In the spirit of A Hunter’s Guide to Karazhan Bosses, I now present you with: A Hunter’s Guide to Naxxramas Bosses! A quick reference guide for those of you who are perhaps newer to Naxx. Remember though, you may or may not do the bosses in this order… so a handy-dandy navigation menu for you (articles will be linked to as they go live):
Navigation:
Spider Wing: Anub’rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina, Maexxna
Plague Wing: Noth the Plaguebringer, Heigan the Unclean, Loatheb
Abomination Wing: Patchwerk, Grobbulus, Gluth, Thaddius
Military Wing: Instructor Razuvious, Gothik the Harvester, Four Horsemen
Frostwyrm Lair: Sapphiron, Kel’Thuzad
CONSTRUCT WING:
Patchwerk:
“Behold, Patchwerk. When word of his existence first reached the ears of the Brotherhood, none believed the tales of an abomination with such immense speed and strength. Fewer still believed it when he fell the first time…”
Shoot him in the face until he dies. Optional: screenshot your Recount/record your WWStats results so you can analyze how you perform in DPS race under a raid situation.
Grobbulus:
“Grobbulus, the first of what was to be an army of flesh giants. It carried the plague slime of Naxxramas within its body, injecting the living ooze into the bodies of its foe. The recipient of this foul injection would usually flee to his allies, bringing them down with him. “
Stand in the middle of the room. The tank will kite good ol’ Grobby around and you will spend most of the fight pewpew’ing either him, or a slime add that will show up every so often which your off-tank will probably pick up. Avoid the big green mists of death on the floor that show up behind the boss.
Sometimes you will get a debuff on you; usually someone in the raid and/or Deadly Boss Mods will point it out to you in big letters. Run away from the raid! Find some safe spot behind Grobby and between the aforemtnioned green mists of death and wait for the debuff to go away before resuming your original position. You’ll take some damage from this but it won’t kill you– unless you run through the green mists or are standing to close to people.
Your pet is immune to said debuff so he can spend the fight happily nomming the boss. Beware though: sometimes if you run to the opposite end of the room while you have the debuff, it will be so far away from your pet that he will despawn. So be ready to Call Pet if that happens.
Gluth:
“Gluth, the foul plague-dog of Naxxramas, was said to have an appetitie so voracious that even the living were not enough to satisfy his hunger. Feugen was said to feed him an army of Zombies daily, recycling the remains of undead too weak to use in combat. “
The best way I’ve ever taken this guy out involved everyone hitting macros in a precise sequence and misdirecting to Evasion-tanking rogues in a certain order. It was awesome, but chances are good that you’ll do this a slightly more conventional way, I’m afraid. =P
First thing to be aware of: your pet is going to sit in the tube and refuse to come out and play. The easy method to fixing this is to run as far away from the tube as you can after you’ve jumped down, which will despawn your pet and let you call him again. Just don’t make the mistake I did the first few times I did this fight, and not realize that my pet wasn’t there until the boss was already at 75% health (or lower).
Second thing to be aware of: this is one of those glorious encounters where you will probably get to eschew DPS in favor of utility, and I love it. Basically, there are zombies that will show up and slowly make their way towards Gluth. If they get to him, bad things happen. So they have to be kited around, either by you, or by someone else who can kite them. Either way there’s a good chance you will be asked to keep a Frost Trap up on the grate.
Every so often everybody’s health will plummet and all the zombies will stop what they’re doing and head towards Gluth; this is called “Decimate.” When this happens it’s your job to forget everything and AoE down the zombies as fast as you can. Then, you can return to whatever your previous job was, whether that was kiting the zombies or doing moderate DPS while keeping traps up.
If you are would like tips on actually kiting the zombies, Drotara does a good job explaining it over at his blog.
Thaddius:
“Thaddius, built from the flesh of women and children, it is said that their souls are fused together – eternally bound within that foul prison of flesh.”
Fight starts out with having to DPS down two “minibosses” of sorts. The main thing here is that they have to die within a few seconds of each other– like Romulo and Julianne. The main difference from that fight is because you are split into two different groups your goal is to do DPS to your miniboss at the same rate that the other group is doing DPS to theirs. If your group is pulling ahead and you need to slow down, this can be accomplished by switching to Viper, going pure Auto-shots, or some combination of the above depending on how much you need to slow down.
After these guys are down you will jump off the ledge over to the other side. Yes, this is the infamous “ledgeboss”. Hint: Aspect of the Cheetah.
Once on the other side your pet will start to run down the ramp to you but he will despawn before he can get to you so just get ready to Call Pet once you notice he does.
Alright! Remember Heroic Mech? No? Okay, this guy basically puts a Positive or Negative debuff on everybody. Positives have to stand next to Positives, and Negatives next to Negatives, or Very Bad Things™ will happen. Your raid leader will let you know beforehand where to stand depending on your charge. Usually it is on the left or right side of Thaddius but I’ve seen front/behind done too. So if you see something like: – – – – – – – – – THADDIUS++++++++ spammed in Raid Warning, that’s what they’re referring to.
The charges will change every ten seconds or so and when they do keep in mind that your charge may or may not change. If it doesn’t change and you’re already in position, don’t move. One time I did a whole fight on this guy where I only had to move once, it was beautiful.
Again, your pet is immune to all the fun, so just leave him on the boss and enjoy what is otherwise a Pewpew fest.
Tomorrow our heroes head into Military Wing! Will they be able to face four all-powerful Death Knights and the horses they rode in on? Or will they prove that perhaps DKs aren’t as overpowered as everyone thinks? Find out on the next exciting episode!
My guild has always decreed that people with the debuff on Grobbulus run straight through the boss and explode at the wall there. This keeps you out of his clouds, keeps your cloud behind the boss as the boss is kited, and keeps people from running around willy nilly trying to find the best place to ‘splode. 🙂
I’m pretty sure once you jump over the ledge to Thaddius, your pet will be stuck on the ledge instead of running back down the ramp and despawning as you said.
This is what I usually do for this wing.
Gluth: put pet on stay before entering the pipe. Pet will despawn as soon as I jump down. Call pet and stick it on the boss. Lay frost trap and kite away.
Thaddius: put pet on stay+defensive at the bottom of the ramp before the pull. After Feugen/Stalagg dies, pet will return to the bottom of the ramp and despawn as you jump over the ledge. Call pet and profit.
Also, Thaddius casts Polarity Shift every 30 seconds. This matches the cd on disengage perfectly. All you have to do is a quick 180 jump and launch yourself to the opposite side.
Missing guides from this wing: slime boss, frogger boss, pipe boss, etc.
@ Lupius – My pet has *always* despawned on Thaddius! Dunno what yours does though! =P
Dunno what Slime Boss and Pipe Boss are. >.> Frogger I probably should have covered though.
I think the reason for that is I have my pet on defensive by default and you have yours on passive.
Slime boss is when people wipe on Patchwerk or the trash in that room, and healers soulstone and ankh up to res half the raid, while the other half release and run back in and die to the slime respawns.
There are actually 2 pipe bosses.
1. Immediately after grobbulus, where people can’t seem to navigate across the pipe that leads to the pipe tunnel to Gluth.
2. There’s a crack on the left side of the pipe tunnel, which is why most raid leaders shout “stick to the right!” before going in to pull Gluth.
Failing at either pipe boss will require you to spend the next 3 minute running back and giving it another try. #2 is a lot worse since chances are, the boss is already pulled.
Note: always bring a warlock… with shards!
omg good ol’ Naxx with its stupidity check bosses XD
LOL, frogger is another fun source of entertainment in and of itself. It may have took me awhile to get the safety dance, but I have never had a problem with frogger. The group I usually run with (an amalgamation of various guilds as someone put it the other night) usually has fun with this, watching/teasing those that go down to frogger.
We also tend to start with this wing just to get it out of the way. It contains one of the most stressful fights for me (Gluth… I usually kite… and usually die just about the same time as Gluth), but also one of my favorite fights, Thaddius.
Oh yeah, with the famous Thaddius ‘jump’. Run, don’t walk, don’t pause, don’t stop, don’t look down, don’t turn. Just run straight ahead and then jump. Usually in a 25-man at least one person won’t make it. Also on Thaddius, remember that range is not important. There’s a buff you want to get that you’ll only get standing close to your other appropriately charged buddies. Get with your group, and then slowly step back till you are just barely far enough away to start firing your shots.
For Gluth and the Ledge Boss, just spam passive. Your pet will appear next to you.
Also, for Gluth, do not forget to encourage Tranq Shot for his enrage! It’s Magmadar 2.0!
Frakking pipe.
That’s all I have to say about the Construct quarter really. Frogger is fine (though my better half usually gets nailed here – a Paladin usually waits for her to cross before heading onwards).
awesome that you made this guide 😀
We use a pretty cool tactic for Thaddius. Positive charge stands at 3o’clock while negative charge stands at 6 o’clock. When you have to move to the other group you just circle strafe through 90 degrees.
It looks a little like this:
T+
–
It makes switching between the two groups a hell of alot quicker. When we have new people the RL does a demonstration on the little bridge just inside the doorway :D.
I’ve always found the easiest thing to do is dismiss my pet just before jumping onto Thad’s platform (there’s plenty of time to do so) and to dismiss my pet before even entering the pipe before Gluth.
Nice hint about aspect of the cheetah, although I’d go one step further and suggest aspect of the pack so that all raid members around you will get that speed boost. 😉 This helped my Naxx run when they failed at jumping.
Important to turn it on and off at the right moments though, or you will get scolded…
I still dont get it….