Drak’tharon Keep
Location: Northwestern Grizzly Hills
Level Range: 75-77
Mob Types: Ice Trolls (Humanoid), Undead
Drak’tharon Keep is a pretty straightforward instance that ties together a few of the quest chains that you’ll be coming up to in Zul’Drak. The trash isn’t anything you haven’t done already with the only exception being the Risen Drakkari Handlers. You can cheat these by CC’ing the Handler and as long as they’re not in combat you’ll never have to deal with the mount (thank you WoWwiki).
Trollgore
Trollgore is a menacing fight on paper but you can remove his only 2 abilities completely and make this a tank and spank encounter for both normal and heroic mode.
First things first, notice the non stop wave of trolls that attack him on the stairs. Also notice that he kills them very quickly. This will continue through the encounter and contribute to both of his abilities in Cannibalize and Corpse Explosion.
If he’s faught on the steps, he’ll Cannibalize the dead trolls and stack a buff on himself to increase the damage of Corpse Explosion.
To make this fight a cakewalk, have the tank pull him off the steps and to one of the far corners. Assign a DPS (one with AoE if you can spare the DPS) to the stairs and have them kill the trolls as they spawn. No trolls dying near Trollgore = no Cannibalize and no corpses to explode. GG.
Novos the Summoner
This 2-phase encounter begins with the Lich shielding himself between 4 pylons. During the entire encounter, waves of non-elite packs and the random elite will spawn down the stairs nearby. Assign one DPS (Hunters OWN this job) to kill the mobs on the stairs and call for assistance when the elite spawns if they need it.
During the waves of mobs Novos will spawn a Crystal Handler that, when killed, will deplete one of the pylons powers. Once 4 have been killed, Novos will attack the group.
The Lich has no aggro table and will cast random Frostbolts and Arcane Blast which knocks a random party member back 15 yards. Much like Aran from Kara, Novos will summon a pretty nasty Blizzard that everyone needs to avoid. His final ability is Wrath of Misery, a nasty curse that inflicts about 2k damage every 2 seconds for 8 seconds – dispel or heal through it and continue to pound on him until he dies.
King Dred
This devilsaur is an optional boss in Drak but you might as well take him down, right? Before you pull him, make sure you’ve killed every raptor in the area or they’ll come back to bite you (literally).
If you have a Shammy in your group, ask for Tremor Totem to help control the 4-second fear in Bellowing Roar. His other “shout” ability (Fearsome Roar) reduces all damage done by anyone within 10 yards by 125 (250 in Heroic).
The tank needs to be vocal about 2 things – Mangling Slash and Piercing Slash. Mangling Slash will debuff the tank, causing them to take 75% more bleed damage from Grievous Bite which already deals about 1100 every 2 seconds. Piercing Slash will deal 125% damage and reduce the tanks armor by 75% for 10 seconds. Needless to say, the tank is going to need some big heals or a nice stack of HoTs. Grievous Bite can be removed if the tank is healed to 100%.
If you didn’t take my advice earlier and kill the raptors around the area, King Dred will use Raptor Call to have them swarm your group. This isn’t really needed for an already healing intensive encounter.
In Heroic mode ONLY, Dred will use Menacing Claw which deals about 17k on plate. Save your “OH S%$T!” buttons for it.
Prophet Tharon’ja
This is a fun 2-phase encounter that switches between a normal tank and spank phase and a phase that morphs your group in to zombies. Zombies are awesome.
To avoid confusion, let me go over the zombie abilities since they have their own action bar.
- Slaying Strike – This is the basic melee attack that you’ll be spamming.
- Taunt – Covers the target in whipped cream and increases their interest in professional wrestling. It’s a taunt man, gimmie a break.
- Bone Armor – Absorbs about 5k damage for 10 seconds and prevents spellcasting from being interrupted. You’ll want to pop this every 10 seconds when the cooldown is up.
- Touch of Life – Steals about 2k health from the target. You’ll be using this every cooldown as well (5 seconds).
Now, back to strategy. In normal mode, Tharon’ja will use 2 abilities – Shadowbolt and Curse of Life. It’s Shadowbolt deals about 2k shadow damage so it can be mitigated. Curse of Life will drain 50% of the targets health, which sucks.
The Prophet will cast Decay Flesh throughout the encounter which will initiate “zombie phase”. In this phase, one of your party members needs to act like the tank by spamming Bone Armor and Taunt. Everyone else needs to spam Touch of Life and Bone Armor while staying out of the crap on the floor. Once he’s taken a certain amount of damage, the phase will end and you’ll go back to tank and spank phase 1. Repeat until he drops.
Not much changes in Heroic mode, just increased health and damage. If the tank player is starting to drop in health, set up a taunt rotation ahead of time so you can share tanking duties on your team in “zombie mode”. Hunters and Warlocks make this fight easier since their pets aren’t effected and can resume attacking normally during the zombie phase.
