Viscidus is a boss in the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj, one of the original vanilla raids. I know, a boss from there that can provide an issue?!
Viscidus is not necessarily a difficult boss, but MECHANICS! It’s split in two phases, which I’ll call FREEZING and SHATTERING, and I’ll give some class-specific details on each phase.
FREEZING
The first part of the boss requires you to freeze him. This requires you to hit Viscidus with 20 attacks that deal Frost damage. These classes have it easy:
Death Knight: You have it very easy here. As Frost, a lot of your attacks will deal the Frost damage you need, and as other specs, you still have access to Frost abilities.
Hunter: At level 100, use the Exotic Munitions talent, and use Frozen Ammo from that. You can also use Beast Mastery as your spec, and use a Chimaera. They have frost attacks!
Mage: As a Frost Mage, you’re naturally very well equipped here. As Arcane and Fire, you still have access to some Frost-based abilities.
Priest: Mind Spike deals Shadowfrost damage. Spam this until he’s frozen.
Shaman: Frost Shock. Has a 6 second cooldown, so it may take a while!
Warlock: Demonology is the way to go here. Touch of Chaos deals Chaos damage. Chaos damage is made up of all schools of magic, including Frost. Build up Demonic Fury, spam Touch of Chaos and Viscidus will eventually freeze.
Druids, Monks, Paladins, Rogues and Warriors have it a bit more difficult. With these classes it’s best to enchant their weapons with Enchant Weapon: Elemental Force then melee Viscidus until he freezes. The enchant won’t proc on every hit, so it may take a while.
SHATTERING
This part requires you to hit a frozen Viscidus 30 times before he defrosts. 30 hits, 30 seconds.
Here’s the easy classes!
Death Knight: Army of the Dead. They’ll smash the bastard in no time!
Hunter: The combination of you and a pet attacking will make short work of him. Stampede can also be a big help.
Monk: Using two one-handed weapons means you will attack really quickly. Taking Summon Xuen as a talent will mean you can effectively attack twice as fast, as there’s two of you.
Warlock: ’cause you’d be Demonology, the combination of you meleeing and a Felguard would likely make short work of Viscidus. Use Grimoire of Service to summon a second Felguard temporarily to ensure the kill.
For other classes, to trivialise this fight, you need to have a Lumber Yard! You’ll eventually get a quest from it that allows you to get a trinket called the Barov Lumberjack Caller. Using this will summon a number of lumberjacks to fight for you, as thus:
Lillorigga likes this trinket.
The combination of 5 lumberjacks and you meleeing the boss will make Viscidus smash to pieces in no time! Make sure you’re equipped with fast weapons, such as daggers or one-handed swords. Warriors swinging around giant two-handed battle axes may well struggle immensely here!
Abilities that summon meleeing minions are always helpful here. Paladins should throw out Guardian of Ancient Kings, and Priests should use their Shadowfiend, for example. Warlocks should favour summoning their Infernal/Abyssal over a Doomguard/Terrorguard, as the former does melee attacks and so would contribute to the shattering.
Why even go for this boss? Well, of course he drops a battle pet, the Viscidus Globule, required for the first Raiding with Leashes achievement! Good luck!
Because most bosses below Mists of Pandaria level are delightfully faceroll-ish, instead of doing full instance soloing guides, I’m going to focus on bosses that, even in a 6.1 world, have weird mechanics or are just plain difficult. Spine of Deathwing is one of them.
Here’s a masterpiece of MS Paint representing Deathwing’s back! I made it myself, can you tell?
The numbered orange blobs are Corruption tentacles. When solo, they don’t really do anything special. When there’s two or more of you (or one + a pet, for those hunters, warlocks and frost mages out there), they cast Fiery Grip and are altogether more annoying.
What you want to do is destroy tentacles 1, 2, and either 3 OR 4, then sit in the spot where one used to be. This causes small tendrils to root you to Deathwing’s back, but cause a small amount of damage every half a second until you step off them. You want to stay there until Deathwing rolls, which causes the Hideous Amalgamations spawned by the death of the Corruptions to fly off his back. Bye!
What causes Deathwing to roll? When he detects more people on one side of his back, he will start a 10 second countdown, in which you want to have an even amount of people on both sides, lest he rolls and you all fly away. When solo? You want to move back and forth between the left side and the right side, which will restart the countdown. Some classes will have it more easy than others.
So, once the 3 Hideous Amalgamations are flung off his back, move to the centre area and keep moving between each side. The dead Corruption tentacles will release mobs called Corrupted Blood, and you want to kill them near each-other, while dancing between each side. When Bloods die, they leave behind Residue, which is the key to winning this encounter. Hideous Amalgamations absorb this Residue, which increases the damage and attack speed of it, but also causes it to become more unstable. This effect stacks 9 times, at which point it becomes Superheated. This is when you want to move it to the plates (Plate 1, 2 and 3 on the diagram) and kill it! Once its health reaches 0, it casts Nuclear Blast, and if it’s close enough to the plate, it will tear up, revealing Burning Tendons for you to kill. Once you do, the plate will rip off, revealing 2 more Corruption tentacles, and the process begins again.
So to recap:
Kill Corruptions until you have 1 left.
Force Deathwing to roll to kill the spawned Hideous Amalgamations.
Kill 9 Corrupted Bloods while moving to the left and right across Deathwing’s back to prevent him rolling.
Once you have 9 Residues, kill the 4th Corruption to spawn a Hideous Amalgamation.
Make the Amalgamation run over the residues so it gets 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood.
Move the Amalgamation to one of the plates and kill it.
Kill the Burning Tendon to rip off the plate and reveal 2 more Corruption tentacles.
Repeat.
Heroic Changes
The only real worry is a debuff called Blood Corruption: Death. When the debuff fades and isn’t dispelled, it causes you to explode. As a warlock, you want to use Grimoire of Sacrifice, and sacrifice your Imp. This gives you the Singe Magic Command Demon ability, which you want to be using whenever the debuff appears on you. This transforms the debuff into Blood Corruption: Earth which, after 15 seconds, buffs you with 20% reduction in damage taken! It stacks twice too.
Recommended Talents (for the classes I play)
Destruction Warlock: Searing Flames, Mortal Coil, Soul Link, Unbound Will, Grimoire of Sacrifice (Imp), Kil’jaeden’s Cunning, Charred Remains OR Cataclysm.
Demonology Warlock: Not really recommended, as you can’t sacrifice a demon, and are thus unable to cleanse the debuff in Heroic OR are susceptible to being grabbed by tentacles.
With monks, Windwalker is a very good spec to do this fight with, as Blackout Kick will easily heal you for any damage you take. The Blood Corruption: Death debuff is something you’re gonna have to just take, but Blackout Kick will top your health up nicely, as if heals you for 30% of the damage you do. It’s very important you do NOT take Chi Explosion from the level 100 talent tier, as this ability replaces Blackout Kick and doesn’t have a heal attached to it, meaning you have to rely on Surging Mist and Expel Harm.
be incredibly careful when using roll or flying serpent kick. be too careless and you can and will fling yourself off deathwing’s back.
Warlocks have it pretty difficult. Though they are able to burn off the debuff, the difficulty stems from Destruction’s lack of spells you can cast while moving. Ember Tap is also pretty weak, and is dependent on you having embers. Affliction is an easier way to solo this boss as Corruption and Agony are instant cast, and glyphed/talented Drain Life is an incredibly powerful heal. In both specs, you want to take Kil’jaeden’s Cunning so that 8 out of every 35 seconds you can cast anything on the move.
Demonology is less effective as it doesn’t have access to Grimoire of Sacrifice, which means you’ll either have to go petless and rely on Unbound Will to dispel the debuff which has a heavy health cost and a long cooldown, or have an imp/fel imp out and risk being snared by the Fiery Grip of the Corruption you leave alive.
Being able to do this encounter means you’ll have a shot at the mounts dropped by Madness of Deathwing! Good luck!
6.1 brings us the third installment in the Raiding With Leashes series, which sees old raid bosses drop awesome battle pets. We’re still in the Burning Crusade era, but these pets drop from the awesome Black Temple, the so-so Sunwell and the horrible Hyjal Summit.
Let’s start with that one first!
Hyjal Summit
Stinkrot: anethron
Anethron is the second boss of Hyjal Summit, and it’s a tank & spank. Literally no difficulty here. The difficulty actually stems from the first boss, Rage Winterchill, and that’s only if you’re stubborn enough to stand in his Death & Decay. It deals percentage-based damage, so it will ravage you if you let it. The Stinkrot item is the Smelly Gravestone.
grotesque: azgalor
Go with Grimoire of Sacrifice with this one, else he’ll use Doom on you and you’ll die after 20 seconds. Of course, this is only a worry if you have low DPS. Tank & spank otherwise. Item is the Grotesque Statue.
hyjal wisp: Archimonde
Yeah, the final boss himself, which means you WILL have to go through thewhole damn place. Grimoire of Sacrifice again, as going with a pet will mean you have to face Air Burst, and falling damage can be a very likely contributor to your death. It’s cute how the wisp drops from Archimonde, as it’s the wisps that ended up killing Archy! The item is Hyjal Wisp.
Black Temple
leviathan hatchling: high warlord Naj’entus
Again go petless, or he may end up spearing you. Frankly though it’s a non-issue as your DPS should get him down before he bubbles, at least at level 100. If he DOES bubble? Wait it out. Sure he’ll become immune and start healing, but it won’t last forever. Item is a Leviathan Egg.
Abyssius: supremus
There is literally nothing here that will pose a challenge. Item is the Shard of Supremus.
Fragment of Anger/desire/suffering: reliquary of the lost
3 pets drop from this encounter, and of course it’s a relatively easy encounter. Trouble is, Essence of Desire has a nasty little trick in the form of a shield that damages you when you damage her. Take it slightly slow, keep an eye on your health and heal if need be, and watch out for the Deaden debuff! Anger and Suffering are easy tank & spanks. Items you are looking for are Fragment of Anger, Fragment of Desire and Fragment of Suffering.
sister of temptation: mother shahraz
It’s a miniature succubus! You need her in your life so your succubus demon has company! Mother Shahraz is not difficult, however she has a habit of putting a LONG silence on you. Item is the Sultry Grimoire.
Sunwell Plateau
sunblade micro-defender: Brutallus
Let your voidlord tank, stay behind Brutallus, and this fight will be magnificently easy. The item you want is the Sunblade Rune of Activation.
wretched servant: eredar twins
When one of the twins dies, the other one enrages and her damage can be a little bit worrying, so DPS one down to a low state first, then kill off the other one. The item you need is the Servant’s Bell. Make sure you kill all the trash between Felmyst (the previous boss) and these two, else they may not spawn.
chaos pup: m’uru/entropius
This fight used to be the “guild killer” and now it’s an easy-peasy tank & spank. The item you are hoping to loot here is the Void Collar.
So, what’s next? Well, Burning Crusade raids are all done, so could we see new pets added to Wrath raids? Mini Yogg-Sarons? Mini Mimirons? Mini tentacles and Mini Jaraxxus? Let’s hope so!
Yes, it’s finally that time. This one has videos I made a while ago as well! Here’s the video for the first 3 bosses:
Let’s talk about them then!
Omnotron Defense System
A council fight consisting of 4 bosses, they all share a health pool, and only 2 are active at a time. Have your voidlord tank both bosses, and use glyphed Health Funnel on cooldown or when needed. Other than that, it’s simply a case of pumping out the damage to them, and avoiding their attacks where possible.
When the fight starts, you only engage 1 robot, but eventually a second one will activate, and after a few seconds the first robot will generate a shield on itself that renders it immune to damage, necessitating a target switch. Take advantage of the few seconds before this shield activates by using Havoc, then switching target and then use Chaos Bolt to hit both! Massive damage! When the third robot activates, the first robot deactivates, meaning only 2 are faced at a time.
Arcanotron advice: Arcane Annihilator can be interrupted. Power Generator creates a zone on the ground you need to drag the robot out of, as it boosts their damage by 50%. You can take advantage of this damage boost too however, so drag it out and sit on it yourself.
Magmatron advice: He has a big BIG aoe that frankly you’re gonna have to heal through. Ditto his flamethrower. When he makes a barrier, it absorbs damage and then explodes. Slightly problematic, but not a wiper.
Toxitron advice: Kill slimes. Get out of the debuff zones he makes (but try and plonk the bosses in it, they take extra damage!).
Electron advice: Dodge lightning. That’s it.
Here’s their achievement, and it’s a simple case of doing those things. Most likely easier as a group as you can nuke them fast before they even DO one of those attacks. Also, you’d need to interrupt Arcane Annihilator, and as you’re using a voidlord, you can’t.
Magmaw
This one is a weird fight. As you can tell from the video, your demon will just stand there and slowly die, he doesn’t engage the boss at all. For this reason, I recommend Grimoire of Sacrifice. The damage will come in thick and fast, meaning most of your Burning Embers will be spent on healing yourself. When he casts Pillar of Flame, get out of the affected area or you’ll get launched into the air and sustain hefty falling damage! This also summons adds which you can Rain of Fire to death for bonus embers.
After a while, he’ll use Mangle, and this is where the damage starts to get pretty intense, but you’ll be able to target his weak point, the Exposed Head. This takes double damage from your attacks and transfers that to Magmaw itself, meaning it’s worth your while smiting that spot! You’ll have gathered up a lot of parasites by the time you land, so Rain of Fire!
Easy enough. When the parasites spawn, kill them before one jumps into you. Fire & Brimstone: Conflagrate will help here.
Maloriak
Your voidlord will be useful again here, thankfully. This is a fight where you wanna slow DPS for a while. Maloriak will periodically release Aberrations into the fight, but he only has a limited number of them. You want him to release all/most of them during the fight, as when he reaches 25% health he releases ALL of the ones that remain, as well as 2 “primes”. They passively buff each-other’s damage dealt and reduce their damage taken by virtue of being in proximity to one-another, and so if a number of them are released, they are gonna hit HARD.
As for Maloriak himself, he throws various vials into his little cauldron to buff himself. He goes either blue-red-green or red-blue-green.
Red phase, he’ll breathe fire a lot, and do an attack that makes a cone of fire damage that’s split between all caught in it. Blue phase, he’ll use Flash Freeze which you’ll need to get your demon to free you from, or anticipate it and cast Rain of Fire centered on yourself. Green phase, he vomits out a slime that increases the damage taken by all affected by 100% (this includes adds!), and stops the damage buff the adds give each-other. As for his usage of Remedy, well, you’re gonna just have to DPS through it, as you can’t really remove it. At 25%, he stops using the vials, releases the large aberrations, and starts using a few new attacks that frankly you won’t see, ’cause now you burn hard, execute and get your loot.
Self explanatory. Kill all the aberrations quickly. Easier as a group, naturally. Let him release them all at once! NUKE.
Atramades
Ding-a-ling the bell, wait for him to melt it and land, then engage. This is probably the closest we get to a tank & spank in here. Avoid sound waves on the floor, use a gong if necessary, dodge Tracking. Every hit of his fire when he’s Tracking you adds 20 sound, the sound waves add 10, and when you hit 100 sound you’ll die VERY FAST. Eventually he takes off. Avoid the laser.
Delightfully self-explanatory. Gong if you’re worried.
Chimaeron
Make sure you get the buff from the gnome in the cage at the back of the room. Use Grimoire of Sacrifice with this fight, as you need to stay above at LEAST 10k health, and the passive health regen will be vital for it. He’ll knock over the little robot, and start arguing with himself, use this time to nuke him! The feud lasts 30 seconds, and the robot will come back online afterwards. At 20% health, he reduces your healing done by 99% and hits twice with his regular attacks, but your Soul Leech shield will help you out here! This fight is basically tank & spank, but watch your health. As long as you’re above 10k, you’re not in danger.
Simples. Don’t die.
Nefarian
Dismiss your pet, drop down, Flames of Xoroth. Nuke Onyxia, run away from adds! Try and be near a pillar when Onyxia goes down, as Nefarian will fill the pit with lava. Get on the pillar, kill the add, move to the next pillar, kill the add, move to the last one, kill. Be VERY CAREFUL here, your health will drop quite quickly, so be ready with ember taps!
When the last add dies, the lava drains away. Hit Nefarian while this happens, then jump down to begin phase 3. Dodge the adds as much as you can, but don’t drag them through Nefarian’s Shadowflame Breath, as it restores their energy! Energy slowly depletes, and when it hits 0 they drop, until he specifically wakes them back up again with Shadowblaze Spark. Try and stand behind Nefarian, so your demon takes the breaths and you take the adds. Other than that, phase 3 is pretty tank & spank.
You can do this either by keeping Onyxia alive until ol’ Neffy hits 50% during phase 1, or get Neffy to 50% during phase 2 by not killing the third add straight away. Either way, I’d recommend doing this as a group for ease, but if you really want to do it solo, go for it.
Well, that’s Blackwing Descent! What’s next? Well, I still haven’t managed to solo Conclave of Wind yet, so I don’t think Throne of the Four Winds, but then I haven’t done Cho’gall either, or Spine of Deathwing.
Ah, the final raid of Wrath of the Lich King. No, I’m not counting Ruby Sanctum, silly.
Each boss has one achievement tied to it, unlike Ulduar where every boss had hundreds. Makes my job slightly easier.
Lord Marrowgar
A boss I recommend Grimoire of Sacrifice for, in order to avoid being bone spiked. Avoid fire on the ground, use defensives if low on health, and nuke the bastard. It’s a simple, speedy kill.
His achievement is called Boned (fnar!) and it requires that nobody is impaled by a bone spike for longer than 8 seconds. Doing this alone will guarantee success!
Bear in mind that on 25hc, he’ll cast Bone Spike Graveyard on you regardless of whether you’re alone or not. There’s no real way to avoid this, so is he unsoloable? NO! Bone Spike Graveyard has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on worgen or goblins. These races can therefore stomp him easily. The rest of us will have to just have our demon kill the spike. Yes, for 25hc use Supremacy, and make sure you tank him yourself, otherwise he’ll Bone Spike you outside of his Bonestorm.
Bone.
Lady Deathwhisper
Ah, she of the annoying voice. This fight is basically Nukapalooza 2014. Blow her up. Your attacks will damage her MANA bar at first, and during this time she will periodically summon adds for you to kill. These adds are largely irrelevant, bar one. If you see a mob called Cult Adherent, kill it to death immediately. If you let them cast Curse of Torpor on you, it makes this fight SO much more difficult, as it increases ability cooldowns by 15 seconds. Abilities that DON’T have a cooldown will have 15 second ones for the duration of the debuff.
Yeah. Bad times.
Once you start hitting her health bar, she won’t summon adds anymore, and she resumes being a simple burn job. Her achievement is called Full House and it requires that 5 different types of cultist are present when she dies. I’d recommend doing this achievement in a small group because fuck Curse of Torpor, but if you really wanna go for it solo, then save your cooldowns for when you have the right number of cultists, then smash the boss to pieces.
In heroic, she’ll summon cultists even in phase 2, and use a spell called Dominate Mind. Yes, a mind control. I’m fairly confident she doesn’t use it on a solitary target, so again Grimoire of Sacrifice is the way forward.
Gunship Battle
*hisssssss*
This is the fight that will give you a couple problems. Before you start the encounter, talk to the goblin and get the rocket pack. Equip it (it’s a shirt) and put the button on your action bar. Talk to Muradin (or whoever the horde person is that begins this encounter) and ride into the sky!
Hop into one of the cannons, and build up heat by using ability 1. Keep an eye on how much heat you are generating (hitting 100 will overheat the cannon and make it temporarily unusable), and when at 90+, use ability 2. This spends all your heat on a super-powered cannon ball!
When the enemy ship appears, start bombing it! Ignore any adds and just focus on blowing the enemy ship up. Eventually, the other boat will summon a mage that freezes your cannons. DO NOT ROCKET OVER YET. When you get frozen out your cannons, wait for 3 adds to be summoned onto your ship, and kill them as they appear. When they’re dead, hop over and nuke the mage, then hop back. Jump back into your cannon and resume bombarding. Repeat this process until the enemy ship dies.
You will most likely wipe a couple times before you succeed here, because even doing this it’s still a little bit RNG. Persistence is the key here.
The achievement is called I’m on a Boat and requires that you don’t hop over to the enemy boat more than once, which means that this is most likely impossible solo. Group time.
Heroic mode gives everything more health, and thus makes this encounter longer and more annoying. Yuck.
Deathbringer Saurfang
Easy fight! Voidlord tanks, you spank. This is literally as easy as it gets, people. Relish it. He summons Blood Beasts every 30 seconds, kill them if they’re a bother.
Heroic mode adds a buff to the blood beasts that triples their damage and slowing enemies close to them by 80%. This makes them more of a threat, so kill them when they spawn. Other than things having more health, this is the only change to the fight.
I’ve Gone and Made a Mess requires that you kill Saurfang before he casts Mark of the Champion a certain number of times (3 on 10m, 5 on 25m). When he reaches 100 Blood Power, he casts it. This just makes this fight a DPS race that’s easily won. I mean, I did it on my prot paladin easy enough, and her damage is TERRIBLE!
Festergut
DPS race! You need to kill him before hitting 10 stacks of Gastric Bloat. You hit 10 stacks, you blow up and die.
Thankfully, this is another tank & spank fight, with all the easiness that implies. On heroic, there’ll be crap pools for you to avoid. Overall though, this fight is easy-peasy.
Flu Shot Shortage requires you to get no more than 2 stacks of Innoculated. If you burn him down quick enough, then congrats.
Rotface
Another easy fight. I recommend tanking this one yourself, so go with Grimoire of Sacrifice. This means you don’t have to worry about oozes, as he won’t use Mutated Infection on anyone tanking him, and you will therefore get Dances With Oozes by default.
Burn him down. Watch your health if you’re GoSaccing this fight, avoid crap on the floor. Heroic mode adds Vile Gas from Festergut. Doesn’t make this any more difficult, to be honest.
Professor Putricide
Good news everyone! Turns out this wing is hilariously easy!
Ah, but it does get interesting on heroic. For normal, just tank and spank. Don’t stand in the crap. Please.
On heroic, instead of being stunned during phase transitions, you have to kill a couple adds he’ll spawn, Volatile Ooze, and Gas Cloud. On 25man you’ll only be able to kill one of these, so ignore the other one. Another addition is Unbound Plague. Just heal through it.
Obviously, the shorter you can make each phase, the better the fight will go, so go full-on nuke here. Terrorguard, Dark Soul, have some embers banked before you engage and blow him up when your fantastic trinkets proc. For the achievement Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion… you need to not use Regurgitated Ooze when an abomination.
You don’t need to be an abomination for this fight solo. You’re too beautiful. Just nuke and get the achievement by default.
Blood Prince Council
Nuke! AoE! Cleave! Throw everything you have at the one with health. Have your demon tank one/all of them, havoc one you aren’t targeting, and just blow them up. It’s a simple fight, but watch out for your demon! They have a tendency to take a LOT of damage from the princes for some reason.
The Orb Whisperer requires that you take no more than 23k damage in a single hit (25k on 25man) and is largely trivial to achieve.
Heroic adds a debuff called Shadow Prison to the encounter. It causes damage when you move, but staying still for 10 seconds will clear it. Largely trivial again.
Blood-Queen Lana’thel
We’ll start with the achievement, which probably can’t be done solo. Kill Queenie here as a vampire one week, and NOT as a vampire the next. Solo, you’ll always be a vampire, so get some friends to get bitten instead for the latter. This awards Once Bitten, Twice Shy.
This is the definition of a nuke fight. Her attacks do little damage to you so go with Grimoire of Sacrifice and tank her with your face. When she bites you, you get a debuff called Essence of the Blood Queen. This doubles your damage and causes attacks to heal you. From this point, you have 75 seconds to nuke the shit out of her before you get mind controlled and die horribly. Pop cooldowns here. Dark Soul, Doomguard, potions, the lot.
Heroic mode adds nothing of note really bar increased health. Kill her faster!
Valithria Dreamwalker
No. You cannot solo this fight. This is where our mighty journey stops!
Unless you get healer friends to come along and heal the green monstrosity so you can move on. For some reason, the dragon refuses to take healthstones.
In 6.0, they’re making this encounter skippable, because while some classes can solo it, others cannot. Like, ever. No, not even bandages.
Portal Jockey requires that all portals she summons are used. Do yourself a favor, get enough healers (or people with healing offspecs, and get those that CAN’T heal to throw a bandage on her or something), nuke-heal her and get the achievement because she didn’t summon a single portal for anyone to go through in the first place.
Sindragosa
Have your Voidlord for this one again. It’s a relatively simple tank & spank, even on heroic. When she flies into the air, she’ll trap you in an ice tomb. Target it and get your Voidy to attack it to free you. Watch out as she’ll use this quite often as her health gets lower! Make sure you keep Voidy at or close to full health. I recommend Glyph of Demon Training to increase his armor by 10%, and Glyph of Health Funnel to make Health Funnel an instant heal, as well as Soul Link for the passive 3% of damage dealt healed back to you.
Heroic just makes things hit harder. It’s still doable. All You Can Eat requires that you don’t get more than 5 stacks of Mystic Buffet. Frankly, it’s easier to do that one as a group and nuke her down before she even does it 5 times, but if you really want to solo it, go ahead. Go behind pillars to break line of sight so that your stacks fall of, though with the ice tombs I doubt that’s gonna be easy!
The Lich King
I’m not gonna go through the achievements for this one solo, as I doubt they can be done. Been Waiting a Long Time for This requires you to stack Necrotic Plague to 30. This’ll kill you solo, no question.
Phase 1, your pet will tank ol’ Lichy, while you nuke him. Stay above 90% health so that Infest has no effect on you. Nuke Drudge Ghouls and Shambling Horrors. On heroic, make sure that you’re moving constantly out of the Shadow Traps, else you’ll go flying away like Team Rocket. This is the hardest phase to be frank, as there’s so much going on, and the Shadow Traps are REALLY annoying if you’re doing it heroic-style.
Transition 1 (70%), position yourself at the base of the stairs. Kill the Raging Spirits, and especially the Ice Spheres (they will send you flying as well if they touch you). Watch your health, a lot of damage will be coming your way!
Phase 2, you’ll see some Val’kyr flying around. They’ll be a bother as they’ll pick you up and carry you to your doom unless you have aggroed something in the last 45 or so seconds. At the start, you’ll be okay ’cause of the Raging Spirits that were attacking you, but every so often you wanna dismiss your Voidlord, take a hit from Skeletor there, then Flames of Xoroth your pet and Soulshatter to get the aggro back onto him. When FoX’s cooldown is up, dismiss, take a hit, resummon. You won’t have Soulshatter (2 min cooldown, sadly), so ease the DPS a little.
He also casts Defile, which plonks a big area of crap on the ground you need to get out of asap, as it gets bigger each time it deals damage.
Transition 2 (40%) is exactly the same as the first. Kill spirits, kill orbs.
Phase 3, no more Infest! Yay! Kill Vile Spirits that spawn asap. They have low health so Rain of Fire or Fire & Brimstone: Incinerate may suffice here. They explode for about 20k if they get too close. Keep on the move! If he sends you into Frostmourne, then just keep on the move and avoid as much damage as possible. The Val’kyr are still flying around so remember to dismiss your pet, take a hit, then resummon whenever Flames of Xoroth comes off cooldown.
At 10%, you’ve pretty much won. You can survive Fury of Frostmourne through a combination of stupidly high warlock health, Twilight Ward, Unending Resolve, and a Soul Leech shield (though the latter was all it took for me) and continue to kill Lichface as the whole boring RP drags on. You get to this part, the fight is won, unless you do something dumb like walk off the edge of the platform.
Oh look, me doing it on 25 man normal. Maybe one day I’ll do heroic.
And with that, we finish the Lich King raids! But worry not, Cataclysm raids are next! And guess what? Blackwing Descent is hilariously easy on 10n mode.
Ulduar. One of the raids that people hail as being the best, or one of the best, that WoW has to offer. It has a massive amount of achievements associated with it, a bonus boss, the voice acting of Jamieson Price (Yogg-Saron, also LORD JARAXXUS, Lu Bu, Algol, Seraph Lamington, and many other things I idolise the man for), new and interesting ways of activating hard modes, and a boss that can’t be soloed normally!
This is gonna be a fun one.
THE SIEGE OF ULDUAR
This covers the first four bosses, which are naturally rather easy. Getting the achievements for them however? Not so much. The first time I tried to solo this place, I didn’t hop in a vehicle for the gauntlet of trash. Don’t be like me, it makes life difficult.
Flame Leviathan: Big-ass vehicle made by Mimiron. To activate his hard mode, talk to Lore Keeper of Norgannon at the entrance and tell him to start up the defense systems before you start clearing the trash. Don’t kill off the big towers on the way up, just go forward and kill whatever gets in your way, including the mob-spawning towers.
For the boss himself, if you’ve NOT activated his hard mode, it’s a simple case of being in a demolisher, and using the Pyrite Barrel ability on him. It puts on a stacking (to 10, duration 10 seconds) DoT that will kill him, but you can only use the ability 10 times. This is enough. Move backwards as you fire at him so he doesn’t catch you.
For the hard mode, you’ll need to use more than 1 demolisher. What I do, you’ll see in the video below, but there’s some prep you need to do before you pull. First, take a demolisher to the south-eastern corner of the fight area, then make a slight wall around it of the other vehicles. This is because though he focuses on you, he also sends missiles at the other vehicles in the area, and we’re hoping the other vehicles divert fire from the second demolisher. You hop in your demolisher, approach from the south-western area, and throw a pyrite barrel. You want to space them out, so fire a couple normal shots in-between. As you do this, move towards the south-east corner, keep the DoT up. When you start running low on health in Demolisher#1, spam the pyrite! If you get him below 50%, you did good. When the vehicle is destroyed, hop in #2.
Repeat the process, this time heading northwards, space the pyrite out slightly, then spam it if you’re getting low on health like I did. Demolisher#2 gets destroyed, so run! Use Burning Rush, take a hit from his ram (it knocks you back pretty far), and wait for the DoT to finish him off. If it drops, and it’s still alive, you’ll have to kill it yourself, so I hope you took Kil’jaeden’s Cunning! Keep the speed boosts up, pop your cooldowns, and let’s hope that beast don’t ram you to death.
I promise the rest of the bosses won’t warrant such a wall of text. Well, maybe Thorim. And Yogg-Saron. And Algalon…
Achievements
Three Car Garage: This one requires three visits. You need to defeat the boss in each of the three vehicles.
Dwarfageddon: Kill 100 Steelforged Defenders in 10 seconds. They spawn infinitely from the towers, so it’s easy enough to get.
Unbroken: Kill ol’ Flamey on your first attempt, without repairing your vehicle. Easy to do if you’re not doing hard mode.
Orbital Bombardment/Orbital Devastation/Nuked From Orbit/Orbit-uary: Defeat the Flame Leviathan with 1/2/3/4 orbital defense systems active respectively. Fulfilling one achievement awards the ones below it as well, so if you get Nuked From Orbit, you also get Orbital Devastation and Orbital Bombardment.
Shutout: Kill Flame Leviathan without causing a system shutdown. Honestly, I’ve never SEEN a system shutdown, so there you go.
Take Out Those Turrets: Can’t be done solo. Requires you to be a passenger in a demolisher, get catapulted onto the boss, and then destroy a defense turret.
Ignis the Furnace Master: TANK AND SPANK. There is nothing of note here. Doesn’t even have a hard mode, pfft.
Achievements
Stokin’ the Furnace: Kill him in under 4 minutes. Not hard.
Hot Pocket: Survive being thrown into his slag pot. I think it’d be harder to NOT survive it.
Shattered: Wait for him to summon 2 Iron Constructs. Kite them into fire left by Ignis until they reach 10 stacks of Heat, which causes them to get a new debuff called Molten. It lasts 20 seconds. Now kite them into the water on the side of the fight area. This causes a new debuff called Brittle. Kill them both within 5 seconds of each-other.
Razorscale: Another simple fight. First phase, you can’t attack the boss. Adds will periodically enter the fight for you to slaughter, while some NPCs repair the harpoons. Once they’re fixed, use them to bring the boss down. Nuke her. Once she gets to 50%, she won’t fly back up again. Talk to the Expedition Commander to begin the fight. Hint: He’s not a dwarf.
Achievements
A Quick Shave: Kill her having let her land once, and only once. Easy!
Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare: Kill 25 Dark Rune Guardian Dwarves with the boss’s Flame Breath. Self explanatory, really. Guess what? You don’t have to do it all in one run if you don’t want to. If you kill 10 one week, 10 another, then 5 in a third week, you get the achievement. Happy day! Kill the Sentinels (no cloak, it’ll cleave and kill everything else too), wait for the harpoons, get the boss to below half health, then wait for her to kill the guardians. Be wary of Fuse Armor, it’s annoying. Most likely easier to do this one with others.
XT-002 Deconstructor: Another glorious tank & spank here. When he gets to 75%, his heart is exposed. Kill it to enter his hard mode! He gets restored to full health, and hits harder, but your voidlord’ll be fine. Watch out for Tympanic Tantrum, it hits HARD.
Achievements
Must Deconstruct Faster: Kill him in the oddly specific time of under 205 seconds.
Heartbreaker: Kill his heart, then kill him. Meanie.
Nerf Gravity Bombs: Don’t let a gravity bomb kill you.
Nerf Engineering: Don’t let any scrapbots heal XT.
Nerf Scrapbots: Kill 20 scrapbots using a boombot in 12 seconds. At 75%, 50% and 25% health, XT exposes his heart and adds summon. Get the heart low but DON’T KILL IT. Push him into the next heart phase quickly, then a third time quickly. This achievement is very RNG focused, hopefully you will have enough scrapbots near enough boombots. Kill a boombot, it’ll kill the nearby scrapbots. I’d recommend having your voidy tank XT in a corner.
THE ANTECHAMBER OF ULDUAR
This area houses my favourite boss in the instance, but let’s do the other 3 first.
Assembly of Iron: Honestly, it’s a pretty simple tank & spank, but keep an eye on your health levels. The hardmode of this fight is all in what order you kill them in; killing Steelbreaker last awards the achievement for the meta.
Achievements
I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim: Kill Molgeim last.
I Choose You, Stormcaller Brundir: Kill Brundir last.
I Choose You, Steelbreaker: Guess.
But I’m On Your Side: Kill the last member of the assembly while under the effects of the Iron Boot Flask, which is a consumable you purchase from Olug Alegut or Rork Sharpchin for 10 Relics of Ulduar.
Can’t Do That While Stunned: Another of those “much easier as a group” achievements, this requires you to prevent Brundir damaging anyone with Chain Lightning or Lightning Whirl. Interrupts are the order of the day here, along with nuking him first. Your pet counts as something that you can’t let be damaged.
Kologarn: A weird one, this. I prefer to do this petless, as he has an ability called Stone Grip which he uses to grab you. If you’re alone (ie your pet then dies), this’ll reset the fight. If your demon survives for 8 seconds, then YOU die. He won’t use this if you’re the only target, however. He also won’t grab you if he’s using his eye beams. Simply nuke the main body, unless you’re achievement hunting. Stick in melee range, unless you’re a fast nuker. He uses Petrifying Breath on targets he can’t reach, which puts a stacking debuff that increases damage taken.
Achievements
Disarmed: Kill both arms and the main body within 12 seconds of each-other. Relatively simple for a warlock with Havoc. Get the head down to about 20%, get the arms to a Chaos Bolt-able level, Havoc one arm, target the other and fire. Finish off the head.
Rubble and Roll: When you kill an arm, it spawns 5 rubbles. The arms respawn after a short while. Kill 25 rubbles.
With Open Arms: Kill Kologarn WITHOUT killing his arms.
If Looks Could Kill: Don’t get hit by those eye lasers of his. This includes pets, so another reason to go petless here.
Auriaya: Tank and spank of the easiest kind. Has a horrifying death screech. I’m honestly shocked my neighbours haven’t called the police.
Achievements
Crazy Cat Lady:Kill Auriaya without killing Sanctum Sentries.
Nine Lives: About a minute into the fight, she spawns a Feral Defender. Kill it. Wait for it to revive, kill it again. Do this until it has died NINE TIMES. Ugh.
Algalon the Observer: My favourite! You definitely need your voidlord to tank this one, at lower gear levels he hits like a truck. Don’t think that this is your cue to sit back and nuke, you have some moving around to do! Big Bang hits for about 100k on 25man, but hopefully your soul leech shield will absorb all that. When you see that he’s casting Cosmic Smash, move from where you are. He’ll send a fireball at that location which will knock you up VERY high, taking off over half your health when you land again. Adds can be a nuisance, if they start to bother you, kill ’em, otherwise run around to prevent them hitting you. Don’t go into black holes.
Phase Punch stacks to 5, then fades the target out of existence. This’ll be on your pet, so don’t worry too much about it. Flames of Xoroth and Soulshatter if needed.
(VIDEO WILL GO HERE AT SOME POINT)
Achievements
Supermassive: Close 3 black holes in 10 seconds, then defeat Algalon. May be another of those “easier in a group” dealies. You kill a Collapsing Star, it spawns a black hole. To close it, you kite a Living Constellation into it. Requires good positioning and a bit of luck.
Observed: Kill Algalon. Rewards a title! Starcaller on 10 man, Astral Walker in 25 man.
THE KEEPERS OF ULDUAR
These are the watchers that protect Ulduar on behalf of the titans, only Yogg-Saron has made them go mad. Let’s go beat the crazy out of them, beginning with…
Thorim: Oh.
I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never done this one solo. It IS doable, but requires glitching the encounter slightly. Keep your voidlord on passive. You basically kill everything in the arena, hit the switch and run through to the first big mob. Pop any speed boosts you can, tag the big enemy then run run run back into the arena before the instakill spark gets you. The encounter will reset, but the gate won’t close for a while, and the colossus will still be chasing you. Move your voidlord to the centre of the arena, get back through the gate before it closes, and wait. When the arena mobs respawn, have your voidlord hit one of them, then dismiss him. This makes them aggro onto YOU.
They’ll run through the gate, Kill the giant, and all but 1 of the arena mobs (I generally save the Dark Rune Acolyte as I can one-shot him). Run up, killing everything on the way, go up the stairs, kill the colossus to open the door, then go hug the wall (running through the centre to Thorim will make you fall afoul of traps) to Thorim.
This part is where good timing is critical. You need to kill the mob you saved from the arena, wait for Sif to spawn, hit Thorim, jump off and land in the arena before he does. From here, you kill him as normal.
What appears to be a recent change to Ulduar is the fact that in order to unlock the way to Vezax and Yogg-Saron, you don’t have to beat Thorim! Happy days. Further joy comes in 6.0:
Lose Your Illusion: Get to Thorim in under 3 minutes. Speedy.
Siffed: Beat up Thorim while Sif is there.
Don’t Stand in the Lightning: When Thorim is engaged, don’t get hit by his lightning.
I’ll Take You All On: Be one of the people who goes through the tunnel. You’re doing this solo? Guess that’s you then.
Who Needs Bloodlust?: Kill Thorim when under the effects of Aura of Celerity. To get this, you need to mind control a Dark Rune Warbringer. You can’t mind control things, so you can’t do this solo. Hope you have a priest for a friend.
EDIT: I finally managed to do it! Watch me here.
Hodir: Tank and spank! The “hard mode” is a timed event; kill him in under 3 minutes. The only thing you need to watch out for is his ability Flash Freeze. To avoid it, you need to stand atop a pile of snow that forms shortly before he casts it, indicated by a large circle on the ground. Avoid falling stuff in general. Free the NPC’s if you like.
Achievements
I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare: Speed kill! Beat Hodir before he smashes the rare cache. You have around 3 minutes to do this.
Cheese the Freeze: Don’t get hit by Flash Freeze!
Getting Cold In Here: Don’t get more than 2 stacks of Biting Cold. Keep moving around, or stand by the little campfires.
I Have the Coolest Friends: Don’t let the NPC’s die! You have no way of healing them (which will bite us in the ass further on down the line), so a speed kill is the order of the day here too.
Staying Buffed All Winter: Be under the effects of Toasty Fire, Starlight and Storm Power simultaneously. NPC’s cast the third one, the campfires give the first buff, and beams of light give the second. You need a second player for this, however; Storm Power is the result of a player with storm clouds around them moving to another player.
Freya: Two ways of doing this. You’re overgeared? Focus Freya, burn her down HARD. Stand under mushrooms to avoid silencing. Undergeared? You can’t outdamage her healing, but the multiplicative effect diminshes for each add wave she summons and you subsequently kill. Get her down to a point you CAN outdamage the healing, then do so.
Clear the trash beforehand. There are three Elders you can kill; leaving them alive triggers Freya’s hardmode when you engage her. It’s an easy tank & spank when they’re all dead. It’s moderately difficult when they’re not.
Achievements
Knock on Wood/Knock, Knock on Wood/Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood: Kill Freya with 1/2/3 elders alive respectively.
Deforestation: Kill 2 Water Spirits, 2 Storm Lashers and 2 Snaplashers within 10 seconds.
Lumberjacked: Kill all three elders within 15 seconds. Clear trash, then kite one to the second, then kite them to the third.
Con-speed-atory: Kill Freya within 20 minutes of killing the first enemy in the conservatory.
Getting Back To Nature: Kill Freya when she has 25 stacks of Attuned to Nature. She starts with 150, and she loses stacks for each add you kill. Get her to 25 then nuke.
Mimiron: So much fun! Four phase fight. First is a tank and spank; have your Voidlord tank the boss while you blast it to oblivion. Second phase, watch out for Rocket Strike. It’s a 1-hit KO. I recommend keeping on the move. Third phase, Nuke the flying thing. Kill adds if they bother you.
Fourth phase sees all the parts come together like some sorta nightmarish Megazord. They need to be destroyed within 10 seconds of each-other, so spread out your damage evenly. Again, watch out for those Rocket Strikes. Get the parts down to Shadowburn range, then finish them off.
Hard mode adds more health, more damage, and FIRE. LOTS OF FIRE! How to activate it? Hit the switch at the back of the room.
Have fun.
Achievements
Firefighter: Activate the self-destruct switch (that big red button on the back wall) before engaging Mimiron. Beat him.
Not-So-Friendly Fire: Have Mimiron kill one of the little robot adds from phase 3 with Rocket Strike in phase 4. Aww.
Set Up Us The Bomb: Don’t get hit by the mines in phase 1, Rocket Strike in phase 2, or bomb bots in phase 3.
THE DESCENT INTO MADNESS
General Vezax: Tank and spank! Only with a twist. I prefer to do this fight as Affliction, as your three DoTs don’t really cost much mana, and haunt only costs a soul shard. There’s a special annoyance with this fight, you see; no passive mana regen! The only way to actually regenerate mana is to kill a Saronite Vapor, and sit in the puddle it creates. This consumes health but returns mana at a steadily increasing rate. Be careful not to kill yourself!
As affliction, you shouldn’t need to do this, just DoT him, have your voidlord tank him, and wait. Refresh DoTs when necessary. To do this as Destro, try to have a little restraint, and definitely use those mana regenerating puddles.
Achievements
I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning: Allow 6 vapors to fuse into a Saronite Animus, kill it, then Vezax. Rather difficult to solo as a mana-based class, I recommend bringing a friend. Maybe a healer. You’ll be waiting around a lot!
Shadowdodger: Don’t get hit by Shadow Crash. Simples.
Yogg-Saron: Ah, the big one. The really difficult, RNG-heavy one. Before you go into the room, you have the option to speak to the 4 keepers of Ulduar and request their assistance in the fight. Mimiron increases your damage dealt and movement speed, and weakens tentacles. Freya creates sanity wells (they restore sanity when you stand in them), and increases damage done and healing received. Thorim also increases damage done, and increases your total health. He also makes the Immortal Guardians in phase 3 killable. Hodir increases damage yet again, and reduces damage taken. He also protects you from death by encasing you in ice for 10 seconds, but can’t do it constantly. Have your voidlord out.
Phase 1: Go to the middle of the room where Sara is. Clouds will bubble and form guardians. Kill them near Sara to damage her. Do this 8 times and phase 2 will begin. You can force guardians to spawn by walking into clouds. Kill any remaining guardians.
Phase 2: This phase is where your sanity starts getting attacked, if it gets low, go stand in one of the green sanity wells on the outside of the room. Tentacles spawn every so often. Kill them. One of them likes to pick you up and wave you around like a trophy; have your demon kill it. Small ones put an annoying debuff on you that stuns you at random intervals. Kill them before they can cast it! Eventually, Yogg will shout “MADNESS WILL CONSUME YOU!” and create portals into his head; make a beeline for them!
Brain Room: There are several different brain rooms, but the premise in each remains the same. Plonk a Rain of Fire wherever you see an NPC, they turn into tentacles, then die as they have low health. Once all of them are killed, you can attack Yogg’s brain. Kill it then leave via the portals. See the little chattering skulls around the room? DO NOT FACE THEM, they drain your sanity. You have 60 seconds to do this, so I hope you have good DPS, or can risk having to go in again. If 60 seconds elapses, you go insane, which effectively mind controls you, then blows you up when there’s nothing left for you to kill.
Phase 3: You get spat out. Ew. Nuke Yogg-Saron! Ignore adds (unless you have Thorim active) as they can’t die anyway. Try and have your voidlord pick them up. Whenever he uses Lunatic Gaze, TURN AWAY FROM HIM. It reduces sanity by 4% every second, and you’re probably low at this point if you don’t have Freya active.
Yes, you can solo this on 25 man too. No, I haven’t yet. It’s rather difficult, and still heavily RNG-based. Killing Yogg+0 on 25 man nets you the CHANCE to get Mimiron’s Head, the coolest mount ever.
Achievements
Three Lights in the Darkness/Two Lights in the Darkness/One Light in the Darkness/Alone in the Darkness: Kill Yogg-Saron with the assistance of three, two, one, and no keepers respectively.
They’re Coming Out the Walls: During phase 1, kill 9 guardians in 12 seconds. You’ll have to force them to spawn by running into clouds, then nuke them down together.
He’s Not Getting Any Older: Kill Yogg-Saron in under 7 minutes.
Drives Me Crazy: Beat Yogg without anyone in your raid going insane. You’re soloing? Well, you get this by default. Unless you do what I did in my demo video below, oops.
In His House He Waits Dreaming: There are three versions of the brain room. One with Arthas, one with Deathwing, one with Garona. See them all. Doesn’t have to be done in one visit.
Kiss and Make Up: /kiss Sara during phase 2. She’s on top of Yogg’s head. Pucker up!
And there we have it. All the bosses, all the achievements. Some bosses (Yogg, Thorim, Mimiron) are a lot harder than others (Auriaya, Ignis, Vezax), but there’s some fantastic stuff to see here. Best raid in the game? That’s for you to decide, I guess.
Next solo guide, naturally, will be Icecrown Citadel. I may also do a quick guide to the Timeless Isle and an introduction to Destruction for people who boosted a warlock to 90, seeing as I boosted a horde warlock to 90 t’other day.
Because I haven’t posted a picture of Lillorigga the warrior recently, here she is dodging the attack of a filthy demon! Parry! Riposte! Thrust!
Ahh, Naxxramas. Formerly a level 60 raid, it was redesigned (ish) for Wrath of the Lich King. It’s also pretty easy to solo, and a few bosses drop battle pets for the Raiding with Leashes achievement!
The Arachnid Quarter
Anub’Rekhan: There is literally nothing threatening about this boss. Burn him down and laugh.
Grand Widow Faerlina: Burn her as well. For the achievement Momma Said Knock You Out, don’t kill her adds. Just focus on her. You might want to unequip your legendary cloak.
Maexxna: You can do this in two ways. First way, use Grimoire of Sacrifice, and burn her down. She hits fairly hard, so be warned. Second way, you can use your Voidlord to tank, but she’ll use Web Wrap on you, which is a 60 second stun. You can get your pet to break the web though. Burn her down, but be wary of her Frenzy ability, she’ll start doing some heavy damage.
For the Arachnophobia achievement, you need to kill Maexxna within 20 minutes of having killed Anub’Rekhan. Simples. Drops the Giant Bone Spider pet.
The Plague Quarter
Noth the Plaguebringer: Pet tank, you spank. Delightfully simple.
Heigan the Unclean: Tank and spank again. Has an ability called Spell Disruption that triples your cast time. Apparently can be avoided by staying 20-30 yards away from him. You can try and do the dance to avoid the poison damage but frankly it’s not necessary. To get the The Safety Dance achievement, don’t die. Pets don’t count.
Loatheb: Yawn. Tank and spank. Drops the Fungal Abomination pet. For the Spore Loser achievement, don’t kill any of the spores he summons.
The Military Quarter
Instructor Razuvious: This guy hits ludicrously hard compared to the other bosses here. Still a tank and spank, but at low gear levels, watch out for your/your demon’s health levels. You can kill his 2 adds if you like, it makes little difference.
Gothik the Harvester: Attack him while he’s on the wall. He summons mobs, you kill them. Their spirits go over to the other side of the room. Kill adds, kill adds, kill adds, then the gate will open. AoE all the ghosties, kill adds, kill adds. Yawn. When Gothik himself teleports in, nuke him down.
The Four Horsemen: Easy. Nuke ’em. You wanna try for the achievement though? It’s called And They Would All Go Down Together, and as the name suggests, you need to kill them all within 15 seconds of each-other. This is easier than it sounds, believe it or not. 2 of the horsemen run to you, the other two stay where they are and DPS you from afar. Get them each down to about 100-150k health, then stand in-between the two ranged bosses. Rain of Fire the two melee ones, and nuke the two ranged ones. Shadowburn when you can.
The Construct Quarter
Patchwerk: He can be reasonably difficult! Especially if you’re undergeared. It’s a DPS race, this fight, and you need to have your Voidlord tank him. Nuke the bastard, and hope you’re still standing when the dust settles. Naturally a lot harder on 25 man, as his health pool is larger, and he hits harder. Your warlock self-healing will do you wonders. For Make Quick Werk Of Him, kill him in under 3 minutes.
Grobbulus: Scarcely a boss. Tank and spank and move the fuck along. Next!
Gluth: Relatively simple. Tank and spank again, but he periodically summons adds that heal him if they get to him. Whaddyagonnado? Have your demon tank him at the far side of the room, while you stand where the zombies spawn. They hit for nothing practically so ignore them while you DPS the boss. After a short time, their health will drop dramatically, and they make a beeline for the boss. Nuke it now! On 25 man, each zombie that reached Gluth heals him for 8%. You can outDPS the healing at higher gear levels. Drops the Stitched Pup pet, which is weirdly adorable.
Thaddius: You need to kill the two adds before you can kill Thaddius. They need to die within a few seconds of each-other too. Dismiss your pet, jump over to Thaddius (use a speed boost if you need to), resummon your pet (Flames of Xoroth is you have the embers) then tank & spank. By virtue of doing this alone, you’ll get the Shocking! achievement.
Frostwyrm Lair
Sapphiron: Tank and spank, yawn. He sometimes uses Icebolt, which puts you in a block of ice for a short time, and he uses this regardless of whether you are solo, or with your pet. It’s really of no concern, even on 25 man. You’ll automatically get the achievement The Hundred Club unless for some reason you’re wearing gear that gives you a frost resist of 100 or more.
Why are you wearing frost resist gear? Stop that.
Kel’Thuzad: Has an achievement tied to the first phase called Just Can’t Get Enough which requires you to kill 18 abominations. It’s easy, just AOE them down along with anything else around them. This is another of those fights that’s trivial WITHOUT your voidlord. Use Grimoire of Sacrifice, and he’ll never use Frost Blast on you (stuns you and deals 26% of your maximum health every second for 4 seconds, so yes an instant death), nor will he mind control you and force you to nuke your pet then reset. Watch your health.
You CAN use a pet if you like, but make sure you stay top of Kelly’s threat list, else boom, you’re most likely dead. This means turn off your pet’s taunt. TURN IT OFF.
Oh look, another retuning of a level 60 raid! Onyxia drops the much coveted Reins of the Onyxian Drake, and a 22 slot bag if you’re itching for space. Only one boss in here, so let’s get straight to…
Onyxia
Easy stuff as a warlock. Use your voidlord to tank, as per usual. Once she drops below 65%, she’ll take to the skies! At a high gear level, you can ignore literally everything and carry on nuking the crap out of her. She’ll fly off, immediately come down and then die. She won’t drop below 1hp until she lands.
At a low gear level? Keep focused on Onyxia herself, and use Rain of Fire centered on you to deal with the adds. You’ll be absolutely SWIMMING in embers here, so keeping healed is not a problem, though if it is, feel free to use Fire & Brimstone to nuke them all down. Be very careful when you see the message that she’s taking a deep breath; try and avoid the fire that she breathes ’cause it does a lot of damage.
Once she drops to 40%, she’ll land again, and fire off a raid-wide fear (though as you’re the only one here…). She does this periodically, but this is the point where you blow your cooldowns and smash her to pieces.
Achievements? We have a few!
More Dots!:Kill her in less than 5 minutes. Simple. She Deep Breaths More: Avoid taking damage from Deep Breath. You need to know where she is when she takes off, so you can easily position yourself in such a way that her attack won’t hit you. Many Whelps! Handle It!: A toughie, actually. Tank her near the entrance to the room. Once she takes off, run down one of the smaller tunnels. You’ll definitely need to use a speed boost, so Burning Rush or some sort of Engineering item I guess. Pretty hard to do alone, bring a friend along to make it easier if you like. They can run down the other passage and grab some little dragons too.
Well, those were two simple ones. Next time, I’ll cover the Obsidian and Ruby sanctums, the Vault of Arrchavon, the Eye of Eternity, and Trial of the Crusader. Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel are fairly hefty with a metric fuckton of achievements, so I will cover those in a third (and potentially fourth?) entry!
Tempest Keep. Black Temple. The Sunwell. The Battle for Mount Hyjal.
Three of these raids are awesome. One of these raids is simply torturous.
TEMPEST KEEP: THE EYE
Void Reaver: You’re definitely going to want Kil’jaeden’s Cunning for this one, as the boss sends orbs down from the sky that silence the area they land on. This means you need to strafe a LOT. Have your voidlord tank the boss while you unload Incinerates onto it while being on the move around constantly. Drops the Pocket Reaver pet!
Al’ar: Drops the Phoenix Hawk Hatchling pet. Usual tank and spank, the boss dies… and resurrects for you to kill it again. Do so and move along.
High Astromancer Solarian: Kill the trash beforehand, they’ll MC you and reset the fight otherwise. Another easy tank & spank. She knocks you upwards a lot, but you can lay a Demonic Circle down and teleport to it as she knocks you up to save you a few seconds. The fall won’t damage you. Drops the Lesser Voidcaller pet. It’s a mini voidwalker!
Kael’thas Sunstrider: One of those multi-phase fights, and one of those aforementioned difficult fights, if you’re unprepared. Take Grimoire of Sacrifice, but keep your Voidwalker out for the first parts. There used to be a strategy where you’d drag each advisor around throughout the instance so you could face them one at a time in phase 3, but alas that seems no longer possible, as the doors close VERY fast when you engage KT now.
Phase 1: Advisors! He sends each advisor out one at a time to fall at your feet, and you get an introduction into what they can do. Thaladred is first, and he knocks you around, but he walks very slow. Nuke. Lord Sanguinar follows, and he fears. Nuke. Capernian is third, and she knocks back MASSIVELY, but only to people in melee range. She also disorients. Nuke. Telonicus is the last advisor, and he places a debuff on you called Remote Toy that you want to avoid, as it randomly stuns you over the course of a minute. Nuke him before he casts it on you, or wait for it to drop off before killing him. If you like, you can kill them in varied places around the room to ease phase 3.
Phase 2: Weapons! The shield should probably be your first target, as it interrupts. Nuke the rest. If you like, loot and equip the Staff of Disintegration and use it from your character pane. This puts a buff on you that makes you immune to CC effects like fear and disorient. At a high gear level, it may not be fully necessary.
Phase 3: Advisors!? Yeah, he rezzes them. Mages with combat rez?! This is the tough part of the fight, and you wanna prioritise your targets if you don’t have the staff buff. Kill Telonicus first, as his Remote Toy debuff is simply annoying, then Capernian. The other two kill however you like. When they’re dead, you should sacrifice your demon.
Phase 4: Kael’thas! The reason you sacrifice your pet is that he can mind control you, and oopsydaisy that’ll reset the encounter when you inevitably nuke your pet to death. You don’t wanna do it ALL OVER AGAIN, do you? Anyway, nuke KT to 50%. If he summons a phoenix, kill it, then kill the egg. Watch your health, pyroblasts hurt quite a bit, considering he’s “only” a level 70 boss. At 50% he floats in the air and has a tantrum, beginning…
Phase 5: Swimming! He casts Gravity Lapse, which flings you into the air, and keeps you there. You can “swim” in the air, but trying to touch the ground will see you flung back up. The effect wears off after a while, and you WILL take fall damage, so bear that in mind. Do not go within 8 yards of the elf, or you’ll start to take stacks of Nether Vapor, which reduces your maximum health by 10% (stacks up to 90%, which means a Pyroblast or two may be lethal). Nuke.
He drops a couple of cool items, the most notable being Ashes of Al’ar, the fabulous-looking phoenix you killed earlier, in mount form! If you equipped the staff, then remember to re-equip your weapon.
BATTLE FOR MOUNT HYJAL
You know how Black Morass and Violet Hold are predetermined waves of enemies with a couple bosses here and there? Well, have a whole raid of it!
Rage Winterchill: This boss is the major threat here. He roots you, which is annoying enough on its own, but when coupled with Death & Decay, it can be deadly. D&D deals %age-based damage, and the attack extends just slightly past the ground effect, so MOVE OUT OF IT AS SOON AS YOU ARE ABLE. I cannot stress that enough, it WILL kill you otherwise. Each tick hits for 15% health. You basically have 7 seconds to clear the fuck out. Nuke the bastard with extreme prejudice.
Anetheron: Nuke him. Carrion Swarm puts a healing reduction debuff on you (to the tune of 75%). Kill the infernals he summons, they only have about 150k health, but they pack a wallop (to the NPCs at least).
Kaz’rogal: Nuke! He stuns sometimes.
Azgalor: Don’t use a pet, or turn off your pet’s taunt ability and Threatening Prescence. He has a spell called Doom he casts on whoever he doesn’t have aggro on. If your voidy is tanking him therefore, he’ll use it on you. It causes you to die after 20 seconds. Can silence you. Otherwise, nuke.
Archimonde: Definitely go petless for this one. He casts Air Burst on targets he doesn’t have aggro on. This ability sends you flying up into the air, and the fall can be deadly. Otherwise, nuke.
BLACK TEMPLE
<insert preparedness joke here>
High Warlord Naj’entus: Grimoire of Sacrifice again, as he uses Impaling Spine on targets that don’t have his attention, which effectively stuns you for a long-ass time. Try and nuke him down before he uses Tidal Shield. This ability shields him and restores his health, and you have to wait until it wears off. Nuke more.
Supremus: There is literally nothing that stands out about this fight. Heck, if you’re feeling fancy, let your demon solo him.
Shade of Akama: Lots of adds that might as well be equipped with feather dusters, for all the damage they do. Talk to Akama to start the encounter, then kill anything chanelling a purple beam at the ghost. It’ll float towards Akama, then become attackable. Kill it. This turns the Broken in the temple friendly, and there’s even a vendor for you to use!
Teron Gorefiend: Another GoSac fight, or ensure you keep him aggroed onto you, otherwise he’ll cast Shadow of Death on you, which kills you after 55 seconds. Nuke.
Reliquary of Souls: A three-part fight, with an add phase in-between each part.
Essence of Suffering: Nuke!
Essence of Desire: The slightly difficult one. Spirit Shock disorients you for 5 seconds. Aura of Desire mirrors damage you do back onto yourself, so I’d forgo Chaos Bolts on this one, and mind your health! Ember Tap if needed, and watch out for Deaden, it doubles damage you take, making a reflected Chaos Bolt a possible one-shot on you. Wait for it to wear off before attacking, or just be extra mindful of your hitpoints.
Essence of Anger: Nuke!
Gurtogg Bloodboil: This one’s a DPS race. He has a 6 second disorient, along with some stacking DoTs and bleeds that can eventually dish out a LOT of damage. The thing is… have your pet tank and the boss is trivial. Oh well. Ember Tap/Health Funnel as needed.
Mother Shahraz: She has 10 second silences, and she casts these relatively frequently, meaning that when she casts the first one, you probably have about 5-10 seconds of casting before she does another. Make those seconds count! With your pet tanking, it’s again rather trivial.
The Illidari Council: This one is actually rather difficult if you are unprepared! What I do is try and keep them stacked closely, then keep up Rain of Fire on them all. They share a health bar, but each RoF tick will effectively hit 4 times if you keep them close together. Focus single-target spells on one target, preferably the paladin Gathios the Shatterer. He has a tendency to bubble characters to make them immune to magic damage, but never himself. At lower gear levels, definitely have your voidlord tank one or two of them to ease the pressure on your health bar. If you can, interrupt Lady Malande’s heals. You really need to keep the damage rolling to outDPS the priest’s healing. Once you beat them, Akama’ll show up again. Talk to him to move on.
Illidan Stormrage: Honestly, it’s a relatively simple fight. You can use GoSac if you like, or have your voidlord tank if your gear level is low. Nuke him, he’ll fly up and throw his blades to the ground to summon 2 Flames of Azzinoth. You take them too far away from the blades they spawn from, they’ll do MASSIVE damage to you. You see the circular part on the ground? Stay in the centre of that, and you should be fine. Nuke, get stunned, Maiev shows up, they both chat, nuke some more, he chats some more, then you can loot him. Notable for dropping 2 legendaries: The Warglaive of Azzinoth main hand weapon, and Warglaive of Azzinoth offhand.
SUNWELL
Time to play whack-a-mole with Kil’jaeden, but before we can, we have a few bosses to kill. There’s a trash mob to watch out for called Sunwell Slayer. Kill them first, they do %age based damage, so they’re a threat.
Kalecgos & Sathrovarr: DISMISS YOUR PET! Use GoSac for this fight, as having a pet kinda glitches it. Nuke Kalec, wait a bit, nuke Sathrovarr, collect loot. He’s skippable, if you’re so inclined.
Brutallus: With your voidlord, this fight becomes a joke. Don’t stand in front of him, as Meteor Slash hits in a wide cone. Meteor Slash stacks, increases fire damage taken by 75% per stack, and deals fire damage itself. The damage can quickly ramp up. The jokey part? Meteor Slash can’t stack on your pet. Tank and spank.
Felmyst: You can bypass the air phase of this fight with about 95k DPS, in which case this is a tank & spank. If your DPS isn’t that high, then make sure you set her as your focus, so she shows up on your minimap. She’ll fly off, and eventually do an attack called Fog of Corruption. You’ll see the message “Felmyst takes a deep breath!” to indicate the attack is coming, and you need to basically NOT BE IN THE AREA SHE’S GONNA AFFECT. You can tell where she will by the minimap, hence why she is your focus. If you get affected by the fog, you’ll get charmed, and instantly die if you don’t have a pet out.
Eredar Twins: Tank & spank. Keep an eye on your health. Don’t bother AoEing, when one goes down, the other heals back up again.
M’uru & Entropius: Nuke. Kill adds if they bother you. It’s amusing how a boss that was a guild breaker, the hardest boss in the instance, is now the easiest by far.
Kil’jaeden: Another nuke. Kill adds if they bother you (they look like you!). Drops a legendary item, Thor’idal, the Stars’ Fury! It’s a bow, so useless to warlocks. I keep it in my bank regardless.
Well, that concludes the Burning Crusade raids. The Lich King raids are a lot bigger, so I may dedicate a whole post to each one, rather than lump a lot together. The exception being Trial of the Crusader and Onyxia, as they are relatively short.
So next up… Naxxramas!
In other news, who do I have to speak to in order to get Kil’ruk as a permanent mount? 😀
Honestly, there’s very little level 60 content that should give you any problems at level 90, but here’s a small guide anyway.
MOLTEN CORE
Lucifron: Has an annoying curse that increases ability cost by 100%. Nuke him before he can cast it. Drops T1 gloves for warlocks and warriors, and T1 boots for druids, paladins, mages and shaman.
Magmadar: Nuke! Easy. Drops T1 legs, and the Blazing Rune, which teaches you to summon a Corefire Imp battlepet!
Gehennas: Nuke. Drops T1 gloves for rogues, shaman, priests and paladins, and T1 boots for warrior and hunter.
Garr: Nuke. Has a habit of smacking you around the place. Drops T1 headgear, and the Bindings of the Windseeker, one of the items needed to create THUNDERFURY, BLESSED BLADE OF THE WINDSEEKER!
Shazzrah: Nuke. Yawn. Drops T1 gloves for mages, druids and hunters, and T1 booties for priests, rogues and warlocks.
Baron Geddon: One of only two enemies that pose any real threat, and that’s due to his Living Bomb ability that knocks you into the air. You go up so high, you take fall damage. Still not a threat. Drops the 2nd half of the Bindings of the Windseeker, and T1 shoulders for shaman, warlocks, druids, paladins and mages.
Golemagg: Nuke. Notable loot includes Sulfuron Ingot, needed to make Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, Core of Hardened Ash, which allows you to summon an Ashstone Core battlepet, as well as T1 chest armor.
Sulfuron Harbinger: Noticing a pattern here? NUKE! Drops the summon item for the Harbinger of Flame battlepet, and T1 shoulder armor for hunters, priests, rogues and warriors.
Ragnaros: Nuke, but be wary of Wrath of Ragnaros. It knocks back, and may cause fall damage. Drops T2 leg armor, as well as the Eye of Sulfuras, which is needed to create Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. He also drops Aegis of Stormwind, which isn’t really notable, other than being a nice shield!
BLACKWING LAIR
A couple bosses here may give you issues here, but more on that in a sec. Damn near everything else is a nukefest. 3 battlepets drop here, from Razorgore, Broodlord Lashlayer, and Chromaggus. Blackwing Technicians drop Elementium Ingots, needed to craft Thunderfury.
Razorgore: With this encounter, before you can attack the boss itself, you need to kill the enemies on the platform to the left of the entrance, then use the orb to control the boss. You then run around destroying all the eggs. Sounds easy? It’s not! Adds will start pouring in and will attack Razorgore and yourself. You want them to attack YOU. Each class has different methods for getting passive aggro, warlocks for example can use Grimoire of Sacrifice. It heals you every few seconds, generating healing aggro that makes the adds focus on you.
So what I do is activate whatever ability I’ll use to get aggro from adds (GoSac, Eternal Flame, Riptide, Renew, whatever your class does!), then I control Razorgore, kill the eggs furthest away from my character, you should be able to kill roughly half of them before the mind control wears off. AoE the adds around me to alleviate any pressure on me, then use the orb again. Kill the remaining eggs, which’ll cause the adds to leave, and Razorgore to attack you. Then it becomes a simple nuke!
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt: Not a difficult boss by any stretch of the imagination anymore, but back in the day he was apparently a MASSIVE block for a lot of guilds, and was known as the “guild killer” of Vanilla WoW. This solo is a DPS race that you will most likely win, unless you’re insistent on doing it as a healer or something. After a short amount of time has elapsed in the encounter, he’ll put Burning Adrenaline on you. This doubles your damage and makes all your spells instant casts, with one MAJOR caveat: every second that passes will reduce your maximum health by 5%, and when 20 seconds have elapsed, you die. Just blow everything you have on the boss, and enjoy your run back afterwards. Warlocks and Shamans can Soulstone/Reincarnate themselves, saving them the run!
Chromaggus: This is a relatively easy fight, to be honest, but some classes will struggle with it. Periodically, he’ll inflict debuffs called Brood Afflictions on you. There’s 5, and when all of them are on you, you’ll be mind controlled. When solo, this means the encounter resets and you get to stand there for like 5 minutes until it wears off. Yawn! If you’ve been looting the trash throughout the place, you’ll have picked up Hourglass Sand. Using this removes the Bronze affliction, and you have to remove the others yourself. Naturally, some classes won’t be able to do this as easily as others.
The other hindrance with Chromaggus is something you may notice if you target him before he’s pulled. He has a buff on him that gives him a MASSIVE vulnerability to a certain school of magic, but makes him very resistant to the others. When you see the message “Chromaggus’ skin begins to shimmer” his weakness changes. To trivialise the encounter entirely, you can wait until he has a weakness to whatever school of magic you use, then go crazy. See how high you can get your Chaos Bolt damage!
RUINS OF AHN’QIRAJ
Literally nothing here poses a threat. Bosses drop tokens which, along with scarabs you collect in the dungeon, can be turned in to some NPCs outside the instance for class-specific items. A ring, a cloak, and a weapon. NEXT!
TEMPLE OF AHN’QIRAJ
Some things here pose a threat though! The bosses of this place also drop tokens, which you can hand in to a few NPCs along with scarabs near the start of the dungeon, to acquire the “tier 2.5” armor, which is quite a distinctive set for characters, designed after the insectoid inhabitants of Ahn’Qiraj. Some of the armor is weird looking, but it’s meant to have that vibe.
NOTABLE BOSSES
The Prophet Skeram: Drops Jewel of Maddening Whispers, which allows you to summon a Mini Mindslayer battlepet. It’s kinda cute. Casters will want to be wary of the CONSTANT interrupting. Use instant cast spells. He clones himself, just kill everything. INSTANT CAST SPELLS ONLY! Can’t stress that enough.
Twin Emperors: They knock you around and it’s annoying. Clear all the trash (the anubis thingies) in the room before this boss, else when you engage the emperors, they’ll all come steaming in as well. Vek’lor is immune to physical damage, Vek’nilash to magical. If you wanna loot BOTH bosses, you’ll need to hit both of them at some point. They share health, heal each-other, and teleport every 30 seconds or so, which acts as an aggro dump. You’ll need to hit the twin you AREN’T focusing on again, else you’ll be unable to loot him.
For example, on my warlock, I focus on Vek’lor with my magical damage, but at the start of the encounter, and at every teleport, I twat Vek’nilash with my staff to get on his aggro table, so that I may loot him when I kill them.
It then becomes about outdamaging their heal. At 90 with a decent (and easily obtainable) gear level, you should have no issues beyond those already mentioned. Has a chance at dropping the Anubisath Idol, which is the BEST BATTLE PET EVER. Seriously, it like never dies.
Viscidus: This boss is annoying. What you need to do is DPS the boss until he’s nearly dead, then use frost abilities to freeze him, then when he’s frozen, attack him until he shatters. The Elemental Force enchant works if you don’t have frost abilities, and as for actually shattering him, that’s class dependant. As a warlock, I use Grimoire of Service, have a felhunter as my active pet, then summon a second one when he’s frozen. We then twat him until he explodes. My shaman summons an elemental, and pops Heroism at the frozen stage. My rogue… just attacks. My monk uses Storm, Earth and Fire (YES on a single target fight! The copy racks up the hit count). DK’s use army of the dead. You need to hit him 30 times in 30 seconds to shatter him when he’s frozen, and 20 frost hits to freeze him in the first place. Drops the Viscidus Globule, which is a pretty sucky battlepet, but hey.
C’Thun: DPS the big eye. Kill tentacles if you really want, it’s not mandatory though. When you get the eye to 0, phase 2 will begin, and you’ll notice you do drastically reduced damage! Oh no! What gives?
Just wait. You’ll go into C’Thun’s stomach, where you need to kill 2 tentacles at the back (they’re hard to miss), then stand on the bubbling platform at the back and jump to get out. C’Thun’ll turn a nasty shade of purple, and you can nuke the bastard. Be wary of the stomach acid, it kinda hurts. You wanna be out of that nasty digestive system asap.
Next quick and dirty guide’ll be for level 70 raids, which have a few tough fights.
One of which isn’t a fight at all, but a chess battle.
Panda Steve Types Stuff 