairly simply process. Sometimes it involves rotation of jobs, sometimes it involves a priest going out of combat while another heals to gain the passive spirit regen.

For jobs it may be switching between main tank healing and raid healing. One will always be more mana intensive. If you are trying to clear a raid quickly it may help mana downtime by switching the roles after every pull.

On some bosses you may see your Mana going down faster than the other priests, if this occurs tell the priest before hand you are going to stop healing, only start again once you have either significantly more mana than him or the raid needs urgent heals.

It is imperative you both warn the other healers and gain a decent amount of mana. Since you stopped healing the other healers will be burning their mana a hellova lot faster to compensate for your pause. They too will soon need to stop healing to recoup mana.

Downranking

An important part of your spell cast bar will be downranked spells. If you dont have this get them in ASAP. Despite blizzard nerfing this you can cast a lower mana spell which heals for a significant amount. You should have lower ranks of greater heals and normal heals ready in your task bar, wether it is for keeping the tank topped up or for throwing that one last ditch heal on the tank before your mana hits absolute zero.

I think that just about covers the basics of priests, I have purposely not gone into much deal but this guide provides a great introduction to priest raiding in world of warcraft the burning crusade end game. As the site progresses I will invest some time in writing indepth articles on all areas of priests in raiding, not to mention their gear!

Tuesday 22 January 2008

Karazhan - Opera Event

The Opera Event is probably one of the more fun raid events in World of Warcraft, and especially in Karazhan. There are 3 possible outcomes, you can read detailed guides for each one at,

Big Bad Wolf
Romulo and Julianne
Wizard of Oz

These three Opera events are both challenging and fun, each with their own little quirks. It is definately one of the most entertaining parts of Kara where you get fun fights with their own oddities, which we will try and guide you through in the tutorials above.

To make sure you can stand upto what they throw at you though it is best to have at least two tanks, a rogue a fire mage and a priest on board.

Karazhan - Romulo and Julianne Opera Event

Romulo and Julianne is a fairly easy fight but requires good team co-ordination, it helps if you have a raid leader keeping an eye on things and making sure everybody is attacking the right person.

They have some fairly annoying effects which require careful watching, their self buffs can be debuffed.

Julianne

  • Eternal Affection: Holy. Calls upon Holy magic to heal an ally. Heal 46250-53750, Cast Time 2 seconds.
  • Powerful Attraction: Shadow. Stun 6 seconds. Range 45 yards. Cast Time 1.5 seconds.
  • Blinding Passion: Holy. 6000 Holy damage inflicted over 4 sec (1500 initially, then 4 ticks of 750 each). Range 45 yards, Cast Time 2 seconds.
  • Devotion: Holy. Holy damage dealt is increased by 50%. Spell casting speed is increased by 50%. for 10 sec.

Romulo

  • Backward Lunge: Physical. Strikes at an enemy behind the caster, inflicting weapon damage plus 300 (Knock Back 35 yard).
  • Deadly Swathe: Physical. Strikes at nearby enemies in front of the caster, inflicting weapon damage plus 300 (Affects up to 3 targets).
  • Poisoned Thrust: Physical. All statistics reduced by 10% (Stacks up to 8 times), the debuff can be depoisoned.
  • Daring: Holy. Increases the Physical damage dealt by the caster by 50% and the caster's attack speed by 50% for 8 sec.

In the first stage you will fight Julianne she is a caster and can be interrupted, this should be done as much as possible. The spell Eternal Affection should be watched most closely as it heals a huge amount. She is immune to silence but has vulnerabilities to things such as Kick, Shield Bash and Earth Shock. Mages should look out for the devotion buff which can be spellstealed, but if not any other dispel should be used as it heavily increases Julianne's DPS.

Try and kill her in a corner of the room.

After you get her down Romulo will appear. He has about 190,000 hp and is a warrior. Remove his buffs ASAP, as with Julianne.

Tank Romulo with his Back to the wall in the opposite corner to Julianne. Moving him to have his back to the wall will allow the melee DPS to avoid his Backward Lunge effect, which can be quite devastating.

Romulo can be Disarmed and should be done as much as possible. If you are lacking dispellers it may help to save disarm for when he uses the Daring self buff to compensate for the higher DPS.

Once you have downed Romulo things become really fun. At this point both bosses will self ress and need to be taken down, and this is important, at nearly the same time!

You have ten seconds between killing the two bosses, miss that and the downed boss will respawn with full health.

To maximise DPS and minimise healing it is suggested the raid splits into two, with the tank and casters on Romulo to avoid his melee attacks. The Offtank and melee DPS attacking Julianne, making sure to use the full compliment of melee spell interrupts.

Who ever is leading the raid must keep an eye on the health of both bosses to make sure they hit around 3-5% at the same time, if one is too far ahead stop DPSing. Once they are level again begin to nuke both bosses.

And that is the tragic tale of two star crossed lovers..

Karazhan - Opera Event - The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz is probably the most difficult of the three Opera Events, with the Big Bad Wolf and Romulo and Julianne being the other two.

The Wizard of OZ contains 5 bosses which arrive soon after one another.

Dorothee & Tito

Dorothy will come into combat first, she is unagroable and will attack random players. Tito will go around silencing or pacifying his targets, leaving them unable to attack. Do not kill tito before Dorothee as then she will enrage dealing massive damage to random party members, including your clothies!
Nuke Dorothee then nuke Tito,

Roar is rather ironically susceptible to fear. A lock is ideal here for keeping him feared rather than tanked. However the offtank should try to get some agro incase fear fails, in which case it would be much more preferable for Roar to head for the offtank rather than the lock.

Strawman suffers hugely from fire damage, nearly any fire spell cast on him will disorient him. Therefore firespells should be constantly aimed at him, be they from lock, mage, fire totem or fire elemental.

Tinhead needs to be tanked by the main tank since he deals a rather large amount of damage, as time progresses he will begin to 'rust' as his rust gets worse the tank will be able to kite him rather than fight him, letting the DPS finish him off with ease. Remember to face him away form the raid, as he does a cleave ability with rather high damage.

Once the four main characters are downed the Crone will come. This woman spawns cyclones that will throw players into the air for around 1-3k fall damage, this can be mitigated by slowfall abilities.

Her second spell is chain lighting, making it important to keep your raid spread out as much as possible, though this may be hard with the cyclones.

The crone has pretty low HP and Damage so should go down without too much of a problem..

Karazhan - Opera Event - Big Bad Wolf

The Big Bad Wolf is one of three Opera Events in Karazhan. The other two being 'Romulo and Julianne' and 'The Wizard of Oz'. All three of these battles are rather fun and have some interesting quirks to them.

His first two attacks are very much crowd control, an AoE fear called 'terrifying howl' on all raid members near him, and a 'wide swipe' which stuns the target for four seconds.

The point where this gets fun is on the Big bad Wolf's third ability, Little Red Riding Hood.

This will change a raid member into little red riding hood causing the Big Bad Wolf to chase them for the duration of the change. The problem with this is that the debuff gives the unlucky raid member 0 armour/resistance and removes their ability to caste spells or fight. The upside is it will increase their speed by 50%. If you get this run in nice big wide sweeping circles around your healer, it is easily survivable unless you are unlucky to get wide sweep, which stuns you in position with no protection. If this happens you will most likely die, but at least you get the knowledge of how you are going to die unlike a random boss hit. After experiencing this myself I can safely say 'rabbit', 'headlights', 'splat' are words that tend to come to mind if your luck fails in that kind of way.

The best technique on this boss seems to be to have your tank on one corner of the room and have your DPS in the two closest corners. For the most part it is tank and spank. When the little red riding hood debuff takes effect the Tank must continue chasing and hitting the wolf to maintain some kind of agro level. DPS must watch their threat meters or the Big Bad Wolf will target them as soon as the little red riding hood debuff fades.

Healers stay on the newly formed little red riding hood, they will most likely survive one swipe, but they wont manage two if they don't get healed.

If you get turned into the Big Bad Wolfs favourite meal you have no option but to run. The best way to achieve this is to keep close to the wolf but out of his range. If you get too far ahead he will cut the corers and catch up with you. If that happens you are in serious trouble, and will most likely hear the wolf yell “Mmmm… delicious.”

Cheeky bastard.

Apart from that there is very little else to do. Warriors can use intervention to save the little red riding hood from a hit. Mages can use amplify magic, since the wolf casts no spells.

While techniques such as Invisibility, iceblock, feign death and vanish have been known to stop you getting the debuff if you cast just after the big bad wolf starts casting it has been known that no one gets the debuff, though this may have been fixed in patch 2.3!

If you follow these pointers you should have no trouble in downing this fairly amusing boss!

Karazhan - Maiden of Virtue (the Big Bitch)

The Maiden of Virtue is a big bitch, but easy enough to take down. She sits as the third boss in Karazhan and she is, at least in my opinion, one of the easier bosses in Kara. Maiden is Taunt Immune, so again its important to state that all you DPSers MUST watch your agro. This fight relies on your tank keeping maiden central for the most part so people know where to stand. The good thing about Maiden is that she is one of the few Kara Bosses that only requires one tank to complete with ease, so offtank, get your DPS gear on.

So lets get right down to it, what can Maiden do, and how hard is she?

Well her health sits at around 376,000, and she only really has two major attacks that you need to worry about, with two more damaging, but not raid breaking abilities. This leaves her as a fairly simple tank and spank exercise. Her melee hits for 2.5k - 3k every second and a halfish with the occasional 4-5k crushing blow.

  • Repentance - Incapacitates for 12 seconds and does 1500-2000 holy damage to the whole raid. Cannot be dispelled but can be broken with damage. 25 second cast time.
  • Holy Ground - AoE (12 yards around her, conveniently the size of the platform) 240-360 holy damage every 3 seconds. Silences every 1 second for 0.5 sec.
  • Holy Fire - 3000-3500 fire damage DoT and 1750 fire damage every 2 seconds for 12 seconds. 1 second cast time, 2 second cool down. Can be dispelled, and should be if possible.
  • Holy Wrath - Instant cast holy chain damage AoE. 2k damage on first target, 900 damage on any others. 20 second cool down.

The important thing about beating maiden is learning the repentance and holy ground technique. To start this off you need a good raid layout,

Maiden is on a raised platform in the centre of the room, this is surrounded by pillars. Your ranged DPS and healers should stand just below the lower step while the melee DPS and your tank should move into the middle. Melee DPS and the Tanks should be in one group for Circle of Healing, a great spell on Maiden. who does a lot of AoE damage to the melee DPS around her. Make sure you have a healer on either side of maiden so you always have people in range of healing.

Pretty much as soon as you go in holy ground will take effect, this isn't really a huge problem for Melee DPS and can be ignored. What can damage the raid is Repentance, this will knock out your healers for 12 seconds, not good!

In a perfect world your healers should step into holy ground (On top of the platform) That way as soon as repentance is cast it will be dispelled by Holy ground. Your healers can then step out of the holy fire, wait for silence to tick off and continue healing. Either way top up the Tank with Heals over Time (HoT) to cover in case of repentance.

If your healers get caught in repentance you have two escape routes, plus paladins Divine shield (making them a useful healing addition on this boss)

1) If you have any Pallys or druids in melee DPS they should immediately jump out of holy ground and start healing till the original healers are back in action.

2) Get the tank to move maiden towards the healers, that way holy ground will move and bring tem out of repentance early.

Neither of these techniques are ideal, both can save the raid though. Once you have this setup in your raid Maiden is easy enough and only has two more abilities.

Holy fire, a rather annoying dot, but can easily be healed over. If you have a priest specced for reduced mana cost on dispel get him to do this, otherwise a couple of flash heals may be more effective (no doubt holy fire will get a tick off anyway). Grounding totems may proves useful in absorbing some Holy fire if you have a shaman in the group, saving your healers a bit of work, and warlocks can use spellstones to remove.

Holy Wrath tends to hit the tank and melee around her. It is a fairly low damage spell and should not cause your raid any undue problems.

The rest of this instance is simply knocking down maiden in a tank and spank kind of way leaving you with some easy epics, and your raid group with one more boss down!

Monday 21 January 2008

Karazhan - Moroes

Moroes is the second boss in Karazhan. This boss is quite a tricky one logistically, good CC should make this a breeze but there is plenty of room for error in the unware.

But lets get back to basics. Moroes follows the Kara theme by being an undead, yet another guy who didn't realise it was time to quit the earth. His HP hovers aroun 378,000 and he has a wide array of skills as follows.

  • Melee - He hits for around 1600 - 2500 on a plate wearer
  • Blind - Moroes poisons a melee target causing them to go “blind” and run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off … much like Fear or Scatter Shot, this can be dispelled.
  • Gouge - Incapacitates the highest aggro with a Gouge. He will then attack the second person on the aggro list.
  • Vanish - Moroes vanishes every 30 seconds. Aggro will not reset.
  • Garrote - After coming back from a Vanish, Moroes puts a Garrote on one player dealing out 1000 damage every 3 seconds for 5 min. Can be removed by: Dwarf Stoneform, Paladins Blessing of Protection on others or Divine Shield on themselves, Mage Ice Block, items which remove bleed effects. Garrote will disappear once Moroes is killed.
  • Enrage - Moroes enrages at 30% increasing his damage.

Now Moroes himself is not that difficult, what makes this fight challenging is the adds.

Moroes has four additional elite guards. These are chosen from a random list, but usualy will include at least a healer and/or dispeller.

  • Baron Rafe Dreuger - Retri Pala
  • Baroness Dorothea Millstipe - Shadow Priest
  • Lady Catriona Von’Indi - Holy Priest
  • Lady Keira Berrybuck - Holy Pala
  • Lord Crispin Ference - Prot Warrior
  • Lord Robin Daris - MS Warrior

Dealing with these adds is the most important aspect of this fight, and should be dealt with care. Crowd control is a definate must on these guys, Shackle undead is invaluable, and kiting may also be a viable option if you have a hunter to hand. It is in my opinion best to Shackle the healers and keep them shackled till Moroes is dead. This basically means you have less time with Moroes hitting your team while you deal with the adds, once Moroes is down you can move onto the last one/s.

Remind your raid to use spell interupts on these guys whenever possible to greatly drop the time it takes to get them down.

Dont forget about gouge, when he hits your tank with this he will go straight for the second man in the agro list, make sure this is our off-tank!

Due to the lack of Taunt on this boss you may find it helps to have a hunter cast misdirect if possible, every little helps!

Friday 18 January 2008

Karazhan - Attumen the Hunter and Midnight (His Faithful Steed)

This is the first boss in Karazhan and by far the easiest. Considering the number of gimmick fights in the burning crusade, with random abilities, complete random taunt and so forth this is a refreshingly simple tank and spank battle. However there ar a few quirks you should be awar of before jumping in to the fray.

First things first though, lets get the basics sorted.

Attumen stands at about 350,000 health and is of the Undead variety. He has a variety of attacks, most of which can be easily avoided if your tanks stand in the right place. While Attumen can be solo tanked it is not recommended and you will require a minimum of two tanks for the other bosses at any rate.

His attacks are as follows,

  • Melee - 1.6k - 2.1k on tank, 8k on clothie. Can and should be disarmed.
  • Shadow Cleave - Cleaves anyone in front of him for about 4k.
  • AoE Curse - Reduces chance to hit with melee and ranged attacks and spells by 50%. Casts every 30 seconds. Removed by mages and druids.
  • Mount Up - When he or Midnight reaches 25% health he will mount and they will form 1 boss at full health.
  • Charge - This charge does over 6k damage on cloth and does a knockdown however it has a minimum range so can easily be avoided by having everyone hug. Remember to stay on his back half to avoid the Cleave.

The Basic Setup

The basic raid setup for attumen is incredibly simple.

First, Your offtank needs to get agro on Midnight, I suggest giving at least 5 seconds for this as neither Attumen of Midnight can be taunted (Damn Kara has a lot of this). It helps if you take midnight to the wall, keeping him well out of the way.

Once your tank has sufficient agro DPS Midnight to 95%. At this point Attumen will appear, it is vital that at this point your main tank gets agro on Attumen and faces him away from the group.

The rest of the group including the off tank must stay behind attumen to avoid his cleave ability,

Important things to remember here are Demoralising Shout and Thunderclap, Disarm should also be used on attument to significantly reduce his damage output. A cheeky Spell reflect will also work wonders on his curse which occurs once every 30 seconds.

So you have your Raid in place with the two bosses where you want them. The next part is simple, dps Midnight as fast as you can. As soon as he hits 25% hp Attumen will mount him, restoring to 100% health.

As soon as this hapens the tank must ensure the Attumen/Midnight combo is attacking him and move him to face away from the group again. All other raid members must huddle up directly behind the boss to avoid his cleave and midnights charge ability (Which Can be lethal to clothies, especially if only one stays outside the group.)

The DPS should leave 2-3 seconds after the two bosses join to allow the tank to gain sufficient agro, this is hardly ever required, but 2-3 seconds is a safeguard to a possible stupid wipe.

The rest of the fight returns to a simple tank and spank, healing is fairly easy and should only be needed on the tank itself.

It may also be useful to note that there is a repair guy near this boss, however you amy need a certain level of rep with the violet eye to use him, can anyone confirm? He also sells several rare recepies (Bind on Pickup) for any flourishing Jewelcrafters out there.