Kil'Jaeden
Kil'jaeden is the final boss of the Sunwell Plateau raid. Sporting a whopping 9.4 Million health, this fight is by far the longest in all of the TBC raids, and incidentally also one of the hardest.
I recommend you bring two tanks for this fight, and one healer for every 4 raid members. So if your group size is, for example, 16, you should bring 4 healers. You need to have at least one, preferably two ranged DPS who can dedicate themselves to a specific mechanic I’ll go into later.
Phase 1:
The encounter starts with three
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=25588/hand-of-the-deceiver elites. They don’t have a lot of health, but they do have abilities that can quickly wipe your raidgroup if you don’t execute the proper strategy. It’s worth noting that these mobs can be crowd controlled, so if you have a strong AoE CC such as Mind Bomb or Capacitor Totem, you should use them here.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=46875/felfire-portal
This will periodically summon a Felfire Imp which will run towards a nearby raid member and then explode, dealing heavy damage to all nearby players. They have extremely low health, so they can easily be killed, but upon death they will also explode. This means that your group will have to stay spread out during this phase as much as possible to avoid taking too much damage from the Imps.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45770/shadow-bolt-volley
Probably the most dangerous ability during this phase, Shadow Bolt Volley is a spell that will deal medium damage at first. Each time it deals damage, however, it will apply a stacking debuff to all targets hit which increases ALL damage taken for a few seconds. It’s crucial to use crowd control to interrupt this spell or risk an immediate wipe if they cast a few too many, because the damage quickly becomes unhealable.
Once the Hand of the Deceiver reaches 20% remaining health, he will become immune to crowd control effects, which means you have to consider using raid cooldowns to stay alive through this short execute phase.
Phase 2:
Once all three Hand of the Deceiver mobs have been killed,
www.wowhead.com/npc=25315/kiljaeden will spawn in the middle of the room. Your main tank should be ready to pick him up. He is stationary, which means you cannot move him to another point in the room. Do note: getting too close to Kil'jaeden will cause him to knock you far away from the center of the room.
Kil'jaeden starts out with a somewhat small set of abilities, but gains more as the fight progresses.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45442/soul-flay
Deals medium damage to a single target over 3 seconds. Nothing special about this ability.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45664/legion-lightning
A chain lightning-like ability that will hit an initial target and then jump to 4 more targets. The range on the initial cast, as well as each successive jump, is 50 yards, so you cannot realistically avoid the chain effect. It deals medium damage, but, more importantly, also drains mana. This means that healers will want to be careful with how much mana they spend early on in the fight, as using too much could mean you’ll repeatedly run out later on if Kil'jaeden hits you several times with this spell.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45641/fire-bloom
This spell places a debuff on multiple raid members, who will then start to deal medium damage to nearby players within 10 yards. The damage isn’t a big deal, but the more mana your healers have to spend early on, the less likely you are to successfully reach the end of the fight. Therefor the best strategy is to have your raid group stay spread out 10 yards apart from one another. In the case of melee DPS, this isn’t really feasible, so that’s simply some extra damage that needs to be healed through.
And lastly, Kil'jaeden will also periodically summon a
www.wowhead.com/npc=25502/shield-orb , which is a key element of the fight. These orbs do not expire and will build up over time, dealing heavy raid-wide damage. They do not have a lot of health, however, so they can be taken care of quickly by a dedicated ranged DPS. I recommend you use a mobile spec with good immediate damage for this, such as a Marksmanship Hunter or a Balance Druid, but any ranged DPS will do.
Once Kil'jaeden reaches 85% remaining health, Phase 3 will begin.
Phase 3:
Kalecgos will start to aid the raid group by activating the Dragon Orbs at the edge of the room.
If a raid member interacts with an Orb, he will be transformed into a
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=25653/power-of-the-blue-flight with abilities that can greatly empower your raid group.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45862/blink
Like the similarly named Mage spell, this will teleport you forward 20 Yards.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45856/breath-haste
Using this spell will grant friendly targets in front of you a Bloodlust effect, not only increasing their attack and casting speed, but also giving them more movement speed. It will also make targets immune to movement reducing effects. You want to primarily use this on your healers and ranged DPS, as they benefit the most from the increased casting and movement speed. You’ll want to use this on-cooldown to buff as many people as possible.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45860/breath-revitalize
Using this spell will grant friendly targets in front of you a regeneration effect, causing them to regain mana and health over 10 seconds. The best targets for this spell are healers, as they benefit the most from the mana regeneration, and melee DPS, as they are taking the most damage during the fight because they have to be stacked closer together. You’ll want to use this on-cooldown to buff as many people as possible.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45848/shield-of-the-blue
This is the most important spell gained by using the Dragon Orb. It is designed to counter Kil'jaeden’s most powerful ability, which I will explain in detail later. Upon using this ability, a barrier forms around the Dragon that will reduce all damage, both taken and dealt, by 95% for anyone inside the shield. However, it drains 10% of the caster’s health each second it is active. The shield will remain active for 5 seconds after the initial cast. This effectively means you only get to use this ability twice per Dragon Orb.
In phase 3, Kil'jaeden gains new abilities in addition to the ones he already has, and gains improved versions of some of the previous abilities.
First off, Kil'jaeden will summon
two Shield Orbs at a time during this phase. This will spawn at opposite sides of the room, making it hard for a single ranged DPS to quickly take out both. That means you’ll want to have another DPS be ready to take care of the second orb, to prevent the most damage you can.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45892/sinister-reflection
This spell will be cast immediately when Kil'jaeden enters Phase 3. It will spawn 4 copies of a random raid member that need to be tanked, preferably by your Off-Tank. They deal heavy melee damage and also inherit some of the class specific spells of the player they copied, which deal a good amount of damage and/or healing as well.
It’s important that these adds are quickly killed by your raid group, as leaving them up for too long will put too much strain on your healers. The easiest way to do this is to group them up near your melee DPS and have the entire raid AoE them down.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45740/flame-dart
This spell will be cast fairly often and can be quite the nuisance to your raid group. It deals low to medium damage to all raid members, and applies a debuff to all targets hit, slowing their movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds. This debuff cannot be dispelled. This makes it hard for your raid to manoeuvre mid-fight, which means your raid group needs to be at their proper positions at all times.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=46589/shadow-spike
Kil'jaeden starts to channel this very lengthy cast, bombarding the raid with projectiles that explode upon impact with the ground, dealing heavy damage in an 8 yard radius. Combined with the Flame Dart debuff, your raid group is going to take a lot of damage if they aren’t spread out properly. During this channel, however, Kil'jaeden will not use any other abilities.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=46605/darkness-of-a-thousand-souls
This is the most important ability of the entire fight. Kil'jaeden will start to cast Darkness of a Thousand Souls after going through a routine of spells. This is an 8 second cast with a very obvious casting animation: Kil'jaeden will cover himself with his wings and stop using any other abilities.
Upon completing the cast, Kil'jaeden will deal roughly 50,000 damage to the entire raid. Needless to say, you cannot survive that damage, so you have to deal with it another way.
This is where the
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45848/shield-of-the-blue spell comes into play. To survive this cast, your entire raid group will have to gather in one spot and then, right before the spell is cast, the player controlling the Blue Dragon needs to place the barrier to reduce all damage taken by the raid by 95%. This takes coordination, because most of your raid group will be slowed by Flame Darts, making them unable to go very far, and others will be afflicted by Fire Bloom, making them deal heavy damage to anyone that gets close to them.
The best way to deal with this mechanic is to have a designated spot where everyone will gather, but instead of everyone rushing to get there, you should be grouping up in waves.
First, the players who aren’t afflicted by the Fire Bloom debuff will have to start grouping up. Then the players carrying the Fire Bloom debuff can also run into the raid group. It’s worth using a raid cooldown such as Spirit Link or Power Word: Barrier to mitigate the incoming damage at this point.
Then, as the spell is about 2 or 3 seconds from completing, use
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45848/shield-of-the-blue to stop virtually all incoming damage. After the cast has completed, your raid group should return to its original configuration. There is one caveat however. If the Dragon Orb closest to your raid group was the one used, your ranged DPS and healers will have to rotate around the room to the ones that are still active, to prevent having to run way out of healer range to activate a Dragon Orb later on in the fight. This is the only time you’ll be able to reposition like this, because soon after your raid group will be affected by loads of debuffs once more and be unable to move around.
After casting Darkness of a Thousand Souls, Kil'jaeden will again start to cycle through his other abilities, starting with summoning four reflections, and going from there. After going through the phase once more, there are two possibilities:
- Kil'jaeden is already below 50% health remaining and will skip what would usually be the second Darkness cast, and simply enter Phase 4 instead.
- Kil'jaeden is not below 50% health remaining and will start casting the second Darkness of a Thousand Souls.
If he casts Darkness of a Thousand Souls again, you will have to go through the tactic mentioned before, where you group up in waves and then use the Barrier right before Kil'jaeden completes his cast.
After the second Darkness cast, your Dragon will be used up, which means you don’t get the luxury of having the powerful buff effects for some time, but, more importantly, you lose the ability to use the Shield of the Blue ability. This acts as a DPS-check for the fight, because you need to get Kil'jaeden into the next phase in order to have Kalecgos activate more Dragon Orbs. If you cannot push Kil'jaeden below 50% health remaining before he’s done cycling through his Phase 3 abilities once again, it will be a wipe, because the Darkness of a Thousand Souls will simply oneshot everyone in your raid group.
However, if you manage to push Kil'jaeden into Phase 4, the fight gets even tougher!
Phase 4:
Kalecgos will activate another orb, and Kil'jaeden will gain more abilities, as well as improved versions of previous abilities.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45915/armageddon
This spell will cause meteors to fall down from the sky. They do not move particularly quickly, so you have enough time to run away from them and avoid taking heavy damage. Combined with Shadow Spike, Legion Lightning and Fire Bloom, your raid will be taking
huge amounts of damage, and your healers will quickly start to run low on mana.
Kil'jaeden will now spawn
three Shield Orbs at a time, making it hard to take them out quickly, which increases raid damage further.
After reaching this phase, it’s important that the player controlling the Blue Dragon focuses mainly on repeatedly casting
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45860/breath-revitalize on the healers for the remainder of the fight to enable them to use their most powerful healing abilities without running out of mana.
Aside from the added raid damage and new abilities, Phase 4 is similar to Phase 3. You will have to survive two Darkness casts, after which you have to be at least close to pushing him into the final phase, which starts once he reaches 25% health remaining. Similarly to Phase 3, if you don’t have the damage to reach this phase fast enough, Kalecgos will not activate the last two Dragon Orbs, which means you will wipe on the third Darkness cast.
If you manage to push him below 25% health remaining, you will enter Phase 5.
Phase 5:
Kalecgos will activate the last two Dragon orbs, and Kil'jaeden gains improved versions of previous abilities. Anveena will awaken and use the Sunwell to weaken Kil'jaeden, causing him to take 25% increased damage from Holy abilities.
- Soul Flay will now channel for 8 seconds, dealing heavy damage to the target.
- Kil'jaeden will continue to cast Armageddon while casting Darkness of a Thousand Souls.
- Kil'jaeden will cast Darkness of a Thousand Souls much more frequently.
The Soul Flay channel having a longer duration means one of your healers will need to be the designated healer to deal with that mechanic specifically, as the damage will be too high to outheal with AoE heals. This increases the pressure on your other healers, as they now have to deal with the raid damage being down one player.
Armageddon continueing while Kil'jaeden casts Darkness of a thousand Souls means that your raid will be taking incredible amounts of damage if you stack up for the Barrier too early. Remember that the
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=45848/shield-of-the-blue will remain active for 5 seconds, so you can afford to be stacking up roughly halfway through the Darkness of a Thousand Souls cast, and simply use the barrier earlier. Be careful not to use it too early, or it might run out before the cast has completed and cause a wipe.
The increased frequency of the Darkness casts will cause raid damage to become unhealable, as your group will have to move around a lot, causing more raid-wide damage through the Fire Bloom debuff as well as stray Armageddon hits. Your healers will be running on fumes here, and one Dragon won’t be enough to keep them from going out of mana.
This means you will have to activate both remaining Dragon Orbs at the same time. Both players controlling the Dragons will have to cast Revitalize on-cooldown on the healers, and in their downtime they can focus on haste-buffing the ranged DPS. If you find a spare moment, take the time to give the melee group a haste buff as well. It’s long-lasting and will greatly increase your chances of completing the fight.
Make sure to have good communication between the two players controlling the Dragons to avoid stacking Barriers on a single Darkness cast, which will almost universally cause a wipe when you run out of barriers to use.
That is all there is to know about the Kil'jaeden boss fight. Good luck!
we raid wednesdays+saturdays at 20:00 realm time atm. Sometimes random raids when people happen to be online.
