Attumen the Huntsman - is the first and easiest boss in Karazhan. He comes with his horse, Midnight. Attumen is optional; it is not necessary to kill him in order to progress to the later bosses.

General Information

* Level: Boss
* Location: Karazhan
* Type: Undead
* Health: approx 350,000
* He is commonly seen as a gear check for Karazhan (although Moroes and the Maiden are both substantially tougher).

Attacks and Abilities


Attumen

* Basic Melee: 1.6k - 2.1k on tank, 8k on cloth. He can, and should, be disarmed.
* Immune to taunt and bleed.
* Shadow Cleave: Cleave attack for around 4k. Range is 5 yards, anyone but tanks should be outside this.
* Intangible Presence: A reflectable AoE curse cast every 30 seconds that reduces chance to hit with melee and ranged attacks and spells by 50%. Can be removed by mages and druids.
* Mount Up: When either Attumen or Midnight are at 25% he will mount up, both turning into one boss with the higher hp percentage of both.
* Berserker Charge: : After Attumen is mounted, he periodically does a charge. This does over 6k on cloth, and causes a knockdown. Note this charge has a minimum range of 8 yards, so it can be avoided by standing close enough to him (watch the 5 yard cleave though).

Midnight

* Basic Melee: Around 1.8 k damage
* Immune to taunt and bleed.

Strategies

At the start, Midnight is alone. When she's at 95%, her master Attumen is summoned, right at Midnight's spot. When either reaches 25% health, Attumen mounts and gains the Charge ability.
Preparation

Clear the whole area, because all trash mobs will come when you pull Attumen, save for the five next to the blacksmith. Trash has a 25-minute respawn, so a little speed is required during the clearing phase. Respawns will not happen during the boss fight.
Tanking

One tank should start the encounter by pulling and tanking Midnight. Your off tank (preferably one that can Disarm) will be waiting between your group and Midnight. When Attumen spawns, he should immediately be picked up by this tank and drawn away so that Attumen's Cleave doesn't hit the Midnight tank. One effective way to do this is to activate mob health bars (default keybind V) and Thunderclap immediately upon seeing Attumen's healthbar appear. Follow with a Demoralizing Shout then and a Disarm, as quickly as possible, and have a Hunter use Misdirection on Attumen onto his tank. A Paladin tank can use Consecration and Exorcism to pick up Attumen as soon as he spawns (Level 1 or 2 Consecration left on ground under Midnight). Disarming Attumen will reduce his DPS by about 60%, at which point he'll be less damaging than Midnight. Also, a warrior can use Spell Reflection before Attumen applies the curse, which is triggered every thirty seconds.

Midnight should be tanked well away from the raid. Tanking her where she stands is preferred.
Charging

When either horse or rider are at 25% health, Attumen will mount. Aggro will be wiped, and if he is below Midnight's health, Attumen will be healed up to the horse's percentage. Since aggro is reset when he mounts, it's a good idea for the tank (if a warrior) to use Shield Wall at that time, to give the healers some slack. This will allow the warrior to build threat again, without requiring significant heals. In the case of a Paladin tank a quick shot of Exorcism, judging Righteousness or Vengeance should allow DPS to come in with very little gap for threat generation.

The only difference after mounting is the additional charge ability. It is not entirely clear how the targeting of the charge works. One theory says that it hits the furthest person who has no aggro, so that it would be advisable to put a plate / mail user at the back of the raid. The other theory is that the charges are either random or target the nearest non-melee target, thus the off-tank should be about 8 yards from the boss.

Keep in mind that he can and sometimes will use his shadowcleave while moving back to the MT after a charge.

The best way to avoid damage to the raid is by having the tank turn Attumen around, and having everyone in the raid stand directly behind him between 6 and 7 yards away (outside cleave range, but too close for the charge).
DPS

Midnight should be focused on first. It is possible to switch DPS to Attumen when Midnight gets down to about 30%, so that Attumen has low health when he mounts up. This shortens the length of the phase where he can charge, although it requires tanking Midnight for that much longer.
Healers

Healers should keep everybody's health topped off through the whole fight, especially in Phase 2, because the charge can hit anybody if the group is not properly oriented. Charge victims should bandage to lessen the healer load.
Curse

Mages and Druids should focus on removing the debuff from everyone.

If there's a warlock in the raid, Curse of Weakness could be used on both Attumen and Midnight. This reduces their attack power by up to 350. However, it does not stack with Demoralizing Shout and prevents the warlock from using a different curse. If a warrior is present, using Curse of Weakness will in effect be a waste of Demoralizing Shout.
Post Fight

Clear the mobs to the quest NPC to the left of the corral where Midnight was tanked. This will allow members in your party who are at least Honored with The Violet Eye to repair and buy recipes.
Alternate Strat

A few key changes have us defeating this boss with ease, even with as few as 7 people.

* Midnight is not tanked "where she stands". Instead, she is pulled via gun and moved in front of the cart, to the left of where the cart tongue lies against the ground. DPS holds off initially.
* Attumen tank does a little white damage to gain rage. During this time he makes sure he is seeing Midnight's health bar via nameplates ("V" by default). Once he reaches 30 rage +, he presses ESCAPE to untarget Midnight and stands there.
* DPS is called half-in for midnight.
* Attumen spawns quickly after DPS is engaged, the offtank will see Attumen spawn right beside Midnight (because of his nameplate) and immediately activate his Bloodrage, generating rage-related threat, then shield bash. In the event Attumen didn't go after him right away (should not happen) he can intervene Attumen and pick him up.
* Attumen tank moves Attumen over to the wall where the 5-person pull was before Midnight was pulled, but in full line-of-sight of the rest of the raid.
* Attumen tank immediately uses disarm on Attumen and Spell Reflection. In fact. if the tank uses Spell Reflect the instant it is up, every time it is up, he will reflect 100% of Attumen's debuffs back to Attumen. (Not so reliable in phase III). In the event the tank gets a debuff, a mage or druid dispels it.
* DPS group 2 starts on Attumen. This means one half is DPSing Midnight and one half Attumen. The ideal situation is to bring their life down together at the same time. If this proves too difficult, all DPS can be assigned to midnight, Phase III will just last longer.
* When Attumen mounts (Phase III) a tank immediately shield slams and uses their Bloodrage again. (Generating rage generates threat.)
* All DPS and the other tank moves to the rear of the horse and starts DPS, but white-damage only until the tank calls for all-in.
* At this time, all casters move right behind the horse too. Most especially Healers. In melee range. (But continuing to heal of course)
* The only people at range are hunters unless there is no hunter, then the other tank goes out. If no one is at range, Attumen will sometimes whack a healer with melee instead, which is a harder hit than his charge, so leave at least one person at range. That person is effectively a "charge tank" and hunters fill this role with ease.
* With an appropriately geared tank (Paladins work well for this), it is possible to have a single tank for both Attumen and Midnight. Midnight is pulled and Consecration is put down. Attumen will aggro on the tank from the consecrate effect. Two healers should be sufficient to keep the Paladin tank up during both Phase 2 and 3, assuming the dps is able to avoid pulling aggro. This strategy works well with tanks and healers that are well-geared, but will not likely work with groups that are just starting out in Karazhan

Moroes - <Tower Steward> is an undead rogue boss found in Karazhan. He is not optional; killing Moroes unlocks the Opera Event, which in turn opens the door to the Curator.


Background

In The Last Guardian, Moroes was described as Medivh's castellan, or personal house servant. He was an oddly thin man, ghostly in appearance, who wore horse blinders over his eyes in order to escape the wandering visions that plagued Medivh's tower. He described to Khadgar (who had traveled from Dalaran to serve as Medivh's apprentice) how he had seen a vision of him breaking one of Cook's crystal dishes and — despite trying to avoid doing so — ended up shattering it anyway; he wore the blinders until the day he died. He was killed by Medivh in the final stages of his madness, and is now buried beside his master and Cook outside of Karazhan.


Moroes has been resurrected by the new master of Karazhan. He is one of the first bosses encountered by adventurers. He has been revived as an undead and wields two wicked daggers when attacking. He seems to have retained much of his personality during life.
General Information

* Level: Boss
* Location: Karazhan
* Type: Undead
* Health: Around 378,000

Abilities

* Basic Melee: 1600–2500 on plate.
* Vanish: Vanishes without dropping aggro.
* Garrote: After reappearing from Vanish, he will immediately garrote someone, dealing 1000 damage every 3 seconds for 5 min (100k total damage).
* Blind: A poison that occasionally blinds a target in melee range (apparently the closest person in melee range), causing them to wander. Dispellable. If one tank is Gouged, and the other tank is Blinded, Moroes will run rampant on the group.
* Gouge: Gouges the highest aggro, incapacitating them. Moroes will attack the second highest aggro.
* Enrage: At 30% Moroes Enrages, increasing his damage.

Strategy

The Moroes encounter tests your raid's ability to control several targets while also maintaining high DPS. In order to succeed, you must go in with a solid crowd control strategy for the four adds. If allowed to go free, they will quickly put an end to the squishies. Control must be established immediately on the pull and maintained throughout the fight.

Once control is established, the encounter becomes a race between your dps and the building damage caused by Garrote. Each time a Garrote is applied, the strain on the healers increases. Moroes must die before the healing needed becomes too much to handle.
The Adds

Moroes will have four different random adds from the following list in every instance, much like Chromaggus' breaths. Each add will be based off a class and spec. The following table lists them in a good kill order:

Name Class Health Abilities
Baroness Dorothea Millstipe Shadow Priest 66k Mana Burn, Mind Flay, Shadow Word: Pain
Lady Catriona Von'Indi Holy Priest 66k Greater Heal, Power Word: Shield, Dispel Magic
Lady Keira Berrybuck Holy Paladin 68k Holy Light, Cleanse, Divine Shield
Baron Rafe Dreuger Retribution Paladin 68k Hammer of Justice, Cleanse, Blessing of Might
Lord Robin Daris Arms Warrior 84k Mortal Strike, Whirlwind
Lord Crispin Ference Protection Warrior 84k Disarm, Shield Bash, Shield Wall

As many adds as possible should be crowd controlled (starting from the rear of the list). The adds are susceptible to most forms of CC, such as the priest's Shackle Undead, the paladin's Turn Undead, the hunter's Freezing Trap, and most kiting techniques. Each of these methods has its drawbacks: shackles can break early or be dispelled by the holy priest and paladin type adds, fear can drive the adds out of the room and thus reset the fight, and all kiting tactics require great skill by the kiter. If an add does break loose, a tank should taunt it; however he should not attack in order to allow CC to be reapplied soon. Also be aware that the paladin-type adds can cast blessings on Moroes and his entourage, so be ready to dispel or purge.

Adds for which no control is available need to be killed before Moroes. One good sequence is to follow the above list from top to bottom - the priests have the least health and require no tank, the paladins can dispel, and the warriors take quite long to kill due to their high HP (particularly the protection warrior). Generally, if the raids DPS are high enough, it is a good idea to kill all adds first, this makes the fight much safer. Having some CC'd or kited add around while Moroes is nuked is dangerous, because the the control could break (for example because the controlling player dies from a garrote).

If the add which is due to be killed doesn't deal high physical damage it is not imperative to tank it, instead some combination of slowing effects should be used (i.e. kite it). If it does need tanking and only two tanks are present, a good offtank can take both, an add and Moroes at the same time. The offtank will need extra healing when Moroes gouges, however.

Doubling up on CC is also not a bad idea. For example having a hunter lay a Freezing Trap in front of a shackle can give the priest more time to reshackle.

After Moroes is dead, any remaining adds still need to be killed. Alternatively, the raid can leave the room, which will cause them to despawn.

It is advisable to either eliminate or keep shackled the Paladin type adds, as they can remove other forms of crowd control with their Cleanse.

Garrote

Moroes vanishes every 30 seconds, and upon return randomly Garrotes a raid member. Garrote is a bleed effect and will deal 1k damage every 3 sec for 300 sec (5 minutes, for a total of 100k damage). After he garrotes, he will immediately return to the highest aggro player prior to the vanish. Garrote can be removed by the following abilities only:

* Dwarves Stoneform
* Paladins Divine Shield (self) and Blessing of Protection (others)
* Mages Ice Block
* Items which remove bleeding effects (Luffa no longer works)
* Dying and combat rez

Since the possibilities to remove Garrote are limited, there is no choice but to heal through it on most raid members. One active HoT from a well-equipped healer should heal enough to survive while the HoT is active. It is highly recommended that Priests liberally use Prayer of Mending when at least 2 targets are garroted. This spell will greatly lessen the healing load from garroted raid members.

In theory, all garrotes should be automatically removed when Moroes is defeated. However, in practice, they never seem to be removed. If the encounter is reset the garrotes are not removed.

Dying from garrote does not inflict a durability loss penalty. It is a good idea to plan ahead (while clearing other bosses) and save all combat rez cooldowns (Soulstones, Shaman Ankhs, and Rebirth) for Moroes. Do not cast soulstones (as usual) before the encounter, but wait until an important target is garroted, and only then soulstone. This method of garrote removal has the additional advantage that the rez will also restore some mana. If a raid member is garroted and a combat rez will be used, the player should quickly spend all his mana, just die and be rezzed.

A reduced cooldown on Blessing of Protection (Guardian's Favor) is a big bonus in this fight.

If possible, Garrote should always be removed from raid members who have to control an add. All healers are very important too. DPS classes should be cured only towards the end of the fight, while the tanks should never get the garrote removed - they are the main heal targets anyways, and BoP temporarily removes aggro.

Paladins can use Blessing of Sacrifice on a garroted party member to mitigate the damage. This can make a difference for low HP casters.

The Addon Deadly Boss Mods will announce using the raid warning system when someone gets garrote and who has it if it is activated by the raid leader or a raid assist.

Off-Tank

Two tanks are needed on Moroes. The off-tank must always be second on the aggro list, because the main tank will periodically be gouged and Moroes will then turn to the person with the second-highest aggro. When a tank is blinded, it needs to be removed immediately by a Shaman, Paladin or Druid (it is a poison). If no one in the raid can remove poison, the secondary tank needs to work from maximum melee range and have someone stand very close (on top) of Moroes to soak up the blinds. For the first part while killing adds its best to designate one of the ranged DPSers to stand on top of Moroes. While killing Moroes himself, simply have at least one melee DPS hugging him.

Since the off-tank will only get hit while the main-tank is Gouged, rage will be a problem. To counter rage-starvation, consider having the Moroes off-tank grab one of the adds to act as a rage battery. If it's one of the dispelling adds, make sure that the magically crowd controlled adds are held far away from it. It is not a good idea to use the protection warrior type add for this purpose, because he will regularly disam the off-tank, greatly obstructing threat generation.

The off-tank would, of course, be required to build threat on both Moroes and his designated add simultaneously. This effectively turns the off-tank into both a poor-man's crowd control and a more effective off-tank.

If the main tank is a Paladin, then they can keep a blessing of Sacrifice on the off-tank at all times. This means that gouge will break after one hit on the off-tank which makes it easier for the healers.

Things are a lot easier if a third tank is available to tank the add which is due to be killed. The off-tank can do that job, but it requires quite a lot of skill.
Variant: Paladin tank

A well equipped paladin tank can try to tank all of the adds and Moroes at the same time. Take the adds down one at a time but leave one add alive. As long as something is beating on the main tank, they are near immune to the blinds and gouges as they will break when the player is hit. One thing to note is that the adds WILL de-aggro from the Paladin if he or she is gouged. If the gouge is not instantly broken, the adds will most likely attack your healers - having an off-tank who is keeping secondary aggro on all the adds will help limit this.

Hunters

Hunters are a great asset in this fight. A hunter can kite (chain frost trap) one of the adds, and his pet can either dps or tank a second add. Two hunter pets are enough to control one add (except the mortal strike warrior). If pets are used as tanks, one healer should keep them alive. A hunter that is not kiting can drop a frost trap in front of a shackled add.

When using Frost Traps, extra care must be taken. If Moroes accidentally (on his way to the next garrote target) runs over the trap he simply removes it, because he's immune. Therefore the traps should be set up away from all players, best would be a small area in the back of the room designated as off-limits to everyone else. Kiting should be done in a big circle along the outer limits of the room, while everybody else stands closer to the center.
Notes

* Moroes is immune to Taunt.
* The encounter can be reset by pulling an add out of the room. However, Moroes leaving the room will not reset the encounter.
* Dropping an Earthbind Totem or positioning a mage between a shackled mob and the priest to Frost Nova if shackle breaks is a good idea. A paladin hitting the mob with a Hammer of Justice or Turn Undead can help give the priest the time s/he needs to get the shackle off as well.
* All pet users: make sure the pets don't attempt to attack a shackled add when Moroes vanishes
* The adds are immune to bleed, and, as of patch 2.1, so is Moroes. (Prior to 2.1, he was not)
* Mana Burn (Dorothea), Heal (Catriona) and Holy Light (Keira) can (and should) be interrupted to speed up killing the four adds. Rogues are especially good for this between stuns and Mind-Numbing Poison. Curse of Tongues also works on them. Unshackled adds can be kited with Crippling Poison.
* Since they're all undead, the Argent Dawn trinkets can be most useful here (Rune of the Dawn and Seal of the Dawn).
* If a Blessing of Protection is received by a tank or a melee DPS class to remove a garrote, that person should cancel the Blessing immediately to get back into the fight. If a tank must receive it, wait until Moroes vanishes to prevent the chaos from temporary aggro loss.

Known Bugs

* Even with a successful and documented kill without any wipes or resets, the garrotes from Moroes do not always drop.
* If Moroes dies from DoTs while he is vanished, your raid may not get credit for the kill.

On September 26, 2007 (after a new Karazhan reset after both regular maintenance and the implementation of patch 2.2), our raid killed Moroes just as he was vanishing. Although we were able to loot his body, Barnes the Stage Manager did not acknowledge the kill, and would not start the Opera Event for us. Moroes had been our first boss kill in the instance (we had not killed Attumen), and we discovered that we did not get a raid ID attached to our Moroes kill. When we spoke to a GM, we were told to leave the instance and perform a soft reset by staying out for half an hour. Upon our return, a stealthed member went to dining hall and reported that Moroes had respawned.
Class Specific Tips
Paladin

As a Paladin, it can be very difficult to fear one add and to maintain healing on the tank at the same time. A simple macro can do the Fear. Assume you had to keep Lord Robin Daris feared all the time.

/cast [target=Lord Robin Daris] Turn Undead

Turn Undead: The macro system in WoW 2.0 introduces a new element called focus which allows a player to save a target as its "focus" and, using macros, cast spells on the focus without losing your current target. Similar to the Shackle Undead Macro for the priest see Useful Priest Macros for detailed examples and explanation. Here's just the macro:

/clearfocus [modifier:shift] [target=focus,dead] [target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/script SetRaidTarget("focus", 1)
/cast [target=focus] Turn Undead

Priest

As a priest, it can be very difficult to reshackle one add and to maintain healing on the tank at the same time. A simple macro can do the reshackle, you can push it between two heals every 5-10 seconds. Assume you had to keep Lord Robin Daris shackled all the time.

/cast [target=Lord Robin Daris] shackle undead

This will do the work and eases the fight a lot.

Shackle Focus Macro

The macro system in WoW 2.0 introduces a new element called focus which allows a player to save a target as its "focus" and, using macros, cast spells on the focus without losing your current target. See Useful Priest Macros for detailed examples and explanation. Here's just the macro:

/clearfocus [modifier:shift] [target=focus,dead] [target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/script SetRaidTarget("focus", 1)
/cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead

Shackle Addon

An addon called UberShackle can be helpful in reshackling Moroes adds. A passive addon that requires no special configuration, UberShackle provides both visual and audio notification when your target breaks its shackle prematurely. It also provides a countdown (by default, beginning at 20 seconds before expiration).
Warlock

A similar macro can help a Warlock make the shackling a lot easier. A Voidwalker is required for this maneuver, although some adjustments could have a Felguard do it with his Anguish ability.

/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/petstay
/petfollow
/cast [pet:voidwalker,target=focus,exists,harm] Torment; Torment

You keep the Voidwalker in passive, and spam this macro during the fight to use the Torment ability to make your pet gain aggro on the shackled target. As such, it will run for your pet rather than the shackling priest. This is particularly useful for Baron Rafe Dreuger as he tends to stun the highest aggro target the second he breaks.

Edit: Updated now that the UI includes a Focus command for Macros. New macro allows you to set focus on shackle, then switch to whoever you are DPSing or healing. Simply press the macro again to recast Torment on shackled add without switching targets. Will not work with other macros that use Focus. Focus clears on FocusTarget death, player death, or when cleared with /clear focus or /focus none. Holding Alt while using macro sets new Focus.
Bug

The Garrote DoTs do not disappear when Moroes is killed.

Note: This is not a definite bug; it happens sporadically.

Maiden = A titan-like Boss in the Guest Chambers wing of Karazhan. She bears a modeling resemblance to Ironaya of Uldaman. She is ironically, being the Maiden of Virtue, put behind the rooms full of ladies of the night. The Maiden is optional, it is not necessary to kill her in order reach other bosses.

Abilities

* Health: 404,100
* Mana: 67,740
* Melee: on 14k armor: normally 2500-3500 every 1.8 sec, 4000-4800 crushing
* Holy Ground: permanent 240-360 holy damage every 3 sec AoE 12 yards around her. Also silences for 1 second.
* Holy Fire: 1 second cast, 3238-3762 fire damage up front and 1750 fire damage every 2 seconds for 12 seconds. DoT is considered a Magic effect and should be dispelled.
* Holy Wrath: AoE chained holy damage, instant cast, 20 second cooldown. Cast on a random target. Will not target or chain onto /off of pets.
* Repentance: Deals 1750-2250 holy damage and incapacitates the whole raid for 12 seconds. 30 second cooldown, not dispellable but broken by damage. Does not hit the main tank.

Strategy

The Maiden uses all her abilities at random, thus if for example the Repentance cooldown is over this does not mean that she will cast one next, it just means that it's possible for her to cast one.

Positioning

Correct positioning of the raid is the key here, healer positioning in particular. Ranged and healers should be far enough away from the Maiden to be outside of the Holy Ground attack. At the same time, the whole raid needs to be in range and sight of a dispeller and be spread out far enough to avoid chaining Holy Wrath. These requirements are easily matched with the following setup:

There are 8 pillars around the room. Put one non-melee raid member at the outside wall in each gap between two pillars. Place the healers next to each other. Melee and tank can start wherever they like.

Tank her in the center of the room, right where she stands. After the pull, the raid members all move to their assigned gap between the pillars, and take exactly one step up the stair leading to her. This puts the whole raid in LoS, healing and dispel range of each other, but far enough apart to prevent the Holy Wrath from hitting more than the melee group.

Instead of standing between the pillars, it's just as good if the raid members stand with their backs to the pillars. Just synchronize so that everybody takes the left (or right) pillar, and not two people end up using the same.
[edit] Repentance

Wipes occur at this boss for mainly two reasons - either the tank dies while the healers are incapacitated from a Repentance, or too many raid members die from Holy Fire.

There are several ways to survive Repentance:

* Paladins can cast Blessing of Sacrifice (rank 1) on any melee character to constantly take damage, breaking the effect.
* A healer (preferably one which cannot dispel) can move into the Holy Ground after the Repentance cooldown is over. Since it can take a while until she casts Repentance, this may effectively take the healer out of the combat for a while (due to the silence effect). This also increases the danger from a chained Holy Wrath. After she's cast Repentance, the healer must immediately move out of Holy Gound and start healing.
* The tank can move the Maiden towards a healer, to wake up the healer with damage from Holy Ground. This is easier if one healer stands one step closer to the center of the room, best would be behind the tank. Don't forget to immediately leave Holy Ground because of the silence.

Note: As of Patch 2.2, Blessing of Sacrifice has a 30 second cooldown which means that raids relying on this spell to break Repentance may have a tiny window of vulnerability due to lag and player reaction time. However, since the Maiden's Repentance is also on a 30 second cooldown, this should almost never be a problem.


A nice macro for the tank, if they're a warrior, to use during repentance is:

* /target [Priest/Healers name]
* /cast Intervene
* /targetlasttarget

* The tank can be loaded with HoT spells.
* The tank can use cooldown moves such as Last Stand.
* Druids who are otherwise doing melee damage in cat form on the Maiden can run out of the Holy Ground during Repentance and heal the tank.

* Easiest way to work Maiden is have a tree druid. Dot heals every time repentance cooldown is up. Renew, and all 3 of the druids heals can last a tank through repentance. Make sure he is always on full life, after repentance have a pally/priest cast highest rank flash/quick heal in order to boost tank back to full life. Tank also has pot, last stand, shield wall and healthstone or 2 so this can also help.

Just ensure that after repentance is clear, REGARDLESS of anyone's health, someone should flash heal the MT. You DO NOT NEED TO heal through repentance. Spec if your tank is geared, and you have enough HoTs (druid and priest are fine).
[edit] Holy Fire

The easiest method to deal with Holy Fire is to have Grounding Totems up, with an alert Shaman and a little luck this one totem can absorb all Holy Fires targeted at that group. With one shaman in each group the fight actually becomes quite easy.

If no grounding totems are up, the healers and dispellers must be very alert. Every raid member needs to be topped off at all times, and Holy Fires must be dispelled as quickly as possible. This cannot be stressed enough, as it is the most important aspect of the fight: Dispel as fast as possible. Unless someone would die, cancel the spell you're currently casting to dispel immediately, so you spend less time healing damage dealers back up. Some raids place two dedicated dispellers on opposite ends of the room.

Holy Fire can also be spell reflected, and warlocks can cleanse themselves with Spellstones. Potions which remove magic effects should also work. It actually deals fire damage (not holy), thus fire protection potions are useful, and the damage could be resisted with appropriate gear. Still, it is not advisable to stack high fire resist on every raid member due to the low rate of fire for this ability, and the randomness of the targeting.

Additional Tips and Methods

* Priest/Shadow Word: Death - If a Priest casts Shadow Word: Death on the Maiden during the 0.5 second cast of Repentance the backfiring damage will break the Repentance. This requires a timing mod, keeping the Maiden as the target (or using a focus macro) during the time she could cast Repentance and of course a fast reaction by the priest.
* Keeping pets around for this fight is a good idea as well, because they will eat Holy Fires. Pets are not valid targets for Holy Wrath, and may thus be sent into melee with no fear of causing a chain.
* Melee should stand at the edge of Maiden's hit box, as far from each other as possible (as forming a triangle or square around her). Holy Protection potions help diminish damage taken by melee significantly, and are recommended over health pots.
* Warriors who pop Berserker Rage can become immune to or break Repentance.
* Being immune to Repentance effect also prevents the 2k front-end damage.
* Dampen Magic on melee DPS reduces the Holy Ground tick damage to 150-200 so that single HoT, shadow priest, or feral druid can keep them alive pretty securely.
* Amplify Magic is not a good idea at all; it appears to drastically up her damage.
* The Maiden is not immune to bleed effects of rogues and Feral druids.
* The rooms off the hallway prior to the Maiden do not need to be cleared. If you choose to skip them, be sure to hug the wall to your right or you risk drawing aggro from the mobs in the side rooms. The hallway and patrols are on a 60 minute timer. However, the servants quarters adds spawn quicker at 20-25 minutes.
* She's immune to Taunt, so don't use Power Word: Shield on the tank before the fight starts to enable faster rage generation to compensate. The usual rage generation, with charge and stance change is a good opening. Safest start is as usual a hunter with Misdirection.
* Insignia of the Alliance/Horde will not remove Repentance.
* A Paladin's Divine Shield will remove Repentance.
* Having a Druid in Tree of Life Form stack heal over time spells on the tank makes the fight trivial.

Hyakiss the Lurker - Is a level 73 named elite spider in the Servant's Quarters in Karazhan. Once he spawns, he's stealthed in a corner of the spider room.

To cause the Hyakiss or one of the other servant's quarters bosses to spawn, you must completely clear the area of trash. If it takes your raid more than 30 minutes to kill them all, you will likely have respawns, which will need killed as well. Once there is not a single trash mob alive in the Servant's Quarters, one of the three bosses will spawn. Which boss spawns is determined randomly.

Attacks and Abilities

* HP: ~260,000
* Hyakiss' Web: Stuns an enemy for 10 sec (magic).
* Poison: Deals 500 damage every 3 seconds and reduces armor by 500. Stacks up to X times.

Strategy

After engaging, 2 tanks build up threat on Hyakiss simultaneously. Make sure that the off-tank always stays second on the aggro-list, so that when the main tank gets webbed, Hyakiss goes to the off tank, instead of killing the raid. Remove the poison, it reduces armor and does nature damage per second. If there is no one to remove it, the off tank should taunt her if the poison stacks too often (2-3 times), so that the MT has the chance to let the debuff run out. The stun can also be dispelled.

Rokad the Ravager - Is a level 73 named elite darkhound in the Servant's Quarters in Karazhan. The Servant's quarters are located immediately to the right after you enter the instance from the main entrance.

Rokad only does straight up melee damage on the main tank, but does so a lot (about 1781 DPS). The encounter is a straightforward tank and spank fight.

As of july 2 2007, Rokad has 220,000 HP.

Most of the trashmobs in the room can be cleared before starting the bossfight. The only exceptions are the two dogs closest to him: they seem to be linked to the boss and pulling them will aggro the boss as well.

Clearing the trash takes about half an hour, after which the first respawns will have appeared. After maybe 5 more minutes of killing trash there is an NPC shout to announce that Rokad spawned. The random animal boss spawn seems to work like this: 1. Clear the area (boss hasn't spawned yet). 2. Start clearing the respawns. 3. Get the announcement by the spawned boss. 4. Clear the path to the announced boss. 5. Kill the boss - (confirmation needed on this) - Apr. 8

Faction Gain

Clearing the area requires the raid to kill around 50 mobs worth 15 Violet Eye rep each. With reputation from the boss, this adds up to about 1000 Violet Eye reputation.
[edit] Strategy

While Rokad does relatively strong melee damage to the tank, this encounter is essentially a "tank 'n' spank" fight; just DPS him down and heal as needed.

A warlock can enslave or banish the two dogs that aggro with him. They have a cleave that can hit for 2-3k and crit for over 7k. If enslaved and used against the boss, they can actually pull aggro away from the main tank. - July 2 07.

Shadikith the Glider - Is a level 73 named elite bat in the Servant's Quarters in Karazhan.

Note: To get to this boss, you need to clear all the mobs in the servants quarters. It's to the right after you enter the instance. When you cleared all Mobs in under 30 minutes and about 3-10 of the respawns a random of 3 bosses will spawn, one of them is this.

Abilities

* Sonic Burst: An AoE Silence ability.
* Wing Buffet: Removes aggro from the tank. Identical to the Drakes of BWL.
* Charge: He will charge the farthest member of the raid that is in line of sight for him. Hits for aprox. 5000 on cloth. This ability can crush for up to 9000, you can't run back and zone in. Because of this, the farthest member of the raid should always be an offtank or shaman with shield. This ability can be taunted away before the hit.
* AoE Knockback: He will randomly do an AoE knockback that hits everyone in melee range for about 2000 damage.

Strategy

We split up in two camps. Pulling him out from his room into the room leading to his, the MT was tanking Shadikith with his back against the wall to avoid being knocked back. The rangedps and healers stood with their backs against another wall at the opposite side of the room with the 2nd tank standing by them ready to taunt Shadikith away from the healers and rangedps and moving him back to the MT who then taunted Shadikith back to himself. Besides this it is a very easy tank and spank fight. Just keeping the MT topped off to prevent "unlucky" situations when he uses his silence ability.

Alternative Strategy

Pull the boss to a recently cleared large room. A hunter with misdirection is very valuable here and can pull the boss to the beginning of the instance if there is no suitable room in which to fight the boss. Do not attempt to kite this boss any significant distance to a raid, as it is extremely fast, however, attacking the boss then vanishing is a viable means of pulling the boss to the rest of the raid.

A tank and an offtank should stand in opposite corners of the room, with all casters in the center and melee dps following the boss and attempting to stay in front of it with their backs to walls. Because the boss charges the member of the raid who is farthest away at the time, this will always be a tank, and each tank is in healing range at all times. The offtank should attempt to gain some level of threat immediately, in case the boss has just wiped the aggro from the main tank. This happens 1-2 times per fight, and in each case, it appears that the boss has wiped aggro from everyone immediately before charging, as he does not attempt to attack healers or dps leaders. If a sufficiently large room is chosen, casters will never be silenced by the AoE silence effect, so healing is never interrupted. Additionally, the only people affected by the AoE knockback will be any melee dps who have not managed to get to the boss's front side and place their backs to a wall. Melee dps should not attempt to chase the boss unless it switches aggro from the main tank to the offtank, as it will usually return to the main tank immediately after charging.

Wizard of Oz - Is one of three possible Opera Event encounters in the Opera House in Karazhan. It includes Dorothee, Roar, Strawman, Tinhead, Dorothee's summoned dog Tito, and The Crone.

Overview
Here's an overview of the mobs encountered in this fight:

Mob / HP / Attacks / Remarks

Dorothee 150,000 Water Bolt (1.5 seconds cast, Frost Damage 2025-2475), AoE Fear. Cannot be interrupted or tanked, attacks at random.

Tito 35,000 Interrupts and silences casters. Causes Dorothee to Enrage if killed before her.

Roar 110,000 Melee: around 3000 on cloth, AoE fear. Very susceptible to fear.

Strawman 110,000 Melee: around 4000 on cloth. Gains a Disorient debuff after taking Fire damage.

Tinhead 110,000 Melee: 1500-2000 on plate, Cleave (3 targets, up to 4000 on cloth). Gets a Rust debuff after some time, making him easy to kite.

The Crone 150,000 Cyclone, Chain Lightning (5 targets, 2775-3225 damage). Appears after the other mobs are dead.

The first four bosses are upstage when the event starts and become active one after the other quite quickly.

The activation sequence is:

1. Dorothee (who then summons Tito)
2. Roar
3. Strawman
4. Tinman

After these four are all dead, The Crone will appear. Killing The Crone successfully ends the event.


Strategy / Kill order


The raid needs to agree on a kill sequence. All mobs (exc. Dorothee) can be controlled, depending on player skill and classes available some may be more dangerous than others. One accepted sequence is to deal with the mobs in the order in which they activate. Dorothee is generally regearded to be the most dangerous, because she cannot be tanked. Roar is more dangerous than Strawman because of his fear, and Tinhead is the least dangerous because after some time he moves so slow that he can be easily kited.

Tanking

Tinhead is the only mob which really must be tanked. On all others, tanking is optional, but helps to avoid trouble if they break control. The main tank should be on Tinhead exclusively, a second tank should help on Roar, and maybe taunt Strawman now and then. Tanking Dorothee is pointless. Tito can and should be tanked.
[edit] Dorothee

There's not much to say about her than just nuke her fast. Pay attention not to kill Tito while she's still up, else she will enrage. Tito should be killed right after she's down. Waterbolt cannot be interrupted, and because she has no agro table, it targets random people while she's alive.

Roar

Roar is rather cowardly, and susceptible to fear. However, often he will run into one of the two doors and go out of line of sight making it somewhat difficult to keep him constantly feared. Be prepared for many early breaks and resists, as he seems to do this quite often. One Warlock should still be enough to control him, an off-tank on Roar makes the Warlocks job much easier.

Strawman

When he is struck by fire damage abilities, there is a very high chance that he will be disoriented for 6 seconds. Scorch & Searing Pain are excellent abilities to proc this debuff. A fire mage would be the best class to deal with this add, but any mage or warlock (with his imp) will do OK too, even a Shamans searing totem or fire elemental could do the job in an emergency. The off-tank on Roar should taunt Strawman now and then.

Tinhead

Tinman needs to be tanked by the main tank due to the rather high amount of damage he inflicts. As the encounter progresses, he begins to rust (as indicated through an announcement) and slows down. After a while, he slows down a great deal and can be effectively kited by the main tank. At this point the tank should be taking minimal damage as he can run around without being struck.

NOTE: A popular misconception is that Tinman's rust event is initiated by ice spells. This is not the case. The rust event is simply a timed event and cannot be influenced.

The Crone

After all 4 major characters have died, The Crone spawns. She has no vulnerabilities, so the MT should pick her up immediately. She spawns cyclones that will knock raid members straight up into the air, dealing a significant (but not fatal) amount of damage; HoT's can keep the cycloned victims alive. When you land, you will take fall damage as well. They are avoidable, and any slow fall ability will also negate fall damage. Cyclone does not stun, so instant cast spells can be used in midair. The cyclones move slowly around the room in a group, and can cross the center of the stage, so it is unsafe to move strictly clockwise or counter-clockwise. Someone should be continuously calling out the cyclones position and direction so everyone can adjust. The Crone does not have a lot of HP; this phase is much easier than the first.

NOTE: Patch 2.1 removed damage done by cyclones. Expected falling damage is 1500-3000 depending on class.

Known Bugs

This encounter, unfortunately, appears to have a number of bugs. Players who have encountered these bugs have not had much success, if any, getting the encounter to reset. Reports say the encounter can't be reset, but it can be reset if you get out of the room at the bottom of the stage.

* Some bosses may not spawn, or may spawn and not be targetable at all.
* Bosses may aggro through the curtain before the encounter starts.
* The curtain may fall early while the raid is still in combat.
* Bosses may evade-bug, e.g. Roar when he goes through an allegedly closed door.
* Upon a wipe, hunters who Feign Death or rogues who Vanish may trigger a bug. It is advised that all players "really die" to avoid any bugs in case of a wipe.
* Tinhead, on very rare occasions, "forgets" to reapply rust and can cause the rust to reset.

As of June 4. 2007, we encountered the first and the third bug. We left the instance for 30 minutes, had to clear up to the opera again, and got Wizard of Oz again, this time it ran bug-free.

The first bug may result in trapping the raid on stage - after all available bosses are down, the door isn't opened and there seems to be no way out. To avoid using mage portal or hearthstone, ranged DPS can shoot some of mobs in the audience to aggro them and wipe the raid.

It can also bug the event if any player jumps off the stage to reset the fight( its possible if you know the jump trick). The only way to fix this problem is to 'Soft Reset' the instance by all players leaving the instance and waiting 30mins for it to reset. This will also reset the trash up to opera event.

The Big Bad Wolf - Is a worgen boss in the Opera House in Karazhan.

Attacks and Abilities

Terrifying Howl - Instant. Causes nearby enemies to flee in fear for 3 sec. Cast every 25-35 seconds.

Little Red Riding Hood

* Description: Changes the target into Little Red Riding Hood. This increases the likelihood that the Big Bad Wolf will chase them and try to gobble them up!
* Effect: Reduces the target's armor and resistances to 0. Increases speed 50% to flee the Big Bad Wolf. Pacifies and Silences.

Wide Swipe - Instant. Stuns the current target for 4 seconds. Casts about as often as Terrifying Howl. This can be used against a target with the Little Red Riding Hood debuff, effectively guaranteeing death.

Strategy / Tanking

* Generally only one tank is needed. A warrior, protection paladin or feral druid can fulfill the role, but warriors have an advantage due to berserker rage.

* The wolf should be tanked along one wall a medium distance away from the rest of the raid. If possible, switch to berserker stance to berserker rage just before a fear.

* Whilst someone is under the Red Riding Hood debuff, it is important that the tank continue to generate aggro or risk the Big Bad Wolf attacking a DPS once the debuff has gone.

* A Shaman is able to make use of his Tremor Totem to reduce the time spent under the influence of a fear. If the shaman is Enhancement, it is probably best to keep the totem up for the duration of the fight. Elemental or Restoration Shaman will not be under the threat of constant fearing, and can instead drop the totem immediately after a fear, to more reliably break party members' fears.

* If that is not possible, a Dwarf or Draenei Priest's Fear Ward can counteract the fear.

* Beside his fear, the wolf is not terribly difficult to tank and does not do a huge amount of damage.

Damage

Ranged DPS classes can continuously damage the wolf provided that the tank does not lose aggro. They can continue damaging while the wolf is chasing Little Red Riding Hood. Melee DPS classes have to be more careful due to the fear. However, any damage caused while the Big Bad Wolf is chasing someone will add to his threat list, regardless of your inability to pull aggro during that time.
[edit] Little Red Riding Hood

All non-melee classes (ranged DPS and healing) should stand close together in a corner about 1/3-1/2 the stage length from the wolf being tanked on the adjacent wall. When the wolf casts the Red Riding Hood debuff, the affected person needs to run around the perimeter of the stage. Do not touch or hug the wall because it will slow down your running speed, but stay very close to it. The wolf should be a short distance behind you at all times, but out of melee range. After running about 1.5 times around the stage, the debuff will wear off and the wolf will most likely run back to the tank as long as sufficient aggro was generated.

* If you watch the Wolf's target carefully, he will briefly change targets to the upcoming Red Riding Hood then switch back to the tank, before he casts the debuff. This can give advance warning to the target, which is particularly useful to melee dps.

* All healing should be focused on whomever has the debuff. It is often possible to survive one attack from the wolf as long as the runner is healed as soon as they are hit. Healers should use preemptive heals, canceling at the last moment if the runner does not get attacked. A priest should use Power Word: Shield. Earth Shield and heal-over-time spells can also help.

* The runner should follow a SQUARE path. The Wolf actually chases a spot something like 10 yards ahead of his target. The runner can imagine they're carrying a long fishing pole with a lure extended ahead of them. If Little Red Riding Hood runs in a circular or oval path, the Wolf will continuously cut them off and be in melee range. If Little Red Riding Hood runs in straight lines with tight corners, the Wolf will lose ground on the straightaways, cut off a little on the corners, but potentially stay out of melee range the entire time.

* Be aware that while chasing Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf will continue to fear all nearby players, including the runner. Tremor Totem and Fear Ward on the runner can help.

* Warriors can Intervene to whomever receives the Riding Hood debuff to provide a bit of extra protection.

* Druids with the Tree of Life Form should not use it, as it slows them even while under the effects of the Riding Hood debuff.

Class Specific Tricks

* Rogues - Vanish can be used to prevent all damage from the debuff. Don't come out of stealth, as the debuff remains through Vanish.

* Hunters - Feign Death works normally... including the chance to be resisted.

* Paladins - Use Blessing of Protection on others. As the wolf will follow Little Red Riding Hood for longer than this buff can last, the player will be taking damage if he/she get the buff too early.

* Priests - Mind Flay now has no slowing effects on the Big Bad Wolf.

* Mages - Use Amplify Magic to help with healing as there is no magic damage during the fight.

* Warriors - Use Thunderclap to slow his damage output when chasing as well as Intervene to absorb a hit.

Miscellaneous

This event requires at least 1 person on the stage to start. If you fail to have a player on the stage to talk to the old lady, you will be stuck outside the stage door. If this happens, the event will be stuck, unable to reset. However, it is possible for a person to run up the right side of the pipe organ and manage to leap onto the stage. This is a very tricky maneuver to do, however, and the best course of action is to remind your raid group that if they hear the message that their eyes cannot be trusted, everyone should immediately run onto the stage.

If you don't have somebody on the stage, it is still possible to recover this event through a soft reset. Have all your raiders exit the instance for thirty (30) minutes. All of the mobs on a timer will respawn and the event will be reset.

As of Patch 2.1.1 (6/5/07) the door does not close until Grandmother has been talked to and the wolf spawns.

* Reset: to reset the big bad wolf, place all players near the door, when he charges, run to the side - this will cause him to charge through the door, reseting him.

Romulo and Julianne - Is an event in the Opera House in Karazhan. It is an homage to Romeo and Juliet.

Abilities

Julianne

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

Romulo

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

Strategy

Fighting Romulo and Julianne is a very intensive fight. In phase one, the raid fights Julianne, who primarily casts spells, in phase two the raid fights Romulo, who only does melee, and in phase three the raid fights them both.
[edit] Phase One

In phase one, you will fight Julianne. She is a caster and should be interrupted as much as possible to conserve mana. The interrupters should focus on Eternal Affection, which heals herself for a lot of health. Interrupting the other spells, however, is good for conserving healer mana. She is immune to Silence, but not to other interrupting abilities such as Kick, Shield Bash or Earth Shock.

Dispelling her Devotion buff should be prioritized, however, since it increases her DPS a lot. It is a magic buff and can be removed with Dispel Magic (Priest), Devour Magic (Felhunter), Purge (Shaman), or Spellsteal (Mage).

It is helpful to have her die in a corner separate from Romulo, to make it easier to pick her up in phase three.


Phase Two

During phase two, the raid fights Romulo. He is a warrior-type boss, has approximately 190,000 health, and hits quite hard. Like Julianne, his buff should be removed with the aforementioned spells, because it greatly increases his DPS.

He should be tanked with his back turned to the wall, so that the melee DPS will not get knocked back too far by his Backward Lunge.

It is possible to disarm Romulo, and though it should be done as much as possible, it is best to do it when he gains Daring to compensate for his higher DPS in that stage. Like Julianne, he should die in a corner.


Phase Three

Many players believe phase three is the true event, because you now fight Romulo and Julianne at the same time. The tactics of phase one and two still apply, however because the raid now has less mana and is engaging both bosses at the same time, it will be harder.

The raid should split up in two groups, one group which focuses on Romulo and one group which focuses on Julianne. Preferably, the Romulo group should be ranged (due to his melee abilities), and the Julianne group should be melee.

They must die within 10 seconds of each other, or the dead boss will resurrect with full health again, just like the core hounds in Molten Core.

an alternative tactic is to let the lock(s) use their dots upon julianne, and DPS romeo down while having your interrupters on julianne to prevent a heal. If allowed, Julianne will heal herself or Romulo so it is imperative her heals be interrupted. Silencing Shot does not interrupt her spell. Once romeo hits 10%-5% you can switch to julianne. it is advisable to stop casting dots at 30% to prevent the locks from killing romeo before julianne is ready to die. then full out nuke julianne, and start casting dots on romeo once julianne hits 15%.

Miscellaneous

* A Detect Magic should be kept up on Romulo and Julianne at all times, so you can clearly notice when they gain Devotion or Daring. These buffs can be devoured, dispelled or stolen. Having a mage steal Devotion is preferred due to the increase of casting speed.
* Having a hunter drop a Snake Trap generally aids the raid, especially the healers. Julianne will target the snakes for Powerful Attraction or Blinding Passion, and Romulo can use Backward Lunge on them.
* It is no longer possible to reset this encounter by jumping off the balcony.
* As Priest's Dispel Magic and Shaman's Purge cost far less mana than Mage's Spellsteal and Warlocks will likely be using their Imp, the following macros can help Priests and Shaman to remove Romulo and Julianne's self-buffs without losing their current target:

*/cast [target=Romulo] Dispel Magic
*/cast [target=Julianne] Purge

* It is possible for a hunter to feign death during this fight, leave combat and drink/eat. Feign JUST before Julianne and Romulo die on the stages where they are by themselves. If you do this correctly, you will be able to keep mana during this whole fight.

The Curator - Is an Arcane Guardian boss in the Menagerie in Karazhan. It is not optional. Raids wanting to reach the bosses behind it must first defeat The Curator. The encounter is not difficult to learn, but requires good gear. A raid able to defeat this boss is in principle equipped well enough to defeat all the following bosses, save perhaps Nightbane and Prince Malchezaar.

Abilities

* About 660,000 HP, high armor
* Immune to arcane spells, bleed and poison effects, and mana drain spells.
* Basic Melee: Around 3000 on a tank
* Summons Astral Flares [1] with 12000 health. These use Arcing Sear, a rapid-fire chained attack which hits up to three characters within ten yards for 675-825 arcane damage each. Flares can be tanked, but are immune to taunts, stuns and snares. They take normal damage from all attacks.
* Hateful Bolt [2] - An arcane bolt that hits a non-tank player character for 4435-5999 Arcane damage.
* Evocation - When the Curator runs out of mana, it ceases all attacks and evocates for 20 seconds to restore its mana to full. Attacks on The Curator cause 200% extra (triple) damage during this time.
* Enrage - At 15% melee damage and Hateful Bolt rate both are increased slightly and no more Astral Flares or Evocates occur.
* Berserk - After 10 minutes it goes berserk, giving all raid members an unremovable debuff which increases arcane damage taken by 500%.


Strategy

Killing the Curator is basically a gear check. It's not a coincidence that this boss drops the first class set tokens - they really want to be earned. There's not much strategy or room for fancy maneuvers - either the raid does have the required DPS and the necessary mana endurance, or it has not. This is a fight where consumables can really help, particularly those that regenerate mana.

The fight consists of four possible phases. Most of the fight consists of two alternating phases: a Flare Phase (which lasts 100 seconds) followed by an Evocation Phase (which lasts 20 seconds). Once the Curator's health drops below 15% it enters the Enrage phase, when it stops summoning Flares and Evocating, but melees and casts Hateful Bolts more rapidly. If it is still alive ten minutes after the pull, it enters the Berserk phase and wipes the raid in a few seconds.


Flare Phase


In this phase, the single most important element of the fight takes place: The Curator summons Astral Flares, and these have to be killed as fast as possible.

One Astral Flare is summoned every 10 seconds (for which the Curator spends 10% of its mana). The Flare initially aggros a random non-tank player character and starts advancing in his direction. It deals out Arcing Sear (a chain-lightning-like attack) on up to three players in its vicinity for about 750 arcane damage per target per second. The Flares spawn with initial threat from their first chosen targets, so it is rather difficult (but also unnecessary) to tank them away from the raid.

Each Flare must be destroyed within 10 seconds, before the next one spawns. Else, there will be multiple Flares present and damage output on the raid will quickly exceed the healers' capability to keep up with it. It is not necessary to damage the Curator at all during this phase. Only if no Astral Flare is up, damaging the Curator is permissible (unless the raid has excess DPS: see Positioning below).

This cannot be over-emphasized: By far, the most important part of the fight is killing the Astral Flares as quickly as possible. Wipes on Curator usually happen because the healers run out of mana. They run out of mana because the Flares are alive too long. The solution is almost always to kill the Flares faster. If each Flare dies in seven seconds instead of ten, the healers will find their jobs to be much easier.

Besides summoning Flares, the Curator continuously deals moderate melee damage against the main tank and casts a Hateful Bolt every 10 to 15 seconds on a non-tank player character. The chance for a player of becoming the victim of a Hateful Bolt is influenced by the players' current health level and his position on the Curator's threat table. This can be utilized by a raid to designate one character - preferably a warlock with a high health pool or a shadow priest - as a soaker for most of the Hateful Bolts by having him constantly keep up some DoT effects on the Curator. Equipping this character with arcane resistance gear negates a substantial amount of the damage from the Hateful Bolts, making the fight somewhat easier for the healers. It is important to keep the bolt tank healed, as the Curator doesn't appear to Bolt targets which would die from the Bolt damage alone, instead picking the next on the list. Note that using a Hateful Bolt soaker is reasonable only when the raid is otherwise still capable of killing the Flares fast enough. It's typically done when using only two healers.


Evocation Phase

Immediately after The Curator summons the tenth Astral Flare with the last of its mana, it enters a state of Evocation for 20 seconds while it refills its mana. While it does so, it goes completely inactive and all damage dealt against it is tripled.

The raid must first concentrate on killing the tenth and last Flare before switching damage over to the Curator, otherwise there will be two Flares up after the Evocation, which will most probably result in a wipe. Killing the Flare quickly also grants the healers a few seconds break for mana regeneration.

Cooldown and single-use abilities that temporarily increase damage output should be saved up for this moment and be activated at the beginning of the phase to quickly kill the last Astral Flare and to make the most out of the Curator's temporary vulnerability.

Once the Curator has finished refilling mana, the fight continues with the next Flare Phase (or the Enrage Phase, if its health is brought down below 15% during the Evocation).


Enrage Phase

Once The Curator's health drops below 15%, it stops summoning Astral Flares, ceases new Evocations, and increases melee damage output and Hateful Bolt frequency. This means that the healers simply give the main tank and the victims of the Hateful Bolt more attention while everyone else just nukes down the remaining health of The Curator. The Enrage Phase is actually the easiest part of the fight.

Positioning

Since the most important aspect of the fight is killing the Flares quickly, the determining factor for setup is whether melee damage dealers have to help killing the Flares, or not. If so, a concentrated setup is advisable. If the ranged damage dealers are good enough to kill each Flare within eight seconds by themselves, the distributed setup makes the encounter faster and easier.

Concentrated

If melee damage dealers are needed on the Flares, everybody except the hunters set up close together, and the hunters are as close as possible (just the minimum range away). The main tank is on one side of The Curator, and everybody else is on top of each other on its back (within melee range). This concentrated setup makes it easy for the melee classes to help killing the Flares, and quickly switch to The Curator when no Flares are up. The drawback of this method is that the Flare damage is maximized. This is offset to some extent since multi-target heal spells like Chain Heal also have their maximum effect.


Distributed

If the raid's ranged DPS is high enough to kill the Flares quickly (in less than eight seconds) without support from the melee characters, the melee group sets up close to The Curator as before, but the ranged damage dealers and healers stay at least ten yards away from every other player. This significantly reduces Flare damage, because Arcing Sear doesn't jump farther than ten yards. It can reduce the load on the healers to the point where they have surplus mana and can help dealing damage in the Evocation phases. Also, the melee group is on the Curator all the time, which significantly shortens the fight.

If ranged DPS is too low, and melee has to help killing Flares, it's wrong to choose the distributed setup. Even a single melee damage dealer chasing Flares breaks the ten yard pattern, and thus the Flare damage will be maximum anyways. Because of this, a concentrated setup is best for most raids.


Miscellaneous Tips

* When The Curator starts evocating, some DPS meter chasers may be tempted to cheat by attacking The Curator before the last Flare is dead. This can and does lead to wipes in marginal raids. Watch out for cheaters and stop them.
* For most problems on The Curator, the solution is to kill the Flares faster. If that doesn't work, the best solution is usually to come back later with better gear, specs, and more consumables.
* The Flares will spawn either to the left or right of the Curator. Players who know exactly where to look will pick them up quicker than those who wait for them to start moving towards the raid.
* If there are multiple hunters, they should spread out from each other. This avoids more than one being forced into melee combat if an Astral Flare comes their way. They can use their pets' Growl ability to pin the Flares in place.
* While it's tempting to use arcane resistance gear, it slows down Flare-killing. It's somewhat useful on the tank and any Hateful Bolt soaker, but generally harmful on other characters.
* The current best theory on Hateful Bolt targeting is that it ignores the tank and anyone without enough health to survive it, but otherwise hits whoever has generated the most threat since the last Evocation.
* Mana is an issue in this fight. Make sure everyone has enough mana potions ready for this fight and also consider bringing consumables like Elixir of Major Mageblood, Superior Mana Oil, Flask of Mighty Restoration, Elixir of Draenic Wisdom and Blackened Sporefish. Alchemists will truly learn to appreciate the Alchemist's Stone here. Using a Cauldron of Major Arcane Protection will give the healers a break at the start of the fight. Finally, more than anything else, killing the Flares faster helps with healer mana.

* The following simple macro is handy to help damage-dealers target live Astral Flares quickly:

/target Astral Flare
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/target The Curator

* Multi-target heals are very effective in this fight, especially Chain Heal and Prayer of Mending.
* Warlocks can cast Curse of Doom somewhere between the summoning of the fourth and sixth Astral Flare which makes certain it will go off during the Curator's vulnerable Evocation Phase.
* Threat is not an issue in this fight. Use buffs or totems that facilitate quick Flare-killing. Don't use buffs like Salvation that reduce threat.
* Despite the complicated advice given here, this fight is really just a gear check, especially on the damage-dealers. Any strategy will work if the raid has powerful enough gear. No strategy will work without solid gear.

Terestian Illhoof, along with his minion Kil'rek, is an optional boss in the library section of Karazhan. Both have a low-aggro range - you can sneak around the side at the start, and rez everyone in the room with no difficulty.

Attacks and abilities


Terestian

* Basic Melee - Illhoof hits for around ~1800 damage on a tank.
* Shadow Bolt - Illhoof fires a ~4000 damage Shadow Bolt at the highest target on the aggro list.
* Sacrifice - A random character is summoned to the center of the room and is paralyzed, suffering 1,500 unresistible (and unabsorbable) shadow damage per second until the chains (which count as a creature) are destroyed. While the chains are up, Illhoof is healed for 3,000 health per second. The chains have roughly 13,000 health. Can be removed with Ice Block or Divine Shield. Cannot be cast on the main tank (altough it CAN be cast on someone tanking Kil'rek).
* Berserk - After 10 minutes, Illhoof goes berserk, spamming high-damage Shadow Bolt Volleys on the entire raid every few seconds.

Kil'rek

* Basic Melee - Hits for 2,000 on cloth.
* Amplify Flames - Undispellable debuff that increases fire damage by 500. This is applied to a random target.
* Broken Pact - Debuffs Illhoof on death, making him take 25% more damage until Kil'rek respawns (~45 seconds after death).

Summoned Imps

* Basic Melee - Around 400, generally used if aggro target is fire immune or in close proximity.
* Firebolt - Deals 200 fire damage, up to 700 if Amplify Flames is on the target. Quick casting.



Strategy / Overview


* Illhoof and his imp aggro when you pull him. After around 10 seconds, he emotes and summons two portals from the back of the room. Imps continue to pour out of these portals at a steady rate throughout the entire fight.
* If Kil'rek is killed, he respawns after roughly 45 seconds and rejoins the fight.
* When Illhoof sacrifices anyone, they appear in the circle in the middle of his room.
* Staying bunched close to Illhoof is a good idea. Illhoof and Kil'rek both should be tanked near the circle where the Sacrifice happens. This makes it easy to quickly switch from Illhoof/Kil'rek to the chains. Bunching also makes sure the warlock's Seed of Corruption hits a lot of imps.

Tanking

* Depending on the strategy used, one or two tanks should suffice for this fight.
* Illhoof is not particularly hard to tank, although he needs to be kept near the imps he summons so that he receives AoE damage as well.
* Kil'rek, his imp, can be problematic because he spawns in the middle of battle, which generally leads to him attacking an AoE class or a healer. You can use an off-tank (ideally a druid) to pick him up quickly. Druids are ideal for this task, as they can easily shift between tanking form and DPS form; however since he doesn't hit very hard, a DPS warrior can also work. Another alternative is to simply have a second tank on him for the entire fight.
* Kil'rek can also be tanked successfully by a Balance Druid in Moonkin Form. The Moonkin should maintain aggro on Kil'rek by keeping a full round of Insect Swarm and Moonfire and enough raw damage to keep aggro from going to healers. The Moonkin should also DPS Illhoof during this time as well. This will be very mana-taxing and your Moonkin for the fight should have high Mp5 and plenty of potions on hand.
* If steady AoE is used, imps should be on that class the entire fight. Note that if the imps are not immediately hit, they may aggro on the healers.
* If only one tank is used to tank both Illhoof and Kil'rek, they should be kept out of the AoE to avoid Kil'rek aggroing on the AoE.

Kill priority

* The most important thing in the fight is to DPS down Demon Chains as soon as they appear. Demon Chains should go down REALLY fast, not just because the Sacrifice victim will die very quickly but also because Illhoof will heal a lot during it AND the designated Demon Chain healer will lose more mana spamming heals.
* Wound Poison has no effect on the healing from chains. It's likely Mortal Strike also has no effect. It appears to always heal exactly double the amount of damage inflicted.
* The Demon Chains may be vulnerable to some DoTs (e.g., poison) and AoE, although chains should be dying fast enough to make the former of little use. The Chains are not vulnerable to Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath, Arcane Explosion, or Consecration.
* Kil'rek can be either slowly killed via AoE or rapidly killed as soon as he spawns. Killing him rapidly reduces the danger of losing your AoE to Amplify Flames, but can make tanking problematic for the off tank. Killing Kil'rek first will ensure that he has the Broken Pact debuff on longer. As long as you can kill Kil'rek in under roughly 10 seconds, you will do more damage by killing him and reaping the benefit of Broken Pact.
* If it takes longer than 10 seconds to kill Kil'rek focus DPS on Illhoof and allow Kil'rek die from AoE/off-tank. This results in more damage to Illhoof.


Dealing with Imps

* The easiest way to kill off the spawning imps is a pair of warlocks spamming Seed of Corruption on Illhoof. The imps rarely live long enough to hit the warlocks. Since most groups do not have two warlocks, substitute other AoEs for a slightly less easy kill strategy.
* If your AoE is not up to that task designate one high-damage melee DPS (well-geared rogue or cat) to burn them down one at a time. The Kil'rek tank can help clean up any left-overs when Kil'rek is down.


Dealing with Sacrifice

At least one healer with a quick reaction time should be designated to heal sacrifice victims. A paladin works well here, since they can bubble out of it if they themselves become sacrificed.

* You can use /target Demon Chains or /tar Demon to switch to the chains quickly to quickly DPS them down.
* If you have trouble keeping sacrifice victims alive, have each healer use one mid-level heal on the victim at the start of the effect, to provide a cushion of health for the main sacrifice healer to work with. At least one of these heals should land quickly enough to keep the victim alive while the other heals are cast.
* Illhoof's Sacrifice has a 3 second cast time and it's the only occassion for which he changes his target to someone other than the main tank. If Healers are using addons that supply them with a "Main Tank Target's Target" such as CT_Raid, or use Healer Bbuttons, Clique or [target=mouseover] macros for healing which allow them to heal while constantly keeping Illhoof targeted, it will give them some seconds of advance warning on who is about to be sacrificed.
* Mages can use Ice Block and Paladins can use Divine Shield to get themselves out of a sacrifice. Druids can use Barkskin to reduce damage taken.
* Healers need to be prepared for pushback when the person handling imp AoE is sacrificed, as they will draw aggro from a rapidly increasing number of imps. Concentration Aura helps, as does a Challenging Shout/Challenging Roar/Holy Wrath from the tank.
* Keep Illhoof as close to the Sacrifice circle as possible so that Melee can make an easy switch to bring the chains down ASAP.

The Shade of Aran - Is a boss in the abandoned tower of Karazhan. He is the spirit of Nielas Aran, the father of Medivh - the previous occupant of Karazhan. He is located in the Guardian's Library, which is a small, circular room (about 45 yards in diameter), with one door that closes and locks as soon as the fight begins. After Aran's dead a teleport to his room becomes available from Berthold the Doorman, and all trash mobs from the Curator to Aran (exc. one pack outside Illhoof's door), will cease to respawn. The packs above his library are linked to Netherspite.

Abilities

* ~900k HP
* very low armor
* Immune to Mind Numbing Poison, Curse of Tongues, and Silence.


Basic Spells

* Frostbolt - 3 sec cast, 3500 to 4500 frost damage and 4 sec slow
* Fireball - 2 sec cast, 3910 to 5290 fire damage
* Arcane Missiles - 5 sec channeled, shoots 5 missiles each dealing 1260 to 1540 arcane damage (6300-7700 total)
* Chains of Ice - 10 second root, does not break on damage. Dispellable.
* Slow - Reduces movement and melee attack speed by a considerable amount for 10 seconds. Dispellable.
* AoE Counterspell - 10 yard radius AoE around Aran, occurs very often. Locks out schools of magic for 10 sec.

All of Aran's basic spells have infinite range (even through walls, they hit anywhere in the instance) and are randomly targeted. It is possible to interrupt and lock out his basic abilities (with Counterspell/Pummel/Earth Shock etc.), up to the point where he starts to use his weak melee attack. He rarely takes a swing even when not all his schools are locked. When meleeing, he uses a normal aggro table (and often will attack a rogue or warrior in melee range). It has been noted that his Arcane Missiles have a preponderance to be targetted toward the raid member with the lowest percentage health.

All slowing and root effects are dispellable (magic), and can be broken by the usual methods.

Special Abilities

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 - 5 sec cast which creates a fiery aura (which lasts 20 sec) around 3 random people in the raid. When the auras are triggered by moving over them, they will deal 3-4k fire damage to everyone in the room.
* Blizzard - 1313 to 1687 damage every 2 seconds and slows movement speed by 65%, large AoE that moves slowly clockwise around the room
* Magnetic Pull / Super Arcane Explosion - Pulls everyone to the center of the room, followed by a 10 second cast that will deal 9,000-11,000 aoe damage in a 20 yard radius.

Water Elementals

At 40% HP, the Shade of Aran summons 4 Elite Water Elementals with ~10,000 HP. They shoot a constant stream of Waterbolts for ~1000-2000 damage and will despawn after 90 seconds. They can be feared/banished for the duration.
[edit] Regenerate Mana

When the Shade of Aran gets down to 20% mana or less (about 30k), he will do an emote, Polymorph the entire raid, conjure some water, and start drinking. After about 10 seconds, the polymorph will break and he'll do an AoE Pyroblast right thereafter. If Aran is interrupted while drinking, he will simply use a Potion and Pyroblast. The Pyroblast does 7000-7500 damage to each raid member. As of Patch 2.2, the polymorphs affects characters normally immune to the effect, such as druids in a form. Elementals may break one or more of the sheeps during this time. When the Shade of Aran sits down, any healers released from polymorph by an elemental should heal to full himself and anyone low on health or the Pyroblast will kill you.

If Aran reaches 20% mana again after the first Mass Polymorph, he will not polymorph and pyroblast again, he will just drink a potion and continue.

As of 2.1.2 you can use Insignia of the Alliance/Horde to get out of the polymorph while he drinks.

Shadows of Aran

After 12 minutes, he will go berserk calling Shadows of Aran. They have various high-damage AoE abilities which will wipe you within seconds. This is not a serious concern; the fight should never take that long.
[edit] Strategy

The problem in this fight is that the whole raid must learn to avoid damage. The Shade of Arans basic attacks are not very dangerous, but the special attacks are deadly. Each raid member must pay attention which attack is upcoming, nobody can sit back and just do their usual routine. Once everybody learns how to move (or when not to move), the fight actually becomes rather easy.

In order to avoid the Magnetic Pull/Arcane Explosion everybody must run to the outer wall of the room, the Blizzard forces people towards the center (or the other side of the room), and Flame Wreath inhibits movement. Beyond this, casters want to stay outside the AoE silence and classes with spell interrupt abilities want to concentrate on what he's casting.

The encounter cannot be reset.

Gear

Aggro is of almost no relevance, because Aran chooses his targets semi-randomly, thus the tanks should don DPS gear. If the raid chooses not to interrupt arcane missiles, some arcane resistance can be useful. Everyone in the group should strive for at least 8k HP after buffs, more is better. Even healers and ranged DPS must be able to survive a wave of arcane missiles (7k), and everybody must be able to survive the pyroblast (7.5k).
[edit] Interrupts

Arans standard attacks (Fireball, Frots Bolt and Arcane Missile) can all be interrupted. By interrupting his spells, the raid can take some influence on how fast Aran spends his mana. This is important, because it has to be avoided that the polymorph/fireblast (at 20% mana) and the water elementals (at 40% health) occur close to each other. When either health or mana reach the critical percentage, the other must be clearly away from the threshold.

For a raid new to this encounter (with comparably low DPS), it is advisable to interrupt only Arcane Missile, and let him freely cast Frost Bolt and Fireball. This will maximize Arans mana usage, and thus the polymorph/pyroblast will occur early, clearly before he reaches 40% health. After the polymorph, the raid can interrupt any of his spells, to minimize damage taken.

If the raids DPS are high enough that pyroblast and water elementals happen close to each other even though only the Arcane Missiles are interrupted, it's time to switch to letting Aran cast the Missiles freely, and interrupt Fireball and Frost Bolt. This will conserve his mana, so that the Water Elementals will occur first. If DPS are really high, the polymorph will finally not occur at all.

Fireballs and Frost Bolts should be interrupted near the end of their casting time, because he expends mana only at the end of the cast and he will be doing nothing else for nearly 2s. Arcane Missiles should be interrupted early, as he spends the mana upfront and thus they will cause less damage. It is useful to assign each player with an interrupt ability one type of spell which he should take care of, this avoids everybody interrupting the same spell, and then have the abilities on cooldown for the next one.

It should be noted that Feral Druids CAN use Feral Charge to interrupt any of Aran's three schools. It will still interrupt his spells even though he is immune to the snare.

Blizzard

This special attack will materialize as a blue, translucent cloud on the floor that slowly moves clock-wise along the outer perimeter of the room until it has completed a whole 360° turn and disappears again once it reaches its point of origin. The cloud will snare any player it touches and is trailed by a damaging AoE blizzard which will extend backwards up to 180° of the blizzards' path.

Players in melee range to Aran do not have to worry about the blizzard as it will only affect the outer radius of the room. Ranged fighters and healers should always keep a lookout for the cloud and run away clock-wise from it (but avoid running into the tail of the blizzard) unless they are already affected by the snare, in wich case they should immediately turn to cross through the safe center of the room. This will likely expose them to Aran's silencing counterspell, but is still the lesser of two evils. If you keep your raid evenly spread out in the room (in particular the healers), this should not be a serious problem.
[edit] Flame Wreath

If Flame Wreath is upcoming, the whole raid must immediately stop moving, simple as that. People must wait until the auras are clearly visible, and may only move again when they are sure they will in no way come near one of them. The effect is triggered in particular by the following:

* All forms of player movement, including jumping, sitting down, standing up or turning
* Paladins' Divine Shield
* Rogues Cloak of Shadows
* Accepting a resurrection (Rebirth or Soulstone)
* Mages' Blink
* Druids' shapeshifting
* It is possible that Tauren effected by a Shaman's Bloodlust ability will break trigger the flame wreath when they increase in size (unconfirmed)

The following will not trigger the effect:

* Spell casting
* Movement resulting from a spell cast (like Mind Flay)
* Nether Protection
* Pets

People who trigger the Flame Wreath effect are often subjected to a torrent of verbal abuse by the rest of the group.

Magnetic Pull / Arcane Explosion

Prior to this, Aran will always cast an AoE slow. If everybody starts immediately running right after the magnetic pull (no turning around, just run!), even slowed people can reach the wall before the explosion. The slow can be broken by PvP trinkets, Rogues' Cloak of Shadows or Improved Sprint, Druids' Shapeshift, Warlocks' Spellstone, Paladins' Blessing of Freedom, and Gnomes' Escape Artist. Aspect of Cheetah/Pack will also help. Mages can blink to an edge and use the extra time for an evocate. Priests and Paladins should keep an eye out for slow reactions (or anyone in "Chains of Ice"), since the slowing effects can be dispelled. Warriors can use Intervene to quickly charge up to a raid member at the edge of the room.

Water Elementals

A Warlock is invaluable here, because the Water Elementals can be banished, stunned and feared, and are susceptible to Curse of Tongues. The adds should be tanked and nuked ASAP. It helps a lot if the tank wears frost resistance gear. The elementals have roughly 13k HP as of the newest patch, so they can be burned down very easily. Because of this, having a warlock in the group is not as important as before.

Nevertheless, the spawning of the Elementals can become a problem when happening simultaneously with a special attack of Aran where everyone is too distracted to immediately grab the aggro of an Elemental before healing aggro draws their combined fire on a poor healer. This is exactly the one moment in this battle you want to save up any defensive or offensive special abilities or trinkets with cool down up for.

Regenerate Mana

If the raids DPS are high enough, and the interrupts work well, this phase does not necessarily occur. If it does occur, the healers have to be on their toes to very quickly heal the raid after the Pyroblast (preferably using AoE heals). The polymorph breaks a very short time before the pyroblast, so it is possible to cast some protections (Priest shield, HoTs, Paladin bubble, Mage fire ward, fire resistance totems etc.) right before the Pyroblast. After the blast, raid members should use health potions and Healthstones to heal quickly.

This polymorph will even work on characters which are normally immune to polymorph. Druids in Tree of Life form are not considered a valid target for the polymorph however. Therefore, a raid can have the druid cast Lifebloom or another HoT on as many people as he can in anticipation of the AoE Pyroblast. Preparing the raid member with the lowest HP who is not in the druids group to receive Swiftmend would also be an option, as well as preparing Nature's Swiftness to cast either Rebirth (if needed) or Healing Touch.

Druids may now use Barkskin to reduce the damage dealt to them by the Pyroblast, which for druid healers may be essential in keeping themselves alive. Then cast Tranquility right after the Pyroblast to quickly heal up your half of the raid to full health again.

Prior to Battle

Netherspite patrols the back section of his room, but his aggro radius is not particularly large, allowing the entire raid to comfortably enter the room before the pull.

Attacks and Abilities

* Basic Melee: Netherspite hits for roughly 8k on cloth, without any buffs stacked on him.
* Nether Burn: Aura type spell, deals 1200 shadow damage every 5 sec, affected by line of sight. This damage is resistible, so shadow resist buffs beforehand can negate much of it. Only active during Portal phase.
* Void Zone: Opens a massive void portal that lasts 25 sec., inflicting ~1k shadow damage every 2 sec. to all enemies in the selected area. (Similar to that in the Four Horsemen fight of Naxxramas, or Zereketh the Unbound in Arcatraz) Simply move out of the affected area immediately.
* Netherbreath: An attack hitting everyone in front of Netherspite for 4500 arcane damage in addition to knocking them back for ~20 yards. Will be chain cast during Banish phase. Cast time: 2.5 seconds.

* Empowerment: Undispellable self-buff that increases damage by 200%. Cast during Portal phase a few seconds after beams come up and will remain for the whole phase.
* Enrage: After 9 minutes, Netherspite will enrage, increasing his damage done by 500%. Will generally make quick work of your raid, dealing upwards of 30000 damage per hit in melee.

Strategy

There are two phases to this fight, which alternate between each other. The Portal phase, which is the first one and lasts for a minute, and the Banish phase, which lasts for half a minute. They alternate until the encounter is over or Netherspite enrages.

During all phases Void Zones will spawn under random players, dealing large amounts of shadow damage in a short frame of time to those who aren't moving out of them quick enough.
Portal phase

At the beginning of this phase, three portals of different colors will spawn at fixed locations in the room and will begin emitting a beam of their respective color (see below) towards Netherspite.

If the beams are allowed to hit Netherspite freely, they are granting him stacking buffs which strengthen or even heal him. The buffs on Netherspite last 5 seconds from last application (instead of the 8 to 20 seconds it does on players). The beams can (and must) be blocked by players who position themselves between a portal and Netherspite. Players blocking the beams are also affected by a stacking buff, having a positive and a negative effect which grow with each second that they spend in inside the beam. Although the positive effects are quite helpful for the fight, the negative effect makes it hard to nearly impossible for one player to block a beam for the complete duration of the Portal Phase.

Once a buff "ticks out" (player leaves the beam long enough to lose the debuff - 8-20 sec), another debuff is applied to the player called Nether Exhaustion, which prevents him from intercepting that color beam for the next 90 sec.


Red Beam

* Perseverance (red) - Tank beam:
o Lasts for 20 sec after leaving the beam.
o Hits Netherspite:
+ Damage taken reduced by 1% per tick.
o 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.

Green Beam

* Serenity (green) - Healer beam:
o Lasts for 10 sec after leaving the beam.
o 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.)
o Hits Player:
+ Healing done is increased by 5% per tick.
+ Spell cost reduced by 1% per tick.
+ Greatly increases mana regeneration rate.
+ Maximum mana reduced by 200. Stacks up until your total mana pool reaches 0. Affects druids in feral forms as well.

Blue Beam

* Dominance (blue) - DPS beam:
o Lasts for 8 sec after leaving the beam.
o Hits Netherspite:
+ +1% spell damage increase per tick.
o Hits Player:
+ Damage dealt is increased by 5% per tick.
+ Healing received reduced by 1%.
+ Damage taken by spells is increased by 8%.

Portals will always spawn at the same locations in the room during all Portal phases, but their colors will semi-randomly change each time after the first Phase.
Beam Blocking Assignment

Players should block all three beams as soon as possible in the fight. The beams are generally assigned to individual players before the pull using the following criteria:

Red Beam - Classes with high armor, defense and health (i.e. Warriors, Bear Druids, Paladins, Shamans and Hunters). The red beam gives them the massive healing and health needed to tank Netherspite. But despite the replenishment to full health every second, Netherspite can sometimes crit them for very high numbers well above 10,000 (even on plate). So leather and cloth wearers can still get easily one-shot despite the augmented health maximum. Resilience from PvP gear is a useful attribute here.

Blue Beam - DPS classes (preferably with high health or shadow resistance). While their damage output increases rapidly, the damage received by them from Netherspite's shadow aura is also rapidly increasing and healing spells on them will become more and more ineffective. Players staying inside this beam for too long are also becoming highly prone to be killed by a Void Zone appearing under them.

Green Beam - The "Healer Beam". Can also be blocked by classes without a mana pool (Warriors and Rogues) who remain entirely unaffected by the beam. A manaless class can stay for a whole beam's duration within the beam and still be used to take their turn blocking the red or blue beam in the following phase.

Those not blocking a beam will be DPSing, or raid healing.


Beam Blocker Transition

Players who are setup as beam blockers for the second half of a Portal phase should be positioning themselves in front of the beam blockers of the first half once those have their beam secured. Once these have acquired 25 stacks of the beam's buff, they simply need to move out of the beam to have it hit their successor in front of them.

Banish Phase

The Banish phase lasts about 30 sec:

* Netherspite is banished, remains mostly stationary but still vulnerable to all damage.
* Netherspite is still able to deal melee damage to you during the Banish phase if you get too close to it. Only tanks should stay in melee range.
* Damage from Nether Burn aura will stop and no new Void Zones spawn during this phase.
* After a few seconds of inactivity he randomly fires Netherbreath hitting up to three players standing in a cone in front of him, inflicting up to 4.5k arcane damage on each, accompanied by a knock back.

Dealing with high damage bursts from Netherbreath becomes another difficult challenge after the raid has learned to cope successfully with beam management. Everyone who does not have a maximum health pool of more than 9000 HP is prone to be killed by two consecutive bolts if Netherspite aims his breath in the same direction twice in a row. It is mandatory that every player's health is kept above 4,500 HP at all times. Every players should use Healthstones and healing potions in this phase rather than rely on healers who will often have range problems due to the knock back effect. It's also possible to use bandages, since the Nether Burn aura is inactive during this phase.

Players should stand either very close to Netherspite so they are likely still in range of a healer after a knock back, or at maximum range, so that they are being knocked out of Netherspite's breath range and can bandage themselves safely before running back in. In any case, healers should make sure to spread out equally around Netherspite to cover every angle of him.

DoT effects should be timed very carefully in this phase, because after 30 seconds Netherspite will unbanish and reset his aggro table which he will go by for the next 10 seconds until someone can block the Red Beam again. The next Red Beam tank should immediately try to gain his aggro (save up some Rage for this during the Banish phase as he can't be taunted) and position himself between the dragon and the next Red Portal.

Miscellaneous Hints

* No one should ever cross the Red Beam behind its designated blocker. He would temporarily gain Netherspite's aggro who would move in order to reach this player and together with him the Green and Blue beams - which might slip off their respective blockers.
* The Green Beam can be temporarily "stolen" from its blocker to gain a few stacks of its buff for its mana regeneration effect. Make sure to move out after you've gained 5-6 stacks or the original blocker will become unable to accept the Beam back due to having gained Nether Exhaustion.
* Warriors should never use Berserker Stance when blocking the Red Beam. Netherspite can crit them for up to 30,000 damage if they do so.
* Red Beam blockers should be careful when moving out of void zones. It is usually possible to move forward or backward enough to not take damage from the void zone without causing Netherspite to shift position (thereby causing the blue and green beams to shift off their blockers and onto netherspite). Some people prefer to just sit in the void zone as the red beam's healing ability can usually make up for the extra damage.
* Warlocks can sustain a full duration of the Blue Beam by keeping themselves healed with Drain Life, since drains are not affected by the decrease in healing effects and the increase in damage done is almost as great as the increase in damage taken from Nether Burn. Warlocks with 2 points in the Soul Siphon talent can even surpass the increase in Nether Burn damage when there are 6 Affliction debuffs on Netherspite.
* Shadow Priests can also sustain a full duration of the Blue Beam if they have 2 points in the Improved Vampiric Embrace talent. Since Vampiric Embrace scales with damage done, the reduction to healing effects is offset. This in turn also benefits the Priest's entire group with massive health gains, since the Priest is the only one affected by the Blue Beam.
* The three different portals always spawn at the same location in the first Portal Phase:
o Red to the right of the entrance
o Green to the left of the entrance
o Blue opposite of the entrance
* During the Banish phase, healers should spread out to cover every side of Netherspite, so that no one ever gets knocked back out of every healers' range. It's a good practice to put raid target symbols on your healers so they can better coordinate their positioning.
* Another way to deal with the Banish Phase is to simply have everyone but one healer and one tank move out of range of the Netherbreath, at the back of the room. Netherspite will still attempt to target players that are out of range, and thus will not use Netherbreath as often on the two remaining behind. This requires Netherspite to be tanked at the far front of the room, and the raid will have to be quick to reposition themselves for the next Portal Phase.
o This is a safer method but if the raid has low DPS it may be a better idea to maintain dps during the banish phase to ensure a kill before netherspite enrages.

The Chess event is an non-optional encounter in Karazhan where the raid plays a sort of chess match against Medivh. The pieces represent units used during the First War, and are placed like chess pieces on a chess board.

The pieces of each side have the same abilities as their counterparts (i.e. a Warhorse can do exactly the same things as a Wolf), only their animations differ. Although the analogy to chess is usable (Doomguards are "stronger" than Footmen for example), it's not very strict. The pieces from the event behave very differently from real chess pieces, and the Kings are actually the strongest pieces in the game.

In order to start the event, a player has to talk to the king piece of their own faction. The objective is to kill the enemy King without loosing one's own king. If the game is won, a Dust Covered Chest appears with loot.

Afterwards the pieces are reset and it is possible to play a friendly game within the raid. During such a friendly game, there is a silence debuff in the chess room to prevent clearing the trash mobs leading to Prince Malchezaar.

As of 2.1 it is possible to reset the event by talking to the Echo of Medivh.


Controlling pieces

After the event started, raid members can control any currently uncontrolled piece of their own faction by talking to it. After taking control of a piece, the player character will be teleported onto a platform beside the chess field and the players viewing perspective will change to that of the controlled piece. A Pet Bar will appear with which the pieces movement and actions can be controlled, see the below table for a detailed description.

It is possible to release control of a piece by removing the control buff icon. This will incur a 15 sec debuff, during which time it is not possible to control another piece.

Solo-Stealth run

Before Patch 2.0, it was possible for a Rogue or Druid to stealth to the Chess Event by themselves, and to solo it, respectively. However, Blizzard released a new patch that disabled this ability, adding several mobs that could see through stealth. This writer was able to once again stealth his way to the Chess Event, using a 70 Night Elf Rogue with 5/5 Master of Deception and Darkmantle Boots, Charm of Alacrity, Moroes' Pocketwatch, and Evasion, and various Engineering equipment, such as the Goblin Rocket Boots XTreme and the Gnomish Cloaking Device. Using all three of the Dodge increasers, it is possible to remain relatively immune to all damage long enough for one to use Sprint and Goblin Rocket Boots Xtreme to get far enough away from the stealthed mobs to Vanish without them following him. In rare cases, the Cloaking Device proved useful for a second Vanish. However, this method took several hours of practice and know-how.

Strategy

The major difference to real chess is that the king is actually the strongest piece in the order of battle, he should be used in an offensive way (with a little care though). The friendly healers should be used to keep king and queen in good shape, while the the enemy healers should be killed first.

One simple method is to have each player chose one non-pawn piece which they will control later. Then, each player first moves the pawn in front of their piece as far as possible, releases control and takes over their real piece. As soon as holes in the pawn line appear, attack with the player controlled pieces. First, kill the enemy healers (bishops), next the queen and finally the king. The friendly healers should move only very little, and concentrate on keeping the king and queen at top health.

A more sophisticated strategy has four players initially controlling the four central pawns, and four other players on king, queen and both knights. The two remaining raid members should take the bishops. This allows to move the offensive pieces more quickly.

Chess Piece Abilities

1 2 3 4

* 1: Rotate Piece: The same for all pieces, click this and then click the square you would like to face.
* 2: Move: This moves the piece along the board. Refer to each piece for its movement pattern.
* 3: Special Ability 1: The piece's first unique ability, see piece description for details.
* 4: Special Ability 2: The piece's other unique ability, see piece description for details.

These abilities can either be activated by clicking on the pet bar, or by using Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-4. The Ctrl keys allow for faster movement and turning, and additionally selecting them from the pet bar sometimes times out before the ability can be used.

Each chess piece will auto-attack whoever it faces, and it can move, use abilities or change the direction it is facing.

While pieces can move diagonally, they can only face towards four directions. After a diagonal movement, pieces will turn 45° clockwise to realign themselves.

Movement and rotation share a common cooldown of 5 seconds.

Special abilities also share a common cooldown of 5 seconds (independent from movement). If an ability has a cooldown of more than 5 seconds, the other ability will only be affected by a 5 second cooldown.
Chess Event Pieces
Piece Alliance Horde Movement Ability 1 Ability 2 Notes
King King Llane Wrynn Warchief Blackhand 1 Space any dir. Sweep / Cleave
Deals 4000 damage to 3 enemy units in front of you. Cooldown 5 secs. Heroism / Bloodlust
Grants 50% increased damage to all allied humanoids on all 8 adjacent spaces, does not affect self. Cooldown 15 secs. High Health/High Damage. The first side to kill the opponent's King wins.
Queen Human Conjurer Orc Warlock Straight 3 / Diagonal 2 Elemental Blast / Fireball
Deals 4000 damage to any chess piece, Cooldown 5 secs. Range: Straight 4 / Diagonal 3. Rain of Fire / Poison Cloud
Deal 6000 damage to any chess piece and all hostile chess pieces adjacent to target. Cooldown 15 secs. Range: Straight 4 / Diagonal 3 Medium Health/High Damage
Bishop Human Cleric Orc Necrolyte 1 Space any dir. Healing / Shadow Mend
Heals any chess piece for 6000. Cooldown 20 secs. Range: Half of board. Holy Lance / Shadow Spear
Deals 2000 damage to any enemy units standing in a straight line of 3 squares in front of you. Cooldown 5 secs. Low Health/Low Damage. Only Healer.
Knight Human Charger Orc Wolf 2 Straight / 1 Diag Smash / Bite
Deals 3000 damage to a target 1 square in front. Cooldown 5 secs. Stomp / Howl
Reduces damage of all adjacent hostile chess pieces by 50%, last for 10 secs. Cooldown 5 secs. Medium Health/Low Damage
Rook Water Elemental Summoned Daemon 1 Space any dir. Geyser / Hellfire
Deals 3000 damage to all adjacent hostile chess pieces. Cooldown 5 secs. Water Shield / Fire Shield
Reduces damage done to self by 50%, last for 5 secs. Cooldown 5 secs. Low Health/Medium Damage
Pawn Footman Grunt 1 Space any dir. Heroic Blow / Vicious Strike
Deals 1000 damage to a target 1 square in front. Cooldown 5 secs. Shield Block / Weapon Deflection
Absorbs 500 damage. Lasts 5 secs. Cooldown 5 secs. Low Health/Low Damage

Warning: Medivh Cheats!

Medivh, at random, will cheat in the middle of the chess game, which can turn the tide of a fight, so be careful and quick about the decisions made on the field.

Healing Cheat

Medivh will randomly heal his king (and possibly all the other pieces) to full HP.

Damage Cheat

Medivh will target random units on the player's side of the field and surround them in fire, dealing massive damage to all affected units. Simply move out of the flames to avoid dying, but move quickly.

Berserking Cheat

Medivh will choose a few of his units and buff them. This buff will increase their size, speed and damage immensely. Either take down these pieces immediately or move away.

Prince -

Background

Little is known about him except that he is a Man'ari Eredar and a member of the Burning Legion. It is unknown what his purpose is, how, or when he arrived.

Due to his location at the top of Karazhan, he is considered by many to be the tower's final boss. However, some used to consider the creature Nightbane to be the true final boss of K