by Byron Mudry on May 22, 2006
Buru the Gorger is the forth boss in the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ20) and is a very large tick. You think you dislike ticks in real life? Wait till you check out Buru! Seriously though, Buru is a very entertaining encounter. The main reason is that EVERYONE gets to have a chance to kite him around his room. I find it very entertaining to try to kite a boss around since it is not a normal task for many classes. Hence Buru is one of my favorite encounters.
Buru has many different abilities that must be dealt with, they are as follows.
Dismember - This is a stacking DOT that does insane damage (roughly 1200 damage every 2 seconds). Buru will put this DOT on anyone who is kiting him that he catches.
Immune to Taunt - You can not taunt Buru, once he starts watching someone he stays with them until he takes egg damage or they die.
Speed Up - As Buru chases a player he starts out slow but speeds up over time. At the beginning of a chase he is easy to get away from, however by 30 seconds he is moving just slower than players. By a minute he is going fast enough to catch players.
Creeping Plague - When Buru enters stage two Creeping Plague is triggered. Creeping Plague is an especially nasty DOT that hits everyone in the raid so you must drop Buru quickly. The DOT does 80 damage per tick and adds 80 to the damage every 3rd tick. This means the damage looks like this; 80, 80, 80, 160, 160, 160, 240, 240, 240, 320, 320, 320, etc. As you can see, many players will have serious issues dealing with this.
Buru's lair plays an important part in the fight. When you enter his room it is usually by jumping off of the ledge above into the deep water of the pool. There are three important features about the room that need to be taken into consideration while fighting Buru.
The first is to remember where the deep water is so that you do not enter it while being watched by Buru. Even going slow, he can catch you while you are swimming.
Secondly is the ramp in the room. This offers a good method of escape from Buru. You can run part way up the ram and then jump off the side back into the water. This usually gives you a bit of a lead on Buru. NOTE: make sure you do not go past the second ridge on the ramp, as it may bug the encounter.
Lastly and most importantly, you will see eggs surrounding the water in Buru's lair. These eggs are the key to defeating him. When you kill them they explode causing up to 500 damage to players, but up to 40,000 damage to Buru (roughly 5-6% of his health)!! When the egg explodes it will also spawn a Hive Zara Hatchling that must be dealt with.
The Buru fight is broken up into two phases. The first phase is made up of kiting Buru and attempting to destroy his shell, the second is DPSing him down.
The phases work roughly like this:
Phase 1
In Phase one Buru still has his Tick shell on and is therefore very resistance to damage, much like a tick in real life. He is also completely immune to taunts so tanking him is not really an option. Before starting the fight the raid should break up into 2 main groups, group 1 to deal with eggs and group 2 to deal with the spawns from the eggs.
When the fight starts Buru will call out that he is watching someone. He will then watch that person until he is damaged by an egg exploding or he catches and kills that player. If you are that player your job is to kite him around the room until the egg group calls you to a location.
The egg group starts damaging eggs around the room getting them to roughly 5%. It is also important to never use DOTs on the eggs as they may continue for too long. You should always have at least 2 eggs ready to explode. I have found it best to start at one egg and work in one direction around the room, but this is personal preference. The eggs will respawn and there will always be at least 2 up in the room.
When you have an egg ready to explode the leader in the egg group should call out to Buru's kitter and ping the map to show the location. Everyone gets ready and should destroy the egg while Buru is over it, causing Buru a large amount of damage and causing him to switch who he is watching, starting the sequence over again.
The spawn group should be dealing with the elite spawn from the egg. Some groups like to destroy 2-3 eggs in rapid succession and then destroy multiple spawns at one time. I have seen single and group strategies work, so it is really up to you. While not dealing with spawns the group should have DOTS on Buru, heal other players and even help with the eggs.
This phase repeats until Buru is down to 20% when his shell will break off and you enter phase 2. It is important to setup for phase 2 as best as possible. You can accomplish this by ensuring that at 22% you stop all damage on Buru and clear all egg spawns, then heal everyone as much as possible, have everyone drink nature resist potions that has, and then get an egg ready to pop. At this point DPS Buru down to just over 20% (20.1 if possible) and then destroy the egg with him over it. He will drop to roughly 16% health to start phase 2.
Phase 2
When Buru drops below 20% health his shell cracks and exposes his fleshy innards. Time to have FUN! This phase is a DPS fest. Buru immediately hits everyone with creeping plague and summons additional elite hive zara hatchlings. He continues to summon additional hatchlings throughout the fight so be prepared.
The only way to win this fight can be summed up in two words: DPS and Fear. You must do as much DPS as fast as you can on Buru. This means all available debuff slots must be filled with DOTS and all ranges and melee DPS should be at full output. The spawns can be pretty much ignored if you chain fear them with warlocks and priests. Once you kill Buru the adds will disappear, so if they are chain feared they never need to be dealt with.
With the creeping plague debuff on players to only real healing that helps is the prayer of healing since it effects everyone in a group. Paladins, Shamans and Druids are all better served doing as much DPS to Buru as they can instead of healing. To have a valid chance you need to be able to drop Buru in less than 25 seconds as at that point most of your cloth wearers will be dead from the plague.
We will have images of Buru up shortly in our AQ20 gallery here: TenTonHammer's AQ20 Gallery.
Have comments or suggestions? Thought of something that has been missed? Found another tactic that can be used? Found an error? We would love to hear from you! Email us at messiah@tentonhammer.com.
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