Naxx 10 Man Strats

[Gizzard]

Borrowed these from my other guilds site. just wanted to share with everyone here who plans on heading to naxx at 80.

DeathKnight Wing


This is a run down of videos and strats for the Deathknight Wing of 10 man Naxx. I would also hope these threads become a place to discuss our strategies for these encounters. The general strats remain similar to the original Naxx, but definitely have been tuned down. Blizz has said this will be an entry level dungeon, meant to be much easier than Karazhan.

This will be one of five posts covering each wing with strats on each boss. They will be regularly updated. The strategies are very preliminary at this point. I strongly suggest watching each video, as they are very good quality and will allow you to make sense of my musings.

Until we know more, a lot of this will be speculation on based on previous iterations of these encounters in the original Naxx. A decent overview of the original Naxx can be found at http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26639.

The generally accepted kill order in the original Naxx was as follows: Instructor Razuvious > Anub'Rhekan > Noth the Plaguebringer > Remainder of Spider Wing > Remainder of Abomination Wing > Remainder of Plague Wing > Remained of Death Knight Wing > Sapphiron > Kel'Thuzad

UPDATE 1: Updated strat for back corner horseman in 4 Horseman encounter.

Deathknight Wing

Video: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=93121
Razuvious Video (gives much better angle of encounter): http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=89255

1. Instructor Razuvious

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26642

This encounter is not tanked by your main tank. It is tanked by two adds that are controlled by two crystals. Two players in the raid will be designated as crystal users to essentially mind control the adds. Learning to tank with the adds is this entire encounter.

Disrupting Shout: An PBAoE (affects a large radius around him) shout that burns away up to 4,000 mana and deals damage equal to the mana burned away. It’s done every 25 seconds and can kill most casters who get hit with full mana. This skill does not affect Rogues and Warriors as they have no mana.

No longer exists. Razuvious does do some type of very strong dot. Do not know how he targets it though.

One Hit K.O.: There is no official name for this (nor is it a skill, more of an innate ability) but he can pretty much one-hit kill anyone with a melee attack. Warriors can shield block through his attacks and keep up for a little bit but they won’t last long. Rogues can use evasion and last a random amount of time (depending on how lucky they are) but there is no way outside of mind controlling one of the understudies to tank Razuvious.

No clue how much he'll actually be hitting for, but I'd guess around 40k/swing. Only crystal-controlled adds can tank him.

Understudies: Each Death Knight Understudy can be Mind Controlled and has two skills, Taunt and Shield Wall that are used against Razuvious. After a Mind Control wears off the Understudy can’t be Mind Controlled again for a little while.

There are now just two understudies, one for each crystal. The old version (and the 25 man version) they have to be MC'ed by a priest. However, in the 10 man, any player can MC them by clicking on one of the Obediance Crystals. I assume they still have their taunt and shield wall abilities.

Current Strat: Designate two players as crystal controllers. One of these two players should be your offtank, as it's only necessary to have one tanking during the encounter. Unless you are pretty confident with two healers, the other should be a dps.

Each of your crystal controllers will begin the fight by using a crystal to mind control their respective Death Knight Understudy. One of them will then use the taunt ability and immediately pop shield wall. As soon as the first Death Knight Understudy's shield wall goes down, your second crsytal-controlled Death Knight Understudy should taunt and immediately pop shield wall. The two understudy's just repeat taunting off one another when a shield wall is down. There needs to be good communication between your two crystal controllers over Vent to ensure no shield wall is wasted. (This assumes they retain the shield wall and taunt abilities of the original version).

Your main tank's job is to dps the boss, but try to maintain some aggro on the two Death Knight Understudies. They will break loose occassionally, and the main tank needs to pick them up before they get to the raid. If one breaks loose, the crystal controller needs to re-click the crystal to get them back.

DPS just dps. Healers should focus nearly everything on healing the Death Knight Understudies. They have a massive HP pool, but also get hit for a massive amount of damage.

Not sure how this is set up, but the original version required very good coordination to get the pull off correctly. You need to make sure a Death Knight Understudy gets immediate aggro, or else Razuvious will run to the raid and start one shotting your whole raid. Understudies do very significant damage, so dps will not pull aggro from them.


2. Gothik the Harvester

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26651

This fight seems ridiculously nerfed. Too easy. There are two rooms you are in during the fight. Half the raid is in the outer room and half the raid is in the inner room. There is a door between the two rooms that will eventually open.

Shadowbolt: Does 2,500ish damage on a single target, but he casts it very often.

Still does it.

Harvest Soul: This will decrease your stats by 10% and stacks, so he needs to be brought down fast.

Still does it, but not sure it's as extreme a decrease.

Unrelenting Spawns

These spawn in the inner room. In order most difficult to easiest, they are riders > deathknights > trainees.

Spectral Spawns

Each time your group in the inner room kills an unrelenting spawn, a "spectral" version of that mob will spawn in the outer room. Same order of difficulty.

Current Strat: Split your raid in two. Might be best to have paladins in the inner room as those mobs are susceptible to their range of undead abilities, and priests in the inner room where the mobs are susceptible to shackle undead. Honestly though, videos I've seen suggest they have such low hp that it may not matter. Try to put ranged dps on each side for trainees.

As soon as a trainee spawns, ranged dps should switch to them. They have a ridiculously low amount of health, (11k?), so they can be killed in mere seconds by two ranged dps. Not sure about whether to kill riders or deathknights first when those two spawn. Killing deathknights (which are weaker) first allows you to keep the number of mobs on your side lower. Killing riders first allows you to get rid of the mob doing the greatest damage. Not sure if matters really.

After a given amount of time, in the new version, Gothik spawns and runs to the inner room. Harvest Soul is now stacking and you are on a tight clock. A new mob called Vigilant Shade spawns in the outer room. All other spawns stop. The inner room tanks and spanks Gothik. The outer room tanks and spanks Vigilant Shade, which does a nasty AOE shadowbolt.

Eventually, Gothik will start transporting between the two sides. If he's not on your side, you just sort of sit there. At around 30 percent (or maybe it's time based) the doors between the two sides will open and the whole raid will finish off Gothik. Your stats are very low by this point as Harvest Soul is stacked significantly high.


3. 4 Horseman

Additional Video: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=88897
Near the end of this video is a 4 horseman encounter that shows how tanks should switch horseman to drop marks.

This was a truly epic fight, and extremely difficult. There have not been many encounters ever created more difficult than this. I'm not going to even bother going over all the different abilities of each of the four horseman now. I'll add those once we have more information. Instead I will try to run down the basic strat. The fight has changed a great deal (and made much easier) to accommodate having 1/4 the players.

<Boss’s Name> Mark: After 20 seconds (and every 12 seconds afterwards) each boss will place their mark (similar to Firemaw) on nearby players. At about four marks the damage gets so much that you can’t really heal through it, so this is where the difficulty of the encounter comes in. Immunity skills and most shields have no affect at stopping the damage.

Learning to maneuver yourself and the 4 horseman around the room to minimize the impact of each Mark is the basis of the fight. These marks have a HUGE range of 65-70 yards, but (and this is the key) you can outrange a mark.

Current Strat: Each horseman should be pulled to a seperate corner of the room at the beginning of the fight. Everything I've seen indicates they actually run automatically toward the correct correction. Mograine and Thane Korth'azz should be positioned in the two corners that are in the front of the room. In each of these corners in the front of the room are one tank, 2 dps, and on healer. The other two horseman will be be held in the back two corners of the room.

Front corner horseman: In each of the two front corners, the tank tanks, the dps does damage, and the healer heals until everyone has three marks from their given horseman. As 4 marks is about to hit, the two tanks move their horseman to the center of the room. The dps and healers stay in their position at the corners (healers make sure you move up a bit if you need to be in range of your tank). The two tanks quickly taunt the other tank's horseman. With a new horseman now on each tank from the taunt, they move back toward their original corner. Rinse and repeat this process until the two front horseman are dead.

Back corner horseman: In the back you have Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek. They will attack whoever is closest to them from the respective corners. They do not need to be taunted. Lady fires shadowbolts and spawns void zones. Zeliek does holy damage. One range dps should be able to position themself closest to both mobs (the raid is very far away in the front corners). They can have one healer with them just back a bit farther. This two-person team deals with the back two until your raid takes care of the front two.

Once you have two left, it looks like a simple process for the raid to run back and kill the final two horseman. I'm sure there's something I'm missing with the other two horseman though.

This fight is immensely easier than the original version. Instead of coordinating 40 people running specific patterns around a room, you just have two tanks moving to the center and switching targets.

[Gizzard]

Plague Wing


This is a run down of videos and strats for the Plague Wing of 10 man Naxx. I would also hope these threads become a place to discuss our strategies for these encounters. The general strats remain similar to the original Naxx, but definitely have been tuned down. Blizz has said this will be an entry level dungeon, meant to be much easier than Karazhan.

This will be one of five posts covering each wing with strats on each boss. They will be regularly updated. The strategies are very preliminary at this point. I strongly suggest watching each video, as they are very good quality and will allow you to make sense of my musings.

Until we know more, a lot of this will be speculation on based on previous iterations of these encounters in the original Naxx. A decent overview of the original Naxx can be found at http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26639.


Plague Wing

Video: http://files.filefront.com/Plague+Wingwmv/;12175103;/fileinfo.html

1.  Noth the Plaguebringer

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26641

The original version of this encounter involved extremely fast and raid-wide decursing, the ability for the tank to pick up Noth after complete aggro resets, and control of numerous adds. 

Curse of the Plaguebringer: A curse that, if not removed, will cause the Wrath of the Plaugebringer on all nearby allies.

Still exists.  Decurse immediately

Wrath of the Plaguebringer: Does a massive amount of initial damage then follows up with a massive amount of Damage over Time.

Still exists, although I'm unsure if will actually kill you as in original Noth.

Cripple: Whenever he blinks he will cripple all nearby allies.

Not sure if this still exists.

Blink: He blinks every 25-30 seconds and wipes most of his aggro. He doesn’t blink far so the main tank can rebuild aggro quickly with Taunt.

Not sure if this still exists.

Teleport: He will teleport every 90 seconds (increasing each time he teleports) to the top of the room spawning more enemies at the three spawn points.

Yep.  That's the gimmick of this fight.

Spawn Enemies: Randomly throughout the fight enemies will spawn out of three spawn points (look at the stuff that kind of resembles hay). They come in different vareties. The ones throughout the fight are just melee types while special ones spawn during Noth’s teleport (getting larger in variety each teleport). There is one that Shadowbolts and one that Arcane Explosions. Some of these are stunable (for instance the Arcane Explosion one).

The whole key to the fight is handling the spawn enemies. 


Current Strat: Your main tank should position Noth equal distance from the spawn points so it is easiest to pick up spawns and bring them to the raid.  DPS and healers should all be within 15 yards of Noth.  While Noth is down, it's a simple tank and spank. Your off tank will have to be the lookout to pick up summoned spawns though.  A healer may very likely get initial aggro on spawns as they are summoned.  They should be close enough to the tank to quickly run to them. When curse of the plaguebringer occurs, your decursers have 10 seconds to remove it or face likely raid wipe. 

Dealing with spawns:  While Noth is on the ground he will summon plague warriors.  These can be offtanked (pally might be particularly effective as they are undead and it's easy to pick them up with exorcism) while Noth is still on the ground. You may have around 6 or so by the time Noth teleports.

Noth will teleport, effectively leaving battle for one minute. Once Noth teleports, good aoe classes can AOE all the plague warriors down, while everyone else should assist train someone to get them down quickly.  Approximately 10 seconds after Noth teleports 2 Plague Champions will spawn.  Approximately 35 seconds after his teleport two more Plague Champions will spawn.  I don't know the abilities of the Plague Champions, but doesn't look too radical. 

I'm sure you could also use an alternative strat of killing each plague warrior as they come out, but it seems less efficient and would lengthen the entire encounter as you have less dps on Noth while he's up.  That means he'll probably teleport an additional time.


2. Heigan the Unclean

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26647

This is one of the most unique and fun encounters blizz has ever made.  It's the "dance" encounter.  A lot is resting on your main tank here (also, you do not need an offtank).

AoE Mana Burn: Get close to him and you’ll get mana burned.

Not sure if he retains this, but it would sure make this fight super lame for ret and protection paladins. 

Decrepit Fever: Cleanseable debuff that lowers your max hp by 50% and applies a DoT that does 500 nature damage every 3 seconds.

There is some sort of debuff you need to cleanse.  Not sure if this is it or something new.

Teleport: This fun skill teleports you into a tunnel where you have to run back to the raid. Slay any Eye Stalks that aggro you and just run from the grubs. Avoid the poison clou

May not exist.
 

Eruption (DANCE DANCE ERUPTION): Every couple of seconds the ground will erupt dealing 4000ish unresistable nature damage. It happens in a pattern (see pattern at http://www.theorderls.com/belt/wm/wow/heigan.html) so your raid will need to constantly move back and forth to avoid it. More in tactics.

Ha ha!  Hope you brought your dancing shoes, because this is the whole fight. I'm not sure if the pattern is exactly the same, but it's very close.

Current Strat:   First, this is a fight that you really need to watch the video to understand. 

Phase 1:  All ranged DPS and healers stand in on the platform in the room.  They cannot be it hit by eruption while on this platform.  The tank and melee dps are in the eruption part of the room.  The tank will be responsible for moving (or dancing) Heigan in a 4 part pattern throughout the room to avoid the eruptions.  Melee dps will need to move along with him and ensure close positioning to also not get hit by eruption. 

Phase 2:  Heigan transports to the platform.  No players are allowed on the platform with him.  Eruptions occur faster during this time.  There is no dps.  All players are simply moving in the 4 part pattern (as the melee and tanks do in phase 1) to avoid the eruptions.  After about 45 seconds, Heigan comes back and the raid resumes phase 1. 

This is very much a gimmick fight.  It will take some time to learn "the dance" (or eruption pattern) so you are not getting smoked by eruptions repeatedly.  Once that's done, and the maintank is able to easily maneuver Heigan around the eruption floor, it's trivial.


3. Loatheb

Pre-BC Guide:  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26650

Original encounter was all about managing your own health.  The fight seems to have been changed pretty significantly.  I'll try to follow it through videos, but we'll need more information to get a real strat. 

Poison Aura: Everyone close to him is hit for 200ish Nature Damage every six seconds for twelve seconds.

Don't think it exists.  There is a dot called Death Bloom now though, which ticks for about 200ish, possibly finishing with a larger tick around 600. 

Inevitable Doom: After 2 minutes into the fight Loatheb will begin casting Inevitable Doom. Afterwards, every 30 seconds until the five minute mark he will recast it. At the five minute mark he speeds it up to every 15 seconds. It deals 2550 shadow damage after 10 seconds. This is applied to everyone in the raid and can not be removed or resisted.

Still exists.  You need to kill him in not long after 5 minutes or the inevitable dooms simply do more damage than you can heal through. 

Fungal Blooms: 50% Melee/Spell Casting Critical Chance Increase along with removing threat generation. Lasts 90 seconds and only five people can have it at a time. It’s gotten from killing spores that spawn a Fungal Bloom environmental effect.

Still exists.  Although i'm not sure if the buff is exactly the same. 

Corrupted Mind: Allows you to cast one healing spell (includes shields, HoT’s, and pretty much everything that prevents damage) per minute. Applied to everyone in the raid.

Seems changed significantly.  There are windows of opportunity for healing, which can be tracked by an emote.  For 25 seconds no healing spells can be cast.  Then a five second window of opportunity opens up for your healers to cast as much as they want. 

Current Strat:  Tank and spank him.  Ensure your dps kills the first spore.  Healers will want to plan to get the most possible healing out during their 5 second window to your main tank.  Everyone else needs to try to take care of themselves.  Not sure why, but it seems everyone should be packed around Loatheb very tightly, as well.

[Gizzard]

Spider Wing


This is a run down of videos and strats for the Spider Wing of 10 man Naxx.  I would also hope these threads become a place to discuss our strategies for these encounters.  The general strats remain similar to the original Naxx, but definitely have been tuned down. Blizz has said this will be an entry level dungeon, meant to be much easier than Karazhan.

This will be one of five posts  covering each wing with strats on each boss. They will be regularly updated. The strategies are very preliminary at this point. I strongly suggest watching each video, as they are very good quality and will allow you to make sense of my musings. 

Until we know more, a lot of this will be speculation on based on previous iterations of these encounters in the original Naxx. A decent overview of the original Naxx can be found at http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26639.

UPDATE 1: Added Anub'Rhekan Video that shows tank kiting. 

SPIDER WING

Videos: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=88511
http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=92761

1. Anub'Rhekan

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26640
Additional Video:  http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=91941 This does a great job of showing a Death Knight tank kiting Anub.  I think he could position Anub more to the center of the alcove instead of on the edge when tanking, but it still shows exactly how to kite him without help.  Going around the outside edge as this tank does is preferable to the center. 

This encounter is all about your tank learning to kite Anub'Rhekan.  It will take a couple attempts, but once the timing is down the fight is very easy.

Impale: This is a nasty skill that randomly targets someone and throws them in the air, dealing about 3200 (Physical – mitigated with armor) damage to anyone in its area of effect (a straight stripe from Anub to the player). You can avoid having this wipe a raid by simply staying as spread out as possible.

Still has a similar ability.  Not hard to deal with. 

Locust Swarm: After the initial cast (sometime when the encounter starts) around every minute and a half he will begin casting this spell which snares anyone nears him and start killing them with a heavy duty stacking DoT (1000+ damage every 2 seconds!!!). When this spell is cast, a Crypt Guard will spawn to the north and an animation of locust (like in Warcraft III) will be around him.

This encounter is all about Anub's locust swarm ability.  All melee except the main tank need to run out well before Anub casts Locust Swarm.  As soon as Anub begins the cast, the main tank must start running alonside the outside of the room to the other side of the room to avoid the stacking dot.  No one can be standing in this run path.  If the tank fails to time the kiting run correctly, the dots will stack too high too heal through.  The range of his locust swarm is also quite large, so everyone needs to stay away from the tank's kiting path.  Anub clearly lifts his back end up into the air for about two seconds before he casts locust swarm, and this signifies for the tank to run. 

Corpse Scarabs: These fun guys will spawn from anything that dies while the encounter is active. You’ll get ten from Crypt Guards and five from players. They are immune to no form of crowd control so simply Frost Nova and AoE down (low HP).

Not hard.  Crypt Guard dies.  Little scarabs show up.  You aoe them.

Crypt Guards: While not a skill, Anub will spawn these guys everytime a Locust Swarm starts. They are stunnable so they should be stunlocked by Paladins, Rogues, and Warriors as much as possible. They also have a Cleave attack so they need to be tanked facing away from the raid. They can also net everyone around them when first aggro’d, so the raid should always be nearby when they spawn (or they need to be stunned asap to prevent the nets)..

Tank and spank these mobs. 

Current Strat: Pre-BC version started with 2 crypt guards up, but I'm unsure if any start up with Anub when you engage.  There are basically two phases.

Phase 1:  Tank Anub in the corner.  DPS on Anub.  Nothing to it.

Phase 2: Occurs every 90 seconds.  Anub casts locust swarm and the tank kites him to the other side of the room.  While the tank is kiting and repositioning, the dps is killing the spawned crypt guard and then kiling scarabs. After these are dead, phase 1 begins again.  Do not start attacking anub until the Crypt Guards are dead.  AOE don't attack Anub until the scarabs are dead. 

One note on tanking this.  Warriors and Druids are ideal as the maintanks.  Warriors can intercept a designated dps standing in the kite path to get a large headstart on Anub while kiting.  Druids can go cat form to simply outrun Anub.  Paladins and Death Knights (I assume, don't know much about Death Knights) have to actually do it for real.  There have been some complaints on beta forums that his speed is too fast, but I'm not sure what will end up on live.  Swiftness potions ease the learning curve for tanks, and can be used on every other kite assuming you don't need your pot cooldown for health pots.  In addition, a hunter can use aspect of the cheetah to run just in front of the tank to give them increased speed (this was the standard method used on original Anub). 


2. Grand Widow Faerlina

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26643
Another Video: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=92045

I really love how they changed this encounter for the new 10 man version.  It's pretty cool. 

Rain of Fire: Your standard Rain of Fire with a lot more damage tacked on. This is countered in one of two ways. If it’s outside of melee range then everyone gets far away from it (without all bunching up). If it’s in melee range then the main-tank needs to drag her away and outside of the Rain of Fire while the melee flee from it in the direction the main-tank is dragging her. This is where the Greater Fire Protection Potions come in handy on your melee. 

If there is fire on you. Move.  Even if you are the main tank.  Not hard. 

Poison Bolt Volley: If you’ve fought Lord Kri then you know about this fun ability. She will hit 10 random people for 1400 damage that applies a very strong cleansable DoT. This should be healed up as fast as possible and the DoT removed by if at all possible. Anytime you sacrifice a Naxxramas Worshipper you will gain a 30 second immunity from this skill. Use of Greater Nature Protection Potions can be of great help along with a few NR pieces on key members (NR pieces that give good stats only though).

Some form of this ability still exists.  Can be cleansed. 

Naxxramas Worshipper

There are four Naxrammas Worshipper adds that come with Grand Widow.  The pre-BC version also included two Naxrammas Followers.  These no longer exist. In the pre-BC version, a priest MC'ed a Naxxrammas Worshipper and used an ability to end Grand Widow's enrage ability.  In the new version, killing a Naxrammas Worshipper ends Grand Widow's enrage. They can be sheeped.  One tank should be able to tank all 4.  Because they are casters, I assume Death Knights may excel at this.

Enrage: Enrage offers a 75% attack speed bonus every minute into the fight. You need four tanks (Warriors are the best in this scenario, although a Druid could technically tank one) to tank the Naxxramas Worshipers. Then have a Priest mind control a Worshipper and use it’s sacrifice ability to stop Faerlina in the middle of her enrage. She will not enrage again for one minute. However! You can use it to prevent her from enraging. This will only give you an additional 30 seconds which is inadvisable. Sacrificing Worshippers also stops her Poison Bolt Volley for about thirty seconds.

Ending her enrage now requires the killing of a Worshiper, not MC'ing.  Failing to kill a worshiper to end the enrage will wipe your raid.  Having no worshipers to kill while Grand Widow is enraged will wipe your raid. 

Current Strat:   The entire raid except melee must spread out to minimize rain of fire damage.  Your main tank runs in to pick up Grand Widow and your offtank builds aggro on all four worshipers.  If possible, you can sheep one worshiper, but the tank may be using a lot of aoe initially to get aggro on all four. 

The dps requirements of this fight are extensive, once this tank has aggro on worshipers, they can move to the Grand Widow, who should be positioned about 15-20 yards away.  This can probably be done after you are down to 3 worshipers, but depends on the circumstances.  The worshipers will continue to fireball your offtank from ranged.   

It looks like one ranged dps can be sufficient to for worshiper duty.  This member's job is to dps a worshiper to about 20 percent health with the tank.  After Grand Widow enrages, this dps must kill the low worshiper very quickly (10 seconds max).  You can have other dps switch to the low health worshiper as well to help finish it off.  This dps then has another approximately 50 seconds to get the next worshiper to a health low enough to kill when Grand Widow Enrages again. 

Alternatively, the entire raid dps can start the fight by getting all 4 worshiper's down to approximately 40 percent.  15 seconds before an enrage one dps can switch over to a worshiper to finish it off right as the enrage occurs. 

There is a simple cycle.  You essentially have 5 minutes to kill Grand Widow:
0:00 - 1:00: DPS Grand Widow, ensure one worshiper is low on health. 
1:00 - 1:05: Kill first worshiper to stop enrage
1:05 - 2:00: DPS Grand Widow, ensure one worshiper is low on health
2:00 - 2:05: Kill second worshiper to stop enrage
2:05 - 3:00: DPS Grand Widow, ensure one worshiper is low on health
3:00 - 3:05: Kill third worshiper to stop enrage
3:05 - 4:00: DPS Grand Widow, ensure last worshiper is low on health
4:00 - 4:05: Kill fourth worshiper to stop enrage
4:05 - 5:00: DPS Grand Widow
5:00 on:  Grand Widow enrages, you die as there are no more worshipers to kill.   

It will be very hard to kill Grand Widow if you kill a worshiper too early.  Not sure if Grand Widow needs to be in a certain range of the killed Worshiper.


3. Maexxna

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26645

Maexxna is a big giant spider.  Fight is pretty simple. 

Poison Shock: Does 1700-2200ish damage in a frontal cone. The damage is Nature and can easily be avoided by having the raid stand behind Maexxna.

Probably still does it. Inconsequential as long as the the area for the raid to stand behind Maexxna is huge. 

Magical Bug Spawn: No official name for it, but after 30 seconds (then every 40 seconds afterwards) some low damage/hp bugs spawn. These need to be dealt with through AoE.

Still happens.  Just aoe them.  Nothing to it.

Web Wrap:  This is casted at 20 seconds into the fight and then every forty seconds afterwards. This skill picks three players (that aren’t the main-tank) and attaches them to the wall. The web must be destroyed before the players are killed.

Only occurs to one player.  Have one main ranged dps assigned to destroy the webs.  Have an alternate ranged dps also assigned to destroy the webs in case your main web destroyer is the victim of web wrap.

Necrotic Poison: Reduces healing taken by 90% for 30 seconds. IMPORTANT: Get rid of this ASAP!

No idea if this still exists, but you should probably have one person assigned to get this off the MT immediately. 

Web Spray: Every 40 seconds this skill is used. It stuns everyone for 8 seconds and deals 1700-2200ish damage. The damage itself isn’t a problem as much as the 8 second stun that goes on everyone, including the main-tank.

Still occurs.  Although it seems a lot less than 8 seconds now, which makes the fight insanely easier.  Hots need to be up on the tank before this occurs everytime.  This ability is what the fight is really about. 

Enrage: What boss doesn’t have this? At 30% Maexxna enrages and does a ton more damage. Best to let Maexxna fall below 30% after Web Spray happens.

Definitely occurs.  This is where the real fight begins. 

Current Strat:  Your tank faces Maexxna away from the raid.  The raid will want to be fairly tight together behind Maexxna to easily aoe all the bug spawns.  When someone is web wrapped to the wall behind the raid your designated dps need to dps the web wrap around them.  If someone ends up web wrapped during a web spray, they'll probably die. AOE dps needs to AOE the bugs when they come out.  Bugs out during a web spray is also bad.  Immediately before web spray, healers must put HoTs up on the main tank.  Immediately after web spray healers will need to heal the main tank back up.  Your main tank should have some sort of rotation of trinkets, health pots, stones, etc time to use around web sprays. 

The first 70 percent is trivial.  The difficulty is in a web spray during Maexxna's frenzy from 30 percent onward.  Your entire raid will be immobilized for a number of seconds while a frenzied Maexxa beats on the main tank.  It's dangerous.  At 30 percent all  dps needs to pop trinkets, cooldown, heroisms. Save it all for 30 percent.  Healers should also save their best cooldowns for the last 30 percent. The tank needs to ensure their best defensive abilities (such as shield wall), trinkets, health stones, and health pots are available for use during the frenzy web sprays.  Before a frenzy web spray the tank needs to pop their trinket and relative ability(s), afterward they need to help out the healers with a health pot or health stone.

[Gizzard]

Abomination Wing



In preparation for WotLK, I will be running down videos and strats for the first "raid dungeon" in WotLK - 10 Man Naxx.  The general strats remain similar to the original Naxx, but definitely have been tuned down.  Blizz has said this will be an entry level dungeon, meant to be much easier than Karazhan. 

There will be a post covering each wing with strats on each boss.  They will be regularly updated.  The strategies are very preliminary at this point.  I strongly suggest watching each video, as they are very good quality and will allow you to make sense of my musings below. 

Until we know more, a lot of this will be speculation on based on previous iterations of these encounters in the original Naxx.  A decent overview of the original Naxx can be found at http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26639. 

Update 1:  Added individual videos on patchwerk and thaddius.  Updated thaddius strat with phase 1. 
Update 2:  Added Earthbind Totem to Gluth strat.

ABOMINATION WING

Video: http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=92759


1. Patchwerk

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26644
Another Video: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=88593

The original Patchwerk was an encounter designed mostly to test your raids dps and ability to quickly heal up a tank. 

Hateful Strike: This skill is what you must control to allow your raid to successfully defeat Patchwerk. It will hit the person with the most HP that is near him. It does an INSANE amount of damage but it’s a regular melee hit. That means with enough HP and armor you can live through it. If a Rogue has more HP then any of the Warriors then it will hit a Rogue, which will drop your raids DPS.

Hateful Strike is now hitting the group's offtank for up to 10.5k dmg, but does not appear to hit the maintank. Their tank also dodged, parried, or mitigated the hateful strike a lot. It appears as though the mechanic is changed to hit the person second highest on aggro with the Hateful Strike (similar to Gruul).  If it was still hitting the person with the highest HP, there's no way it could hit their offtank for 8.5k consecutively as occurs about 3:34 into the video.  The big "nerf" here is in the damage of hateful strike.  10k damage is half or less of a level 80 tank's hp, while the level 60 version of hateful strike was taking 80 or 90 percent of a tanks hp. 

Enrage: After seven minutes he gets bored with you and goes into a killing frenzy taking out the entire raid very fast.

Enrage is now 5 minutes, but there appears to be a frenzy with 35 seconds left.  I assume he just starts hitting harder and faster at frenzy.  Enrage is a very fast death. 

Current Strategy:  Tank and spank.  Make sure healers are quick to heal up the offtank from hateful strikes.  Will be interesting if to see if you can go with only 2 healers to up your dps in order to make the enrage. 


2. Grobbulus

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26646

The original Grobbulus was never a difficult encounter.  It was more of an award for finally getting past the guild killer and giant blockade Patchwerk. 

Poison Cloud: He leaves a poison cloud behind him as he walks that does a very good amount of damage and remains for a very long time. These clouds can kind of spread towards the main-tank as he tanks, so the best way to avoid it is to not stand in it and have your main-tank kite Grobbulus around (slowly).

The poison cloud remains, although I'm not sure if it continues to do as much damage as the original version.  The strategy remains to have your tank slowly move the boss around the outside of the room throughout the fight. 

Slime Spray: Does around 4000~ damage (Nature based) and spawns a slime that needs to be taken care of.

Definitely still spawns, but I couldn't tell if it's still doing significant damage.  With only melee on it, they were able to take it down, run to Grobbulus for a few hits before a new one spawned.   

Mutating Injection: Does about 4500~ damage around the target (or less if it’s cleansed) and spawns a Poison Cloud. Think of it as something like Geddons explosion but way, way, way more awesome/deadly.

Pretty much the same mechanic.  Just like every other encounter where there is a "bomb" like effect the infected person runs away until they drop a poison cloud and then return to the raid.

Enrage: He goes insane and kills the raid at 12 minutes into the fight.

Still enrages. Time unknown.

Current Strat:  Tank moves him slowly around the room with each poison cloud drop.  Ranged DPS nukes him from the center of the room.  Healers are best off in the center of the room as well.  Melee dps is first on the slime spawns, and it looks like it's possible to position yourself to do melee dps to the boss if there is time.  You won't be able to get behind him though.  When anyone gets the mutating injection they run to an area far off to drop a poison cloud (still not clear if it should/can be cleansed).  Don't stand in the green shit and you'll win.

3. Gluth

This is the best fight in the video...and the least informative.  If anyone has any other videos of this fight, that would be great.  Gluth appears to have received some pretty significant nerfs, although it's tough to tell from the mage PoV. 

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26648

AoE Fear: Every 20ish seconds Gluth will fear those around him, kinda of like all the other bosses who fear people near them.

This may no longer exist.  Hard to tell from the video, but their tank healer was standing awfully close if there was an aoe fear. 

Mortal Wound: The usual Mortal Wound debuff, reduces healing by 10% and stacks up to 100% where healing no longer works.

Again, hard to tell if it still exists.  They were using two tanks.  So wouldn't surprise me if this exists in some form, where the two tanks have to switch occasionally when the debuff stacks too high.   

Frenzy: Every 10 seconds a Hunter needs to hit him with tranq shot. Be sure to set up a rotation before the fight.

Non-existent. 

Decimate: About every minute and forty seconds, Gluth reduces everyones HP down to 5%, including the undead wandering about the room. This is fixed by everyone using potions/bandages/main-tank using potions/HoT’s/etc.

Definitely still exists.  Not sure if it's percentage based or not though.  Hit the mage for 12k.  Maybe 20 percent instead of 5 percent?

Enrage: Kills the raid around the five minute mark by doing massive amounts of damage and fast.

His video started late into the fight.  It appears to be 6 or 7 minutes. 

That’s right, the Undead are totally throwing a rave and it’s in Gluth’s room. They all want to run to Gluth and sacrifice themselves to heal him up and that’s the entire gimmick to this fight....If any undead make it to Gluth then he can consume them for 5% of his health. This is very bad. You can’t also have a tank take and hold aggro on all of the undead (3 spawn every 10 seconds or so) so the best solution is to kite them.

This guild used two mages with a druid healing them to handle all the undead spawns (makes it a fun video to watch, as he gets close to death a number of times).  You can get aggro on them.  There's a whole lot of ways to trying handling these.  There are reports that his the healing done by undead reaching Gluth is so low that you can effectively outdps them and still finish under the enrage.  This might get fixed.   

Current Strat:  The most important thing is handling the undead spawns.  You need a couple people, with a healer backing them up, to use aoe abilities and kite them around. It is very difficult to do this encounter without a shaman earthbind totem or hunter frost trap to help kite the undead spawns.  Mage's frost nova is also helpful.  Many have reported this as the most difficult encounter of the instance. 

Don't know enough about Gluth himself to comment on strat for everyone else.


4. Thaddius

Pre-BC Guide: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/26649
A much better video: http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=88763

The original Thaddius was serious business, but this guy seems like some sort of deformed cousin.  Looks like a serious nerf to me.

Phase One:

Stalagg’s Thunderclap: Your normal Thunderclap but with tons of damage.
Feugen AoE Mana Drain: Drains the mana of people around him.
Feugen’s Warstomp: Does about 1,500ish damage to everyone around him within Melee range and stuns them.
Chain Lightening: A massive AoE attack should Feugen or Stalagg be pulled away from their lightening rod.

These are two giant dudes stuck in place that you have to kill at the same time before Thaddius spawns.  I think they maintain all these abilities. According to the video, it looks like having mana users fight Stalagg (to avoid the mana drain) while non mana users fight Feugen (melee dps won't be in thunderclap) is still the viable strat. 

After killing them, the raid jumps down to phase 2:

Charge Particles (made up name): Every thirty seconds Thaddius will take it upon himself to “charge” the raid. He gives everyone either a negative or a positive debuff (electrical debuff, not a good debuff). Every five seconds, if two opposite players stand next to each other they will deal 2,000 damage to each other. This means if your raid is standing in a giant ball then everyone within the raid will die. This is countered by moving around.

It's called Polarity Shift.  This is very similar to the first boss of heroic mech in the new version.  The video makes it seem extremely simple - negative on one side, positive on the other side.  Check your charge every time he does the ability, run through the boss in order to move to the appropriate side. Everyone can be packed in pretty tight though, making healing easy.  The tank simply rotates 180 degrees to the appropriate side for his debuff as well. 

Chain Lightening: A AoE attack that deals moderate damage to five people.

Still exists.  Not sure how many people it's hitting at once though.  Damage is still probably "moderate"

Enrage: After five minutes, Thaddius goes insane and begins wiping the raid.

Still enrages. Time unknown. 

Current Strat: Have a tank on each of the two first mobs.  Mana users on Stalagg (to avoid the mana drain) while non mana users fight Feugen (melee dps won't be in Stalagg's thunderclap, but will take a warstomp?)  Kill them at the same time, just like R&J in karazhan. 

After they die the MT leads the raid into jumping onto the platform with Thaddius.  Positive charges go on one side and negative charges go on the other side.  Everyone is within 10 yards of him on both sides.  When a polarity shift occurs, each person moves moves to the side of their charge.  It's not certain if it's best to run around the outside of Thaddius or directly through his body. Tank rotates 180 degrees if their polarity shifts.  There does appear to be significant raid damage immediately following Polarity Shifts as people run to their appropriate position.

[Starfire]

The understudies never break lose, however the crystal does have a channeled duration. It's actually safe to have both of your tanks use the crystals to control the understudies; when the understudies break they tend to target the channeler's first; however healing aggro can pull them.

A method to "avoid" this is just have the understudies run away from the group so when they break the controller can re-channel (takes 1-2 seconds).

This is also ideal since it means more DPS on Instructor, rather than having a tank "try' to DPS.

The "dot" Instructor does is called "Jagged Knife" he targets a person randomly and throws it at them. You can add the debuff 'Jagged Knife" to grid and make it easy to heal. It's a physical debuff, so Hand of Protection can remove it too.

Instructor still does the shout; however it is not a mana burn of any sort, it's just aoe damage. Usually 1-2 CoH will have that healed, though.

The setup for Understudies is, you should only be tanking while Bone Armor (aka Shield Wall) is active. So each tank should taunt every 20 seconds (duration of Bone Armor).

It's also best to stagger your "mind controls", usually about 10-15 seconds for the first one. So your MT channels first, your OT grabs an understudy for 10 seconds, then your OT begins channeling.