Before you start, be sure to pick up the extra daily quest outside the instance near the meeting stone. When you enter the instance, the first mobs you come across are the Ahn’kahar Watchers, they’re a carbon copy of the Ahn’kahar Slashers, who have three abilities: cleave, Enrage, and Triple Slash. Triple Slash seems to have an infinite range, which under normal circumstances doesn’t matter, but hey, now you know. Upon death the Watchers will drop a Ahn’kahar Watcher's Corpse, which if you were paying attention, is needed for the quest. The Deep Crawler’s have two abilities: Glutinous Poison, which causes all abilities to cost 25% more, and Fatal Sting which is a dot that they will cast when they get low on health.
I think it’s a good time to mention, sometimes the abilities I link don’t actually matter, such as Fatal Sting, that’s not really something you need to think about, I just find it interesting that the mobs have the ability. Moving on, we have a group made up of a Plague Walker, a Ahn’kahar Spell Flinger and a Ahn’kahar Web Winder, be sure to pull the Patrol before going further, they’ll come out into the hallway right after the stairs. Before you pull, set the Spell Flinger to your Focus, to do that, select them, right click the frame, and click Set Focus, or type /Focus. Now, there’s a very good reason we did that, when you see him casting Shadow Blast, which does damage equal to 80% of the targets health, which converts to lots of damage, and no need to work on threat for him. The Plague Walker has a nasty aura called Aura of Lost Hope, which reduces your max health by 5% every 5 seconds for 10 seconds. Nothing special about the Web Winder, they root and have a DK-like pull. The next pull introduces the Ahn’kahar Slashers that I mentioned above. Head either down the stairs to the left, or right, both ways will get you to the same place, a couple groups later and you’ll be at the first boss, Elder Nadox.
Elder Nadox had two abilities of concern, the first is Spawn Guardian, which will summon a Ahn’kahar Guardian, who will make Elder Nadox and all adds immune to damage until killed (or kited out of range), and the second ability is Brood Rage, which will enrage one of the swarmers, increasing its health by 10k, and it’s damage. Other than picking up the adds, there isn’t anything special about this fight.
The Plundering Geists running around down here have one ability, Plunder Health, which steals 1,000 health from you and heals them for that amount. Around the corner there’s a group made up of Eye of Taldaram’s and Frostbringers. The Frostbringers have a buff called Icy Winds that slows casting speed by 50%, but increases damage by 75%, Frost Nova, and Frost bolt. The Eye of Taldaram’s cast Shadowfury and Eyes in the Dark, which allows them to cast Dark Counterspell, dealing 5k damage and locking out a school for 8 seconds, Eyes in the Dark is dispellable.
There are two Bonegrinder’s patrolling around, these guys will knock you back and fear your entire group, you can use berserker rage, and save a priests fear ward for someone else, but you will probably want to pull them back to avoid some combination of fear and knock back aggroing extra groups. They also have the trample ability that was so popular in Steam Vault, or in other words, casters shouldn’t be in melee range (not that they ever should be, excluding some fight mechanics), and they’ll enrage at around 15% health increasing physical damage by 83% and attack speed by 30%. In this room you want to go up the webbed ramps and click the orbs on the platforms, which means killing the groups on them, doing that will release the second boss, Prince Taldaram.
Prince Taldaram is a relatively easy boss, he hits moderately hard, and has two abilities. His first is Flame Orbs, he’ll occasionally summon 3 orbs that fly away from him in a straight line and do fire damage every second to any party members in 20 yards. The second ability he casts is Embrace of the Vampyr which will stun the target to the ground and drain their health, during the effect they can’t be healed, effect breaks when he has received 40k damage, or mages/paladins can iceblock/bubble out of it, hand of protection might work as well. Before he does that he’ll go invisible for about 3 seconds.
When you finish off the Prince, there is a path that leads downstairs, it’s small, and very easy to miss your first time through. You should be very careful while pulling these mobs as there are four or five pats all moving around amongst stationary groups of four, it’s very easy to accidentally pull two or three groups. The first group I usually pull is the set of two patrolling back and forth in front of the stairs. The Twilight Worshipper’s have a Flamestrike attack that’s pretty nasty, when you see them casting it you can bash or move before it finishes casting.
After that, I generally pull the four set at the campfire across the walkway, then the four set at the campfire tucked behind the stairs, then the two pats one at a time, then the group with three elementals. Up until there is only one group left in the main area I ALWAYS return to the top of the stairs, don’t be surprised if DPS pull aggro, then pull extra groups of mobs anyway, no plan is perfect. Note that the Apostles cast Healing Wave for a large amount of healing. The elementals can be rough to keep aggro on for some reason, I’m not sure why, as none of them have threat reduction, it could be the immunities are causing DPS to split even more than usual.
In this room we actually have a choice! Which boss do you want to do first?! Head down to the mushroom forest to kill Amanitar, up the stairs to kill Jedoga Shadowseeker, or up the web ramp to kill Herald Volazj.
I’ll cover Jedoga first, she’s floating over a ritual circle surrounded by worshippers of hers, they’re three separate pulls but you can take them all at once if you want to, when you kill them she’ll lower to the ground and a lot of strong enemies will rush up to the top of the stairs (to prevent you from moving her), and another 20 or so mobs will rush up and stand around her, they’re uninteractable and not a threat. As you DPS her every now and then she’ll rise up, and say something to the effect of “You who is loyal come to me” or something… and one of the people in bubbles will start walking towards her, they cannot be stunned, Crowd Controlled, or slowed in any way, you have about 10 seconds to kill them. If you do NOT kill them, she’ll absorb their power and enrage with the buff Gift of the Herald, if you fail to kill the first one, you might as well make an attempt for the achievement. For max survivability, Disarm her and Shield Block the first time, Shield Wall the second time, and use Last Stand, Enraged Regeneration, and Shield Block the final time. Other than melee attacks she has a whirlwind, which will eat melee alive, Thundershock, which needs to be moved out of, and Lightning Bolt, which is random.
Amanitar is a giant nature elemental, when you pull him a billion million mushrooms will spawn, some are poisonous and some are healthy, you’ll want to clear out a space to tank him in with no mushrooms really, with a healthy one in reach for when you need it. During the fight he’ll occasionally cast Mini reducing size, damage by 50%, and DEFENSE by 500! To remove the Mini debuff, kill the healthy mushrooms, when you kill them you’ll also get a buff called Potent Fungus that increases your damage by 100%.
The “final” boss is Herald Volazj, I say he’s the final boss, because behind him is the exit of the instance, and the torch you need to burn that corpse at for that quest I told you to pick up at the beginning. Volazj will cast Mind Flay about once every 10 seconds on you, which means you can spell reflect pretty much every single one of them (which used to do TONS of damage, like 30,000 damage, because it was based on a percent or something, but that was fixed), he also casts Shiver, which does damage, then jumps to a nearby target, it can affect up to 5 targets, which means if you don’t split up all members of the party can be affected by it at once, jumping back and forth between them. The final, most important, and a fairly unique ability is Insanity, which causes you and party to shift into your own phases and four clones will spawn of your party. Basically, as a prot warrior, you need to immediately charge the healer, then stun-chain them to death. After that turn to the DPS, melee go last as they’re just bashing on your shield. Kill order should be Healer > Caster (Warlock/Shadow Priest > Boomkin/Mage/Shaman) > Hunters > Melee. He casts insanity at 70% and at 33% health, it’s possible to get two Insanities in a row, which results in 8 clones up at once. If you’re not aiming for the quick kill, I suggest slowing DPS down as he’s casting the first insanity. (Note: he no longer has a cast timer for it, so you will have to kinda watch what he’s doing to tell when he’s casting.)
Our favorite part, the lewts! Elder Nadox drops a rather nice ring, it has all the stats a baby tank needs to survive, the Nerubian Shield Ring. Jedoga Shadowseeker drops the Shadowseeker's Pendant, same stats as above plus dodge. Amanitar is optional and doesn’t drop anything you need, so ask yourself “Why am I doing this boss? To please my group?” if your answer isn’t “Screw them!” congratulations, you’re not a jerk, besides you could use the Emblem of Conquest (3.3: Emblem of Triumph) anyway, so you might as well kill it. To make up for Amanitar not dropping anything Herald Volazj has TWO tanking items for you to feast on, Bracers of the Herald and Greaves of Ancient Evil.
Make sure you don’t forget to burn the corpse and then turn in the daily before hearthing, that’s an extra 23g to go towards repairing your armor!
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