This guide covers the second wing of the Highmaul raid instance, The Arcane Sanctum.

Once again this wing is fairly easy for players to complete since it is a wing in the very first Warlords of Draenor expansion raid.  Since this wing of the raid is only three bosses it is also fairly fast to complete making it perfect for those of us on tight timeframes at night for gaming.

The only additional requirement beyond those needed to get into the first wing of Highmaul is to have actually completed the first wing, The Walled City, before being able to queue for this wing in LFR version.

This second wing houses three very different bosses which are: Tectus, Twin Ogron, and Ko’ragh.

Tectus

The Tectus encounter has a lot of movement requirements so players better be quick at reacting or you will have issues. Tectus is also a fight that requires heavy add management. The abilities that Tectus use include:

  • Crystalline Barrage
  • Earthen Pillar
  • The Living Mountain
  • Tectonic Upheaval
  • Fracture

The fight starts with players needing to deal with Tectus and a series of adds that are summoned.

The adds that are summoned are Berserker and Earthwarpers. The berserker can be tanked and killed overtime, however the earthwarper must be killed quickly.  The earthwarper casts a spell called Gift of Earth that will travel towards Tectus.  If it hits the boss he will gain a buff of Accretion that grants him 5% additional damage and heals him for roughly 5%.

While dealing with adds you must also avoid the Crystalline Barrage and Earthen Pillar mechanics. Tectus will target random players with Crystaline Barrage which leaves an AOE cloud in place once it hits them.  The player does get some warning though and needs to get away from everyone else and ensure that the AOE is left in a safe area.  At 25 energy Tectus will create an Earthen Pillar which stays in place and blocks line of sight.

Tectus is protected from death while under the effects of the Living Mountain buff, which is almost the whole fight.  You can only kill Tectus while he is not protected by the buff, which only happens when he reaches 100 energy and is using his raid wide AOE ability called Techtonic Upheaval.

As if all of that was not enough to deal with, once you actually kill Tectus, he splits into two Shards of Tectus and the fight continues.  Each of the Shards retains all of the original abilities but just has less health.  The shards also gain a buff for being close to each other, and therefore need to be tanked apart from each other.  You must follow the same process to kill each of these Shards as you did the original Tectus, only being able to kill them during a Techtonic Upheaval.

Even after all that, you are still not done, each Shard of Tectus will split into four Motes of Tectus once they are killed.  These again keep all of the abilities, other than the Living Mountain buff, which means they can be killed at any time.  Since there will be at least 4 of these active though, damage becomes insane at this stage and players must do everything they can to survive.

The ideal kill order is to deal with one Shard of Tectus at a time all the way through to death.  This means the complete kill order will be:

Tectus – Shard #1 – Motes 1 to 4 – Shard #2 – Motes 5 to 8

The fight gets harder and harder as it goes on due to both the incoming damage from a growing number of bosses, as well the reduced amount of space in the room due to the Crystalline Barrage AOE effects and the Earthen Pillars.  By the end you are just trying to escape the insanity!  Overall it is a great encounter!

TWIN OGRON

The second boss encounter is against two bosses at once, the two Ogrons Pol and Phemos. Each of the bosses have separate abilities that need to be managed.

Pol’s abilities:

  • Shield Bash
  • Shield Charge
  • Interupting Shout
  • Pulverize

Phemos’s abilities:

  • Double Slash
  • Whirlwind
  • Enfeebling Roar
  • Quake

Pol will use a shield bash against the tank at normal intervals and then his special abilities at set energy values.  At 33 energy Pol will use Shield Charge which charges at a random player and deals damage and places a DOT on that player and everyone in the path to that player.

At 66 energy Pol will use Interrupting Shout, which is an AOE damage and interrupt ability. It will also silence anyone that is casting when it ends for 1 second so be careful and quit casting before it finishes.  Lastly at 100 energy Pol will use Pulverize which hits the ground three times.  The first hit deals damage to each player and anyone around them, the second makes 3 spikes fall from the ceiling dealing AOE damage to anyone below them, and the last causes a massive spike to fall in the center of the room dealing damage to everyone.

Phemos will use a double slash against the tank at normal intervals dealing heavy damage.  Then at 33 energy Phemos will start a Whirlwind which deals damage to anyone around him, but he keeps agro on the tank and can be dragged around to get him away from the group. Each hit also puts a stacking debuff on the tank that increases the damage that Pol’s shield bash deals, meaning that you will need one tank for each boss.

At 66 energy Phemos will use Enfeebling Roar which will apply a stacking debuff to anyone in the AOE that increases damage taken. The debuff is split by the number of players in range, so all players need to stack quickly so that the tank does not take the whole stack and be un-healable.  At 100 energy Phemos will use Quake, which throws both weapons on the ground causing a quake and then a blaze of fire from the weapons.  You must avoid the fire that comes from the weapons as it deals damage and places a DOT on anyone hit.

In addition to the above mechanics, each boss gains haste the further they are from the other, making them attack more often and gain energy faster. Then there is the main difficulty with this encounter, each boss starts at a different energy value and gains it at different rates. This means that abilities will happen at different rates and at different times, overlapping at different times.

The fight is all about keeping the bosses together as much as possible to slow their attacks, yet getting them away from each other when required, all while trying to avoid the overlapping abilities that cause the most harm.

Ko’ragh

The third and final boss in the wing is Ko’ragh who is found in the Chamber of Nullification.  The fight involves a main raid group and a sub group that each deal with different elements of the fight.  The main abilities that Ko’ragh uses in the fight are:

  • Nullification Barrier
  • Breaker’s Strength
  • Overflowing Energy Orbs
  • Volatile Anomalies

The fight starts with Ko’ragh being protected by a Nullification Barrier which absorbs a huge amount of magic damage before being depleted.  It does not however block physical damage at all.  While the barrier is active Ko’ragh will gain a stacking buff called Breaker’s Strength every 10 seconds boosting his damage output.  This buff does not go away until you have broken the barrier. 

Ko’ragh has several attacks during this phase.  The first of these abilities is placing a suppression field on a random player which deals damage to anyone in it and silencing them while in it.  He will also expel arcane, fire, frost, and shadow in a random order throughout the fight. 

Expel Magic: Arcane targets a tank and launches  explosions at them in quick succession for 10 seconds, which means that you need to switch tanks and run away from everyone quickly.  Expel Magic: Fire places an exploding debuff on all players that deals damage to each player and anyone within a short range, meaning you need to spread out quickly.  Expel Magic: Frost summons a frost orb that deals all players nearby, so everyone needs to move away.  Lastly Expel Magic: Shadow puts a healing debuff on all players in the raid which prevents them from receiving any heals until they receive enough to break through the debuff.

Once the Nullification Barrier has been broken, Ko’ragh will leap to the center of the room and summon a Rune of Nullification that charges up a new Nullification Barrier for him over time.  While the Rune of Nullification is up, one player (and up to five players in the looking for raid version of the raid) may also enter the rune and gain a protective barrier as well, however as their barrier is charging up they will take extremely heavy damage, needing a few healers on them to keep them alive.

While in the Rune of Nullification, Ko’ragh will summon Volatile Anomalies to attack the raid.  These adds explode when killed and need to be moved to the suppression field areas in the room or they will cause heavy raid wide damage.

Once Ko’ragh has charged a replacement shield he will start to summon Overflowing Energy Orbs to the fight.  These orbs will form above the battlefield and fall slowly down and then explode on contact with the ground dealing heavy raid wide damage.  The player(s) with their own protective barrier can stand under the orb as it hits the ground and absorb all of the damage and thereby stop it from hitting everyone else in the raid.  Anyone under an orb without a barrier will be instantly killed.  However there will be more orbs that come down that you can absorb with the barrier so at some point the raid will take damage.

These two phases repeat until you are able to defeat Ko’ragh or wipe. While the fight has relatively simple mechanics it is still extremely fun and challenging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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