Your first Karazhan part 4: The Iron Maiden

I think the name “Maiden of Virtue” is supposed to be “ironical”.

I mean, she’s not really that virtuous. First of all, she kills people. A lot. Last time I checked, that doesn’t tend to land in the “good deeds” pile.

Though on the other hand, each of us did slaughter thousands of people, animals, and monsters to get to the point where we could fight her…but I digress…

Second, she’s got, like, no clothes on.

Third, she is guarded by various seductresses and succubi who joke about demonophilia while whipping you:




In fact, considering that the hallway leading up to her is lined with lavishly-decorated bedrooms and populated by seductresses really seems to indicate one thing: she’s the mistress of this demonic brothel.

She’s a 3-story tall, stone-cold pimp.

But at the same time, considering that she’s roughly 30-feet tall and made of cold, unfeeling stone (actually, that reminds me of a date I had once…), it’s probably a safe bet that she’s a virginal maiden, as the mechanics of it being otherwise are a bit mind-bending. So there’s that. I guess one out of two ain’t bad.

Regardless of my speculation impugning her virtue, the maiden nevertheless uses mostly holy attacks, so be prepared to enjoy:

Consecration!

Retribution!

Stun!

Big Freakin’ Stone Fists! (OK, these aren’t exactly a holy ability, but they hurt no less for it.)

But before you can initiate a sado-masochistic relationship with her, you’ll have to fight through her stable of “escorts”. If you know what I mean.

Maiden Trash

After cleaning up Moroes, backtrack to the large staircase in the previous room. From there, your entire raid should stick together and hug the right wall. You should be able to sneak around the outer edge of the room to the corner, turn left, and make it to the small opening near the next corner without engaging more than a few ghosts. When you reach the door, it will be guarded by Phantom Valets who look just like other ghosts. But don’t be fooled: the valets will EAT YOUR TANK FOR LUNCH. They hit hard. Have your healers spam-heal your tank for the entire pull, and, for the love of god, do not pull aggro off the tank!

Next, head through the door and up the two flights of stairs to a large, open room full of ghosts. Your destination is the door along the right wall up ahead. Clear however many of the familiar ghost packs and single elite ghosts it takes to reach that door safely, but don’t just go barging in. There are patrols in the hallway on the other side of that door, so you’ll want to send your tank ahead to scout it out and signal the rest of you to follow when the coast is clear.

Pulling carefully in this hallway is key, as there are a number of patrols that can really ruin your day. Once through the door, your destination is to the right, down the wide stone hallway. There are bedrooms through doors along the left wall of the hall. Don’t bother fighting the enemies in those rooms. Instead, keep against the right wall (or risk aggroing the rooms) of the hallway as you move forward, killing only the groups in the hallway.

You may have a quest asking you to pick up a journal in one of these side rooms. Ignore it for now. Once your group has downed Maiden, simply wait ½ hour after everyone has left the tower and the instance will “soft reset”, despawning all of the trash that is linked to bosses you’ve already killed. At that point, you can waltz right up to the quest item completely unimpeded.



You’ll encounter two types of pulls. The first are armored guards who come in pairs, and summon spectral dogs to come to their aid. Try to keep the dogs off of your healers, but these pulls aren’t very dangerous. The really scary pulls are of the groups of what appear to be seductive human and high elf women. As it turns out, they are actually either ghosts or demonic succubi in disguise. Again, sounds like dates I’ve been on. They won’t transform until they start to get low on health, but still be prepared for them to bust out an aoe seduce and then start whipping your healers. Have a warlock banish the women labeled as “Demons” while your group shackles or traps the undeads.

Anything Special?

Warlock: Banish “demon” women

Priest: Shackle yo’self summa dem spooks


With hopefully little ado and not too much arousal, you’ll reach the end of the hallway, and be face-to-face (well, face-to-shin) with the lady who puts the “OW!” in bowing, the attitude in beatitude, the hurtyou in virtue…the Maiden!



The Maiden of Virtue

The Maiden is standing in a circular room, waiting on a central circular dais with little stairs leading up to it. The dais is surrounded by pillars.

The Maiden is like some sort of super-paladin. At all times, she will be dropping a consecrate-like effect called Holy Ground, which, aside from a few hundred damage every 3 seconds, will also silence anyone in range for 1 second. So obviously, you want casters to be out of the range of this if at all possible.

Her other paladin-on-crack move is called repentance, and like a retribution paladin’s repentance, it incapacitates a target. Unlike a regular paladin’s move, this one hits the entire raid (except for the tank), and does about 2000 damage to everyone. Oh, and it lasts twelve seconds.

She also has a few non-paladin moves to deal damage to accompany her formidable melee.

The first is Holy Fire, which hits one target for about 3500 fire damage, and ticks for nearly 2000 damage every 2 seconds after, for 12 seconds. It is absolutely imperative that you immediately dispel this every single time she casts it. Few of your raid members will survive that type of damage, especially if they are also standing in the aoe.

The second is Holy Wrath, a chain-lightning like spell that she will periodically cast on a random target. It will chain to anyone near the target, damaging them, so it is important that your raid spread out as much as possible to avoid this.

Taking these abilities into account, you’ll come up with a few guidelines:
-spread out.
-keep everyone’s health high.
-keep casters off the dais.
-dispel Holy Fire
-have some way to keep the tank alive during Repentance

You can enter the room without starting the fight, so the first thing you should do is arrange all casters and ranged dps around the outer edge of the room, like so:



Once the fight starts, they will all move forward and take a position between two pillars. They should all take different pillars to avoid standing too close together. You should also try to put a dispeller on each side of the room, so that no one is ever out of range to get Holy Fire removed.

Once everyone is in position against the wall, the tank should run in and start the fight, tanking Maiden in the center of the dais. Conveniently, Holy Ground only reaches to edge of the dais. Casters can remain out of range of the silence by standing at the edge of the dais, on the first step. Don’t stand too far back, or you may be out of your dispeller’s line of sight because of a pillar; get as close as you can.

Meanwhile, melee dps should spread out behind Maiden as much as possible to mitigate Holy Wrath damage. You might be surprised to find how far away from her you can stand and still hit her.

Dealing with Holy Fire:
Holy Fire is a magic effect, and can therefore be dispelled by:

-Priest’s Dispel Magic
-Paladin’s Cleanse and Divine Shield
-Felhound's Devour Magic (leave it on auto-cast)
-Mage’s Ice Block
-Rogue’s Cloak of Shadows

It can also be blocked by the Shaman’s Grounding Totem. Make sure you assign specific people to dispel specific targets. I’ve watched people die before because all of the dispellers thought Someone Else was going to dispel. I’d like to meet this Someone Else guy someday, and ask him why he never does anything he’s supposed to do.

Dealing with Repentence:
Obviously, if your healers aren’t healing for a full 12 seconds while incapacitated, your tank will probably die. There are many ways to deal with this. Use any combination of the following, depending on your group make-up, level of skill and gear, and your anal-ness:

-Paladins bubble out of the repentance, or leave blessing of sacrifice up on the tank when they think repentance is coming (damage the blessing redirects from the tank to the paladin will snap the paladin our of the effect)
-Keep a lot of heal-over-time spells up on the tank.
-Have the tank use cooldowns such as shield wall, potions, nightmare seeds, etc.
-Since the Holy Ground will break melee out of repentance quickly, melee dps that can heal can run out of the aoe and heal.
-Have the tank move Maiden toward a healer so Holy Ground damage will free the healer. Remember to move Maiden back into position afterwards. Similarly, a healer could just stand in the aoe in anticipation of an incoming repentance, though this method is risky.

Also, notice the handy Repentance countdown BigWigs puts on my screen:




Whew. That was complicated! But don’t worry, once you try it a few times, it will feel like second nature.

Anything Special?

Priest: Dispel Holy Fire immediately.

Paladin: Dispel Holy Fire immediately. Use bubble and blessing of sacrifice to break out of Repentance if needed. If retribution, cast some emergency heals during Repentance if needed.

Druid: Keep HoTs up on the tank. If feral, cast some emergency heals during Repentance if needed.

Warlock: Keep Felguard’s devour magic on autocast to dispel Holy Fire.

Mage: Ice Block out of Holy Fire if needed.

Rogue: Cloak of Shadows if you get Holy Fire for some reason. You should not be getting Holy Fire'd in melee range.

Shaman: Grounding Totem. Chain Heal melee. If Enhancement, cast some emergency heals during Repentance if needed.

Everyone: Keep as far away from others as possible, and healers keep everyone’s health topped off.


Once you’ve got the Maiden horizontal (not the first time she’s been there! Ba-dum-bum!) and had your hopes that the $&#* healing mace would finally #@*&ing drop thoroughly dashed, you can turn back around and head for an evening at the Opera.

Next: Lions, Tigers, and Bears. And Wolves. And Dogs. And Witches. And Robots. And Star-crossed Lovers.

Oh my!

Plus: Despite what your mother may have told you, running around in circles can save your life!

Your first Karazhan, part 3: Moroes

Attumen and his steed Midnight lie dead among the dry straw littering the floor of Medivh’s stable, and you and your allies have plundered his remains for valuables. You now have two directions to choose from: return the way you came, or push on one room further to a friendly ghost of a blacksmith, who can offer repairs to anyone who is at least of honored reputation with the Violet Eye (the faction that wants you to invade Karazhan every week and offers you quests from just outside the entrance). Clear to him if most of your raid is honored to save time repairing later. Once you’ve cleared to the blacksmith, you will be able to reach him unimpeded until the instance resets on Tuesday.

It is my belief that the blacksmith is cursed: if you skip him thinking "Nah, we won't need to repair" then your group, no matter how skilled and geared and experienced, is doomed to wipe until your gear breaks. One way or another, he will use his voodoo to ensure that you clear to him, so you might as well just get it over with and stop trying to cut corners.

Once you’ve finished with the cursed blacksmith, head back the way you came, following the spiral stables back out to the main entrance. From here, climb onto the platform where the ghostly butler stands, and continue up the wide flight of stai-STOP. Stop right there. Only go about 2/3 of the way up the staircase. Near the top are hordes of ghosts just waiting for you to get a bit too close and wipe your unprepared raid. Play it safe and don’t approach the top just yet. Unless you are the tank, you should hang out on the stairs until you’ve cleared enough of the trash to proceed safely.

Over the top of the stairs are two types of pulls: large groups of non-elite ghosts and single elites that patrol the large rectangular room at the top of the stairs. Your main tank should pull one of these onto the stairs at a time, being careful to avoid getting an elite and an aoe pack at the same time. We like to use raid labels (the skull, moon, and other assorted lucky charms available to the raid leader to put over a unit’s head if you right-click a targeted unit’s unit frame) to keep track of the roving elites. For the non-elite groups, give your tank and offtank a moment to build aggro on the entire group, then unleash your aoe attacks. Healers should be at the ready with quick heals to protect the squishier dps classes that may come under attack. If you have a mage, they probably will die at least once on these stairs. The single elites are easy tank-and-spanks with no special abilities to speak of.



Your tank should first clear out the left side of the room, which usually takes 4 or 5 pulls total. Then, the tank should carefully sneak to the left into Moroes’ room, which is a rectangular space full of long dining tables. Sitting at each table is a group of non-elite diners being served by roving elite skeletal waiters. Your tank should pull the groups from the tables near the entrance to this room back to the stairs, and also separately pull any skeletal waiters that patrol near the entrance. The diners are the same as the previous non-elite groups except some of them have ranged attacks. Meanwhile, the waiters add a wrinkle with their “brittle bones” debuff that reduces the tank’s armor to (ahem) zero. This will probably necessitate some extra healing attention.

Once the near half of Moroes’ room is clear, your entire raid should carefully climb to the top of the stairs (stay left!) and sneak along the wall to the left into the next room. As you walk into the room, you’ll see that you are entering from right side, meaning that there is a wall nearby to your right and the room expands out to your left. Stay along the wall and head left, parking your group between the two columns along the room’s back wall. This is what you should be looking at:

You should have two aoe groups and one or two skeletons left in front of you to clear. Since some members of the diner groups have ranged attacks, your tank will have to cheat a little in order to get them clumped together for easy victimization. Once your tank has their attention, she can wedge herself into the corner where the column meets the back wall (see image). If done correctly, the curve of the column will be just enough to break line of sight with the ghosts and force them to run into melee range.



Once you’ve cleared the diners and waiters, you still have one more job left before fighting Moroes. Far off to the left and right sides of the room are pairs of Ghostly Stewards that you need to clear. They pull in pairs, and each one of them hits considerably hard. A good way to deal with this is to use two tanks, who each pull one of the guards simultaneously. Then, you lower the risk that your one tank will take too much damage too quickly. Focus-fire down your offtank’s target first, since your main tank will have an easier time staying up. Sounds easy enough, right?

Nope.

Some would say that getting drunk is dangerous. Others, like me, might say that getting drunk can be a good time.

Well, as it turns out, in this case those other people are right. You see, the Ghostly Stewards carry bottles of liquor, and around 30% health, they will use that bottle to perform a move called “Drunken Head Crack”. This is even worse than it sounds, especially because the Stewards will enrage a few seconds later. The Head Crack will not only make your tank stinking drunk (I assume the alcohol seeps through the crack in the skull and goes directly to the brain?), but also unable to dodge, block, or otherwise avoid attacks. In concert with enrage, this will cause your tank to start taking piles of unavoidable damage to the tune of around 4000 HP per now-accelerated hit. No tank can stand this for long.

There are two things you can do to deal with this. First, you need alert healers. They all should be ready to spam heals fast and hard as soon as they see one of the Stewards drop below 40% health. Second, the Stewards can be disarmed, preventing them from using special moves. If your tank disarms the Steward at around 50% health, you won’t have to worry about the Head Crack. Unfortunately, this option is only available to warrior tanks.



Whew! Ok, so you’ve cleared the room and hopefully survived getting drunk (just like college!). Now it’s time to turn your attention to the dias and prepare for the world’s most conscientious undead rogue:


Moroes

Moroes is a polite guy. Unlike other undead rogues, who will likely spam a /spit macro after ganking you, Moroes prefers to fret over the mess he’s made (with your blood) after he’s stabbed you in the back and wrung your neck.

He’s even friendly: as in, he’s got a posse of ghost minibosses up on the dias with him, all of them eager to make a mess out of your raid group as well. Let’s see how they stack up:

Moroes’ “Rogue’s Gallery” (I’ve been dying to use that joke!)

Though Moroes has 6 undead friends, he only has 4 of them over for dinner at a time. Which 4 adds you will see will be randomly generated every week, so there’s no predicting which ones you will face. Like Moroes, each add is analogous to a certain WoW class/spec combination.

• Baroness Dorothea Millstipe
  Shadow Priest
  
  KILL HER FIRST. She can mana burn your healers, guaranteeing a wipe. She’s in cloth, so she should go down easy. No need to tank her, though you should toss some heals to whoever she is hitting. Like all of the adds, is stunnable.



• Baron Rafe Dreuger
  Retribution Paladin
  
  Freezing trap him, but don’t let him get close enough to stun. His plate makes him slow to die, and he has some damage potential, so CCing him until after Moroes is dead is generally recommended.



• Lady Catriona Von'Indi
  Holy Priest
  
  Another clothie who can easily be killed early. Her main threat is healing, so interrupting her heals or keeping her CCed should be a priority.



• Lady Keira Berrybuck
  Holy Paladin
  
  She will dispel the crowd control off of her allies, so she MUST be stopped. Since she can cleanse between Freezing Traps or while being killed (and she is in plate), she should be your #1 candidate for shackle.



• Lord Robin Daris
  Arms Warrior
  
  This &$@%ing bastard will 1-shot clothies, but he’s also slow to die. He will require a tank when you kill him, and is dangerous to try to shackle because of his high damage. I recommend you have a hunter ice trap him while keeping far, far away.



• Lord Crispin Ference
  Protection Warrior
  
  This guy is the lowest priority, as his damage is barely noticeable. He is just very hard to kill. You either want to keep him CCed the whole fight, or have the offtank keep aggro on him (works great as a rage battery!) if your healers can handle it. He should always be killed last.

Once you’ve identified which guests Moroes has over for dinner tonight, you’ll have to hatch a battle plan that involves killing some of them, and crowd controlling others. In most situations, you will be immediately burning down one guest while shackling/ice trapping/paladin fearing the others. Depending on who you get and your group makeup, you may also kill a second target before turning to Moroes. Also note that an add can be kited by a skilled hunter, mage or warlock, and that if any adds exit the room, the encounter resets (so be careful with your pally fears!).


The Fight

Tank Moroes off to the left or right side or the room to give CCers a wide area to control their targets without getting close to Moroes. It can be beneficial to have the ranged members of your raid stand clumped together on the large table. This will prevent issues with mobility and line-of-sight. If they are all clumped together, then it is easy to predict where CC targets will go if they break free. If you have a hunter who isn't already using her freezing trap, have her lay one between the caster group and the CC targets. That will provide an extra buffer of protection for your squishies if a shackle gets resisted.

Moroes himself requires two tanks at all times. He will occasionally gouge (disorient) the main tank, and make a beeline for whoever is second on the aggro list (hopefully the offtank). He will also periodically blind (this is a disorient effect as well) the closest person to him who is not currently his aggro target. Be prepared for the possibility that he may blind the off tank, then immediately gouge the main tank and attack a third target. You can mitigate this by having a dps character stand right on top of Moroes, while the offtank stands as far away as she can while still fighting. That way, the dps character will be blinded instead.

But this is not the only reason your healers need to be alert. Every 30 seconds, Moroes will vanish. A few seconds later, he will reappear behind a random target in the raid and garrote them before returning to whoever had his aggro before he vanished (his own vanishing does not wipe his aggro). Garrote is a massive, long-lasting dot. It will tick for 1000 damage every 3 seconds, and last for five minutes. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Garrote cannot be dispelled by conventional means.

This essentially means that the fight is on a timer. You need to kill Moroes fast before the garrote damage runs your healers dry. Since garrote lasts so long, the healing burden will be compounded as more and more raid members have garrote ticking away on them. There are only 4 ways to remove garrote: Pally self-bubble, Pally Blessing of Protection, Mage Ice Block, and . . . death.

Paladins should self-bubble as soon as they get garrote, as should mages. Paladins should save their BoP for healers who get garroted. Do not waste a BoP on dps or a tank.

You will take no durability loss if you die from garrote, so dying on purpose can be a viable strategy. You can plan ahead by saving soulstones, ankhs, and battle rezzes for this fight. Dying will clear the garrote, and possibly restore some mana upon resurrection.

Oh yeah, and you’ll also have to deal with any damage that the adds are doing. Bet you’re looking forward to healing this fight, huh?

Garrote should disappear as soon as Moroes is dead, so at least you have that to look forward to.


Anything Special?

Priest: Shackle an add.

Hunter: Freezing Trap an add.

Paladin: Use Blessing of Protection to save healers from garrote. "Turn" an add if necessary. Use your bubble if you get garroted yourself.

Mage: Ice Block if you get garroted.



So in summary, CC 2-3 adds, kill 1-2 adds quickly, then go kill Moroes himself before moving on to the CCed adds. Please, please, please do not loot Moroes until everything is dead. You do not need a wipe with only one add left because everyone is drooling/arguing over a drop. Eventually, Moroes and his friends will be polite enough to lay down and hand over their personal belongings, perhaps including a nifty pocketwatch. Neat-o!

Next: You fight a 3-stories-tall, granite … pimp-bot.

Your first Karazhan, part 2: Attumen

So you’ve got the gear. You’ve got 9 buddies. You’ve got an itch for teh epixx.

It’s time to go to Karazhan! Woooho-but wait…how do I get there?

Karazhan tower, the former home of Medivh The Last Guardian, is located in the south end of (not)scenic Deadwind Pass. To get there, Alliance should head to Stormwind and hitch a gryphon to Darkshire in Duskwood, then ride directly east to the pass. Horde have a more annoying trip from Orgrimmar to Stranglethorn Vale via zeppelin, then they must take a flight path to Swamp of Sorrows before riding west into the pass. Alternatively, Horde can fly across the entire continent from Undercity to Swamp of Sorrows. Once in the pass, either faction need only ride south past some vultures and then through an ogre encampment before arriving at Karazhan.



Or, if you’re lazy, let those other suckers in your raid summon you via the convenient summoning stone sitting just the left of the front door. Must have made it really easy for Medivh to hold dinner parties back in the day.

Open up the door with The Master’s Key (you are keyed, right? No, you cannot just run in after your friend opens the gate if you don’t have the key, Mr. Clever) and step through the swirly portal to enter the first room, which will serve as your raid’s staging area. To the right is a platform leading to a wide staircase, which you can ignore for now. The ghostly butler on the platform will never attack you, but he does have some interesting lore information about the tower on offer. I’m not going to focus on the lore, so look elsewhere if you want an explanation of why this place is full of ghosts and monsters (I’ve read up on it, and it still doesn’t make sense).

Before the platform, you will also see a small opening to the right. Do not go into this door. It leads to the Servant’s Quarters, which have become infested with bats, spiders and hounds. If you were to, in theory, go into those rooms and kill trash, you would eventually cause a random boss (either bat, spider or hound) to spawn. Killing this boss would net you an epic item with random attributes. This means that you are way more likely to get a belt “of spirit” or “of the eagle” than you are to get something remotely useful. This room is entirely optional, and is mostly a waste of time unless your group is severely undergeared. Its only use is as an easy source of reputation, but rep is easy enough to come by on normal runs. So yeah, don’t bother with this door.

Instead, focus your attention to the large opening to the left, which leads to the tower’s stables. Buff up and get ready to bust some ghosts!

Or ain't you 'fraid of no ghosts?

Attumen Trash

The stable is a spiral, and your goal is to work your way from the outside to the center, where Attumen the Huntsman and his steed Midnight await. Between you and the center are 5-6 groups of ghost horses and their ghostly handlers. Pull sizes will vary from 2 to 6 at once, tending towards the higher end. How you handle these pulls depends on your group makeup: any target may be shackled, freezing trapped, Paladin-feared, or offtanked. Priority for CC goes to the Stable Hands because they have this annoying habit of healing the horses.

Tank and beat down the horses first. The Spectral Chargers like to cast an aoe fear and/or charge a random raid member, forcing the tank to give chase and potentially wreaking havoc on your squishies, so be prepared for either. The charge can be avoided by standing close to the Charger.

For every set of trash and every boss, I’ll be listing, by class, anything unusual you should be doing on those pulls. If I don’t mention you, just continue to tank/heal/dps as normal. Because you’re not a special, unique snowflake.


Anything Special?

All: Cluster around the Chargers if possible.

Hunter: Chain Freezing Trap on your assigned CC target (if any).

Paladin: You may need to use “Turn Undead” on a CC target, depending on your raid makeup.

Priest: Shackle Undead, preferably a Stable Hand. Fear ward the raid, tanks and healers first.

Shaman: Tremor Totem


Once you get started, make sure you're clearing the trash at a brisk pace: unless Attumen is dead, this trash will respawn 25 minutes after it dies. The sooner you get through it, the more time you have to retry the boss before having to reclear the trash. This is partly meant to serve as a gear-check on your raid. If you aren’t strong enough to clear this trash and beat Attumen in 25 minutes, then don’t even try going up further. Respawns will not happen during the boss fight.

Once you’ve made the ghosts un-undead, you’ll reach the circular area in the center, you’ll see Midnight standing alone next to an old wooden cart. Rebuff and get prepared: approaching Midnight will begin the boss encounter.




Attumen the Huntsman & Midnight

This fight has 3 phases and will require 2 tanks. This is because Midnight is not being entirely honest with you. He may be standing there looking all innocent, but in reality, his master is waiting to pounce on your raid.

For all bosses, I will be presenting only the strategy that my raid group has found most effective. There are definitely other ways to take down the bosses, but I’m only going to talk about the one I have seen work well firsthand.

Phase 1: Midnight alone

This phase will be very short. Just have your offtank run in and hit Midnight a few times before your dps opens up on him. Tank Midnight where he starts, near the cart. Your main tank should be building rage and keeping a very careful watch for Attumen to appear so he/she can snap the boss up immediately. When Midnight hits 95% health, Attumen will appear out of nowhere right next to Midnight.

Phase 2: Attumen and Midnight, separate:

Your offtank should continue tanking Midnight, and your DPS should continue hitting him. Attumen appears with a blank aggro list, so he will likely make a dash for your healers once he has phased in. Your main tank should be between Midnight and the healers, and should be watching carefully and pulling Attumen’s aggro immediately. Keep in mind that Attumen is immune to taunt, so open with a high-aggro move, like Shield Slam, instead. Since Attumen cleaves in an arc in front of him, your main tank should keep him facing away from the raid. It’s a good idea to simply move him off to the side. We like to tank him in the back left corner (see photo). Healers will have to manage healing on both the main tank and the offtank, making this the most healing-intensive phase.



Attumen can be disarmed, so it is recommended that you have a warrior tank him and use the ability every time its cooldown is up.

For the rest of the battle, Attumen will periodically cast an aoe curse that reduces chance to hit with all attacks by a brutal 50%. Your mages and druids should be constantly removing the curse from everyone, especially tanks. Warriors can Spell Reflect the curse, though this can be difficult to time.

Anything Special?

Druid: Remove Curse

Mage: Decurse

Warrior: Disarm Attumen


Phase 3: Attumen mounts Midnight

When Midnight reaches 25% health, Attumen will run over and mount his steed, turning them into a single boss mob. This mob’s health will be equal to the health of whichever of the two had more before they merged, so he will likely be near full. However, it would have been unwise to DPS both to around 25%, as Phase 3 is actually easier than Phase 2 - if you know the trick. And you are about to, my friend.

This new mob will spawn with a cleared aggro list, but the process takes a moment, giving the main tank time to get in position. The MT should immediately draw the boss’s aggro, and should be given a few seconds to build it before DPS begins. Like most Burning Crusade raid bosses, this guy is immune to taunt, so make sure you give the tank adequate lead time to build aggro. The boss should be tanked where Attumen was being tanked alone (in the back corner as pictured) and facing away from the raid.

In Phase 3, the boss gains only one new move: he will periodically charge the member of the raid furthest from him, then run back to the tank. Since he can cleave while running back, this could prove devastating to the raid. However, as with the trash Chargers, this move has a minimum range. Simply have the entire raid bunch up directly behind the boss (Yes, even the hunters. Trust me, you'll live through the tiny hit you'll take on the damage meters by being in melee. It's OK. No, no, don't cry! [It may be that now that the deadzone has been reduced to almost nothing, hunters can use ranged attacks without being far enough away to trigger a Charge, but I haven't had a chance to test it]). Seriously, get in melee range of the horse’s arse. He will never charge, and this phase will be easy as pie with cake on top, especially if your warrior(s) remember to keep disarming the boss. Just keep it up until he dies.



Anything Special?

All but main tank: Bunch up in the horse’s butt.

Druid: Remove Curse

Mage: Decurse

Warrior: Disarm Attumen

------

Aaaaand you’ve beaten your first boss in Karazhan! Do a little dance, argue with your group over who gets the super-rare mount if it drops, then collect your epics! Congratulations!



Next: The only polite undead rogue in the whole world, and the only time I will ever admit that maybe getting drunk isn’t always a great idea.

Your First Time (in Karazhan)

So you’ve never been to Karazhan before.

Don’t feel bad. I’m sure there are plenty of other people who have never done the first major raid instance in World of Warcraft’s The Burning Crusade expansion. It’s natural to be anxious your first time, but I’m here to relieve that anxiety by showing you precisely what you can expect. Not only will I provide strategy guides for bosses, I’ll show you which direction to go to reach the boss and what you can expect things to look like along the way. At the same time, I’m going to assume you have a basic working knowledge of game mechanics and terminology. If you don’t know what “aggro” or “mob” mean, get thee to a wowwiki!




When I say everything, I only mean everything you can expect when you first step into Medivh’s Haunted Tower Fun Ride. It’s up to you to get keyed (there’s a nice guide here) and get into a guild that is running Karazhan, or at the very least gather 9 other people together. Remember, at least two of them need to be healers and one of them needs to be a dedicated “main tank”, meaning a protection-specced warrior or paladin or a feral druid (here comes the hate mail…). I’m sorry, but those PvP arms warriors in your guild or that ret paladin who ends every sentence in guild chat with “lmao” are not going to cut it for main tanking. They will make perfectly fine offtanks, though. Most trash and many bosses require a secondary tank; that tank need not be as strong as your main tank.



When gathering your nine partners-in-crime, keep in mind that most of the foes you will face in Karazhan are classified as "undead". This means that, on most trash pulls, your typical mainstays of instance crowd control - mage’s polymorph, rogue’s sap, and warlock’s seduce and fear – will not work. What long-term CC will work? The priest’s shackle undead, the hunter’s freezing trap, and the paladin’s “turn undead”, which doesn’t actually turn the target undead, but instead fears them, which I guess technically makes them “turn” away (in patch 2.4, this will be changed into an incapacitate effect that also works on demons). So, you’re going to find the instance easier if you have some priests, hunters, and paladins with you, but keep in mind this is by no means a requirement.

Also desirable, but not required: consumables. This includes potions, buff food, weapon oils, sharpening stones, elixirs, and flasks. You can find a useful list here. Some players swear by consumables and would never raid without self-buffing to the max. Other players complain that these items are too expensive and too annoying to replenish (especially when wiping repeatedly) and would rather do without. It is up to you, your guild, and your raid group what you should do. The bottom line is: consumables will help you win. It will take you longer to beat a boss and clear a dungeon without potions and elixirs. Often, one mana potion or agility elixir will be the difference between a wipe and a photo of your raid dancing naked on the boss’s corpse, so think very carefully about the pros and cons of your decision.

The final aspect you’ll need to consider before heading over to Karazhan is, of course, your gear (this one is required. Unless you’re really into role-playing a naked corpse. You creepy freak.).



Every class forum on the official World of Warcraft site holds piles of threads asking “Am I ready for Kara?” You will not be posting one of those! Instead, you will follow my handy-dandy guide of what today’s discerning raiders are wearing to the most popular ghosts-in-a-tower party of the year!



There has been lots of discussion about optimal stats and gear for raiding. But, in reality, figuring out if you’re prepared for Kara is actually super easy, almost no matter what class you are. Stop worrying so much and just answer the following questions:

1. Your character has 15-16 slots on the character sheet for gear. Are at least 13 of those slots filled with at least blue-quality items from level 70 dungeons (some of these may be blue items from level 70 PvP honor rewards)?
2. Are the other slots (if any) filled with at least blues from midlevel Outlands dungeons or greens that can only be equipped at level 68 or higher?
3. Are most of your level 70 blues appropriately enchanted and all of them fully gemmed (green gems are fine)?
4. Is all of your gear appropriate to your role? (For instance, if you are a melee dps shaman, you better not be wearing +healing pants, nor should you have +agility and +attack power on your druid’s spell damage gear.)

If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, then you are ready to step into Karazhan. Please note that this is a general minimum to start, not clear, KZ. To beat the later bosses you will need to have upgraded your gear with epics from previous bosses, perhaps supplemented with heroic or PvP epics. It is also beneficial to max out your crafting profession(s). Clearing the instance is much easier if you’ve crafted your epic tailoring set, or your epic blacksmithing weapon, or your epic engineering goggles (which surpass the tier 4 level loot that drops in KZ).



The exception to this rule is the main tank. If a rogue has low stats and poor gear it may prolong the fight an extra minute, but if the main tank has inadequate gear, the group wipes. Therefore, the tank needs to reach certain milestones in order to lead your group into the Tower of Purplez. Every main tank should have over 10,000 HP (preferably more like 12,000). Prot warriors will need 490 defense (note this is actual defense skill, not defense rating) to become as close to uncrittable as possible, while prot paladins will want to aim to reach 102.7% total avoidance (dodge, parry, block, etc.) with holy shield up in order to avoid getting nailed by burst damage. Tanking druids should have the full three points in the talent “survival of the fittest”, which will reduce their chance to be crit by 3%, meaning they only need 415 defense skill (or, alternatively, 103 resilience rating) to become nigh-uncrittable. Once the tank has reached these milestones, she should just start focusing on stacking stamina and armor. For more detailed information on tanking requirements, I’d recommend browsing the WoW forums or the Elitist Jerks class discussion forum.

Finally, you will need addons, which are files that you can download and put in your WoW folder that will modify your user interface in ways not available by default. No matter what your class, there are two addons you will absolutely NEED: a threat meter - either KLH or Omen - and a boss warning mod such as BigWigs. A threat meterwill put a small window up on your screen that will present a real-time readout of roughly what your threat level is on a boss. You will want to keep an eye on this to make sure your name doesn’t go above the main tank’s name. If you are getting close, stop DPSing (this means YOU) or healing if at all possible so you don’t pull aggro. Meanwhile, boss warning mods like BigWigs will put warnings and timers up on your screen to help you keep up with what a boss is doing or is about to do. At least install these two; it is up to you and your group if any further addons will be necessary.

This may seem like a lot of preparation, but it’s going to pay dividends when you finally zone into KZ for the first time.


NEXT TIME: Why bunching up against a horse’s ass is a good idea. (hint: bring noseplugs!)