Return to Karazhan Dungeon

[RedSorc]

Finally got around to finding the time to attune for this and managed to do a clear of Karazhan on my trinity team (Prot Paladin/Holy Paladin/ Beast master x 3).

With around 860, 34 traits and one legendary each, was a fantastic experience; took about 10-15 pulls for most of the bosses to get a strategy and then execute it.

Wikket: Not sure really had a strategy down for this. Ran around like a headless chicken, used 5x immunities to cheese the one shot mechanic without having to run my 5 into 5 seperate random void zones. Took a few pulls, but it went down with a good Core Hound Lust.

Maiden of Virtue: In the end, the best way i found of doing it was to spread out my ranged so that they didn't chain the holy bolts and just have them stand still. Yes, they stood in the bad stuff: I just healed through it. Once I did this, reducing the mechanical complexity of the encounter, she went down within a couple of pulls.

Moroes: Pretty much just did the fight as you're meant to. CC 3 of them, burst them down one by one. This is one of the fights where the coordination of multiboxing works in your favour.

Horseman: Dispelling the shadow is a small nightmare. I ended up just healing through it. Thought this was going to be tricky, then I just did a bloodlust pull on attempt 5 and the guy just... died. I was like "...oh."

Curator: fairly straightforward. Gave up trying to do a fancy pants spread for the electric zones, just had everybody follow the tank and ran around like a headless chicken. Beastmaster mobility.

Shade of Medivh: Didn't do anything too fancy here: played the fight as normal. interrupted the arcane bolts and the frost spell whenever I could, like the fire go through. Spread out and didn't really move around the entire fight; took 10 or so pulls before I got the execution down.

Mana Devourer: Tricky. Bursting it with potions and bloodlust was essential, because I couldn't hack more than two cycles. I ended up quickly kiting the boss away when the boss spread the mana, let my holy paladin and hunters lag behind a bit so the orbs all ended up going through then. used battle rezes/invulnerabilities to drop the stacks. Took a good few pulls to get down.

Viz'aduum the Watcher: My new favorite fight to multibox in the game. Its an execution fight; entirely possible once I had a strategy down, just entirely down to whether I was able to execute it properly... though the strategy I took certainly required every single one of my 860 item levels. The big weakness of the boss is that his health pool is actually pretty small.

Phase 1: Spread the ranged before the pull. Interrupt the first cast. Switch to whichever character gets tagged by the giant laser and run it away from the group. When the shadow orb debuff goes on, dispel it. If you've got your initial spread set up correctly, you survive it. Get everybody to follow and kite the boss around so everyone dodges the bombardment. Interrupt the casts throughout. If I'd done it right, the boss should transition before repeating the mechanics.

Phase 2: Hang around at the arrival point on the ship for about 45 seconds to get cooldowns back. Use follow to get the party to move as one and move down the ship. Burst the hell out of the boss (without using lust!) when you get the other side. Keep everyone together on follow to dodge the coming bombardments and the disintegrate casts. The plan was to burst the boss down so that he transitioned either before he casts the shadow orb debuff or before it triggers. If you get in the portal before it triggers, it triggers harmlessly.

Phase 3: i send out one of my hunters as a sacrificial lamb, cheetah down the ship, interrupt the boss and promptly die. Ideally, I wanted to combat rez him, but I couldn't get in range reliably. Spread the gang so the bats don't AoE them down. Let the boss come down to you, sidestepping the disintegrates. Not all the adds will come with him, but AoE any that do come down ASAP. Pop lust. Kill the goddamn boss before he kills you. When the triple shadow orb debuff happens, I used immunities on everybody (Divine Shield, Aspect of the Turtle) to survive it. I needed to use a combat rez on my victorious pull, but other than the mistake I made there, the first time I executed the strategy cleanly, he went down on the 27th pull.

Great dungeon, challenging for my team, but always felt possible. I think it'll take a bit more gear before I can think about triggering Nightbane (and some practice on the individual bosses). got a second legendary out of a cache this morning for one of my toons (Chain of Thrayn for Holy Paladin, not bad), so suspect I will get a flood of legendaries for the others this as the pity timer kicks in for each of them, hoping that will help get me there.

I suspect I'll have a great deal more problems with some of these guys when Karazhan gets Mythic Plussed. Bosses like Viz'aduum, Mana Devourer and Maiden of Pain will need adjusted strategies when the damage/health gets too big to execute my strategies at a certain keystone level.