Shade of Aran



Strategy





Placement

There is no placement really...he doesn't really move...he has no real
aggro, and pretty much just stays in the center of his room.



The Encounter

Although this fight is a huge pain in the butt...it is a lot of fun
and really easy if your raid pays attention. There really isn't ANY
room for error on this fight. If one person fails to listen it can mean
a wipe for your raid. First let me list all his moves as he has a TON
of them...



Normal Moves

Frostbolt ~4400 noncrit damage.

Fireball ~4400ish noncrit damage.

Arcane Missiles 5 sec channeled, 1500 noncrit damage per missile.

Chains of Ice - 10 second Root, does not break on damage. Dispellable.

Conflagration - Deals 8000 fire damage over 10 sec to the affected
player, and a smaller amount of damage to nearby players. Conflagged
players are disoriented and cannot use any spells or abilities.

Slow - Reduces movement and melee attack speed by a considerable
amount for 10 seconds. Dispellable. Druids can shapeshift to remove the
reduce movement effect.



Special Abilities

Nielas Aran's special abilities cannot be locked out by
Counterspells. For example, if you CS a Fireball, he can't fireball for
10 seconds, but he could Flame Wreath at any time.



* Counterspell - 10yd radius AoE around Aran, occurs very often. Any caster in range is quickly rendered useless.

* Blizzard 1700/second, large AoE that moves slowly clockwise 360
degrees around the edge of his arena. Kinda like a less damaging Cthun
dark glare. The blizzard has a large area of effect, and it covers one
side of the room. You will be hit by the Blizzard if you are meleeing
him and on the side it's travelling on.

* Magnetic Pull / Super Arcane Explosion - Pulls everyone to the
center of the room, Slows everyone, then starts a 10 second
uninterruptable cast that deals 12,000 noncrit damage to a 30 yard
radius (note that the room is only 35yds wide). If you start running as
soon as you're pulled, you can avoid the AE even while Slowed.

* Flame Wreath - 5 sec uninterruptable cast. Targets 3 random
people in the raid. If there is no one close to them, nothing happens.
If there are any other players near the target, it creates a circle of
fire on the ground for ~20 seconds. Anyone who crosses the flame wreath
(moving in or out) will trigger a 3-4k Explosion that hits everyone in
the room. Do not use ANY abilities which makes yourself immune to magic
effects (such as Divine Shield, Ice Block, Cloak of Shadows) while in a
Flame Wreath, as this will cause an explosion. You also can't use mana
fiend, battle rez, or ankh while this is up.





FOCUS UP PEOPLE

Basically you can just start the fight with crazy DPS, you want to
get him down as fast as possible. Your tank can also wear DPS gear
because he won't be tanking. Also everyone should have AT LEAST 7500 hp
for this fight and bring pots and healthstones if you have a warlock.
Throughout the entire fight he will use his primary abilities and use
his special ones in random intervals. The important thing is just keep
EVERYONE topped off at full HP and be paying attention to what moves he
is using. Have 2 people assigned to interrupting each normal spell cast
he has, so like the warrior and a rogue to intterupt his fireball and a
shaman and a rogue to interrupt his frostbolt. I would let him cast his
arcane missles as it takes more time and is easier to heal. You can
pretty much lock him out of casting frostbolt and fireball.



The Blizzard can be easily avoided, just look where he is casting
it and follow behind it. If you get caught in a blizzard run through
the middle and get out of it, you can not outrun it since it moves. The
flame wreath just means DO NOT MOVE...at all. Do not jump, twitch,
turn, anything. You can cast, but that is it. If he does a flame wreath
and a blizzard after one another still don't move. Call out that you
are stuck in the blizzard and the healers will act accordingly. His
Arcane Explosion move is REDICULOUSLY easy to dodge and if you get hit
by it you need to be removed from the raid. He will pull everyone to
the middle and as soon as this happens just start running to the walls.
As the healers are running take this opportunity to cast HoTs on people
and PoT or bandage once you get to the wall as he does no DPS during
this. Also, dispell anyone who is chains of iced needs to be dispelled.



Keep everyone topped off and keep the DPS up until 40%. At 40% he
spawns 4 water elementals which can be completely CCed. I reccommend
having your tank pick one up, fear and banish 2 if you have a warlock,
and rogues can stunlock the last one. Hunters can also trap and priests
can fear. They are affected by silence as well. Healing gets a bit
intense here but just last for 90 seconds of this and they despawn.
Once they despawn it is the same thing as before they spawned and you
can just DPS him down. I would reccommend saving cooldowns for after
the adds so you can DPS Aran down quicker as your healers should be
close to running out of mana.



Also if Shade of Aran gets to about 30000 mana he will do an AoE
polymorph for about 10 seconds and then pyroblast everyone in the raid
for ~7k. You can line of sight this so when he gets close to 30% mana
everyone run to the wall and use the bookcases to line of sight him can
avoid the sheep and AoE allowing you time to regen. Top everyone off
before this so in case someone gets sheeped they don't instantly die
from the pyro. If you get hit with the pyro IMMEDIATELY use a potion or
get a heal. Before you go into this fight you need to make sure you
equip some stam gear and get above 7200 hp with buffs so that if you
get hit by the Pyroblast you won't die.



KEYNOTES



* LISTEN and PAY ATTENTION, I can not stress this enough. Basically
if you move with a flame wreath up, you wipe the group. Also you are a
moron if you die to the arcane explosion. Just run when he draws you
near him.

* Get out of the blizzard, do not try to outrun it just run
through the middle is the best way. You shouldn't ever get hit by it
cause it moves and you can just follow behind it, it always moves
clockwise.

* If you get hit by a pyroblast IMMEDIATELY potion or get healed.
Same thing applies if you combat rez or ankh, Aran has a semi smart
aggro in which if someone is low on HP he will target them and try to
burn them down.

* The adds can be completely CC, forget DPS on Aran when they spawn as CCing them and waiting to DPS is much easier.

* Pay attention to his mana, around 30% run to the sides and line
of sight him, just heal people till he does his sheep and take the
moment to regen.

* Set up good spell interrupt rotations and let the arcane missles be the move he casts, its easiest to heal through.

* Save cooldowns for after his adds despawn, then burn him.

* If you ankh or get combat rezzed immediately pot or ask for a NS
heal before the rez as you will most likely die as soon as rezzing if
you don't get a heal.

* Make sure to have 7200 hp so that you can live through a
pyroblast if it hits you. Just get topped off IMMEDIATELY once it goes
off. Healthstones and Pots help a lot, just pop them as soon as you are
hit and no worries.















Terestian Illhoof



Strategy





This fight used to be a joke but now he is actually pretty hard and
requires a good paladin, a good warlock, and healers that are on the
top of their game. The buff is his imps do more damage, he does more
damage, his shackle heals more, and his shackles do more damage. This
strategy has the Paladin and Warlock in the same group with
concentration aura so the Warlock can hellfire next to Illhoof and his
imp portals the entire encounter.



Placement



* MT - The only special placement is the tank, he needs to tank
Illhoof right next to the middle of the room near the sacrifice spot so
that when someone gets sacrificed DPS can just turn around and own the
shackles.

* Warlock - The warlock should stand about to the left of where
Illhoof is tanked, this is so his AoE is hitting both imp spawn points
to pull aggro, hits Illhoof and his elite imp, AND hits the shackles
when they appear.

* Healers/Casters - Just stand on top of the warlock so any loose imps can be hit by his AoE and hopefully aggro on him.

Hunters - Should stay at close to max range on Illhoof so that when
the shackles spawn you can DPS them with your good bow DPS and not
crappy melee DPS.





The Encounter

The pull should be done by the MT running into the roof and
grabbing aggro on Illhoof AND his elite imp. He will be taking a good
amount of damage so all healers except the one assigned to healing the
warlock should focus on healing him. Illhoof summons imps throughout
the fight and has an elite imp pet which can be killed throughout the
fight as well. If you kill the imp Illhoof takes a 25% increase damage
taken debuff which can help on DPS for Illhoof. The pet can just be
killed through moves such as blade flurry, cleave, and the warlocks AoE
since he is tanked by the MT. He does not need to be focused. Every so
often he shackles a random player and that player's shackles need to be
killed IMMEDIATELY as it not only is a lot of damage a second to the
player, but it heals Illhoof too. Also you need an offtank gaining
aggro on Illhoof because your MT can be shackled and you don't want him
loose on the raid.



In order to AoE down the imps just have a Paladin in with a warlock
with concentration Aura on. Then have one person focus on healing the
warlock while he does nothing but hellfire close to illhoof and will
get aggro on all the imps. This keeps minimal imps up at a time, DPSes
Illhoof's pet, the demon chains, and Illhoof himself. Also fel armor
increases their healing received by 25%, throw in a tree form druid and
that is another ~100 healing. The treeform druid can then just HoT up
the warlock and assist the other healers on healing the MT and healing
the shackled target.



DPS needs to be FAST on this fight, so as soon as the tank has
aggro go balls to the walls DPS on Illhoof and like I said his pet can
be killed throughout the encounter by using AoE type moves. I would not
recommend trying to focus down the pet as it takes away DPS from
Illhoof. His elite imp doesn't have that much health and his lesser imp
adds have almost none either, just got to make sure you can keep most
of them on the warlock. He also has a debuff which increases fire
damage taken by 500...which can HURT due to his imp adds doing nothing
but fire damage, but with the increased heals to the warlock and
consant death of imps, it shouldn't be an issue. This should be a bit
of a gear check for DPS and Healers but a rinse and repeat fight.



KEYNOTES



* Don't really focus on his pet imp, just DPS it with AoE style moves throughout the encounter.

* Make a macro that says /target Demon the shackles are called
demon shackles and as soon as someone gets sacrificed you can use that
macro you immediately start DPSing those down.

* The shackles need to be killed IMMEDIATELY as they heal Illhoof
by a substantial amount and can kill people VERY quickly, the person
who gets shackled should call it out so he gets immediate attention.

* Healers keep tons of HoTs on the warlock as he will take most of
the healing, I would assign everyone to healing the MT and 1 person to
focus on healing the warlock, if the warlock gets the flame debuff and
the 1 healer is having trouble ask for temporary help from 1 other
healer.

* You need your main tank to build aggro on both Illhoof and his
Elite imp so give him a few seconds before unloading and AoEing.

* Without a Paladin and a Warlock this fight will be really tough
because you won't be able to have the pally put on Concentration Aura
which allows your warlock to cast hellfire the entire fight and your
healers won't be interrupted either, Have the warlock stand in the
middle of the room so his hellfire is doing DPS to Illhoof, his imp,
the shackles, and his adds. You should have very little trouble with
adds if you do this.