TenTonHammer's First Look at "The Shattered Halls"

Well here I am, right back where I started in the Burning Crusade several months ago, the Hellfire Citadel. This time I am nearly level 70 and aiming to explore the Shattered Halls, a high level instance meant for experienced groups level 69 and 70. As explained in my previous guides the Hellfire Citadel is located between the two starting towns of the factions in the Hellfire Peninsula. The Hellfire Citadel, houses the following four instances:

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Getting to the Citadel and finding a group

The first thing to figure out was how to get to the new instances. I knew from my last trip to the Citadel that is was just south of Thrallmar or north of the Alliance city. For those unfamiliar with the area, you can always check our trusty map of the Outlands. It is a little counter intuitive to find the Furnace though as you actually head up onto the Ramparts to get to it, even though the Ramparts instance is gotten to through the keep area... strange, but oh well.

I was once again able to find a group using the LFG and LFM interface in no time at all. As I feared though it works far better in beta than it does in the live 2.0 patch where players in general are still too stubborn to use it.

Ok, So I now had a group and was ready to go in, what was it all about...

The Shattered Halls

The fun started right away when we started pulling. We pulled what we thought would be a group and only one came. Ok, easy, lets kill it and move on. We do, and pull the second one, and then the tank asks, "Didn't I kill that other one before?" Sure enough the first one was back. It turns out that even in the loose groups in the Shattered Halls there is a key MOB called a Hellfire Legionnaire that must be killed first or he summons replacements. This is true even if he is not aggro'ed We pulled him and got a group of 3 MOBs total, downed him first and then there were no respawns.

Fights progress in difficulty from there, starting with groups of 3, 4 and then very quickly 5. Crowd control and aggro management is critical in these fights as even the normal MOBs can hit for up to 800ish and critical for up to 2000 damage. It is very easy for the healer to pull aggro accidentally since you will need to throw big heals very quickly.

We worked through the progressively harder packs until we came to a doorway that was locked. to get around it you have to jump into the sewer system below and fight you way through groups of slimes. The slimes had one main slime and then many little baby adds that came with it. Again you need to kill the main one to have the little ones stop spawning, similar to the Legionnaires for the Fel Orcs.

When you come up from the sewer you get your first look at Grand Warlock Nethekurse which is the first boss. The fight has a neat little intro too it where you can watch him kill his adds as punishment. They then spawn again and when you engage he toys with you by throwing them at you one at a time. Then the real fight begins. In this fight the tank needs to move him around to avoid the purple spots that he summons on the floor as they cause massive damage over time to players on them. The one time I got caught in one it was ticking for over 1000 damage per second. The tank can easily drag him around the room so that players can avoid these spots though. The fight enters a second phase once you get him down to 15% health, he will stand in place and start spinning around and casting shadow bolts at random players. They hit hard and fast, so at 15% it becomes a DPS race to get him down as quickly as possible. Since aggro and targeting is random there is no reason for anyone to hold anything back, you can go at full 100% damage.

The groups after him become even harder with the standard group being 5 man and some being 6 MOBs all of increasing difficulty. There are only a few pulls before you enter an event type area where a guard master calls out archers that pelt you at distance with flaming arrows that leave DOT AOEs on the ground. They are at the end of a long corridor that you must fight your way through. The guard master at the end of the hall is similar to the legionnaires earlier, and he must be killed before the groups stop spawning. This means you must push hard and fast through the hallway. In essence it is a mini suppression room from Blackwing Lair.

The second boss actually feels much easier than the first. He is a giant two headed ogre with personality conflicts, named Warbringer O'mrogg. He spends the whole fight arguing with himself, which is quite entertaining. His abilities are an AOE fear and a random aggro attack. You can start the fight out as a normal fight with the tank holding aggro, however at some point in the fight he will state something witty like " I kill someone else now" or "I bored, I squish you instead" and move to attack a different random player. At this point everyone can go at full DPS until someone pulls aggro at which point the times on the ability is done and the tank can regain aggro and everyone can slow down until he calls it out again.

The last thing to note is that there are assassins that wander around the arena so you should all stay in the middle circle so that when you get feared you will not run far enough to aggro the assassins (at least you hope) as they can cause enough issues to wipe the group. From this point on there are several hidden assassins around the area. You need to find them and kill them all as any left alive will come to the aid of the final boss, which will in all likely hood cause a wipe.

There are only a few pulls from the second to the third and final boss, but can be difficult between the champions and wandering assassins. Go slow and steady and it shouldn't be an issue.

The final boss is a very complicated fight, since he constantly summons adds that need to be dealt with. The boss is the giant Fel Orc Warrior named Kargath Bladefist. As many of you know, he was one of the highest ranking members of the Shadow Council and has had a huge influence in Azeroths history. The outpost in the Badlands is named after him, as is the south shore of Orgrimmar (Bloodfist Bay). He is an enemy well worth the effort of defeating. The adds he summons are no push over either and take some time to deal with. You must keep them under control though if you hope to win this fight. Other than summoning adds his main form of attack is a set of charges. Everyone 30 seconds or so in the fight he does four random charges against party members, and then cleave against a 5th person. The cleave hits everyone within about 10 yards of the front of him. This means that as soon as he starts charging the first person, everyone should scatter. This ensures that only one person gets cleaved.

The fight is a healing endurance test and a DPS race. The healers need to have enough mana and regen to keep the whole party up, while DPS gets him down before they run out. The charges and cleaves do enough damage that you need to heal everyone after each round so that the next round of charges does not kill anyone. While difficult it is an entertaining and fun fight.

Once he is down you have finished the first high level instance in the Burning Crusade and the first one that drops some of the dungeon tier 3 item sets. We suffered a few wipes each time while running the instance and it took significantly longer than previous instances in the Burning Crusade have. I believe it took about 3 hours each run, maybe a bit more. With some practice and slightly better gear, you can probably make it in about 90 minutes.

The instance is a significant step up in difficulty from earlier instances with even experienced AQ40 and Naxx raiders feeling challenged. Many players in both groups that ran it expressed their love of that challenge in a 5 man group. It was something that they had missed and only found in high end raids. Everyone loved the instance, the fights and the loot and said they could not wait to explore the other high level instance and practice their 5 man skills.

I took many additional screen shots which are all available in our gallery here: TenTonHammer visits the The Shattered Halls .

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