World of Warcraft Raid Guide

Update on WoW Raid Guide

2011-06-06T09:40:00.000-07:00

There has beena distinct lack of posts over the last year or so, this has been down to quite a few factors, the most significant of which is that I met a girl, emigrated to the United States, and got married. In recent months i have also been heavily involved in teh upcoming iPhone MMORPG Traveller-AR.

All this combined has left me with very little free time for playing WoW, and definitely no time for writing WoW Raid guides. The good news is that once Traveller-AR has been released I will have a little extra time to spend raiding once more, and should son be able to pull together some more information on some of the toughest WoW Raid bosses!

Naxxramas Gothik the Harvester

2010-05-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Gothik the Harvester is a boss which many people first meet in the Death Knights starting area as a quest giver. When you reach the new Naxxramas in Wrath of the Liche King however you will eventually find yourself and your raid group ready to take this epic WoW boss on first hand.

Gothik the Harvester only has 2,510,100 HP in 25 min and 836,700 in 10 man raid modes. This might not seem like much, but trust me, this boss is no easy take down.

For the first four minutes and thirty four seconds of this fight, Gothik the Harvester will be invulnerable to attacks.

During this time your raid group must concentrate on keeping down the additional mobs which will spawn for the first 3 minutes and 44 seconds.

When Gothik the Harvester comes down after the 4:34 of trash clearance Gothik has only a few minor abilities which you must contend with. Gothik will teleport, fortunately agro is kept through teleports, making life much easier for the tanks.

Shadowbolt - Gothik the Harvester will cast a shadow bolt every single second causing 4500 to 5500 shadow damage (2880 to 3500 shadow damage in 10 man) on his primary (tank) target.
Harvest Soul - Gothik casts Harvest Soul once every 15 seconds, this reduces the stats of the whole raid group by exactly 10%, and stacks 10 times.

The real trick to beating Gothik the Harvester is in controlling the adds. Beating the adds requires careful co-ordination between two sides of the room., the living side and the dead side. Everytime a living mob is killed it is reborn on the undead side,

Since crowd control on undead mobs is harder however, the DPS on teh living side must control the flow in which they release undead mobs. Some groups may find it easier to place more DPS on the undead side, to help reduce the adds as quickly as possible.

You will need to have at least one tank for the mobs on each side, you should also make sure you have the tanks ready to taunt Gothik when he becomes vulnerable (Who will first spawn on the living side, then teleport to the dead side) When Gothik the Harvester reaches 30% health the room will become undivided, allowing you to quickly take down the remaining health of this add-adorned boss.

For the full list of adds and their abilities check out this WoW Wiki article.

I will however summarize how you should kill these adds.

First your living side team should kill the Unrelenting Rider, then the Unrelenting Death Knight, then the Unrelenting Trainee in that order. However, your living team must keep a close eye on the undead team, especially in the beginning since the Unrelenting Rider will spawn both a Rider and a Horse when it respawns on the undead side. You can CC a lot of the living mobs, which can help keep the rate which you kill the living mobs manageable for the undead team.

On the undead side, you will be able to take down the mobs as they appear, be warned though, the spectral rider and the spectral horse cannot be CC'ed!

Be careful not to overwhelm the undead side, and keep up a fast pace of DPS, it should not take you long to reach Gothik the Harvester who is a simple tank and spank job, with the slight twist that he will teleport between the two teams. This means that both your tanks will need to keep on top of him as he switches between the rooms. When he reaches 30% health you will be able to get your entire DPS on him 100% of the time, as the middle gate will lift!

Emalon the Storm Watcher Raid Guide

2010-05-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Emalon the Storm Watcher was at one point one of the hardest bosses in the Vault of Archavon. However after a big patch nerf, many guilds will now find Emalon the Storm Watcher a much easier prospect. Don't get me wrong however, while Emalon has been nerfed, he should still provide you and your friends with a fairly decent challenge!

First, lets get down to basics. In 10 man mode Emalon the Storm Watcher has around 2.7 million HP. This is increased to 11 million HP in 25 man mode. The first thing you will most likely notice about Emalon is that he hits for a good 20k un-mitigated on plate every three seconds. Unfortunately Emalon's strength doesn't stop there, with some devastating lightning based (Nature damage) abilities in his arsenal. Emalon, like Archavon the Stone Watcher, has a short enrage timer of 6 minutes, so you need to keep up a high DPS on this WoW Raid boss!

Around Emalon the Storm Watcher there are four minions, when one is killed another respawns, unfortunately you need to keep on top of these guys, as I will explain shortly. First however, let's cover these hardcore lightning abilities of Emalon teh Storm Watcher!

Chain Lightning - Hits one person for between 4.5k and 5.5k damage a time, this jumps around your raid if people are too close, and each jump will increase it's damage by 50%, this occurs every 15 seconds.
Lightning Nova - A large 20 yard nature damage AOE which hits for up to 20k to 25k damage. Closer proximity = greater damage.
Overcharge - Gives a minion overcharge, I will explain this next!

The Tempest Minions which surround Emalon the Stone Watcher are the bane of many a raid group when they first attempt this rather difficult raid boss. Each one spawns with around 141k HP, and when Emalon hits a random minion with overcharge, that minion will become fully healed.

Overcharge grants a random minion 20% extra damage, and this is stacked every 2 seconds. When ten stacks are reached the minion becomes a living bomb, which deals 30k damage to the entire raid.

For this reason it is imperative that as seen as Emalon the Stone Watcher empowers one of his minions with overcharge, your DPS must take the affected minion down immediately!

Basic Emalon the Storm Watcher Strategy Guide

While the Emalon boss fight is by no means easy, once your raid group has mastered this raid boss you should find it becomes a pretty smooth fight. There are some simple strategies that you should however bring in to play.

Use two tanks, one on Emalon, the other on the Tempest Minions. The tanks should stand at least 30 yards away from each other to avoid the off-tank getting hit with the full force of the Lightning Nova. Melee DPS should also be prepared to run from Lightning Nova.

Ranged DPS should be the ones to switch to the overcharged minions, the rest of the time they should focus on Emalon the Storm Watcher.

Avoiding the chain lightning is easy in 10 man (Just keep spread out) but harder in 25 man. Because of the limited space some 25 man raid groups prefer to stack players in twos. This way the chain lightning only hits 2 people. Allowing the chain lightning to jump too far is a recipe for a raid wipe, since it can cause a large amount of raid wide damage!

As long as you manage to keep these simple things under control you should be able to kill Emalon the Storm watcher in no time at all, and enjoy the Tier 8 goodies this lightning imbued boss drops!

Avoiding Chain Lightning is different in 10 and 25 man variations of the raid.

Vault of Archavon - Archavon the Stone Watcher 10 and 25 man WoW Raid Guide

2010-05-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Archavon the Stone Watcher is the first boss in the vault of Archavon, and is my first update to my world of warcraft raid guide in a lonnggg time. I apologise for not updating the WoW raid guide more, I have however been incredibly busy with both my wedding and my US immigration!
But lets get back on point! Archavon the Stone Watcher is very similar in both 10 and 25 man raid modes, he is a pretty tough boss, but his real lack of imaginative abilities make him a pretty easy take down for any WoW raid group that is decently equipped.

Archavon the Stone Watcher will drop Tier 7 pieces and their PvP equivalent, for a variety of classes. The Tier 7 will definitely help with some of the later bosses in this raid. You can also look forward to twe emblems of triumph.

In this WoW raid Archavon the Stone Watcher has 2,300,900 hp in the ten man instance, and just under 10,000,000 hp in the 25 man version of Archavon.
Archavon the Stone Watcher deals a pretty high amount of damage, and you will more than likely need two tanks, you should also keep up a high rate of DPS on this boss, you will want to take him out as quickly as possible due to his five minute enrage timer.

Archavon the Stone Watcher has some pretty basic abilities, but nevertheless you will need to keep a close eye on things to prevent your raid group from wiping.

Rock Shards - The Rock Shards ability is an unavoidable attack that deals around 10,000 damage on 10 man and 20,000 damage on 25 man against a single (random) raid member over three seconds. This ability is cast every 15 seconds or so, and one healer can easily keep on top of this with a well timed large heal. The damage is also mitigated by armor. The tricky part of this ability is that the same damage will be applied to any raid member within five yards of the affected player.
Impale - Every 45 seconds Archavon the Stone Watcher will cast impale, this is probably the biggest raid breaker of the entire fight, and your healers will need to be on the ball every time this is cast. It deals a raid wide 4000 damage on 10 man and 8000 damage on 25 man, while giving a 2 second stun to the entire raid. At the same time the main tank will be impaled in to the air and incapacitated for 8 seconds. During this time it is highly important that you have a second tank, or well geared DPS, take up the threat until the main tank recovers. Since this only lasts 8 seconds Taunt is a viable way to keep the boss busy if played right, so a good DPS player can keep things going.
Choking Cloud - This move has a 30 second cooldown, and you will see the Stone Watcher jump towards a random raid member. When Archavon the Stone Watcher lands he will deal 4,000 damage in ten man and 8,00 damage in 25 man raids to the player, and anyone stood within 10 yards of him, as well as knocking the players back by around 30 yards.. A white cloud will appear where Archavon the Stone Watcher lands, standing in this will result in 2,000 damage in 10 man and 3,000 damage in 25 man per tick, as well as causing a 50% reduction in your hit chance, so never stand in these clouds!

Archavon the Stone Watcher Strategy Guide

To defeat Archavon the Stone Watcher you really just have to remember a few simple rules

1) Keep everyone WELL spread out to reduce the AoE damage.
2) Tank him against the back of the room
3) DPS fast, if your healers have spare mana it really can't hurt for them to throw on a DoT or two just to help keep the damage up. The boss is on a five minute enrage timer, so he needs to be taken down FAST.
4) Watch out for both the cloud (Which hurts both health and group DPS) and Rock Shards, if you are hit by rock shards, get out of the way of the rest of the group. If your neighbor has rock shard, get away fast!

Healing on Archavon the Stone Watcher fight is pretty simplistic, you will need one well geared healer in ten man fights and 2 to 3 healers in the 25 man version. At least one more healer, maybe two depending on group make up (10 man) and three, maybe four, healers (25 man) will be required to deal with the rest of the damage. The amount of healers you will need is really based on your raid groups ability to avoid the AoE damage, so keep an eye on how your group progresses. If you do not kill Archavon the Stone watcher before he enrages you may have no choice but to drop a healer for increased DPS.

DPS has to be fast on this boss, and since the fight must take less than 5 minutes, DPS really do need to go all out.

As your DPS will be going all out, your tanks must be ready to hold agro, so make sure your tanks are specced properly, and well geared.

The first tank inparticular should keep threat high to deal with impale, the second tank should keep threat at a level which is always higher than DPS, but lower than the main tank.

Follow these simple steps and you should kill the boss Archavon the Stone Watcher in no time, and soon enough you will tire of waiting for the 7 day cooldown timer on this loot heavy WoW Boss!

Naxxramas Instructor Razuvious 25 Man Guide

2009-06-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

Instructor Razuvious is the first Naxx Boss in the Military Quarter. in this wow raid guide we will explain how to take down this difficult addition to the new 25 man Naxxramas.

So lets get down to basics, Instructor Razuvious has 10,000,000 HP and hits plate for 30k damage. It is a huge amount and that is why your priests will come to the fore with Mind Control during this instance. the key to taking down this WoW boss is through his understudies, but I will go in to that later, for now lets go over Razuvious's skills in 25 man Naxx!

Disrupting Shout - This physical AoE hits for between 7125 to 7900 physical damage on the entire raid, this is unavoidable and is cast every 15 seconds.
Jagged Knife - Jagged Knife is used on a random member of your raid about once every 10 seconds. It does 5k dmaage instantly and applies a bleed affect which deals a further 10,000 physical damage over 10 seconds. This can be avoided by standing out of Razuvious's line of sight.
Unbalanced Strike - Inflicts 350% weapon damage and applies the Unbalanced debuff. This reduces the players defence by 100 for 6 seconds. Due to Razuvious's massive damage output this hits for over 100k so only Death Knight Understudies should ever be hit by this ability!

So far I have mentioned the Death Knight Understudies a couple of times, but not really explained what they are for. Basically your priests need to mind control these guys to tank Razuvious. They don't hit for much and can be tanked easily, and should not be killed the end (when they take a huge amount of damage from your DPS, 1000%). Lets go over what makes up the Death Knight Understudies.

Blood Strike (Button 4) - Causes 50% extra weapon damage to the target, has a four second cooldown.
Taunt (Button 5) - Use this to taunt the boss, this lasts ten seconds and has a 20 seconds and has a 20 second cooldown from cast.
Bone Barrier - Bone Barrier should be kept up when tanking the boss, it reduces the damage taken by 75% for 20 seconds and has a ten second cooldown.

Razuvious 25 Man Strategy Guide

First off, to complete this boss you will need a main tank to keep hold of the Death Knight Understudies. You will need two to three priests, depending on your raid groups skill, to mind control the Adds to tank the main boss. Two priests can sucessfully control the boss through mind control, however if you do not have the setup exactly right a third priest can keep a Death Knight understudy mind controlled ready to jump in if required. Mark the understudies so the priests know which ones to mind control.

To heal through this boss you will need one dedicated Jagged Knife Healer and two to three understudy healers. You should also keep a raid healer handy to cover any excess damage.

The pull is the critical point of this fight, fail to do do this correctly and there is a high chaince the raid will wipe.

The tank should go down he steps about 3/4 of the way first, this should pull the understudies. Razuvious will not come after the tank for 3-5 seconds. It is during this time in which the first priest must mind control an Understudy, raise it's bone barrier and then taunt the boss.

The priests should aim to stand at the bottom of the stairs and use the Understudies to tank the boss a the edge of the green circle. This should prevent mind control breaks and allow enough time to recast mind control before an understudy reaches a priest.
If you have four priests in your group you can mind control and tank with all four of the understudies.

This is the safest way to keep the boss under control, however it can gimp your raids healing or DPS.

When placing the understudies you should space them evenly apart around Razuvious so that the other priests instantly know when another priest has taunted the boss, because he will turn.

The main difficulty after this pull is keeping up an efficient rotation of mindcontrol, bone barrier, taunt. It may help if the raid leader has a go command for each priest, so tehy start their sequence at the correct time!

I hop this guide gives you some help in how to defeat Instructor Razuvious!

Naxxramas 10 Man Guide - Instructor Razuvious

2009-06-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

Instructor Razuvious is a Death Knight Trainer, and is the first boss you will find in the Military Quarter of Naxxramas. Razuvious is a pretty hard boss to crack, not only because of his rather harsh skill set, but also because of his two understudies (Four in the 25 man version). The two understudies of Instructor Razuvious are dealt with differently in the Ten and Twenty Five man versions of this encounter.

In the 10 man version of Naxx Instructor Razuvious has around 3,349,000 hit points, and his regular hits damage for around 30,000! His abilities can also be quite devastating and require some intensive healing!

So lets have a rundown of some of the abilities of 10 man Razuvious!

Disrupting Shout - Disrupting Shout is a physical AoE attack that does
4275 to 4725 physical damage to your entire raid every 15 seconds and cannot be avoided!
Jagged Knife - This ability is a harsh ability which occurs every ten seconds. It causes 5,000 physical damage and applies a bleed effect which causes a further 10,000 physical damage over five seconds. It is applied to a random raid member and can be avoided and can be avoided only by standing out of sight!
Unbalancing Strike - Causes 350% weapon damage and causes the Unbalanced debuff, reducing defence by 100 for 6 seconds. This hits for around 105,000 damage on the tank, only Death Knight Understudies should ever be hit by this!

Death Knight Understudies

When you pull Instructor Razuvious in the 10 man version of Naxxramas you will also pull two Death Knight Understudies. These hit lightly and you must mind control these throughout the fight using Orbs of Domination to and your healers should keep the two Death Knight Understudies healed at close to full health. Once Razuvious is dead they will take 1000% damage from your raid's attacks so you will be able to take these guys out in
no time after the fight has ended!

The Death Knight Understudies have their own abilities, none of which are particularly dangerous to your own raid, but must be understood as when mind controlled you will need to use them to tank Instructor Razuvious. the skills of the Death Knight Understudies are,

Blood Strike - An instant attack that inflicts 50% extra weapon damage to an enemy target and has a four second cooldown. This will be number 4 on your hotbar for quick casting!
Taunt - Used to taunt Razuvious, has a twenty second cool down and is attached to number 5 on the hotbar
Bone Barrier - Reduces damage taken by 75% for 20 seconds, Death Knight understudies should always have this up when they are mind controlled and tanking. This has a 30 second cool down so be ready for this so the two tanks mind controlling can switch agro using Taunt. Healers should also prepare for this just in case, it may be necessary to do some large scale healing at this point!

10 Man Strategy for Instructor Razuvious

To defeat Instructor Razuvious in Ten Man Naxx your raid group must learn to utilize the understudies. At the beginning of the fight your tanks must go to the orbs to control the adds, one around 10 seconds after the first. Razuvious will gain agro on these, meanwhile both tanks should cast bone shield before they agro, and one should taunt the boss. A few seconds before the first tank loses agro the second tank should taunt the boss away, this should be repeated until the boss is taken down.

Bone barrier must also be cast before every taunt to keep the tanks up effectively, and while this can be healed through for short periods it is advisable that the tanks swap agro before they lose this.

Both the tanks should spam Blood Strike to ensure they maintain agro over DPS.

A good way of ensuring things go smoothly here is to switch tanks every 16 - 17 seconds rather than waiting until the 20th, healers should be aware of this however so they can heal accordingly.

Your tanks should remember that they lose mind control after one minute, so they must be prepared to shout agro and disengage in some order, rather than both losing agro at the same time. While you can disengage mind control remember that you must do this form the buffs bar, not the leave vehicle button.

When the tank disengages and re-engages they must remember that there is a 5 second cooldown on the understudies abilities.

This is pretty much all you need to know to take down Instructor Razuvious, the first boss of the Naxx Military Quarter in the ten man version of Naxxramas!

Naxxramas Loatheb 25 Man Raid Guide

2009-05-31T03:42:00.001-07:00

Loatheb is (as you might have read in our 10 man WoW Naxx Guide) one hell of a difficult fight for disorganised raid groups. The main reason for this is that your healers only have a 3 second window for heals to take affect, please note that HoT's will no continue past the three seconds.

This is the only difficult part of the fight itself, the Wrath of the Lich King boss is pretty easy and his damage is weak, the true challenge of this fight is simply healer co-ordination, something not really tested to teh max often in World of Warcraft fights!

Loatheb has a hefty 20,200,000 hit points and low melee damage, he beserks after 12 minutes so the boss fight MUST be finished by this point!

Unlike the majority of WoW bosses, Naxx or otherwise, Loatheb creates spores which actually buff your raid very nicely, it is imperative that you learn how to use these buffs correctly to win the fight. First however, lets do a quick run down of the abilities of Loatheb in 25 man Naxxramas.

Necrotic Aura - This is the spell which makes the fight against Naxx Boss Loatheb so damn difficult. Necrotic Aura covers the entire taid and reduces all healing done by 100% for 17 seconds, 3 seconds after it expires it is recast, so three seconds is all the healers get in this fight!
Deathbloom - The reverse of druids 'Lifebloom' Deathbloom does 400 nature damage a seconds for five seconds followed by a final 1500 nature damage hit. Just to give priests warnings, the DoT ticks will not be absorbed by your Shield, however the final 1500 will be. This is undispellable.
Inevitable Doom - Loatheb will begin to cast Inevitable Doom two minutes after the fight begins. After this has been cast there is a ten second pause before it inflicts 5000 Shadow damage. This is cast every 30 seconds thereafter, 5 minutes after the fight begins this will increase to every 15 seconds. This cannot be dispelled however Ice Block, Cloak of Shadows and Divine Shield will remove it!
Fungal Creep - This is a beneficial debuff which gives 50% and removes all threat generation plus wipes all previous threat) from those affected to up to 5 players standing within 10 yards. A new spore spawns every 20 seconds and the buff lasts for 90 seconds, so careful co-ordination is required to ensure that all DPS and then healers get full use of this fantastic buff. The tank should always stay well clear of these spores so he does not lose their threat.

Naxxramas Loatheb 25 Man Strategy Guide

The Loatheb boss fight is quite simply a DPS race with some rather intensive healing needed every 20 seconds. When the healers are not healing they should be fulfilling several other roles to help ensure the smooth running of the fight.

The spores are key to a fast wipe free take down of the naxx boss Loatheb. Your DPS should be organised in to groups, with the highest DPS in the first group and then in decreasing order in the other groups. This will ensure you are taking full advantage off the crit buff, and allowing your DPS to go on all out damage, since they generate no threat.

The healing is the hardest part of this fight, two healers are normally required to top up the tank during the three second period, the other healers should focus on raid healing. Priests can cast Power Word: Shield, likewise the Paladins Sacred Shield, during the healing debuff period, this can be a lifesaver, especially if you are having trouble keeping the tank up!

It is sometimes suggested that one priest keeps up a shield on the tank while any others cast it on other raid members who may die otherwise when Inevitable Doom or the final Deathbloom damage are coming up.

For the healers this is all about timing and getting the most out of the three second healing gap. HoT's should be stacked on the raid before the gap and a raid warning should be announced 3 seconds before so that healers can begin to cast their large heal/long cast spells.

Healthstones and potions will do nothing until the healing debuff is removed, so wait until this point before you chug these!

Shadow Protection potions are useful, since they prevent damage. not heal you.

To help healers everyone but the tank should chug a potion and/or start bandaging during the three seconds. While this may not seem like much it can help save a raid group who have low healing.

Follow all these tips and before you know it your raid group will have downed the Wrath of the Lich King Boss Loatheb in the 25 man version of Naxxramas!

Naxxramas Loatheb 10 Man Guide

2009-05-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

Loatheb is a gigantic plague ridden bog beast from Azeroth who has been beefed up to the max in Wrath of the Lich King. Loatheb is particularly akward for most raid groups due to his quite painful 100% anti-healing spell, which gives your raid no healing ability for 17 out of every 20 seconds of the boss fight.

This Naxx fight has become significantly more difficult since the priests AoE healing spell Circle of Healing was nerfed (Yes, they nerfed possibly the weakest, most expensive healing spell since Holy Nova was removed from the Talent Tree) to a six second cooldown, it has been considered that this fight is the sole reason this happened.

This massive gimp on healing may make the fight seem near impossible, and indeed to an unprepared raid group this fight is impossible, fortunately there plenty of ways you can boost your raid group to get it through the fight. Deadly Boss Mods is pretty much essential during this boss fight since you have so few oportunities to heal the raid members!

So lets get on with the basics on this boss, Loatheb has 6,690,000 hp and has pretty weak attacks, as mentioned earlier the real danger from Loatheb is from his anti-healing spell Necrotic Aura.

Loatheb has several abilities and effects, near unique is the fact that Loatheb gives out a positive buff,

Necrotic Aura -Every 20 seconds Loatheb will cast Necrotic Aura on your entire raid group. This will reduce all healing by 100% for 17 seconds. This does mean you only get one 3 seconds chance to heal every 20 seconds!
Deathbloom - Once every 30 seconds Loatheb will cast Deathbloom on the raid, giving a DoT that does 200 nature damage a second for six seconds with a final 1200 natura damage hit at the end. This is unfortunately undispellable.
Inevitable Doom - Once two minutes has passed Loatheb will begin to cast Inevitable Doom. This inflicts 4000 Shadow Damage after 10 seconds and is cast every 30 seconds. 5 minutes after the fight started this will go down to every 15 seconds. This cannot be dispelled however but Ice Block, Cloak of Shadows and Divine Shield will remove it.
Fungal Creep - This is a pretty much essential ingredient to this fight. To take down Loatheb you need to nuke him down as fast as possible, this buff gives a 50% critical strike chance and cause no threat for 90 seconds. You receive this buff by killing spores that Loatheb will spawn every 30 seconds. This cannot be held by more than 5 people in the raid so this should only be picked up by your DPS.

Loatheb 10 Man Strategy Guide

Your DPS should be in one group if possible and be followed by a priest with CoH and Precast ready on Prayer of Healing. Before this fight all classes should be awae of their own healing abilities and be able to time them in to the fight (I.E Deathnights get a full set of runes to pull off two Death Strikes, Warlocks cast Haunt 12-13 seconds before Necrotic Aura fades.

Since healers tend to be next to useless for a large portion of the fight it is a great idea to have the healers anouncing new spores, heal points, (10-11 seconds HoT's spammed over raid, 3 seconds for long cast large heal spells to be cast on those on significant low HP)

Position wise the tank and Loatheb should be kept well away from any spores, this is pretty much essential, if the tank gets hit with the spores buff they will instantly lose threat/agro. Later on (after the third spore) it is possible for 100% of your group to get the Buff. This needs careful work but can be hugely benefitial to the raid group, but the next spore must be gained by the DPS to avoid threat being taken away from the tank.

Top WoW Addons - Deadly Boss Mods

2009-05-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

Download Deadly Boss Mods Here!

Deadly Boss Mods makes it into my top WoW Raid Mods with ease. It is incredibly easy to use, simply install it and during any instance or raid you will get handy pop ups warning you of certain events that will happen during the raid.

This may seem like just a nice to have, but during many raid bosses this addon is absolutely essential for a kill, Sucah as WotLK Naxxramas Loatheb or most Zul'Aman Bosses!

Naxxramas Raid Guide - Heigan the Unclean 10 Man Guide

2009-05-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

Heigan the Unclean can be either your worst enemy or best friend in Naxxramas, depending on your raids co-ordination this boss can be an impossible hurdle or a simple gear gaining step, though it is easier with this Naxx guide.

The reason this boss has such an unclear divide between difficulty is quite simply because of the four steps you need to dance through to take Heigan down. Failure to complete these steps by a single raid member will most likely result in a wipe, especially in the ten man version of Naxx.

But time to yet again get down to details, Heigan the Unclean has 3,060,000 hit points and as with the 25 man version the 10 man version of Heigan has some crippling disease effects. these affects are spread over two phases, the difference being that phase two also has a much faster motion of the movement pattern that you need to follow.

Phase 1

Spell Disruption - A 20 Yard AoE focused around Heigan which increases cast times by 300%
Decrepit Fever - This disease affects a random player and does 3k nature damage every 3 seconds and reduces the maximum hit points of all players within 20 yards by 50%

Phase 2

Heigan will begin to channel the following two spells at the start of phase two.

Plague Cloud - Deals 7.5k nature damage a second to any player that stays on the platform during phase 2, this can easily be avoided by getting off the platform before phase 2 starts.
Eruption - During Phase Two three quarters of the room will be hit by eruption every few seconds during phase two. This does 6600 to 7400 nature damage each time. Players near the edge of the safe spot will only be hit once, those in the unsafe spots will be hit multiple times, something that will nearly always kill the affected players!

Heigan the Unclean 10 Man Strategy Guide

To defeat Heigan the unclean in 10 man Naxx you simply have to follow the 'dance' which goes from one to four and then back again, as shown in he diagram above. During Phase One you can stand safely on this. In most raid groups the ranged dps and healers stand here in phase one while the boss is tanked through the safe spots at maximum range from the ranged DPS.

Remember it goes from one to four and back again, 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 and so on, remember that this resets at each phase. If your raid group is having trouble with this smoke flares may help!

Apart from that the healers should concentrate on keeping diseases clear and then you should have no problems on this Naxx Boss Heigan the Unclean!

Naxxramas Raid Guide - Heigan the Unclean 25 Man

2009-05-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

Heigen the Unclean is the second boss in the Naxxramas Plague Quarter, and the most infamous. Unlike the majority of other WoW bosses the strategy of this WotLK boss hinges entirely on your raid group moving to the correct locations in the correct sequence a tthe corect times.

The sequence you need to follow is 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2 and so forth, this resets as soon as Heigan teleports so remember to move fast back to spot number one. This boss can be easy or hard depending on your guilds co-ordination, some groups can walk this while others have some real trouble!

But lets get down to the basics of this notorious boss, Heigan the Unclean has around 9,300,000 hit points. Heigan also has two phases both of which require movement in the sequence above, in the second phase however things move significantly faster!

He has several abilities which differ in the two different phases of the fight, these are

Phase One

Spell Disruption - 30 Yard constant AoE aura around Heigan that increases cast times by 300% - Druid Healers are good here as their insta cast heals are unaffected allowing them to move freely.
Decrepit Fever - A Disease that affects a random player causing 4,500 nature damage every 3 seconds and reduces the maximum hp of every player within 20 yards by 50%.

Phase Two

After 90 seconds Heigan the Unclean will teleport to the middle of the raised platform and begin channelling.

Plague Cloud - A dangerous spell causing 7,500 nature damage every second to any player still on the platform during this phase.
Eruption - Three quarters of the room will be affected by an AoE called Eruption every few seconds causing 6600 to 7400 damage. People near a safe spot will only be hit once, those in an unsafe spot will be hit several times, which will nearly always kill the affected raid member.

Heigan the Unclean 25 Man Strategy Guide

The fight has a 135 second cycle, the first lasts 90 seconds and the ground eruptions move slowly. Here your tank needs to pull Heigan from the north of the room to the middle of the room then towards the east of the room, as shown below following the blue line from one to four and back again. During phase 1 all ranged DPS and healers can stand on the platform (Red Spot) but must move into a safe zone to avoid

During phase two Heigan the Unclean teleports to the platform for 45 seconds. Ground Eruptions will speed up and the entire raid will need to move through the safety zones to avoid death by Plague Crowd.

Remember that whenever a phase change occurs it resets to zone one. if you are having trouble try using smoke flares to ensure that people move to the right areas.

This fight is pretty easy once you get used to the pattern, but be careful for Decrepit Fever, this disease can easily affect an entire raid when grouped together. Shamans and priests are useful here, cleansing totems should be up constantly, they should also try to keep Abolish disease up on a few raid members, particularly before the end of phase two.

Naxxrmas Raid Guide - 10 Man Noth the Plaguebringer

2009-05-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

Noth the Plaguebringer is the first boss you will meet in the Plaguequarter of Naxxramas. While this boss is pretty simple he does require good off-tank control and some concentrated dispelling of curses to avoid a raid wipe.

Noth is a pretty quick boss to take down with a well organised group, he has two phases, the second of which you should only see once. This involves good off-tank control, during the main phase it is important to re-iterate that decursing raid members must be ready to decurse Curse of the Plaguebringer as soon as it is cast.

Noth the Plaguebringer has around 2,500,000 hp and will spawn several adds during the fight, learning his abilities is a crucial aspect of this fight. Noth's abilities are,

Curse of the Plaguebringer - Curses three of the raid members, these player must have the curse removed within ten seconds or else Wrath of the Plaguebringer will afflict the player.
Wrath of the Plaguebringer - If Curse of the Plaguebringer is not removed everyone within 30 yards will be hit with 3700 to 4300 shadow damage. A DoT will also be applied which causes 1300 to 1700 shadow damage every 2 seconds for ten seconds. This can be handled diferently to the 25 man version of the instance, if you have no decursers it can be healed through if the afflicted players move to different corners of the room, away form the rest of the raid.
Summon Plagued Warriors - After every 30 seconds Noth the Plaguebringer summons two Plagued Warriors, these guys have around 100k hp and hit for 1k on plate. these guys cleave, so keep tanks infront and DPS behind.

After the first phase has lasted 110 seconds the second phase begins. During this time Noth will transport himself to a balcony and become invincible. This phase lasts 70 seconds and two waves of two skeletons will occur during this time. There are two different kinds of adds you may encounter, however if done correctly you should only find yourself dealing with Plagued Champions.

Plagued Champions - Plagued Champions in the 10 man version of Naxx have around 105,000 hp and hit for around 2.5k on plate. They have mortal strike so keep the off-tanks health up.
Plagued Guardians - Plagued Guardians only come in the second occurrence of phase two onwards. They have 75k hp and hit for 1k on plate. they cast arcane explosion at very regular intervals causing 4k damage to all players in range (30 Yards) one of these will replace one Plagued Champion in each wave. However Noth can usually be taken down before Phase Two is repeated, so you may not encounter these.

Noth the Plaguebringer 10 Man Strategy Guide

Just like the 25 man version of this raid it is essential that the curses are dispelled as soon as possible. Although it is possible to heal through the curses in the 10 man version it is not the easiest way to finish this boss. If you have no decursive ability in your raid group then the three people affected by the curse need to run to opposite sides of the room to minimise damage.

The first stage is pretty simple, deal with the curses as above, preferably be decursing, while hitting Noth with all the DPS you have, including the off tank. When the adds arrive your offtank should take hold of these and the DPS should burn them down before returning to the Plaguebringer. Repeat this till you hit the second phase and then deal with the adds by the tank taking one and the off tank taking the other!

Keep healing up because shadow shock can deal a lot of damage to your raid, so ranged dps and healers keep your distance!

You should be able to take down this boss quickly and easily and it's a pretty cool introduction to the Plague Quarter of Naxxramas!

Naxxramas Guide Noth the Plaguebringer 25 Man

2009-05-06T11:42:00.001-07:00

Noth the Plague Bringer is the first boss in the Plague Quarter, he casts a fair number of spells, most of them however are curses requiring at least 3 decursing classes to keep your raid alive with ease.

This is a fairly simple fight with two main phases and both of these can be handled by even an amature raid group due to the fights simplicity. blink must be watched out for however as Noth's agro resets, so the raid must stop quickly allowing the tank to regain agro.

But lets get right down to the basics, Noth the Plaguebringer has 8,440,000 hit points. He also spawns up to three different kinds of adds, plagued warriors which have 125,000 hp, Plagued Champions which have 130,000hp and Plagued Champions which have 100,00 hp, however I will talk more about this after I have covered Noth's abilities.

Noth the Plague Bringer has several abilities which require good decursing more than anything else.

Curse of the Plaguebringer: Curses 10 random raid members around every 50 seconds, if they are not decursed within 10 seconds then Wrath of the Plaguebringer will be cast on the player and all raid members within 30 yards.
Wrath of the Plaguebringer: If Curse of the Plaguebringer is not decursed a large number of raid members will have Wrath of the Plaguebringer cast on them. This causes an immediate 5550 to 6450 shadow damage and applies a dot giving 3150 to 3850 Shadow damage every two seconds for ten seconds. It is best to save potions in case this occurs, this way you can quickly restore some health and allow your healers to catch up with the sudden burst damage and have the curses dispelled.
Blink: Noth the Plaguebringer will blink periodically during the fight, he doesn't blink far but Agro is reset, so all DPS MUST stop until the tank regains agro. This has a 25 second cooldown and tends to happen straight away, so any long cast time spells should not be started during this time.
Cripple - When he blinks all players around his location before the blink will be crippled, this slows movement by 50%, reduces attack speed by 100% and strength by 50%. This is dispellable and a dispelling class should be ready to remove this from the tank as soon as possible. A well timed mass dispel can work wonders here.
Summon Plagued Warriors: Every 30 seconds Noth the Plaguebringer will summon three Plagued Warriors. Plagued Warriors have around 125,000 hit points and hit for around 3k on plate, off tanks should pick these guys up ASAP.

In phase two of this fight Noth will teleport away and will become invincible for around 70 seconds. During this time the raid group will be attacked by waves of skeletons, after which you will return to phase one. Phase two occurs every 110 seconds, and depending on your raid groups skill you may see either one or two types off adds.

Plagued Champions - Plagued Champions have around 130,000 hp, the hit for around 3.5k on plate and also hit with Mortal strike and Shadow Shock (a 25 yard AoE focusing on the add causing 29600 to 3500 shadow damage within range. It is cast random and has a very low cooldown.
Plagued Guardians - These appear from the second phase onwards, effective raid groups will kill Noth before phase 2 repeats so should not see these guys. Plagued Guardians have 100,000hp and hit for 1k on plate. They cast Arcane explosion regularly which deals 6k damage to all raid members within 30 yards. Two of these will replace two Plagued Champions in each wave from the second iteration of Phase Two onwards.

Noth the Plaguebringer 25 Man Strategy

This is a fairly easy fight but you will need a minimum of 2 to 3 decursing players and 2-3 tanks depending on your raid groups quality. The tanks need to be ready by the piles of bones to pick up the adds and the decursers must be speedy in removing the curses, it helps to assign groups for this.

Noth himself does not do too much damage, unless you let the fight go for too long, at which point he does 1000% damage. It is important to note though that the real risk of this fight is not de-cursing fast enough, this can easily cause a wipe in even the best of raid groups.

Off-tanks should be ready to pick up the adds, but be ready to cause some DPS damage when possible. It is more than possible to take Noth out after only one second phase so the more DPS the better.

As phase two starts the off tanks should pick up the Plagued Champions/Guardians and spread them apart, Healers and Ranged DPS should keep their distance. Close DPS should stay together to minimise damage from the AoE Shadow Shock.

When Phase Two ends he nearly always casts Curse of the Plaguebringer. It is useful for the de-cursers to be aware of this so they can remove this curse before it does any damage to the raid.

All in all he is an easy enough boss, but still requires careful handling and good co-ordination from both your decursers and off tanks. Remember this and you should take down the first Plague Quarter boss with no trouble at all!

Naxxramas Raid Guide - Maexxna 25 Man

2009-05-02T06:06:00.000-07:00

Maexxna is the final Naxxramas boss in the Arachnid Quarter, and she is by far the toughest of the three bosses that reside there. She is one hell of a dangerous boss to an unprepared guild, with plenty of raid breaking abilities and some fearsome stats. It is often considered that Maexxna is the first real taste you receive of the upcoming Naxxrmas bosses that you will encounter throughout the instance.

But lets get down to basics, Maexxna sits on around 7,600,000 hp in the 25 man version of Naxx, she also has some ferocious abilities which must be dealt with swiftly and correctly if your guild is going to pick up the rather tasty drops from this boss!

So without further ado, let us go over the Maexxna 25 man abilities!

Web Wrap - cast first at around 20 seconds and then 40 seconds after that, web wrap sends two of your players flying towards the webs on the western wall, upon which they will be cocooned The incapacitating cocoon causes 2400 to 3100 nature damage every 2 seconds, but only has 15k hp so can be removed with relative ease. To help simplify this the players will be cocooned at the same two spots so your dps can stand ready every 40 seconds to release the affected players from their cocoon.
Web Spray - A Complete AoE effect which incapacitates everyone in the room for 6 seconds as well as causing 2100 to 2800 nature damage. Tank must be buffed up with HoT's prior to this being cast!
Poison Shock - A cone shaped AoE that reaches for 15 yards infront of Maexxna causing 4500 to 5900 damage to all those infront of her, this occurs every ten seconds, but is easily avoidable by standing to the side, or behind the boss.
Frenzy - At 30% health Maexxna will frenzy, this increases her physical damage by 75% and haste by 50%.
Meaxxna Spiderlings - Eight small spiders are spawned 30 seconds in to the raid and 40 seconds thereafter. These only have 14k hp and hit for 2k on cloth, but must be dealt with quickly to avoid unnecessary deaths.

Despite this being the hardest boss in the Arachnid Quarter of Naxxramas it is also one of the quickest, the fight is generally over in around three minutes, and rests solely on your group navigating the different effects correctly, most importantly being web spray, where your tank must be HoT'ed to the brim to ensure he does not get killed while everyone is out of action.

The best way to play this boss is for the tank to take Maexxna close to a wall and then face her into the room, the raid should position themselves behind the boss with mages ready to frost nova and AoE the spiderlings. Ranged DPS should also be ready to take out the cocoons as soon as two of your raid members are afflicted by Web Wrap. the spiderlings must be taken out ASAP so they are dead before Web Spray, if any are left then some unlucky raid members will be taking damage while your healers are out of action, and will most certainly die.

Healers will need to put abolish poison and all HoT's on the tank before Webspray comes in to effect, if this is not done the Tank will most likely die.

When Maexxna hits 33% you should cut back on DPS until one last web spray has occurred, if you do not do this everyone may be immobilized while Maexxna is in frenzy, this can easily wipe a raid group!

Apart from that, good luck! The boss is not too hard if your group co-ordinates well and prepares correctly for each of Maexxna's abilities!

Naxxramas Raid Guide - Maexxna 10 Man

2009-05-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

Maexxna is the final Naxxramas boss in the Arachnid Quarter, and is by far the toughest of the three bosses that reside in this section of Naxx. Maexxna is one hell of a dangerous boss to an unprepared guild, with plenty of raid breaking abilities and some fearsome stats. It is often considered that Maexxna is the first real taste you receive of the upcoming Naxxramas bosses that you will encounter throughout the instance.

But lets get down to the basic Maexxna Stats, Maexxnahas about 2,500,000 hp in the 10 man version of Naxx, she also has some ferocious abilities which must be dealt with swiftly and correctly if your guild is going to pick up some fantastic drops from this boss!

So without further ado, let us go over the Maexxna 10 man abilities!

Web Wrap - cast first seconds in to the fight and then every 40 seconds thereafter, web wrap sends one of your players hurtling across to the Western side of the walls. When they hit this they get wrapped in a cocoon which incapacitates the affected player. There are two spots where the player will be cocooned so DPS should be ready and waiting, the spot alternates back and forth between the two positions. The cocoon has around 6k hp so the DPS should be able to take it out quickly, which is pretty vital as the cocoon effect causes 2400 to 3100 nature damage every 2 seconds!
Web Spray - A total AoE effect which incapacitates everyone in the room for 6 seconds and also causes 1700 to 2250 nature damage. Tank must be buffed up with HoT's prior to this being cast or else they will die!
Poison Shock - A cone shaped AoE that reaches for 15 yards ahead of Maexxna causing 3500 to 4500 damage to all those infront of her, this occurs every ten seconds, but is easily avoidable by standing to the side, or behind the boss.
Frenzy - At 30% health Maexxna will frenzy, this increases her physical damage by 50% and haste by 50%.
Meaxxna Spiderlings - Eight are spawned at 30 seconds in to the fight and every 40 seconds thereafter. These only have 7.5k hp and hit for 1k on cloth, but must be dealt with quickly to avoid unnecessary deaths.

Naxxramas 25 Man Guide Grand Widow Faerlina

2009-04-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

The 25 man version of Grand Widow Faerlina can be a daunting task, on top of the four worshippers in the 10 man version of this raid Faerlina has two Followers. These should be killed straight away, they have an AoE silence and will charge random raid members, something that can easily disrupt a raid.

In the 25 man version of Grand Widow Faerlina has around 6,760,000 and has some raid testing abilities which will ensure you raid's co-ordination is enough for the coming battles in Naxxramas. Some of Faerlina's abilities will really test your abilities, they are designed to cause widespread damage as well as some huge one target damage if you are not careful.

Grand Widow Faerlina's abilities in the 25 man version of Naxx are,

Poison Bolt Volley - Faerlina's Poison Bolt Volley hits the closest ten players to Faerlina, it is used around every 15 seconds and deals 3300 to 4200 nature damage, as well as applying a dispellable DoT that does around 1900 to 2100 nature damage every 2 seconds for 8 seconds. Widows Embrace prevents the use of this for 30 seconds.
Rain of Fire - Grand Widow Faerlina will cast her rain of fire spell repeatedly through the fight every 6 to 15 seconds. her rain of Fire spell has an 8 yard AoE radius and causes 3700 to 4300 fire damage every two seconds for six seconds.
Frenzy - Faerlina's frenzy can easily break a raid group, she hits for 150% more, has a 50% melee haste increase and during this time will cause 20k damage. This must be dispelled ASAP with Widow's Embrace

Grand Widow Faerline also starts this boss fight with two followers and four wirshippers. the Worshippers should be stockpiled for mind controlling and Widow's Embrace, the followers however must be nuked. In the 25 man version of this raid you need only mind control the worshippers to kill them, so at the right time a priest should mind control the worshipper with the lowest HP, move it towards Faerlina and then when stood next to her Widow's Embrace should be cast.

Technically the followers can be tanked for the entire fight, however they charge random people and have an AoE silence. For this reason I suggest your group learns to take these two adds down in under 30 seconds.

All there really is to this fight is the co-ordination on the mind controls just as frenzy hits. You need to cause some major damage fast, but with a good raid group you should have no problem taking down the boss Grand Widow Faerlina!

Naxxramas 10 Man Guide Grand Widow Faerlina

2009-04-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

After you have finished off Anub'Rekhan you will come across Grand Widow Faerlina. Faerlina is the skill check, as Anub is the gear check. Grand Widow Faerlina has plenty of abilities which will throw your raid group in to disarray so you must be careful to have a strong raid composition and co-ordination to ensure that this boss takedown goes as well as possible.

Grand Widow Faerlina starts the fight with around 2,230,000 hp and four worshippers, these are integral to the fight and must be controlled carefully. but first lets go over Grand Widow Faerlina's 10 man raid abilities.

Poison Bolt Volley - Faerlina's Poison Bolt Volley will hit the three closest players to her for 2600 to 3400 damage each, this also applies a dispellable DoT which does 1400 to 1750 nature damage every 2 seconds for eight seconds. Widow's Embrace prevents Faerlina form using this for 30 seconds. She will generally cast this once every 12 to 15 seconds however it can be earlier as it is on an 8 second cooldown.
Rain of Fire -This rain of fire spell casts an 8 yard AoE causing Fire damage of around 1750 to 2750 every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. This is cast every 6 to 18 seconds and can easily be stepped out of.
Frenzy - Every 60 to 80 seconds grand widow faerlina will enter a frenzy. This should be mitigated by Widow's Embrace which we will come to later. Frenzy increases Faerlina's damage by 150% her melee haste by 50% and she will hit for upwards of 15k damage during this time.

Explaining Grand Widow Faerlina's Worshippers.

Grand Widow Faerlina starts the fight with four Worshippers. These will need to be off tanked at the beginning of the fight, but should not be killed. Upon death the worshippers (in the ten man version of this boss fight) cast Widow's Embrace, which removes Faerlina's frenzy and silences her nature school for 30 seconds!

In 10 man Naxx Grand Widow Faerlina's Worshippers are immune to mind control, so should be taken down to about 5% one after another so they can be killed a the right time. Before you kill them take them close to Faerlina so you can guarantee their death!

Naxxramas 10 Man Guide Grand Widow Faerlina

Taking down the Naxx boss Grand Widow Faerlina is all about Raid Co-ordination, especially in the 10 man version of the instance. The trick to getting through the boss Faerlina is controlling the additional worshippers to remove Faerlina's Frenzy.

Killing Grand Widow Faerlina can be done relatively easily with two tanks, The off-tank should be able to handle the worshippers and should tank them under the stairs. They barely deal any damage so they should be fairly easy to handle.

The main tank should hold Faerlina, the DPS Should focus on Faerlina but must be prepared to help the off tank if they are having trouble getting down a worshippers health ready for frenzy.

The Worshippers should be handled to around 5% health ready for Faerlina's frenzy, this is pretty much crucial so the Worshipper can be killed at the right time.

The right time to kill a worshipper is just after frenzy hits, the worshipper to be killed must be taken close to Faerlina and then nuked down instantly to keep Faerlina's Frenzy as short as possible.

You need to repeat this strategy for every upcoming Frenzy to take down Grand Widow Faerlina effectively, failure to stop her frenzy can easily cause a wipe and can be near impossible to fight through for an inexperienced raid group.

Naxxramas 25 Man Guide Anub'Rekhan

2009-04-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Like in the 10 man version of Naxx Anub'Rekhan is the also the first boss you wil have to kill in the 25 man Naxxramas raid. This Naxx boss is fairly easy to deal with and in this naxx raid guide to 25 man Anub'Rekhan I wills how you how to take this boss down with no trouble at all.

Anub Rekhan has approximately 6,765,000 hp in the 25 man version of this instance and two Crypt Guards will spawn, both of whisch should be dealt with immediately.

The abilities of Anub'Rekhan in a 25 man raid mode can be devastating, but are easy enough to avoid if your raid group follows their instructions carefully.

Anub'Rekhan's abilities are,

Impale - Anub's single most instant damage ability, impale will select a target from your raid and damage that player and all raid members between them and Anub for 5600 to 7400 physical damage and throw each player affected by this AoE into the air, causing 50% fall damage when they hit the ground. for this reason your raid members should use any slow fall abilities possible when hit by this to help save from accidentla death as well as your healers Mana.
Locust Swarm - This ability has a 60 second cooldown, but is generally used every 70 to 120 seconds. It will first occur between 80 seconds and 120 seconds into the fight. The Locust swarm ability does several things. First off though, it is a 30 yard AoE that is focussed on and will move with Rekhan. It causes a DoT which does 1300 to 1700 stackign damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. it also has a complete silence, which removes all abilities including Shield Wall, Last Stand and Even Auto-Attack. This lasts for around 20 seconds. When this spell is cast Anub will also spawn another Crypt Guard, which must be dealt with immediately.
Summon Corpse Scarab - At regualr intervals during the fight Anub Rekhan will spawn Corpse Scarabs from teh corpses around the room, this differs from Crypt Guard and raid member corpses. Raid members will only spawn 5 Corpse Scarabs, whereas fallen Crypt Guards will spawn 10 Corpse Scarabs. Mages should stand near Crypt Guard corpses so tehy can frost nova the scarabs as soon as they spawn. You should take these down quickly, they only cause around 1k damage on cloth but this can be the difference between a successful raid boss takedown and a wipe!

Crypt Guards are mentioned a lot here, so I think they deserve a short section explaining their abilities. The crypt guard abilities are fairly simple but important to understand. They must be dealt with quickly to avoid them breaking up an wiping your raid.

The Crypt Guard have around 521,000 hp and their abilities are,

Cleave - An attack which does 110% damage spread over three targets.
Acid Spit - A Stacking DoT that hits for 500 Nature damage per stack every two seconds for ten seconds.
Frenzy - When the Crypt Guard reaches a low HP it will frenzy causing 50% extra damage and increasing it's attack speed by 60%

Anub'Rekhan 25 Man Strategy Guide

While this boss can be done with two tanks it is far preferable to have 3 tanks on the 25 man version of Anub'Rekhan. The main tank should focus on Anub while the other two pick up the Corpse Scarabs and Crypt Guards.

The main tank should pick up Anub'Rekhan and move him straight back to the spot where Anub spawned. The two off-tanks should pick up their crypt guards and take them close to Rekhan, at which point the DPS should work on nuking down these two adds.

The DPS themselves should spread out in semi circles around Anub Rekhan to help minimize the effects of Impale, the mages should however stand close to the deceased Crypt Guards to pick up the Scarabs that spawn with Frost Nova.

The real challenge of this fight is dealing with Anub'Rekhans Locust swarm. As soon as this hits your raid group should form two groups, the first should contain your tank, one or two healers (Depending on your tanks gear) and preferably a hunter. The hunter should enable aspect of the pack and the tank should kite Anub'Rekhan around the ring of slime while the healers keep him topped up. Preferably everyone should remain out of range of the locust swarm.

During this another Crypt Guard will spawn and should be picked up and destroyed by the rest of the raid. Once this phase is over the main tak should return Anub to his previous position and the DPS can continue as before untill the next Locust Swarm

Naxxramas 10 man Guide Anub'Rekhan

2009-04-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

Anub'Rekhan is one of the firs bosses you will meet in the Naxxramas 10 man instance. He has some raid breaking abilities at his disposal but generally you will find he is considered one of the easiest bosses in Naxxramas, and is a good gear check for some of the upcoming bosses you will face in this particularly entertaining raid instance.

Anub'Rekhan deals a lot of physical and nature damage, as well as providing your raid group with some fairly difficult diversions to keep he fight interesting. he starts at around 2,230,000 hp and has some devestating abilities at his disposal. This raid does not really test your raid groups co-ordination too much, but the fight will be a good basic gear check. Anub'Rekhan will use various abilities during this fight, these are,

Impale - A devastating ability that targets a random player and hits every other player that stands between Anub and his target in a straight line. This AoE attack causes between 4800 and 6200 physical damage and will throw each player hit into the air causing 50% fall damage when they hit the ground. Slow fall abilities should be used here if possible to save your healers mana.
Locust Swarm - On a 60 second cool down but generally used every 70 to 120 seconds Locust swarm is fairly easy to avoid but can be devastating if not handled correctly. During this phase Anub'Rekhan slows to 60% of his speed and the AoE Locust Swarm affect appears for 30 yards around him. Your raid must move out of this as soon as possible. Locust swarm causes a stacking debuff for 875 to 1125 Nature damage every two seconds and gives a strong silence to anyone affected. This silence removes all players abilities, including shield wall, auto attack and last stand for the tank. When this is cast you will also find another crypt guard will spawn at Anub's initial spawn point, this should be taken by the off tank and moved away from the Locust Swarm.
Summon Corpse Scarabs - At regular intervals Anub'Rekhan will spawn corpse scarabs from the corpses around the room. it helps if your mages can frost nova these straight away but it is not always possible. Depending on which corpse Anub'Rekhan chooses different numbers of scarabs will spawn, Crypt Guards will spawn 10 and regular player corpses will spawn 5. For this reason mages should always stay close to the Crypt Guard Corpses. These will automatically attack random targets when spawned.

The crypt guards themselves are a major part of this fight, they have around 234,000 hp and have some dangerous attacks that must be deals with correctly. These guys should be taken down as soon as they spawn. The first one will appear 20 seconds in to the boss fight, the next ones will spawn after every locust swarm.

The Crypt Guard Abilities are,

Cleave - The Crypt Guard does 110% damage spread over 3 targets.
Acid Spit - A stacking DoT affect that causes 500 nature damage every 2 seconds for ten seconds
Frenzy - When they hit low HP the crypt guards will frenzy giving them an additional 50% damage and 60% haste.

Anub'Rekhan Strategy

Killing Anub'Rekhan needs only a relatively simple strategy, but can cause some problems, and even wipes for unprepared guild runs.

The most reliable strategy for dealing with Anub'Rekhan is to form two groups. One with a healer, your main tank and a hunter if available, the other with your off-tank and other raid members.

The group with your main tank should kite Anub around the edge of the slime circle, your healer should keep up HoTs to make any damage from the locust swarm negligible and leave him free to deal with any damage the tank may suffer from Rekhan directly.

The other group should deal with the spawned Crypt Guard, once taken down the group should then form a moving semi-circle around Anub'Rekhan and continue to deal damage to the Boss.

Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) Naxxramas (Naxx) Intro & Guide

2008-11-17T05:55:00.001-08:00

Naxxramas once one of the hardest raids in WoW has returned once more in Wrath of the Lich King as one of the entry level raiding instances.

Naxxramas (more commonly known as Naxx) is made up of several sections, each following a slightly different thme, though all of them, unfortunately severely depressing when compared to some of the rather vibrant instances that appeared in the burning Crusade.

As I progress through these sections, bosses and trash mobs I will be updating each of the sections below with upto date information on how to down the bosses of Naxx in WotLK. The most interesting part of the new Naxx in WotLK is that Naxx can be completed in two versions, wither 10 or 25 man raid groups. This is a great advancement to raiding guilds in my opinion as it allows both small and large guilds to run the raid and get comparatively equal loot for the number of players!

The different areas available in the new Naxx are

Arachnid Quarter

Arachnid Quarter 10 Man Guides
Anub'Rekhan
Grand Widow Faerlina
Maexxna

Arachnid Quarter 25 Man Guides
Anub'Rekhan
Grand Widow Faerlina
Maexxna

Plague Quarter

Plague Quarter 10 Man Guides
Noth the Plaguebringer
Heigan the Unclean

Plague Quarter 25 Man Guides
Noth the Plaguebringer
Heigan the Unclean

Military Quarter

Construct Quarter
Frostwyrm Lair

I will shortly be updating these lists with both 10 and 25 man guides to the bosses in each particular area!

Guardian Spirit - My First Take

2008-11-10T03:46:00.000-08:00

So I have jumped back into WoW and found a whole new host of spells at my disposal, most notably I found Guardian Spirit at the top of my talent tree, and dear god it kicks ass!

Guardain spirit is a healing spell which for 10 seconds ups the targetted players healing received by 40%!

But here is the clincher, the thing that made me oh so goddamn grateful I chose priest as my healing class. If the player reaches 0% haelth with this active he will be restored to 50% life, thi slittle thing is absolutely fantastic for any wow raid where you find yourself struggling to keep the tank up!

Of course my healing is still sub par after a break of nearly 6 months, I have been doing a few BGs to try and get some healing practice in, but of course I am now getting completely owned by all the arena geared players!

If anyone wants to run a few easy 70 instances on trollbane (EU) pass me a comment and we will get it sorted!

Return to WoW - The WRath of the Liche King

2008-11-07T02:24:00.000-08:00

So the Wrath of the Liche King is about to break, and I ahve to admit after jumping back into WoW, suffering from that damn Unknown players error, jumping out and jumping back in again I have found myself playing a game I know NOTHING about!

This may sound like a bad thing, but it has sparked my interest once agian, new talents, new spels, merging of class types. it appears WoW Has changed, though for better or worse we will have to see.

For this reason you will soon start to see me posting updates to my guides, new walk throughs and when I finally get my head around the new character atributes begin posting advice on these as well.

I have had a quick mess about with my priest, and have to admit I am loving the talents, I have also started to level up a horde mage, something I keep meaning to do after I lost interest in my alliance one!

So I look forward to coming back soon with my reviews on World of Warcraft - the Wrath of the Liche King!

The Exodus Of Raiding Players has Begun?

2008-07-08T02:57:00.000-07:00

It seems that more and more raiding players haev been leaving WoW recently, while many transferred to PvP, and Raiding is still alive and kicking, with the Wrath of the Liche King coming out soon many players have become despondant, many have quit playing until expansion release and many guilds have taken that final sigh and disbanded.

I myself have even lost interest in the game, for any who come to this site regularly you may have noticed my recent lack of posts, the reason is quite simply that I don't really play WoW anymore.

I know - it's a shocking statement to make. But after raiding for better gear left you at the mercy of those who battled in arenas, bliz announced all current gear would be nothing but a status symbol after the Wrath of the Liche King release and my memory remeniscing on the Burning Crusade release where I backed the changes blizz made only to find myself in a rather tedious daily repetition of annoying quests for no particular gain.

When I first stated playing WoW I loved the game because as I progressed in dungeons I progressed in gerar, I could beat more people and this helped to prove that I had done what I had done in raiding. It gave raiding meaning and helped me aquire both PvP and PvE experience, there were always those who raided harder, gained more gear and played better than me, there was always a standard.

Then Blizzard seperated PvE and PvP.

Suddenly I found myself thinkning what was the point. If I wanted to beat a linear set of raid bosses I could play a single player game without the multiplayer subscriptions, sure its fun to do teh linear chains with other people, but the overall goal was to be better than others. Months of raiding saw me go into a battleground and get destroyed because I did not have the right stats, raiding no longer gave me the edge on others - spending months getting a fantastic weapon left me at the mercy of those who had chosen pure PVP, even if they did work hard for it. Suddenly there was no longer any benefit in me raiding because when all's said and done I could not test the gear I earned against others.

If I wanted to play a pure PvP game I would whack Call of Duty on, I wanted to play a game where I could do a variety of things to progress against other people - now only PvP play progresses you against other people, Raiding just progresses you against the game.

For this reason I am on the very verge of quiting the game, and this will alas mean teh ed of this blog, which I may or may not sell on to a new owner.

But unless Blizz re-alligns PvP and PvE into one entirity again I very much doubt I will be staying with the game that has put off so many of it's fans.

2008-07-08T02:43:00.000-07:00

We all know someone who has had their account hacked, whether it was by brute force, or amybe you suspect the player had the odd bit of powerlevelling done for him.

Now however blizzard have brought out a small USB key called the WoW Authenticator, if you buy this and set your account up as an Authenticator account you will be unable to log into WoW Without this USB key, a great way to protect all your Raiding Epics!

Of course there is a downside, these are currently all sold out, but do not fret, Blizzard have announced that they will be upping production and refunding those who have made orders that cannot be instantly fulfilled!

Personally I love the idea of some decent Account Protection, I am however just a little worried that things may go pearshaped when, for instance, i accidentally stand on it, lose it, let it go through the washing machine. When this happens, and knowing my clumsyness on occasions it most definately will, I will be without my precious WoW for days, weeks, and if its still sold out maybe over a month.

Jesus Mother of Mary I hope you get a back up!

Wrath of the Liche King - Non-Linear Dungeons Return!

2008-06-30T02:22:00.000-07:00

For those of us who are Old School WoW raiders, Blackrock Depths was probably your first venture into a large, non linear dungeon which allowed yo to go where you wanted and kill bosses in your own order.

The fact of the matter was that Blackrock Depths really did allow you to explore!. It provided a lot of adventure which many other dungeons lack as you chain pull down a single corridor. I liked the fact that the keys for the doors was hard to obtain, allowing more select groups to advance to certain areas more easily. I liked the feeling that in this instance you were actually progressing.

It was for this reason that the Burning Crusade left me feeling a little disappointed, and why Karazhan remains my favorite Raid, hell my favorite instance. It seems that in the Burning Crusade you found yourself stuck in very linear gameplay, doin the same thing over and over, following a corridor to the next boss over and over again, whether you were in a raid or an instance.

Fortunately Blizz has been listening to the World of Warcraft community and has moved forward with plans to create a new breed of non linear Raid and 5-man instances, allowing for variation, progression and most importantly entertainment for WoW Raiders!

2008-06-17T05:05:00.000-07:00

Since Patch 2.4 was released there has een a huge influx in daily quests, most of them easy to do and all of them giving a lot of Gold. The Shattered Sun Offensive Daily Quests are by far the best daily quests for making gold quickly and bumping up your Shattered Sun Offensive Reputation.

Like many players I tend to do as many daily quests as possible in my free time to get as much gold as possible out of them, after all 2 for 5 minutes work isn't bad!

I did however have trouble finding a complete list of the dailies, so here they are, the entire Patch 2.4 Daily Quest List!

Shattered Sun Offensive Phase One

Shattered Sun Offensive Phase Two

Shattered Sun Offensive Phase 2 (50%)

Shattered Sun Offensive Phase Three

Shattered Sun Offensive Four

New Daily PVP Quests

Spirits of Auchindoun (Alliance) (Horde)
In Defense of Halaa (Alliance) (Horde)
Ata'mal Armaments

Reputation Shattered Sun Quests

And there you have it, the entire Patch 2.4 Daily Quests, a great way to make lots of gold fast, and the reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive wont hurt either!

Season 4 Arena Gear Hitting the Shelves Soon!

2008-06-10T08:21:00.001-07:00

So it seems that Season 4 is immanent, the rollout of large numbers of Epic Kick Arse Gear is pretty soon going to cover the realms and us poor raiders who are still making our way to the new end game will be suffering once more.

There is some good news though, despite the looks getting yet again almost identically copied (Please blizz you can manage to hire a few more designers can't you?) the new top end Arena sword will be an entire 10 points bellow the equivalent Raid Drop.

And while the incoming Season 4 will soon be arriving to players Drysc from Blizzard will not say how soon other than to say he wants to see more Guilds take down Kil'jaeden, who is currently standing undefeated bar 0.03% of the guilds in World of Warcraft, hell only 3.88% of Guilds have made it in to the Sunwell Platau Raid Instance.

In the meantime its upto us solid PvE'rs to progress with speed to get our gear up before the Arena Goers can torunce us again!

Shattered Sun Daily Quests Complete Guide

2008-05-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

I have had quite a few emails through asking for a complete guide to the Shattered Sun Offensive Daily Quests, one of the Best ways of Making Gold in World of Warcraft.

Well as important as Gold is to Raiders I will not go too indepth on it here, But I have done a write up on one of my other blogs, WoW Gold Guru, on which I have included a complete list of Shattered Sun Daily Quests to help people make the most of their gold grinding time on WoW.

You can find the list of Shattered Sun Quests Here!

If you have any additions comments or best order tips to add please feel free to leave them in the comments :)

Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider Tempest Keep Tactics - The Lord of the Blood Elves

2008-05-20T03:05:00.000-07:00

Kael'thas Sunstrider is the last, and most complicated boss of Tempest Keep. He has no less than five phases, each as cunning as a weasle and sly as a fox. On top of that you will be dealing with four incredibly pain in the arse adds that you will need to defeat twice. In patch 2.4 Blizz made up a bit for his difficulty by making it possible to reach him directly and also increased his loos to 3 Tier 5 Chest Pieces.

The Abilities of Kael'thas and his sidekicks are fairyl danuting at first. His advisors are resurrected in Phase 3 effectively giving them double their health! Perfecting the tactics required to defeat the final boss Kael'Thas need to be learnt by every member of your raid.

Thaladred the Darkener

Around 280k health
3-4k Melee on plate plus 2.5k every tick for 12 seconds
Gaze – Fixes aggro to a random person in raid; 9 second cooldown
Psychic Blow – 4-5k damage plus knockback to his current target, 30 yard range
Silence – Silences anyone within 8 yards

Lord Sanguinar

290kHealth
3-4k Melee damage on plate
Bellowing Roar – A 35 yard AoE fear around him, 1.5 second cast, fortunately does not reset his agro!

Grand Astromancer Capernian

Around 200k health
Fireball – 6-7k single-target fire damage
Conflagration – Randomly targets a player within 30 yard range causing disorientateand dealing 600-900 dps and 300 damage per second to all players within 8 yards of the debuffed raid member. Capernian does not attack any players with conflagaration.
Arcane Explosion – Deals 4.5k Arcane damage and has a knockback effect with a slowing debuff. This only occurs when players are within melee range, so get your ranged attack on him!

Master Engineer Telonicus

Around 275k
Bomb - 7-9k fire in a small AoE centered on current target's location, 1.5 second cast
Remote Toy – 60 sec debuff placed on a random player, periodically stuns the affected player for 4 seconds

Kael'thas Sunstrider

3.6 Million Health
Around 4k Melee Damageon plate
Fireball – 2.5 sec cast, between 16-20k fire damage, interruptible
Flamestrike – 3 sec cast, and around 3k fire damage per second AoE for 10 sec
Summon Phoenix – Summons a Phoenix
Arcane Disruption – 1750-2250 Arcane damage and a 10 second disorient to every raid member, 20 sec cooldown
Shock Barrier – a shield which absorbs 80k damage, lasts 10 seconds and stops spell interrupt abilities

Phase 4 specific abilities:

Mind Control – Mind controls 2-3 people in the raid
Pyroblast – 4 sec cast, 45k-55k fire damage, interruptible, 60 sec cooldown; begins casting immediately after casting Shock Barrier

Phase 5 specific abilities:

Gravity Lapse – All members of raid are teleported to him and then swim in the air for 30 sec
Nether Beam – 1850-2150 arcane damage to a random target, jumps to nearby players, damage doubled for each jump (So Spread Out!)
Nether Vapor – Small black clouds floating in the air near Kael'thas. If touched they add a stacking debuff which reduces max health by 10% each time, stacking up to 9 times, to 90% reduction.

Raid Composition for this fight is drastically important, you will need

Main Tank
Fire Resist Tank (With at least 150 fire resist for use as Conflag target during Phase 1 and Phoenix tank in Phases 4 and 5)
2 Off-Tanks
6-7 Healers
5-6 Melee
10-11 Ranged

Ranged damage dealers are much much better than melee in this fight since there are mobs which cause large amounts of damage to melee (Thaladred and Capernian), and the Phoenix eggs are muchmore easily killed by ranged who do not have to run to the Eggs.

Phase One

In the first phase you can take a quite relaxed pace in killing the advisors, each one has a tactic to take him down with relative ease.

Thaladred the Darkener - Sets his Gaze on a raid member thus giving him 100% agro for the fight. For the duration of the gaze he will walk toward that target, who must run away and kite him while ranged DPS attack Thaladred. For brief intervals between gazes, or if the gaze target dies, Thaladred may melee or follow the target with the most threat. Nobody should be closer than 10 yards when a gaze shift takes place.
Lord Sanguinar is a simple tank and spank boss, made interesting only by his fear ability which does not even reset agro. DPS, particularly Ranged, must remember to let the tank keep agro during fear.
Grand Astromancer Capernian casts Arcane Explosion if there are people in melee range, making this another ranged-only fight. Conflagrate must be avoided by everybody except her tanks. One possible setup is to have a fire resist tank stand rather close to her (remaining 15 yards away outside Arcane Explosion range) to take the conflagrations, while a Warlock kills her from 30 yards away. This tactic needs two healers on the warlock, and one on the fire tank. Alternately, she can be tanked by two warlocks which take turns - when one is conflagrated, the other takes over. Warlocks tanking her must not have Nether Protection, Since se will run forward to melee, and then cast arcane explosion, if one of her spells is resisted.
Master Engineer Telonicus is the least dangerous of the advisors. His Remote Toy debuff can be fatal if placed on a tank in phase 2 as it reduces threat generation, so delay killing Telonicus until no tank has the debuff. In phase 3 the debuff is rendered useless by the staff's anti-stun aura.

Phase 2: The Weapons

when you have killed all the advisors Kael'thas summons seven legendary weapons. By killing and looting these weapons all raid members can equip themselves with legendary weapons for the rest of the fight. The weapons are multi-drop but unique so one player can, but should not, pick up one copy of each. Killing the weapons is a mixture of AoE and focus fire. There should be an AoE kill zone, where most of the weapons are held, while the remaining DPS concentrate on one weapon after the other. Here's an overview of the weapons in a reasonable kill order:

Netherstrand Longbow ~210k HP

Has a Multi-Shot attack and drops its agro list if any melee or pet attack it. Preferably tanked by a hunter facing it away from the raid to avoid Multi-Shot hitting others. This is the most dangerous weapon and should be killed first by all hunters and ranged DPS which are not contributing to the AoE to avoid the tanking hunter losing agro.

Staff of Disintegration ~170k HP

Low melee damage, attacks with Frostbolt and Frost Nova. It likes to cast a Frost Nova, run away 10-15 yards and then start to Frostbolt. It's a highly desirable item because its "use" ability grants immunity to the Remote Toy debuff, and it increases the damage output of casters.It has low health and dies much faster than the other ledgendary weapons

Cosmic Infuser ~280k HP

Deals little melee damage but heals itself and friendly targets, which can and must be interrupted. The melee damage dealers should control and kill this

Infinity Blade ~210k HP

Hits for an average amount but attacks very fast. Has a Thrash ability that grants it two extra attacks periodically.

Warp Slicer ~290k HP

Hits for around 1.5K every 2 seconds on plate and applies a stacking rend DoT. Each stack ticks for an additional 500 damage every 3s for 15sThis can be can missed, dodged or parried.

Devastation ~230k HP

Frequently Whirlwinds, which one-shots any non-tanks. Needs to be tanked away from the other weapons either near the edge or away from the AoEs. Not very useful for most raid membersso doesn't really matter if itdoesn't die quickly.

Phaseshift Bulwark ~290k HP

Deals a high amount of damage and has a shield spike ability which when activated can reflect a lot of damage to a fast attacking melee DPS. The Phaseshift Bulwark has much higher HP and armor than the other ledgendary weapons. You can do phase 3 without it, but the Tanks will not be able to manage Kael'thas without it in Phase 4

Tank Assignment List:

Axe - Main Tank
Sword and Shield - Main Tank
Mace + Dagger - Offtank
Staff - Offtank
Bow - Hunter

The weapon corpses despawn after 60 seconds so must be picked up swiftly, the weapons looted despawn after 15 minutes or when the fight is reset.

Do not worry if you still have a couple of weapons alive at the start of phase 3, you can wrk around the problem

Phase 3

Two minutes after the start of Phase 2 Kael'thas resurrects his advisors. The tanks and their healers should start to move to the corpses of their previous targets several seconds before Phase 3 Hits, so that they can immediately pick up the advisors.

Advisor tank list:

Sanguinar - Main Tank
Telonicus - Off-tank
Capernian - Warlock & Tank (With Fire Resistance)

This is pretty much the same as before, Thaladred and Capernian should be avoided by melee. and the four advisors can be safely attacked by ranged. Since Thaladred is worst, ranged DPS should take him down first. One melee damage dealer with the Infinity Blade should put the weapons debuff on himwith care, the player must be aware of incoming Gaze shifts, move away before the gaze shift and return to DPS when another person has teh gaze..

All other melee damage dealers should concentrate on Sanguinar first and Telonicus second.

After Thaladred is down, ranged DPS can either help the melee group at Sanguinar, or start on Capernian. The decision is group dependant and depends on teh strength of your melee dps.

When all other adds are down all DPS should focus on Telonicus .

Phase 4: Taking matters into one's own hands

When Phase 3 has been going for 3 minutes Kael'thas joins the fight. You should be ok if one advisor is still up, two or moer however and chances are you will wipe.

Fireball is cast regularly and should be interupted asap by any class that can.

Mind Controlled characters can be sheeped, probably the besty way to avoid the problem. It's also possible to use the Infinity Blade with low damage attacks such as hamstring to dispel Mind Control.

Flamestrike needs to be avoided, you will notice a glow on the ground vaguely similar to Consecration, move well away fromt his when you see it (You have around 3 seconds)

Every 30-40 seconds Kael'thas will summon a Phoenix. The Effect for this is the same as flamestrike but much shorter.

Phoenix handling

When the Phoenix spawns you can either kite it with a ranged damage dealer, or simply have your fire resist tank keep control of it. The Phoenix continually casts a hellfire ability which damages itself for around 5% of its health, as well as damaging everybody around it for around 3.5k fire damage per second, This means it will stay alive for 20 seconds before killing itself. When the Phoenix dies it will cast a knockback ability and then turn into a Phoenix egg. This egg has around 70k Health and must be destroyed very quickly. IF you dont take teh egg down within 15 seconds it will spawn a new Phoenix.

Pyroblast

Every 60 seconds Kael'thas casts a the sequence of Shock Barrier, three Pyroblasts and an Arcane Disruption.

Even with all the possible mitigations in effect, Pyroblast damage can be up to 23k fire damage. Tanks with the Phaseshift Bulwark can use it to absorb one Pyroblast. If the damage dealers are up to it, the best course of action is to burn down the shield fast enough to interrupt the second pyroblast. If you cant make this a tink with around 20k Health can just about live through one pyroblast if it has the Infernal Protection buff from the Cosmic Infuser, a Fire Protection Potion or Nightmare Seed and PW:Shield). If your raid group keeps failing to get th shield down before the second Pyroblast it is likely your group is not up to kael.

Event Cycle

In summary, there's a 60 second rotation which takes place over the entire phase:

[0sec]->[20sec](MC + Arcane Disruption)->[40sec](Phoenix + MC + Arcane Disruption)->[60sec](Shock Barrier + 3 Pyroblasts + Arcane Disruption).

Flamestrike happens at random times through the phase.

Phase 5

When Kael'Thas Reaches 50% health phase 5 will start. At this point a small cutscene will begin, when this occurs you should defeat the remaining phoenixs.

In Phase 5 he stops using Mind Control and Pyroblast, instead he casts a random selection of Gravity Lapse, Nether Vapor and Nether Beam. Gravity Lapse teleports the entire raid to Kael'thas' position and up in the air from there. In order to avoid the Nether Vapor debuff and Nether Beam chaining, the raid must immediately move away from Kael'Thas and Spread Out to avoid taking extreme damage. Near the end of the 30 sec duration, people should try to keep close to the ground to minimize falling damage, but must not get too low, else they take damage and get launched back up high in the air.

Kael'thas has a permanant Shock Barrier up during a Gravity Lapse and the phoenixes evade, making any attempt to cause damage futile.

When Gravity Lapse ends the tank must be given time to regain agro, so it may help if the DPS go after any remaining phoenixs rather than return straight to the boss.

Mages should also counterspell the first fireball after gravity Lapse!

If you manage all this, Congratulations! You have defeated one of the toughest bosses before the Black Temple.

Heroics - Should they Cover Old World Instances?

2008-05-15T02:09:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking yesterday as I boosted a friend through SM cath how much I miss the old world invoices. Scarlet Monestary is one of my old world favorites, loads of variety, some pretty funky bosses. It's a shame therefore that I have no characters around that level to play in it. Sure I could hop onto my 70 and walk through it, but wheres the fun in that?

This made my mind wander onto all the other instances I don't play quite so much anymore, what would a Heroic Deadmines be like? or Maybe Gnomeregan with a Zul'Aman style gauntlet down that rather annoying spiral part?

There are infact a whole host of invoices that I used to love, none of which I can play anymore. But how fantastic would it be to go through the old instances as a level 70? I mean stockades would finally make sense, those level 18 prisoners who cannot be subdued by level 70 elite guards.

I really would like al the old game content to be revamped for a heroic type though, I miss all the old instances, making them heroic would pretty much open up a whole new world of gameplay in WoW, which is becoming more and more monotenous with the daily quests.

Jan'alai Boss Guide - Zul'Aman Walkthrough

2008-05-03T07:21:00.000-07:00

Jan'alai (The DragonHawk ZA Boss) is one of the harder of the first four bosses in Zul'Aman. To kill this boss you first however have to get through the Jan'alai Gauntlet in ZA. This is similar to the first Zul'Aman gauntlet however on this one you have to contend with Amani'shi Scouts, these will head towards drums and spawn two Amani'shi Reinforcements every time he pounds the drum. The only real trick to this gauntlet is to keep moving and to take down the Scouts as soon as possible! Warriors charge and rogues stunning skills are incredibly useful here. As you progress you will meet Amani'shi Flame Casters and Amani'Shi Guardians, both of which can be Crowd Controlled. You will also find Beast Tamers and Dragon Hawks, the beast tamers are CC'able and the dragon hawks can be removed with a good paired AoE.

Jan'alai is a pretty tough boss and has several tricks you need to watch out for. He stands at around 960,000 hp, so you should get some fairly decent DPS in on the fight. Jan'Alai will also spawn two Egg Hatchers who must be handled correctly throughout the fight. There is a lot of fire damage throughout the site so it may help if you stack a few pieces of Fire Resistance Gear.

Flame Breath: A cone of firetargetted on a random player that has long range but a narrow width, this hits for around 4-5k on people in a line and Damages these people insanely fast. You can minimize damage from this by spreading out around the boss.
Fire Bombs: He will teleport the entire raid outside the inner square to him (Since Patch 2.4, prior to this the entire raid was teleported), and spawn "flame walls" on the outer ring of his area preventing you from passing. After this he begins spawning bombs on a timer randomly around him. After approximately 10 seconds they will blow up dealing upto 5k damage in a 5 yard radius, Raid members must move to a safe spot away from the bombs. Their is no timer on this ability and he will use it randomly
Summon Amani'shi Hatcher: Every 90 seconds during the fight Jan'alai will summon two Amani'shi Hatchers which run to either side, unless the amount of eggs is significantly uneven. These will begin hatching eggs into Amani Dragonhawks at an accelerated rate: starting with one and incrementing by 1 spawn each time, 1,2,3,4, so letting him hatch 4 times will spawn 1+2+3+4=10 adds and destroy 10 eggs. After spawning all the eggs on one side, the Amani'shi Hatcher will move to the other side and spawn that side as well if he is not killed.
Spawn all remaining eggs: At 35% health all the remaining eggs will spawn. For this reason you need to let the Amani'shi Hatchers release a few eggs each time to prevent your raid group getting wiped by an obscene number of hatchlings!
Enrage: Triggered after 5 minutes of combat or hitting 25% health. Increases melee damage and attack speed by 50%.
Berserk: Triggered after 10 minutes of combat. Significantly increases his damage, and will very quickly wipe the raid.

The Amani Dragonhawk Hatchlings

The Amani'shi Dragonhawk Hatchlings deal melee damage so should be tanked by a high armour class. They can be trapped, feared, frozen, and killed using AOE attacks if required They will also cast Flame Buffet a debuff that increase fire damage taken by 2% , this will stack continuously with no limit but CAN and MUST be dispelled.

First off - Dealing with the hatchers.

The Hatchers must be allowed to release some eggs. Most raid groups let both release 2-3 eggs before nuking down one, and then letting the other release a further 2-3 eggs before killing him. Others however prefer to kill one Hatcher instantly and let the other release as many hatchlings as possible that an offtank can handle.

There are two common raid wiping occurrences that can happen on this boss. The First is Jan'Alais Flame Breath, this is easily avoided by keeping your raid group spread out.

The Second is Fire Bombs. These can be hard to avoid sometimes so require your raids full concentration, there is a safe zone that the raid (Minus tank) can move to in the northwest of your map, but your raid group must be prepared to move as soon as the bombs go off or they will be devastated by Flame Breath.

Apart from these skills though this boss is a fairly straightforward Tank and Spank, if you have a mishap during the fight your raid group can (And should) move down the stairs to reset the boss. When the boss resets he will disappear for around 30 seconds so you can get some members ressed, if you run out of time you can pull him down the stairs for an additional 30 secs of resurrection time!.

Patch 2.4.2 Class Changes (PTR)

2008-04-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

Well the new public test realms are out for world of warcraft with Patch 2.4.2 and we have already seen some pretty random class changes going on. There doesn't seem to be anything major or raid breaking just yet but we ought to keep an eye out!

Ontop of the class changes it seems mages will be able to portal/teleport to Theramore or Stonard depending on their allegiance, something that should cut a fair bit of travelling time for them! and Mount speed increase items will become Mount Enchantments, so goodby stacked Carrot on a Stick and Riding Crop :(

The Class changes in PTR Patch 2.4.2 are -

Druid

Talent: Primal Fury (Rank 2) will now be properly unlearned when it is untalented.
Talent: (Restoration)- Natural Perfection will no longer proc by normal melee attacks.

Hunter

Aspect of the Viper: This ability now grants an additional amount of mana each 5 seconds equal to 35% of the hunter’s level.
Boar Charge: This ability will no longer make Growl cast immediately after it generates excessive threat.
The pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power.
Dire Ravens in Blade’s Edge Mountains now tameable.
Scare Beast: The range on this spell has been increased to 30 yards and it is now instant cast.
Tamed Drywallow Snappers now will know Bite 5 (instead of Claw 5.)

Mage

Talent: Improved Blink (Arcane) now reduces chance to be hit by 13/25% and the duration of Rank 1 has been increased to 4 seconds.
Completing the quest “Arcane Refreshment” will now properly teach the spell Conjure Water (Rank 7).
Polymorph: Mounted creatures will no longer remain mounted while polymorphed.
Mage Armor no longer reduces the duration of beneficial magic buffs.
Molten Armor will now do damage while a damage absorption shield is active.

Paladin

Flash of Light and Holy Light will now work properly with castsequence macros.
Seal of the Crusader: This ability now increases the damage dealt by Crusader Strike by 40%.
Crusader Strike (Retribution) will now properly receive a damage increase from Seal of The Crusader.
Talent: Precision (Ranks 1-3) will no longer improperly display daggers and staves as a weapon class in the tooltip.
Paladins that already have Apprentice Riding skill can now properly learn Summon Warhorse from the trainer.

Priest

Fear Ward will no longer be consumed while under the effects of cyclone.
Mana Burn: This spell can no longer trigger effects that require the target to be struck with a critical hit.
Power Word:Shield now has the correct sound associated with it and can no longer be heard from large distances.
Talent: Power Infusion will now consume the correct amount of mana when cast on yourself.

Rogue

Ability: Blade Flurry: This ability can no longer hit critters as its secondary targets and will now use a proper range calculation for all secondary targets.
Talent: Mutilate (Assassination) will no longer incorrectly appear multiple times in the combat log when used.

Shaman

Ability: Frostbrand Weapon: Rank 6 damage has been increased very slightly.

Warlock

Drain Soul: Channeling of this spell will now always stop when a player target dies.
Pets: Using a sacrifice effect to kill your own pet will no longer trigger effects that should only occur when killing an enemy.

Warrior

Sweeping Strikes: This ability can no longer hit critters as its secondary targets and will now use a proper range calculation for all secondary targets.

Al'ar Evade Bug in Tempest Keep

2008-04-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

Most guilds have been here, you are doing a run of Tempest Keep, you get Al'ar past phase one and are dealing with the second stage magnificently. Then the unthinkable happens. It has happened to me, and chances are if you are reading this its happened to you. Al'ar evades, resets and laughs at you from above.

This evade bug has stretched already strained tensions to breaking point in a few guilds, especially those that have just entered TK and are on their first attempts at the big bird. We were 17% off downing him for the first time with a full raid still alive and at high health when it happened to us.

So why does Al'ar evade?

The usual cause of Al'ar evading is when he is in his second phase and casts Dive Bomb. If he dive Bombs anyone on the platforms or near the doorway there is a very high likelihood that Al'ar will glitch and act as though he left the room.

This is not only irritating because of the fight resetting, but also because one of the major glitch points (the door) is also one of the few real landmarks you can use as a raid regrouping point.

But whatever you choose to do it's best to avoid the possible bugging points, fight in the central area of the room and have fun downing Al'ar!

The Actual Magtheridon Changes in Patch 2.4

2008-04-24T03:34:00.001-07:00

There has been a lot of confusion with people going to Magtheridon's Lair in Patch 2.4 and expecting the 3 cubes that were active in the public test realms. I thought I best clear things up here. A lot of writers talking about the Patch 2.4 notes based their research on the Public Test Realms. In the Public Test Realms (PTRs) prior to patch 2.4 Magtheridon Only had 3 cube clicking boxes, this was expected to be the major nerf Blizzard were talking about.

However when the live version of patch 2.4 was released we soon discovered that Magtheridon was back to 5 boxes and had been nerfed in other areas.

For instance, the infernals now spawn less frequently, the channelers are easier to take down and their is no debuff when you click a box, making rotations significantly easier.

For a Full Rundown of the actual Magtheridon's 2.4 Patch Changes (Not PTR notes) Click Here

Tempest Keep Al'ar Guide

2008-04-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

Al'ar is tehnically the first boss of tempest keep, though groups new to TK may skip him and go to the relatively easier Vod Reaver and Solarian first.

Al'ar is basically a large pheonix pet of Kael'Thas Sunstrider, and it's a pet that drops some pretty nice loot!

But down to the nitty gritty, Al'ar stands at 2,800,000 health and hasa couple of tages you need to watch out for. Al'ar also has several attacks that can devestate a raid,

Phase 1

Flame Quills: Al'ar will fly to the center of the room instead of moving to a new platform occasionally. Al'ar will then launch Flame Quills that hit anyone on the platforms or the outer part of the ramps. Deals around 8k Fire damage a second, for around five seconds.
Ember Blast: Explodes upon his first death, knocking back any raid member within 15 yards. This hits for about 10k fire damage, and upto 1k fall damage. WHen this is cast it signals phase 2

Phase 2

Rebirth: deals around 5k fire damage to any raid member within melee range, with a knockback across the room. This occurs several seconds after a Dive Bomb. He will spawn in the same location where the Dive Bomb hit. Al'ar will also use this ability at the start of Phase 2, when he respawns in the middle of the room.
Dive Bomb: Al'ar flies up, and targets a random player. Al'ar then dives into the ground at that location. This hits for around 5k fire damage, and spawns two Ember of Al'ar adds. Al'ar will then cast Rebirth at the same spot. 30 second cooldown.
Flame Patch: Tragets an area around a random player, deals 3k fire damage per tick.
Melt Armour: Target's armor is decreased by 80% for 60 seconds, another tank must taunt immediately after this is cast.
Enrage: Al'ar enrages 10 minutes after the start of phase 2, wiping the raid very quickly.

Ember of Al'ar

70,000 health.
Hits for 1500 melee damage.
One spawns after each position change in Phase 1, two more spawn after each Dive Bomb in Phase 2.
Each time one is destroyed, Al'ar's health is drained by 3% of max health in phase 2.
Ember Blast: Explodes upon death, knocking back any player in range (~15 yards). Deals ~7k fire damage, and an additional ~1k fall damage.

These can be stunned but are immune to any other types of Crowd Control.

Gear

Despite the large amount of fire damage in this fight it is generally recommended that Fire resistance is not stacked unless you are a tank. As much damage as possible should be self healed in this fight so stock up on bandages and potions. Greater Fire Protection Potions are pretty useful in this fight!

Tactics

Phase 1

When the fight first begins Al'ar will always fly to platform on the far left, A tank should be ready and waiting to avoid flame buffet. During the entirety of phase one Ranged should be stood on the ground firing upwards, it is impossible for ranged to pull agro at this point of the fight. Melee can draw agro so must be careful to avoid pulling Al'ar as they will most likely be out of LoS. Tanks should stand on the very edge of the platform so healers can reach them, if they move too far into the platform they may lose line of sight.

In theory you should have five tanks on this boss though it is doable with three, one tank is required to handle the Embers of Al'ar, the other two should take each side of the platform, if you have an extra two tanks thy should cover the middle platforms. Flame Quills does cause some problems hear and can be avoided by jumping off the platforms. While it has been said that you can avoid it by moving against the walls on the ramps you can miss this as well, but with an 8k damage a tic debuff hitting up there My guild has never risked doing this. In the meantime whenever Al'ar starts spinning anyone left on the platform should jump down immediately and run back up. It is imperative your tanks return to their places immediately or your entire raid will start taking damage from Flame Buffet.

Once Al'ar has been on the first platform for 30 seconds he wil move onto the next one clockwise, he will repeat this pattern until a flame quill effect takes place..

Everytime Al'ar eaves a platform an Ember of Al'ar will spawn, these tend to go to the healers but a tank standing at the bottom of the two ramps can easily pick up any flying down. Since Melee are fairly ineffective on the boss they should help with the adds, a rogues stun is usefull around 3-4% health on these as it gives dps time to move out before the add explodes (This does mean one has to stay behind to finish it off, Paladins or Rogues cloak of shadows is good here.

If Al'ar casts Flame Quills he will return to either platform one or four. If your raid group does not have enough tanks for every platform you can have a tank waiting at the bottom of the platform ready to run up as soon as the flame quills ends.

Phase 2

A well proven tactic in phase two is to save Al'ars adds. Each time one of these is killed in phase two it removes 3% of Al'ars health. During phase one you can reduce an adds health down to ~5 % and in phase two a warlock can cast Seed of Corruption plus a couple of dots. When the explosions start chances are the tank holding the adds will die, unless they have a paladins bubble handy.

Phase 2 occurs when Al'ar reaches 0% health for the first time. When Al'ar hits 0% health it will explode for a large amount of fire damage and will reappear at the centre of the room casting a massive knock back effect. Flame Buffet is till in effect in phase two so a tank must pick Al'ar up immediately.

When phase two hits Ranged dps are better suited to the adds and melee on the boss, this helps when scattering to avoid meteor.

While on the ground Al'ar will spawn random flame patches on the ground. Players should move away from these asap, although since flame patches are targetted on a player they can be Spell Reflected.

Al'ar will occasionally charge, tanks should follow Al'ar when this happens, since he does not always return afterwards and can begin casting flame buffet. During this time Alar will cast a Melt Armour debuff on hte Tank lowering his armour by 60%, when this happens he should cease threat generation and another tank should take over.

When in the air Al'ar will cast Dive Bomb (Formerly Meteor) that will hit for around 5k on a target and people surrounding him. When this happens move away asap, he will return in teh same area with a hefty knockback spell. When this occurs we will spawn two more Embers of Al'ar on the ground he hit, tanks shouldbe ready to pick these up!

During this fight all players should stay off the ramps platforms and near the door as Al'ar has been known to bug and evade when dive bombing these locations, resetting him.

If you are a warrior jump into a flame patch and cast spell reflection. (This may have changed in Patch 2.4, Can any readers verify this??)

Tales of Adventure in WoW

2008-04-15T06:38:00.001-07:00

I have recently decided to take a bit of a break between writing my more serious posts by writing an in theme comedic journal of my wanderings around azeroth and the outlands. Bear with me as I am new to writing in my style but please take a look and comment at http://journalofadventure.blogspot.com/

I would am grateful for any support while I try to get in teh swing of writing this!

For those unsure, here is a quick excert,

"Todaye I also sawe a Warloke, whom I tolde to reforme his ways. He introduced me too hys fiende Shara, she yst prettey as a royale princesse, I shalle proposee to wedd her todaye,"

Later...

"Myne blessed princesse hath a whip ofe most acute payne. Indeed myne flighte hast never been so hastily runne as myne mistress tooke too thy aire on great leathern wings. I do notte hath a clue as too howe I missed those great thynges.

Fromm thys day forthe aye shalle seeke women from myne realme onley."

Tempest Keep - High Astromance Solarian Tactics Guide

2008-04-14T14:58:00.001-07:00

High Astromancer Solarian is usually the second boss taken down in Tempest Keep. This walkthrough will show you the tactics to help you down Solarian in no time!

Dispite Al'ar being the first boss seen in Tempest Keep (TK) Many groups have great difficulty taken down Al'ar so go for either Void Reaver or Solarian due to their relative ease.

Solarian has around 2,800,000 and has several abilities you must watch out for.

Wrath of the Astromancer: Turns a random raid member into a Bomb that hits for around 6k damage after 6 seconds, before it explodes the effected player will deal AoE damage to the raid. When the AoE hits everyone effected is thrown into the air and takes 90% fall damage. It is pretty much gaurenteed everyone effected by this will die. The person who was effected by the bomb will land unscathed from fall damage.
Arcane Missiles: Hits 3 times for 3k damage on a random raid member.
Blinding Light: 2.5k AoE arcane damage to the entire raid. Has a 20 second cooldown.
Every 50 seconds Solarian will disappear and three beams of light will appear. summoning around 12 - 15 non elite adds, after these fade Solarian will re-appear with two priest adds.

The adds have the following attributes,

Non elite Adds (Agents):

30.000 Health
1500 damage on cloth

Elite Adds (Priests):

80,000 Health
300 damage on cloth

Tactics

When setting up your raid group it helps to have some arcane resistance, but do not nerf yourself. The Violet Badge from a karazhan quest chain is incredibly useful here. Due to the large number of adds a Paladin tank is especially useful here and all raid members should group around him when the adds appear.

Phase One.

The raid should be split into two groups, melee and ranged. Each group should have a leader and back up leader marked by a symbol. All members of each group must gather around their relevant leader. This ensures that when anybody gets the bomb debuff they can move out of the way of everyone else ASAP.

The bomb is the raid breaker in this fight, who ever has it will have large purple flairs emminating from his body. They must move out of the way of your raid as soon as physically possible to reduce raid damage. Everyone hitby this will get thrown into the air and will take around 90% fall damage apart from the person with the bomb debuff (they will land unscathed). Anyone who gets hit by this will most likely die.

The second thing that needs to be watched out for is Arcane Missiles, these hit for 9k damage in quick succession, all but the main tank healer need to keep an eye out for this and throw some quick heals on, flash heal and flash of light are perfect for this.

Phase 2

When phase 2 hits Solarian will disappear and three beams of light will appear. From these between 12 and 15 non elites will spawn, these hit for 1.5k damage so must be tank controlled. This can be done by tank rotation on AoE agro but it is much more effective if you have a paladin Tank. When this occurs to avoid problems both groups must group together, if this doesnt happen then the adds will go after random players and it is very likely they will die. After 15 Seconds Solarian will respawn along with two priests. The priests must be stunlocked and interrupted, otherwise they will heal both Solarian and Themselves. All DPS should nuke these down as soon as they can.

The first two phases will rotate several times.

Phase 3

Phase three turns into a simple tank and spank. When Solarian hits 20% health she will turn into a voidwalker. This will significantly increase her armour and her previous attacks will cease. She now has an arcane bolt attack and a fear spell. The fear should be avoided with spells such as fear ward or stance dancing, failure to do so can result in Solarian attacking DPS.

Manage to handle all this and you have managed to down Solarian, i hope this walkthrough helped, and even more so that the guide led you to success!

Tempest Keep - Void Reaver (Loot Reaver)

2008-04-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

For many guilds Tempest Keep and Serpent Shrine Cavern are their ultimate goals. Tempest Keep tends to be easier for most who are new to 25 man content, but only on certain bosses.

Although Al'ar is meant to be the first boss in Tempest Keep he is fairly difficult, for this reason many guilds new to the instance may find themselves heading to Void Reaver, otherwise known as Loot Reaver due to how easily he is downed and the pretty damn nice loot he drops.

So onto what you need to know about the Void Reaver, his health stands at around 4,750,000 and life and mana drain effects will not work on him. The fight only has two main points, one part for ranged and one for tanks. Ranged must look out for Arcane Orbs, Tanks must be aware of KNock Away, a threat reduction ability. To deal with knock away you will need three, but preferably four tanks in your group. But back on point, here are his skills in a bit more detail!

Pounding: An 18 yard AoE around the Void Reaver that lasts for 3 seconds and hits for around 1k to 2.3k arcane damage per second, This can be resisted and isfor no more than three seconds.
Arcane Orb: A ranged AoE with a 6 second silence effect that hits for around 6k Damage to a player. This has a 3 second cooldown and will be fired towards a random player, it moves pretty slow and can be avoided, or rather, must be avoided as they can do a lot of damage. This will only be fired at raid members outside the 18 yard range of Pounding.
Knock Away: A Single target push back ability that is used on the tank with the highest threat and reduces the players aggro significantly. It has a 20 sec cooldown and can be missed, parried or dodged to avoid the threat reduction debuff.

Due to Voidreaver being a fairly simple boss the tactics are likewise very easy. As previously noted you should have four tanks keeping agro on the boss, he is untaunatble so keeping your threat up is a priority if you are tanking Void Reaver. the Melee and tanks should all be placed in the same groups so AoE heals have full effect. These should be used liberally to counteract Pounding. Circle of Healing and Chain Heal are ideal for this.

For ranged players everyone should spread out ina circle at maximum range from Void Reaver. When he casts an arcane orb towards you it is imperative that you move out of the way as soon as possible. It may help to assign your healers locations around the room, this should prevent anyone leaving healing range.

Agro Management is the absolute key to this fight, A sharp eye is needed on your threat meter as tanks all too often dip below the top DPSers on this boss, and chances are that will wipe your raid group!

Addons - Gazmik Fizzwidget's Adspace

2008-04-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have spent a look at addons you will no doubt have come across some of Fizzwidget's wares. A lot of his addons are aimed towards professions or hunters, however one of his addons shines out to me above all others.

Adspace is laughably simple but ingeniously brilliant.

We have all been there, we goto the auction house, there is a white recipe you want going for 15g. You know that somewhere it will be on a vendor, but finding ouch which one is a royal pain in the behind.

Adspace however comes to the rescue quite neatly. on the end of any recipe/pattern/etc tooltip it adds another couple of lines describing vendor locations for your faction (Alliance or Horde). So if you are in the Auction House and you hover over a recipe instead of wasting your hard earned gold you now have something telling you it is infact only a flight path away.

I know this isnt a game changing addon, it wont help you in a raid and it wont help you kill anyone else. It could however save you 10 minutes of tabbing and searching the internet every so often, and it could save you wasting your gold on items you could have bought significantly cheaper at a vendor!

Zul'Aman - Akil'zon Guide & Tips

2008-04-08T05:08:00.000-07:00

Akil'zon is the second boss you should reach in Zul'Aman, especially if you are attempting the timed event. To reach Akil'zon you must first run the gauntlet, which requires you to run up the hill defeating the mass of mobs in your way. To complete this it is best to have a paladin tank up front and another tank behind your group. Two AoErs are advised for this and keep your DPS on their toes when looking for the elites that will come towards you.

Akil'zon himself is the Eagle formed boss of Zul'aman (ZA) and will call forth the powers of the birds and the air against you, the birds he calls are a nightmare to control, but they can fortunately be taken down with relative easy by affliction locks, hunters or shamans. The electrical storms are what will really get you!

But down to business, Akil'zon is regarded as one of ZA's easiest bosses if your raid is on their toes. He sits at a rather meagre 660,000 health but does have high armour, mitigating physical damage and making it preferable to keep warlocks as boss dps and hunters on bird control. He has a fair number of spells at his disposal and it is essential you know these and how to avoid them as much as possible.

Summon Amani Eagle - Summons Soaring Eagles which hit for around 1.5k damage with their Eagle Swoop attack. They can only be hit by ranged DPS.
Static Disruption - Deals 3.5k damage to Akil'zon's target and those arouns it. Also debuffs players, increasing nature damage taken by 25% for 20 seconds.
Call Lightning - Deals around 3.5k - 4.5k nature damage to the target.
Gust of Wind - Throws a player up into the air, the player will lose around 50% health when they hit the ground. For this reason it is important to keep players above 50% hp at all times"
Electrical Storm - Channeled spell that raises a player into the air and forms a cloud around him. Anyonenot underneath the palyer will receive an increasing amount of nature damage, first hit for aroun 1k, second 2k, third 3k and so forth. This lasts for around 7 or 8 seconds.
Enrage - He will enrage after 8 minutes increasing damage dealt by 50%, this will meana wipe.

Tactics

Positioning is key for the Akil'zon fight, spread out to avoid the AoE from static disruption. Melee should all strive to stay as far as possible away from each other, this is hard to do in such a mall space but hte further you get the less jumps the spell will make!

The main reason for wiping in this fight is electrical storm. During this spell a player will be lifted into the air and electricity will fire out and damage all players not directly underneath him. To achieve this all players should gather at Akil'zon (So melee DPS cans till attack) approximately 7 seconds before the storm starts, addons such as deadly boss mods are useful for predicting when the storm will happen. Even then a raid leader should shout out for everyone to group up at the boss, since one person not moving can wipe the raid!

You should wait till 7 seconds before hand to avoid Static Disruption causing mass damage to your raid group. The only problem with this is that the timer used by addons like deadly boss mods only times the cooldown, Akil'zon may cast this any time after the cooldown has finished. For this reason your healers must be on the ball incase he casts a static discharge before electrical storm.

After the first Electrical Storm is first cast Akil'zon will cast his summon soaring eagles spell. These cannot be attacked by melee classes and will dive about causing around 1.5k damage a hit. While these can be succesfully ignored by a good group I would not recommend it as it can put a huge strain on the healers if too many spawn at once.

Instead warlocks, hunters and shamans should use instant cast spells to take down these pesky feathered fighters. Due to the difficulty of casting a spell while the birds are still in range it is suggested that mages continue to DPS on the boss.

Once you have mastered surviving the Electrical Storm you will have mastered this boss. Good Luck!

Wii Competition!

2008-04-06T03:44:00.000-07:00

You heard it here first!

Our friends over at WiiRinControl.com have announced their new competition to win some Wii VC Goodies. The competition is 100% free to enter and you can up your chances five times over by referring some friends!

To Enter all you have to do is sign up and introduce yourself, stay active and you will even automatically be entered into future competitions to win fantastic prizes around once every 3 weeks!

So if you are a Wii fanatic, interested in talking about all teh latest Wii news and games tehn take a look at http://www.wiirincontrol.com and check out this brand new Wii games and hardware discussion website!

Void Shatter - One Void Crystal into Large Prismatic Shards.

2008-04-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

With the release of Patch 2.4 and Sunwell Isle we saw the release of a new enchanting spell, namely Formula: Void Shatter. The formula for Void Shatter can be picked up on Sunwell Isle and trained at 360, however you also need a Runed Eternium Rod. These babies need 370 enchanting and can cost between 500g to 600g to make, good job Blizzard.

Void Shatter simply turns one void crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards. It has a 24 hour cooldown to prevent the market getting flooded, but it has started to affect the price of both items ingame. Large Prismatics are getting cheaper and void crystals getting mroe expensive. This is kind of a shame since Large prismatics were a great source of income from heroics for me, boosting each heroic run to an easy 70g profit.

I believe the reason Blizzard released this was two fold.

First to balance out the cost of the two items. Large prismatics and void crystals have become massively disproportioned on most servers with Void Crystals selling at upto half the price of Large Prismatic Shards on some servers.

The second reason is most likely the upcoming release of the Wrath of the Lich King Expansion. As with most things they are making items easier to get so that people can be more prepared for the expansion. This has happened to Epic gear with welfare epics, now be prepared for welfare enchants!

Wether this is a good change or not is debatable. I however am in favour of it, I believe enchants currently cost an insane amount, much more than they should do compared to other things. Getting a slight upgrade via an enchant can cost easily double that of a gear upgrade, im not sure why this is!

The Magisters' Terrace Guide -Sunwell Isle (MrT or MgT)

2008-04-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

The Magisters' Terrace is a brand new 5 man instance that appeared in Patch 2.4. Yes I know this isn't a raid but due to its increased difficulty and in heroic mode Kara equivalent drops I thought I should cover it!

There are four bosses, each of which I have done a write up for,

Selin Fireheart
Vexallus
Priestess Delrissa
Kael'Thas Sunstrider

But not only are there four kick ass bosses (Including Kael'thas from Tempest Keep) but the trash is also insane, and requires good and well played crowd control.

Here is a rundown of the trash in Magisters' Terrace (Known as MrT or MgT depending on your server!)

Mob	Normal	Heroic Mode
Sunblade Blood Knight	Hits hard and can heal with Holy Light. Uses a stealable seal (Seal of Wrath) that adds a large amount of holy damage to each melee and spell. Can be mind controlled, sheeped, seduced or trapped.
Sunblade Mage Guard	Casts a stationary Magic Dampening Field that reduce spell damage and healing received by 75% on a player. Also has an AoE stun seun effect and a random Glaive Throw. Can be mind controlled, sheeped, seduced, or trapped.
Sunblade Magister	Uses Arcane Nova and Frostbolt. Every spell cast gives them a stacking 10% haste bonus to spellcasting, the haste buff is stealable and dispellable, so if you have a mage wait for this to stack a few times then spellsteal! Immune to Mind Control and Seduce. Can be sheeped.
Sunblade Warlock	Repeatedly casts Incinerate and occasionally casts Immolate. Has a stealable fel armor buff that provides 250 spell damage. Mages should steal this as well! Comes with an easily killed Imp pet. Can be mind controlled, sheeped, seduced, or trapped.
Sunblade Physician	Their weapons have Inject Poison that puts a DoT on the player for 1.2k-1.4k nature damage to the target every 3 sec for 15 sec. He will also use Prayer of mending. Can be seduced, mind controlled, or sheeped. You must keep this guy crowd controlled as prayer of mending can heal for a lot.	Inject Poson hits for 3k - 3.5k per 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
Wretched Bruiser	Low power Melee mob, can be ignored till al one CC'ed mobs are taken down. He has a Fel Infusion spell that increases speed and damage dealt for 10 sec. Also uses Wretched Strike (Mortal Strike like) that reduces healing done to the target	Hit clothies for 2-3k. Dont AoE in Heroic Mode
Wretched Skulker	Dual Wield mob. Uses Fel Infusion to increase attack speed and damage for 10 sec. Also uses Wretched Stab to do normal damage plus 150.	Hit clothies for around 2-3k. Don't AoE in heroic mode
Wretched Husk	Casts Frostbolt and Fireball as well as casting Fel Infusion to increase attack speed and damage for 10 sec.
Sunblade Sentinel	Casts fel lightning on all nearby party members which hits for around 1.5k fire damage.
Brightscale Wyrm	These come in large packs of between 8-12 before the boss Vexallus. They provide a stacking damage buff called Energy Infusion upon being killed. Each kill gives everyone in the party another 1% to their damage done. These ahve low health so all AoErs get in on this, including priests with holy nova/
Sunblade Keeper	He occasionally spawns with the Wyrms and will detonate a mana cell. This causes the Wyrm groups to go into a feeding frenzy and become a single large and difficult to take down group. The person with the highest agro wil usually get banashed, be warned this is often the healer. On top of that he also has Shadow Bolt and Shadow Bolt Volley in his arsenal.
Sister of Torment	Will use a seduce called Deadly Embrace, on random targets as well as Lash of Pain. Can be enslaved or banished, and is susceptible to a Paladin's Turn Evil.
Ethereum Smuggler	Will occasionally teleport to a random target and spam a lot of Arcane Explosion very quickly. Can be sheeped, trapped and Mind Controled.
Coilskar Witch	Attacks with a bow and has the spells and effects Forked Lightning, Frost Arrow, and Mana Shield. Can be mind controlled, sapped and seduced.

As with all trash pulls of this type you must crowd control or nuke down the healers asap. At the start of the instance you will see a lot of stationary magic dampening fields, use these to your advantage. A well co-ordinated group can step in these till they hit around 50% health (If they are taking spell damage), then step out so your healers can top you up.

Be careful though, stepping in these reduces reduces damage and healing taken, so your healer must remember not to cast heals while you are in the field (Since teh heal will be reduced by 75% and become very mana inefficient. Doing this reduces your damage taken by spells by 75% and stepping out gives you the opportunity to receive full healing effects. If you are taking damage from a melee class move out of these asap as it has no benefit and massively reduces the healing you take!

Magisters' Terrace Guide - Kael'thas Sunstrider

2008-04-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

Kael'thas Sunstrider is originally in Tempest Keep, however at the final boss of the Magisters Terrace you will find Kael'thas Sunstrider alive and well, although with a big green rdiamond stuck in his chest.

So far it is estimated that Kael'thas Sunstrider has around 170,000 Health, but dont let the low amount fool you, this boss is no cakewalk. He has a host of abilities that will decimate your raid if you are not careful!

Fireball - Hits for around 2.5k in normal, 6k in heroic mode. Its not resistable but can be interrupted and reflected.
Flamestrike - A large circle will appear on the ground, you have 5 seconds to get out of there or you and any other party members inside it will get hit for 5k (9k in heroics)
Summon Phoenix - In phase 1 towards a party member, they have a threat meter and can be kited, mages or hunters are good for this. In phase 2 they will stop moving and cast fireballs at party members. They pulse hellfire consistantly meaning a Pheonix can kill itself. When they die they will emit a low radius but high damage explosion with the knockback effect, leaving an egg. This must be destroyed ASAP or another phoenix will hatch!
Gravity Lapse - Gravity Lapse is cast in phase two (beginning at 50% health) Gravity lapse does several things, dfirslty it throws you into the air, especially when youg et close to the ground. Secondly it creates a DoT on all raid members for 300hp a second and thirdly he will spawn 3 Arcane Orbs (I hate these things) which do high melee damage. YOu can move during Gravity Lapse in a similar way to swimming.

In Heroic mode he casts two more spells

Shock Barrier - Absorbs 10k damage and makes him immune to interrupts. This usually signals the casting of pyro blast so all players must nuke asap to take the shield down and a player with interupt capability must do so ASAP
Pyroblast - Around 55k Damage on the current target, usually the tank. Cannot be reflected and can only be interrupted when you get the Shock Barrier down.

Tactics

To begin with Kael'thas will mostly melee, casting only an occasional fireball. To make things even better these can be interrupted, so anyone with the ability should use it! He will cast Flamestrikes regularly, everyone in your group should however be able to avoid taking damage with ease.

When the phoenix spawns be sure to nuke him down ASAP, especially if you are nearing 50% of Kael'thas's health. If his health nears 50% and the PHoenix is still not dead cease DPS and take him out.

The best way to deal with the pheonix is to kite and nuke with two ranged DPS, the DPS must keep the phoenix away from the main group AND themselves to avoid taking damage on it's death. You will usually have at least 2 spawn during the fight. Make sure you destroy the egg or you will have to deal with an additional respawn!

To gain distance on the phoenix DPSers may find it usefull to jump down from the stage, forcing the phoenix to go down the ramp, this is a great way to gain some extra dps time.

When Kael'thas hits 50% he will cast the first gravity lapse. When this happens you will float freely around and take 300 damage a second for 30 seconds. At the same time he will summon three Arcane Orbs these hit for 2k a time so your party should fly around and avoid these. During Gravity Lapse there is no tanking required so everyone should all out DPS Kael'Thas if they get the opportunity.

After 30 Seconds Kael'thas will end Gravity Lapse due to him becoming 'tired' During this time he takes 50% plus damage and will not attack, so all out DPS him and use all DPS cooldowns. When this ends after another 30 seconds he will get back up and recast gravity lapse. It is possible for several classes to solo this boss after 50%, most notably Affliction warlocks, since Kael'Thas no longer attacks and the adds can be out manouvered.

No player should release spirit while any other player remains alive.

If you are doing this boss in heroic mode the fight is very similar but with one major difference. Shock barrier/pyroblast needs tobe taken down asap. If Kael'Thas casts Shock Barrier you must immediately take down the shield and then cast an interrupt on his Pyroblast or it is nearly gaurenteed you will wipe. The two possible escapes are a paladin bubble and warriors Shield wall/last stand (Sometimes)

Magisters' Terrace Guide - Priestess Delrissa

2008-03-31T10:11:00.001-07:00

Priestess Delrissa is the third and arguably the hardest boss in the Magisters' Terrace instance, if not for her actually abilities than her four random gaurdians. The Gaurdians have various abilities and weaknesses, I have made a quick table outlineing these below! This boss is very similar to the Moroes fight, all her adds are however untauntable, be warned!

Name	Race and class	Notes
Apoko	Broken Shaman	Drops Totems (Windfury and Fire Nova) Heals, Purges regularly, even removing paladin shields.
Eramas Brightblaze	Blood Elf Fury Warrior	Very fast melee attacks, can Kick, Ice Trap or be Feared, although hew is Immune to Mind Control and Seduce.
Ellrys Duskhallow	Blood Elf Warlock	Uses Shadow Bolt, Fear, and Seed of Corruption. She has an Imp pet named Fizzle, which can be killed quickly. She can be Polymorphed and Frozen. Immune to Seduce and Mind Control.
Garaxxas	Satyr Hunter	Comes with a pet ravager named Sliver. Can use Freezing Trap, banish and Warstomp for Crowd control. He is immune to sheep and cyclone.
Kagani Nightstrike	Blood Elf Rogue	Uses Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, and Gouge. Has Crippling Poison on his weapon. Can Vanish and reappear next to a random target. Can be sheeped and cycloned. Immune to Seduce.
Yazzai	Ethereal Mage	Uses Frostbolt, Frost Nova, Blizzard, and randomly Polymorphs a target. She will also Ice Block. Can be polymorphed. Immune to Seduce.
Zelfan	Gan'arg Engineer	Uses Explosive Sheep, frontal flame cone. He can be Banished but is immune to seduce.

The Priestess Delrissa herself has several spells in her arsenall you also need to watch out for

Dispell Magic - Dispells two harmful spells from her adds/herelf or two benefitial spells from your party members.
Flash Heal - Quickly heasls an ally for 398 - 462
Shadow Word: Pain - lasts for 18 seconds, deals 36 shadow damage on normal 48 heroic.
Power Word: Shield - Places a shield on an ally, it can absorba round 1500 damage.
Renew - Heals an Ally for 430 every 3 seconds for 18 secodns (600 health a second in Heroics)

The key to defeating this boss is crowd control. All adds should be crowd controlled asap with any healers, Priestess Delrissa included, taken down as soon as possible. Spell steal is a great way to get some of Priestess Delrissa's fantastic spells onto your own party!

It is advisable to leave shadow word: pain on your party, that way it automatically removes any CC that may be put on them by the Adds.

Apart from that there is not really much a guide can tell you, this fight is very hectic, very random and requires a lot of independant player skill. If you still find yourself having torouble your players may find it easier if they bring a set of PVP gear for the fight.

Magisters Terrace - Vexallus

2008-03-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

Vexallus is the second boss in the Magisters' Terrace. He is an Arcane Elemental and sits at around 131,000 health. Like the majority of bosses this guy is untauntable!

But lets get back to his basic attacks,

Melees for around 3k arcane damage in heroic mode.
Chain Lightning - Infrequently cast but random and hits for around 2400 Nature damage to first target.
Overload (This occurs when Vexallus hits around 10% hp) - A chain cast Arcane Blast AoE dealing 1k damage to all of your party. Increases Arcane damage taken by 10%. Stacks up to 15 times, at which point Vexallus pauses in his attacks, nuke him quick here!.

Vexallus will regularly spawn a pure energy add. These are similar to the adds on Curator but with some basic differences.

They have less than 200 health, can be killed by pretty much anything, even healers!
Only one at a time will spawn in normal, two in Heroic.
Energy Bolt - Deals 2800 to 3200 arcane damage. 20 yard range.
Energy Feedback - Placed on the player who kills it. Deals 300 Arcane damage per second. Increases damage dealt by 50% for 30 seconds. layer. This stacks upto 15 times!

Tactics!

The most important thing here is add management, these guys have pitiful health but cause a lot of damage if not instantly killed. The killing of the adds should be spread between the DPS, that way the +Damage buff is used to full effect but the 300 damage per second DoT does not stack so much the healer can no longer handle it.

Since these debuffs and buffs stack rapidly it is imperative that you nuke this boss down as fast as possible or the healer will find it impossible to keep the group alive. Some people prefer to keep their DPS cool downs on hold till they have several stacks of the + Damage buff so they are used to full effect. Another (Rarely used) tactic is to swap the DPS hitting the adds in rotation so one can lose the DoT buff. This should only be used if you have very low DPS however as it is very hard to implement correctly and drags the fight out intolerably.

All Damage caused by Vexallus and his adds is Arcane, so Arcane resist gear can really help in this fight. This does not however reduce damage taken from the Feedback DoT, so it is important you do not gimp your groups DPS or Healing.

Before Vexallus hits 10% hp make sure you have killed all the Adds, since at this point you will receive a debuff increasing arcane damage taken, greatly increasing the attacking power of the Pure Energy Adds!

Tips and Tricks

Mages can iceblock and rogues can Cloak of Shadows out of the DoT, this should be used if the healer is having trouble keeping up with the damage being dealt.

Magisters Terrace - Selin Fireheart

2008-03-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

Selin Fireheart is the first boss of the brand new (As of patch 2.4) instance Magisters Terrace, on Sunwell Isle (Isle of Quel'Danas). He is fairly easy to take down but does some massive AoE spells which if unattended can easily take down a raid.

But as always, back to basics

Selin Fireheart has around 164000 health
He Syphons mana from crystals till he gains full mana, this also increases the damage dealt so crystals must be destroyed ASAP.
He casts fel explosion every second until he runs out of mana, this spell HURTS towards the end of the fight.
Drain Life - Drains life froma random party member, can be dispelled.
Drain Mana - In heroic mode only he will cast a drain mana spell, can also be dispelled.

The Tactics for this boss are laughably simple, as soon as he starts draining the crystal put all DPS on the crystal itself, this will minimise his damage increase and the number of AoE spells he can do. Apart from that its a very simple tank and spank, enjoy!

Zul'Aman - Nalorakk (The Bear Boss)

2008-03-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Nalorakk is Zul'Aman's first boss (Although you can switch orders if you wish). Nalorakk has bene imbued with the spirit of the bear and will periodically change into this form during the fight, bringing in a host of different effects.

Nalorakk has around 800,000 health in and out of bear form. THis migh tnot seem like much hp, but don't be fooled this boss can be difficult!

The best part about this boss is that despite the fight taking a long time it is simple tank and spank, the only difference is tank rotation (Different tank for each form) and the fact that this fight is rather healing intensive.

But back to basics,

As previously stated, Nalorakk has 800,000 hp, does not perform crushing blows, IS tauntable and will enrage after 10 minutes, so kill him quick people

His different abilities in their respective forms are,

Nalorakk in Troll Form

Mangle: All bleed effects cause 100% additional damage
Surge: Charge ability, hits plate for about 1.5k hp, hits cloth for around 3k - 3.5k hpBrutal Swipe: A cleave ability that does 11-14k damage on plate (~30k unmitigated); can be divided evenly between two targets. It has a short range so the two tanks should stay pretty much on top of one another.

Nalorakk in Bear Form

Lacerating Slash: Bleeding for 1735 damage every 2 sec. (18 sec duration)
Rend Flesh: Bleeding for 2335 damage every 1 sec. (5 sec duration)
Deafening Roar: Deals 1235 to 1365 physical damage and silences enemies for 2 sec. MAke sure you have a lot of HoTs up for this!

Tactics!

Nalorakk is a fairly simple boss, especially considering some of the other ZA boss skills. The main things to worry about here are your tanks keeping in position and agroing, and your healers keeping the tanks fully topped up and with active HoTs on.

Your Tanks need to arrange which phase they will take, one for bear phase and one for troll. One tank alone cannot handle both the mangle and the bleed effects. Therefore it is important that as soon as Nalorakk switches forms the correct tank uses taunt and build up agro to the right level, the other tank should back off until the active tank has enough threat to keep agro after taunt fades. Both tanks should stand ontop of one another at all times to split the damage from the cleave abilities evenly. If just one tank gets hit he will most likely be one shotted.

Yes, Threat meters are most definately a necessity by this point, especially since your tanks ar unlikely to be able to use their full threat gain capabilities.

Healers, remember to keep HoTs up with at least 5 seconds left on them at all times, restoration druids are invaluable here, for their HoTs and inneverate. When you leave the silence oafter two seconds instantly throw your quickest heal on the tanks untill they regain full health.

All DPS must be very careful not to over agro on this fight.

Killing Nalorakk will extend the ZA timer event by 15 minutes,it is well worth taking this guy down first.

Zul'Aman - Timed Event

2008-03-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

The Zul'Aman Timed event is a bonus to the regular boss loots.

The timed event in ZA first starts when you talk to Harrison Jones, who suffers a rather unfortunate fate when the gates first open. When the event starts you have twenty minutes, this extends to 45 with the time bonuses from the first two bosses. Killing Nolorakk the Bear boss will grant you 15 extra minutes and Akil'zon the Eagle boss will grant you an extra ten. The other bosses will not grant any extra time.

After killing each boss (Not engaging, you must kill before the timer runs down) a chest weill appear by him, you get different loot in each one.

First chest gives a random piece of armor (iLvl 128).
Second chest gives a random weapon (iLvl 132).
Third chest gives a random ring (iLvl 141).
Fourth Chest gives the Amani War Bear, an awsome rare mount!

Tactics

You need to clear trash incredibly quickly to complete the full timed event, and will probably be unable to do this without Black Temple Gear. You must chain pull throughout the entire instance, this means healers must constantly rotate and takea good supply of Super Mana Potions.

Do not free the prisoners untill after the event, they do not despawn and can be freed later.

The recommended boss order for this strategy is Eagle -> Bear -> Dragonhawk -> Lynx. This order is quqite simply the most time efficient and effective. You can mount up in this instance and it should be done to save time!

To complete this in time all players must know what to do and be able to do it well, DPS must be very high and tanks and healers need to be very well geared and organised.

Karazhan Complete Step by Step Walkthrough

2008-03-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

So after a month of writing I have finally completed the full Karazhan Step by Step Guide.

This includes two dedicated documents for Healing and Tanking Karazhan.

There are then indiviual guides for each and every boss, Enjoy.

Attumen the Huntsman and Midnight - The First and Easiest Kara Boss.
Moroes - A good test of your groups co-ordination.
Maiden of Virtue - A MASSIVE woman, fortunately very easy to take down.
Opera Event - One of three possible events, which one will you get?
The Curator - Karazhans first real gear check.
The Shade of Aran - Watch out for his IMBA spells
Terestian Illhoof and Kil'rek - A warlock and his pet demon, and then about 100 other demons!
Chess Event - A nice little mini game to break up a lonngg instance!
Netherspite - It's like starwars but with a big friggin dragon.
Prince Malchezaar - The ruler of Karazhan, he aint that big!
Nightbane - What do you get if you cross an infernal with a big lizard?

And there you have it, all you need to get through one of hte games funnest raid instances - Karazhan!

Magtheridons 2.4 Changes

2008-03-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

*Edit* Thanks to the person who noted the roll back on the changes, I have amended this to reflect the final changes released in game.

Magtheridon I have to admit used to be one of my favorite raid bosses because of the sheer co-ordination required to take him down.

Now however several changes have been made that will make this fight infinately easier and infinately more worthwhile.

Firstly lets take a look at the fight itself, it will still involve clicking on 5 cubes, despite previous claims that it would be nerfed to 3. The difference is however that you no onger receive a debuff so you only need one group to deal with it, reducing the co-ordination. (You wouldn't think getting two groups of five people to click something every so often would be hard, but there you go!)

The infernals have been nerfed, their spawn rate is lower and their abilities weakened, you should no longer have any trouble crowd controlling these.

Instant death debris from the roof collapsing has been made easier to spot.

The loot has also been vastly improved as well. Magtheridon will now drop (IN adition to the epics and his head)

The buffs the channellers gave each other on death has been nerfed, you should now be able to clear the room of them before Magtheridon Releases.

3 Badges of Justice - great for those saving up for the sunwell epics.
Pit Lord's Satchel - A BoP none unique 20 slot bag!
Black Sack of Gems - A bag containing several Epic Quality Gems!
and finally - around 25g, mhhh love the moolah.

All in all quite a nice addition for this boss!

So for those who were having trouble downing this minimum trash, quick epics boss, your prayers have been answered.

A Magtheridon Take Down Guide can be found Here

The Final 2.4 patch change notes - including Sunwell Isle

2008-03-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Here are the full patch notes for World of Warcraft Patch 2.4, im off to go play now, enjoy!

Patch 2.4

Fury of the Sunwell

The glorious fount of arcane energy known as the Sunwell empowered the high elves for millennia, until the death knight Arthas laid siege to the elven kingdom and corrupted its sacred energies. Seeing no other alternative, a band of survivors led by Prince Kael’thas destroyed the ancient fount. Over time the surviving elves fell pray to a crippling magical withdrawal.
Now, promising salvation for his people, Kael’thas has returned. Soon the Sunwell will shine once again, but whether the sacred fount will usher in deliverance or destruction remains to be seen.

In Memoriam: Gary Gygax

Blizzard Entertainment would like to dedicate the patch in memory of Gary Gygax. His work on D&D was an inspiration to us in many ways and helped spark our passion for creating games of our own. As avid D&D players and fellow game developers, we were all saddened by the news of his passing; we feel we’ve lost a true adventuring companion. Thanks for everything and farewell, Gary. You will be missed.

Combat Log Improvements

The combat log has undergone improvements that allow more robust combat text filtering including the ability to define custom colors for enemies and friends, as well as combat text filtering for self and others.

Global Arena Tournament

Players will be able to create level-70 characters with epic equipment and compete on special tournament realms in a new global arena tournament. For more information, details and entry requirements, please visit the official tournament pages.

General

The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5 and 25-player instances.

The combined forces of Shattrath have launched an attack on the Isle of Quel’Danas, to confront Kael’thas and the Legion at the Sunwell and surrounding areas. Players will now be able to gain reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive and participate in a new set of daily quests.

A representative of the Keepers of Time has been spotted at the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath. Players in good standing with the faction will be granted ease of passage to the Caverns of Time.

Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.

Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.

Item Cast Spells: Many spells cast by items were being cast as if the caster were the same level as the item. Most of those will now be cast at the player’s level, giving them a reasonable chance to miss, be dispelled, or be resisted.

Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.

Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.

Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.

The Daily Quest limit has been increased to 25.

Non-self % based haste spells will no longer stack with each other.

Racials

Find Treasure: This ability no longer deactivates upon death.

Druids

Cyclone range is now 20 yards, down from 30.

Empowered Rejuvenation: This talent now properly affects the final heal from Lifebloom.

Gift of Nature: This talent now properly affects the healing from Tranquility.

Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.

Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control.

Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0 second.

Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.

Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.

Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% while in Cat form.

Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.

When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.

Hunter

Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.

Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.

Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.

Improved Mend Pet now has a 25/50 chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Track spells will now persist after death.

Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Mages

Arcane Explosion: The damage cap for area of effect damage on this spell has been increased by approximately 50%.

Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.

Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.

Improved Blink: This talent no longer reduces the mana cost of Blink. Instead, it increases the chance for all attacks to miss the Mage by 25% for 2/4 sec after Blink is cast.

Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Frostbite: When a frost spell is reflected back at a Mage, it is now possible for the Mage to suffer from the Frostbite effect.

Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Icy Veins no longer increases the chance your chilling effects will Freeze the target, but now increases the chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any spell by 100% while active.

Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.

Mana Shield: This spell will now get a percentage of the Mage’s bonus to spell damage as an additional effect.

New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slowing effect.

Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.

Paladins

Avenger’s Shield, Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Avenger’s Shield: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. I.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Crusader Strike: This ability will no longer refresh the Healing Way buff from the Shaman talent.

Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.

Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.

Judgment of the Crusader: It is no longer possible to have icons for two different ranks of Judgment of the Crusader appear at the same time when judged by multiple Paladins.

Judgment of Wisdom: Some abilities (such as Frostbolt) were not triggering the mana energize effect from this spell. This has now been fixed.

Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.

Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.

Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.

Sense Undead- Now persists after death.

Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

Priests

Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.

Fear Ward is now usable while in Shadow form.

Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, up from 1/3/5%.

Inner Focus: Chastise now benefits from Inner Focus. In addition, Starshards no longer consumes Inner Focus.

Mass Dispel now affects a maximum of 10 targets, increased from 5.

Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts for 15 seconds.This will not stack with other haste effects, such as Heroism, Bloodlust, or Icy Veins.

Power Word: Shield: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Prayer of Mending: This spell will now fade from players who leave or enter an instance, change continents, or exit the game.

Reflective Shield: The reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.

Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.

Silent Resolve:This talent now affects Surge of Light, Power Infusion, Inspiration, Spirit Tap, Blackout, Levitate, Shackle Undead, Touch of Weakness, Hex of Weakness, and Symbol of Hope.

Touch of Weakness: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.It will also function properly even when the Priest with Touch of Weakness on is silenced or stunned.

Vampiric Touch: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Rogues

Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time.

Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates and now has an animation.. It will now almost always be accurate in displaying the amount of damage done to a rogue when under the effects of Cheat Death.

Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.

Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.

Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.

Sap mechanic changed from “Incapacitate” to “Sap”. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.

Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.

Shaman

Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance, down from 6%.

Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.

Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.

Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.

Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.

The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds.

Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.

Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.

Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.

Stormstrike has a new icon.

Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.

Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%.

Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4 seconds.

The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.

Warlocks

Blood Pact now has a tooltip.

Demonic Knowledge: This buff will no longer remain on enslaved demons when Enslave Demon is removed. It will now increase your spell damage by an amount equal to 4/8/12%, down from 5/10/15%.

Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).

Emberstorm now also reduces the cast time of your incinerate spell by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Nether Protection: The buff from this talent will no longer interrupt capturing PvP flags and bases.

Pyroclasm: This talent now works correctly again with Rain of Fire.

Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances if they meet the instance requirements.

Sense Demon now persists after death.

Shadow Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Warriors

Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior.

Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP.

Stances: It is no longer possible to accidentally change into a stance you are already in via macros (resulting in a global cooldown and loss of rage).

Whirlwind: Critical strikes with the off-hand weapon from this ability can now trigger Flurry and Rampage.

Flurry will properly refresh if a crit occurs with 1 charge left.

PvP

Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.

Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.

Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no honor.

Added new PvP daily quests that send players to Halaa and the Spirit Towers of the Bone Wastes. These quests are available for Alliance and Horde at their respective local quest hubs.

Arenas

Personal Rating: The amount a player’s personal rating can climb above his or her team’s rating is now limited.
The benefits of drinking out of combat have been delayed while in the Arena. It will now take four seconds before the full benefit of the mana regeneration will come into effect.
Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.
Shadow Sight now increases damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. Duration has been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.
Players feared outside of the Arena (through the world or outside the arena walls) will now be teleported back to the center of the arena map.

Battlegrounds

If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.
When you first enter a battleground, messages about other players joining the battleground will be linked together for the first minute. You will see a message in AV like "28 players joined" rather than a line for each player that joined. After the first minute, it will work as it always has. In addition, all of the messages about other players leaving the battleground and getting marks of honor once the battleground is complete have been removed.
Battleground Rune Buffs:Speed, Restoration, and Berserking buffs received from battleground runes will no longer cause Stealth or Prowl to break.
Alterac Valley
- Captain Balinda Stonehearth Stonehearth can no longer be interrupted, silenced, or have her spells slowed. In addition, her water elemental cannot be banished, and does increased damage.
- Vanndar Stormpike and Captain Balinda Stonehearth have had their health totals reduced to match the health totals of Drek’Thar and Captain Galvangar...
- Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other’s maximum health and damage by 25%. This is a stacking effect.
- Horde players will now start the battle closer to Drek’Thar and Frostwolf Keep.
- There is now a Join as Party option.
Warsong Gulch
- When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes.
- Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the flag.

Professions

Added several new tradeskill items to the new Sunwell Daily faction vendor:

Enchanting recipe to shatter a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards.
Enchanting recipe to increase Defense Rating by 15 for chest armor.
Three jewelcrafting recipes to cut gems with spell haste from Dawnstones, Talasite, and noble Topaz.
Two new meta gem recipes.

Alchemy

Gift of Arthas now stacks to 20.
Transmute Arcanite no longer has a cooldown.

Cooking

Broiled Bloodfin now increases resistances to all schools of magic instead of increasing Stamina and Spirit.
New recipes, Charred Bear Kabobs and Juicy Bear Burgers, can be purchased from either Bale (Horde) or Malygen (Alliance) in Felwood. These recipes requires 250 skill to learn, and are created from meat found on level 48-56 bears. This will aid players in leveling up their cooking skill to 300 without fishing.

Enchanting

Reduced the materials required for Enchant Shield – Resistance

Engineering

Gagsprocket in Ratchet now sells the plans for the Minor Recombobulator.
Goblin Jumper Cables and Goblin Jumper Cables XL now display cooldown information in their tooltips.
Removed the level requirement for the Craftsman's Monocle.
The stun caused by engineering Bombs and Grenades is now considered an Incapacitate effect and uses the appropriate Incapacitate diminishing returns. Bomb and Grenades can now inflict damage to targets immune to Stun and Incapacitate effects.
A new recipe has been added for Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite, a cloth version of the Rocket Boots Xtreme. This pattern drops from Mechano-Lord Capacitus.
Rocket Boots Xtreme now have all their stat points allocated toward Attack Power, and will no longer have Stamina.
Rocket Boots Xtreme and Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite will cause players to drop a PvP flag if used while carrying one. (Warsong Gulch, Eye of the Storm, and Zangarmarsh)

Fishing

New Fishing Daily Quests! Visit the mysterious old man fishing at Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath City to discover what treasures he has to offer.
Find Fish now correctly tracks Schools of Tastyfish and Muddy Churning Waters.
Feltail fishing nodes have been changed to Brackish Mixed Schools; they now produce mostly Golden Darters and some Feltail.
Removed the level requirement from the expert fishing book, The Bass and You.

Herbalism

Ancient Lichen now has a chance to drop a Fel Lotus where it used to drop a piece of random green jewelry.
Black Lotus replaced by Fel Lotus in herbalism skinning tables for Outland creatures.
Increased the chance that Felweed, Dreaming Glory, Ragveil, and Flame Caps will contain a Fel Lotus.
Warp Splinter can now be skinned with Herbalism in heroic difficulty.

Jewelcrafting

A new jewelcrafting recipe has been added to transform many green quality gems into a single random blue quality gem. This recipe is available from grandmaster jewelcrafting trainers.

Leatherworking

Shadow Oil will now fit into Leatherworking Bags.

Mining

Increased the skill up potential for most smelting recipes.

Quests

New Daily Dungeon quests for both the heroic and non-heroic five-person Magister's Terrace dungeon at the Sunwell.

Players can now turn in one of each battleground mark for an honor reward. The questgivers for this turn-in are the Horde Warbringer and the Alliance Brigadier General and can be found near the battlemasters in the capital cities.

Dungeon and Group Quest Experience: The amount of experience awarded for dungeon and 5-person group quests in Outland has been increased in almost all cases.

The daily quest Escape from Skettis has had its reward tuned down.

The number of elite Shadowsworn Drakonid patrollers on the Ata'mal Terrace has been cut in half. Most of the remainder have had their patrol paths lengthened.

Increased the slots on Old Blanchy's Feed Pouch to 8.

The Thunderspike no longer sparkles for Alliance characters, nor does it show up on the mini-map when Find Treasure is in use.

"Zapper Fuel" is now flagged as a Sunken Temple dungeon quest.

Dungeons and Raids

All 25-player raid bosses have had their cash drops increased!

All 25- player raid bosses that drop set tokens will now drop an additional token!

Badges of Justice have been added to all raid bosses who did not previously have them!

Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter Hyjal.

Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter the Black Temple.

Players who have completed the attunement quests for Black Temple and Hyjal will be granted the title of “Hand of A’dal”.

You may now fight Prince Kael’thas and Lady Vashj without first killing all the other bosses in their respective dungeons.

The Unstable Cloud and Frost Breath spells are now treated properly as a movement impairing spells.

Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects.

Elemental creatures are no longer explicitly immune to poison and disease effects. Elementals with nature school immunities will still be immune to nature-based poisons, however.

Gems obtained through Heroic difficulty instances are no longer Unique-equipped.

Loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to Bind on Equip. In addition, the cash dropped by these bosses has been significantly increased.

Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher rate.

Caverns of Time: Heroic Black Morass

Rift Keepers and Rift Lords now have reduced hit points.

Caverns of Time: Mount Hyjal

The Vials of Eternity quest is no longer necessary for entry to Hyjal. This quest is still required for faction rings.
Azgalor's Rain of Fire now affects a smaller area.

Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad

The Human Illusion effect will now always be removed properly when a player leaves the instance.
Durnholde Lookouts no longer spawn in the Heroic version of the instance. The placement of creatures around Durnholde Keep in Heroic mode is now identical to that of Normal mode.

Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon’s Lair

Many gameplay elements of the encounters in Magtheridon’s Lair have been changed to decrease their overall complexity and difficulty.

Karazhan

Players will no longer need the Master’s Key to enter Karazhan. The gates to Karazhan will still require the Master’s Key to be unlocked.

Tempest Keep: The Eye

The Vapor Clouds in the Kael'thas encounter are significantly easier to see.
Void Reaver is now immune to Vindication again.

Tempest Keep: The Mechanar

The Mechanar: It is no longer possible to gain an additional Badge of Justice by bringing Cache of the Legion keys obtained in other copies of the instance.

Zul’Aman

Jan’alai will now only teleport players to him if they are too far away.

Items

Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality PvP items from reputation vendors.

Avatar Regalia: The two-piece bonus from this set will now be consumed by Vampiric Embrace as intended.

Bloody Brass Knuckles, Eerie Stable Lantern, Baelog's Shortbow, and Snakeskin Bag have been upgraded to Superior items.

Blue Suede Shoes can now be disenchanted.

Crystalforge Raiment: The two-piece set bonus will now work properly. Additionally, the four piece bonus will now only work on the next Holy Light cast, as intended.

Cyclone Regalia: Trade skills will no longer consume the Energized effect.

Darkmoon Card: Madness: The buffs from this item will no longer interrupt casting and channeling.

Deadman's Hand: This item's effect now works while the victim is sitting. In addition, its effect is now properly considered a root for purposes of being dispelled or removed.

Deathwing Brood Cloak: These cloaks are now bound on equip instead of bound on pickup.

Druid Balance PvP Sets: The bonus movement speed for Bear, Cat, and Travel Form has been removed and replaced with a new bonus to Wrath and Starfire.

Druid Restoration PvP Sets: The bonus movement speed for Bear, Cat, and Travel Form has been removed and replaced with a new bonus to Regrowth.

Discombobulator Ray: This item will again not work on mounted players.

Frostfire Regalia: The resistance bonus from this set now works with the Burning Crusade ranks of Mage Armor.

Gladiator's Leather Gloves: This arena bonus will now properly school lock enemies when the damage from Deadly Throw causes them to stop channeling.

The Gladiator’s Thunderfist 4 piece set bonus has been reduced from 70% to 50%.

Gnomish Mind Control Cap: Victims of the Gnomish Mind Control Cap will no longer get Forbearance when the mind control is terminated due to Blessing of Protection.

Gnomish Poultryizer: This item will again not work on mounted players.

Goblin Rocket Launcher: Creatures will no longer gain health while affected by the Stun from this item.

Heavy Netherweave Bandage: It is no longer possible to have two players bandage the same target simultaneously using this item.

Netherweave Bandage: It is no longer possible to have two players bandage the same target simultaneously using this item.

Idol of the Crescent Goddess: The mana discount on Regrowth has been increased.

Idol of Feral Shadows: The bonus damage to Rip has been increased.

Idol of the Raven Goddess: The bonus healing, critical strike rating, and spell critical strike rating from this item have been increased. In addition, it no longer sometimes fails to apply the healing bonus.

Idol of the Unseen Moon: The cooldown added in a previous patch has been removed.

Idol of Ursoc: The bonus damage to Lacerate has been increased and the tooltip clarified to indicate it applies to both initial and periodic damage.

Idol of the White Stag: Duration increased.

Items intended for Retribution Paladins have had their stats adjusted. Retribution Paladins should see an increase in dps as a result.

Jade Pendant of Blasting: This item no longer increases physical damage dealt.

Justicar Raiment: The 2 piece bonus will now always give the correct amount of bonus healing to the Judgement Light effect.

Libram of Absolute Truth: The Holy Light mana discount has been increased.

Libram of Divine Purpose: The bonus damage on Seal and Judgment of Righteousness has been increased.

Libram of Mending: The mana regeneration buff has had its duration increased. The name of the buff granted by this item changed to Grace of the Naaru to avoid having the same name as the Light’s Grace talent.

Libram of Righteous Power: The bonus damage for Crusader Strike has been increased.

Libram of Souls Redeemed: The bonus for Flash of Light has been decreased and the bonus for Holy Light has been increased.

Libram of Wracking: This item now increases the damage on Holy Wrath and Exorcism instead of decreasing their mana cost.

Nether Vortex are no longer Bind on Pickup and can now be purchased from G’eras for 15 Badges of Justice!

Masquerade Gown: The spirit bonus from this item will now properly trigger all benefits from the Tree of Life talent.

Mojo: A pvp-flagged player can no longer kiss Mojo and cause non-flagged players to become flagged.

Moongraze Stag Tenderloin can now be consumed by hunter pets that eat meat.

Noggenfogger Elixir: It is no longer possible using this item to keep the Old Hillsbrad human illusion outside of the instance.

Paladin Healer Gladiator Sets: The set bonus changing Hammer of Justice cooldown has been changed to a set bonus increasing the amount healed by Holy Shock.

Pendant of the Violet Eye: Paladin Judgment spells will again properly trigger this item.

Players can now only carry 80 Conjured Manna Biscuits at a time.

Primal Nether are no longer Bind on Pickup!

PvP Relics: The bonus resilience from Idols, Librams, and Totems is no longer stackable by swapping between multiple relics.

Resilience has been added to all Retribution Paladin PvP gear.

Added Shattrath Flask of Pure Death and Shattrath Flask of Blinding Light to the reputation flask vendors in Shattrath.

Shaman Elemental PvP Sets: The resistance on Lightning Bolt spell pushback has been reduced to 50%.

Shaman PvP Boots: The pre-Burning Crusade bonus to increase Ghost Wolf speed no longer works for players over level 60.

Shattrath Flasks now work inside the Sunwell Plateau raid instance.

Skull of Gul’dan: This item now shares its cooldown with other similar trinkets.

Steam Tonk Controller: This item can no longer trigger the Warrior talent Second Wind when it is driven out of range by the Warrior.

The On Use effect has been properly changed to passive for the following items: Blue Overalls, Brantwood Sash, Firewalker Boots, Gloves of Kapelan, Hellion Boots, Hibernal Gloves, Hibernal Pants, Kimbra Boots, Mistscape Gloves, Nightsky Trousers, Sacred Burial Trousers, Turquoise Sash, and Woolen Boots, Spinesever.

Tome of the Lightbringer: The block value and buff duration have been increased.

Totem of the Pulsing Earth: The mana discount for Lightning Bolt has been increased slightly.

Vengeful Gladiator’s Waraxe: The weapon delay has been reduced.

Weightstones and Sharpening Stones: The bonus damage from these temporary enchantments now works while shapeshifted.

Winterfall Firewater: The tooltip no longer specifies only melee attack power.

User Interface

The Interface Options screen has been completely redesigned. AddOns that interact with the Interface Options screen will need to be updated.

Players will now be able to inspect other players via their chat link.

Players may now inspect players of the opposing faction while they are not flagged for PvP.

Combat Log Improvements

New tabs are available for sorting combat messages.
ctrl-right clicking functionality has been added for individual information sorting
Colors may now be assigned for friends and enemies
The WoWCombatLog.txt file format has been changed to make it easier for programs to read.
The ability to chat-link player spells and talents.

Cast sequences work with slot numbers again.

GM messages now appear with a Blizzard icon near their name.

You can now declare war on a faction in the reputation UI while you are in combat.

Spell haste and Armor Penetration will now display on the character sheet. (Armor Penetration displays in the hit rating section). Spell Penetration now displays under the spell hit section.

Weapon enchants are now shown at the character selection screen.

The friends list now has a notes field per friend. Click on the note icon to add a note for a particular friend.

There is now a UI option to display free bag space. When turned on, your backpack will display the total number of free spaces available in all your bags.

You can now link quests into the chat log by Shift-Clicking on the quest name in the quest log.

Merchants now display how many pages of merchandise they sell (Page 1 of 2).

Guild Bank Changes

Ranks can now be set to allow withdraw of funds or allow repair with funds or both.
When purchasing a bank tab, it takes money out of the guild bank before it takes your personal money. This is logged as well.
Each Tab now has an info pane. This pane can be used for requests or for rules about the tab or anything at all really.

When looting Bind on Pickup items, the confirmation dialogue now lists the name of the item in the dialogue. You can now verify that you are picking up the correct bind on pickup item.

Bind on Pickup items that only you can pick up (Heroic Badges for instance) will no longer bring up a confirmation dialogue.

Players can now opt out of looting for group loot, round robin and need before greed looting styles. If a player turns this on, they will not get a looting turn in the loot cycle. This can be turned on from the right-click menu on your own portrait.

In Master Loot mode, all players in the group will see sparkles on corpses that have loot above the master loot threshold. This lets everyone see what the master loot items are, though they cannot interact with them. Only the master looter can loot those items still.

Searching for an item in the tradeskill search box should now hide empty categories.

The names over the heads of nearby players who are on your friends list will appear in a different color now so you can tell when they are nearby.

Stacked items for sale at the auction house now display the per unit price and per unit buyout price in the item mouseover.

The profession UI search field has been improved and now allows for searching of more types of things. For instance you can search for items by socket color, by effect ("Critical Strike" for instance) or search gems by their effect ("Strength" for instance). In addition, the searching of items by level has been made more intuitive. You can now search for items by level with "15-20" to search for items that you can make that have a minimum level required of 15 to 20.

The Tooltip for player Dodge/Block/Parry in the character sheet has been changed slightly.

Optimized particle system rendering for improved frame rates.

The casting bar will now display properly when casting Blizzard (mage) or Rain of Fire (warlock) with spell haste.

For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum.

World Environment

Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, Blade’s Edge Arena, Lordaeron Arena, and Nagrand Arena: Players who fall below the world in these environments will now die instead of being stuck.

Creature versions of Intimidating Shout have been changed to Frightening Shout, and the primary target of the ability is now feared instead of stunned.

Critters: Ambient level 1 creatures will no longer be picked as subsequent targets by chaining spells and abilities.

Doomwalker: This creature will no longer sometimes cause a player’s Darkmoon Card: Vengeance to trigger and put the player in combat with the Doomwalker.

Elites in Blade’s Edge Plateau Regions: These creatures now have an increased chance to drop rare depleted items.

Eye of Culuthas and Hound of Culuthas now drop grey loot.

Goreclaw the Ravenous can now be skinned.

Interacting with objects (chests, mining nodes, herbs) should no longer aggro neutral creatures.

Monstrous Kaliri have learned how to chase players going straight up.

Shardtooth Mauler: This creature now drops meat like other bears.

Outland Rare Spawn

The following creatures have had their hit points and damage significantly reduced: Collidus the Warp-Watcher, Fulgorge, Hemathion, Kraator, Marticar, Morcrush, and Nuramoc

The Ratchet bank now has access to the Guild Vault.

A mailbox has been added to the inn in Darnassus.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an error that was causing many auctions to never complete due to the item no longer being on the auction house.

Splintertree Raiders will now respawn with Torek if Duriel Moonfire and her guards are killed while the Raiders are still alive.

Female Draenei can no longer become stuck under a root in the tunnels leading to Blackfathom Deeps, Ashenvale.

The quest description text for "The Corpulent One" no longer refers to it being a group quest.

Saber/Tiger Mounts will now make footprints when walking backwards in snow.

Ogri'la Peacekeeper's weapons have been scaled to a size more appropriate for keeping the peace.

Unplugging speakers/headphones during the opening cinematic will no longer freeze the cinematic until canceled.

Pets are now able to properly attack mobs near the walls on the ramps in Zul'Aman, Bear Wing.

The flag on the battle map in Eye of the Storm will no longer show up as Horde controlled even if an alliance player has picked it up.

Channeling spells will no longer continue to show the channeling bar after zoning into arena battlegrounds.

Blood Elf corpses now properly have loot in Alterac Valley battlegrounds.

Snake Trap will no longer affect non-combat flagged players.

Leaving a 2v2 arena team and creating a new 2v2 team while on a 3v3 arena team will no longer result in incorrect rosters listed for each team.

Joining a second arena match before a previous arena has closed will no longer result in personal rating not updating correctly.

Attempting to promote an arena team member to Team Captain while that member is offline will no longer result in a "Player not found" error.

Disbanding an arena team while inside an arena battle will no longer cause the arena UI to become corrupted until logout.

The Arena Team Petition Window will now automatically close when the Arena Captain is out of range or offline.

Switching arena teams after playing a game will no longer cause the PvP tab to incorrectly display your old team's rating.

There is now a chat message given after attaining a new title.

Spells that require targeting circles will now be castable on textures that would previously disallow their use.

Alterac Valley quests will now properly show a golden ! or blue ? for players above level 65.

Nazan in Hellfire Citadel: Nazan will no longer sometimes not land on the ground until after Vazruden the Herald is killed or Nazan is heavily damaged.

Archimonde's Grip of the Legion will no longer target pets.

It is no longer possible to be saved to a Heroic instance while not meeting the requirements to get into it.

There is no longer an area in Serpentine Cavern where using Field Repair Bot 74A will cause it to fall through the ground.

There is no longer an area in Coilfang Steamvaults where ground targeting AOE effects cannot be cast.

The proc from Black Bow of the Betrayer will no longer break crowd control effects such as Scatter Shot.

Vengeful Gladiator's Mooncloth Hood and Vengeful Gladiator's Satin Hood will now display Troll Tusks.

Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury will now display its bow animations correctly.

The Legion Ring boundary markers no longer occasionally disappear.

Monthly quests will now properly reset at midnight server time.

Fixed an area in Netherwing Fields in Shadowmoon Valley where players on flying mounts could be dismounted and were unable to mount.

It is no longer possible for players to use guild banks in opposing faction cities.

The Clockwork Rocket Bot can no longer be buffed.

Players with moderator status in custom channels will now properly lose moderator status when kicked by the channel owner.

Sending mail to a non-existent character will now result in players getting the message, “Cannot find mail recipient”.

Zeppelin Master Zapetta will no longer become confused about whether the zeppelin in Orgrimmar is arriving or leaving.

Nightbane Karazhan Guide

2008-03-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

Nightbane is generally regarded as the last boss of Karazhan. Unlike other Kara bosses he needs to be summoned using the Blackened Urn (Obtainable from the Medivh's Journal Questline.) Once the Blackened Urn has been placed your raid group has 30 seconds to position before Nightbane lands.

Nightbane has two phases which alternate, when reaching 75%, 50% and 25% he will jump into flight phase and fly around for a duration.

His key abilities are,

On the Ground

Bellowing Roar - A Fear effect with 2.5 second cast time and a 30 second cooldown. This can easily be outdistanced by your ranged, stance danced by warriors and prevented with fear ward.
Charred Earth - Chars the ground beneath a random player. All players standing inside the affected area, shown by burning ground funnily enough, receive a DoT that deals up to 3k physical damage per second, This is mitigated by armour, can be avoided and removed by moving and can spawn in several places at once. It should not be a problem if your raid stands correctly.
Cleave - A Cleave effect that hits for approximately 6k on plate, 11k on cloth, this can be deadly if it co-incides with a fear!
Distracting Ash - Reduces chance to hit with melee and spells by 30% for 40 seconds. Can be dispelled.
Smouldering Breath - Inflicts 3.5k to 4.5k fire damage to enemies in a frontal cone. Afterwards players will be hit with a DoT that hits for 1.5k to 2k every three seconds for 15 seconds.
Tail Sweep - Inflicts 450 fire damage on enemies in a cone behind the boss, knocking them back. Deals 450 fire damage every 3 seconds for 25 seconds.

In the Air

Casts Rain of Bones on one random player/pet:
Bombards the area the targeted person was standing at the initial cast with bone fragments, which deal 352-408 physical damage in a 6-yard radius.
Summons five Restless Skeletons. with 13.5k health and hit for around 1k-1.5k on cloth, around 500 on plate.
Shoots powerful Smoking Blast every second for approximately 15 seconds. Deals 1.5k to 2k physical damage on cloth (700-1k on plate) to the target and 3k fire damage over 18 seconds. The DoT can be dispelled. This is put on the highest threat player after Nightbane moves into the air, for this reason a healer normally gets hit with these since other players are attacking the skeletons.
Fireball Barrage: If any member of the raid is too far away from Nightbane while he is in flight, he pelts the raid with fireballs, each doing 3k - 3.5k damage, casting 1 per second until all members are within range. This is in place to prevent an exploit, you should not see this if it is done correctly!

Tactics

Nightbane is Untauntable, so after Nightbane lands each time DPS must hold off until the tank regains agro. Healers must also be careful, but spells like Prayer of Mending from the priests are especially useful here, since they keep they tank up and help his agro.

Nightbane will first land about two thirds of the way down the terrace, After flight phase he will land much closer to the centre so it is important your groups position themselves accordingly. The groups positioning is of paramount importance on this boss, since the charred earth effect can decimate a raid if it lands in the wrong place.

Charred earth makes the ground surrounding one player hit for 3k damage a tick. Any players in this must move ASAP to avoid taking damage and overstretching the healers. To help prevent this from covering too wide an area the DPS and healers should position themselves at maximum range from Nightbane (To avoid his fear) against either of the walls, and by that its important to remember to stand right up against them. If charred earth is targeted on a player from one side the group in his vicinity should instantly move to the other groups location by the opposite wall.

If the worst happens (It will) and both sides are effected by charred earth there should be enough space for you to sit in the middle till one of the other charred earths dissipates.

If the entire floor is covered with charred earth the tank should be ready to move the boss back so the ranged players can move forward without getting feared.

All the time the tank should have his back facing the outer wall so the melee DPS can stay close and avoid Nightbanes Tailswipe as with most dragons (Between the front and back legs)

When Nightbane jumps into the air everyone should instantly run to the tank. It sometimes helps to have a paladin tank and healer for this part. This is for two reasons, when they cast consecration they draw agro from the skeletons that spawn, and paladins have much lower agro generation, so the smoking blast fired from Nightbane is less likely to hit them and more the tank.

Once the skeletons have appeared it may help if people spread out slightly so tanks can easily pick up targets. This also reduces the AoE damage taken by rain of bones,

Once rain of bones is cast the entire raid should move out of its range, this helps reduce the strain on the healers and gives them a great opportunity to regain some mana.

Keep an eye out for smoking blasts, they often hit a healer (Since they tend to generate the most threat on Nightbane during the air phase) so it is imperative that the healers keep an eye on one another to prevent deaths.

After the Air phase ends Nightbane will land again and all people should move back to previous positions. Remember that once he lands he will always drop down in the central part of the terrace so moving back a bit further is essential.

This cycle will continue at 50% an 25% as well as the initial 75% health air phase, so be prepared!

Karazhan Guide Prince Malchezaar

2008-03-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

Prince Malchezaar is the last official boss in Karazhan. While Nightbane is harder for most groups to master he is normally tackled fairly early on into the instance, just before curator.

Prince Malchezaar is a fairly simple boss, especially when compared to Netherspite before him. He does however hit hard, and the Netherspite Infernals that surround him can wipe even the best of raids if they land in the wrong place. First things first though, a few quick facts!

Health: around 1,200,000

Summon Infernal: Summons an infernal that will emit a constant hellfire AoE for 3 minutes. These cannot be killed. The Prince's cooldown for summon Infernals is once every 45 seconds in phases one and two, though this decreases to 15 seconds in phase 3.
Enfeeble: Only in phase 1 & 2 - Reduces the Health of five raid members (Never the tank) to 1hp for around 7 seconds, any damage = instant death. Healing effects do nothing here. Health returns to normal after this time. Enfeeble is followed by Shadow Nova so all members with this debuff must move at least 30 yards from Prince Malchezaar at this time!
Shadow Nova: A three second cast spell which deals 3k damage to all members within 25 yards of Prince Malchezaar, it comes with a knock back effect, so be wary of any infernals close by, he may knock you into them!
Shadow Word: Pain: In phase one this is cast on the tank periodically, in phase two it is cast on random party members. It must be dispelled ASAP and causes 1.5k damage a tick.
Thrash: Gains two extra attacks a turn in phase 2, cast anywhere between 3 and 30 seconds between each other. Causes large spike damage.
Parry: Avoids a frontal attack, it also increases the next attack by 40%, causing huge damage if mixed with Thrash. This can be minimised by ensuring all DPS stay behind Prince Malchezaar. This is only in Phase Two
Sunder Armour: Also in phase two Prince casts sunder armour on the tank, greatly reducing his armour.
Flying Axes: In phase three his axes fly around and attack a random party member each time. Not much can be done here other than keeping the target healed!
Amplify Damage: Undispellable debuff cast no raid members in phase 3. Doubles all damage taken.

A fair number of spells to look at, but since most interlink they actually give you a pretty good idea of how things go. The Strategy requires your team to pay full attention to the game as last minute manoeuvres around the battle area are common place.

The most important thing in this game is to designate a spotter. Hunters are good for this because they can just cast auto shoot while looking around. The Spotter should be marked with a symbol so all the raid can find him quickly.

The spotters job is to keep an eye on the sky looking for infernals, which take about 15 seconds to hit the raid. It is important to note that while for the greatest part of the journey they move across the sky they drop like a stone in the last couple of seconds.

Your spotter needs to make sure that you are always in a space with other places to run, he should also shout out to the tank to move if the ranged DPS are becoming boxed in.

When enfeeble is cast many of the melee DPS must run to the spotter, for that reason the spotter should keep ranged raid members at maximum range so the melee do not get confused. The spotter should ensure the path between him and Prince is clear from infernals since an enfeebled player would die almost instantly if he stepped into the AoE.

The tank should face Prince Malchezaar away from the raid and towards the wall, if the tank is against the wall it will prevent him from being thrown too far by shadow novas knockback effect

When your raid is in position, tank against the wall, ranged with a lot of space (the far end of the platform is good for this)

Your DPS should work slowly here, using mainly basic damage to let the tank gain a large amount of agro for the upcoming heavy DPS phases. It is vital that your tanks agro remains at the top of the list as if he drops to second he may become enfeebled, pretty much guaranteeing a wipe. He will cast shadow word pain periodically on the tank, this is best dispelled by a paladin since priests have to move forward to use their dispel effect.

If your group starts to get boxed in remember to move, tank and all to another part of the platform..

When Prince Malchezaar hits Phase 2 at 60% he spawns two axes which substantially increase his damage. He no longer casts shadow word of pain. And instead starts parrying, sundering armour and thrashing, causing huge amounts of damage. Healers need to be on their toes here since Prince can deal upwards of 12k damage in under a second, bugger overhealing meters here and spam heal the tank if he is anything but 100%.

The tank should ensure here that thunderclap and demoralizing shout are constantly up here to mitigate some of the damage.

When Prince hits 30% melee damage returns to normal, as does the skills he uses (Minus enfeeble) and shadow word pain is cast on random raid members. He will throw his axes at random people, who must be healed rapidly to prevent deaths.

He will now bring down infernals much more rapidly, nearly every 15 seconds, so prince must be all out nuked here.

Do not be too disheartened if your group wipes on this boss, most of the time wipes occur due to unlucky infernal drops or prince stringing together some unlucky parries and thrashes.

You will down prince soon enough!

Netherspite Guide Karazhan

2008-03-19T06:30:00.001-07:00

I have to admit I knew my Netherspite guide to was imminent, and I have been dreading it.

Netherspite is by far the most complicated boss in Karazhan, he requires rotations, group setups, positioning and a group who ALL know what they are doing (Make sure they read this article, or at least another one, before starting this fight!

But lets get back to basics, Netherspite is a huge dragon with around 1,100,000 hp health. Unlike most dragons he does not cleave with his tail, so melee DPS so not need to worry about positioning!

His offensive contains

Around 3k base damage on plate, but can crit/crush for 11k (8k on cloth) This increases when certain beams touch him.
Netherburn, deals 1.2k damage to everyone in the room.
Void Zone - Opens up a dark portal on the ground, dealing 500-1k shadow damage to anyone standing in it every 2 seconds.
Netherbreath (Raid Wiper!) Anyone in front of Netherspite will get hit with around 4.5k arcane damage and knocked back 20 yards This is repeated several times and can easily whipe your raid!
Empowerment - undispellable buff that increases his damage by 200% during the portals phase
Enrage, occurs after 9 minutes and will wipe the raid!

Netherspite has two phases, a banish phase and a portals phase.

The Portals phase is based around three portals openning up around Netherspite. Each portal emits a beam which MUST be blocked by a member of your raid group. If the beams are allowed to hit netherspite he will gain a stacking buff which can make him near impossible to kill if left for too long.

All players should stay close to Netherspite during the portals phase to keep healers movement down to a minimum, he does no cleave or tailswipe with his tail, so there is no excuse for not getting in close.

The buffs on netherspite last for around five seconds on netherspite, as opposed to the 8-20 seconds that they last on players. This allows for some creative dropping in and out of beams if you are short on people to tank them.

These must be tanked by your players, and certain people in your raid group are best placed to do this for you on certain coloured beams.;

The beams themselves have different Positive and negative effects, these have different effects on both your players and netherspite depending on their colour.

Perseverance (red) - Tank beam:

Lasts for 20 sec after leaving the beam.
Hits Netherspite:

Damage taken reduced by 1% per tick.

Hits Player:

Netherspite will aggro you.
If no one is standing in the Red Beam, Netherspite uses his standard aggro table.
Damage taken is reduced by 1% per tick.
Defense is increased by 5 per tick.
Health is modified - the first application gives +31,000 maximum health, with additional stacks reducing maximum health by 1000 per stack.
Replenishes full health every tick.

Serenity (green) - Healer beam:

Lasts for 10 sec after leaving the beam.
Hits Netherspite:

Heals for +4000 health per tick. (Stacking so it heals for 4K, 8K, 12K, 16K etc. -- it is very important not to let Netherspite get hit by this beam.)

Hits Player:

Healing done is increased by 5% per tick.
Spell and ability cost reduced by 1% per tick (including abilities that require Rage or Energy, in addition to Mana).
Maximum mana reduced by 200. Stacks up until your total mana pool reaches 0. Druids in Bear/Cat Form will have their hidden mana bars affected as well. Rage and Energy maxima are unaffected.
Similar to the red beam, mana is restored to the new maximum with each tick.
If a Hunter uses Feign Death while tanking the green beam they will become exhausted and not be able to tank it anymore, most likely wiping the raid.

Dominance (blue) - DPS beam:

Lasts for 8 sec after leaving the beam.
Hits Netherspite:

+1% spell damage increase per tick.

Hits Player:

Damage dealt is increased by 5% per tick.
Healing received reduced by 1%.
Damage taken by spells is increased by 8%.

Before the fight starts you must assign players to beams, failure to do so can result in confusion and an inevitable wipe. Those not assigned to a beam should be DPSing or raid healing, no healing is needed on the tank during the portals phase due to the properties of the red beam which gives him complete agro over netherspite.

Deciding who tanks what is fairly simple,

The Blue beam should be tanked by a DPS class, preferably one with high health and shadow resistance. Their DPS is rapidly increased but so is the shadow damage they take! Since healing received by them is also reduced a DPS class staying in this beam too long will be susceptable to a void zone. Even if a well geared DPS stays in this for an entire phase though he should still be able to easily survive three or more netherburns.

Warlocks are great for tanking Netherspite's blue beam as tehy have drain life and life tap (Not to mention the shadowweave set bonus if they have it). With the DPS buff of the blue beam Drain life alone can heal for 1k a tick. For exactly the same reason Shadow Priests are great for tanking this beam. Even with the great self healing for these two classes in this beam you should have a healer pay the majority of their time keeping this position alive. Due to the dangerous stacking of this buff it may help to have a rotation of players to take this beam, or have the player hop out for 8 seconds to lose the debuff.

If a player dies while tanking this beam it is not a huge problem since any class can feasibly tank this with healing.

The green beam should be mostly blocked by a manaless class, however sometimes it does help a healer if he jumps in and out of it occasionally. The tank who is not in the red beam should try and take control of the green beam.

The red beam should be tanked by your main tanks. Since this gives both the health and healing required to tank netherspite who can hit for upwards of 11k with crushing and critical blows.

The tank in the red beam should be the only one who moves in and out of the beam regularly, and some people argue at all.

This is required because after around 30 stacks the tanks health drops too low. Most tanks hop in and out every 5 seconds, this ensures the +31k health buff is not removed but prevents too many ticks of the health reduction.

If the tank does lose teh buff and gains nether exhaustion (Meaning he cannot retake the beam) then another player (Not the other tank in the rotation) should take over the beam. Paladins are great for this since they can use immunity shields such as Divine Intervention to tank this.

A perfect rotation would go

First Portal Phase

Red-Tank A
Blue-DPS A
Green-Tank B

Banish Phase

Second Portal Phase

Red-Tank B
Blue-DPS B
Green-Tank A

Banish Phase

Repeat.

The banish phase can be fairly difficult, Netherspite will target random players and send out netherbreath, which will hit any player in the same vicinity as the target. It has around 60 yards range, so you can out distance it, but it is not often this is doable.

The best tactic here is to tank netherspite near the red beam, as the portal phase comes to an end everybody should run as fast as possible to the other side of the room. If for some reason netherspite is in the middle of the room everyone should spread out to avoid mass AoE damage to the raid.

It is very important to note that after banish ends the agro table is cleared so the tank MUST be allowed to regain agro before people begin to attack again.

Priests please cast Prayer of shdow protection for this fight to try and mitigate some of the mass AoE damage.

If warlocks are in the Blue beam cast curse of doom at the end of teh portal phase, this can sometimes hit for between 5% and 7% of Netherspites health.50-70k hit in one shot is never a bad thing!

Holy Priest FAQ

2008-03-18T07:41:00.001-07:00

These questions are asked on many websites all over the internet, I think it is vital as a healer that I know the very basics behind my class, and that all others know them too.

I hope these simple answers to being a Holy Priest will help you through your career in WoW Healing!

Q: What Talent Spec Should I Take as a Holy Priest?
A: There are two standard 'templates' for a holy build, the first is a slight hybrid, with 23/38/0, with 23 in discipline giving improved divine spirit and improved fortitude. The second is based on a fuller holy tree, with some points still in discipline for mana conservation, this is usually along the lines of 1x/4x/0. With the discipline, meditation and inner focus mixed with a holy tree upto Circle of Healing.

Q: Should I take Spirit of Remption?
A: Definately, if you dont find the angel practical the 5% + Spirit is fantastic for any priest.

Q: Should I take Lightwell (LOLwell)
A) While it can heal for around 4500 a click its break on damage removes a lot of this spells usefullness, especially with both the raidwide damage and unpredictability of bosses in The Burning Crusade.

Q: Should I take Circle of Healing?
A: Circle of healing is a great spell for getting out of a tight spot, it reaches to 1k-1.6k healing to all members of a party every second if used correctly. It is great for 5mans and raids alike. Some people however still prefer to have a better overall heal rather than this spell in their inventory.

Q: Should I take Holy Concentration?
A: Holy Concentration is a powerful talent, though choosing between this and reduced spell damage (AoE Spell damage being the nuumber one priest killer) is often a close call.

Q: Is Holy Reach Worth it?
A: It really does depend on your style of play, if for instance you use AoE heals a lot this is invaluable, whereas if you mainly single target heal you may find it more profitabel to move these talents somewhere else.

Q: What Gear do I need to run instances?
A: For Karazhan you can start at 1300 +Healing, 180 Mp5 or 400 Spirit, you should become a comfortable kara healer you should have around 1650 - 1850 +Healing 200 - 250 Mp5 or 500 - 600 Spirit.

When you reach the end of Kara you will be ready to move into higher instances, T5 Content will require you to beat the end of Teir 4 content by about another 15% and to heal comfortably you should have around 2000+Healing, 230-290 Mp5 or 600-700 spirit.

Q: As a Holy Priest Should I Stack Mp5 or Spirit.
A: The easy answer is you should be stacking both, each of these are vital, though in patch 2.3 Spirit became much more powerful for Holy Priests.

With a good ehaling talent build the following formula should be usid to figure out your Mp5 in and out of the five second rule. For Example

500 spirit and 135 Mp5 from gear.
[(500/4)+13]*2.5 + 135 : 480 Mp5 (OO5SR)
345 * 0.3 + 135 : 238.5 Mp5 (II5SR)

Q: Should I downrank spells?
A: Definately, Downranking is key to mana conservation by reducing overhealing. Dont become obsessed with overhealing though, it is much more important to keep the healer up than shave a few% off your overhealing mark.

Q: What is stopcasting and should I use it?
A: Definately, Stopcasting is much more efficient than jumping out of a spell. Stopcasting can be done by pressing escape, or alternatively by setting up a /stopcasting macro to a button of your choice.

Q: Overhealing what should I do?
A: Before the burning crusade most healers would blanche at any over healing over 20%. Nowdays however with different game mechanics overhealing should bemore at the 30% mark. Take your overhealing too low and you may find your raid dieing because of the oh so regular spike damage that is dished out in end game instances in the Outlands.

High King Maulgar (And his High Council) Gruul's Lair

2008-03-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

High King Maulgar is the first boss in Gruuls Lair. A lot of guilds have trouble with this boss due to his four adds (High King Maulgar's Council) turning this fight into a non crowd controlled overpowered version of Moroes from Karazhan.

High King Maulgar (Not King Mulgar!) hits for around 6.5k on plate, with 10k Crushing blows. With demoralizing shout you can knock this down to 4.5k hits with 7k crushing, but this still requires intensive healing from your priests.

He also has several abilities that you MUST watch out for, these are :

Arcing Smash, 5000-6000 damage on plate when debuffed, cleaves
Mighty Blow, 5000-7000 damage on plate when debuffed, horizontal knockback
Whirlwind, 4000-5000 damage on plate when debuffed, he moves at 50% speed while active
At 50%, he will begin charging random raid members

High King Maulgar's council are all heavy hitters, there are some tricks to get around them though. But first their stats

Krosh Firehand (Mage)

Has around 301,000 hp
Spell Shield - Reduces Damage by 75%
Blast Wave - Deals 6k damage to all players around him for 15 yards.
He is immune to debuffs such as curse of tongues, counterspell and silence
His Fireballs Ignore all Fire Resistance Gear, grounding totems and Spell Reflections.

Olm The Summoner (Warlock)

Has around 276,000 hp
Casts a shadow DoT that cannot be removed and Stacks
Summons Wild Fel Stalkers
Deals a Death Coil (Cannot be Spell Reflected)
Melee hits for around 5k

Kiggler the Crazed (Shaman)

Health is around 301,000
Hexes (Polymorphs) Primary Target
Deals a lightning bolt for around 3k on a single target.
Arcane Blast - 2500 damage over 10 yards (Very infrequent so he can be meleed)
Arcane Shock - Deals 720-800 damage plus additional damage every 3 seconds for 12 seconds
Melee damage ~6k

Blindeye the Seer (Priest)

Health - Around 297,000
Power Word: Shield
Prayer of Healing
Prayer of Mending (Heals himself to Full! - 10 second cast, casts Shield first which must be taken down before standard interrupts. However the following can be used while the shield is active. Priest: Silence, Rogue: Improved Kick, Hunter: Silencing Shot, Hunter: Intimidation, Warrior: Improved Shield Bash, Warrior: Intercept, Mage: Improved Counterspell)
Normal Heal (Around his 5% of HP)
Melee around 2k (800-900 on well geared tank)

Tactics!

The first thing you need to do in this fight is ensure everyone knows where they should stand. Correct positioning means you can avoid AoE effects, or worse getting knocked from the warlocks AoE Into another, instant death for any clothies!

The basic kill order for King Maulgar's is Priest, Warlock Mage, Shaman. Though if you group is low on warlocks sometimes the Warlock is taken down first.

Both the priest and warlock can be taken down by ranged and melee so tend to die very fast, the shaman and the mage should only be hit by Ranged DPS, wit the melee moving onto High King Maulgar (But make sure they are very aware of his AOE or you will be in trouble!

Be careful not to get him below 50% until both other adds are down, as he randomly starts charging raid members, this is one of the main raid wiping problems in this fight (What happened to skill hey blizz?). Ranged DPS is much more preferable for this fight, though it is unrealistic to have a raid group comprised of melee.

The great thing about this fight is that it does not have the usual tanking roles, mages and hunters will both have to work hard for this.

The Hunters should make the pull on this, each firing Misdirect onto the relevant tank, giving them a good 2k threat head start. Remember to assign misdirect targets and boss targets for each hunter to avoid confusion.

You should have a mage tank Krosh Firehand (The mage). This is for the 75% damage reduction shield, which your mage should spellsteal at every opportunity. Krosh Firehand should be tanked at the far right of the room. Since mages are not natural tanks it is important they do not have blessing of salvation and cast any instant spells to gain maximum agro. A good pulling point is from just behind the steam vent on the right, go any further than this and you risk pulling the entire room.

Once the mage has agro he should move to the far right of the room so the raid does not have to worry about his flame wave ability. One healer should be enough to keep the mage tank up. The mage tanking Krosh should have some good stamina gear prepared for this fight to increase survivability, around 12k hp buffed is preferable, with around +16% spell hit (+6% with 5 points in the mages arcane focus talent) to reduce the chance of Spellsteal being resisted. Hunters do not use arcane shot on this boss, it removes his shield and prevents the mage from stealing it!

High King Maulgar should be tanked by the gate leading to Gruuls Lair on the far left. This leaves little possibility of knockbacks or fears sending you his AoE/Cleave Range. If you have a spare hunter keep him using misdirect on the main tank to make sure he has the highest possible agro. Two healers should be positioned on the tank. Druids are great for tanking High King Maulgar due to their high health and armour.

Kiggler the crazed should be tanked by either two warlocks or hunters who are using siphon life/drain tanking him. He can also be drained by a feral/moonkin/treeform druid because of their immunity to polymorph. Nature Resistance is a bonus here. Try and keep at maximum range to avoid the arcane blast. Shamans can be useful here as their grounding totem can absorb the Lightning Bolts. A feral druid will however take more damage as the lightning bolts are fairly puny.

A good tanking position for him is in the entrance corridor, keeping him safely out of the way.

Blindeye the seer should be pulled into the closest available space, preferably towards the back of the room and can be tanked by a DPS warrior if you are low on tanks. All DPS should be on him ASAP to get this guy down, keep interrupts up and stuns to delay his shield/full heal. A rogue with mind numbing poison or a warlock with Curse of Tongues should ensure that this is always in place to keep Blindeye's heal cast time extended. An Arms Warrior with Mortal Strike can also be extremely beneficial here.

Olm the Summoner should be tanked at the back of the room, he has no AoE so can be tanked close to Blindeye the Seer, this also allows the DPS to reposition quickly to take him down. Warlocks are good for tanking Olm with the Fel Hunters he summons (Which have taunt, woohoo!), enslave these ASAP and turn them on him, Olm will cast DoTs onto the Felhounds, this can be dispelled by one of the Felhunters own spells. If you have more than two felhounds tanking Olm send them off to Krosh and taunt him. Krosh will quickly dispose of the felhound and leave a bit of breathing space for your mage tank.

Taking down high King Maulgar

Once you have defeated the adds the spare healers and caster DPS should take a quick breather to regain some mana. Melee should not enter the fight till they see his first whirlwind pass, once this occurs move in for around 25 - 30 seconds then retreat till whirlwind passes again. A mod such as Deadly Boss Mods can help keep an eye on this for you!.

When Maulgar hits 50% he enters phase two. In this phase he drops his hammer, significantly reducing melee damage, you cannot miss this phase as he turns big and red!

In this phase he will charge random party members, which is VERY healing intensive. He will also cast intimidating shout fearing your main tank for four seconds. You should have an offtank keeping up agro and with a taunt ready allowing the main tank to recover for incapacitation and retaunt Maulgar back. If you decided to have a warrior tank Maulgar he can stance dance through this!

It is heavily advised to keep two tanks up here, Maulgar's whirlwind increases his speed dramatically, so if your main tank becomes feared he will dance around the room causing huge amounts of damage.

If you can keep this up you should have absolutely no problem downing High King Maulgar!

Suggested group layout for this is,

4 Hunters - (3 misdirection pulls onto Mage Tank, Maulgar Tank and Olm tank, one straight onto Kiggler)
1 Mage Tank
2 Warlocks on Olm
2 Tanks on Olm
1 Tank on Maulgar
1 MS Warrior on Blindeye
1 Tank on roaming Fel Hounds (in case of resist from a Warlock)
7 reasonably geared healers
2 Rogues

WoW Levelling guide 1 to 70 in less than a week.

2008-03-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

Its not often that I feel compelled to promote a particular product. My affiliate links are Amazon based, none biased and pretty much just a virtual store so people can help support my site by purchasing what they want.

However on this occasion I was sent a copy of Team iDemise's 1-70 World of Warcraft Levelling Guide. For those of you who do not know this, Team iDemise or one of the worlds few corporate sponsered Gaming Teams. With multiple cash prize winnings ($300,000) and titles under their belts in everything from Counterstrike Source to Quake, these guys finaly took it upon themselves to try a different game. Namely World of Warcraft.

idemise have not just cobbled together an ebook for their guide, they have made sure everything is integrated into WoW with their very own addon. You can buy this WoW Levelling guide for a mere $39.95 at the moment, for either horde or alliance levelling!

This addon has step by step instructions and locations pinpointed so you know exactly where to go and what to do. More importantly by following this guide you will know what to avoid and what you should be killing!

If you want to find out more about this ingame levelling guide just look Here!

Tanking Guide to Karazhan

2008-03-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

Tanking in Karazhan can be fairly, complex, with each boss requiring vastly different tactics. However our job as a meatshield has the ever simple goal of taking damage.

In this Kara guide I will not talk about trash mobs, they are all fairly simple to tank. Instead I will go through tanking the bosses of Kara with a step by step walkthrough.

So, starting from the beginning!

Attumen the Huntsman and Midnight. (His mighty Steed)

Attumen is the first Karazhan boss, and a very simple fight, but is preferably done with two tanks.

Off-Tank Role.

Take the horse (Midnight) from the beginning of the fight, this is a fairly quick phase and only lasts till midnight reaches 95% health.

When Midnight reaches 95% attumen will spawn, the main tank should take him.

When this occurs take midnight out of the way and against the wall, keep good agro here as all DPS should attack midnight till he reaches 25% health

When this happens Attumen the Huntsman will mount Midnight and reset agro, stop attacking while the main tank gains some agro.

The Main Tank has a fairly easy role in this boss fight, though he does have a couple of moments where he may need to survive without healing for a few seconds.

In the first phase the Main tank should do nothing, however they must be prepared to take control of agro when Attumen spawns in phase 2

When phase 2 occurs attumen will appear and attack randomly. The main tank must gain agro ASAP. Healers can grab agro incredibly easily here so you should suggest they wait two or three seconds before throwing on the heals.

The tank should remember to use shield bash and spell reflection to avoid his curse and keep DPS from Attumen down.

After that you simply have to keep Attumen busy while the DPS knock down Midnight.

When Midnight reaches 25% hp Attumen will mount him. Agro resets again here so both DPS and healers should drop off their task for another 2 or 3 seconds.

You should as main tank face him away from the raid group, however it is imperative that you make sure all raid members get directly behind Attumen and Midnight to avoid his charge ability, something that can easily wipe a raid.

Once this set up is complete it is a nice and easy tank and spank

Maiden of Virtue

The Maiden of Virtue is the second boss in Karazhan. She requires only one tank who should keep her positioned in the middle of her platform.

As a tank you should stock up on healing potions, healthstones and so on, since the repentance cast by maiden can take out all your healers.

If all your healers do get taken out you can remove their stun by moving maiden towards the healer then moving away again once Maiden's holy ground causes some damage and breaks the healers stun.

If you see yourself as the target during a Holy Fire cast use spell reflect if you are a Warrior, it can cause some nice damage!

All in all a pretty easy fight for a tank, rely on the rest of the raid to do their job and you should be fine!

Moroes

Moroes is probably the first real challenge you will have in this instance. For starters Moroes has four adds, or 'dinner guests'. To get around these as many as possible should be crowd controlled till Moroes dies or off tanked and taken down immediately.

On Moroes himself you must have a main tank and an off-tank, this is required because every so often Moroes will gouge the main tank and attack the off tank (or if things go wrong whoever else is second in the threat list) until the incapacitation fades.

Apart from this you will simply have to withstand a large amount of damage and control a rather chaotic fight!

Every so often Moroes will vanish and garrotte a random player, you have to run over and quickly attack him to ensure you do not lose agro to the DPS.

Opera

Opera has three events which must be handled differently.

Firstly The Big Bad Wolf.

This guy hits fairly weakly but has some rather random abilities he can and will randomly turn one of your raid members into little red riding hood. If this happens overload all your threat abilities to try and regain agro, unless of course it is you that gets turned. If this happens run, fast.

He also does a fear, if you can stance dance out of this, fantastic, if you are not too happy about that tactic then make sure priests fear ward you and you have an antifear trinket handy.

Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz is a two stage fight, firstly you have Dorothee and her pals, then you have the wicked witch.

In the first phase the Main Tank should be on Tinhead. This guy deals massive damage but his movement speed gradually slows, meaning that towards the end of the fight he can be kited with no healing required. Off tanks should try and gain agro on Roar and Strawman. Roar is resistant to fear though and this should be kept up, be careful not to interrupt it!

Don't bother tanking Dorothee or Tito, Dorothy is unagroable, she should be nuked by DPS. Tito should not be killed till after Dorothee is dead, otherwise she will enrage.

After all these guys are down the crone will appear, main tank should get on her right away, be careful to keep moving away form the cyclones though!

Romulo and Julianne is a fairly tough fight, just because of the accuracy required when taking them both down.

Julianne will spawn first, take her down and keep in mind that all her spells can be interrupted, especially her heal! keep her tanked in one corner.

When Romulo spawns should be tanked by a warrior for the disarm ability, tank him in the opposite corner.

When Romulo dies both will come back to life. Tank them in their opposite corners. Ranged DPS on Romulo to avoid his DPS attacks and melee on Julianne for their spell interrupts.

The hard part is making sure that both bosses die within ten seconds of each other or one will resurrect their partner.

As a tank you will not take an alarming amount of damage, make sure to keep your disarm/interrupts up though!

Nightbane

Nightbane is one of the hardest bosses in Karazhan and many groups skip him.

However if you are going to take this boss down there are several things that should be considered.

In the ground phase the tank should keep Nightbane against the outer wall, Nightbane fears so a warrior tank is good for stance dancing, but either way it helps to keep things such as fear ward up constantly.

Look out for the charred earth AoE, this can cause disruption in your group and can make movement required under two circumstances

Firstly if Charred Earth spawns below the tank, in which case the tank should move back and the rest should follow. (this is rare but has been known to happen)

Secondly if all the Ranged DPS areas suffer from charred earth, if this happens move back so your ranged DPS and healers can re-position.

During Nightbanes flight phase several things happen, either way the best way to avoid them is for everyone to regroup around the tank, this avoids Nightbane firing fireballs at you.

A secondary tank, preferably a paladin but any others will do, should cast an agro generating AoE as soon as 5 skeletons spawn around you, these guys only have ~13.5k hp so can be taken down quickly.

When Nightbane begins to land all players should go back to their previous positions, with the tank ready to instantly gain agro should he have lost it to healers.

Using an offtank is not required for Nightbane, but it can be useful incase the main tank goes down, If you decide to use an offtank they should sit behind Nightbane in the DPS melee position to avoid overstretching the healers. Only pull one in for this if your main tank dies towards the later stages of the battle though.

Curator

Curator is a gear check in Karazhan. He is a good indication that your group is geared enough for bosses upto Prince and Nightbane.

As a tank in this there is not a huge amount you need to do, keeping the Curator focused on you is your primary concern and is not that hard to do. During the evocation phases you should burn your cooldowns, including any taunts, since DPS will be doing 300% more damage.

Terestian Illhoof and Kil'rek

For this boss you are best using two tanks.

Neither boss is particularly damage intensive on the tanks, infact Terestian Illhoof is fairly easy to tank. Kil'rek can cause problems however as when he respawns he can instantly go for an AoE'r

Both bosses and maybe even imps should be tanked close together to maximise AoE damage.

Paladins are very effective at tanking here, with fire res aura and consecrate they can sometimes even tank both bosses and the imps solo.

A little fire resistance gear here can help, but is definitely not necessary.

Shade of Aran

Aran is one of those bloody annoying bosses with no agro control. Almost singular in Karazhan it is still a pain when you can not direct his damage.

Off tanks should jump into DPS gear for this one, the main tank should still maintain agro since some attacks are based on the agro list, however if your tank feels confident he should switch out for some DPS kit.

Remember to keep an eye out for some of Arans special moves (here) as you still need to correctly negotiate each one.

Netherspite

Netherspite is probably one of the trickiest bosses you will tank, if only for beam management.

You will require two tanks working in rotation, one for each portals phase.

The portals are three zones that open up and fire a beam towards Netherspite, as a tank your main concern is the red one

A single tank can handle this red beam in each phase, he simply has to move in and out of the beam every 5 seconds to remove both Netherspite -damage%taken buff and keep their own max hp higher.

The red beam has several benefits which make it obvious why your tanking class should be using it

Lasts for 20 sec after leaving the beam.
Hits Netherspite:

Damage taken reduced by 1% per tick.

Hits Player:

Netherspite will aggro you.
If no one is standing in the Red Beam, Netherspite uses his standard aggro table.
Damage taken is reduced by 1% per tick.
Defence is increased by 5 per tick.
Health is modified - the first application gives +31,000 maximum health, with additional stacks reducing maximum health by 1000 per stack.
Replenishes full health every tick.

Once you have two tanks on the red beam you will also require two manaless players tanking the green beam, this can be DPS as well as tank classes. However the green beam MUST be kept of Netherspite, its properties are.

Lasts for 10 sec after leaving the beam.
Hits Netherspite:

Heals for +4000 health per tick. (Stacking so it heals for 4K, 8K, 12K, 16K etc. -- it is very important not to let Netherspite get hit by this beam.)

Hits Player:

Healing done is increased by 5% per tick.
Spell and ability cost reduced by 1% per tick (including abilities that require Rage or Energy, in addition to Mana).
Maximum mana reduced by 200. Stacks up until your total mana pool reaches 0. Druids in Bear/Cat Form will have their hidden mana bars affected as well. Rage and Energy maxima are unaffected.
Similar to the red beam, mana is restored to the new maximum with each tick.
If a Hunter uses Feign Death while tanking the green beam they will become exhausted and not be able to tank it anymore, most likely wiping the raid.

Make sure tanking rotations are clear before the fight starts, and try an get your timing right for moving in and out of the beams!

Managing this fight is more to do with practice than gear, once you have the technique down you will have no trouble with this boss!

Chess Event

No tanking required on this one!

Hop onto a chess piece and go!

Prince Malchezaar

The prince is fairly simple to tank, it is however important to keep an eye on the raid.

If possible make sure you keep pots and healthstones for Princes second phase, even when tanking in great gear Prince deals out a huge amount of damage with his weapons and healers may lose a vital couple of seconds healing by an unlucky infernal drop!

If your raid is getting boxed in lead him around the edge of his platform to somewhere were the DPS have more space to move around. Infernals drop regularly and do massive AoE damage, if your group gets stuck, or even worse, separated from you then it will be a wipe.

Good geared druids make good tanks for Prince due to their High Armour and health

And that is how to tank Karazhan!

Addon Spotlight - Gatherer - Tools to Help You Grind

2008-03-10T03:17:00.000-07:00

In this weeks addon spotlight I will be suggesting gatherer.

There are several rival addons to Gatherer, including Cartographer. Gatherer does however have a much easier to use interface, importable data files (Great for downloading comprehensive and complete mine and herb locations) not to mention the fact that it not only records resources gathered by yourself but by all of your guild members using the addon too!.

Gatherer should be an essential addon for anybody who has a gathering profession, Its easy to use interface, intuitive symbols for different ores/herbs etc and ability to track other items (Such as treasure chests) make this a fantastic addition to your addon collection.

Karazhan Chess Event

2008-03-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

Karazhan Chess Event

The Chess event in Kara is a fantastic and fun little break in the middle of your raid.

After downing boss after boss this little mini game provides a little light relief for the raid group, allowing your players to select a piece, wether it be a pawn, king or healer and jump into battle against the opposing chess pieces.

Once the battle is started you can select any piece that takes your fancy as long as it is not currently controlled. Different pieces have different skills, so most people will try and get one of the major pieces before a pawn.

You move and attack by selecting the appropriate icons from the pet bar that will apear, movement is controlled by this as well as changing the direction you face.

Kings are the most powerful units, they have high health and deal high damage. Alliance have King Llane, hode Warchief Blackhand. These guys have a sweep/cleave effect which deals 4k damage to 3 enemy units infront of him and has a heroism/bloodlust efefct which grants a 50% increase to damage dealt by all allied humanoids within 8 adjacent spaces.

However if your king dies it will signal the loss of the game and you will not receive any loot. It may help to keep your bishops (healers) on the king to keep him alive while he deals some major damage to the opposition.

The Queen has medium health and high damage. The queen will be a human conjurer on the alliance and an Orc warlock for the horde. She has an elemental blast/fireball which deals 4k damage to any piece within 4 spaces (3 diagonally) as well as a rain of fire / poison cloud that deals 6000 damage to any chess pieces adjacent to the target.

The Bishop will either be a Human Cleric or Orc Necrolyte. He has a 12k heal on a 20 second cooldown and a holy lance/shadow spear which does a meagre 2k damage. The bishop has low health and low damage, but its healing is invaluable.

The Knight will be a Human Charger or an Orc Wolf, with a 3k damage dealing smash / bite on 5 second cooldown and a stomp/howl effect that reduces damage dealt by 50% on all enemies adjacent to you. He has medium health but low damage.

Your rook will either be a Conjured Water Elemental or a Summoned Deamon. It will have either a Geyser or Hellfire effect which deals 3k damage to al adjacent hostile pieces as well as a fire shield/ water shield effect that reduces damage received by 50% for 5 seconds. This guy has low health and medium damage.

Your Pawns will be either Human Footmen or Orc Grunts. These guys have low health and damage with a 1k vicious strike/heroic blow and 500 damage absorbing Shield Block/Weapon Deflection.

Once you have chosen your piece and jumped into the fray you may find it easier if you all move quickly towards the oppositions king. Take hmi out quickly and you will win.

It wont be that easy though, Medivh will at some point cheat!

He will either put into place a Healing cheat, healing his king and possibly all other pieces to full hp. A damage cheat, which will surround random pieces on your team with fire causing massive damage (Move quickly out of this to avoid death) Or possibly a Berserking cheat, this increases several of the oppositions pieces size, speed and damage massively! If this happens take down the effected pieces ASAP!

After this however you will find the fight fairly easy.

Key strategies tend to involve a rush to the king, taking down healers and the queen on the way. It is however fairly hard not to lose this fight if you keep your king topped up with health and use him as a pretty much close to invunerable DPS Tank.

Terestian Illhoof and Kil'rek - Karazhan

2008-02-29T03:25:00.000-08:00

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!)

2008-02-29T02:20:00.000-08:00

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.

Site News

2008-02-25T06:51:00.001-08:00

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.

2008-02-25T03:12:00.000-08:00

*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!

Making Gold With Alchemy and Herbalism in World of Warcraft!

2008-02-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-22T05:13:00.000-08:00

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!)

Introduction - Where it all began.

2008-02-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Karazhan Guide - Shade of Aran

2008-02-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

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!!