NAXX 10 Man Guide

copeyhagen

Im starting Naxx 10 man tonight with my guild, i started respeccin my def gear for dps gear last night cu we already have loads of tanks.

anyways, this 10 man naxx guide was written by Archivis over at dslreports.com wow forum (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21661220-Archivis-Guide-to-Naxx-10man)

might be of some use to those of us that are only starting raiding in wotlk

Archivis' Guide to Naxx (10-man)

Archivis’ Guide to Naxxramas (10-man)

Last expansion, I wrote up a guide to help beginners out in Karazhan. It was widely used by people on this site and spread to friends all over. I broke it down in plain English to explain to people more about what needs to be done to down bosses than what abilities do what. While that’s important, those details tend to cause people to have their eyes glaze over and they end up putting a priority on the wrong things as to what’s important to down a boss. Feel free to add on to this discussion with alternate methods that have worked for your group and any tips or tricks that you’ve come across. Also feel free to distribute this guide without my permission. I’m just contributing to the community, not trying to make a buck.

Group Composition
Before you go in, you’re wondering what kind of group composition works for you. In Karazhan, you could get away with less healers once you out-geared the place. For the sake of the intended audience of this guide, you really should roll with 3 healers. If you’re rolling with less, you obviously don’t need this guide. You also want two tanks of any flavor and five DPS of any flavor. All I recommend in your group compositions is that you try not to bring the same class of the same role twice. Bringing two druids is fine as long as they’re both not the same spec, because they fulfill two different roles (one tank, one heals…. Or one moonkin, one healer, etc). Bringing two mages or two rogues or two hunters is doable, but if you have a choice in composition, change it up. Versatility amongst classes will be beneficial in your raid. It’ll also help to evenly gear your crew up as you disperse loot, making farming and future progression easier. Any 3 of the 4 healing classes are fine. If you’re limited on choices and have to bring two of the same class, fine, but I recommend not stacking two healers of the same class for diversity and utility’s sake. The same goes for tanks.

Strategy in 25’s
Much of the 10-man strategies are similar to the 25 man strategies, just larger. There are a few bosses that are different, but many of them are the same. This is intended as a 10-man guide, not a 25. I’ll leave the next few posts as “reserved” so I can add a 25-man guide in at some point (or at least the differences).

Pre Raid Prep
You’re probably wondering what wing you should do first. The Spider Wing is generally the easiest. Getting in there and beating down the bosses are a quick way to get gear and boost morale. You’ll want to make sure that your raid is flasked and brings food. Feasts are convenient, but can be expensive if you wipe often. I sincerely recommend that your raid leader as well as your raid members get a boss addon like Deadly Boss Mods to make timers easier for you.

Spider Wing

Trash
All the trash in this wing is pretty much “AOE” everything down. For those who suck at AoE or are limited on their AoE option, its generally a good idea to put a “Skull” on whichever target is the tallest, have that be the primary threat target for single target DPS and when that dies, let melee beat on whatever they decide. Tank threat is obscene and unless your tanks are really really bad (not like… worse than pro, but really bad) or your AoE starts in before your tank gets a single hit, AoE is going to be the preferred method to nuking down just about everything. Beware of spiders who like to yo-yo your tank around, this might make your healer either whine on vent about out of range, or cause the better of your healers to get in range. Nothing should be difficult as far as trash goes.

Anub’Rehkan the Boss with the Cool Voiceover: One of the easier bosses in the instance requires only an intelligent and geared tank. Adds occasionally appear that are a priority to be burned down first. Corpse Scarabs appear as well and they get AoE’d. Your off-tank will pick up anything that spawns during this fight. Your MT will tank the boss in the back of the room at 12’o’clock. Occasional raid damage will occur and people will get a chance to place their chewing gum on the ceiling every once in a while, but aside from that, its tank and spank.

The only gimmick with this fight is the Locust Swarm ability that is used. Boss mods has a fairly accurate timer of when its to be used. No one is to be within 30 yards of the boss. The tank included. He needs to kite the boss along the outer edge of the room into the 6’o’clock position. Each time he Locust Swarms, you kite him to the other side of the room, via the outer edge. Left or right doesn’t matter. Stay out of the slime. DPS can resume after the add is dead or after the boss is in position.

Faerlina and her Emo Friends: This boss has an enrage timer that is cancelled only by the death of one of her adds. You can either buy yourself time and prevent an enrage, or you can burn an add down during the enrage and extend the timer even longer. I recommend having a player burn down one of the adds to 25% or so and when the enrage timer hits, have your DPS switch over immediately to that target (lucky charms help) and cancel that enrage as fast as possible. Other than her rain of fire, its tank and spank from here. Coordinate your timers and the enrages to burn down the adds as needed.

Maexxna the Tank Killer: Let the tank get in her into position. You want to set yourselves up so that melee is clumped up at her legs, and ranged is somewhere behind melee. Do not spread out, do not be at different sides. Do not stand in front of the boss. Her frontal poison is deadly on anything other than a tank. Keep poison cleansing totems down in the MT’s group and keep Abolish Poison up. Leaving this poison up diminishes healing by 90%.

Occasionally, she’ll knock someone on to the back of the room and leave them web wrapped. Let one of your healers keep them topped off and instruct your ranged to burn down the web wraps to release your players. Communication helps here. Pinging on the map your location and using vent to ask for help will make it easier for ranged to hit you.

Spiders appear out from under her at random times as well. Your off-tank will need to pick them up. If your raid is spread out, this makes it very difficult to pick them all up and wastes time as your AoE has to kill multiple times. Healers will generally get aggro. Tossing a consecrate/death and decay right on the “ranged stack” area will ensure that the adds go right to the tank. If any stay up there with melee, well that’s probably their fault and they did it on purpose either to #1. Get extra rage as a DPS warrior or #2, Get dodges/parries as a DK so he can spam Rune Strike on the boss to pad his numbers (>.>). Let the OT peel them off the melee at their leisure, after the ranged pack is dead.

She’ll also stun the raid for a few seconds, which means no healing on the tank. Popping up a shield and keeping up every HoT possible on the tank helps ensure that your tank won’t go splat.

At 30% she enrages and does more damage. Nothing else changes. Save Bloodlust for this point. If you have a holy paladin, have them bubble when the raid stun occurs so they can continue to heal the tank. It’s a tank gear check at this point. If the tank dies, let your off-tank pick it up and panic your way to victory. Once your MT is geared enough, it shouldn’t be an issue, especially if healers did their job keeping poisons at bay and keeping hots up.

Plague Wing
This is probably the next best wing to go into. The bosses are fairly simple and fun as well.

Trash
The trash is still easy, but you need to know what you’re going up against before you just waltz in there. The first Gargoyle can be reset by running out of the wing. Once you’re in the center, he’ll reset. Future Gargoyles can’t be reset. Slimes can be tanked or kited. Don’t let that idiot rogue of yours who went into Naxx at 70 tell you that you can’t tank the slimes. Gargoyles are a DPS race once they hit 30%. If you fail, they’ll heal up and make you try again. Save your cooldowns and burndowns for 30%. Healers can lay off the healing for a sec to assist if you’re having issues with this.

After Noth is a giant gauntlet. That idiot rogue that told you that you can’t tank those slimes? He’s probably going to tell you about this gauntlet requires you to clear quickly as well. It doesn’t, the respawn rate is either removed or some high rate like 2 hours. I’ve never had anything respawn when I’ve been there. Clear those packs at your leisure on your way to Heigan. Hug the right to minimize the amount of trash pulls.

After Heigan is the gauntlet to Loatheb. This gauntlet can be extremely tricky your first few times through it and even intimidates other groups I’ve encountered… that is until I showed them the Archivis method for clearing the gauntlet. Now you too can clear that gauntlet like the joke of an instance the rest of the place is. Simply hug the left, prioritize your ranged to kill the eye stalks (and melee too, if they’re near) and interrupt them as much as possible. Don’t let your AoE go ape**** or they’ll die. Let your tanks pick up aggro and move along at a comfortable pace along the left wall. No need to bolt, just don’t waste time. Once you’ve run as far up the left as you can, make a quick dash for the bridge and kill off the remaining adds. If someone dies and you can’t summon (I’ve only seen one warlock that’s level 80 on my server) them and they can’t stealth, yell at them for not staying with group and/or AoEing too early, stop the gauntlet early (or battle rez, if you have a druid) and go back to the beginning. Hug the left, bolt for the bridge, don’t die.

Noth the Lootbringer:
Have 2 folks who can remove curse. Resto Shamans (Only Resto), Druids, and mages. Curse Removal is a priority. Let them handle it. Have the MT pick up Noth and tank him in the center of the room. Have your off-tank pick up adds. When the adds are picked up, bring them to the boss and have your single target DPS burn them down. Have your AoE burn them down. Most classes have splash damage that can hit multiple mobs, so keeping them near the boss lets you damage the boss as well as the adds.

Make sure your healers aren’t standing anywhere near the bone packs. Healers should probably be standing near or flat out on top of the main tank to ensure that the rest of the raid can peel an add off them if they end up getting healer aggro first. Noth teleports, adds come out, they get burnt down. AoE what you can. Any non-AoE should be assisting off of one target to ensure that each target is burnt down efficiently. After that, Noth teleports back and you rinse and repeat. This is a DPS check. If your raid fails here, it’ll fail in the rest of the instance. This is one of the most basic DPS checks and there are several more in the instance. Have your folks run heroics and get better blues before they come back in if you’re struggling here.

Heigan the Unpuggable:
Here by referred to as DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) from now on. Everyone in your raid must refer to him as DDR as well. Bonus points if you play terrible techno on vent during this fight. Anyone who can remove diseases during this fight should do so, especially on tanks. Shaman totems work well here.

DDR has four quadrants of the room, and the stage. During P1, the stage is the safe spot for your ranged. During P2, nobody stays on the stage. During P1 and P2, 3 of each 4 quadrants vomit green stuff up into the air. Each time the room pukes, the raid moves. You start off in quadrant 1 and then move to 2, 3 4, then back to 3, 2, 1. In phase 1, it’ll go: 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2. In Phase 2, everyone gets off the stage and moves to quadrant one. DPS comes to a halt at this point. Yell at any of those little ****ers that are getting a shot or two in before its time to move, because they’re most likely going to be the ones to die. When the room pukes, the raid needs to move and keep moving. The room will puke much more rapidly and you’ll need to move through the quadrants: 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2-3-4 for as long as it takes until the transition is over.

Don’t put the best guy in your raid on follow and hope for the best. It won’t work like that. You need to independently move. Just note that it may appear that you are in the lead or ahead of everyone else when in fact, due to latency, you may just be in the right spot. If you’re trailing, you’re going to die. Keep moving. Another thing to note is that when you reach the end of the room and you need to turn around, this is not Kindergarten. You do not touch the wall and go back. You get in just enough to get to your quadrant, turn around immediately and wait for that split second and resume movement. If anyone falls behinds and dies, or runs too fast and dies, wait until the transition is over and battle rez them up on the platform… don’t battle rez them on the floor. If they have enough health, its possible to survive the room-puke if you were too fast/slow. Healers be prepared to hot up and instant-cast heal anyone who gets hit. Don’t stop for chained casts. As long as enough healers are alive and your MT is alive, you can do this fight all day long. Sometimes, laying there dead watching the rest of your raid do this dance over and over again is humiliating enough to give those folks incentive to not screw it up next time.

Loatheb the Crit Monkey
Loatheb requires one tank. He’s tanked in the middle. Healers are prevented from healing for 17 out of every 20 seconds. You’ve got three seconds to heal folks, make it count. Priest bubbles are an awesome way to negate damage on the tank and others. Rolling hots before the “Necrotic Aura” falls off is also advised. Those hots will tick during that 3 second window. Mostly though, you want to stick to AoE heals and keeping mindful of the tank. You can begin casting while the aura is up. When the aura falls off, the heal will land and possibly let you cast again during that 3 second window.

Occasionally, happy spores come out of the grates to say hello. They look like some odd pokemon and dance their way to the center like they want a hug. Get 5 people in your raid at melee range of the spore and kill the pokemon. Upon doing so, those 5 folks will get +50% crit and 0 threat for the next 2 minutes. This is a DPS race, so ensuring that the raid has that crit helps. After the first two spores are popped, it is the responsibility of each individual to find a spore as needed, pop it as needed and resume their role. Healers can get spores as well. Crit heals are nice. Once everyone has a spore, the tank is welcome to get one as well. No one should be getting threat at this point, so the extra tank DPS won’t hurt.

Military Wing
I recommend the Military Wing third. Four Horsemen is rather intimidating to many folks who haven’t seen it before, but I’ve been able to give an explanation to a group where only half the folks saw the fight and managed to one-shot it. With this guide, I feel confident enough to explain this wing to you and alleviate any intimidation folks have from the old Naxx40.

Trash
On your way to the first boss, tank the Death Touched Warriors away from melee. They whirlwind… hard. Keep them away from the rest of the raid, actually. When you’ve finished clearing a pathway out of the first large room and are about to make your way into the balcony, beware of the possible double face pull due to the patrols. Pull those 2-3 pulls into the previous room until you’re certain you’re safe to go onto the balcony. Once you’re down on the same floor as the first boss, you do NOT have to clear all the trash. Just clear out enough trash to comfortably set yourself up for the next boss.

After you kill Razuvious, you’ll have a series of weapons to kill. They come in pairs. You want to make certain that you do your absolute best to pull only 1 pair at a time (until you overgear the place). If you end up with 4 weapons, it can cause a wipe, depending on what they are. Don’t give up, its not guaranteed, but you might want to turn off auto-pilot or those pulls. The rest of the trash is fairly simple to the next boss.

After you’ve killed boss #2, pull the next trash pack or two back into Gothik’s room. Detect Invis helps from accidental pulls. Nearly every pack you encounter has a large patrol path and many of those packs overlap. Be aware of incoming packs and have your group ready to retreat to Gothik’s room if need be.

Razuvious the Retarded
Ever sit there and wonder, if these bosses were played by intelligent people, would we ever get past them? Why hit your own guys? Go after the healers, idiot. That’s what Razuvious reminds me of when I see him. Anyways… The 10-man version of this fight is handled much differently than the 25-man version of this fight. For the 10-man, there are two crystals at the bottom of the ramp. There are no tanks required for this fight. Since you should be rolling with two tanks, I recommend having those two control the crystals.

When the encounter is engaged, Razuvious stands there like an idiot and waits for someone to attack him. I’m sure if you gave him a good 15 seconds or so, he’d get anxious and try to hit something, but the fight intentionally gives you time to pick up the adds, hit Razuvious and take him wherever you need. You’ll want 1 healer dedicated to the adds, 1 healer split on the adds and the raid, and one healer dedicated to the raid. He’ll do some random damage to the group as well as some burst physical dots to a random person. Have your dedicated healer be aware of that and keep them topped off with quick heals. Aside from that, once the tanks have him, you’re DPS is solid to unload on him for the duration of the fight.

Quick Note: Razuvious can be reset by having your raid run back up the ramp that you came down, all the way to the balcony. When you reach the second floor of the balcony, he may run around like an idiot trying to tag one of your raid members, or a pet, or a totem, but as long as you’re on the second floor, you’re safe.

Your two crystal users need to get a boss timer of some sort. I recommend Deadly Boss Mods. It displays the cooldown timer on the shield wall (which is 20 seconds). The fight largely relies on them to do their jobs consistently. Vent should be clear for these two to communicate what is going on.

The first player picks up Razuvious and puts him in some position. We like to use the edge of the wall. Your other mind controller stacks his add on top of the other. This ensures that upon switching, the boss doesn’t move and he doesn’t turn and screw up melee DPS. The adds have a bar that’s used. Generally, you just want to worry about the Bone Armor and Taunt. This is buttons #5 and #6. Anytime you’re picking up razuvious, you want to mash those buttons furiously until you’re absolutely certain that you’ve taunted and bone armored. When it’s the other person’s turn to taunt, they do the same. If you’re feeling comfortable and want to get a few extra swings in, hit 4 when its up, but priority is on the timers.

The Bone Armor severely reduces the amount of damage done to the adds. If this bone armor falls off, one hit can be fatal and cause a wipe. I recommend taunting with around 1-3 seconds to spare. When your add is no tanking, you should refresh the mind control duration. You can do this by running the add away from the raid, hitting some spell or ability on your hot bar (like a thunderclap, or self casting thorns on yourself), or hell, I think even a /dance will do it. This ensures that your Mind Control duration doesn’t run out while you’re in the middle of tanking.

If one add dies, you’re almost guaranteeing an incoming wipe. If the boss is almost dead and the bone armor is up on the other add, you can buy 20 seconds of time to finish him off. If not, have the add pick him up anyways while your raid runs safely to reset position.

Pro Tip #1: Mark of Blood can cheese this fight. Mark of Blood is a talent that is 21 points deep in the Blood tree of a Death Knight. It causes the enemy (Razuvious) to heal their target for 4% of their maximum health every single time they’re hit (lasts 20 seconds). I’ve seen an add go from 30% health to full health (with the assistance of healers) when this happens.

Pro Tip #2: Don’t use a crystal when you have a pet out. If you have a lock/hunter/DK do it, make sure their pet is tucked away.

Pro Tip #3: Leader of the Pack is helpful here. V/E from a shadowpriest helps as well. LoTP is raid wide, V/E is not. Put the two mind controllers in the same group as a priest. Their health returns are minimal, but add up significantly over time.

Gothik the Trash Mob With Epics
This fight is all about your proper group composition. If you survive Phase 1, Phase 2 is an utter joke. There are two sides… live side and dead side. Live side is the first half of the room as you entered it. Dead side is the other side of the gate where the bone piles are.

Here’s how you want to stack your group composition:

Live Side:
Tank
Best Healer
3 DPS

Dead Side:
Top Tank
Remaining 2 Healers
Top 2 DPS

Dead side requires more healing and is significantly harder than live side. As enemies are killed on the live side, their souls travel along the balcony and end up in the bone piles on the dead side where your team has to kill them again.

I sincerely recommend a “defensive” position for both sides until you outgear this place. This means that you wait for the mobs to come to you, rather than chase them down. You should defensively have your Tank up front, DPS by the tank, and your healers safely behind them. Set yourself up in a way that everything has to go through your tank in order to get to your healers. This will prevent them from being overrun.

Phase 1 lasts 4 minutes. It starts off extremely easy and gets progressively more difficult and more overwhelming as time goes on. Have your raid pop bloodlust when 1 minute remains. Focus fire is critical here. Protecting your healers is critical here.

Here’s some things to note. Your tanks do not need to be picking up every single add that comes out. As time progresses, more and more elites will come out and they need to focus on holding those. Your DPS is capable of tanking the little adds with ~10k health while taking minimal damage. You should have one DPS on each side responsible for making sure that they stay off the healers. Focus fire is critical here. Assist off the tank and burn down the lowest HP target to ensure that your tank doesn’t get overwhelmed and dies.

As time goes on, during the last minute, Live side needs to time their kills and slow down slightly. They’ll burn through their adds quickly and in doing so, will overwhelm the dead side. You have time, be careful as to what you’re sending back and communicate appropriately. If Dead side is getting overwhelmed, hold off on DPS and let Dead Side catch up. Doing this is what has helped my group succeed.

This is the bulk of the fight. If you survive this with at least 1 tank and 1 healer on each side and hopefully some DPS, you’ve got a high chance of winning this fight. The “blow your cooldowns” portion of this fight is during the last minute of Phase1, not at all during Phase 2.

After this, the boss comes out and nukes on one side, then will teleport and nuke the other side. Once he hits ~30%, the gate opens up and both sides can join each other. I never once saw the guy melee, so its essentially just heal whoever he bolts. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a tank if one of them went splat and you managed to survive P1.

Pro Tip: Anything that can slow cast times, whether it be curse of tongues, or mind numbing poison will reduce his shadowbolt time significantly, making the second phase of this fight a real joke.

The Four Blind Horsemen
This is the fight where no matter what I do, I always try and preface this explanation that folks need to pay attention and try not to let their eyes glaze over. I’ll try and do the same here. After buffing up, everyone can run to the proper positions. You can run along the outer edges of the walls and not aggro these guys. Hell, I’ve reached their steps and not aggro’d these guys. I have to go up and punch one of their horses in the face before they’ll actually do anything. Here’s your basic setup. Assume that you’re standing at the entrance gate, staring at the bosses:

One tank and one healer: Front right

Your Best Healer: Back Right

One DPS with heal buttons: Back Left (Elemental Shaman’s and Boomkins are perfect for this. In the odd occasion that you have a warlock on your server that hit 80 and is in your raid, its possible that the lock can offset some healing by using drain life.)

One Tank, One Healer, and everyone else: Front Left.

For the sake of repetition, I will explain what needs to be done in an easy to understand manner so that folks understand what they need to prioritize in their head while they’re doing this fight. Upon engaging this fight, all four bosses run to their respective corners. The two folks in the back operate independently from the remaining 8 in the front. They are their own entity and ignore the chaos up front. The healing in the back is very intensive. Here’s what the two in the back need to focus on:

Stay out of void zones. The back-left boss will throw them out. Tossing out heals and not watching void zones is what wipes the raid the quickest. Your best healer needs to be back here. It is intensive on the healing and demanding on the situational awareness.

Be within 30 yards of your target. You don’t need to be in melee range. You just need to be within 30 yards. If you stuck a person back there with the ability to heal themselves, just make sure they’re within 30 yards of the boss. When its time to switch, you simply both trade place, ensure you’re within 30 yards of the new boss, and within healing range (40 yards) of each other. I can’t stress this enough… stay out of void zones.

For the folks up front. The boss at the front left meteors. Everyone should stack on top of each other to spread this damage out. Aside from that, the damage isn’t too bad. The healer/tank on the front right should get used to standing on top of each other, regardless of which boss they have just so they have the rhythm down. The meteor will hit for a lot more, but is very healable, so no need to panic.

The marks – Each boss places their individual mark on anyone within range. This mark stacks indefinitely and the boss will pulse damage to that player which is then amplified exponentially based upon how many stacks you have. You don’t really need to know which mark you have or what it looks like or what it’s called. You just need to know how many stacks you have. Now, I know other groups have a different limit, but for the sake of simplicity here’s what I recommend.

1 Stack – Do nothing
2 Stacks – Do nothing, be prepared for the third stack
3 Stacks – Immediately engage the “swap” (see below).
4 Stacks – This may occur, do not panic. This strategy anticipates that you may obtain a 4th stack of a certain mark. It will not kill you. The time spent doing the “swap” during the third stack anticipates that you may get a 4th, and that’s fine.

The Swap: For the two in the back, the swap is as simple as trading places. When you reach 3 stacks, you just swap, be mindful of the void zones, and ensure that you’re within 30 yards of your boss. If no one is within 30 yards of either of those bosses for an extended period of time, they will AoE the entire room for obscene damage and cause a wipe.

For the 8 up front: When you approach 3 marks, the raid immediately moves. Your DPS and your healers should act as if they are tethered to their tank. When the tank moves, they move with them. Always stay with your tank. The two tanks will move close towards each other and taunt each other’s bosses of each other. If done appropriately, the two bosses up front should be in different places. The reason why everyone must be “tethered” to their tanks (that includes the healer who is responsible for healing front right) is that Thane could possibly meteor during a transition. This is a big issue if people are split up, as he can meteor a random person within range. If one of your straggling healers or DPS is targeted, they’ll get oneshot. Moving as a group ensures no one-shots during a transition. Yes, it may seem silly to move with your tank and then simply run back to where you were, but its important.

And that’s the bulk of the fight. The two tanks will trade-off like this every time they immediately reach 3 marks. DPS as much as you can. Use Bloodlust/Heroism immediately and burn burn burn.

When one add dies, your chances of success go up greatly. At this point, your raid only has to worry about marks. How you handle this is up to you. When you’re down to 3 adds, its possible that you may have to run away from the boss when you reach 3 stacks. When this occurs, run away from the boss, sit in a dead zone, twiddle your thumbs, and wait for the stacks to fall off. Resume your role when the stacks fall.

Afterwards, have your raid split up between the remaining two bosses. Each player is now responsible for watching their own stacks, which by now, may stagger differently. Rule of thumb, if you’ve got 3 stacks, get away from the boss, either to another add, or to a dead zone to let the stacks fall off. Void zones are still at play here. If you’re down to the last two, you’re nearly guaranteed a kill.

Abomination Wing

This wing is probably the most difficult of the four in relativity to the rest of the instance. This wing has four bosses while the other have three and are harder gear checks on certain classes, have large dependencies for every single of your raid not to screw up and require more coordination. Overall, its not something to be intimidated by as its still very doable overall, but I recommend that you hit this wing last. If you can successfully clear the other wings, you’re ready for this one.

Trash

The Patch trash is very simple. Burn everything down that gets in your way. When you get to the room with the AoE slimes, you don’t need to kite them. In the 10-man, these slimes are easily tanked. (I do not suggest tanking them in the 25’s). AoE them down. Stay out of the slime if you can, heal up when you can’t avoid it and clear out everything you can from there. If you think you can AoE it down, you can.

Grobbulus trash is simple as well. Slight AoE knockback, so don’t get yourself punted towards the boss if he’s hanging around downstairs.

Gluth has no trash.

Thaddius trash is a pain only in the sense that if you don’t pull them back in the previous boss room, they can overwhelm you and wipe you. Similar to 4H trash, many trash packs path over the same area between your room and Thaddius’ room. Pull them in and clear them in the previous boss’ room until you’re comfortable to proceed.

Patchwerk the Mac Truck

Patch is a fairly straight forward boss. It’s about as tank and spank as it gets. So much in fact that people use him as a gauge on how their stand-still DPS is when running meters. The pull is straight-forward. The tank will want to pull him across the slime (while not touching it themselves) and ensure that his ass is also out of the slime so the melee DPS has somewhere to stand. Melee DPS does NOT want to run right away. They don’t even want to get close. The only people that should be going in are the two tanks.

Your main tank and off-tank will want to swap roles on this one. Your most well geared tank will be the off tank for this fight as the hateful strikes will hit harder than his normal damage. In the 10-man version of the current day Naxx, Patch’s hateful strike will hit the #2 person on threat in melee range. You remember that rogue that did this back in the day that’s telling all the melee DPS to go sit in the slime? Don’t listen to him, it’s not true anymore. Hateful Strikes are based strictly upon who has #2 on melee threat. If done right, this should be the tank. Make sure that your off-tank doesn’t exceed the main tank on threat (the hatefuls have an additional threat mechanic built in to boost the threat as well). DPS should never ever have an issue with threat once the tanks are in position. I had a rogue once run in to do his misdirect while they were getting the boss into position. The off-tank was a hair out of the hitbox while the movement took place and the rogue got one-shot by a hateful. Once in position, no one moves the entire fight.

Heals will only need to go on the two tanks. At 5%, he has a soft enrage that’ll need additional healing. The actual enrage comes after 6-ish minutes. If you’ve cleared the other wings, you’re more than prepared to tank, DPS and heal this fight. By the way, Patch hits hard…. Really hard.

Pro-tip #1: This boss is not tauntable. Because of this, Death Knights can skyrocket their damage using Army of the Dead…. Even higher if they use Dancing Rune Weapon when they channel Army of the Dead. Personally, I went from third place to well beyond first when I used this ability.

Side note: The hateful mechanics have always been disputed, even back in the old Naxx days. You’ve got the Archivis Guaranteed Seal that he will only hit the #2 on aggro in melee range. In the 25 man Naxx, he hits #2 and #3… that’s it. To prove this point in my 25-man, I sat at 25k HP the entire fight and saw the tanks dip occasionally below 20k while I took zero damage. I did not “click off my fort” or “stand in the slime”. Between Blood Aura, Leader of the Pack and Blood Presence, standing in the slime was a futile effort.

Grobbulus the Pull-My-Finger
Grobbulus is one of the more difficult fights for many raids from what I’ve seen. This fight can be overly complicated by many people, so let me break this down as easily as possible. I refer to the rings on the ground as “fart rings”. It seems to stick in people’s minds.

Self Fart Ring: Every 10-15 seconds or so (this is more of a “what it feels like” approximation than reality, although I could be right), he drops a fart ring on the ground. This ring lasts a pretty long time and slowly expands its radius outward. Standing in this ring creates a ton of damage. Move the boss out of this ring when he drops this ability. See below for exact MT movements.

Player Fart Ring: Grobbulus thinks that not only is it funny when he farts, but when you fart as well. He will occasionally pick a non-MT player in the raid and give them gas. If you’re running a boss mod, a skull should appear over that player’s head. This player will have a “disease” on them and when that disease expires, it will do like 8k damage to them and everyone around them. Using immunities like Ice Block, Cloak of Skill and Pallyhearth will certainly nullify the damage to yourself, but will still drop a fart ring and nuke everyone around you. Using these immunities aren’t a bad thing, as long as you don’t use them when you’re around anyone else. Run to your designated spot, pop your immunity and move on.

Slimes: To make things more complicated, Grobbulus will slime the tank, Nickelodeon style. For every person in front of Grobbulus when he slimes, he will spawn one blob. If multiple people are in front of the boss, he’ll create multiple blobs. Don’t panic if this occurs, his facing gets wonky and occasionally this will happen. Pick them up, burn them down. You can either tank these with the melee and AoE them down overtop of the boss, or if healing hurts, pull them out and let the ranged DPS burn them down. These are a priority over the boss. The only exception would be if the boss was at ~5% in which case you just want to burn the guy down.

Enrage: He enrages at 30%. That’s when you blow bloodlust. He’ll create more slimes, more self fart rings and more player fart rings. This DOES NOT MEAN PANIC! Jesus Christ I’m so tired of people running around with their wrists flapping in the air like a little girl acting like they don’t know what to do. Everything just happens more often and is still executed the exact same way. The boss gets kited a little faster, more people will drop more rings just like before and everyone goes on their merry way. Save Bloodlust/Heroism for this time.

Main Tank: Start him off just at the bottom of the ramp there where he paths. Each time he drops a fart ring, you want to follow the edge of the room (not hugging the wall, but out slightly). The goal is to move him out far enough to give melee enough room to hit him from behind without the fart ring expanding outwards and damaging the melee as it creeps up. A good 10-15 yards will suffice. Don’t overkite. You need the room space to go around. Follow the room clockwise and don’t pin yourself in a corner. At 30%, be ready to move a little faster. Don’t constantly move, just move like you did before. Fart ring appears, you move.

Off Tank: DPS when you’re able to. Your job is to pick up the slime(s) and either have them available for melee to DPS, or if the healing strain is too much, pull them out for the ranged DPS to nuke down. Priority #1 is getting aggro over those slimes. Our group tanks them near the boss so that splash melee DPS (Blade Flurry, Wandering Plague, Cleave, Whirlwind, etc) can hit the boss and the adds (keeping adds near the boss is a great tactic for much of this instance, including fights like Noth, by the way). Multiple adds may appear. Be prepared to pick them all up. Hitting anything other than a tank is a no-no.

Melee DPS: Stay behind the boss at all times. When the boss is kited along his path, don’t get too anxious to move too fast and get in front of the guy. If you get in front, he’ll drop additional slimes that’ll need to be tanked and then burnt down. If your raid leader asks you to, burn down the slimes as priority #1. If the slimes are tanked near the boss, use your multi-target abilities.

Ranged DPS: Know that melee will move with the tank automatically because well, they need to in order to hit the boss. You, on the other hand, can sit there and nuke all day long with little movement at all. At least… you thought you could. You want to stay relatively near the boss. As the boss is kited, your position should move. Those fart rings of the past will expand outwards and hit you eventually if you stay back too far. On top of that, players will be running back there to drop off their own fart rings. If you’re in their way, or near them when they explode, you’ll get hit with AoE damage. Best rule of them is to move perpendicular to the boss as it moves.

Healers: If you’ve got an ability to remove disease, take it off our hotbar, unbind it from your mouse, whatever. In fact, bind it to something on the numeric keypad, then take your keyboard, smash that end of it on the end of your desk until the numeric keypad cracks off and toss it out the window. If a disease gets removed, it’ll cause the damage immediately to that player and everyone around them and drop the fart ring immediately. Most people wipe because they think the damage comes from another source, but this is actually what causes it. “Why does melee take 8k damage all the time? Must be from those slimes.” Wrong, those slimes AoE for like 1-2% of your health. If you’re getting hit for 8k, you’re either tanking, or you got blown up by a disease. When a person gets a skull over their head, make sure they’re topped off while they run by. They’re going to take disease damage, followed by additional blow-up damage. Top them off again as they run back into the raid. For positioning, see above in the “Ranged DPS” section. Straggling behind and standing at the “drop off” point for farts can get yourself killed. Otherwise, heal the tank, heal the off-tank as needed, and top off the raid from any AoE damage.

Fart Ring Drop-offs: Everyone but the MT will get a fart ring eventually. Even the Off-tank will get a fart ring, which makes things very interesting when he’s also tanking blobs. Common sense kicks in and tells you, let him take those blobs with him, drop his ring off and resume DPS. Using immunities is frowned upon, unless you’re in position to drop a ring off and good to go. Using an immunity will drop the ring immediately and AoE nuke everyone around you. If you’ve made it into position early, timing an immunity can actually help the raid.

Now, if you want to know where to drop off a fart-ring, the first thing to realize is that you don’t panic. Know that the boss will be kited in a predictable clockwise motion. Know that ring will be placed and spread out predictably. These rings expand over time. The further back you go, the wider the rings appear. Your job, upon getting hit with the fart disease, is to immediately stop whatever you are doing, run back to where previous fart rings were dropped off, drop your ring and move back. Yell at anyone on vent who is going to get hit by your explosion. If they took my advice above, they shouldn’t be in your way. You do NOT want to drop one off in the middle of the room. You do NOT want to drop one off in healer camp. You do NOT want to stand within the radius of another ring while dropping yours off. If done properly, your rings should interlace with the boss rings and in the end, it should look like a very sloppy Olympic Rings icon.

The goal is that once you’ve got the motion down and people understand the drop-offs and the adds are burnt down like clockwork is to keep it together at 30%. Bloodlust/Heroism is important and knowing that while everything that’s going on is going to happen much more frequently, that you can still do this very easily. Everyone wants to be aware of their positioning during this fight and those who are dropping off fart rings should be vocal about those who forget to get out of your way.

Gluth the Puppy

Truth is, Gluth really just wants his belly rubbed. Problem is, he wants to your blood to do it with. There are a few things to worry about and if your healers have an issue timing their heals at the right moment (not the entire time, just at one specific element of the fight) and your kiters/slowers are having issues, you’re going to have problems. Otherwise, the fight is a joke.

There is no trash to this boss. The reason for this is because the pipe itself causes enough frustration and is enough of a pacing mechanism. If you’ve failed frogger after Patch, you’re probably going to fail the depth perception test for this pipeline as well, which means you’re going to fall off, run back through frogger, then die, then get a rez, run through frogger and die again, while exploding the healer that rez’d you so that the paladin can run down, rez the both of you, while the three of you run through frogger and the pally laughs and bubbles and runs through it, leaving himself alive, but killing his team mates again, who then release because they need to repair. 20 minutes of this nonsense occurs while you wonder where you went wrong spending your Saturday evenings before the second tunnel causes you to lose 3 more players… because they don’t understand what “right side” (This will also be an issue on Thaddius, by the way) means or your healers don’t understand what “don’t heal” means and upon jumping into the fight, the dog one-shots the healer.

Now, if you managed to actually get to the boss, aggro’d him appropriately with all players alive, read on. You will need two tanks for this fight. The boss will cause a mortal wound debuff that reduces healing received by 10%. This stacks indefinitely. Your off-tank will need to taunt at 3-ish stacks. Once the MT’s stacks fall off, the tanks work out a rotation to taunt back and forth once their own stacks fall off. Tanks should try and be vocal about who is actually tanking so the healers can keep an eye on them.

The other portion of this fight occurs by having zombies running around. These zombies, upon reaching the boss, will heal him for 5% of his health per zombie. Because of this, these zombies will need to be kited. They can’t be tanked, because they put a stacking debuff on whoever they hit that causes them to get hit for additional damage every time they’re hit by a zombie. I have personal experience being the kiter as a Death Knight. Most anyone can be a kiter, but I did it because well, I don’t trust anyone else to do it. In the past, if you ever noticed a person successfully outrun a trash mob during a wipe, this is probably your ideal kiter. Hopefully, you’ve got some sort of shaman in your group. If you don’t, well, hopefully you’ll figure something out, because I haven’t done this fight without one. Your shaman’s number one priority is to drop an earthbind totem back near the grates. If you’ve got two shamans, they’re both dropping earthbind totems. I don’t’ care if it hurts their DPS/healing, they’re dropping them, and properly refreshing them as well. Letting them expire is not acceptable.

Your kiter’s job is to keep an eye on the three grates and grab aggro on these zombies and kite them in a circular manner around the earthbind totems. As a Death Knight, I drop Death and Decay near the raid every time its up. D&D catches anything I missed. If you’re a hunter/mage/whatever, you could just tag the mob. I use Icy Touch to pick these up. I use Frost Presence for the extra threat. During my kite path, I run them through the Death and Decay to ensure healers don’t snag me for the additional aggro. If you don’t have Unholy Aura, Unholy presence may be the way to go to pick up the movement speed (or some enchanted boots with speed increase… I’ve found this is extremely helpful, if not mandatory). The job of your kiter is to hold aggro on these mobs and to prevent from being hit as much as possible. These mobs can be slowed and/or stunned/frozen/etc a million different ways. If one gets loose, your raid should not panic. Simply get its attention, bring it to the kiter, let the kiter get aggro and run back. These things hit like wet noodles, even on cloth. The issue comes from their stacking debuff that doesn’t make their hits so weak after a while, especially in numbers.

The big boss gimmick for this fight is an ability called “Decimate”. This decimate will trigger an instant panic for your entire raid if they do not properly understand what to do. First off, your tanks need to be vocal about who is tanking depending on who has stacks of the mortal wound debuff. When the decimate timer is about to hit, you should rephrain from taunt-swapping at this time. Decimate will drop the HP of everyone in the room to 5%, including the zombies, healers, DPS and tanks. Healers, do not panic. The raid will not take damage, so do not heal them. Your priority is to heal the MT. Use instant cast heals to top them off. Nature’s Swiftness, priest bubble, holy shock, whatever. Get them out of that 5% and then back up to health. Get the off-tank up to speed asap as well. If the MT dies, they can be battle rez’d and put back to work while the off-tank taunts and holds him. Next, heal the kiter so they can resume kiting and then top off the DPS.

When a decimate hits, all zombies will ignore the kiter and run immediately for the boss. All DPS will AoE these adds down and absolutely make sure that none get to the boss. Single target non-AoE will want to stunlock/burn down anything that seems to be ahead of the pack. Death Grip works wonders to snag that one that got away. You can AoE freeze these adds in place and AoE them down. If done properly, none should get to the boss and you should be fine. After that, it’s simply rinse/repeat.

Healing on this fight will be on the main tank’s and occasionally the kiter. The kiter, should take minimal damage, but if for whatever reason the slowing doesn’t happen, he could take bursty damage from being overwhelmed by zombies.

Thaddius

Split your raid up evenly at the start. 1 tank on each side. The two adds will need to be burnt down similar to the manner that R&J were burnt down in the Opera House. They both need to be killed within seconds of each other, so time your DPS accordingly.

Throughout the fight, the adds will occasionally punt the tanks from one platform to the other. When the tank lands, he should immediately taunt the add that he’s landed to and DPS can resume. Tanks do not need to stand on the edge like they did in Naxx40. They just need to be up on that platform somewhere. The mobs have a tether to them that can cause a wipe if they end up having to run down the ramp. Don’t kite them down there and don’t run down there.

Once those adds are dead, you’ll go from your platform and jump on to Thaddius’ platform. Anyone who fails this jump just needs to swim through the slime (quickly) and jump again. Any decent raid leader will require those who fail the jump to purchase Super Mario Brothers after the raid.

Shortly after the adds die, the boss will appear out of stone and will be engaged. Please take note that he has a massive hit box. Not his little circle, but his hit box itself is massive. You need to take advantage of this and melee will need to move to max melee range for this. Occasionally, this boss will cast Polarity Shift. This Polarity Shift works just like it did in Naxx40 and works just like it did on that boss in BC-Mechanar. Your raid can use any method they want, but for my raids we use Positive, Left…… Negative, Right. If you’re tanking the boss where he stands, it should look like:

Positive | Boss | Negative

People will need to run to their appropriate side upon engaging the boss. For safety reasons, I always run slightly beyond max melee range upon swapping and then inch myself into melee range. This ensures I don’t blow up any of the slower folks. I encourage other folks to do this as well. The only exception being the MT, who wants to move the boss as little as possible (it will happen). If the boss moves, do not panic. If he moved away from you, slowly inch up. If he moved closer to you, move back. All ranged will want to stack on top of melee for this fight. This is a DPS race and people get a DPS boost based upon how many people of like polarity are stacked on top of each other. If people die, less stacks will be available and DPS will be lost and your attempts at beating the enrage timer will be futile. This may take some practice to get used to…. Especially in a 25-man setting where chance of having “that guy” is greater than in a 10-man setting.

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Frost-Wing will come at a later date

sunzz

My guide to naxx - get 10 people in semi decent heroic gear + a brain go in and roflface it.

Anti

sunzz wrote: »

My guide to naxx - get 10 people in semi decent heroic gear + a brain go in and roflface it.

Pretty much yeah

Anti

also as a side note, the videos on tankspot.com are pretty good if you can get over the dudes annoying accent.

Sephina

Well content is reallly easy these days >.> this is pugged !:D