The Nexus

First off, head down the left corridor, somewhere in that corridor will be either an Azure Magus or an Azure Warder. Reflect the Frostbolts the Magus’ cast. The next set of mobs is two Mage Slayers with one Mage Hunter Ascendant. The Mage Slayers are demon dogs who will cast Draw Magic, which increases their damage by 50%. If they both cast it, you can get some “What? I died?” moments. The Mage Hunter Ascendant will be one of three different kinds of mob, arcane, frost, or fire. The Frost Variety will cast Freezing Trap which will cause you to lose aggro, so try to avoid the trap. They all will cast Aura of Arcane Haste, which should be removed.

At the bottom of the ramp you’ll see a frozen Alliance/Horde Ranger, the main thing you’ll have to worry about with these guys is Rapid Shot, where they’ll shoot random members of the group, luckily we have a whole plethora of stuns available, so just stun this. In the larger groups with two of these I just shockwave when I see one casting this. The next pulls have a random composition; the Clerics are healers. The Berserkers will War Stomp which will knock you up in the air, no threat reduction though. After two of the larger groups, you’ll come across the first boss in the Heroic version, or a mini-boss in non-heroic version.

The Commander of the opposing faction will have two healers with him, you’ll want to pull him from range and then move back towards the entrance of the hall, as he fears every 20-30 seconds. Other than that he’ll charge the furthest away party member, stunning them for 2 seconds, and occasionally getting a melee hit in. He’ll whirlwind occasionally, and if you’re a new tank, you’ll want to run out of this, as it’ll hit for twice as much as a normal attack. After you kill the two healers, just find somewhere to tank him, he can be disarmed if you’re healer is having trouble keeping you up, remember to use Berserker Rage during the fear, I generally hit Shield Block during this to help the healer out. After that there will be two groups of 4 mobs, made up of Mage Hunter Initiates, Mage Hunter Ascendants, and Stewards. You’ve already dealt with Ascendants, so the only things to know is the Initiates will Drain mana, I always shield bash this, as the less drinking, the more killing, and the Stewarts have a AoE Silence and bring back the Spellbreaker move.

After you clear two of those groups, you’ll be at the second boss, Grand Magus Telestra, she casts Firebomb, which does damage to you and anyone around you, Gravity Well, which flings the group around the room doing minor damage every second for about 6 seconds, get some shield slams in here or something. At 50% and 15% she will split into 3 casters, frost, fire, and arcane. The Arcane is the one you’ll want to take care of first as she’ll polymorph and AoE stun. Then Frost as she AoEs with Blizzard, the lowest threat is the fire one, as she’ll just attack with some fire spells, nothing important. All 3 forms are stunnable, silenceable, and crowd controllable.

The only thing you need to know about the next set of pulls is the Azure Enforcers will Mortal Strike, and the Crazed-Mana Surges will Mana Burn, again shield bash so the healer doesn’t have to drink as much. The third boss Anomalus is a tank and spank for you, just know that at 75, 50, and 25 percent he’ll become immortal until a rift is destroyed, just kill it and go back to him. The little Lashers in the next corridor will heal you while they’re dead, so before you start clearing, be sure to kill at least one, the most important thing to know about the Crystalline Tender and Keeper pulls is that the Tenders will cast Tranquility and the Keepers have a chance to stun on hit, so try to avoid attacking them until you’ve shield slammed the buff off. The fourth boss Ormorok the Tree-Shaper has three abilities that are important as a tank, his Crystal Spikes will do 9-10k damage to you, and then you’ll take a big chunk of fall damage if you get hit, he summons a Crystalline Tangler, just watch out for it and taunt it off of the healer. He will enrage at 25% increasing damage by 100%, be sure to cycle through your cooldowns to minimize damage. Once he dies there is a path behind him that leads to the entrance of the crystal area.

The Final Boss: Keristrasza has the normal dragon moves, tailswipe and a breath, no cleave though. She has a permanent aura Intense Cold, which stacks up to 10 and does 100 damage per second per stack, and slows attack and casting speed by 10% per stack, all you have to do is jump as you tank. She’ll also cast Crystallize which will root you to the ground, you can intervene the healer to get out of this, or they can dispell it. At 25% she’ll enrage doing 10% more damage and attacking 30% faster, as before, use cooldowns to survive this.

And that is the Nexus from a warrior’s stand-point. Any comments or suggestions can be emailed to me at Vivilros@Gmail.com or you can use the comments at the bottom. Specifically I want to know if you thought it was too long, or if I didn’t provide enough detail, do you want to know what you can reflect? Who can be disarmed? Anything you would like me to mention in the future please tell me, and I’ll make the appropriate changes to future posts.

Oops, I forgot to include gear from the instance, basically we got Cloak of the Enemy from the Faction boss, Arcane-Shielded Helm from Grand Magus Telestra, and the Bulwark of the Noble Protector from Keristrasza. All are very good drops for a beginning tank, I’m still using the Cloak (if only because of terrible drops/rolls) and used the helm for a while. I’ve never seen the Bulwark, I don’t believe it exists X_X.