Attumen the Huntsman is the proud owner of Midnight, the strongest horse in the stables. If his horse is put in danger, he will rush to defend and destroy the attackers. As the first and easiest boss in Karazhan, he is considered a gear check for any adventurers who wish to delve deeper into Karazhan. Attumen is optional; it is not necessary to kill him in order to progress to the later bosses. Moroes and the Maiden of Virtue are both considered to be substantially tougher.

Attumen

Location: The Livery Stables, Karazhan
Basic Melee: 1,600 - 2,100 on tank, 8,000 on cloth.
Immune to taunt effects.
Shadow Cleave: Frontal melee-range AoE attack for around 4,000 shadow damage.
Intangible Presence: A reflectable AoE curse cast every 30 seconds that reduces chance to hit with melee and ranged attacks and spells by 50%. The area of the curse is centered on Attumen's current target.
Mount Up: When either Attumen or Midnight are at 25% he will mount up, both turning into one boss with the higher health percentage of both.
Berserker Charge: A charge that does 200 damage on cloth and applies a knockdown for a brief stun. It hits a random target at 8-40 yards. This charge frequently does only around 200 damage, it is possible for Attumen to get an attack on the charged target causing 6,000 damage.
Vulnerable to Disarm. (reduces damage about 65%)

Attumen's steed, Midnight

Basic Melee: Around 1,800 damage.
Immune to taunt effects.

Strategy

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

Preparation

Before pulling trash, assign a tank for Midnight and another tank for Attumen. It's best if the Attumen tank is a warrior, to easily disarm Attumen. The Midnight tank is best one that can swap to damage-dealing after Attumen mounts up. Arms warriors or feral druids can typically do this. (It's also possible for a well-geared paladin to tank both Attumen and Midnight simultaneously.) Assign healers to these two tanks and assign a third healer to top off whoever needs it.

Quickly clear all the trash in the stables area. Kill the Spectral Stable Hands first, as they have a heal spell. Control the other trash with Freezing Trap or Shackle Undead. You have only 25 minutes to clear all the trash, so keep moving. If anyone dies during a trash fight, don't wait for a resurrection. Run back in and re-join the fight. Keep pulling trash as long as two healers have mana and the tanks are fully healed.

Phase one - Midnight

Phase One starts when Midnight is attacked and lasts until she is reduced to 95% of her health. She will not attack until she is, herself, attacked. She calls any respawned undead horse trash to assist her, and initiates a basic heavy melee attack.

Phase One is a brief tank-and-spank. The only issue is making sure that the damage-dealers don't pull aggro off of the tank. Simply allow the tank a few moments to build threat, then attack with light damage output. The Attumen tank can build rage by attacking Midnight with white damage.

If Midnight calls any trash, put the Attumen tank on the trash and kill it before initiating Phase Two. Better yet, clear fast enough that there is no such trash.

Phase two - Midnight and Attumen

Phase Two starts when Midnight is reduced to 95% health. It lasts until either Midnight or Attumen is reduced to 25% health.

Attumen spawns near Midnight and begins attacking immediately. He uses his Shadow Cleave and his Intangible Presence curse.

The main danger during Phase Two is right at the beginning. A healer can get aggro and die before the Attumen tank establishes any threat. This generally leads to an eventual wipe. If this happens, run out of the Stables area to reset the fight. Quickly run back in, re-buff, and re-start the fight before respawns start.

When Attumen spawns, healers momentarily stop healing until his tank picks him up. The Attumen tank instantly uses non-targeted threat generation, such as Bloodrage, Thunderclap, Demoralizing Shout, or Consecration. A hunter can use Misdirection to help the Attumen tank (cast it during Phase One). Once the Attumen tank has aggro, he leads Attumen a short distance away from Midnight, and faces him away from the rest of the raid, so his Shadow Cleave can only hit one target.

Any warriors in the raid Disarm Attumen and use Spell Reflection to bounce the curse onto Attumen. Both of these tricks weaken Attumen considerably. Mages and druids remove the curse from the tanks and any non-tank warriors, to ensure that threat generation abilities and disarms land.

Damage dealers, simply hit Midnight without pulling aggro, all the way down to 25%. Healers, conserve mana as possible and use potions. It's a long fight. Hunters remember to use feign death if needed.

Some raids choose to also damage Attumen during this Phase, so that he has little more than 25% health on entering Phase Three. This results in more time with Midnight's melee and less time with Attumen's Berserker Charge.

Phase three - Attumen

Phase Three begins when either Attumen or Midnight is brought down to 25% health. It ends when Attumen dies.

Attumen mounts Midnight and the two of them fight as a single opponent. If Midnight has more health than Attumen, Attumen's health percentage goes up to Midnight's. Attumen gains the Berserker Charge ability, and continues using his Shadow Cleave and Intangible Presence abilities.

Attumen wipes threat at this transition, so everyone stops healing and attacking until the tank establishes aggro. Hunters can help by misdirecting to the Attumen tank.

The Attumen tank again faces his target away from the rest of the raid. Everyone except the Attumen tank moves immediately behind Attumen, so they cannot be hit by the Berserker Charge or the Shadow Cleave.

The Berserker Charge has a minimum range of eight yards. Even hunters can attack from less than that range, so nobody needs to get hit with the Charge. If Attumen manages to Charge someone anyway, he returns directly to the tank afterward, so the tank should not move. Attumen does not use his Shadow Cleave until he reaches the tank, so it's safe for him to run back through the rest of the raid after the charge.

The Midnight tank switches to a damage dealing form/stance and weapon and attacks Attumen.

Warriors continue to use disarm and spell reflection. Druids and mages continue to remove the curse.

The main threats associated with Phase Three are pulling aggro away from the tank (stay below 100% on a threat meter) and the healers running out of mana (bring lots of potions). Generally, however, this is an easy phase of an easy fight.

Post fight

Once Attumen is down, clear the mobs near Koren. He is required for quests, and characters with at least Honored reputation with the Violet Eye can use him to repair and purchase Blacksmithing recipes.

Moroes is Karazhan's steward, found tending to guests in the Banquet Hall in Karazhan. Along with four special invited patrons, Moroes fights any uninvited guests to the death. Moroes is the second boss and the first mandatory boss found in this raid instance, and his defeat allows access to the Opera Event.

Title: Tower Steward
Gender: Male
Race: Undead
Level: ?? Boss
Character class: Rogue
Health: 380,000
Affiliation: Medivh
Occupation: Steward of Karazhan, Castellan to Medivh
Location: Banquet Hall, Karazhan

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.

The party he "holds" in the tower's Banquet Hall includes ghosts of relatives of Darkshire noblemen as guests. Names of all of the NPCs in the Hall, including Ebonlocke who refuses to take part in the festivities, can be found as names of notable citizens of the Duskwood town.

Abilities

* Basic Melee: 1600–2500 on plate.
* Immune to Taunt
* Vanish: Vanishes without dropping aggro.
* Garrote: A physical DoT applied to a random player character after Vanish. Deals 1000 damage every three seconds for five minutes (100,000 total damage).
* Blind: A poison-based disorient effect that lands on Moroes' closest non-tank target.
* Gouge: A physical stun on Moroes' current target. Breaks on damage. Moroes attacks the target with the second-highest threat while his primary target is stunned.
* Enrage: At 30% health, Moroes Enrages, increasing his damage.
* Berserk: After a certain amount of time Moroes frenzies and throws daggers at random raid members.

Strategy

The Moroes encounter tests your raid's ability to control several targets while also maintaining high DPS. Success requires a solid control strategy for his four dinner guests. 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 the raid's damage output 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 dinner guests (adds)

Moroes has four different random dinner guests (adds) from the following list in every instance. Each add is 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, Holy Fire
Lady Keira Berrybuck - Holy Paladin - 68k - Holy Light, Cleanse, Divine Shield, Blessing of Might
Baron Rafe Dreuger - Retribution Paladin - 68k - Hammer of Justice, Cleanse
Lord Robin Daris - Arms Warrior - 84k - Mortal Strike, Whirlwind
Lord Crispin Ference - Protection Warrior - 84k - Disarm, Shield Bash, Shield Wall

Baroness Dorothea Millstipe
Her mana burn spell is the single most dangerous factor in this fight. It can burn all the mana from a healer, leading to a wipe. Fortunately, her cloth armor makes her easy to kill. Burn her down first, and as quickly as possible. Interrupt, silence, and stun her attempts to cast the mana burn. She does not need a tank, but make sure to heal her target.

Lady Catriona Von'Indi
She does not appear to use her Dispel Magic to free the other dinner guests from shackles or traps. Instead, she uses it to remove buffs from players. Her heals must be interrupted. If she is killed, no tank is required.

Lady Keira Berrybuck
Her heals and cleanses make her extremely disruptive, as she will release her friends from Shackle Undead and Freezing Trap. Her Blessing of Might adds 550 attack power and is also dangerous, especially on Moroes. Due to her armor and Divine Shield she is more difficult to kill than the priests. Therefore, she is a high priority to keep shackled the whole fight. If she is killed or trapped, warn the raid that shackles and other traps will break early and that priests, hunters, and shamans must get rid of the Blessing of Might. Her Divine Shield can be dispelled with Mass Dispel. If she is to be killed, a tank is a good idea, but not required.

Baron Rafe Dreuger
His main threat is his ability to stun his main target with Hammer of Justice and take off after a healer. While he has a documented Cleanse ability, he does not appear to use it much. He may be trapped, so long as the hunter is careful not to let him get close enough to stun. A tank is required to kill him.

Lord Robin Daris
His main threat is his powerful Mortal Strike. He will quickly kill anyone but a tank. He should generally be chain-trapped by a hunter, then tanked and killed. If no hunters are available, he should simply be off-tanked (with extra heals) until it is time to kill him. He can also be kept shackled the whole fight, but with great caution; the priest will die in one hit if he gets loose for long enough. Keep him away from the raid, as his whirlwind causes damage if he uses it in a crowd.

Lord Crispin Ference
He doesn't do a lot of damage, but takes a long time to kill. Therefore, it's reasonable to attack Moroes while Ference is still alive. Although his disarm ability is annoying, it is reasonable to off-tank him as a "rage battery", especially as a druid bear. Once the other dinner guests are dead or shackled, he can be trapped, turned, or killed when Moroes vanishes.

As many adds as possible should be crowd controlled. The adds can be controlled with the priest's Shackle Undead, the paladin's Turn Undead, the hunter's Freezing Trap, off-tanking, snares (with kiting), and stuns. Be careful when using a paladin to fear the adds, since if an add exits the room, the encounter resets.

Shackles can be maintained until Moroes is dead. Adds for which no shackle is available should usually 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 longer to kill due to their high health (particularly Ference).

Garrote

Moroes vanishes every 30 seconds, and upon return randomly Garrotes a raid member. Garrote is a bleed effect and deals 1,000 damage every three seconds for 300 seconds (5 minutes, for a total of 100,000 damage). After he garrotes, Moroes immediately returns to the highest threat target. Garrote can be removed by the following abilities only:

* Paladins' Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection
* Mages' Ice Block
* Items which remove bleeding effects (Luffa no longer works)
* Death (hopefully followed by a combat resurrection)
* It seems that hunters can avoid Garrote by Feign Death during Vanish

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 be enough. Group heals work well when multiple targets are garroted.

In theory, all Garrotes are automatically removed when Moroes is defeated. However, sometimes they persist even after Moroes dies. Resetting the encounter does not remove Garrotes.

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 resurrection cooldowns for Moroes. Do not cast soulstones before the encounter, but wait until an important target is garroted, and only then soulstone. This method of garrote removal has the advantage that the resurrection restores some mana. If a raid member is garroted and a combat resurrection is planned, the player should quickly spend all his mana, then just die and be ressurected.

If possible, Garrote should always be removed from a priest that is maintaining a shackle. All healers are important too. Damage-dealing 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 the Garrote breaks the Gouge.

Gouge and the tanks

Generally, two tanks are needed on Moroes. The off-tank must always be second on the threat list, because Moroes periodically gouges the main tank then turns to his target with the second-highest threat. This must be the off-tank. However, it is possible to avoid the gouge by turning your back to him, and backing up slowly until you can use your attacks.

Since the off-tank gets hit only while the main-tank is Gouged, rage may be a problem. To counter rage-starvation, the off-tank can grab one of the adds to act as a rage battery. This also controls that add.

If available, a third tank can handle the adds that require tanking, or one of the two Moroes tanks can do the job.

As a variant, a paladin can tank Moroes and all four adds. The paladin firsts casts Blessing of Sacrifice on a temporary off-tank (Or a warlock who can then use Hellfire to cause the paladin some damage) and later on a Garrote victim. This breaks Gouge as soon as the Garrote ticks or the hellfire passes some damage. If Baron Rafe Dreuger is present, the raid stun-locks, silences, and kills him quickly, so that he cannot stun the tank.

Dealing with Blind

Moroes casts Blind on his closest enemy that is not his current target. This is a poison-based disorient effect that causes the victim to temporarily lose aggro and wander aimlessly for ten seconds. It is broken by damage. It is devastating if Moroes Blinds the off-tank then Gouges the main tank, as he will then generally attack a healer.

To avoid this, assign a non-tank character to stand on top of Moroes at all times. This character takes the Blinds instead of the off-tank.

Naturally, Paladins, Druids, and Shamans should remove the Blind effect. Shamans should keep down a Poison Cleansing Totem to help with this.

Preparing for battle

Given the random nature of the adds and the raid's composition, every Moroes fight is different. The raid must make a plan before the pull and stick with it. This fight requires more planning than anything that comes before it in the game.

1. Clear the entire room of all the trash.
2. Mark Moroes and all the dinner guests with raid icons.
3. Determine and announce the kill order
4. Assign targets to players for:
* Shackling
* Freeze trapping
* Fearing (via Turn Undead)
* Tanking for Moroes, as crowd-control, and for kill targets
* Off-tanking, for Moroes
* Healing, for the tank, off-tank, and the rest of the raid
* Backup duties, should someone die before his assignment is complete

Executing the fight

Once a plan is established, it's time to execute it.

Pull Moroes, kill targets, and off-tank targets to one side of the room. Pull shackle and trap targets to the other side and control them there. This makes it less likely for the crowd-control to break from AoE attacks, dispels, or cleanses. The tanks generate threat on Moroes and any off-tank targets, while the controllers shackle or trap, then switch to healing or attacking as quickly as possible.

Use all cooldown abilities available to attack and kill the first target as quickly as possible. The fight becomes considerably easier to control once one or two targets die. There's no reason to save damage-dealing cooldowns for Moroes. Focus fire on the planned kill targets, in order, until Moroes dies.

The tank calls out when he is gouged, so that healers can switch focus to the off-tank.

Anyone who is controlling an add calls out when there is a problem so that someone else can help.

Once all non-shackled adds are killed, the raid may kill Moroes next to speed up the fight and reduce the pressure from multiple garrotes, or kill the shackled adds to remove the risk of them getting loose and causing trouble.

After Moroes is dead, the raid may kill any remaining adds or despawn them by leaving the room.

Notes

* The encounter can be reset by pulling/fearing an add out of the room or by having the entire raid run out of the room. However, Moroes leaving the room will not reset the encounter.
* If a shackle target gets loose, use taunts, stuns, snares, and fears to give the priest time to re-shackle it.
* Make sure the pets don't attempt to attack a shackled or trapped add when Moroes vanishes
* Since they're all undead, the Argent Dawn trinkets can be most useful here (Rune of the Dawn and Seal of the Dawn).

Class Specific Tips

Paladin
Paladins should use Divine Shield to remove Garrote from themselves. They can use Blessing of Protection to remove it from important raid members it lands on, generally priests. A reduced cooldown on Blessing of Protection (Guardian's Favor) is a big bonus in this fight.

Paladins can use Blessing of Sacrifice on a Garroted party member or the off-tank to mitigate the damage. This can make a difference for low-health casters and breaks Gouge on paladin tanks.

While Turn Undead is not reliable long-term crowd-control, it is useful to protect healers and other crowd-controllers, should a target get loose. To avoid resetting the encounter, do not use it near either of the entrances to the room.

A paladin that is assigned to crowd-control duties can use one of the following macros to cast Turn Undead without losing his current target:

/cast [target=Lord Robin Daris] Turn Undead

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

See Useful Priest Macros for detailed examples and explanation.

Priest
Shadow Priests generally have more spell hit than Holy Priests, and are thus better at maintaining Shackles. Re-cast the shackle every ten seconds or so to reduce the possibility of a target getting loose. If a shackle target does get loose, make sure to call for help.

The following macros are useful for casting the shackle without losing your current target:

/cast [target=Lord Robin Daris] shackle undead

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

See Useful Priest Macros for detailed examples and explanation.

An addon called UberShackle can also be helpful in reshackling Moroes adds.

Warlock
The following macro will allow a Warlock Voidwalker to build threat on a shackle target without breaking the shackle. If the shackle breaks, the target will attack the Voidwalker instead of the priest.

/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

Hit the macro while holding down the alt key to set the focus. Keep the Voidwalker in passive, and repeatedly hit this macro during the fight to use the Torment ability.

Use Curse of Tongues on the caster adds to slow down mana burn and heal spells.

Hunter
Hunters can chain-trap one add indefinitely. This is made easier by survival talents or the Beast Lord Armor set bonus. They can also kite.

However, given the importance of high damage output in this fight, it is not always a good idea to trap or kite for a long time. If the hunter is busy trapping, he can't put out as much damage. It may be best to pull a target into a trap, drop a second trap, and trust in an off-tank to pick up the trap target before the second trap breaks.

Hunters can use Misdirection to help the off-tank maintain threat on Moroes.

Hunters can drop a Freezing Trap on any (player) priest that is keeping a target shackled. If the shackle breaks, this will give the priest time to re-shackle the target instead of taking hits.

Hunter pets specced for armor and stamina can tank kill targets, so long as they get heals.

Warrior

Any spec of warrior can off-tank Moroes and tank kill targets.

Intervene does not appear to catch Garrote.

Shaman
Shamans should drop Poison Cleansing Totems to get rid of Blind. They should also be prepared to die and reincarnate if they get Garroted.

Druid
Druids can switch into bear form and use Growl to protect any healers or crowd-controllers that get unwanted attention. They should generally save their Rebirth battle resurrection for priests that are maintaining shackles.

Mage
Mages can and should use Ice Block to get rid of Garrote.

Rogue
Use Mind-Numbing Poison on the caster adds to slow down mana burns and heals.

Quotes

Aggro: Hmm, unannounced visitors? Preparations must be made.
Vanish 1: Now, where was I? Oh yes...
Vanish 2: You rang?
Killing A Player 1: One more for dinner this evening.
Killing A Player 2: Time... Never enough time.
Killing A Player 3: I've gone and made a mess.
Death: How terribly clumsy of me...
Killing all players: The Master will return from Stormwind soon.

Gender: Female
Race: Uncategorized
Level: ?? Boss
Health: 420,000
Mana: 67,740
Location: The Guest Chambers, Karazhan

The Maiden of Virtue is 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 to reach other bosses.

Abilities

* Melee: on 14k armor: normally 2500–3500 every 1.8 sec, 4000-4800 crushing
* Immune to Taunt
* 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. The DoT is a Magic effect and can be dispelled.
* Holy Wrath: AoE chained holy damage, instant cast, 20 second cooldown. Cast on a random target. Does not target or chain onto /off of pets.
* Repentance: Deals 1750–2250 holy damage and incapacitates the whole raid for 12 seconds. Thirty second cooldown. Dispellable only by Divine Shield and Ice Block, but broken by any damage taken. Does not hit the Maiden's target.

Strategy

The Maiden of Virtue does not have phases in her fight. She behaves the same from the start of the fight to the end.

The Maiden uses all her abilities at random, not on a strict timer. For example, when the Repentance cooldown is over, she does not always cast it immediately; it just means that it's possible for her to cast it. However, she does not cast Holy Fire while Repentance is active.

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. A wipe is also possible due to poor positioning which leads to a chained Holy Wrath. Once these risks are managed correctly, this is a fairly easy fight.

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 eight 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 no two people end up using the same one.

Red area: all ranged dps
Middle red spot: Maiden
Blue spot: Tank
Green spot: Melee dps



Repentance

There are several ways to survive Repentance:

* A paladin healer casts and refreshes Blessing of Sacrifice (rank 1) on any melee character to constantly take damage, breaking the effect.
* A paladin uses Divine Shield to dispel repentance, then heals. This is usable only once per paladin.
* A healer (preferably one which cannot dispel) moves 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 casts Repentance, the healer moves out of Holy Ground and resumes healing.
* The tank moves the Maiden towards a healer, to wake up the healer with damage from Holy Ground.
* The tank is loaded with HoT spells.
* The tank uses cooldown moves such as Last Stand, Shield Wall, potions, healthstones, and Nightmare Seeds.
* Melee damage-dealers that can heal (cat druids, retribution paladins, and enhancement shamans) run out to heal during Repentance.

All of these methods work well, and they work better in combination with each other.

Holy Fire

Holy Fire will quickly kill its victim unless removed. It is imperative to deal with it.

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. Grounding totems have a limited range, so positions must be assigned carefully to make sure that everyone in the group is protected.

Holy Fire is a Magic debuff, and thus can be removed by the following:

* Priests' Dispel Magic
* Paladins' Cleanse and Divine Shield
* Felhounds' Devour Magic
* Restorative Potion
* Warlocks' Spellstone
* Mages' Ice Block
* Rogues' Cloak of Shadows

Holy Fire can also be spell reflected.

Healers and dispellers must be very alert to deal with Holy Fire. 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 quickly as possible. Unless someone would die, cancel the spell you're currently casting to dispel immediately, so you spend less time and mana healing Holy Fire victims. Some raids place two dedicated dispellers on opposite sides of the room.

Holy Fire deals fire damage (not holy), thus Major Fire Protection Potions are useful.

This is the first fight since Chromaggus where dispelling debuffs is critical. Priests and paladins that are new to this fight usually have some initial difficulty dispelling fast enough to avoid wipes. This is normal, so be patient. Once they have a little practice and figure it out, though, the Maiden is a fairly easy fight.

Additional Tips and Methods

* 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.
* Pets are not valid targets for Holy Fire or 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 (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.
* In contrast to some people's belief, paladin tanks can tank Maiden well despite Holy Ground's silence. The silence effect only lasts one second for every three seconds. As all of the paladin tanking skills used during the actual tanking are instant cast, the one second silence does not cause much problem usually.
* Dampen Magic on melee DPS reduces the Holy Ground tick damage to 150-200 so that a single HoT, shadow priest, or feral druid can keep them alive.
* Amplify Magic is not a good idea at all; it appears to drastically boost her damage.
* 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.
* The following macro is handy for warrior tanks to pull the Maiden to a healer under the effects of repentance:

/target <healer's name>
/cast Intervene
/targetlasttarget

Priests, paladins, and warlocks may use a dispel assist add-on such as Decursive, Healbot, or Smartbuff to speed up removal of Holy Fire. The following simple macro is a reasonable replacement:
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover] Dispel Magic

(Replace "Dispel Magic" with "Cleanse" or "Devour Magic" for
paladins or warlocks.) Drag the group windows out of the raid panel
before the fight. When the Holy Fire icon appears beside someone's
name, just point at the name and hit the macro hotkey. No clicking or
target switching is required.
The following macro is useful for Paladins keeping up
Blessing of Sacrifice on the Main Tank but are busy targeting other
party members with cleanses and heals:

/cast [target=NAMEOFTANK] Blessing of Sacrifice

* The macro will not mess with your targeting at all. Max-rank BoS is
recommended since the whole point is to keep the tank up and the pally
won't take much damage anyway.
* The Maiden cannot be reset. She will pursue her targets all the way to the zone portal.
* Since Maiden casts Repentance at specific intervals
throughout the fight, certain mods exist that can warn the raid of an
impending Repentance. This can allow a healer to walk into the Holy
Ground effect just before the Repentance lands, instead of having to
stand there taking damage for an extended period.
* Beast Mastery Hunters can use Bestial Wrath just before a Repentance to negate its effect.
* The Insignia of the Alliance and Insignia of the Horde can both be used while under the effects of Repentance to break its effect.

Quotes

Aggro:
* Your behavior will not be tolerated.
Repentance:
* Your impurity must be cleansed.
* Cast out your corrupt thoughts.
* Impure thoughts lead to profane actions.
Player Death:
* Ah ah ah...
* This is for the best.
Death:
* Death comes. Will your conscience be clear?

In the Opera House Barnes the Stage Manager can be found. When a player talks to him, he walks on the stage and announces this night's event (currently there are three different plays):

1. Hood - Starring the hungry Wolf himself.
* Big Bad Wolf
2. Oz - Starring Dorathee and her dog Tito, Tinhead, Strawman, the lion Roar, and the evil Crone that tries to stop them on their way home!
* Wizard of Oz
3. Romulo and Julianne - A tale of forbidden love...
* Romulo & Julianne

* In order to find out which event is on, a single raid member can strip and start the event. The rest of the raid should wait in the pit below. If Red Riding Hood is on, the raid member is safe, and the rest of the raid can move up, as the event will not start until someone talks to Grandmother. The other two events will engage straight away and the person on stage will die quickly.
* After the event, a door on the side of the stage opens which leads to the Curator via some trash mobs.
* Successfully solving the Opera also opens the side entrance, by running back out of the instance and up the side tower, a few trash pulls can be bypassed.
* Moroes must be killed for the Opera event to be accessible

The Big Bad Wolf

Race: Worgen (Humanoid)
Level: ?? Boss
Health: 380,000
Wealth:21g 4s 29c
Location: Opera House, 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, possibly 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 Priest's Fear Ward can counteract the fear.

As of a recent patch all races that can be a Priest can get/use Fear Ward.

* 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.

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 20 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.

Class Specific Tricks

* General - The Big Bad Wolf is immune to all slowing effects.
* Rogues - Vanish can be used to prevent the Big Bad Wolf from chasing you, but will not remove the debuff itself, so wait for it to run out before you come out of stealth.
* Hunters - Feign Death works normally. Cast it when you get the Little Red Riding Hood debuff, and stay down until it wears off. In case of a resist you must be prepared to get up again and run as fast as possible before the Wolf is too close.
* Paladins - Use Blessing of Protection on others. The wolf will follow Little Red Riding Hood for longer than this buff lasts, but while unter the protection of Blessing of Protection the player will receive no damage from the Wolf. Make sure to not use this buff too early to get the maximum benefit of this spell.
* Mages - Use Amplify Magic to help with healing as there is no magic damage during the fight. Ice block is now an option for all mages, because of the recent patch.
* Warriors - Use Thunderclap to slow his damage output when chasing. You 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 or switch it off immediatly if they receive the debuff, as it slows them even while under the effects of the Riding Hood debuff.

Quotes

* Combat start: In reply to dialog option "What phat lewts you have grandmother"? Grandmother turns into Big Bad Wolf and yells
"All the better to own you with!"
* Transforms: "Run away little girl, run away!"
* Killing A Player: "Mmmm... delicious."
* Stagehand Barnes (prior to event starting): "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this evening's presentation! Tonight, things are not what they seem... for tonight your eyes may not be trusted! Take for instance this quiet elderly woman waiting for a visit from her granddaughter.... surely there is nothing to fear from this sweet, gray-haired old lady! But don't let me pull the wool over your eyes! See for yourself what lies beneath those covers! And now... on with the show!"

Wizard of Oz

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.

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. Tinhead

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 slowly 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.

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

Roar
Roar is rather cowardly, and susceptible to fear and Scare Beast. 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 Shaman's Searing Totem or Fire Elemental could do the job in an emergency. A wand also works if it deals fire damage. The off-tank on Roar should taunt Strawman now and then. If your raid is low on fire damage, or Strawman's disorient is not proccing enough to keep him controlled he can be killed first. He goes down much faster than Dorothee, and a pair of good healers can easily heal through Dorothee's damage while the raid takes down Strawman.

Tinhead
Tinhead 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 Tinhead'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 max health.

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.
* Using a snake-trap before all 4 npc's have been activated will trigger them earlier. They will kill the snakes and then disappear, making it unable to complete this event

"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 (it's 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."

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

Romulo
Gender: Male
Race: Undead
Level: ?? Boss
Health: 190,000
Wealth: 20g
Location: Opera House, Karazhan

Julianne
Gender: Female
Race: Undead
Level: ?? Boss
Health: 150,000
Mana: 67,740
Wealth: 20g
Location: Opera House, Karazhan

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. 4500 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.

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), Spellsteal (Mage), Arcane Shot (Hunter), or Shield Slam (Warrior).

NOTE: She is immune to (Warlocks') Curse of Tongues.

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 (especially if you don't have someone to dispel it), 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 Phase Two still apply. However, since the raid now has less mana and is engaging both bosses at the same time, it is harder.

The raid splits up into two groups; one group focuses on Romulo and one group focuses on Julianne. The Romulo group is generally ranged (due to his melee abilities) with a warrior tank (for disarm) and the Julianne group is melee and interrupters.

The two bosses must die within 10 seconds of each other, or the dead boss resurrects with full health, just like the core hounds in Molten Core. The damage-dealers may need to switch between targets to ensure that they die at the same time.

Miscellaneous
* Romulo and Julianne have very useful self casting buffs, which can be devoured, dispelled or stolen. Having a mage steal Devotion is preferred due to the increase of casting speed.
* It is no longer possible for hunters to use Snake Trap for Julianne and Romulo to target.
* 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

* Since patch 2.3, it is no longer possible for hunters to feign death to get out of combat to drink and eat. It is, however still an acceptable tactic to interrupt Julianne's casting if she is targeting the hunter.

Quotes
These are, in fact, paraphrased quotations from the original play (Source in brackets):

Julianne
* Aggro: What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus? (Act III Scene 2)
* Death: Romulo, I come! Oh... this do I drink to thee! (Act IV Scene 3)
* Death (2nd): Where is my Lord? Where is my Romulo? Ohh, happy dagger! This is thy sheath! There rust, and let me die! (Act V scene 2. This quote is a composite from different part of scene)
* Kills Raid Member: Parting is such sweet sorrow. (Act II Scene 2)
* Rezzing Romulo: Come, gentle night; and give me back my Romulo! (Act V Scene 2)

Romulo
* Aggro: Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy! (Act V Scene 3)
* Death: Thou smilest... upon the stroke that... murders me. (Act III Scene 3, quoting Mercutio)
* Death (2nd): This day's black fate on more days doth depend. This but begins the woe. Others must end. (Act III Scene 1, quoting Friar Lawrence)
* Rez again after taking too long to kill both boss: Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death; I enforce thy rotten jaws to open! (Act III Scene 3)
* Kills Raid Member: How well my comfort is revived by this! (Act III Scene 3)

* Immune to arcane, poison and mana drain spells and effects.
* Basic Melee: Around 3000 on a tank
* Hateful Bolt: An arcane bolt that hits a non-tank character for 4435-5999 Arcane damage.
* Summon Astral Flare:Summon one Astral Flare every 10 seconds (Flare Phase)
* Evocation: Go completely inactive for 20 seconds while re-filling mana and increasing damage taken by 200% (Evocation Phase)
* Enrage: At 15% health, increase melee attack speed and Hateful Bolt cast rate while ceasing new Evocations or Astral Flare summons
* Berserk: After 10 minutes, give all raid members a non-removable debuff which increases arcane damage taken by 500%

Astral Flare

* Health: 690000 HP
* Melee: none
* Arcing Sear: Rapid-fire chained attack which hits up to three targets within ten yards for 675-825 arcane damage each
* Immune to taunts, stuns, roots, and snares

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 has the required DPS and the necessary mana endurance, or it does not.

The fight consists of four possible phases. Most of the fight consists of two alternating phases: a Flare Phase (which lasts 90 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

During the Flare Phase, The Curator summons ten Astral Flares, hits the tank with moderate melee damage, and casts Hateful Bolts.

The Curator summons one Astral Flare every 10 seconds, at a cost of 10% of its mana. Each Flare spawns with about 1000 threat from a random, non-tank player character and advances in that character's direction while hitting nearby enemies with Arcing Sear.

Each Flare must be destroyed within 10 seconds, before the next one spawns. Failure to do so will result in multiple Flares dealing damage at the same time - this situation will usually mean a wipe. It is not necessary to damage the Curator at all during this phase. Damaging the Curator is permissible, but only when no Flares are up (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 The Curator usually happen because the healers run out of mana. They run out of mana because the Flares live too long. The solution is almost always to kill the Flares faster. The faster each Flare dies, the easier the healers' job becomes.

While it is not necessary to tank the Flares, doing so gets them to hold still and makes them easier to kill. A hunter pet with attack power buffs and specced for arcane resistance and stamina is ideal for this task. Warriors, bear druids, paladins, and enhancement shamans can do the job, too. A decently-geared retribution paladin with Righteous Fury can trivialize holding the flares in place with burst Holy damage threat; the buff increases their innate threat generation of Holy attacks from 70% to 160% without reducing their damage output.

The Curator casts a Hateful Bolt every 10 to 15 seconds on a non-tank player character. The current best theory is that the Hateful Bolt hits the non-tank character that has generated the most threat on The Curator since the last Evocation and currently has enough health to survive the damage from the Bolt.

It is possible to assign one character - preferably a warlock or a shadow priest - as Hateful Bolt soaker. This character attracts most of the Hateful Bolts by steadily damaging The Curator. Equipping the soaker with arcane resistance gear negates a substantial amount of the damage from the Hateful Bolts. Note that using a soaker is reasonable only when the raid is still able to kill 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.

Most raids must first concentrate on killing the tenth and last Flare before switching damage over to the Curator. Otherwise, there may be two Flares up after the Evocation, which is bad (see above). Killing the Flare quickly also grants the healers a few seconds break for mana regeneration. Overgeared raids can attack The Curator immediately to speed up the fight, and clean up the extra Flares after Evocation.

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 Evocations, and increases melee damage output and Hateful Bolt frequency. This means that the healers have to give the main tank and Hateful Bolt victims more attention while everyone else just nukes The Curator. This phase is actually the easiest part of the fight.

As of Patch 2.3, The Curator breaks Evocation and enrages as soon as its health reaches 15%. Prior to patch 2.3, it finished its Evocation before it enraged.

Positioning

Positioning is a secondary concern, but it can help raids with marginal gear. A concentrated setup increases damage on the Flares by eliminating the need for melee damage-dealers to chase down Flares. A distributed setup reduces damage from the Flares by reducing the chaining of Arcing Sear.
Concentrated

If melee damage dealers are needed on the Flares, everybody except the hunters sets up close together, with the hunters as close as possible, just at their minimum range. 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 makes it easy for the melee characters to damage 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 because multi-target heal spells like Chain Heal also have their maximum effect. More importantly, the Flares die more quickly in this formation, so they have less time to do damage.

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 and stays put. The ranged damage dealers and healers spread out and each stays at least ten yards away from everybody else. This significantly reduces Flare damage, because Arcing Sear doesn't jump farther than ten yards. Also, the melee group is on the Curator all the time, which shortens the fight.

If melee characters have to help killing Flares, the distributed setup does not work well. Even a single melee damage dealer chasing Flares breaks the ten yard pattern, and thus the Flare damage is maximized anyways. Worse, that melee character loses a lot of damage output while running around. Because of this, a concentrated setup is best for most raids new to this encounter.

Miscellaneous Tips

* 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, better specs, and more consumables. Underpowered raids simply cannot win this fight.
* Mana is an issue in this fight. Make sure everyone has enough mana potions and mana regeneration consumables.
* 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.
* Multi-target heals are very effective, especially Chain Heal and Prayer of Mending.
* The following simple macro is handy to help damage-dealers target live Astral Flares quickly:

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

* While it's tempting to use arcane resistance gear, it slows down Flare-killing. It's somewhat useful on the tank, any Hateful Bolt soaker, and any Flare tank, but generally harmful on other characters.
* Flares spawn to the left or right of The Curator in a pattern. Learn the pattern to pick them up faster.
* When The Curator starts evocating, some DPS meter chasers are 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. Note, however, that this is actually useful in well-geared raids.
* The fight can be reset by running down the last stairs before the room.
* Astral Flares do not live long enough for damage-over-time spells to be effective. Warlocks can use Searing Pain or Shadow Bolt instead.
* If there are multiple hunters, they should spread out from each other. This avoids more than one being forced into melee combat when an Astral Flare comes their way. Feign death and (manually cast) Growl can keep the Flares at range.
* Using a Cauldron of Major Arcane Protection gives the healers a break at the start of the fight.
* Warlocks can cast Curse of Doom on the Curator somewhere between the summoning of the fourth and sixth Astral Flares. It's best to time it such that it goes off right at the start of the Evocation, so that it can be replaced by Curse of the Elements, Curse of Recklessness, or even Curse of Shadow when the rest of the raid starts to deal damage.
* Priests can use their Shadowfiend during the Evocation phase. Due to the triple damage during Evocation, the Shadowfiend can completely refill the priest's mana.
* Shamans should use their Bloodlust or Heroism during the eighth Flare.
* If The Curator is mistakenly pulled while other players are elsewhere in the dungeon (i.e.: repairing in Midnights room), those player may be teleported up into The Menagerie. This will cause certain death if the players cannot get to the stairs to reset the Curator.

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.

The Shade of Aran is an optional boss. However, after he is defeated, a teleport to his room becomes available from Berthold , and all trash mobs from the Curator to Aran (exc. one pack outside Illhoof's door) cease to respawn.

Race: Shade (Undead)
Level: ?? Boss
Character class: Mage
Health: 900,000
Mana: 168,388
Wealth: 38g 37s 17c
Location: Guardian's Library, Karazhan

Abilities

* Very low armor
* Immune to Mind Numbing Poison, Curse of Tongues, and Silence

Basic Spells

* Frostbolt – Three-second cast, 3500 to 4500 frost damage and four-second slow. Interruptible
* Fireball – Two-second cast, 3910 to 5290 fire damage. Interruptible
* Arcane Missiles – Five-second channeled spell that shoots five missiles, each dealing 1260 to 1540 arcane damage (6300-7700 total). Interruptible
* Chains of Ice – Ten-second root, does not break on damage. Dispellable. Appears to be a chance on hit with frostbolt, similar to mage's Frostbite
* AoE Counterspell – Ten-yard radius permanent AoE around Aran, locks out schools of magic for 10 seconds

All of Aran's basic spells have infinite range (even through walls—they hit anywhere in the instance) and are randomly targeted. Pets are valid targets for these spells, including the snakes from Snake Traps.

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

It is possible to interrupt and lock out all his basic abilities to the point where he starts to use his melee attack. He sometimes takes a swing even when not all his schools are locked. When meleeing, he uses a normal aggro table. This can cause problems, as he can move out of the center of the room and leave the raid out of position.

Arcane Missiles seem to be semi-intelligently targeted at the raid member with the lowest percentage health, but this may simply be a random effect.

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.

* Flame Wreath: Five-second cast which creates a fiery aura around three random characters for 20 seconds. When the auras are triggered by moving over them, they deal 3,000–4,000 fire damage to everyone in the room. They do not disappear upon Aran's death and can still be triggered after the fight
* Circular Blizzard: Large AoE that moves slowly clockwise around the room. Deals 1313 to 1687 frost damage every two seconds and slows movement speed by 65%, does not hit the center of the room
* Magnetic Pull / Slow / Super Arcane Explosion: Pulls everyone to the center of the room and Slows them. This is followed by a ten-second cast Arcane Explosion that deals 9,000-11,000 damage in a 20 yard radius.

Conjured Water Elementals

At 40% health, the Shade of Aran summons four elite Conjured Water Elementals with 13,000 health. They shoot a constant stream of Waterbolts for ~1000-2000 damage and despawn after 90 seconds.

Polymorph / Drink / Pyroblast

At 20% mana or less (about 30k), Aran mass Polymorphs the entire raid, conjures some water, and starts drinking. After about ten seconds, or if his drinking is interrupted, the polymorph breaks and Aran does a pyroblast for 7000-7500 fire damage on the whole raid.

Shadows of Aran

After 12 minutes, he goes berserk and calls Shadows of Aran. They have various high-damage AoE abilities which wipe the raid within seconds. This is not a serious concern; the fight should never take that long.

Strategy

The key to success here is survival. The Shade of Aran's basic attacks are not very dangerous, but the special attacks are deadly. Each raid member must pay attention to 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.

There seems to be a "safe zone" that provides good positioning for healers and ranged DPS during the encounter.

Drawing a 3x3 grid using the floor tiles around Shade shows four corners that are out of range of both the AoE counterspell as well as blizzard. Although it's possible to find a safe spot there, Aran may moves a little and thus put players there in the counterspell. The blizzard may also sometimes affect these spots.

Blizzard has given no indication that they consider use of these safe spots to be an exploit.

Gear

Aggro is of almost no relevance, because Aran chooses his targets semi-randomly. Hence it is important to remember to replace all threat reducing buffs, such as the Paladin's Blessing of Salvation, with something offensive instead. The tanks should don damage-dealing 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 8,000 health after buffs. More is better. Even healers and ranged damage-dealers must be able to survive a wave of arcane missiles (7,000 damage), and everybody must be able to survive the Pyroblast (7,500 damage).

Interrupts

Aran's standard attacks (Fireball, Frost Bolt and Arcane Missile) can all be interrupted. By interrupting his spells, the raid can influence how fast Aran spends his mana. This is important, because the Polymorph/Pyroblast (at 20% mana) and the Water Elementals (at 40% health) must not 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 damage output), it is advisable to interrupt only Arcane Missile, and let him freely cast Frost Bolt and Fireball. This will maximize Aran's mana usage, and thus the Polymorph/Pyroblast occurs early, well before he reaches 40% health. After the Pyroblast, the raid can interrupt any of his spells, to minimize damage taken.

If the raid's damage output is high enough that Polymorph/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 interrupting Fireball and Frost Bolt. This conserves his mana, so that the Water Elementals occur first. If damage output is really high, the Polymorph/Pyroblast does 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 does nothing else for nearly two seconds. Arcane Missiles should be interrupted early, as he spends the mana upfront anyway, and early interruption reduces the spell's damage output. It is useful to assign each player with an interrupt ability one type of spell. This avoids everybody interrupting at the same time and, therefore, having nobody left available to interrupt the next spell.

The following abilities interrupt a Shade of Aran cast:
* Rogues' Kick
* Warriors' Pummel and Shield Bash
* Shamans' Earth Shock
* Druids' Feral Charge
* Mages' Counterspell
* Warlocks' Spell Lock

The Druid, Mage, and Warlock abilities have long cooldowns, and are thus not very effective. Note that the Shade is immune to the silence, daze, and root effects of some of these abilities, so casting them produces an "Immune" message. However, the abilities still interrupt the spell cast.

Also, a Druid with the gloves from Vengeful Gladiator's Sanctuary can interrupt Shade of Aran with the Maim ability.

Rogues that have Gladiator's Leather Gloves, Merciless Gladiator's Leather Gloves, or Vengeful Gladiator's Leather Gloves equipped, can interrupt Shade using their Deadly Throw ability. Opportunist's Leather Gloves, Grand Marshal's Leather Gloves, and High Warlord's Leather Gloves also works with doing this.

Particularly for Healers: To save mana, it is generally a good idea to understand when an interrupt is successful and a heal is not needed. There are two ways to achieve this:

* Watch Aran's cast bar
* Listen to distinctive sounds of interrupts

Circular Blizzard

This special attack materializes as a blue, translucent cloud on the floor that slowly moves clockwise along the outer perimeter of the room. It is trailed by a damaging Blizzard which fills up to half the room. The cloud and the Blizzard snare anyone caught in them. The Blizzard does not affect the center of the room.

Players in melee range to Aran normally do not have to worry about the blizzard (as long they stay in the center of the room). Ranged classes should always keep a lookout for the cloud and run away clockwise (but avoid running into the tail of the blizzard). When caught, players get snared and should immediately turn and move to the center of the room. The periodic AoE silence/counterspell there is the lesser of two evils.

Flame Wreath

I will not move when Flame Wreath is cast, or the raid blows up.

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. Meleers have a few seconds to move into melee range of Aran from the second Flame Wreath is announced and until he casts it, however this requires some practice and careful timing.

The effect is triggered by the following:
* Player character movement
* Accepting a resurrection (Rebirth or Soulstone)
* Mages' Blink
* Druids' shapeshifting
* Shaman Elemental Totems (Fire Elemental Totem, Earth Elemental Totem)

The following do not trigger the effect:
* Spell casting
* Movement resulting from a spell cast (like Mind Flay for priests or Aimed Shot/Steady Shot for hunters)
* Paladins' Divine Shield
* Rogues' Cloak of Shadows
* Warrior's Whirlwind
* Nether Protection
* Pets
* Companions

Flame Wreath is confirmed to crit, having an estimated crit chance of 10-15%, dealing 7.000 damage to the target.

Magnetic Pull / Slow / Arcane Explosion

Magnetic Pull can be avoided by standing behind one of the tables near the wall—players fixed there do not need to worry about the pull or the explosion at all.

All other raid members must immediately run to the outer edge of the room—no turning or finishing up an attack. Even with the slow debuff everybody can reach the wall well before the Explosion.

If possible a priest in the raid should cast a Mass Dispel centered on the Shade immediately after Magnetic Pull. This automatically takes care of everybody reacting slowly and Chains of Ice. If mass dispel is not available (or the raid feels confident and wants to save priest mana), Priests and Paladins still should pay attention to slow reactions or Chains of Ice.

Water Elementals

The Water Elementals can be banished, stunned and feared, and are susceptible to Curse of Tongues. Crowd control, tank and kill them quickly, they have only 13.000 HP each. It helps if the tank wears some frost resistance gear. They despawn after 90 seconds, one warlock can keep two crowd controlled the entire time (fear and banish) with two warlocks, you can just keep all four them crowd controlled until they despawn.

If the Elementals spawn at the same time as one of the special attacks takes place, it's difficult to control them properly. It is a good idea to control DPS and bring the Shade's health down to 40% at a time when there is no risk of a Flame Wreath, Blizzard, or Polymorph / Pyroblast.

Trinkets and abilities with cooldowns should be used when the Elementals spawn.

Polymorph / Pyroblast

If the raid's DPS is high enough and the interrupts work well, this phase may not occur at all. If it does, the healers have to be on their toes to heal the raid very quickly after the Pyroblast (preferably using AoE heals). The Polymorph breaks at the same time as Pyroblast is cast, so there's just spell's travel time to cast something before it hits. This effectively can be done only by healers outside melee range. After the blast, all raid members should use health potions and Healthstones to heal quickly.

This Polymorph works on characters who are normally immune. Only druids in Tree of Life form remain unaffected. If Aran is interrupted while drinking, he simply uses a potion and Pyroblasts anyway. PvP insignias do not break the Mass Polymorph, only the Water Elementals may break sheep during this time. The Pyroblast can be interrupted.

If Aran reaches 20% mana again after the first Mass Polymorph, he does not polymorph and pyroblast again. He just drinks a potion and continues.

Tips for Priest Healers

Healing for this fight is noticeably different from the other encounters in Karazhan for two reasons:

* Healers must be far more in tune with their surroundings and move around like everyone else in the raid; this means they must be able to take their eyes off of everyone's health bars and become more situationally aware.
* There is no benefit to having a regular tank, which means all healers in the raid are raid healing.

In addition, Priest healers bring more versatility to this fight due to a combination of the following abilities, which you should be prepared to use liberally:

* Prayer of Mending – Make sure that there is always a PoM active (there are PoM-tracking addons to make this easier).
* Renew – Always top off those not at full health with Renew.
* Power Word: Shield – A shield provides a buffer for the targeted member should a cast not be interrupted.
* Dispel Magic – One of the most important spells for this fight, be prepared to dispel anyone who is ice chained and cannot move. This is especially critical if a Blizzard is going on at the same time. Dispel yourself and those around you when Aran does his Magnetic Pull. If you are confident with your skills or you have points in Focused Power, which shortens the time of your Mass Dispel, quickly cast Mass Dispel centered around Aran to help free those still closest to him. Aran takes 10 seconds to cast his Arcane Explosion, which is long enough that you should be able to dispel those closest to him.
* Circle of Healing – If specced for it, quite helpful when more than two in a party need some quick heals, and can be spammed on the fly. Much safer than a Prayer of Healing due to CoH being an instant cast.

The common denominator in all of these spells is that they are instant casts. While you will still need to cast Greater Heal for people who are hit with Aran's spells, your survivability is greatly increased during most of the encounter if you use instant spells and keep moving—except during Flame Wreath, when you must stay put with everyone else (this is a good time to cast regular heals on your raid). With so much happening at once, if you stand still to cast all of your heals, you will likely wind up dead.

Tip: Learn to strafe during the encounter. Strafing around the room while facing Aran lets you see where Aran is facing while maintaining a safe distance from Aran and his Counterspell. You can also see where the Blizzard is, and whether the person who is ice chained might get caught in a Blizzard (which means an urgent need to dispel them). You can still cast all of your insenttant spells while strafing, and the constant movem will make it harder for Aran to successfully cast fireballs and frostbolts on you (since he would need to stop casting to turn to face you).

Save your Psychic Scream for the elementals. Shade of Aran is immune to fear; if he is too close to you (and thus cause you to suffer from his Counterspell), just run away.

If your raid is sheeped, be prepared to immediately start group heals the moment you are out of the polymorph. You may wish to coordinate with the other healers to pre-determine who heals which party for this.

Make sure everyone has a stamina buff, as every extra bit of health helps. If you find yourself struggling to reach the suggested 8000 health point (raid buffed), go to the Auction House and look up "of Stamina" to pick up some high-stamina items. Try to match the piece to a slot that is weakest in your outfit so that you don't replace too much of your other important stats such as heal. The jewelcrafted Heavy Adamantite Ring might be pretty handy for some. One reasonable option is to wear an item from the purchasable Mooncloth Battlegear PVP set, since all of the items have high stamina as well as gem slots. Use with some discretion, however; this is not a PVP encounter, and wearing a full PVP set may cause you to run out of mana.

Quotes

Aggro
"Please, no more! My son... he's gone mad!"
"Who are you? What do you want? Stay away from me!"
"I will not be tortured again!"

Flame Wreath
"Burn you hellish fiends!"
"I'll show you this beaten dog still has some teeth!"

Blizzard
"Back to the cold dark with you!"
"I'll freeze you all!"

Arcane Explosion
"Yes, yes, my son is quite powerful... but I have powers of my own!"
"I am not some simple jester! I am Nielas Aran!"

Low Mana / AoE Pyroblast
"Surely you would not deny an old man a replenishing drink? No, no I thought not."

Summon Water Elementals
"I'm not finished yet! No, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve."

Player Death
"Torment me no more!"
"I want this nightmare to be over!"

Aran's berserk
"You've wasted enough of my time... let these games be finished!"

Aran's death
"At last the nightmare is over..."

[Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian] is carried by a raid member
"Where did you get that?! Did HE send you??"

Terestian Illhoof is a corrupted satyr in the Repository of Karazhan. He hides in a secret passage behind a bookshelf in the library. Cleansing of his presence will halt the respawning of demons directly by the bookshelf. He is an optional boss, but his loot table makes his death profitable to most adventurers.

Race: Satyr (Demon)
Level: ?? Boss
Character class: Warlock
Health: 680,000
Affiliation: Burning Legion
Location: The Repository, Karazhan

Overview

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 (although it CAN be cast on someone tanking Kil'rek). A druid can use barkskin while chained up, which will ultimately reduce the damage while in the chains from 1500 to about 1300 damage per second.
* 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 taken 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

* 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. A standard warrior, druid, or paladin tank works. Even moonkin druids, hunter pets, and voidwalkers work fine, so long as they get attention from the healers.
* 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.
* Note that a Paladin tank with Fire Resistance Aura can effectively tank Illhoof, Kil'rek, and many of the imps by spamming Consecrate with Righteous Fury active. The healing received will refill the Paladin's mana pool via Spiritual Attunement.

Kill priority

* The most important thing in the fight is to destroy 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.
* As of 2.3 Wound Poison does effect the healing from chains along with Mortal Strike and Aimed Shot.
* 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.
* The following macro is hugely useful in selecting targets for this chaotic fight:

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

Dealing with Imps

* The easiest way to kill off the spawning imps is a pair of warlocks spamming Seed of Corruption on Illhoof or on the imps themselves. Hellfire also works. The imps rarely live long enough to hit the warlocks. One warlock also works fine. The Nether Protection talent, an Earthen Elixir, Dampen Magic, Blessing of Sanctuary, Power Word: Shield, and Concentration Aura on the warlock are all useful in reducing incoming damage and casting pushback.
* If no warlocks are available, a mage or elemental shaman suffices.
* If your AoE is not up to the 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.
* To give warlocks and other AoEs a break, the imps can also be feared.
* Another extremely effective way to deal with the imps without warlocks is to release shaman fire elementals. Chances for effective kill go up dependent on the spell damage of the shaman or shamans and the number of shaman. But the use of chain lightning and the elemental pretty much guarantee a downing of the imps. This fight is absolutely not dependent on locks alone as many have come to believe. Shaman are also extremely effective in this fight as well. The only class with an AOE pet which does not draw aggro to the player.

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.

* 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 three-second cast time and it's the only occasion 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. Divine Intervention will also dispel a sacrifice if a soulstoned paladin who is low on mana opts to use it when Illhoof is close to death.
* Healers need to be prepared for pushback when the person handling imp AoE is sacrificed, as they draw aggro from a rapidly increasing number of imps. Concentration Aura helps, as does a Challenging Shout/Challenging Roar/Holy Wrath from the tank.
* Here is a useful healer macro that will help improve sacrifice response time tremendously - use your own spell of predilection in place of regrowth:

/stopcasting
/target Demon Chains
/target targettarget
/cast Regrowth

* Keep Illhoof as close to the Sacrifice circle as possible so that Melee can make an easy switch to bring the chains down ASAP.
* Hunters can drop a snake trap. Illhoof sometimes sacrifices a snake instead of a player character, making things much easier.

Quotes

Aggro Ah, you're just in time. The rituals are about to begin.

Sacrifice Please, accept this humble offering, oh great one.

Sacrifice Let the sacrifice serve his testament to my fealty.

Summon Come, you dwellers in the dark. Rally to my call!

Summon Gather, my pets. There is plenty for all.

Killing A Player Your blood will anoint my circle.

Killing A Player The great one will be pleased.

Death My life, is yours. Oh great one.

The Chess Event in Karazhan must be solved in order to reach Prince Malchezaar. The raid plays a sort of chess match against Medivh.

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, in particular player-controlled pieces autoattack enemy pieces they face, 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 losing one's own King. If the game is won, a Dust Covered Chest appears with loot. Many players see this encounter as an easy fight, referring to it as "the free epics".

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

It is possible to reset the event by talking to the Echo of Medivh.

Chess Piece Abilities and Control
After the event begins, raid members can control any currently uncontrolled piece of their own faction by talking to it. Upon taking control of a piece the player character is teleported onto a platform at the side of the chess field. The player gains the "control piece" buff, his viewing perspective changes to that of the controlled piece, and their action bar is replaced. It is possible to release control of a piece by removing the control buff (right click it). This incurs a 15 sec debuff, during which time it is not possible to take control of another piece.

The action bar for controlling a chess piece has the following layout:

1 2 3 4

1: Rotate Piece: The same for all pieces, click an adjacent square on the board to face toward it.
2: Move: This moves the piece, see piece description for details.
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

The abilities can either be activated by clicking on the action bar, or by using keys 1 through 4. It's faster to use the key shortcuts, particularly because the movement controls have a timeout. Each chess piece auto-attacks if it faces an enemy. While pieces can move diagonally, they can only face towards four directions. After a diagonal move, pieces turn 45° clockwise to realign themselves.

Movement and rotation share a common cooldown of 5 seconds, and the special abilities have another shared cooldown of 5 seconds. If an ability has a cooldown of more than 5 seconds, the other ability is only affected by the 5 second cooldown.

Piece	Alliance	Horde	Movement	Ability 1	Ability 2	Notes
King	King Llane	Warchief Blackhand	1 Space any dir.	Sweep / Cleave Deals 4000 damage to 3 frontal adjacent enemy units.	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 single chess piece. Range: Straight 4 / Diagonal 3.	Rain of Fire / Poison Cloud Deal 6000 damage to any hostile chess piece and all adjacent hostile pieces. Cooldown 15 secs. Range: Straight 4 / Diagonal 3	Medium Health/High Damage
Bishop	Human Cleric	Orc Necrolyte	1 Space any dir.	Healing / Shadow Mend Heal a friendly piece for 12,000. Cooldown 20 secs. Range: Half of board.	Holy Lance / Shadow Spear Deals 2000 damage to enemy units standing in a straight line of 3 squares in front.	Low Health/Low Damage. Only Healer.
Knight	Human Charger	Orc Wolf	2 Straight / 1 Diag	Smash / Bite 3000 damage to a target 1 square in front.	Stomp / Howl Reduces damage of all adjacent hostile chess pieces by 50%, last for 10 secs.	Medium Health/Low Damage
Rook	Conjured Water Elemental	Summoned Daemon	1 Space any dir.	Geyser / Hellfire Deals 3000 damage to all adjacent hostile chess pieces.	Water Shield / Fire Shield Reduce damage taken by 50% for 5 sec.	Low Health/Medium Damage
Pawn	Human Footman	Orc Grunt	1 Space any dir.	Heroic Blow / Vicious Strike Deals 1000 damage to a target 1 square in front.	Shield Block / Weapon Deflection Absorbs 500 damage. Lasts 5 secs.	Low Health/Low Damage

Warning: Medivh Cheats!Medivh cheats at random intervals during the game. Although on paper the effects look tough, in reality they usually have little effect on the course of the event.

Healing Cheat: Heals Medivhs king (and possibly all the other pieces) to full HP.
Damage Cheat: Medivh places a fire AoE on a random player controlled piece.
Berserking Cheat: One of Medivhs units gains increased size, speed and damage.

Strategy
The king is quite strong and thus should be used in an offensive way—he is in fact similar to a DPS tank (be cautious though). A reasonable kill order is to deal with the enemy healers first, then drop the queen, and finally the king. If king and queen work together efficiently, and have good support from the bishops, the combats on the remainder of the board are less important. The friendly healers should move only very little, and concentrate on keeping the king and the queen at top health.

One simple strategy is to have each player chose one non-pawn piece which they want to control later. Then, each player moves the pawn in front of their piece as far as needed, releases control and takes over their "real" piece. As soon as holes in the pawn line appear, attack with the player controlled pieces.

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

Bugs
* As of patch 2.4, releasing from a piece may cause the player to spawn below the floor of the room, leaving him back in the Curator's hallway. This can prevent the player from looting the chest because running back may take too long before it disappears—use a Warlock summon if possible in this case.
* Taking control of a piece may sometimes result in an near-immediate disconnect. The only way back into the game is to wait some time until the player is removed from the game with a "desertion" like debuff, or by quickly releasing control of the piece before the disconnect actually takes place.

Quotes
The "Echo" of Medivh speaks at various events during the course of the game:

Event begins: "Very well. Let the game begin."
Cheating: "Perhaps a change is in order." "Time for an alternative scenario." "One must not become too complacent."
Medivh loses a bishop: "A necessary sacrifice."
Medivh loses a knight: "Yes...of course."
Medivh loses a pawn: "Hmm." "Interesting." "No matter."
Medivh loses his queen: "Ahh, I should have known."
Medivh loses a rook: "A minor concern."
Player loses a bishop: "The slightest loss of concentration is all it takes."
Player loses a knight: "Yes...all according to plan."
Player loses a pawn: "A transparent stratagem." "Let us see." "Ah, the wheels have begun to turn."
Player loses the queen: "Now it gets interesting."
Player loses a rook: "Foolish! Very foolish!"
Player's king is in check: "As it should be."
Medivh's king is in check: "And so, the end draws near."
Player is checkmated: "Nothing less than perfection will do."
Medivh is checkmated: "And so it ends."

Race: Nether dragon (Dragonkin)
Level: ?? Boss
Health: 1,100,000
Mana: 3,155
Wealth: 38g 23s 93c
Location: The Celestial Watch, Karazhan

Netherspite is an immense nether dragon found lurking in the Celestial Watch, Medivh's personal observatory. As the only dragon found inside the dark tower, he will use his otherworldly powers to vanquish any creatures that attempt to go near him. This dragon's death is not required for further progress into the tower but he does control the trash between the Shade of Aran and the Chess Event.

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. The fight is entirely tactical: other than the enrage time the players' gear does not play as large a part in this fight as it does others.

The room itself is enormous, allowing plenty of room for players to maneuver. It is shaped like a square with a semicircular balcony attached to the far end.

Attacks and Abilities

* Basic Melee: Netherspite hits for roughly 8k on cloth without any buffs stacked on him.
* Nether Burn: Aura type spell (exactly as Baron Rivendare's and Lord Alexei Barov's), deals 1200 shadow damage every 5 seconds, 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 seconds, inflicting ~1k shadow damage every 2 seconds to all players 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. Players blocking the blue beam (see below) should be especially careful with this because of how fast it can kill them.
* Netherbreath: An attack hitting everyone within range of Netherspite dealing ~4.5k arcane damage in addition to knocking them back ~20 yards. Will be cast very frequently 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% (including Nether Burn). Will generally make quick work of your raid, dealing upwards of 30000 damage per hit in melee.

NOTE - unlike most dragons, Netherspite will neither cleave nor damage players with his tail.

Strategy

There are two phases to this fight that Netherspite alternates between. The Portal phase, (the first one) lasts for one minute, and the Banish phase (the second one), lasts for half a minute. He alternates between these two at the given rate until dead or enraged.

Portal phase

* Players get a system warning: "Netherspite cries out in withdrawal, opening gates to the warp."

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. The beams do not slowly move toward him, but rather appear touching Netherspite once they are created.

If the beams are allowed to hit Netherspite freely, they grant 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 they do 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 both a positive and a negative effect which grows more extreme with each second that the player spends blocking a beam. Although the positive effects are quite helpful for the fight, the negative effect makes it difficult (but certainly not 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 1 minute and 30 seconds.

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 and ability cost reduced by 1% per tick (including abilities that require Rage or Energy, in addition to Mana).
Maximum mana reduced by 200. Stacks up until your total mana pool reaches 0. Druids in Bear/Cat Form will have their hidden mana bars affected as well. Rage and Energy maxima are unaffected.
Similar to the red beam, mana is restored to the new maximum with each tick.
If a Hunter uses Feign Death while tanking the green beam they will become exhausted and not be able to tank it anymore, most likely wiping the raid.

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

This part of the fight relies on individual player responsibility in that all players designated to block a beam ahead of time (see below for suggestions) must be aware of what beam they are supposed to be blocking and when so as to intercept it as quickly as possible.

Those not blocking a red beam deal damage or heal the raid. Because of the red beam's unique abilities, healers should not ever waste time healing the tank. Damage dealers need not worry about threat, since the tank has guaranteed aggro while standing in the red beam.

For each Portal phase, one or two players are needed to block each beam. Using one player is simpler, but requires much better gear. Using two players avoids stacking debuffs to dangerous levels, but requires intelligent coordination.

Blue Beam

The blue beam is taken by damage-dealing classes (preferably with high health and/or shadow resistance). While their damage output increases rapidly, the damage received by them from Netherspite's shadow aura also increases rapidly and healing spells on them become less effective. Players staying inside this beam for too long becoming prone to be killed by a Void Zone.

Most raids do best by assigning one damage-dealer to take the blue beam for twenty ticks, then switching to a second damage-dealer for the rest of the phase. This avoids stacking the debuff to dangerous levels.

A Warlock is especially useful here, as he can replenish the health lost through the increased damage from his Drain Life spell and can reduce his shadow damage taken. A shadow priest is also a good option since Vampiric Embrace also scales with damage and heals the caster for a considerable amount. These classes are most easily able to take the entire duration of the blue beam. One healer should be designated to heal only the person in the blue beam.

The death of a blue beam blocker is not always a disaster. Any class and any spec is capable of blocking this beam. If the blocker happens to go down during the portal phase, any available player can simply hop in and ride the beam for the duration until the snag can be worked out.

Green Beam

The green beam rapidly heals Netherspite to full if it is allowed to touch him. It must be blocked at all times.

A manaless class (warrior, rogue, or feral druid) can stay for a whole beam's duration and not receive any relevant debuff. The reduced energy / rage cost of abilities from this beam allows them to do more damage. A tank that is not currently taking the red beam is a good option.

Half the green beam can be taken by a healer to temporarily greatly increase his power. This makes it easy to keep up whoever is taking the blue beam. A healer that takes the beam for 20 seconds finishes with mana 4,000 below his maximum. This may be higher than his mana before the beam, so it is often a very good idea to put a healer in the green beam. Restoration Druids are especially effective in this - their HoTs tick for very high numbers, which can be useful to recover from the Netherbreath - however, Paladins and Shamans can more easily recover from the reduced mana pool.

Damage-dealing classes that use mana may touch the green beam for one tick. This refills their mana to full. They must be careful to get out of the beam quickly, so the designated green beam blocker does not get Nether Exhaustion.

Raids that have problems with the blue beam blocker dying usually are raids that keep healers out of the healing beam. If this is a problem, try using the green beam with a healer instead of just neutralizing it with a rogue or warrior.

Red Beam

Classes with high armor (i.e. Warriors, Bear Druids, Moonkin Druids in full leather, Paladins, Shamans and Hunters) can block the red beam. 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 for very high numbers (upwards of 11k on a plate-wearing non tank). So leather and cloth wearers can still get easily one-shotted despite the augmented health maximum. Resilience from PvP gear is useful.

The red beam may be blocked two different ways. One way is to have one character block it for 20 seconds, and another character block it for the rest of the beam. The other way is to have a single tank-class character dance in and out of the beam for the entire duration.

If two characters share a red beam, they must be druid bears, moonkins in full leather, or wear chain mail or plate. One player takes a beam for 20 ticks, then the next player does.

If one player takes the entire red beam, they must be druid bear or have plate mail and a shield. Any character will eventually be one-shotted if they stand in the entire red beam, so they must dance in and out of the beam to avoid some of the debuffs. To do this, they repeatedly take five stacks of the debuff, then shift to the side to let Netherspite take the next five stacks, then shift back in. To avoid Netherspite moving, they should not move backward.

Beam Rotation

Because of Nether Exhaustion (see above), two shifts of players must be used to block the beams. A solid rotation looks like this:

SHIFT ONE: PORTAL PHASE

* Red-Tank A
* Blue-DPS A, then DPS B
* Green-Tank B

BANISH PHASE

SHIFT TWO: PORTAL PHASE

* Red-Tank B
* Blue-DPS C, then DPS D
* Green-Tank A

BANISH PHASE

SHIFT ONE AGAIN, etc.

Banish Phase

The Banish phase lasts for about 30 seconds:

* Players get a system warning: "Netherspite goes into a nether-fed rage!" He will dramatically change color to the usual shade of a banished mob.
* Netherspite is banished, remains stationary but still vulnerable to all damage. He will not pursue players and has no aggro table.
* Netherspite is still able to deal melee damage to you during the Banish phase if you get too close to him.
* Damage from Nether Burn aura will stop and no new Void Zones spawn during this phase. The ones already in place, however, are not removed.
* After a few seconds of inactivity, Netherspite begins targeting random players, and will attempt to cast Netherbreath on them. This ability has about a ~60 yard range and effects an unlimited number of players in a frontal cone.

There are two techniques for handling the Banish phase.

One technique is to leave Netherspite at the door with the designated red-beam tank for the next Portal phase and one healer. Everyone else runs to the far side of the room, by the telescope. The tank faces Netherspite toward the door, and the healer stands to the side. The players on the far side of the room bandage up and recover mana. This is generally the easiest maneuver.

The second technique is to make a tight circle around Netherspite and continue attacking. Non-tanks stay out of melee range. When he faces a player to perform a Netherbreath, everyone runs to his tail. If executed quickly and properly, this prevents anyone from getting hit, and Netherspite dies more quickly this way.

Another trick is to have a shaman drop a Searing Totem. Netherspite tries to kill the totem with his Netherbreath (an AoE spell that does not kill it). It also aggroes Netherspite as soon as the banish phase ends, providing time for the tank to pick him up.

After 30 seconds, Netherspite starts a fresh Portal phase and clears his aggro table. This means that no damaging or healing spells can be used before the tank can gain aggro. This means that he will have to pick up Netherspite and then drag him over to the red portal or healers will be stuck. Other players should run to where their portals have appeared as quickly as they can.

Netherspite does not always leave the Banish phase immediately when his cooldown is up. Do not run back to him too soon.

Miscellaneous Hints

* No one should ever cross the Red Beam behind its designated blocker. Netherspite moves in order to reach the new recipient of the red beam. The green and blue beams follow him and might slip off their respective blockers.
* 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 in the blue beam should cast Curse of Doom at the end of the portal phase when they have many debuffs stacked. It hits for between 5% and 7% of Netherspite's health.
* Shadow Priests can 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
* Paladins should use Shadow Resistance Aura because the red beam should give the tank more than enough health to survive without Devotion Aura, and it is useful because Nether Burn can be resisted.
* Priests should cast Shadow Protection or Prayer of Shadow Protection on the raid to help mitigate damage from Nether Burn and void zones. This is especially true for the blue beam blocker.
* While difficult, it is possible to break line of sight on Netherspite during the banish phase. Positioning is key: if the tank positions Netherspite near the door, it is possible to hide in the corner of the first window on the right. This reduces the amount of time running back and forth, and reduces the amount of time Netherspite is able to target players.