 |
Download (13.3 MB – 720×480 – DSL) Download (2.58MB – 320×240 – 56kbps) PC Widows XP: Windows Media Player 10 |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
Blizzard Entertainment has exponentially evolved their way to make instances and special boss fights. We have seen that with the bosses of Zul’Gurub, which require 20-players raid groups. The instance is surgically designed to be a tough experience, and each boss has its own special attacks and tricks to beat him. Ahn’Qiraj—in Public Test Servers—is showing to be among the most exciting and fun instances.
The Ancient city of the Qiraji is difficult and requires a good organization. Every class is needed: Druids entangling roots is needed for crowd control hand-to-hand with Mages’ sheeping. All healers need to watch the tank at all times—which can drop in a blink against Kurinnaxx’s stackable-debuffs; and wear their mana-regen gear. Some of the fights with the first two bosses are very long. If you do not have mana regen gear, you will exhaust your healing before the bosses hit half health. That extra mana per tick can be the difference to keep your tank and team alive.
First boss, is a huge scorpion named Kurinnaxx.
The strategy for Kurinnaxx is to have 2-3 Warriors on him. One Warrior in the front of Kurinnaxx. The Second Warrior on his left, and the Third Warrior on his right—by the ribs. Kurinnaxx makes sand traps that drops chance to hit by 75% and causes plenty of damage. The sand trap also silences casters for around 9 seconds—so stay out of range if by any chance someone gets aggro away from the tank. Move away as fast as you can before you get silenced by his trap. Rogues, watch how many debuffs are stacked on you, and use your vanish, and stay away. Anyone that gets 75% chance to hit, is useless anyway, so stay away so that you do not get damage. That will allow healers to conserve mana. Resume DPS when the effect is over.
Kurinnaxx also has some sort of cleave or mortal strike that stacks 10-15 times. This can be deadly for any tank. The idea of having one tank in the front, and two warriors on the side is that when the tank reaches 6 stacked-debuffs, he has to stop attacking immediately, and letting the other tank get the aggro. Make sure to make a macro in CAPS to alert the other two tanks that you are gonna let them take aggro. After 6 debuffs the Warrior will die so fast, no healer will be fast enough to cast Flash-heal. The macro also alerts all casters to stop attacking. Important. This is for the transition of aggro from Warrior to Warrior to get aggro.
)) |
||
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
)) |
Once the second tank gets aggro, make a macro for ASSIST so that casters can resume their DPS(Damage). As soon as the second warrior gets 6 stacked debuffs, stop attacking and let the third tank get aggro. Rinse and repeat. The whole raid needs to know their role and when to react based on these MACROS. Otherwise, you will get a wipe. This is a very long fight. Wear your mana regen gear if you are a healer and many stacks of Major Mana pots. Druids should provide Innervate on priests that ran out of mana.
Once you kill Kurinnaxx, make sure no one talks to the Human NPC. Only the main tank is to talk to him, when everyone is in position and ready. The next fight is a triggered event that starts when you talk to the Human NPC. Rajaxx will yell: “The time of our retribution is at hand! Let darkness reign in the hearts of our enemies! No longer will we wait behind barred doors and walls of stone! No longer will our vengeance be denied! The dragons themselves will tremble before our wrath!.
Basically, waves and waves of Qiraji Warriors and flyers will keep pouring in. Once a wave dies, another is sent within only two seconds. You need to drink in this short lapse of time if you can. Warlocks and Mages need to put a lot of DPS here on mobs. ALL Warlocks need to fear units constantly, and dot the main tank’s target while keeping a watch on the feared mob, to recast fear on them again and again. Druids can entangle-root mobs, and priests should use their Fear-2 mobs ability, hunters might get a chance to place traps in between waves. This orchestrated mob control will ensure the survival of all the 20 players, and keep you save from too much damage. Remember to dot the main tank’s target while fearing or entangling. Once it dies, move to the next target—rinse and repeat, until everyone is dead. Making the fight last longer by crowd controlling is good—in that lapse of time your healers and DPS casters are regenerating mana.
If you keep the 4 Kaldorei Warriors and Human healed, you won’t have much trouble. They have tons of hit points. The challenge is if you wipe and they die. They won’t respawn for at least two more hours, so you will be left on your own without the NPCs. The fight with Rajaxx—I will let you figure it out on your own. So let’s skip forward.
I could say Blizzard is allowing every single class to feel important and useful in Ahn’Qiraj instance.
Fighting Buru—a huge scarab on steroids—looks piece of cake, but requires a lot of organization.
Bad news: Buru can’t be tanked at all by a Warrior.
Good news: Buru walks very slow and can be kited(You can make him follow you while everyone ranges it).
I would suggest players to use their Revered-boots from Arathi Basin Battlegrounds for this event. The Boots allow you to run a bit faster than normal. Start running up the ramp while Buru chases you. Try to reach the top, of the ramp, then jump down. Healers need to keep healing the player after they jump down.
In the meantime, players need to cause damage to the six eggs of Buru—but DO NOT destroy them. Once the eggs have 5% hit points, spam on Raid chat “BRING HIM”, to alert the runner to bring Buru and make him walk on top of the eggs.
Soon as Buru is on top of the eggs, Warlocks and Mages should cast Area-of-Effect(AOE) Spells to destroy the eggs. Apparently, when the six eggs are destroyed below him, they cause damage to Buru.
Special thing to note: Buru won’t get aggro if you dot him or cast spells on him. He won’t stop chasing his target until it is dead, or becomes unreachable. You should make the font color of Raid Chat blueish or green—so that you can read the Warning message in orange. When Buru chooses to attack a specific player, you get a alert message onscreen saying that Buru is watching you.
Druids should be alert when they get Buru’s attention. They are quietly versatile to kite Buru. Turn into a Cheetah to run faster. When you need to enter the water, do not swim normally, or Buru will reach you, since your movement swimming is slower. Shapeshift into a seal quick and when you reach land, shapeshift once more into cheetah.
All healers must run behind Buru to heal the target. Buru won’t aggro if you heal the chased player. Our pick-up-group(PUG) was able to beat him on our second trial. Not hard, but not easy either—I commend Blizzard for creativity.
After defeating him, we headed up the ramp into the next terrace. Casters need to stay in the back by the ramp. Warriors should pull with their ranged gun and make sure to tank the Hive’Zara Tail Lasher (scorpions). They will silence all casters in an Area-of-effect for nearly 9 seconds, and it spams it very often—like father, like son. Nods at Kurinnaxx. Healers can’t heal anyone if you allow them to move into the casters, as they become silenced. The other insects will keep poisoning the whole group. So healers need to stay as far away as possible, and get in to toss renew. Druids should help with entangling root, but keep your distance to toss rejuvenation on the tank and anyone who needs it—staying away from silence AOE.
The Silicate Feeder worms here spread a deadly poison after they die, so try not to kill them in the middle of your group, or everyone will get hit and lose health pretty quick—which may kill players that are already 20% health.
Something Warriors would love to know is that past this terrace hallway after you kill Buru, heading toward Ayamiss, you have a high chance to loot Manual of Battle Shout Rank 7. Hunters get Qiraji Magisterial Ring and Druids get Rejuvenation Rank 11. Assumingly, all classes might have their own Book/Manual to upgrade one of their class-specific spells.
Once past this room, we gave a try to the huge bee boss, named Ayamiss the Hunter. All I can say is that was a very tough and interesting event. Ayamiss has a high aggro threat, and launches poison blasts at his target, jumping from target to target. On top of this punishment, every 15-20 seconds a swarm of flying bees come from the front and the back and attack the players. They seem to die with Mages and Warlocks AOE. Watch our movie of Ayamiss the Hunter. This event might be qualified as “Insane” and will be challenging, yet fun for hardcore guilds. A+ to Blizzard on this one.
We decided not to mess with Ayamiss for a second trial, and skipped him to find out what was next. The very long ramp heading to the top of the temple gave us a bunchful of curiosity. The sun could be seen in the direction of the ramp—as if inviting us for the fight of our life at the top of the temple.
Once atop, we found many Anubisath Guardian (Obsidian Statues) walking back and forth in very slow motion. You shouldn’t be fooled. They are set to walk on you at some point during mid-fight. The whole raid should stay on the ramp. That is your 100% safe spot. Hunters or Warriors should pull the Obsidian Statues down to the ramp. Once you are sure all of the statues are dead, you can leave the ramp. Each Obsidian spawns 2 Qiraji warrior minions. One can be feared in the safety of the ramp.
Mages need to cast detect magic at all times on Obsidian Statues to detect the type of deflect debuff they have. This is a anti-wipe measure and a lifesaver. The abilities of every class are tested on this instance.
The Anubisath Guardians by the Watchers Terrace have a deflect Shadow-and-Frost at once, while others have a Fire-and-Arcane deflect debuff. Casting Detect Magic will alert the whole raid which magic-spells they should avoid casting. Reason? If just one player messes up and dots the Obsidian Statue with Shadow Word:Pain, Devouring plague or Frostbolt/Frost Nova—for example—it will deflect back to every player in front of him the attack for over 800 damage. This mistake 3 times in a row could wipe half the raid wearing cloth and leather. Watch our movie showing the fight with one of the Anubisath Guardians—and a close up to Ossirian using mind vision.
Once we made sure all the Anubisath Guardians were dead, we started exploring the Watchers Terrace. A huge field with columns. We saw some crystals on the ground, and started testing—not knowing what to expect in this event.
When clicking the crystals, they would slide up from the ground, then sink back. Our curiosity grew, not knowing what they were for. But we kept in mind we could interact with the Pylon crystals named Ossirian Crystal.
We finally started to engage this final boss named Ossirian. Soon as we heard him yell: “Sands of the desert, rise and block out the sun!”, we knew this guy meant business, and that we were up to a spanking session. Blizzard really brought a challenge in Ahn’Qiraj instance. This is not the typical beat till it dies boss. He looks like the Egyptian god Horus, son of Osiris and Isis with the head of an obsidian-stone Hawk—Reference. However, Ossirian has a circle that brights on his head, which looks like a sun. The god Ra—father of all gods—and grandfather of Osiris’ parents Geb and Nut, is the god of the sun and has a hawk-head and a sun on his head—Reference
If you watch our movie, you will notice that our first attempt at this boss was both hilarious and sad. The 20-players lasted barely one minute or so. Believe it or not … our lovely Ossirian was literally beating the snot out of us. Ossirian killed a player by 8k, 12k, 13,068, 14,246 damage. Whoa? You heard right, and that was only normal hits. His crushing ability did 19,681 damage. Everyone was jaw-dropped as Ossirian kept yelling: “You are terminated.”. And indeed—this guy is a Terminator that has nothing to be jealous of Arnold.
Our second attempt was more lasting, and almost had a kiting strategy going. Players were driving him toward the Ossirian Crystals. You may Watch our second movie showing how the crystals sap Ossirian with a lightning bolt.
At this point, we do not know if Blizzard has acknowledged in the forums if this is a bug. I will surely check out later. If this is working as intended then our discovery will be possibly the solution to this massive spank-wipe. The Ossirian Crystals sap him—lowering his damage output for 30 seconds. A player reported he was hit by 5.6k damage and the main tank reported getting hit by 1.3k damage after the Ossirian crystal launched a bolt at Ossirian. The strategy here, among many others that guilds should figure out with practice, is for the Tank-Warrior to pull Ossirian toward one of the Crystals. The raid should organize and assign one player to stand by one of the crystals at all times. No one should attack him while he is on rampage, so to keep the aggro on the Tank. When the crystal saps Ossirian with a bolt, his damage-output will be reduced. A Shaman reported that he was able to purge his Strength of Ossirian buff as well.
It is important that all mages are alert on re-casting Detect Magic on Ossirian at all times to find out when he has risen up his buff. I’m not sure if that was the name, but it seems he has a armor buff that can be dispelled.
The ideal scenario is that a Tank keeps pulling Ossirian toward each Crystal, sorta kiting him in circles, up to the next crystal while casters range him. The player assigned to each crystal most be alert to trigger-click the crystal at the right time to sap Ossirian once more—every 30 seconds, on a different crystal. The crystal will spawn again, so you can return to it at a later time.
Before conclusion, I gotta warn you that Ossirian also summons a huge tornado that moves through the Watchers Terrace, adding an extra adrenaline-pumping factor. He can also cast cyclone on a single-target. This no doubt will be one of the most challenging boss events that will require a lot of cooperation, organization and communication among all players to pull off. And a lot of luck and praying. Blizzard’s creativity at its best.
Special thanks to Filefront for hosting our movies to share with you, and to GameCam for providing a great Game Movie Capturing software.
Return to Bluesnews.com
Gamebanshee
WowBelgium.be
)){kind=link}