Morchok is a relatively simple encounter made up of two alternating phases.

Crystal Phase, which lasts approximately 1m, is a tank and spank phase during which the raid is faced with two tasks: the tanks need to regularly taunt the boss off of each other and a few players will have to soak the proximity damage done by crystals that the boss summons.

Black Blood Phase, which lasts approximately 30s, requires your raid to hide behind pillars of stone to avoid being hit by the Black Blood flowing out from Morchok.

Finally, at 20% health, Morchok gains the Furious buff. This does not affect the alternation between the Crystal Phase and the Black Blood Phase. The fight continues normally, just that the boss deals more damage and attacks faster.

Crystal Phase

Crush Armor is a stacking debuff applied by Morchok on his tank every 6s. It stacks up to 10 times and each stack reduces armor by 10%, eventually forcing a tank swap.

Stomp is an AoE attack that Morchok casts every 10 to 15s. It deals 750k physical damage in 10-man and 2,500k in 25-man difficulty. The damage is evenly split between players within 25 yards of Morchok.

Resonating Crystal is cast by Morchok every 15s, approximately. This ability summons a red crystal that explodes after 12s, dealing split damage to the 3 closest players in 10-man and the 7 closest players in 25-man difficulty. The total damage dealt by the explosion decreases when the players are close to the crystal (between 25k and 30k damage each if all players are standing close to the crystal when it explodes).

In addition, Morchok performs a melee attack on his current target every 2.5s. The damage of the melee attacks increases the more stacks of Crush Armor that the tank has.

The strategy for properly handling the Crystal Phase revolves around 3 simple tasks: proper positions for dealing with Stomp, tank swap for dealing with Crush Armor and have targeted players soak the damage from Resonating Crystal.

Because of Stomp, the raid should be positioned within 25 yards of the boss. There are no other positioning constraints, though stacking together, close to the boss, will make AoE healing more efficient. Stomp deals a double share of damage to the current tank and to the player that is the closest to the tank. Ideally, this double share of damage should always hit the two tanks.

The only players who will have to move out of the 25-yard radius are those that will have been targeted by Resonating Crystal.

Because of Crush Armor, the tanks will need to regularly taunt the boss off of each other. The debuff lasts 20s and stacks every 6s, which means that the taunt should occur as soon as a 4th stack is applied on the current tank.

Every 15s (so 3 times per Crystal Phase), Morchok will summon a new crystal. Closest players will be easily identified by the beam of light that links them to the Crystal. The beam changes colour, depending on the distance between the player and the crystal.

After 12s, the crystal will explode, knocking back the targeted players (provided that they have done their job and moved next to the crystal) and dealing damage to them.

Even though the beams initially target the closest players and it is possible to replace someone by simply moving closer to the crystal than they are. It enables more aware players to compensate for other players lack of reaction.

To deal with Resonating Crystal, you can either have the closest players move to the Crystal when it spawns or have a set of designated players that will handle every Crystal that spawns.

Black Blood Phase

Shortly after the explosion of the third Resonating Crystal, Morchok enters the Black Blood Phase, during which he casts 3 abilities in quick succession before resuming the Crystal Phase. Players will be pulled to Morchok before having to rapidly take cover to avoid a very damaging ability.

Earthen Vortex marks the beginning of the Black Blood Phase. All players are pulled towards Morchok and begin to take physical damage equivalent to 5% of their health every second for 5s.

Falling Fragments is cast immediately after all players have been pulled towards Morchok. This ability is channeled for 5s and creates stone pillars around Morchok. Standing next to the location where a pillar is created deals 15k physical damage. You will notice that players hardly ever take damage from being too close to a pillar.

Black Blood of the Earth is cast immediately after the channel of Falling Fragments has finished. For 24s, Black Blood will flow outwards from Morchok. Players standing in it will receive a stacking debuff that disappears as soon as they step out of the blood. The debuff stacks every second and each stack inflicts 5k nature damage per second.

The strategy for this phase is very straightforward. As soon as Morchok pulls the players to him, everyone needs to run behind the pillars of stone created by Falling Fragments, as they offer protection from Black Blood of the Earth. There is plenty of time to reach the pillars, so no one should take damage from the blood.

Once behind a pillar, there is no other source of damage until the Crystal Phase resumes. Therefore, healers should focus on getting behind a pillar before trying to heal those that are in range of them.

At 90% health, Morchok splits himself in two, and your raid has to fight both Morchoks at the same time, the other boss is called Kohcrom.

Both bosses use the same abilities as Morchok does in normal mode, with the same frequency and in the same way.

Crush Armor no longer exists, meaning that there is no need to tank switch on either of the two bosses.

Morchok and Kohcrom have separate health pools, but every time you deal damage to one of them, both bosses take an equal share of damage.

Both Morchok and Kohcrom place a debuff on their tanks each time they cast a Stomp. This debuff lasts for 10s and increases physical damage taken by 100%.

The heroic mode part of the fight truly begins after Morchok reaches 90% health. Until then, the fight is unchanged from normal mode. Because Morchok's health is not especially high, he will get to 90% health right around the time that he spawns the first crystal.

It is important that you clear as much of the trash mobs around the fighting area as possible, to give yourself ample room.

You should split your raid into two groups. Each group should have one DPS player who will be assigned to take a double share of damage from Stomp and survive.

Depending on your raid's DPS, Morchok may cast the first Resonating Crystal right before reaching 90% health, and then split immediately after. If this happens, your raid leader will have to decide which of the two groups will soak the crystal.

When Morchok reaches 90% health, he will split in two. When splitting, Morchok will jump to a specific place and effectively become two different bosses. The boss called Morchok will be on the right-hand side, and Kohcrom will be on the left-hand side, as you are facing Wyrmrest Temple.

The two bosses will remain stationary for around 5s, before they can be moved by the tanks. Keep in mind that, during this time, threat is still generated normally against them, so DPS players should be careful.

Immediately after splitting, the two tanks must quickly move the two bosses far apart. After this point, the strategy for each of the two groups becomes simple.

Every player must always be within 25 yards of their group's boss, in order to share the damage from Stomp.

3 players in 10-man and 7 in 25-man difficulty must handle the Resonating Crystals. You should decide ahead of time who these players will be.

A designated player should be extremely close to the boss, in melee range, in order to soak the increased damage that Stomp deals to the closest two targets.

Each group will have to repeatedly soak crystals and survive the damage from Stomp, until the bosses go into the Black Blood Phase. This phase remains completely unchanged and should be dealt with as in normal mode. The damage that the black blood deals is extremely low, and players can afford to take many ticks from it without being in danger of dying.

Unlike in normal mode, it is crucial that the players handling Resonating Crystal always be within 25 yards of their boss. Whenever one of the bosses casts Resonating Crystal, its tank should move it close to the crystal, so that designated players can stack on the crystal while still being within 25 yards of the boss.

If there is one or more melee DPS in the group of designated players, bringing the boss close enough will enable them to continue attacking it.

In the event that the boss is not quite close enough to the crystal to allow players to stack on the crystal while being in a 25 yard range of the boss, the crystal soakers will first have to remain in range of the boss for the next Stomp, and then quickly move to the crystal.

When handling Resonating Crystals, players who are assigned to this task should make sure to position themselves on the side of the crystal that is towards the boss, so that the knock-back will push them towards the boss.

Note that Morchok and Kohcrom do not use their abilities in exactly the same order or with the exact same frequency. Most importantly, while both bosses perform 4 stomps during each Normal Phase, Morchok spawns 3 Resonating Crystals, while Kohcrom only spawns 2.

Healing will generally be quite difficult. In particular, it will be extremely difficult at those times when a Resonating Crystal is preceded and followed by a Stomp. When this happens, all players should do everything that they can to survive and healers should attempt to use their own cooldowns.

Tanks should use their cooldowns to help reduce the damage taken by Stomp and the increased damage taken caused by the debuff applied after Stomps. Healers should also be on the look out for increased tank damage at this time.

Zon'ozz is a relatively simple encounter made up of two alternating phases. Your raid's actions will determine when the boss enters the second phase in the cycle. The Ping Pong Phase, during which the raid must bounce a purple Ball (a damage-immune enemy NPC) between themselves, by blocking its traveling path, before finally hitting the boss with it. The Black Phase, which lasts 30s, is triggered whenever Zon'ozz is touched by the Ball. During this phase, the raid must stack together to deal with very heavy AoE damage.

If your raid executes the fight properly, Zon'ozz will take increasing damage as the fight goes on. Indeed, every time you hit Zon'ozz with the Ball, each bounce the Ball made during the Ping Pong Phase will make him take 5% increased damage.

This debuff, Void Diffusion lasts 2m. Therefore, if your raid does not let too much time elapse between each Black Phase, you can keep increasing the stacks of this debuff.

Ping Pong Phase

During the phase your raid will mostly perform two tasks: deal damage to Zon'ozz and control the Ball so that it does not touch the walls of the room and so that it touches the boss at the correct time.

The phase ends when the Ball touches the boss. Your raid will choose for this to happen after a certain amount of time, as this resets Zon'ozz stacking enrage and makes him take increased damage for the rest of the fight.

Focused Anger is a stacking buff that Zon'ozz applies to himself, roughly once every 6s. It increases his attack speed and damage dealt by 10% per stack.

Psychic Drain a frontal cone attack that deals a high amount of shadow damage to every enemy in front Zon'ozz and heals the boss for 10 times the amount of damage dealt. Zon'ozz casts this ability every 20s.

Void of the Unmaking (which we refer to as the Ball) is an NPC that Zon'ozz summons at the start of the fight, and after each Black Phase. The boss will summon the Ball directly in front of him. It is immune to damage, and slowly moves around the room.

If the Ball comes in contact with a player, it bounces back in the opposite direction. When this happens, the Ball also deals a large amount of damage through Void Diffusion. The damage is split between all players within a small area. Additionally, each time the Ball touches a player, it stacks two buffs on itself. Void Diffusion, a buff that increases the damage that it deals when it comes in contact with a player, by 20% for each stack and a stacking buff that causes your raid to deal 5% increased damage per stack to Zon'ozz.

If the Ball comes in contact with one of the walls of the room, the entire raid is damaged by Black Blood Eruption.

Disrupting Shadows is a DoT that Zon'ozz casts on a number of random players. This DoT deals 30k shadow damage every 2s for 20s. Zon'ozz casts this ability every 20s. It can be dispelled, and when dispelled, the target takes a moderate amount of shadow damage and is knocked back.

The strategy for the Ping Pong Phase revolves around bouncing the Ball between raid members and then finally hitting Zon'ozz with it, in order to trigger the Black Phase. Disrupting Shadows must also be dispelled.

The most important part of the Ping Pong Phase is, as the name suggests, properly controlling the movement of the Ball.

With that in mind, the first thing to do is to deal with Zon'ozz summoning the Ball, something that happens a few seconds after the fight begins. The idea is to have the Ranged group stack about 20 yards from the boss and the Melee group run to the boss. The exact positioning of the Melee group does not really matter at this stage, only that the tank must make the boss face slightly away from the Ranged group.

When the ball is summoned, the Ranged group will have to move slightly, to intercept the Ball, while the tank should proceed to face the boss entirely away from them. The ping pong part begins as soon as the Ball collides with the Ranged group. Next, the bouncing will begin between the Ranged group and the Melee group. When it is time for the Black Phase to start, simply have all the players from the Melee group move out of the path of the Ball so that it can hit the boss.

One important thing to keep in mind is that after he spawned a Ball, Zon'ozz will wait at least 90s before spawning a new one. For example, if you spend 40s in the first Ping Pong Phase, you will need to wait 20s in the second Ping Pong Phase before getting a new Ball.

The longer you wait before getting a new Ball, the less you can bounce it around before the damage on the tank from Focused Anger forces you to trigger a new Black Phase.

Therefore, you need to spend approximately 1m in each Ping Pong Phase, so that you get a new Ball at the beginning of the following Ping Pong Phase. At the same time, you need to aim at bouncing the ball between 5 and 10 times, so that the damage from Void Diffusion remain manageable.

Also, you do not want to remain more than 90s in each Ping Pong Phase. Indeed, Void Diffusion, the debuff that keeps stacking on Zon'ozz at the beginning of each Black Phase lasts only 2m. Spending more than 90s in a Ping Pong Phase will cause the debuff to drop.

Black Phase

During the Black Phase, your raid will take unavoidable, raid-wide damage from two abilities.

Black Blood of Go'rath, this is a debuff that Zon'ozz places on every raid member. It lasts for 30s and deals shadow damage every second.

Zon'ozz spawns several Eyes of Go'rath. These NPC cannot be tanked or attacked, and they deal damage to random raid members.

From the moment Zon'ozz is hit by the Ball to approximately 15s after Black Blood of Go'rath starts, Zon'ozz will not perform melee attacks.

The strategy for the Black Phase is extremely simple. Just have your entire raid stack up on Warlord Zon'ozz and heal the damage.

After exiting the Black Phase, Warlord Zon'ozz will, normally, first summon another Ball, and 5s later he will start casting Psychic Drain. However, in case the previous Ping Pong Phase lasted less than 1m, the boss is likely to cast Psychic Drain before summoning the Ball. For this reason, it is advisable that the tank faces the boss at a 30 degree angle from the ranged group. As soon as the Ball has been summoned, the tank should face the boss completely away from the raid.

Disrupting Shadows now deals higher damage than in normal mode, with every tick. When dispelled, however, it deals damage not only to the affected player, but also to all raid members within 10 yards, also knocking them back.

Focused Anger now causes Zon'ozz to deal 20% extra damage (up from 10%) and attack 5% faster (down from 10%) with each stack.

During the Black Phase, three types of Old God tentacles will spawn, causing the raid to take massive amounts of damage.

Claw of Go'rath is a large tentacle that must be tanked. If not tanked, this tentacle will deal massive amounts of damage to the raid, causing a fast wipe. The Claw of Go'rath deals very low damage, and does not need a proper tank.

Flail of Go'rath is a small tentacle with little health. It deals damage to random raid members and performs a knockback on players within 15 yards of it.

Eye of Go'rath simply deals damage to random raid members.

During the Ping Pong Phase, the only important difference is that players affected by Disrupting Shadows can no longer be safely dispelled, unless they are far away from any other raid members. As a result, in most cases, the damage from DoT must simply be healed through.

The Black Blood of Go'rath debuff that exists in normal mode works slightly differently. In heroic mode, this debuff gains stacks, and deals damage to the raid based on the amount of stacks it has. Each tentacle that is alive (Claw, Flail and Eye) applies one stack of the debuff. Killing the tentacles is required in order to lessen the raid-wide damage.

It is likely that several tentacles will still be alive after the Black Phase ends. In this case, simply have your ranged DPS players finish them off before switching back to Zon'ozz.

Keep in mind that the Eyes of Go'rath can be interrupted when they are casting Shadow Gaze, thus reducing the raid damage. There is no cast bar for this spell, however, and you will have to interrupt blindly.

In order to make your raid's DPS as efficient as possible, you should not kill all the tentacles after the third Black Phase. A few Eyes and even a Claw can be left alive, and your raid can just continue burning Zon'ozz while your healers cover the damage.

The Yor'sahj encounter is essentially a single phase fight. The encounter is unique, in the sense that Yor'sahj has only one ability, which he casts with regularity.

In addition, approximately every 75s, Yor'sahj will summon 3 random oozes of a different type. Upon reaching the boss, each ooze buffs the boss, granting him a specific ability that is temporary and lasts 60s. When there are 15s left on his buffs, the boss begins summoning the next set of 3 oozes.

Your raid can only kill one of the three oozes each time, so the challenge comes from choosing which ooze to kill so that your raid is faced with the least damaging combination of abilities.

There is a lot of room for error, and killing the wrong ooze can be easily recovered from if the right strategy is subsequently applied for the remaining oozes.

Yor'sahj

Void Bolt is Yor'sahj's only ability. This does a large amount of shadow damage to the tank, in addition to leaving a stacking shadow damage DoT. Yor'sahj uses this ability with a rather unpredictable frequency. The DoT deals damage 5k in 10-man and 30k in 25-man difficulty every 2s, requiring two tanks to swap the boss among themselves in 25-man difficulty. In 10-man, the damage is easily healable.

Every 2.5s, Yor'sahj also deals a moderate amount of damage with his melee attack.

Roughly every 75s, Yor'sahj will summon 3 oozes of a different type that slowly move towards him, doing nothing else. They cannot be stunned or slowed. Upon reaching Yor'sahj, each one grants him a different ability.

While the oozes are being summoned and while they are moving towards him, Yor'sahj is immobile in the center of the room and does nothing, although he can still be attacked.

Each ooze (also called globule) has a specific name. We will refer to them by their color, as this is how the in-game emotes refer to them.

Your raid needs to kill one of the 3 oozes. This means that your raid will have to properly deal with the buffs granted to Yor'sahj by the remaining 2 oozes. Failure to kill one of the oozes will, most likely, result in a wipe.

Purple (Shadowed Globule)

This buff is not deadly on its own, but it creates a lot of confusion and complicates the fight. Most raids will prefer the simpler strategy (even at the cost of more raid-wide damage) that killing the purple ooze leads to.

The purple ooze grants Yor'sahj Deep Corruption. This ability does a large amount of raid-wide shadow damage for each fifth heal or absorb effect that a player receives.

The aim is to keep the raid alive while casting as few heals as possible, thus not triggering any damage from Deep Corruption.

Green (Acidic Globule)

The green ooze grants Yor'sahj Digestive Acid. This causes Yor'sahj to occasionally damage a random raid member and all allies within 4 yards of them for a moderate amount of nature damage.

Just like with the purple ooze, the buff given by the green ooze is not deadly on its own, but it requires the raid to spread out when almost all the other buffs require that the raid stacks.

The easiest way to deal with Digestive Acid is to have the raid spread out at least 4 yards apart. This is generally not difficult, but may be somewhat problematic when green is combined with another ooze that requires the raid to stack, in which case you will need to carefully spread out around the stacking location.

Yellow (Glowing Globule)

The yellow ooze grants Yor'sahj Glowing Blood of Shu'ma. This buffs Yor'sahj, causing him to attack 50% faster and to use Void Bolt twice as often. Additionally, it causes Void Bolt to have an AoE effect that hits everyone in the raid.

In case your entire raid needs to stack together while the Glowing Blood of Shu'ma is active, you should simply AoE heal the entire raid, and use damage reduction cooldowns to facilitate this.

Black (Dark Globule)

The black ooze causes Yor'sahj to spawn a large number of adds, called Forgotten Ones. These adds fixate on random raid members and regularly cast Psychic Slice on them, which deals shadow damage.

The best way to deal with the Forgotten Ones is to simply stack up and AoE down the adds while healers use AoE heals to keep the raid alive.

Red (Crimson Globule)

The red ooze grants Yor'sahj the Searing Blood ability. This causes Yor'sahj to damage a number of random players for an amount of damage that is larger the farther away from the boss these players are.

Searing Blood appears to exclusively target those players who are farthest away from Yor'sahj.

The best way to deal with Searing Blood is to have everyone as close as possible to the boss.

Blue (Cobalt Globule)

The blue ooze creates a Mana Void. When this hostile unit spawns, it drains the entire mana pool from all the casters in the raid. As it only drains mana once, casters will start regenerating mana as normal and will still be able to cast some spells. When the Mana Void is killed, it releases all the mana that it had drained, distributing it evenly between all mana users within 30 yards of its location.

Dealing with the Mana Void is quite easy. Simply have all of your DPS players switch to the Mana Void as soon as it is alive, killing it quickly. This will restore mana back to all the casters, and from then on you can continue the fight normally.

When Yor'sahj is not empowered by the abilities of any oozes, the encounter is basically tank and spank. Healers must only be prepared to heal tank damage (from melee swings and Void Bolt). This initial phase only lasts for 20s.

The rest of the time, Yor'sahj will either be summoning the oozes and doing nothing or be empowered with two additional abilities (or three, if you failed to kill any of the oozes).

While there are a total of 20 possible combinations, so far, only 6 have ever been witnessed. So it is safe to assume that these are the only 6 combinations that the game will face your raid with:

black - blue - yellow

black - green - red

black - purple - red

blue - green - purple

blue - purple - yellow

green - red - yellow

Given that there are only 6 ooze combinations, the kill orders are slightly different than what they would be if all 20 possible combinations were present: green > yellow > purple.

Yor'sahj will spawn 4 oozes instead of 3. Since you can only kill one, it means that you will always have to deal with Yor'sahj being empowered with the abilities of 3 oozes, instead of 2.

There is a total of 15 possible combinations. However, you would only see 6 combinations:

black - blue - green - purple

black - blue - green - red

black - blue - purple - yellow

black - green - red - yellow

black - purple - red - yellow

blue - green - purple - yellow

The general ooze priority is yellow > green.

The fact that the boss is buffed by 3 oozes does not add complexity to the fight.

Your raid will have to deal with purple in half of the possible combinations. This means that, unlike in Normal mode, properly handling Deep Corruption is no longer optional.

This debuff will stack on players every time they get a heal or receive an absorb effect. At 5 stacks, the player will explode and deal a massive amount of raid-wide damage.

Also, purple is always up in combination with blue, which deals no damage, and either of black or green, which deal very moderate damage. As you can see, purple is never combined with a highly damaging ooze that would cause the healers to panic, so they should be able to easily keep every player in the raid alive, without having to heal them more than 4 times.

The fight against Hagara is made up of 3 phases: Main Phase, Ice Phase and Lightning Phase. The Main Phase lasts 50s and is followed by either the Ice Phase or the Lightning Phase. The fight goes back to the Main Phase as soon as your raid has finished dealing with the Ice Phase or the Lightning Phase.

To determine whether you will get an Ice Phase or a Lightning Phase first, simply look at the visual effect on Hagara's weapon before the pull (it will either be a frost effect or a lightning effect).

Each phase will require your raid to properly deal with positioning constraints or to move in a synchronized fashion.

The Main Phase will require members of your ranged group to position themselves in such a way that they prevent missiles from reaching the melee group, all the while freeing players who get encased in Ice Tombs.

The Ice Phase will require your raid to run in a clockwise fashion on the edge of the platform to keep damaging Ice Waves at a safe distance. Icicles falling on the platform also need to be avoided. At the same time, DPS players will need to destroy the crystals that protect the boss.

The Lighting Phase will require your raid to create a chain of players to propagate lightning in order to disable several objects that protect the boss.

Main Phase

The boss should be kept in the middle of the room and be damaged as much as possible. The ranged group must also deal with a few abilities that mostly require proper positioning and good reaction time.

She has a melee attack that she uses every 2s. Because she also spends a lot of time casting her various abilities, she ends up using her melee attack every 5-6s in average. It deals moderate damage to the tank and should not pose any problem.

Ice Tomb is cast once per Main Phase. This ability, encases 2 random players (but never the tank) in 10-man and 5 in 25-man difficulty in Ice Tombs. These tombs need to be destroyed before the encased players can regain control of their characters. As soon as the ability is cast, targeted players are marked with a blue arrow on top of their head and 7s later, they are frozen. Ice Tomb deals approximately 7k damage per second to encased players. The ability does not chain to nearby players.

Focused Assault is the same in all difficulties and is cast every 15s. This ability is channeled for 5s and causes Hagara to attack in front of her for 50% of her normal melee damage every 0.5s. While she does this, Hagara remains stationary so the tank can easily move away from her.

Shattered Ice is always cast either right before or right after Focused Assault. This ability, which targets one random player, slows down movement for 4s and deals 78k frost damage in 10-man, 100k in 25-man difficulty.

Ice Lance is cast twice per Main Phase. Every time, it summons 3 crystals. Each of these crystals fixates on a random player and for 15s send one missile per second towards this player (so 15 missiles in total). When a missile reaches its target or another player on the path to its target, it explodes and inflicts frost damage to every player in a 3 yard radius. It also reduces the attack speed (but not the casting speed) of whoever gets damaged by 25%.

When Hagara is using Focused Assault, the tank should back away from her (either by walking back, or strafing backwards). This will minimize the damage that the tank takes, as the boss is slow to catch up and must break her channel to do so. Make sure that the tank does not turn their back to Hagara, however.

Healers should be especially wary of the damage done by Shattered Ice as it can easily one shot someone who has previously been damaged by Ice Lance.

DPS need to free players trapped by Ice Tomb.

When a melee player is targeted by Ice Lance, a ranged DPS or a healer needs to step in the path of the missiles so that they do not reach the targeted player.

Ice Phase

Hagara casts Water Shield on herself, which causes her to remain stationary and immune to all damage until the raid has successfully completed the phase.

During the Ice Phase, the raid will be chased around the platform by very deadly Ice Waves. While running to avoid the waves and the Icicles that fall from the sky, the raid will need to destroy 4 Frozen Binding Crystals by attacking them whenever possible.

When all 4 crystals are destroyed, the Water Shield protecting Hagara is removed and she is debuffed with Feedback, which, for 15s, causes her to be stunned and take 100% increased damage. The Main Phase restarts when the debuff drops off Hagara.

Watery Entrenchment prevents players from entering the center of the platform as doing so is very deadly (15% health lost every second and movement speed reduced by 50%). This Watery Entrenchment is created a few seconds into the Ice Phase, giving players time to move to the edge of the platform.

Ice Wave summons 4 Ice Waves a few seconds after the entrenchment is created. Each of these waves extends from the boss to the edge of the platform and move in a clockwise manner around the platform at a speed slightly slower than a player's base running speed. Being hit by a wave is extremely deadly as it causes 200k frost damage, in addition to increasing frost damage taken by 50% for 2.5s.

Icicle causes Icicles to regularly fall from the sky onto the outer part of the platform. Icicles come by waves, each wave consisting of about 10 Icicles and coming 15-20s after the previous wave. A visual effect marks the location where an Icicle is going to fall. After 4s, the visual effect disappears and 1s later, the Icicle hits the ground, damaging everyone within a 7-yard radius (the area previously marked with the visual effect) for 100k damage.

Move clockwise so that you stay between two Ice Waves. Getting hit by them is very deadly, so make sure to remain at a safe distance. The visual effect for the Ice Waves can be misleading, as you can be hit even if the visual effect does not reach you, so be careful.

Whenever you can, attack the Frozen Binding Crystals. Always keep an eye on the Ice Wave chasing you when you attack a crystal, as it is easy to get carried away and lose track of their exact position.

Keep an eye on the falling Icicles and move out of the areas where they are going to hit the ground.

To give you an idea, it should take no more than 2 turns around the platform to destroy all 4 Frozen Binding Crystals.

During this phase, healers should have only heal the occasional damage from falling Icicles. Should a player manage to survive being hit by an Ice Wave, they should be healed quickly before they take damage again.

Lightning Phase

Hagara casts Water Shield on herself, which causes her to remain stationary and immune to all damage until the raid has successfully completed the phase.

During the Lightning Phase, the raid will have to overload the 4 Crystal Conductors that protect Hagara. Players need to form chains so that lightning propagates through them, eventually reaching the conductors and overloading them.

When all 4 conductors are overloaded, the Water Shield protecting Hagara is removed and she is debuffed with Feedback, which for 15s, causes her to be stunned and take 100% increased damage. The Main Phase restarts when the debuff drops off Hagara.

During the Lightning Phase, the raid will be faced with a Bound Lightning Elemental, whose death causes the overload of a nearby conductor, which the raid then uses as a source for propagating lightning to the other conductors.

Also, the raid will take constant damage from Lightning Storm. Every 2-3s, this ability hits 3/4 random players in 10-man and 7/8 players in 25-man difficulty. Each player takes 15k nature damage in 10-man and 17,5k in 25-man difficulty. Every time a player is hit by Lightning Storm, they receive a stack of a debuff that increases nature damage taken by 5% per stack.

As the phase begins, a Bound Lightning Elemental spawns and needs to be picked up by the tank. This add must then be brought next to 1 of the 4 Crystal Conductors and killed. This will cause the chosen Crystal Conductor to become overloaded.

From this point on, your raid will propagate the lightning emitted by the overloaded Crystal Conductor to another Crystal Conductor. This will cause the other Crystal Conductor to also become overloaded. To do so, the players from the raid need to create a chain to propagate lightning from the overloaded Crystal Conductor to the other Crystal Conductor. Once this is done, the newly overloaded Crystal Conductor can be used as the source of a new chain that will overload the remaining, non-overloaded Crystal Conductors.

The maximal range for lightning propagation seems to be around 10 yards. If, somewhere in the chain, the distance between two consecutive players go over the maximal range, a few seconds will elapse before the end of the chain loses the lightning, giving enough time for overloading the targeted Crystal Conductor before the lightning runs out.

Focused Assault can no longer be avoided and each missile of Ice Lance applies a stacking debuff that increases frost damage taken.

In the Ice Phase, Hagara regularly applies a debuff on players that slows movement speed.

In the Lightning Phase, Storm Pillars regularly appear on the platform and explode after 3s, dealing proximity damage.

In 10-man difficulty, there are 8 Lightning Conductors.

You need to have two players on each Ice Lance. By alternating every 2 or 3s, they enable the debuff to drop, thus making the damage from Shattered Ice manageable if they are targeted by it.

Focused Assault can no longer be entirely avoided. Tanks still have to move out of the attack, but Hagara will catch up much faster. To survive, defensive cooldowns and healing cooldowns will be needed.

In the Ice Phase, Hagara will target a random player with Frostflake. This debuff does no damage but it slows down the targeted player and stacks every second, meaning that the player will eventually come to an almost complete stop. When dispelled, the debuff leaves a Frostflake Snare on the ground. Every player standing in this 10-yard radius frost area is slowed down by 50%. Exiting the frost area removes the movement speed reduction.

One possible strategy is to have targeted players enter the Watery Entrenchment and be dispelled there. They will take a few ticks of damage, but this should be manageable and the Frostflake Snare will be out of everyone's way. Another possible strategy is that targeted players move to the edges of the platform to be dispelled, though this means that other players need to be careful and stay away from the edge.

In the Lightning Phase, Hagara will regularly summon Storm Pillars. These pillars have a visual effect that looks like a ring. 3s after they have spawned, they explode and deal 35k nature damage to all players within 5 yards.

The idea is to circumvent these pillars when making a lightning chain between the conductors. It is also perfectly viable to ignore them, provided that you can heal the damage, which increases as Lightning Storm stacks build up.

2 or 3s before the Ice Phase starts, have the tank bring Hagara to the location where a Crystal will spawn. This will save you precious seconds traveling from Hagara to the first Crystal when the Ice Phase begins.

If the melee DPS are at full health, they should keep attacking the Crystal, even if an Icicle is going to fall on them.

To destroy all the crystals, your raid will normally need to go around the platform twice. To speed up this process, you should do as much damage as possible on the 3rd and 4th crystal. Then, while the bulk of the raid goes for a second pass to finish off the 1st and 2nd crystal, a few DPS players should be left to finish off the 3rd and 4th crystal. The idea is the 3rd and the 4th crystals should be destroyed at around the same time as the 2nd crystal.

During the Lightning Phase, you will want to overload all the Crystal Conductors within a few seconds of the death of the Bound Lightning Elemental. To achieve this, the chains of players from one Conductor to another will be pre-established and each player will have a pre-determined location to go to. The add will also always be killed on the same Conductor, so that you can assign melee players a position close to this Conductor, while DPS players will be assigned positions that are further away.

Finally, you should ignore the Storm Pillars when they spawn in the path of one of the chain of players and heal through the damage that they deal.

The encounter against Ultraxion is a single phase encounter, the difficulty of which increases over time. It does not present any complicated mechanics, although it does contain two very punishing abilities, which must be dealt with perfectly each time. Additionally, the fight requires a tank switch as well as a strong amount of AoE healing. For the whole duration of the fight, the boss and the raid will remain stationary.

The five Aspects (Alexstrasza, Ysera, Kalecgos, Nozdormu and Thrall) offer various buffs to your raid, during the encounter.

The encounter takes place in two realms: the Twilight Realm and the Normal Realm. Both of these realms are just regular realms. They do not give particular buffs/debuffs or anything of that sort. For the vast majority of the encounter, the raid will be within the Twilight Realm. Raid members will only need to enter the Normal Realm when they have to avoid specific abilities that Ultraxion uses.

The only way to exit the Twilight Realm is by using the Heroic Will ability. This is an encounter specific ability, that appears on your screen in the form of a special action bar.

Heroic Will has a 5s cooldown and has no resource cost. It is off the Global Cooldown and it can be used even while you are casting or channeling another spell. Using Heroic Will has no beneficial effects. It merely removes you from the Twilight Realm for 5s. During those 5s, you are unable to perform any action whatsoever.

Hour of Twilight deals 300k unresistable shadow damage to every player in the Twilight Realm. Ultraxion casts this ability every 45s. There is an emote warning players about it in advance and giving them enough time to react. Players will need to use Heroic Will to exit the Twilight Realm just as this ability is about to be cast. Right after Ultraxion has cast this ability, players in the Normal Realm are automatically brought back to the Twilight Realm. In 10-man, at least 1 player must remain within the Twilight Realm and take damage from this ability, otherwise the raid will instantly wipe. In 25-man, 3 players must do the same.

Fading Light is a debuff that Ultraxion places on the current tank and one random DPS player in 10-man and 3 random DPS players in 25-man difficulty, that lasts between 5 and 10s (the exact duration is randomly chosen each time) and instantly causes their death when it expires, if they are still in the Twilight Realm. If the players are in the Normal Realm when the debuff expires, they will be returned to the Twilight Realm, their threat will be reset and they will be unable to generate any threat for 10s. Ultraxion begins casting this ability after the first Hour of Twilight, and he will always cast Fading Light twice in the 45s interval between two Hour of Twilight casts.

Unstable Monstrosity causes Ultraxion to deal a high amount of shadow damage, split between all players within 30 yards who are in the Twilight Realm. He initially casts this ability every 6s, but every minute that elapses in the encounter reduces the interval between casts by 1s. Thus, before the fight is over, Ultraxion will be casting Unstable Monstrosity every second, constituting a soft enrage mechanics.

Twilight Eruption is Ultraxion's hard enrage. After 6m, he will explode, killing not only himself in the process, but also wiping the raid.

Twilight Burst causes Ultraxion to deal a huge amount of shadow damage each second to every player in the raid if there is no player within his melee range. Additionally, he will increase the amount of magic damage taken by all players by 50% (stacking) with each tick, quickly causing a wipe.

The five aspects provide various buffs to your raid. Thrall buffs your tanks, Alexstrasza, Ysera and Kalecgos buff your healers and Nozdormu buffs your entire raid. These buffs are given to your raid at different times during the fight.

At the start of the fight, Thrall will permanently buff all tanks with Last Defender of Azeroth. This reduces the cooldown of all their defensive cooldowns by 50% and increases their duration by 100%.

Gift of Life is provided by Alexstrasza, about 1.5m into the encounter. It increases all healing done by 100%.

Essence of Dreams is provided by Ysera, about 2.5m into the encounter. It causes each heal cast by the player to also heal the entire raid for the same amount.

Source of Magic is provided by Kalecgos, about 3.5m into the encounter. It reduces mana cost of all spells by 75% and increases spell haste by 100%.

When an aspect provides the raid with one of these buffs, corresponding crystals are created on the platform at fixed locations. Healers, and only healers, have the ability to right-click a crystal and gain the corresponding buff.

Each healer can only gain a single one of these buffs. Each buff lasts until the end of the encounter. If the healer dies, the buff is lost and it cannot be regained (if the healer is resurrected in combat, the buff will not persist). In either difficulty setting, all healers should be benefitting from one buff by the end of the encounter.

5m into the fight, Nozdormu buffs your raid with Timeloop. This buff prevents players from dying, once. The first killing blow that they receive will instead heal them to 100% of their health and remove the Timeloop buff.

Stack up and heal through the constant raid damage.

Ensure that players affected by Fading Light use Heroic Will at the right time.

Ensure that everyone (except for the designated soakers) uses Heroic Will when Hour of Twilight is being cast.

Designate players to survive each Hour of Twilight within the Twilight Realm.

Ensure that your healers are maximizing the buffs granted by the dragon Aspects.

Ultraxion is stationary for the entire duration of the encounter and cannot be attacked from behind. To compensate for this, he cannot parry attacks. At least one player must always be in melee range of Ultraxion, otherwise he will unleash a highly damaging, raid wide AoE attack that will most likely wipe you.

Hour of Twilight is the most important ability of the encounter. It happens roughly every 45s and has the potential of instantly killing your raid members each time. There are two components of this ability that your raid needs to take into account: having everyone exit the Twilight Realm before the ability is cast and having the required number of players remain in the Twilight Realm.

Hour of Twilight is a 5s cast, and Heroic Will has a 5s duration. Therefore, as long as players use Heroic Will after the cast for Hour of Twilight has started, they should have no problem avoiding it.

At least 1 player in 10-man and 3 players in 25-man difficulty must be inside the Twilight Realm when Hour of Twilight is cast, or else the aspects are killed and your raid instantly wipes.

Players who remain in the Twilight Realm for Hour of Twilight will have to survive the 300k non-resistable shadow damage that the ability deals. This will require a bit of planning.

In 10-man raids, it will generally be most efficient if one of the tanks handles this ability. They will need to be topped off in preparation for it and should use one or more defensive cooldowns to survive the damage.

Ultraxion always casts Fading Light twice in the interval between two successive Hour of Twilight casts. He does not cast Fading Light at all until after the first Hour of Twilight has been cast.

The debuff has a random duration, between 5 and 10s. At the end of this time, the affected player will either be instantly killed or they will be brought back in the Twilight Realm.

Naturally, no one should ever die to this ability. Players should always be aware of their debuffs, and when they are affected by Fading Light, they will need to use Heroic Will when there are less than 5s remaining on the debuff.

The second component of the ability is that, for 10s after the debuff expires, the player will not generate any threat. This is important for the tank, who gets targeted by the ability each time. It means that the other tank will have to taunt and tank Ultraxion for the 10s duration.

You should be using 3 healers for this encounter in 10-man and 6 healers in 25-man difficulty. This means that all of your healers should be covered by one of the buffs available. Healing in the encounter is increasingly difficult, and quite brutal at the very end, so making use of these buffs is not optional.

Fading Light now affects, in addition to the tank, 2 players in 10-man and 6 in 25-man difficulty.

For 5s after the Fading Light debuff wears off, the player takes 100% increased physical damage.

Being in the Twilight Realm when Hour of Twilight occurs applies Looming Darkness, 2m debuff that causes the player to instantly die if they take any damage from another Hour of Twilight.

It is important to keep in mind that Hour of Twilight will kill players if they have the Looming Darkness debuff, even if they use a complete damage immunity to try to survive it.

The most difficult aspect of this heroic mode is beating the enrage timer. With a bit of preparation, soaking Hour of Twilight and handling the other mechanics of the encounter will not be problematic. Most of your raid's wipes will, undoubtedly, come from insufficient DPS.

For this reason, you will want to bring the bare minimum amount of healers (2 in 10-man and 5 in 25-man), and have these healers contribute as much as possible to the raid DPS, at the start of the fight.

The Warmaster Blackhorn encounter takes place on a flying gunship called Skyfire. The Skyfire has a health pool and can be damaged by various abilities during the encounter. Aside from defeating Warmaster Blackhorn, you will also have to ensure the survival of your ship, if you wish to succeed in this encounter.

The encounter is a two phase fight. During Phase 1, your raid will mainly have to deal with 4 different types of adds. You will also have to watch out for many void zones in which you must stand in order to protect the gunship. If 3 waves of adds are dealt with successfully, Phase 2 begins. During this phase, your raid will have to deal with Warmaster Blackhorn himself.

Phase 1

Goriona

Twilight Onslaught, this launches a large projectile at a random location on the gunship (represented visually by a void zone), roughly every 35s. Once the (slow traveling) projectile lands there, it deals a large amount of damage, split between all players within its 10 yard area and the gunship.

Twilight Assault Drakes

Twilight Assault Drakes initially drop off the other 3 types of adds. After they drop off the adds, however, they remain around the gunship, firing smaller and less harmful versions of Goriona's Twilight Onslaught at the ship. Their ability is called Twilight Barrage, and it should, essentially, be dealt with in the same way as Twilight Onslaught.

It is important to note that, unlike Twilight Onslaught, Twilight Barrage will not deal any damage to the Skybreaker as long as at least one player takes damage from it.

Twilight Elite Dreadblades and Twilight Elite Slayers

Twilight Elite Dreadblades and Twilight Elite Slayers are adds with distinct Warrior characteristics. In addition to dealing moderate damage with their melee attacks, they each perform two abilities.

Blade Rush is performed by both Dreadblades and Slayers. Essentially, the adds will charge a random raid member, dealing damage to every player in their path to the target. The Blade Rush is easy to notice, and players who are in the path towards the target should move away.

Twilight Elite Dreadblades cast Degeneration. This is a frontal cone attack that deals a moderate amount of shadow damage, and also places a DoT on the affected players, which lasts for 1m and stacks with each new application.

Twilight Elite Slayers cast Brutal Strike. This ability is very similar to Degeneration, with the only differences being that it deals physical damage instead of shadow damage and it does not have the frontal cone component.

Neither Degeneration nor Brutal Strike appears to have a fixed frequency of application. Rather, the mobs seem to apply this every 7-20s, and the application can be dodged or parried.

The only players affected by these cone attacks should be the tanks. In order to reset the stacks of the DoTs, tanks will need to switch the adds between them.

Twilight Sappers

Twilight Sappers are adds that focus entirely on damaging the gunship. Immediately after being dropped off by the drakes, these adds will go invisible, before reappearing a few seconds later.

After reappearing, the adds will run towards the back of the ship, casting Detonate if they reach it. This deals 20% of the ship's maximum health in damage, and also deals some damage to players within 8 yards of the explosion.

Phase 1 is all about add control and raid damage. Your goal is to survive 3 waves of adds, while also keeping the gunship from being destroyed. Each wave of adds consists of 1 Twilight Elite Dreadblade, 1 Twilight Elite Slayer and 2 Twilight Assault Drakes. Twilight Sappers appear to spawn on a separate cooldown, not directly linked to the waves, and you will probably have to kill 5-6 of them before Phase 2 starts.

Essentially, you will want your tanks to pick up the Twilight Elite Dreadblades and the Twilight Elite Slayers as soon as they land, and start DPS them. It is ideal to kill one before damaging the other, so that there are fewer DoTs for your tanks to worry about.

Tanks should face the Dreadblades away from the raid, so that no other players are affected by the cleave. This is of special importance if the tanks are moving into the void zones from Twilight Onslaught. It is imperative that the adds do not face the location where the raid is stacked.

The Dreadblades and Slayers should be tanked at one of the sides of the ship, where the harpooned Twilight Assault Drakes get reeled in. This allows melee DPS players to also cleave the drakes when they are in range.

Whenever a Twilight Sapper lands, all your DPS players should focus them down and kill them. They can be slowed and stunned.

It is possible to ignore one or more Sappers, provided that the gunship has enough health to survive the end of the phase and you wish to make better use of that DPS time.

Friendly NPCs will regularly harpoon Twilight Assault Drakes, reeling them in, close to the ship, where they should be damaged by your ranged DPS players.

Technically speaking, the Twilight Assault Drakes are not part of the waves. They simply fly around the ship dropping Twilight Barrage. The more Drakes alive, the more Twilight Barrage the raid has to deal with.

Every time a new wave of Twilight Elite Dreadblade and Twilight Elite Slayer appears, the ship NPCs will reel in two Drakes randomly chosen from amongst the remaining Drakes. If you fail to kill a Drake before the next wave of adds, then it will be released and will go back to launching Twilight Barrage on your raid. This is especially bad because this already damaged Drake might be reeled in again by the NPCs for the next wave of adds, possibly leaving your ranged DPS to finish off any remaining drake before Phase 2 begins.

Simply dealing with the adds is not sufficient to complete this phase successfully. Your raid members will need to constantly soak the damage from the void zones: Twilight Barrage and Twilight Onslaught, in order to keep the damage done to the gunship under control.

Twilight Barrage is easy to soak. It deals a low amount of shadow damage. As a result, it is enough if two players move into these void zones. If a player is topped off (especially a tank), they can soak these alone.

If the ship's health is dangerously low, for some reason, then you should have more players soaking, in order to reduce the damage that the ship takes. Ranged DPS players and healers should be preferred for this task, as they can generally continue to perform their duties even while standing away from the adds.

Twilight Onslaught will require a much larger number of your raid members to soak efficiently. You should always aim to have your entire raid soaking these, in order to keep the damage manageable and to avoid sudden deaths.

Phase 2

After 3 waves of adds have been defeated (specifically, when all the Twilight Assault Drakes are killed), Warmaster Blackhorn jumps on the ship, marking the start of Phase 2.

During this phase, you will initially have to damage Goriona (who is still flying in the air, alongside the gunship), after which you will have to focus entirely on Blackhorn. Also, the gunship no longer takes damage, so the entire raid should focus on Goriona and Blackhorn while avoiding damaging abilities.

Goriona

Twilight Flames, this launches a ball of flame at a random player, dealing massive damage at the location where the ball lands. Additionally, flames will persist on the ship for a short while, in that location, dealing moderate damage every second to players standing there.

Goriona is in range of ranged DPS players who must attack her. Once she reaches 25% health, she will fly away, leaving the encounter.

Warmaster Blackhorn

Vengeance is an enrage that Warmaster Blackhorn gains throughout the phase. He deals 1% increased damage for each 1% of his health that is missing.

Devastate is a typical sunder armor effect, that lowers the tank's armor by 20%, and deals a moderate amount of damage with each application. The debuff lasts 30s and stacks, requiring a tank switch.

Disrupting Roar deals a moderate amount of damage to all raid members, also interrupting and silencing any spell casting from players within 10 yards for 8s. Blackhorn casts this ability roughly every 20s. It is important that casters remain further than 10 yards away from the boss.

Shockwave is a frontal cone attack that deals a massive amount of damage to anyone in front of Warmaster Blackhorn and stuns them for 4s. Blackhorn casts this ability roughly every 25s. It is important to note that Warmaster Blackhorn will often face a random raid member before casting this ability, so it may end up targeting the raid.

As soon as the phase begins, a tank should pick up Blackhorn and move him to the center of the ship.

Melee DPS players should attack Blackhorn, while ranged DPS players should aim at bringing Goriona to 25% health as soon as possible. Everyone will need to move out of the fire from Goriona.

Once Goriona leaves the fight, everyone can focus fully on Warmaster Blackhorn. Make sure that the raid is spread around Warmaster Blackhorn, so that as few people as possible will need to move for each Shockwave (it is marked by a visible graphical effect). Players should try to be close to the boss, making it easier to move out of the conic area. Have your tanks taunt Warmaster Blackhorn off of each other at 2 stacks of Devastate. If you are a caster, stand at least 10 yards away from the boss. This will prevent Disrupting Roar from interrupting your casts and silencing you.

Healers should expect moderate to heavy tank and raid damage. The boss Vengeance will cause him to deal increasing amounts of damage. As the fight progresses, tanks should work out a defensive cooldown rotation, and should coordinate with healers for a better result.

The fight has a very similar feel to its normal mode version, and events occur in the same sequence. However, several changes exist, that make the encounter significantly more difficult. Parts of the ship's deck are regularly covered in damaging patches of fire. The fire is automatically put out by NPCs. Taking damage from Twilight Barrage places a 15s debuff on players that increases shadow damage taken by 50%. This debuff can stack.

During Phase 2, Warmaster Blackhorn gains a new ability called Siphon Vitality. This causes him to steal life from Goriona and heal himself, when he reaches 20% health. Additionally, he deals damage to the raid equal to the amount of healing he receives.

When Goriona reaches 80% health, she lands and must be tanked. She has two abilities during this phase: Twilight Breath, which is a standard frontal cone breath attack and Consuming Shroud, which is a debuff that Goriona regularly places on a random (non-tank) raid member. The debuff absorbs a moderate amount of healing. Any healing done to players affected by the debuff is also mirrored as damage to the entire raid.

There is a very useful tactic that your raid can utilize on the pull. Before engaging the boss, have your ranged DPS players positioned at the top of the ship (by climbing up the stairs next to the cabin), as close to the edge as possible. From there, they will be able to attack one of the Twilight Assault Drakes right as the encounter beings, as it is flying by.

Your ranged DPS players should nuke it as hard as they can and, if it is not dead, DoT it as well. With proper burst, you can kill this drake right away. Additionally (or alternatively), you can also DoT Goriona, who will be in range for a few seconds. This will make Phase 2 slightly easier.

All throughout Phase 1, parts of the deck of the ship will catch fire. These fire patches act like any void zones, damaging players who stand in them. They will be put out, regularly, by friendly NPCs, and they are wholly out of the control of the raid.

Dealing with the shadow damage increasing debuff from Twilight Barrage is quite simple, due to the low duration of the debuff. Essentially, each Twilight Barrage must be soaked by 2 or 3 players, and each time a player is about to soak Twilight Barrage, they must make sure that they do not currently have the debuff on themselves.

Goriona cannot be ignored during this Phase 2 because when Warmaster Blackhorn reaches 20% health, he will start draining life from her and healing himself. Additionally, every time he heals himself, he damages the raid for the same amount.

At 80% health, Goriona will land on the ship and needs to be tanked. At 20%, she will fly away. All the strategy changes for Phase 2 revolve around the landing of Goriona. Have your melee DPS on Warmaster Blackhorn and your ranged DPS on Goriona, until she lands. After Goriona lands, have all of your DPS focus on her until she flies away. Tank Goriona facing away from everyone, as she has a damaging breath attack. Have the raid stack together and AoE heal through the Consuming Shroud debuff. After Goriona flies off, your raid can spread out and should simply burn Blackhorn.

It is best to have the entire raid stacked up and to make use of AoE healing. This will provide a steady amount of healing on the players affected by Consuming Shroud while also ensuring that the raid damage is covered.

Finally, while Goriona is on the ground, the tanks will have to regularly switch Warmaster Blackhorn and Goriona between themselves in order to allow for the Devastate debuff to drop off.

The top priority during Phase 1 is killing the Twilight Assault Drakes, as this will reduce the frequency of Twilight Barrage, making it easier to handle the debuff.

Spine of Deathwing is a single phase encounter that takes place on Deathwing's back, as he is flying through the air. Your raid will need to properly deal with several types of adds in order to pry up and remove 3 armor plates from Deathwing's back. The idea is to open a big enough hole in Deathwing's armor, so as to give Thrall a clear shot with the Dragon Soul.

The armor plates can only be removed sequentially, as removing one enables the raid to reach the next one. This causes the fight to become increasingly harder, as the number of adds you need to deal with increases after an armor plate has been removed.

During the fight, you will be faced with 4 types of adds: Corruptions, Hideous Amalgamations, Corrupted Bloods and Burning Tendons. In order to pry up and remove the armor plates, you will need to properly combine the abilities of these adds.

You can also control Deathwing to some extent, forcing him to get rid of all the adds when you are starting to feel overwhelmed.

Corruption

Corruptions are the first adds that you will see. They are stationary tentacle adds that do not melee and cannot be tanked. At the start of the encounter, there will be 4 Corruptions alive. Each time one of Deathwing's armor plates is removed, 2 new Corruptions will appear in the newly revealed holes.

When a Corruption is killed, it leaves an empty hole in Deathwing's back, from where 1 Hideous Amalgamation and 1 Corrupted Blood spawn. Killing all the Corruptions will cause a new Corruption (and only one) to spawn in one of the empty holes. The rule is that there will always be at least one Corruption up, no matter what you do.

Searing Plasma is regularly cast by Corruptions. It places a debuff on a random players. This debuff wears off after 5m or after a certain amount of healing has been absorbed. While the debuff is active, it deals 10k physical damage to the target every 10s.

Fiery Grip is a stun that the Corruption channels on a random player for 30s. During this time, the player also takes 60k fire damage every 3s. Damaging the Corruption for 20% of its health breaks the channel.

Corrupted Blood

Corrupted Blood are small adds that spawn from the holes in Deathwing's back after a Corruption dies. These adds always respawn when the raid kills them: the residue of a dead Corrupted Blood will slowly make its way back to the nearest empty hole in Deathwing's back, where it will form into a new Corrupted Blood.

In any case, the raid eventually becomes overwhelmed by the number of Corrupted Bloods. The only purpose of these adds is that, when they die, they leave a fire puddle. When a Hideous Amalgamation walks in this puddle, the puddle disappears and the Amalgamation receives a stack of a buff. This buff eventually enables the raid to pry up an armor plate.

When they die, in addition to this stacking buff, Corrupted Bloods deal a small amount of physical damage to all players within 200 yards through Burst.

Hideous Amalgamation

Hideous Amalgamations spawn each time a Corruption is killed. This is a large add that has a normal aggro table and needs to be picked up by the tanks, as it performs moderately strong melee attacks 15-20k every 2s.

Absorbed Blood is a stacking buff that the Amalgamation gains each time it walks in the fire puddle left behind by the death of a Corrupted Blood. This buff increases the damage of the Amalgamation by 10% and its attack speed by 20% per stack, and stacks up to 9 times.

Superheated Nucleus is a buff that is applied on the Amalgamation when it reaches 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood. It begins to pulse AoE fire damage in an area around it. This lasts until the Amalgamation is killed.

Nuclear Blast is the explosion that follows the death of a Hideous Amalgamation that has 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood. The explosion deals a massive amount of fire damage to all players within 10 yards. This explosion has a 5s cast time, during which the add does not move, allowing the tank and other players to get away from it. If the Amalgamation dies close to one of Deathwing's armor plates, it will weaken it, giving your raid a chance to remove it.

The goal of the encounter is to remove the 3 armor plates. You need to remove them sequentially by repeating the same actions three times in a row.

When a Nuclear Blast from a Hideous Amalgamation occurs close to an armor plate, it weakens it, exposing an add called Burning Tendons, which represents the remaining link between the armor plate and Deathwing. As soon as it is exposed, this tendon starts casting Seal Armor Breach in an attempt to reattach the armor plate to Deathwing.

Seal Armor Breach has a 23s cast time. If the raid kills the add before the cast is over, then the armor plate will fly off, leaving the raid to deal with the next one. Note that, by the time the Burning Tendon becomes attackable, it will already have channeled its spell for 5s. If the cast completes before the add is killed, Deathwing's armor will be reattached and players must start over. Note that the health of the Burning Tendon is not reset, so you can just finish it off at the second attempt.

Despite the fact that you spend the entire duration of the fight on his back, Deathwing does not exist as an actual enemy unit that you can target and attack. However, there is one way that you can interact with him. If all the players in the raid stack on the same side of his back, this will cause Deathwing to perform a Barrel Roll (he will roll on himself), getting rid of all the Hideous Amalgamations (Corrupted Bloods remain attached), as well as all the raid members who are not glued to his back at the time. This is very useful if you start to get overwhelmed.

The easiest way to handle a Barrel Roll is to have the entire raid stack in the same empty hole on Deathwing's back. In addition to triggering a Barrel Roll, this will also grant players the Grasping Tendrils debuff. This debuff slows player movement speed and deals a very small amount of damage every 5.2s and is removed by moving out of the hole (something that raid members must only do after the Barrel Roll is over).

Players under the effect of Fiery Grip should not be freed, as being affected by this ability makes them stay on Deathwing's back during the Barrel Roll. Freeing them is indeed risky, as freed players then need to run to an empty hole, something that they might not be able to do in time.

Removing any of the three armor plates requires the exact same actions from your raid. As you progress through the encounter, you will have to deal with more and more adds, thus increasing the damage to your raid. Indeed, since each armor plate removed exposes two new holes, your raid will slowly become overwhelmed by Hideous Amalgamations and Corrupted Bloods.

Kill at least 1 Corruption in order to spawn at least 1 Hideous Amalgamation and 1 Corrupted Blood.

Have the raid (tanks included) stack next to the armor plate.

Bring a designated Hideous Amalgamation to low health (between 10% and 20%).

Kill the Corrupted Blood(s) close to the designated Hideous Amalgamation until reaching 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood.

Finish off the designated Hideous Amalgamation next to the nearest armor plate and have everyone move out (10 yards) to avoid being hit by Nuclear Blast.

Kill the Burning Tendons add before it finishes casting Seal Armor Breach and reattaches the armor plate.

In addition to dealing damage to the Hideous Amalgamation and killing the Corrupted Bloods with AoE damage, a few designated DPS players also need to sometimes deal damage to the remaining Corruption (for 20% of its health) in order to stop Fiery Grip. Note that this should not normally end up killing the Corruption.

The first tank should take the Hideous Amalgamation and one or two Corrupted Bloods. The Amalgamation should be brought next to the armor plate, where it will eventually detonate. The second tank should take the rest of the Corrupted Bloods. If the DPS players fail to keep the Corruption alive, then the second tank needs to tank the resulting Hideous Amalgamation away from the raid and leave all the Corrupted Bloods to the first tank. The idea is to prevent Absorbed Blood from being applied by mistake on the wrong Hideous Amalgamation.

The raid can stack on the tank (or next to the tank). This is safe as Hideous Amalgamations do not cleave or perform any other abilities that may be hazardous to the raid. This also enables DPS players to damage them while AoE down the Corrupted Bloods.

Healers need to heal people affected by Searing Plasma in order to remove the debuff. Healers should expect most of the damage to come from Burst, which is dealt as a result of a Corrupted Blood dying.

Tank damage will increase progressively, as the Hideous Amalgamation gains more stacks of Absorbed Blood.

Superheated Nucleus will deal a lot of damage. Hideous Amalgamations cast this from the moment they reach 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood to the moment they die.

Once the Hideous Amalgamation has reached 9 stacks of Absorbed Blood, it will begin pulsing AoE damage to your raid. It should be quickly finished off. While it channels Nuclear Blast, all players should get at least 10 yards away from it.

Provided that the Hideous Amalgamation was properly positioned, the nearest armor plate will be pried up and Burning Tendons will be exposed.

If the add is successfully killed, the armor plate will fly off, exposing 2 more holes on Deathwing's back, each containing one Corruption.

Removing the other two armor plates is a repetition of what you did for the first armor plate. The only difference comes from the Corrupted Bloods. Their numbers keep increasing throughout the fight. This increases the overall damage that they deal both through their melee attacks and the Burst damage that they deal to the entire raid upon dying.

To mitigate this, DPS players should make sure to only kill 9 Corrupted Bloods for each armor plate. The rest of the Corrupted Bloods should be left to attack their tank as their weak melee attacks are more manageable than Burst. Also, DPS players should not kill Corrupted Bloods too rapidly, as dealing with Burst damage from all the Corrupted Bloods at the same time is very dangerous.

All the enemies in this encounter have their health values increased significantly from normal mode. The biggest increase is in the health of the Burning Tendons. These mobs now have such high health that your raid will find it impossible to kill them within a single exposed tendon phase. In fact, even killing a Burning Tendon during two exposed phases will require a very high amount of DPS.

Degradation is a stacking debuff that is applied to all raid members each time a Hideous Amalgamation is killed. The debuff reduces the target's maximum health by 5% per stack. It has an unlimited duration and it cannot be dispelled. Note that the debuff is only applied when a Hideous Amalgamation is actually killed, and not when they are disposed of through a Barrel Roll.

Blood Corruption: Death is a dispellable debuff that will regularly be placed on random raid members. It has a 15s duration, at the end of which it will wipe the raid. When the debuff is dispelled, it jumps to another nearby target, retaining its remaining duration. After a varying number of dispels, it will mutate into a different debuff when jumping to the next target.

Blood Corruption: Earth is almost identical to Blood Corruption: Death. The only difference is that when this debuff runs out, the target receives one or two stacks of Blood of Neltharion. The amount of stacks depends on how many seconds were left on the Blood Corruption: Death debuff at the moment when it became Blood Corruption: Earth. If Blood Corruption: Earth is dispelled several times, it will mutate back into Blood Corruption: Death.

Blood of Neltharion is a beneficial stacking debuff that reduces all damage taken by 20% per stack. It can stack up to a maximum of 2 times per player. This debuff's purpose is to counter the negative effects from Degradation.

Perform the same sequence of events as in normal mode (kill 3 Corruptions, perform a Barrel Roll, kill the 4th Corruption and so on).

Dispel Blood Corruption: Death from players immediately.

Do not dispel Blood Corruption: Earth from players.

Get as much burst DPS as possible during the exposed tendon phases. Each Burning Tendons must die within 2 burn phases.

After your raid finishes the first burn phase of a tendon, you will have to obtain another Hideous Amalgamation in order to repeat the process. Simply kill another Corruption to obtain another Amalgamation. This will probably happen anyway, since your raid will be damaging the existing Corruption to break the Fiery Grip channels.

The Hideous Amalgamations melee for a very high amount in heroic mode. As such, it is not advised to have them progressively stack the Absorbed Blood, as this means that your tank will have to handle an Amalgamation with at least a small number of stacks for a long time.

To make things even easier, you should tank the Amalgamation away from the armor plate, and have all the Bloods killed right next to the armor plate. This way, when the Amalgamation is low on health, the tank can simply pull it to the armor plate (where it will quickly reach 9 stacks) and then keep it there until its death.

Blood Corruption: Death generally must be dispelled 3-4 times before it turns into Blood Corruption: Earth. This means that the 15s duration of the debuff should not be problematic if your healers have a reasonable reaction time. This is not all, however, since it is better to have Blood Corruption: Death turn into Earth when there is still a lot of time left on the debuff (as this increases the chances of gaining two stacks of Blood of Neltharion from it). For this reason, Blood Corruption: Death should be dispelled with great urgency.

There are two situations where you want to dispel Blood Corruption: Earth.

In the first part of the encounter, until both tanks (or at least the off-tank) have 2 stacks of Blood of Neltharion. This will allow them to more easily survive the very intense damage in the second part of the encounter.

When a player is affected by it while having 2 stacks of Blood of Neltharion. In this case, you should dispel Blood Corruption: Earth, and have it jump to someone else who will be able to benefit from Blood of Neltharion.

As Blood of Neltharion effectively negates the effects of Degradation, your aim should be to have all of your raid members receive stacks of this debuff. This is, as you can tell, largely out of your control, since you cannot dictate who Blood Corruption: Earth will jump to. Dispelling Blood Corruption: Earth from players who have sufficient stacks of Blood of Neltharion is a means of guiding it in the right direction.

By far, the most difficult aspect of this encounter is killing the Burning Tendon. Because of its much increased health, you will have to kill 2 Hideous Amalgamations for each tendon, totaling 6 Hideous Amalgamations. Because of the Degradation debuff, you cannot afford to kill more.

The DPS requirement is very high, and players must try to maximize their output over an 18s period of time (this is how long you have to DPS the tendon each time). Players should practice on the training dummies in order to understand the best rotation to use.

While Corrupted Bloods do not melee for a lot, towards the end of the fight there will be a very high amount of them alive, and an increasing amount will continue to spawn. You can attempt to kill all of the remaining Corrupted Bloods in order to give your raid some room to breathe. You should ideally do this around the time that the second Burning Tendon is killed. Your raid should use a lot of damage reduction cooldowns and AoE down the Bloods. Your off-tank (who is tanking the Bloods) should try to kite them around on Deathwing's back rather than trying to tank them. The Bloods are quite easily kiteable, and your tank should take far less damage.

The Madness of Deathwing encounter is a two phase fight. During Phase 1, you will have to defeat 4 of Deathwing's limbs (two wings and two arms). This part takes place on 4 different platforms, surrounded by water. Each of Deathwing's limbs rests on one platform, and your raid will have to travel to every platform and kill all the limbs in order to make it to Phase 2. During Phase 2, your raid will have to burn Deathwing's head, who will have crashed next to one of the platforms (where the entire phase is spent). At the same time, your raid will have to regularly kill two types of adds. Deathwing's health will initially be at 20% and he will deal increasing raid damage as he nears death.

Throughout the fight, your raid will have assistance from the four dragon Aspects.

Leftmost platform: Alexstrasza's Platform

Middle-left platform: Nozdormu's Platform

Midle-right platform: Ysera's Platform

Rightmost platform: Kalecgos' Platform.

Each of the Aspects offers the raid a specific buff and uses a specific ability.

In Phase 1, once an Aspect's platform has been cleared of Deathwing's limb, that Aspect will cease to assist the raid and focus solely on attacking Deathwing. This means that Phase 1 becomes increasingly difficult as you progress, and your raid will have to choose the order in which to clear the platform carefully.

In Phase 2, the Aspects are once again fighting alongside your raid and they resume their assistance.

During Phase 1, all the buffs, except for Thrall's, only last until the platform of the respective Aspect has been cleansed of Deathwing's limb, at which time the Aspect will begin assaulting Deathwing and will cease to aid your raid until Phase 2 begins. Thrall's buff lasts for the entire duration of the encounter.

Thrall's buff is the least noticeable one: he grants your raid Carrying Winds for the entire duration of the fight. This allows you to move back and forth between two adjacent platforms. To do so, simply run or jump off your current platform in the direction you wish to go. Additionally, following each jump, you will gain a 60% movement speed increase for 10s (this buff stacks twice). This buff does not play any evident role in the fight, and it simply allows you to move around freely between platforms.

Ysera's Presence is a passive buff that increases all healing done by 20%.

Dream is an ability that Ysera grants to all raid members. Players receive an extra action button, with a 30s cooldown. Using this ability grants the player 50% damage reduction for 5s.

Alexstrasza's Presence is a passive buff that increases maximum health by 20%.

Alexstrasza's ability varies from Phase 1 to Phase 2: Cauterize (Phase 1) destroys all Blistering Tentacles (adds that spawn at certain times during Phase 1) and Cauterize (Phase 2) lowers the damage done by Corrupted Blood.

Nozdormu's Presence is a passive buff that increases your haste by 20%.

Nozdormu's active ability is Time Zone, which places a type of protective bubble on the platform where the raid is currently fighting. This causes the Elementium Bolt (a type of projectile NPC that flies towards the raid) to be greatly slowed down, giving your raid more time to kill it. It also reduces the attack speed of any enemies within the zone by 50%.

Kalecgos' Presence is a passive buff that increases damage dealt by 20%.

Additionally, Kalecgos imbues your raid with Spellweaver, which causes all attacks to deal 23k amount of arcane damage to enemies within 6 yards.

Phase 1

On each of the 4 platforms, your raid must perform the same set of tasks to destroy Deathwing's limb.

The strategy remains very similar from one platform to the other, just that the mechanics of the fight will be increasingly harder to deal with, as you progressively lose the buffs granted by the dragon Aspects.

During this phase, you will have to defeat several types of adds, in a specific order and fashion, so that you can eventually destroy all of Deathwing's limbs.

Deathwing

Deathwing does not exist, during Phase 1, as an attackable NPC. He does however use a few abilities and your raid will need to destroy his limbs, either an Arm Tentacle or a Wing Tentacle, depending on the platform.

Assault Aspects is an ability that Deathwing casts on the dragon Aspect on whose platform the most raid members are located. This ability simply determines on which platform the adds will spawn (the one where most of your raid is located) and is a means of allowing you to choose the order in which to tackle the platforms.

Elementium Bolt is a projectile that Deathwing fires at the platform where your raid is currently located, 45s after he has finished casting Assault Aspects. Upon reaching the platform, the Elementium Bolt will deal massive fire damage to the entire raid with Elementium Blast. This initial hit deals less damage the farther away players are from the impact zone. 5.2s after landing, Elementium Blast will tick again, for yet another massive fire damage hit. This NPC cannot be tanked, and it does not melee. It has a small health pool and your DPS players can and should try to kill it before it lands.

Cataclysm is an ability that Deathwing begins casting 2m after he has chosen an Aspect to assault. It has a 60s cast time, at the end of which you will wipe. The only way to stop this cast is to kill the Arm Tentacle or the Wing Tentacle present on the platform where you are fighting.

Arm Tentacles and Wing Tentacles

Arm Tentacles and Wing Tentacles are the limbs of Deathwing that you need to destroy during Phase 1. These adds do not melee and cannot be tanked. In order to clear a platform, your raid will have to kill the limb attached to the platform.

Deathwing's limbs have a high amount of health, and your raid will have to deal with different kinds of adds before the limbs can be finished off.

At 70% and 40% health, they spawn several Blistering Tentacles. These adds are immune to AoE damage, and they deal increasing raid damage, by stacking Blistering Heat on raid members.

If Alexstrasza's platform is still active, then her Cauterize ability will quickly kill all of the Blistering Tentacles. Otherwise, your raid will have to single-target them down.

90s after engaging a Tentacle, it will begin to hemorrhage. This will spawn 6 Regenerative Blood adds. For the entire duration of their existence, the tentacles will deal a small amount of damage to the raid, every 2s. This damage is greater the lower the tentacle's health is.

Regenerative Blood

These small adds have normal aggro tables and have fairly weak melee attacks. Their attacks stack Degenerative Bite on the tank. This eventually overwhelms the healers.

Regenerative Bloods have an energy bar with a maximum capacity of 100, which starts empty and fills at a rate of 10 energy per second. Each time the bar reaches 100 energy, the respective Blood will be healed to full health. These adds are easy to AoE as long as Kalecgos is up.

Mutated Corruption

Mutated Corruption is a tentacle add that spawns 10s after Deathwing assaults an aspect (when the raid has just started the fight or switched to a new platform).

Impale is a massively damaging attack that the Mutated Corruption performs on the main tank. It deals an immense amount of physical damage, for which the tank will have to use defensive cooldowns. Additionally, tanks can make use of Ysera's Dream to survive this attack, while she is still active.

Crush is a very damaging AoE attack that the Mutated Corruption uses regularly. It will target a random raid member, and damage everyone in a line between the Corruption and the target for a high amount of physical damage.

The strategy for Phase 1 consists in clearing each of the 4 platforms. A platform is cleared when the respective Arm Tentacle or Wing Tentacle (Deathwing's limb) is killed. In order to do this, the raid must perform a series of tasks. Fortunately, these tasks are identical between all 4 platforms, so the fight is not very difficult to understand.

The first thing that your raid must decide on is the order in which to clear the platforms. This will determine the order in which you will lose the buffs from the Aspects, and which of the buffs you will get to keep until the final platform.

The first thing you will notice, when clearing a platform, is the massive Arm Tentacle or Wing Tentacle right in front of you. Your DPS players should immediately begin attacking it, and you should try to do as much damage as possible to it before the Mutated Corruption appears.

After 10s, a Mutated Corruption will appear.

The tanks should position themselves towards the back of the platform and they should be ready to taunt the Mutated Corruption as soon as it spawns.

When this happens, all DPS players should switch to it and burn it down.

Tanks and healers will have to pay special attention to the Impale cast and make sure that the tank is protected against this.

At a certain point, while DPS the Mutated Corruption, Deathwing will launch an Elementium Bolt towards the platform.

The exact location when the Elementium Bolt will land is marked by a golden swirling void zone. Everyone should move away from the impact spot, as the damage that the Bolt does, when landing, is greater to players closer to it. Prepare for the massive damage to the raid that the Bolt deals when it lands. The Elementium Bolt must be destroyed as soon as possible. The idea is to kill it between the moment when it lands and the moment when Elementium Blast ticks again, 5.2s after landing.

After the Bolt is dead, players should return to the Mutated Corruption and finish it off, then switch back to the Arm Tentacle.

After 90s, the Arm Tentacle will spawn 6 Regenerative Bloods. Your raid should simply AoE these adds down (while tanking them close to the Arm Tentacle).

It is likely that before the Arm Tentacle or Wing Tentacle dies, Deathwing will have started casting Cataclysm, but there should be ample time to finish off the Tentacle.

Note that when Deathwing is casting Cataclysm, the Tentacle takes 100% increased damage, as the Aspect on whose platform you are standing begins to attack it.

On Ysera's Platform, you can make use of the following:

To deal with Impale, tanks can make use of Ysera's Dream ability (50% damage reduction).

DPS players can kill the Elementium Bolt before it lands, thanks to Nozdormu's Time Zone.

Keep the Regenerative Bloods within Nozdormu's Time Zone, as this will slow down their attacks.

The loss of Alexstrasza's buff will mean that your raid has lost the 20% health increase. Additionally, your raid will now have to manually kill the Blistering Tentacles each time they spawn. As these adds are immune to AoE, you will have to use single target attacks against them.

It is very important that all the Blistering Tentacles are killed in a timely fashion, thus allowing for the debuff that they apply to wear off.

Equally importantly, your raid should make sure not to bring the Tentacle to 70% until after the Mutated Corruption and the Elementium Bolt have been dealt with. Otherwise, you risk having Blistering Tentacles spawn at the same time as another raid-damaging ability is going on, most likely causing a wipe.

Kalecgos' Platform will be the most difficult one by far. The loss of Nozdormu's buffs means that the Elementium Bolt will hit the platform much sooner (totally unslowed) and will likely have time to pulse once or twice after it has landed, dealing absolutely massive damage to the raid. Healers must be on top of their game here, and a mix of defensive cooldowns should be used.

Additionally, with the absence of the Time Zone, the Regenerative Blood adds will deal more damage to the tank.

Finally, both DPS players and healers will have lower output here, due to the loss of the 20% haste buff granted by Nozdormu.

Phase 2

Once all the 4 platforms are cleared, Deathwing will slump forward and his head will land, helpless, on Ysera's platform. The phase starts with Deathwing at 20% of his health, and ends when he has been killed by your raid.

During this phase, Deathwing does not perform melee attacks and only has a single ability: Corrupted Blood. This ability deals fire damage every 2s to the entire raid. When Deathwing's health reaches 15%, 10%, and 5%, the damage dealt by Corrupted Blood increases.

Throughout the phase, Deathwing will spawn two types of adds: Elementium Fragments and Elementium Terrors.

Elementium Fragments are spawned every 90s, 3 at a time in 10-man and 8 at a time in 25-man difficulty. These small tentacles cannot be tanked and have very little health. They cast Shrapnel, which deals a high amount of physical damage to random raid members.

Elementium Terrors are spawned every 90s, 2 at a time. These big adds must be tanked and inflict a stacking debuff on the tank: Tetanus.

The first wave of Elementium Fragments comes 10s into Phase 2, while the first wave of Elementium Terrors comes 40s into Phase 2.

The strategy for Phase 2 is quite simple. Your raid should begin the phase by burning Deathwing. Because the damage that he deals to the raid increases progressively when he reaches 15%, 10% and 5% health, your raid should stop DPS before the 10% threshold, finish off any adds and then proceed to burning Deathwing.

Healers will have to deal with the increasing raid damage from Corrupted Blood. Especially after Deathwing reaches 10% health, healing will become extremely difficult and any available cooldowns should be used.

Elementium Terrors should simply be picked up (each by one of the tanks) and DPS down before the stacking Tetanus kills the tanks. It is ideal to tank these in the Time Zone provided by Nozdormu.

Elementium Fragments are the most deadly aspect of the phase. They must be killed with utmost urgency. They will target random players with their Shrapnel ability. Targeted players will notice a debuff that they receive. When this debuff expires, they will receive a massive amount of damage. Players should use the Dream ability just as the debuff is about to wear off.

Once the second set of Elementium Terrors have been killed, Deathwing should have around 11% health and your raid should execute an all-out DPS burn on him, ignoring the next set of Elementium Fragments.

There are two mechanics that are entirely new in heroic mode.

Corrupting Parasite is a rather complex mechanic that will occur twice on every platform during Phase 1, once at around the same time that the Mutated Corruption spawns and once again 60s later. It begins with Corrupting Parasite, a 10s debuff cast by Deathwing on a random raid member. This debuff deals increasing shadow damage, for a total of roughly 300k over the course of its duration. When the debuff wears off, an NPC with the same name will spawn at the location of the afflicted raid member.

Corrupting Parasite is the enemy NPC that spawns when Corrupting Parasite wears off. The Corrupting Parasite has 3M health in 10-man and 9M in 25-man difficulty. It has no aggro table, it does not melee, it can be killed, and Alexstrasza's Cauterize will damage it for a small amount of its life. When it spawns, it deals 250k fire damage to all raid members within 10 yards of its location (excluding the raid member who was affected by the debuff). After this, the Corrupting Parasite will begin channeling Unstable Corruption.

Unstable Corruption is a 10s cast, at the end of which the Corrupting Parasite will deal 10% of its remaining health as damage to the entire raid. If the Parasite is inside the Time Zone provided by Nozdormu, its cast time is increased by 50%. After casting Unstable Corruption, the Corrupting Parasite will despawn.

Congealing Bloods are adds that spawn during Phase 2. They spawn when Deathwing reaches 15%, 10%, and 5% health, but if Deathwing's health does not reach 15% within 1m of entering the phase, or 10% or 5% within 1m of reaching 15% and 10% respectively, the bloods will spawn regardless of his health. Each spawn is comprised of 9 Congealing Bloods. They have 950k health each in 10-man and 3.2M in 25-man difficulty. They perform no action other than slowly moving towards Deathwing. They have no aggro table and they are killable. Deathwing regains 1% of his total health every time a Congealing Blood reaches him.

The same platform order should still be used (Ysera > Alexstrasza > Nozdormu > Kalecgos).

The Corrupting Parasite is the only notable change in all of Phase 1.

The player who receives the debuff should move into the Time Zone and should receive ample healing.

Other raid members should make sure they are not within 10 yards of this player.

When the debuff wears off and the Parasite NPC spawns, it should be quickly killed.

The second Parasite of every platform will spawn around the same time as the Regenerative Bloods. It is most efficient to move the Bloods on top of the Parasite and AoE them there. If the Parasite is still alive when the Bloods are dead, it can be single targeted down.

Finally, on the last platform (Kalecgos' platform), you should position the Corrupting Parasite near the Mutated Corruption, thus allowing melee DPS to cleave both of them together. Doing this is not a problem, as you no longer have Nozdormu's Time Zone so you no longer have constraints regarding where to position the Parasite. Just make sure that no one is within 10 yards of the Parasite's spawn location.

Impale deals a massive amount of damage in heroic mode, namely 840k physical damage in 10-man and 1,200k physical damage in 25-man difficulty. As you can tell from these numbers, it will be quite difficult for your tanks to survive the damage. You will have to ensure that the tank is using a major cooldown for every one of the Impales. For the first platform, your tanks can simply use Dream together with a minor cooldown. Tanks should also not hesitate to ask for external cooldowns from healers.

It is important to note that invulnerabilities and abilities that allow players to bypass dying will not work against Impale. The ability must be survived by simply reducing the damage taken.

During Phase 2, the only notable difference is the spawning of Congealing Bloods at 15%, 10% and 5% of Deathwing's health. These adds will have to be AoE down before they reach the boss. This is not difficult as their health is rather low and they move slowly. They will always spawn at the back of the platform and their spawning location is indicated by a ground effect for about 2s before they become targetable.

A useful way to maximise DPS during this phase is not to DPS the Elementium Terrors right away, and instead wait until the Congealing Bloods have spawned and then AoE all of the adds together. Doing so will give you more DPS time on Deathwing and will allow you to make use of Spellweaver on the Elementium Terrors. They will most likely still be alive after the Congealing Bloods die so they will require single targeting.

You can have your tanks simply tank the Elementium Terrors normally until it is time to kill them, or have one tank take both and then have the other tank taunt off them in order to have the stacks of Tetanus drop off.

When Deathwing is about to reach 5%, you should stop DPS any Terrors that may spawn, and simply burn down Deathwing. The raid damage will be high, as will the tank damage, so you should use all cooldowns.