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.

Friday 29 February 2008

Terestian Illhoof and Kil'rek - Karazhan

Terestian Illhoof and Kil'rek are an optional (but advisable) set of bosses in Kara. This duo can give unwary raiders a few problems, in most part because of sacrifice but in several cases because of overwhelming numbers of imps.

There are fortunately a few simple tactics that can make Illhoof not just easy, but incredibly simple. You will however need a warlock!

First though here is the stats and spells for this demonic duo and their pets.

Terestian

  • Basic Melee - Illhoof hits for around 1800 damage on a tank, 3-4k on DPS.
  • Shadow Bolt - Illhoof fires a 4k damage Shadow Bolt at the highest target on the aggro list.
  • Sacrifice - A random character is summoned to the centre of the room and is paralyzed, suffering 1,500 shadow damage per second until the chains are destroyed. While the chains are up, Illhoof is healed for 3k hp per second. The chains have roughly 13k health and can be removed with Ice Block or Divine Shield. It will not be cast on the main tank. A druid can use barkskin while chained to reduce damage taken.
  • Berserk - After 10 minutes, Illhoof goes berserk, spamming high-damage Shadow Bolt Volleys on the entire raid every few seconds.

Kil'rek

  • Basic Melee - 2,000 on cloth.
  • Amplify Flames - Undispellable debuff that increases fire damage taken by 500.
  • Broken Pact - Debuffs Illhoof on death, making him take 25% more damage until Kil'rek respawns (~45 seconds after death).

Summoned Imps

  • Basic Melee - Approximately 400, rarely used.
  • Firebolt - 200 fire damage, up to 700 if Amplify Flames is on the target Cast very quickly.

Now onto the tactics.

The most important thing about this fight is the sacrifice. It is important that your DPS jumps straight onto attacking the chains the instant a person is sacrificed, when this happens the sacrificed player will be teleported to the middle of the room.

Because the chains heal Illhoof it is imperative these are downed ASAP, a macro such as
/target demon chains

or, if you fancy something more spiffy,

/cleartarget
/target Demon Chains
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/target Kil'rek
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/target Terestian Illhoo

Will help significantly in selecting the correct target.

Ten seconds after the fight starts Illhoof will open two portals from which a constant stream of Imps will appear. The best way of dealing with these is for a warlock, or if possible two warlocks to spam seed of corruption, this is incredibly effective at taking out the imps. If you do not have a warlock mages AoE or a rogue single target speedily taking them down can also work.

Killing Kil'rek is simply a matter of choice for your raid. If you can take him down in under 20 seconds it is advisable, anything more and you would probably be better off leaving him on the off tank. The befit of getting Kil'rek down is a 45 second debuff on Illhoof which increases his damage taken by 25%, quite a bonus!

It is preferable to fight this with two tanks, the main tank on Illhoof and the offtank keeping agro off the healers when new mobs get agro'd by the Warlocks seed of corruption. The tank should keep Illhoof between the two imp portals to maximise damage from the AoE effects used.

One healer (Paladins are best for this) should be assigned to instantly keep the sacrificed player up, other healing classes should put up HoT's to help mitigate the damage though

DPS go all out on this one, If you are killing Kil'rek wait until Illhoof receives the debuff before using cooldowns.

All in all Illhoof and Kil'rek are a fairly easy takedown, raids new to this boss may find it takes a couple of tries due to this battle becoming rather chaotic at times, but once the basics have been learnt you will breeze through Terestian Illhoof.

Gruul the Dragon Killer - Gruuls Lair (Not spelt Grull!)

Gruul is a fairly mean mother and can be found in the Blades Edge Mountains. His level, and that of the instance is pretty much aimed for those that can clear Kara without breaking a sweat, and his loot tends to be a nice improvement on what you will have gained from Kara.

When you get to Gruul everyone must stand inside the instance, the gates will close on you otherwise when the fight begins. But lets get to the basics, who is Gruul?

Well Gruul is named because he kicked the Black Dragonflights arse, he is also the overlord of the ogres in outlands, so beware his power!

His health stands at 3,415,000 hp and he has a few spells and effects that can decimate your raid group, these are

  • Basic Melee: 3k to 3.5k at the start of the fight on tanks about once every 2 seconds.
  • Growth: Self-buff, increases damage done by 15% every 30 seconds, size increased by 10%.
  • Hurtful Strike: Hits the 2nd highest aggro in melee range. A second and third tank is needed to mitigate this, it hits for 12350-13650 physical damage. If no secondary target is within melee, this hits the first target available within melee range. This damage increases after each growth.
  • Reverberation: A raid wide silence for 4 seconds. Not dispellable. Can be reduced by anti-silence abilities.
  • Cave In: Random AoE which causes ~3000 damage every 3 seconds in the area. The AoE damage is preceded by ground shake in the affected area and is visible on the roof. This occurs more frequently as the fight progresses. Cave in damage counts as melee damage and can be mitigated by armour. Growth also affects Cave In.
  • Ground Slam: Zone-wide knock back into a random direction, starts the effect Gronn Lord's Grasp.
  • Gronn Lord's Grasp: Stacking debuff after a Ground slam that reduced movement speed by 20%. stacks 5 times after 5 secs then causes Stoned. This can only be dispelled by complete Immunity effects and Cloak of Shadows (possibly escape artist, Blessing of Protection does NOT work). Players who dispel Gronn Lord's Grasp will STILL shatter, which makes it important that they still stay away from others.
  • Stoned: Stuns the player Occurs after 5 stacks of Gronn Lord's Grasp.
  • Shatter: After being Stoned, Gruul will shatter everyone in the raid, the damage dealt increasing if players are closer to each other. This damage is physical, and goes through immunity shields such as Divine Shield and Ice Block. The Damage changes according to range from 1100 if just within 15 yards of another player to over 8k if next to the player.(Pets will get stunned but will not effect the shatter)

Because Gruul is constantly growing High DPS is essential, with each DPS player in your group having a minimum of 600-700 DPS to ensure he goes down fast, in addition priests should have a minimum 1800 + healing and very good MP5, since the fight generally takes just under 8 minutes and requires constant tank and raid healing.

This boss will cause a lot of raid damage if your team is not 100% on the ball, cave ins and shatter do huge amounts of raid damage, and will exhaust all healers from mana if DPS do not help themselves recover from it.

All DPS should carry bandages, healthstones and healing potions for this boss. Whenever any significant damage is taken use some of these things immediately. It is amazing how often DPS and even tanks will shout at healers for not using mana pots while in the same breath they will argue against using potions themselves.

Healers here should be looking at around +1800 healing to be able to keep on top of raid and tank damage, which will be significant. And tanks should have around 18-21k hp with high armour mitigation and uncritability/crushability (If possible for class)

Gruul is pure melee damage, so mages cast amplify magic on the group!

The tactics are fairly straightforward, your three tanks must constantly top the agro meters to avoid hurtful strike taking out your DPS. After shatter everyone without exception must heal themselves with bandages, pots or healthstones. This is a very intensive fight on all classes, in Gruuls Lair Healers have to do a massive amount of raid wide healing, DPS need to get Gruul down before he simply grows too large and the tanks take a significant amount of damage, especially towards the end of the fight. You should use everything at your disposal to make sure this goes well.

While the tactics are debateable I have found that the most effective method with an average group is to save cooldowns till the first grow (30 seconds into the fight). This allows your tanks to get their agro up and then lets your DPS all out nuke the boss down.

Cave ins can be avoided completely, you have 3 seconds to get out of them. You should not be taking any damage from these.

Shatter is the usual cause of wipe in Gruuls Lair. In most cases significant damage can be avoided, however it is fairly luck based. Too many people get thrown together and it is simply impossible to move quickly enough. Fortunately there is a safe zone that can be utilised, if you get on top of or behind the rocks you can prevent yourself from being flung across the room. Obviously only one person can do this in each group of rocks, as you will still shatter, however it can be a raid saver to have your healers remain at full health.

Deadly Boss Mods or a similar add-on is pretty much essential for this boss, it will warn you when you are in a cave in and it brings up a little box telling you If you are too close to somebody.

The key to shatter is only worry about the people in front of you, run into a space and trust the raid member behind you will not follow you. The problem with this is that everyone in your raid group needs to conform to this rule, otherwise chaos can ensue.

Apart from shatter this boss is fairly easy, he is however quite an obvious gear check. Defeating Gruul is a way to say your guild is ready for ZA and Magtheridon.

Monday 25 February 2008

Site News

I just thought I would delve into a brief interlude for a bit of a site update, I would like to thank not only the regular visitors but also the hundreds of people who are stumbling upon this website every day.

I urge anyone who reads my guides to post comments, complaints, suggestions or changes I should make to improve both the accuracy and reliability of what I post.

As a side note there are now advertising spots available for $2 (£1) a week at this moment in time, an absolute bargain considering we are currently seeing around 400 impressions a day and rising (Day before was 500, yesterday 650!)

Click on the advertise here button below any adverts on this website!

Magtheridon and Magtheridon's Lair.

*UPDATE*

Magtheridon has been significantly nerfed in patch 2.4 making him significantly easier, updates on this boss can be found Here

Magtheridon is a boss in Hellfire Peninsula. He is often judged as a good gear AND skill check for the SSC and TK instances. This is quite simply because this instance requires perfect raid co-ordination, anything less and it will be a wipe. (Pre patch 2.4, Magtheridon is being made significantly easier after this patch)

Magtheridon's Lair itself is surprisingly small, with only four packs of trash mobs (All of which must be killed prior to fighting Maggy.) Trash can be cleared to boss level in 10 minutes by a group that knows what they are doing, after this is complete you have one hour until they respawn.

Clearing the trash in Magtheridon's lair can be a pain for groups that don't know what they are doing, the key however is distance.

The trash mobs do a devastating shadow bolt volley and rain of fire, therefore the key to these is separation. Due to the lack of space most raid groups separate the raid into two areas. a 'holding pen' where two tanks and two healers keep two of the mobs and a 'bull pen' where the rest of your raid will fight the mobs one at a time. Be careful because these guys can fear with a horror type effect, keeping them in location can be hard!

The holding pen needs to be a good distance from the bullpen, fighting these guys too close together can result in simply too much AoE damage for your healers to keep up with.

Magtheridon

When you reach Magtheridon himself you can walk into the room without pulling any agro, this allows you to position your team. Team setup on this boss is very important, more so than most other boss fights. The fight will begin on the first offensive move.

Firstly you want two groups of designated clickers for the Manticron cubes (I will explain later) and each and every raid member must know what to do here incase a clicker goes down. These will preferably be ranged DPS and it may help to make a macro that shouts out the names of the people.

When the fight starts you need a tank on each of the channelers, don't worry about Magtheridon just yet, he will stay banished for two minutes. The Hellfire channelers have some divesting abilities, here is a quick rundown.

  • Health: 240,000
  • Shadow Volley: 1 sec interruptible cast, 30 yard AoE, up to 2k damage on cloth
  • Fear: Single target fear, 40 yard range
  • Dark Mending: 2 sec interruptible cast, heals themselves or another Hellfire Channeler within 60 yards for around 32k.
  • Summon Abyssal: Summon Infernal (despawn after one minute)
  • Vulnerable to Mind-numbing Poison and Curse of Tongues
  • Soul Transfer: When one Channeler dies, all surviving Channelers gain this stacking buff, increasing size by 20% and damage and casting speed by 30% (with four buffs, the last Channeler has 220% cast speed)

Due to the Hellfire Channelers specific abilities tanking order is important, preferably you will work around the circle killing them in turn. However since every time you kill one all others increase their damage output by 30% (Stacking) making sure each tank is upto the job is vital.

Your main tank should be on the first mob, while he is the easiest it is important he is ready to gain agro from Magtheridon as soon as he removes banish. Keep your best healer on the main tank, and make sure a second healer is ready to help as soon as Magtheridon removes banish.

From then on it should be in order of weakest to strongest tank around the circle, along with weakest to best healer beside him. After each mob is downed the healer should do some temporary raid healing then move on to the last or second to last mob and help keep that tank up, since they start to hit incredibly hard after the third one is taken down.

It is unlikely you will take down all the Hellfire Channelers before Magtheridon removes his banish, so make sure the main tank and a minimum of two healers are ready to pull him into a corner out of the way while the raid finishes off the adds.

DPS should waste cooldowns on getting these guys down as fast as possible, and anyone who can interrupt should keep an eye out for the healers casting a heal on themselves, this spell named Dark Mending heals themselves, or another channeler for around 32k health, a severe set back.

Your raid should have at least two warlocks for the Hellfire Channelers Summon Abyssal spell, these elementals can be banished, feared icetrapped and so on. DPS should not attack these, instead they should be kept chain feared/trapped Priests help out in fearing these if you think you can drop agro afterwards. They will despawn one minute after being summoned.

Around Magtheridon's Lair there are five objects called Manticron Cubes (This will become 3 cubes after patch 2.4). These are absolutely essential to the fight because of a single spell cast by Magtheridon, namely Blast Nova. A spell so powerful every mage, warlock and gnome in the game instantly wants it, a raid wide effect that hits for 2.5k damage every second for ten seconds.

If this spell is not interrupted your raid WILL wipe. To interrupt the spell all you have to do is have 5 members of your team each click a cube as soon as Magtheridon begins to cast his blast nova spell (there will be a raid warning saying "Magtheridon Begins to Cast Blast Nova" you have 2 seconds from this point for the clickers to press the cubes. It is suggested you get an addon such as Deadly Boss Mods to countdown to when this will occur so your clickers can get in place on time. Your clickers should not stay on the cubes all the time as Magtheridon casts Conflagration, a small AoE effect that while not important will prevent you from channelling the cube!

It may help if your raid leader makes a macro saying in raid warning Click Cubes Now and another for Release Cubes Now. Uncoordinated groups are the only reason raids wipe in this instance.

You should also make two groups of people with each person in each group assigned a location. Your clickers should know exactly where to go and you should have some back up clickers which know each location and who was on each one in each group incase they need to take over. You need two groups since clicking the box gives a debuff that prevents futher clicking for over a minute.

When interrupt is channelled Blast Nova will be cancelled and your raid members will receive a one minute debuff, preventing them from clicking the cube again. For this reason you need a second team to rotate the clicking.

When Magtheridon is channelled he will take 300% damage, so priests use your Shadowfiend. However for the duration of the channelling the people clicking the cube will take 800hp damage per tick (Every 2 seconds) so without healing the channelling cannot be sustained for very long. To avoid people jumping off out of sync a clicker should shout out on Ventrilo or Teamspeak when they move from the cube. This is desirable because it prevents team members from taking damage from channelling when there are not enough people doing it to give Magtheridon his 300% increased damage taken debuff..

Choosing whether to simply use the cubes to interrupt the blast nova or to increase Magtheridon's damage taken is purely a personal choice, which should be made by the raid leader before starting the fight. Either way it does not make an insane amount of difference in the long run.

But now onto Magtheridon himself,

Magtheridon has relatively few spells himself,

  • Health: 4,750,000 (May be reduced in patch 2.4)
  • Cleave: 8k - 11.5k on tanks, deals damage in a frontal arc
  • Conflagration: small fire AoE on random floor patches
  • Quake: 50 sec CD, first cast after 40 sec. A knockback that hits every player every second for 7 seconds, interrupts spells
  • Blast Nova: 60 sec CD, about 2,500 damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds to every player in the lair
  • Enrage: 22 minutes after the start of the fight, Magtheridon enrages and wipes the raid


While Magtheridon hits for quite a lot it is nothing that 2 or 3 healers cannot handle, infact apart from blast nova the only thing that causes trouble is his quake effect, this can interrupt heals, keep raid members off the cubes and send melee DPS infront of Magtheridon, leaving them vulnerable to his cleave.

Magtheridon has three stages

The Channeler sage I have already described, the Second stage is tank and spank while avoiding the blast novas and then there is the Third Stage

Magtheridon's Third stage is at 30%. as soon as he reaches this he will shatter the walls of the room causing the roof to cave in, causing around 6k damage to every raid member and stuns everyone for 2 seconds, for this reason you need to time your DPS.

Firstly keep an eye out on the blast nova, you do not want the collapsing roof to coincide with the blast nova effect. If the blast nova is imminent take your DPS off Magtheridon at around 32-33% wait for the blast nova to be mitigated with the manticron cube interrupt and then continue.

Secondly at around 38% the raid leader should shout for all healing classes to top up the entire raid. Yes that includes you wiley DPS Paladins and Druids, not to mention any DPS with bandages handy.

As soon as the damage is taken and the stun fades all raid members should bandage, healthstone or health pot to get their health up, no exception.

After the roof has caved in there will be random small (8 Yard) AoE Cave-ins, similar to those in Gruuls Lair, however after a couple of seconds they will do a 75k crushing blow. Needless to say as soon as you see the cave in animation move your arse, it will kill anyone in it, no exception.

After you have learnt to navigate these issues you will be able to take down Magtheridon without any trouble, his health (While high) goes down incredibly fast. Nearly all wipes in this raid instance are down to either the Channelers at the start taking down their assigned tank or from Magtheridon's Blast Nova, Blast Nova being the killer 99% of the time!

Friday 22 February 2008

Making Gold With Alchemy and Herbalism in World of Warcraft!

As I have mentioned in a previous post, gold is the cornerstone of the world of warcraft economy. Not only do you need it to progress, but you will constantly find yourself spending money on materials, items for raids and so forth.

My main character is a herbalist and an alchemist, a perfect match for making money, a gathering profession with nearly the only WoW profession that gives a wide range of regularly used consumables. This gives fantastic opportunities for making some gold, whether you need it to support raid progression, or just to get that flying mount you have been lusting after.

Firstly, gathering.

Easy, if mind numbingly boring, this is a guaranteed way of making money. Alchemy mats are constantly being bought, and herbs can be found in abundance in most outland areas.

There is no real 'money making' herb, instead simply look for a few different herbs and go to gather those which are most expensive!

You can find different herbs in different locations,

(List to come shortly)

Making money from alchemy is a different story, and requires a pretty large amount of patience. I find Super Mana Pots to be a lucrative source of gold in WoW, however if there is a lot of competition at the time I can struggle to break even.

Elixirs of Healing Power can also be a good source of gold, they require expensive mats but can sometimes sell for twice what it costs to make them. If mats for items are going for a huge amount on the auction house you may want to consider grinding the mats rather than buying them, it may take a bit longer but can net you a healthy profit!

Of course these examples are purely from personal experience, I also find tanking elixirs, flasks and potions also sell well. Though the profit tends to be smaller as mats are more expensive (Poor tanks)

It does seem best to avoid DPS flasks and elixirs. While there are some great things out there for DPS they have a tendency to avoid the expense, after all you can berate a tank or a healer for not having every buff up, but can you shout at a hunter who doesn't have one yet beats some of the poorer players in the group?

Of course all DPS should be using flasks and elixirs for that one last boost, it rarely seems to happen outside of high-end, good guilded raids though.

Making money from these professions is largely a matter of intuition and experience. There is no guide out there that can say 'grind this' 'make that' 'sell at this price' because the market for herbs and pots is one of the most flexible in game.

At some times you will find Golden Sansam, a rather low level herb, selling for upwards of 35g a stack, and dreaming glory going for as little as 7g, the trick is simply to stock up while things are cheap and sell while they are expensive. Sometimes you may find yourselves buying herbs at a cheap price and selling them a few days later. Remember to look at the cost of mats and pots on the AH, if it is more profitable to sell your materials separately you might as well do it. Each stack of potions instantly has the 1.75g imbued vial cost as well as the auction house cut to contend with!

After several weeks of playing the auction house you should be more than capable of making informed decision on what to buy, what to sell and more importantly what to make.

As a final point a great bonus of high level alchemy is speccing into a particular branch of alchemy, these are

Transmute Master
Potions Master
Elixir master

Taking any of these will give you around a ten percent chance of proccing an extra 1-4 of whatever you are making.

I do not suggest making a transmute master. Because you can only transmute once every 23 hours you are literally gimping yourself to one proc every ten days.

Potions mastery and elixir mastery are great options for money making, both proc regularly and you can make hundreds of potions in one day.

If you wish to unlearn your alchemy specialisation and respec into a new branch of alchemy (Ie unlearn transmute mastery and learn potions mastery) you simply have to go to the person who taught you the mastery of your spec and ask him to release you from it. This WILL cost you 150g

Ignore the people who tell you to go to a specific person whatever spec, you do have to visit the person who trains your specific alchemy mastery. These guys are

Transmute Master - Zarevhi at Stormspire in Netherstorm
Elixir Master - Lorokeem At the Lower City in Shattrath
Potions Master - Lauranna Thar'well in the Cenarion Expedition in Zangermarsh

To learn a new specialisation simply got the Master trainer you require and he will teach you his mastery, you will NOT need to do their quest.

Making Gold in World of Warcraft - The Basics

Whatever race you are and whatever class you play you will at some point need to grind some gold to progress in the game. If you are raiding in WoW you may find that on progression instances, where wipes are common, you end up spending huge amounts on repairs, flasks, elixirs, food and buffing mats

So how can you make gold in World of Warcraft?

There are a few different ways, all of them have their pros and cons.

Grinding, the most common way of making money is grinding. Whether it is for netherweave cloth, primals (Primal earth, air, fire, water, mana, life and shadow, although some are worth more than others!)

Grinding is pretty much guaranteed to make you gold, at a speed dependant on the skill of your toon, it is however very boring and very repetitive. Grinding can be done in many places, I prefer Nagrand, For the elemental plateau, the lake below it for motes and the warmaul ogres for their netherweave!

Auction House Trading. Playing the action house game is a risky, but lucrative way of making money. Buy low, sell high. Search for things you think are under priced and sell them on for a massive profit. You can make big money doing this, the downside is you can easily lose the gold as well as earn it!

Using your Professions. By the time you have hit 70 you should have two high level professions under your belt. Some of them are fantastic for making money, others less so.

Alchemy
- A great way of making easy money, personally I find Healing Elixirs, Mana pots and Tanking Elixirs sell well. DPS items seem less popular, since DPS do not personally take responsibility for their actions as easily as healers or tanks they are much less likely to stock up on expensive raiding mats when they can just as easily coast through an instance.

Enchanting
- Another great way to make cash, though more by disenchanting than enchanting itself. Enchanting mats are worth a lot of money, and picking up greens in instances can net you a fortune in gold

Engineering.
- Engineering used to be the worst profession for making money, however recently they have brought out a mote extracting device, using this in conjunction with a helmet that lets you see 'clouds' from which you can extract numerous motes is an amazing way of making cash, especially for those with epic flying mounts.

Skinning/Mining/Herbalism

Gathering professions inherently bring in money, you can make a lot for this simply by gathering what is lacking on the auction house and selling at massively inflated prices. However it is also quite boring, and requires you to keep an eye on the minimap as opposed to simply grinding by killing all the mobs around you.

Leatherworking/Tailoring/Blacksmithing.

Fairly useful for yourself, but not so much for the making money. There are however some fantastic patterns that drop endgame, these can bring in some massive sales, with some epic patterns making items that can sell for 1-3 thousand gold, though much of that is in the price of materials.

Running Instances

Yep that's right, running the instances in normal mode may only net you a little reputation, but with a high drop rate of greens and blues you can make a lot of money here, especially if you have an enchanter to turn some of those blues into large prismatic shards (Sell for around 30g pre patch 2.4, expected to drop by a huge amount afterwards!)

Monday 18 February 2008

Introduction - Where it all began.

So I have been playing World of Warcraft from nigh on the year after its release. It was a fateful day when I had split up with my then girlfriend, moved to a new city and knew few people. So I did what everyone does in that situation...

Thats right, I got absolutely hammered. I drank enough that night to destroy the livers in half of Ireland. And yet I found to myself talking to this girl who was my type, cute brunette and just a little geeky. She told me how she had been playing this game WoW. When I asked what WoW was she giggled and said 'world of warcraft', while brushing my arm with a quick downward stroke of her arm (Unfortunately that was the last I saw of her that night).

I can only presume it was the womans touch while mentioned with the words World of Warcraft that led me to leave the house the following day and pick up a copy of the game.. Whatever my motivation though, within 2 hours of playing I was thinking two things.

1) This is bloody amazing!

2) Where is everyone?

Ahh yes, a quick readup had pronounced Druids the Jack of all trades. So jumping onto my new night-elf character I had soon found my way to Darnassus, the Capital City of night elves!!!

Tumbleweed would actually have been an improvement.

Please Blizz build an instance nearby.

But I am a quick learner, and a self admitted altoholic. So now a few years on I have a level 70 healing holy priest, a 70 dps grinding lock, my poor old feral druid languishing back at level 63 and an up and coming protection warrior at 50 (Boosts welcome ty)

I have been through a huge amount of 5-mans in my time, with a hell of a lot of pick up groups (PuGs) and I can safely say that I have mastered my classes. Something about dealing with healing able characters who refuse to throw in an occasional heal, tanks who dont have a shield, other healers who randomly go AFK and DPS who care more about their DPS emter than avoiding agro have given me a great experiecne of dealing with difficult situations, poor pulls and impossible groups.

So a few weeks ago I quit my long term but non-progressing guild to join the Order of Rotheran on Trollbane - EU. While this guild is not a top raiding guild it is a fantastic, friendly and helpful guild which will hopefully move us onto the T5 Instances soon.

And in that short term I have picked up a host of knowledge on raids, Karazhan (Kara), Zul Aman, Gruul (Not Grull!)and heroics.

Yes thats right, I will also be covering 5 mans in normal and heroic modes. These have been my bread and butter for nigh on 4 years, I consider myself fluent in them!

So all in all, welcome to my World of Warcraft Guide to Raids, Instances, PUGs and anything else that happens to catch my eye.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Karazhan Guide - Shade of Aran

The Shade of Aran in Kara is quite a fun boss, fairly easy to take down but requires your raid to know exactly what to do. Karazhans Aran is often thought of as a good training methodwise for the Lurker in Serpentshrine Cavern, due to the similar methods of moving and stopping required for a successful takedown.

The Shade of Aran is one of karas optional bosses, he is however highly recommended since killing him opens up a telleport from the doorkeepers to Arans Room.

But back to basics, Aran is susceptable to melee attacks, and Interupts are great to stop his spells. He is however imune to silence and spell slowing effects.

Aran has 5 basic spells which will hit you anywhere in the instance and tend to be on random targets. These can be interrupted, some groups find it best not to interupt his fire spells though, as when he goes into melee he tends to move out of position.

  • Frostbolt - Three second cast, 3500 to 4500 frost damage and four second slow.
  • Fireball - Two second cast, 3910 to 5290 fire damage.
  • Arcane Missiles - Five second channeled, shoots five missiles each dealing 1260 to 1540 arcane damage (6300-7700 total) keep an eye out for this incase emergency healing is needed!
  • Chains of Ice - Ten second root, doesn't break on damage and can be dispelled. it is a chance on hit spell with frostbolt.
  • AoE Counterspell - Ten yard radius AoE around Aran, occurs very often. Locks out schools of magic for ten seconds. Ranged, keep your distance!

Around every thirty seconds Aran will use one of three abilities which make him unique in Kara.

His three abilites need to be known by your group or they could wipe you very easily.

Every 30-35 seconds, Aran uses one of his three special abilities (never the same twice in a row). The special abilities cannot be interrupted or locked out, and they are real killers.

  • Flame Wreath: Five-second cast which creates a fiery aura around three random characters in the raid. When the auras are triggered by moving over them, they deal 3,000–4,000 fire damage to everyone in the room. The auras last 20 seconds. When this occurs everyone MUST stand still!
  • Circular Blizzard: Large AoE that moves slowly clockwise around the room. Deals 1313 to 1687 frost damage every two seconds and slows movement speed by 65%, The Blizzard eventually covers half the room, but does not hit the center of the room. There is a graphic which looks like a small blue tornado at the front end of the blizzard to make it easier to see it. Ranged simply stay on the opposite side of the marker to avoid the blizzard effect, melee do not need to worry about this as the blizzard does not effect people ten yards or less towards Aran!
  • Magnetic Pull / Slow / Super Arcane Explosion: Pulls everyone to the center of the room and Slows them. This is followed by a ten-second cast Arcane Explosion that deals 9,000-11,000 damage in a 20 yard radius. As soon as this happens everyone should run to the wall, there is plenty of time to do this :) If someone is falling behind the slow effect is dispellable, so priests and pallies keep on your toes!.

At 40% health Aran will also summon water elementals, these can be feared, banished, can have Curse of Tongues placed on them and only have 13k health. Ether keeping these feared or taking them down should depend on the DPS quality in your raid.

If for any reason he reaches 20% mana then he will polymorph the enitire raid and drink. After he finishes drinking he will send out a pyro blast dealing around 7.5k damage. If your raid suffers from a pyroblast all DPS should Bandage/Pot/Healthstone to save on healers mana.

If the water elementals are out they will break the polymorph, if you are lucky they will hit one of your healers who can use this time to heal the raid (Any one who cant heal should bandage those in dire ened before the pyro blast otherwise) Whatever you do do not break his drinking or he will drink a mana potion instead and throw out the pyroblast straight away. The good news is that as of patch 2.2 this pyroblast can be interrupted, so you should have any clast that can do this attempt to do so immediately!

The tactics behind this boss are relatively simple, interrupts should be placed on the basic spells (Arcane missiles should be countered asap, fierballs and frostolts just beforet hey are cast)

The following interrupts can be used on Aran

  • Rogues Kick
  • Warriors Pummel and Shield Bash
  • Shamans Earth Shock
  • Druids Feral Charge
  • Mages Counterspell
  • Warlocks Spell Lock

When a special ability is cast just do what is advised above, these are the real killers in an instance so everybody MUST know what to do.

Flame wreath is a killer, critting for well over 7.5k on each person. Everyone stay still when this happens unless you are sure you will not effect it.

The Blizzard can be avoided by staying in the middle (Not advised for casters due to silence effect) or simply stay on the opposite side of the room.

The Magnetic pull is the easiest to avoid, run to the nearest wall as soon as you get pulled in.

Overall the different effects make this an incredibly fun boss, and surprisingly easy to beat, but everyone in your raid needs to learn the special moves!!

Friday 8 February 2008

Complete and Concise Guide to Priest Healing in Karazhan.

After looking at what many people wanted when they found my generic Karazhan priest guide on this site I decided to write up a quick guide on exactly what a priest needs to do all the way through Kara, including Bosses and trash. I am hoping this all in one guide will be useful to some priest healers who have just begun to run Karazhan.

I will not go into the basics here, you have got to Karazhan so it is odds on you have learned how to heal!

Firstly, make sure you are geared, 1600+ healing is a minimum if you have 2 healers, if you are fortunate enough to have three healers then you can usually get away with around 1300+ healing without gimping the group., also keep yourself stocked, at least 40 buffing regents (60 for IDS priests). Remember to bring lots of mana pots.

And without further ado, onto the instance!

As soon as you enter you will be greeted by a door, it is safe to open this straight off, although it is suggested you wait until all the raid is ready, otherwise someone may get the wrong idea and move on ahead. If your group know what they are doing there is a lot of room on the other side of the door for easier preparation.

The first trash you will come to are the lead up for Attumen the Huntsman and Midnight. These are fairly easy kills but respawn after a mere 30 minutes if the boss is not killed, therefore you need to make sure these are chain pulled, leaving little room for mana regeneration until you reach Attumen. It may help if the healers rotate here, 2 heal while one drink, or even just one heal, as the mobs are not particularly hard.

For the trash the priests need to be on the ball for two other duties than healing.

Shackle - usually on the horses, they fear
Fear ward - Keep Fear Ward on the tank.

Due to the fears it is a good idea to make sure the group pulls mobs pretty far back, you don't want any wipes at this stage of the instance.

Attumen the Huntsman & Midnight.

For the boss himself you only really have one point where you need to do anything other than throw in heals. With three healers this boss is simply a piece of cake for you.

Firstly your off tank will attack midnight, keep him topped up with low healing spells, let the offtank gain as much agro as possible.

Once Attumen comes the raid should reposition, Midnight and Attumen have to be in line of sight, but the main tank should take Attumen and face him away from the raid. This means you should, so far only be healing the two tanks.

At this point DPS Should focus on Midnight, and as soon as he hits 25% Attumen will jump onto him and return to full health.

Main tank at this point will need to pick up the agro and face him away from the raid. Everyone else, including hunters and casters, should get behind Attumen, VERY CLOSE behind Attumen.

If this does not occur Attumen will randomly start charging about, dealing massive damage to your raid. If this does occur and someone does not come into the group, stay in position, let the tank gain agro. If the offending person does not move into the group then stop healing him, it will be better for the raid group if they die at this point.

If all goes smoothly the tank should be the only person taking damage.

Attumen will occasionally put up a curse, this only lasts ten seconds and should be ignored.

The healer assignment for this boss for the first phase should be on healer on off tank, one on main tank and one as backup/raid healer. All three should keep up HoTs on both Tanks. Rotation is generally not required on this boss.

Trash to Moroes

This is quite simple pulls and shackle should be used as much as possible. Keep on your toes with Crowd Control. Most of the trash is easy, there are some elites scattered about though.

Some trash can be skipped, it may be best to clear till you know which mobs can be bypassed though. Moroes room has similar mobs, however all of these need to be taken out.

Moroes

Moroes himself has four adds, these can be shackled, so priests get prepared.

Those mobs that cant be CC'd should be taken first, then Moroes then the CC'd adds.

Moroes does a lot of damage, and initiates a bleed effect that is removed once he dies. This effect causes a lot of damage and cannot be removed, so stay focussed and if possible stack HoTs over the players suffering from this. Paladins are the only class who can remove this debuff from others, mages can remove it off themselves with iceblock.

The fight is healing intensive, but not particularly hard. Watch out for the shadowpriests mana burn though (It hits for 6k) If it all goes to hell they can be reset by running back to where you came from. Garrottes do not always fall off though, real pain in the arse!

Don't place any DoTs on Moroes near the end of the fight, he has been known to bug out and die while 'vanished'

Trash to Maiden

This is fairly simple, more shackles and some Banishes if you have a Warlock handy. Pull back, take it easy and DPS fast, there should be very few healing problems here.

Stay on the right of the hallway on the last stretch towards maiden, there is a room with adds that you don't need to pull. (Those that have a quest there wait for 30 minutes after everyone has left the instance and go back inside, the adds will have disappeared).

Maiden of Virtue

This is a fairly easy fight, but positioning and group set up is important, especially if you have a Circle of Healing Priest.

First of though, the healers need to spread out to ensure they can heal across the entire raid, movement will be limited once the fight has begun.

Put melee and tanks all in one group so CoH can be used to negate the Holy Ground Effect, this is the most mana efficient and effective way of keeping on top of this.

For the fight itself Healers and ranged DPS hug the wall and move into your approximate positions, once you are ready tanks and Melee should run into the middle, the tank keeping the Maiden of Virtue in her middle spot.

Ranged and healers move forward so you are just before the steps leading up to the central platform.

When the fight starts holy ground will start doing damage to all the melee on the platform, however every so often she will do a raid wide stun for 10 seconds. While this does put all your healers out of action there are several ways out of it as a priest.

First off you should have Deadly Boss Mods, this will tell you when the stun (Repentance) is incoming. At this point step into holy ground, the damage this causes will bring you out of the stun and allow you to run out of holy ground and continue to heal. Holy ground itself has a 0.5 sec silence debuff, effectively removing any possibility of you healing inside the ground.

The second tactic is to get maiden to move towards a healer, holy ground moves with here so will bring you out of the stun as well. Make sure the tank also takes her back to the central area as well though to avoid confusion.

Apart from this she does a few random damage spells, one of which (holy fire) leaves a dot. It does not long and can be healed over, some raid leaders insist it is dispelled though, in the long run it doesn't matter, but it is wise to never annoy a raid leader.

Trash To Opera

The trash here is simple tank and spank, make sure the mobs are pulled out of spotlights and try and step in them yourself, they contain random buffs.

With the skeletal ushers shackle one and make sure the other is duel tanked, he can iceblock one of the tanks, so if DPS is too high he will chase after a squishy.

The tanks also need to get agro straight away off the shackled mob, a hunters misdirect can greatly help with this.

Opera Event

This event has several different possible bosses,

For Romulo and Julianne have a healer on two tanks.

For the Wizard of Oz Raid heal, watch out for the tin man, he hits hard so keep a healer spam healing with help from one of the raid healers.

On the Big Bad Wolf, it's a simple tank and spank exercise until Little Red Riding Hood. When this occurs a random member of your raid will turn into Little red riding hood (Positioning tactics and Little red riding hood tactics at http://wowraidguide.blogspot.com/2008/01/karazhan-opera-event-big-bad-wolf.html)

All healers need to spam heal the unfortunate raid member here while they run away, they can take a hit without dieing, but two will take him down if they are not healed pronto.

Trash to Curator

You have two options here, you can skip trash and go to the back door, or your raid can take down some trash that drop 10-15g per raid member (Pretty nice for those ol' repair bills!) These mobs are fairly easy to take down and tend to be simple tank and spank.

To reach the backdoor, instead of clearing the remaining opera trash, exit Karazhan through the front door by simply going back the way you came (be careful to avoid any of the trash mobs you haven't previously killed). Once outside, head North across the little stream to the old tower structure. Here you will find the back stairwell. Make your way up several flights of stairs, go across the narrow stone bridge and open the back gate. the locked door will only open up if the Opera event has been completed.

Either way, if you clear the Opera trash or make your way through the back entrance you will find yourself at the Broken Staircase With an outdoor path to floor 4.

This is covered in undead spectres so be careful. Eventually you will reach the hallway guarded by some sentinels, these need to be cleared, and they hit hard, stay on your toes healers.

In the next circular room you will find several more mobs, they are all fairly easy to take down but should be pulled back to avoid pulling extra agro.

Curator

The Curator is the first real gear test of Karazhan. If your group can get past this guy you will be ready to take everything up to Nightbane and Prince Malchezaar.

This is healing intensive and unfortunately there a few helpful tactics for healers.

It will be mana intensive so down pots as soon as possible.

Shadowfiend should be used on the Curators evocation only. At this point he takes between 200% and 300% and it is normal for your Shadowfiend to full replenish your mana if released at this point, even allowing you to throw a smite or two in!

Keep an eye out for flares, the people they get close to will need healing, pally healer is best for the tank here with one of the priest raid healers providing back up. It can be done easily enough however with priest or pally main healing the tank.


Trash to Aran

You should be heading for Aran next, to get to him you have to cut your way through a huge room full of trash mobs and the like, getting through here can take 15 to 45 minutes and can be, to put it bluntly, a pain in the arse. To speed things up make sure you hug one side, that way you can avoid the majority of the trash mobs. Expect burst damage here.

When you manage to get up to the mana wraith packs you will find the smaller ones detonate on death. This can be prevented by a variety of silencing effects. The undead casters can be shackled, do this for effective CC

Up until this point all the trash mobs have been linked to Aran, therefore after you clear the next room of demons (Just heal the tank for that room) The mobs will respawn after two hours if Aran is not killed. Just the demon mobs in the last room are linked to Illhoof.

Aran

Aran is a technically difficult fight which requires everyone to be on the ball. You will need to move fast and beat him down before he reaches low mana. The best way to do this is make sure that only Fire and Frost spells are interrupted, not arcane.

He is untauntable and has little agro, so he will attack random people. Major healing is required here. Chug those pots.

As a Healer make sure you stay out of Arans rain of ice spell, it travels around the room 360 degrees, leaving a trail of ice you should also avoid.

If circles of flame appear Do Not Move, This ability has the power to detonate the entire raid.

If you get dragged into the middle of the room run to the side immediately, you will have a slow effect, but still enough time to move to the side. If someone is falling behind this can be dispelled as a normal magic effect, try and keep on top of this but be careful not to sacrifice yourself doing so.

After you kill Aran the door man can teleport you to his room, great time saving incase you need to go back later to finish some quests :)

Illhoof

At the start of this fight you may want to move relatively close to the boss. The imps have a high chance of throwing their spells at you so keeping these guys close to the tank is a real bonus.

You will need to do a fair amount of raid healing on this one, and you must keep an eye out for the sacrifice. At this point a player will get teleported to the sacrificial pit and surrounded by chains. While the DPS nuke the chains you will need to throw on some speedy flash heals. The guy who gets hit by sacrifice will lose health fast as hell!

Illhoof has a companion named Kil'Rek You don't need to worry to much about this guy, but when he dies Illhoof will take an extra 25% more damage, making it an excellent time to release your Shadowfiend.

When assigning healers you should have one on main tank, one on off tank and lock (Who should be spamming seed of corruption so will generate a large whack of agro.) The third healer will have to work through a large amount of damage, not an easy assignment!

When sacrifice take place all healers should immediately start casting a heal, after the initial rush one healer should be able to keep the sacrificed person alive.

Netherspite

The trash mobs leading up to Netherspite are fairly simple to deal with, however they do disarm, so a feral druid is a great help here. Healing wise its just keeping the raid up as per normal though!

Netherspite is an incredibly difficult boss to explain, fighting him can take a couple of wipes till you figure out the best way to position and maintain your group.

The main thing you need to think about however are the beams of light which appear from random portals. Once you have stepped into a beam you will not be able to do so again for another two minutes, therefore a good rotation system is essential.

Red: Always starts off as the portal to the right. The red beam gives an additional 30k health to whoever intercepts the beam and gives them permanent aggro. As long as this player is taking this beam, Netherspite will never aggro another player. On top of that, the tank never has to be healed. He will always be returned to full health after every swing. The negative effect is that the beam will gradually reduce the player’s maximum health. If intercepting the beam for the entire duration, the player will reach 1 health. Because of this, a trade-off is necessary. A tank can intercept the beam for about 30 seconds (each second, the buff stacks, which is noted in your buffs area). A backup is needed. This backup will stand in front of the tank. Once the tank has taken his share of debuffs, he runs through his backup and the backup is now the new red beam tank. Anyone who is wearing mail or higher is a candidate for intercepting the red beam. Cloth and leather wearers will get one-shot. Prot warriors and feral druids can take stacks up to 30ish times. Non-tanks will only want about 25 stacks.

Blue: The blue beam is the centre in the middle-back. Players who intercept this beam will have their damage increased as they go (I’ve had my mind blasts crit for 12k, dots tick for 3k). The only drawback is that the damage received is also increased. This is a drawback that will be explained later. Warlocks and shadowpriests can intercept these beams for a long duration. If the warlocks and shadowpriests can break 1200-1300 shadow damage (buffed), they can take a blue beam for the entire duration. It’s preferred if they don’t and that proper rotations are used.

Green: This is the easiest to manage. Put a non mana user in to intercept the beam. Warriors and rogues are the best candidates. This beam gives you infinite mana, however reduces your max mana similar to how the red beam reduces your max health. It’s possible to reach 0 mana.

As a healer you should not take any of the beams, but it is important that you know what they do.

When the beams are out you can pretty much ignore the tank if he gets into the red beam, focus on keeping the rest of the raid topped up as the boss does a raid wide AOE pulse effect that can severely damage the raid group.

One healer should keep a careful eye on who is in the blue beam, they will need a lot of healing, but will deal out an even greater amount of damage. (Shadow priests should get in the blue beam for insane mana regen and health regen)

Once you get past the basics this boss is not too hard, good communication is the key in ensuring the boss goes down without a hitch and your rotations go as planned.

Chess Event

Next to no Trash.

The event itself is more about grabbing a character and moving into the fray.

There are healing characters but all in all its an easy fight and you tend to fight with what you can get.

Prince Malchezaar

Trash, pretty standard, by now you should have got used to the things you will encounter.

The Prince Malchezaar is one of the last bosses of Karazhan, the other being Nightbane.

Both bosses are of similar difficulty, but Prince has some fairly annoying and difficult to navigate effects. Healers need to play this boss carefully, for the most part you should have a healer solely on the tank, paladins excel here for the spam heals. As a priest you should remember to keep a renew up on the tank to help mitigate spike damage, the rest of your time should be focused on keeping the raid up from some of Prince Malchezaar's more ingenious spells.

The main problem with this boss is the infernals, they will drop out of the sky to a random predetermined location. This means you can learn spots where you will not get hit. The Infernals start sending out an AoE as soon as they land causing massive damage. They continue to spam this for one minute. At all costs your raid needs to get out of these as quickly as possible, and healers must be ready to top the raid back up ASAP.

While Prince himself deals fairly simple, but very heavy melee damage, his infernals and blades do some nasty damage to the rest of your raid.

The Main thing you will need to look out for is enfeeble. When this occurs several members of your raid who are not top of the agro list (Hence why it is insanely important that your tank stays at the top of the agro charts) will go down to 1hp. When this occurs all the people with enfeeble must run away, preferably behind the casters. You need to do this because he will cast a Shadow Nova attack, so anyone enfeebled will die. Priests can continue healing from maximum range and be out of range of the shadow nova.

Prince will also cast amplify magic on a raid member, you cannot dispel this but should keep this raid member topped up to avoid them dieing.

But lets cover the basics, Phase 1 is just spank and tank, he does not do much damage at this stage, for this reason your DPS should keep their damage down, let the tank gain a lot of agro so he will not get enfeebled and die during the next stages. During the second stage Princes DPS will increase astronomically, so it is at this point your DPS need to go all in.

He will cast shadow word pain on the tank so keep your dispels up.

At phase 2 (60%hp) he will really start to do damage, he will spawn some axes and cast sunder armour, this guy can hit unto 20k hp in two seconds, though fortunately this doesn't happen too often. It is advisable to keep the tank topped up to the max, over heal to hell if you have to!

Phase 3 (30%hp) is when things get tricky. melee damage on the tank goes down, but his blades will start to fly around hitting random members of the raid. He will now cast shadow word pain on any raid member, it is best to assign someone on dispels for this.

Infernal spawn rate will increase, so get ready to move and get some AoE heals going if needs be.

Nightbane

The trash should all have been cleared, so straight onto the boss!

Nightbane is on a par with Prince Melchezaar difficulty wise. He can however be taken down fairly easily if everyone does their job.

As a healer you will face fears (Always keep that fear ward up) heavy damage, crushing AoEs and Rain of Bones. Rain of bones is a spell which spawns six adds on a member of your raid.

First off, layout

As a healer you should be in one of two groups hugging either the battlements or the dome. all ranged should be in one of these groups and MUST stay by the side, this minimises the area charred earth covers, since it focuses on the play, not an area. Standing by a wall effectively halves the area of the aoe, giving you some much needed space.

DPS should stay behind the back feet of Nightbane to avoid his frontal attacks and his tailswipe.

Nightbane casts several DoTs on your team, since he casts these very often it is more mana efficient to heal them than dispel them.

If Nightbane casts rain of bones all move into the tank, he then should use his AoE agro gain to get control of the 6 mobs that drop. If things go wrong here spam circle of healing can keep the group up since it heals faster than damage is dealt out, unless you agro more than 2 of the adds. Pallies are fantastic tanks here for their consecration. If you have trouble here the skelatons can be shackled.

Prayer of Mending, as ever is fantastic in this fight due to the random damage taken. Once it hops of the tank it generally will jump onto anyone taking damage from charred earth if it happens.

With this boss expect a huge amount of raid healing, everyone can and will take damage on this one. For this reason things like chain heal are a great addition to the healing group, but with care and attention renew, circle of healing, prayer of healing and prayer of mending, plus of course good old flash heals and greater heals can all be used effectively to keep the raid alive and kicking.

And you are done!

The whole of Karazhan healed, hopefully no wipes, some great loot received and your guild progressed onto Zul'Aman!