Hellfire Citadel

Tank Responsibilities

 

• Perform a tank switch when Acidic Wound stacks to uncomfortable levels. Note that this should not normally happen, as Acidic Wound will often (if not always) drop off while Gurtogg is using Fel Rage.

• Tank Dia at least 25 yards away from any other boss.

 

Healer Responsibilities

 

• If Mark of the Necromancer becomes too strong, dispel it to save players from dying. Be conservative with dispels, as otherwise you may be overrun with debuffs.

• Be prepared to use healing cooldowns for when Jubei'thos uses Windwalk.

 

DPS Responsibilities

 

• Ensure that the bosses reach 30% health in the correct order (usually Gurtogg > Jubei'thos > Dia), and ensure that no two bosses are ever below 30% health at the same time.

• Save DPS cooldowns for when a boss reaches 30% health and focus your attacks on it to ensure that it dies as quickly as possible.

• Kill Jubei'thos' Mirror Images as quickly as possible.

 

Everybodies Responsibilities

 

• When Dia casts Reap, players debuffed with Mark of the Necromancer must move to the far edges of the room.

• Avoid Dia's Wailing Horror by standing outside the Horrors' movement path.

• Avoid the Fel Blades thrown by Jubei'thos and by all of his Mirror Images.

• When Gurtogg fixates on you during Fel Rage, stand still and tank the boss. Towards the end of the fixate, you may need to use defensive cooldowns.

 

Abilities

 

Blademaster Jubei'thos

• Fel Blade hurls a large, green blade in the raid's general direction, inflicting moderate damage to everyone it comes into contact with. Jubei'thos will place a yellow arrow on the ground, pointing in the direction in which he will throw his blade.

• Felstorm is when boss spins around, dealing moderate Fire damage to all players every second for 8 seconds.

• Windwalk is when boss fades away, summoning many Mirror Images that will deal high Fire damage to random players by using slightly weaker versions of Blademaster Jubei'thos' own Fel Blade and Fel Storm abilities. These Mirror Images can not be tanked, but they can be damaged and killed. Any damage done to the Mirror Images is also done to Jubei'thos. The boss re-appears once all of the Mirror Images have been killed, or after 45 seconds have passed since Windwalk was cast. If the boss re-appears after 45 seconds, it appears that any Mirror Images still up at that time disappear on their own a few seconds later.

• When Blademaster Jubei'thos reaches 30% health, he begins to frequently cast Wicked Strike. This hits a random half of the raid for moderate Fire damage Once Blademaster Jubei'thos is defeated, he will continue using Wicked Strike on single players until the encounter is over. The damage of Wicked Strike increases progressively as the fight goes on (even after he has been defeated).

 

Gurtogg Bloodboil

• Bloodboil is an an attack that deals moderate Physical damage to the 5 furthest players from the boss.

• Acidic Wound is a stacking debuff that Gurtogg will regularly apply to his current tank, inflicting fairly low Nature damage every 2 seconds and reducing their armor by 100. This effect stacks up to 60 times and lasts for 30 seconds. This ability requires a tank switch, but its stacks will most likely drop off each time Gurtogg is using Fel Rage.

• Fel Rage fixates on a random raid member for 25 seconds. For this duration, the raid member's maximum health is increased and their Physical damage taken is reduced. Any attacks that Gurtogg makes on this target cause his attack speed to increase by 10% per stack. Gurtogg's increased attack speed fades when Fel Rage ends.

• Demolishing Leap is an ability that Gurtogg spawns large, orange void zones in random parts of the room, dealing high Physical damage to anyone standing in and near them. Players take reduced damage from these void zones the further away from them they are. 3 Demolishing Leap void zones spawn in quick succession each time the ability is cast.

• When Gurtogg Bloodboil reaches 30% health, he will begin casting Tainted Blood. This reduces the maximum health of all raid members by 10%. The effect stacks until Gurtogg dies, and lasts until the encounter is over.

 

Dia Darkwhisper

• Void Bolt uses against her current tank, dealing moderate Shadow damage.

• Void Haze is a passive ability that effectively makes the two other bosses immune to damage if they stand within 25 yards of Dia.

• Nightmare Visage is an ability that Dia Darkwhisper occasionally uses to buff her melee attacks for 14 seconds, causing them to deal high Shadow damage.

• Mark of the Necromancer is a Shadow damage DoT that Dia occasionally uses throughout the fight. This DoT lasts indefinitely and its damage increases the longer it is active on a target, but it can be dispelled. When dispelled, Mark of the Necromancer jumps to the 2 closest allies of the affected target, with its damage being reset to its initial value. When Mark of the Necromancer is dispelled, the entire raid also takes a low amount of Shadow damage.

  • Reap is an ability that Dia Darkwhisper will occasionally use against all targets afflicted by Mark of the Necromancer. Reap removes the Mark of the Necromancer debuff from afflicted players, and places a large void zone beneath them, dealing moderate Shadow damage to all players standing in it. These void zones last indefinitely.

• Wailing Horror is an ability that Dia Darkwhisper occasionally uses throughout the fight. For 30 seconds, much of the room will be covered in Shadow that deals high Shadow damage to all players standing in it every second. There are, however, a few safe spots in the room. Soon after the ability is cast, Wailing Horrors (unattackable NPCs) will begin to fly over the middle of the room, inflicting high Shadow damage to all players caught in their path. It is fairly easy to make out where they will go based on how they are facing.

• When Dia Darkwhisper reaches 30% health, she will apply Mark of the Necromancer to a random half of the raid. Additionally, after reaching 30% health, she will no longer use Reap.

 

Strategy

• Bring all the bosses close to 30% health before damaging either one of them below this threshold. This way, the fight will last as little as possible after the first boss has gone below 30% health.

• Control damage done to each of the bosses, ensuring that the correct boss kill order is followed. Never allow more than one boss to be under 30% health at the same time, as you will be overwhelmed by their dangerous abilities otherwise.

• Manage DPS cooldowns optimally. They should be used whenever they are available, but they should always be saved if one of the bosses is about to be pushed below 30% health. The top priority, however, is to have all DPS cooldowns available for when Dia drops below 30% health, even if this means saving them up for a long time.

 

Recommended Kill Order

1. Gurtogg Bloodboil

2. Blademaster Jubei'thos

3. Dia Darkwhisper

 

Kill Gurtogg Bloodboil first, because even though his sub-30% ability, Tainted Blood, persists after he is defeated, its power will not increase after he has been defeated. By contrast, Jubei'thos' Wicked Strike increases in damage even after he has been defeated.

Thus, Jubei'thos should be killed second, since you want to minimize the time between when he reaches 30% health and the end of the fight (as we will see, it is not feasible to kill him last).

 

Dia Darkwhisper should be killed last because her sub-30% ability is by far the most powerful, as she will continuously cast Mark of the Necromancer after she dies, until the encounter is over, and especially because she will no longer use Reap to remove the DoTs. Note that the combination of this extreme damage and the Tainted Blood debuff your raid will have acquired when killing off Gurtogg Bloodboil will be very healing intensive.

 

Once Dia Darkwhisper is defeated, the encounter is over.

 

Gurtogg Bloodboil

Bloodboil should be dealt with by having 5 fairly resilient players being further away from Gurtogg than anyone else. These players should attract all casts of Bloodboil to them, so healers should keep an eye on them throughout the fight.

 

When Gurtogg casts Fel Rage, the players on whom he fixates should stand still and tank Gurtogg. This is preferable to trying to kite Gurtogg around, since he is quite fast, and his damage done is not really high enough to justify the positional problems caused by kiting him.

 

That said, the damage Gurtogg does to the fixated player does increase over time, until it becomes very high. At this point, defensive and external cooldowns may be needed to keep this player alive.

 

Finally, Gurtogg uses Demolishing Leap. When it is cast, ranged raid members must try to put as much distance between them and the Demolishing Leap void zones as possible, in order to minimize damage taken. It is generally recommended that the raid move as a single unit so that everyone will still be in healing range.

 

Sub-30% Health

Following our recommended kill order, Gurtogg Bloodboil should be the first boss to reach 30% health.

 

When Gurtogg reaches 30% health, he will begin to stack Tainted Blood on the entire raid. Each stack of Tainted Blood reduces the maximum health of all raid members by 10%. The 10% health reduction is recalculated for each stack, meaning that if raid members have 100,000 health, they will first go down to 90,000 health, then 81,000, and so on.

 

There is not much that can be done to handle this ability, specifically. The negative impact of having reduced maximum health becomes much more prominent once Dia's sub-30% phase is reached, which will be by far the most intense part of the fight. Healers should conserve high throughput for this.

 

Blademaster Jubei'thos

Fel Blade must simply be dodged by your raid. Spreading out slightly makes it easier to dodge and minimizes the negative impact of mistakes.

 

Felstorm must just be healed through.

 

When Blademaster Jubei'thos casts Windwalk, ranged DPS players must switch to the Mirror Images that spawn and kill them off as quickly as possible in order to minimize the damage taken from them, and in order to bring back Jubei'thos to the fight as quickly as possible.

 

Sub-30% Health

Following our recommended kill order, Blademaster Jubei'thos should be the second boss to reach 30% health.

 

When Jubei'thos reaches 30% health, he will cast Wicked Strike on a random half of the raid, dealing increasing damage over time to them. This must simply be healed through, which it will become progressively more difficult to do as the phase goes on. When Blademaster Jubei'thos is killed, he will continue casting Wicked Strike on single raid members, but there is nothing to do about this except to heal through it and hope that you can finish the encounter as quickly as possible.

 

Dia Darkwhisper

Dia Darkwhisper uses a number of abilities against your raid, but there are two elements of handling her that are more important than the rest.

 

Firstly, your raid will have to correctly manage the combination of Mark of the Necromancer and Reap. Mark of the Necromancer has to be dispelled every now and then, despite the fact that doing so causes it to jump to two other players each time. The reason for this is that its increasing damage will end up killing affected raid members, if they are not dispelled.

 

Given that Reap removes Mark of the Necromancer from all affected targets, a particular strategy emerges. Your healers should dispel Mark of the Necromancer very shortly before Dia uses Reap. This will ensure that, while the initial Mark of the Necromancer targets will take a lot of damage, the much greater number of subsequent targets will have the Mark removed from them quickly by Reap.

 

Since Reap causes void zones to spawn at the locations of all raid members from whom it removes Mark of the Necromancers, players will have to be very mindful of their positioning. When Reap is about to be cast, all players affected by Mark of the Necromancer should move to areas of the room that are not required by the raid.

 

Secondly, your raid will have to handle Dia's Wailing Horror. There are two parts to this. One is that, as soon as Wailing Horror is cast, all raid members will have to move to safe zones on the ground, to avoid being damaged by Shadows. The safe zones are clearly visible, and they are essentially two lines in the form of a cross. The other part of this ability is that the Wailing Horrors will fly over the raid, damaging players in their path. All raid members must avoid being in the path of the Wailing Horrors when this happens.

 

Aside from this, Dia also uses three other, less problematic abilities.

 

Void Bolt must simply be healed through. Only Dia's main tank will take damage from this ability, but healers must be aware of the state of this tank.

 

Void Haze is the exclusive concern of the tanks, as we have explained in the previous section.

 

Sub-30% Health

Following our recommended kill order, Dia Darkwhisper should be the last boss to reach 30% health.

 

When Dia reaches 30% health, she will cast Mark of the Necromancer on a random half of the raid. Since Dia no longer uses Reap, Mark of the Necromancer becomes a simple Shadow damage DoT that must be healed through until the damage becomes excessive, at which point it should be dispelled. Dispelling it from the affected players will effectively cause it to jump to the entire raid, at which point healing healing cooldowns will likely be needed. That said, it is highly advised to kill Dia as quickly as possible, before the damage gets out of hand.