Netherspite Guide Karazhan

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!