The boss Auriaya is located in Ulduars inner ring just past the shattered walkway and Kologarn. Auriaya patrols the ring with her pet cats, and is sometimes referred to as the crazy cat lady. While generally viewed as the 4th required boss in Ulduar, you can sneak by her and not bother engaging her. This is not recommended though as there are several pulls around the ring, and pulling them with her still on the ring is extremely difficult.
Health
10 Person Raid: 3,200,000 health
25 Person Raid: 16,700,000 health
Abilities
style="margin-top: 20px; border-collapse: collapse; float: right; width: 180px;">
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/71442" alt=""
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 180px;"
/>
Auriaya on her way into the fight
Horrifying Screech When used, this ability sends everyone near Auriaya fleeing in terror for 5 seconds.
Sentinel Blast This is an AoE spell that inflicts approximately 5500 shadow damage (3500 in 10 player raids) to everyone nearby and places a debuff on the victims that increases the shadow damage taken by 100% for 5 seconds. Once she starts casting, it hits roughly 4 times in 5 seconds. It is interruptible.
Sonic Screech This attack does a significant amount of physical damage to everything in Auriayas frontal arc. However, that damage is split between everyone in the front arc. This means that the more players in front of her the less everyone takes. It does roughly 200,000 damage in 25 player raids and 80,000 damage in 10 player raids.
Summon Swarming Guardians Auriaya can summon swarms of small panthers. They have relatively low health and will go down quickly due to any AoE used.
Additional Creatures in the Fight
Sanctum Sentry - These are the cats that patrol the ring with Auriaya. In 25 player raids, 4 will be with her. In 10 player raids, there will be 2. They have a fairly significant amount of health at just over 500,000 in 25 player raids and 300,000 in 10 player raids. They also have several significant abilities that need to be dealt with.
Savage Pounce This attack hits for roughly 8,000 damage and deals and additional 8,000 damage over the next 5 seconds.
Rip Flesh This is a stacking damage over time (DOT) attack that inflicts roughly 4,000 damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds per stack on the player. This appears to only be used in the 25 player version of the raid.
Strength of the Pack The sentries are pack based creatures and as such gain a stacking damage buff for every other member within 20 yards. Every other Sentry within that distance grants to the other a 50% damage boost.
Feral Defender The feral defender is Auriayas personal body guard and comes in the form of a cat with 9 lives. He will be summoned into the fight roughly 60 seconds after combat starts. The Defender has roughly 600,000 health in 25 player raids and 200,000 in 10 player raids and has several very effective abilities that need to be watched for.
Feral Essence The feral defender starts with 9 stacks of this buff, and loses one any time it dies and is forced to resurrects itself. Each stack grants it a 50% damage bonus.
Feral Pounce The defender can randomly pounce from player to player dealing damage and stunning them for 4 seconds. The pounce itself does roughly 600 shadow damage (400 in 10 player raids) multiplied by the feral essence bonuses.
Feral Rush The defender can charge players doing roughly 1,500 damage (1,000 in 10 player raids) and interrupting any spells they are casting.
Void Zone If killed the feral defender falls to the ground and spawns a void zone. This area deals roughly 9,000 shadow damage (6,000 in 10 player) per second to anyone who stands in it.
Strategy
A lot of this fight is based around the pull. In fact, many groups have a lot harder time learning and implementing the pull than dealing with the rest of the fight. This is due to the pounce that the sentries do right at the beginning of the fight. If their main agro target is not in melee damage they will pounce and stun them causing issues.
Therefore, the pull takes some planning and should not be rushed. There are several ways to deal with the pull - the best revolve around hiding the group in the alcove by the stairs out of line of sight. Once there, the group moves to the back of the alcove with the tanks at the front. Then, based on the group, either a totem or trap is left in Auriayas path, or a Hunter misdirects, or a Death Knight drops death and decay in her path. This causes aggro on her and the sentries while no one is in line of sight.
[protip]Many groups only like doing this fight with a Death Knight tank so that they can drop Death and Decay at the end of her path and then get back into cover before aggro is initiated. As you can see there are several other methods that work just as well, give them all a try.[/protip]
Once aggroed they will make their way up the stairs and around the corner into the group. As soon as they are there, the Main Tank picks up Auriaya, while a tank (or 2 in 25 player raids) grabs threat from the Sentries. The sentries need to be marked and killed as fast as possible through single target DPS. In 10 player raids with only 2 sentries they can be tanked together, however in 25 player raids with 4 sentries providing buffs it is best to separate them out to 2 tanks to minimize damage. Another option in 25 player raids is assigning another healer to the off tanks until the sentries are down.
Your goal is to have the sentries down in less than a minute (ideally in 40 seconds or less) to provide time to heal everyone and get ready for the Feral Defender to spawn. This is the hardest part of the fight and tanks will need to pop cooldowns and the group should use any buffs they can such as Heroism / Bloodlust. Once this part of the fight is over, most groups find the rest of the fight easier.
Positioning is important throughout the fight as Auriayas sonic screech will hit everyone in her front arc, and if there are not enough players there to spread the damage to, it will single shot those that are there, including the tank. Position is hard to maintain throughout the fight due to her fear that sends players all over the place, so once a fear is over, everyone needs to stack back up on the main tank.
The other difficulty in the fight is Auriayas Sentinal Blast which can quickly wipe a raid. It is normally cast right after her fear spell, making it hard to deal with. To ensure you survive the group needs to have one person getting out of the fear to interrupt it as soon as it is cast. A Shamans Tremor Totem is critical to get players out of fear as quickly as possible, however it can not be counted on for the interrupting player. Warriors that use Berserker Rage and then Shield Bash are a good option, as well as players with the PvP trinket of the human / undead racial ability to get out of fear.
Once the Feral Defender spawns there are two options, kill it or leave it. The best choice depends on the raids makeup and size. If there are lots of heals in the group, or if you are in a 10 player raid, the best option may be to leave the Defender alive and just focus on Auriaya. The reasoning is that every time the defender dies, while it does get weaker, it drops a very nasty void zone that tends to kill anyone that does not react quickly enough, or gets feared through it.
[protip] It is strongly recommended to just ignore the Defender on 10 man fights. It makes the fight much simpler. Dealing with it and kiting Auriaya around to avoid the void zones drops your groups DPS against her significantly and increases the chance of a wipe.[/protip]
style="margin-top: 20px; border-collapse: collapse; float: left; width: 180px;">
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/71443" alt=""
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 180px;"
/>
Follow these stratagies and Auriaya will surely end up dead.t
For 25 player raids, or raids that are slightly low on healing, it is best to kill the Defender several times. Each time the Defender comes back to life it will do significantly less damage, and after several deaths can safely be ignored entirely. No matter which option you choose, you should remain grouped up as much as possible to spread damage from the sentinel blast minimized as well as the Defenders pounces.
Once through the first few abilities the fight continues through the normal sequence until Auriaya has been defeated. The small adds that she summons are almost completely ignorable. Anyone capable of AoE damage can cast a single spell or two and clear them from the battle. Continue DPS on either Auriaya entirely, or alternating between her and the Defender until you defeat her.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our World of Warcraft Game Page.
