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Karazahn Boss This article is about a boss in the World of Warcraft raid instance Karazhan.

Boss Info

840,000 HP

The Shade of Aran is the spectre of Nielas Aran, Medivh's father.

Strategy

The Shade of Aran is a very interesting fight. This is mostly due to some excellent lines that are spoken by the Shade throughout the battle. The fight itself is anything but typical. The Shade can not be tanked. He will randomly target players and attack them with various spells. There are a lot of important things to note about this fight.

The first is that you want to keep the Shade's mana as high as possible. If you allow Aran's mana pool to go near empty (20%), he will polymorph everyone and then conjure water to drink in order to regain his mana. Once he regains his mana, Aran unleashes pyroblast against everyone. This will hit for 7000+ damage. This will very possibly kill a good percent of your raid. Thus, its important to keep Aran from falling to 20% mana.

The method of keeping Aran's mana high is to interrupt his spell casts. Aran has 3 main spells that he will cast. Fireball, frostbolt, and arcane missiles. Fireball and frost bolt are 3 second cast times and should be interrupted to prevent damage and prevent Aran's mana usage. Arcane missiles is a 5 second channeled spell. This spell should NOT be interrupted. The long cast time keeps Aran from moving on to another quicker casting spell. The channeled nature also gives more time for healers to change targets and adjust for the random targeting.

Aran will in general stay in the center of the room. This is important for casters as Aran has a 10 yard radius aoe counterspell. Its not a silence but having your spell casts interrupted is annoying and detrimental to the raid in the case of healers.

Beyond these basic abilities that Aran will use very often, he has several special abilities that will be used every 30 seconds or so.

The first is a magnetic pull that will drag the raid on top of Aran. This is followed by an area slow. Its important for players to immediately move for the closest wall. Shortly after the pull and slow, Aran will unleash a powerful arcane explosion that can deal upwards over 7000 damage.

The second ability is a blizzard spell. This blizzard is different from a typical mage version in that it is mobile. A small pulsing indicator will appear at the edge of the room. This indicator is the front edge of the blizzard. It will start to move clockwise around the outside wall and is followed by a blizzard. The blizzard hits for 1000-3000 damage per tick. Players should either move to the center or follow the tail end of the blizzard.

The third ability is the most important. It is easy to deal with, but it can wipe raids if even a single player isn't paying attention. This ability is called flame wreath. This ability will surround players temporarily in a ring of fire. The key here is to stand still. Crossing the ring of fire is bad. Very bad. Breaking the ring causes an explosion that will in general lead to a wipe. Players should stop moving immediately when flame wreath is coming to avoid any chance of breaking the ring before the graphic has fully appeared.

At 40% health, Aran will conjure up 4 water elementals that will stay around for 90 seconds. These elementals chain cast water bolts for 1000-2000 damage. This is rather painful, especially since unlike Aran, the elementals do pay attention to normal threat rules. This means your healers will likely be the first targeted by the elementals. As many as possible should be banished and feared. The remainder should quickly be burned down. They only have 30,000 HP. Make sure the players that can interrupt Aran continue to do so. Leave the water elementals to players without interrupts.

Continue to dps and interrupt Aran. Ideally, he shouldn't get down to 20% mana, but if he does, hopefully enough of your raid will remain alive to finish him off.