Drak'tharon Keep

Hi there.

I've been doing this instance as it seems to be decent XP and I am gearing up the team with some drops. However, I seem to be having problems with the Risen Drakkari Soulmages. Their Targetted AE Shadow spell rips my shamen apart, since I am running a DK tank and I am doing my rune sequence and keeping an eye on the runes.

Do I just suck or is there some trick? On a pull with only 1 Soulmage, I can usually kill it and lose maybe 1 shaman. However, if there are 2, it is a guaranteed wipe, although I'll DPS one of them down so I can complete the pull after ressing.

Perhaps I should just be moving the Shamen about to avoid AE? This means the tankwill die and unfortunately, the shamen follow shortly thereafter.

I am running a team of DK 4 Shaman all level 77, geared poorly :(

Thanks!

I still wipe on those guys occasionally in heroic, I absolutely detest them. They are hexable/stunnable/sheepable/etc, so you can use that to your advantage - hexing one while stunning/DPSing the other, using any undead fear/cc you may have (paladin tanks are good at this), etc. I have seperate strafe keys for my team and my tank, so I can usually strafe out before anyone dies but without enough HP (15k+) your guys will probably die. You may want to see if grounding totem does anything in patch 3.08 too, it didn't do anything last week though. You could also simply spread everyone out and let 1-2 people die while you take them out.

Alternatively one strat I did when I first started was zone out and reset instance if I saw double mage (lol). Obviously if you are farming the instance for XP/hour this is a bad idea, unless you are planning on clearing the whole thing which will take around an hour anyways.

Dunno if anti-magic zone would help out with a DK tank either, if you can pop that and have your guys hide in it while killing one quick. I would recommend using bloodlust on a double mage pull, you wanna burn em down asap. Plenty of trash after them for the Sated debuff to go away before Trollgore.

They're pretty annoying but if you keep shadow resistance aura up (assuming you have a priest or paladin) there's plenty of time to walk out of the void zones, just remember to spread out before engaging them. I usually don't bother to get in range to hex and just burn them down, but you can get unlucky if you get two in the same pull. A healthy hp pool and good reaction time is the key here, just burn them down and walk out of the void zone asap :-)

Better yet don't have to move your shamans at all...

Just leave them 35 yds away from the soul mages and they will never cast void zones on your shamans. What I do is leave my shamans really far back, then pull the soul mage, and pull him slowly backwards until hes just in range of my shamans (I just keep spamming flame shock until it actually lands). Then I fight at exactly that range. They will occasionally drop a void zone on my tank but thats easy to move out of.

Spread out and make sure you have your followers on their own movement bindings. Crowd control the soulmages or burn them as quickly as possible. Simply walk out of it if they cast one someone.

you will notice that the number of casters in each group is random from 0 to 3, except for the last group of 4 usually only has 1 spell caster.
if you get 3 of them you are pretty much SOL, you ARE going to die before killing all 3. with 3 they rapid fire those disks until you are dead. I had close to 7 discs down once ... I had straf right, back and left again doing pretty much zero dmg because I was on the run the whole time.
just do your best to take one of the casters out and come back.

I usually start with my team on the far left and target the spell caster, use 4x healing streams and straf right and each time a disc comes down.
the more human looking one and the smaller of the animal looking guys are the spell casters.

Thats not true. First I've only ever seen 1 void down at a time even with 2 soul mages, second, I can drop 1 soul mage before he even reaches my tank, third its not that difficult to just move all 4 shamans forward 3 steps at the same time and keep DPSing. With decent spellpower/rotation you can drop these guys really fast - you just have to pay attention to whether a void zone gets dropped or not and move forward if it does, but if you're at the right range you wont have them on your DPS anyway.

Don't bother spreading out or moving 1 guy at a time, WAY too much micromanagement which might cause you to mess up more and lose 1 or more guys. Just leave your dps stacked and if a void zone gets dropped, move all together forward at the same time and you'll only take ~4000 damage or so.

Edit: Also have run this instance like 20 times and never seen more than 2 soul mages in a group - not saying its not possible but if it is it must be almost a 0% chance. The two caster groups at the beginning have always had 1 summoner guy no matter what so it seems like theres always a summoner, leaving only 2 spots for soul mages.

This is on normal right? I was doing it about a week ago, I spread out far enough to not get it on more than 1 shaman at a time, and just healed through the damage.
No idea on numbers in heroic though, but I'm guessing that strat doesnt work :)

If there is just 1 of the guys who cast it get him to about 70% or so then stun him and burn him down asap, should prevent him from casting it. If you have lava burst he should drop pretty fast.

I farmed that place like crazy, last boss drops an awesome shield, get 4 of them !! :D

Thanks for the tips. I got to the point where even with 2 soulmages, I would be able to at least kill one. Of course, by that point I was better geared and level 78 so...

I find that tanking through the first cast of that AE and letting it hit the tank made it so that the Shaman could DPS like crazy. Also, I noticed that when I would turn the mob away from the Shaman, it seemed that the AE was less likely cast on the Shaman. Not sure if that was just luck or what (probably just random, but who knows).

After doing this instance about 10 more times I've found the easiest method for me now is to just run in, start tanking but face the camera towards my shamans - if a void zone drops on them i just push my up arrow key to run them all forward a tiny bit and they hardly take damage - for extra safety drop 4x healing stream so you dont have to 4x chain heal after getting out of the aoe.

Those guys are a bitch. You cant sheep them. They are undead so shackle and turn evil works. I have never tried to hex them. I just strafe or use up/back on all if they have a zone under their feet.

Ya you wont be healing through this damage on heroic, but as Hachoo said keep way back and they wont drop it on them (put them at edge of casting range.)