Ultraxion is a massive twilight dragon who serves as the fifth boss of the Dragon Soul raid. This encounter marks the beginning of The Fall of Deathwing, the second wing of the instance. It’s primarily a gear check, requiring high DPS and healing output from everyone in the group.
After the first four bosses have been defeated, return to the top of Wyrmrest Temple and speak with Kalecgos, then Thrall. You’ll need to protect the Aspects from an onslaught of Twilight Assaulters, and then Ultraxion will appear at the edge of the platform. Once Ultraxion is dead, his body will fall to the ground, but you can get your loot from a Cache of the Aspects nearby.
Ultraxion
Warmaster Blackhorn
Spine of Deathwing
Madness of Deathwing
“I am the beginning of the end… the shadow which blots out the sun… the bell which tolls your doom…“
– Ultraxion
Raid Composition
These are our recommendations for your raid composition for this fight. You will need 2 tanks for this encounter regardless of the raid’s size or difficulty. You should also try to bring the minimum number of healers you can manage, as this fight has a very tight 6-minute enrage timer and you will need all the DPS you can get. Any additional healers you bring beyond the numbers recommended below won’t be able to benefit from the healing buffs that are provided during the fight, which severely reduces their effectiveness.
Role | 10 Normal | 10 Heroic | 25 Normal | 25 Heroic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Tanks | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
 Healers | 2-3 | 2-3 | 5-6 | 5-6 |
 DPS | 5-6 | 5-6 | 17-18 | 17-18 |
Role Summaries
Everyone
- Have your special action button keybound and know when you need to use Heroic Will during the fight.
- Stay stacked in a tight group in front of the boss for the entire fight to make raid healing as easy as possible. The only people who should need to move at all are healers when they pick up their buffs.
- If you’re soaking an Hour of Twilight, be ready to use powerful defensive abilities to survive.
Raid Leader
- Assign healers to pick up each of the healing buffs that are provided over the course of the fight.
- Assign players to soak every Hour of Twilight.
- Use Bloodlust near the start of the fight so you can use it again at the end, ideally when players are all in the same realm so they can all benefit from it.
Tanks
- Use your defensive cooldowns on the pull, because they will all be reset when Thrall casts Last Defender of Azeroth.
- Remember that your defensives will last longer and their cooldowns will be faster, and look for ways to maximize their use.
- If you’re tanking and you get Fading Light, wait for your other tank to taunt and then use Heroic Will.
- If you are not currently tanking and the current tank gets Fading Light, taunt ASAP.
Healers
- Know which healing buff you should be picking up and grab it as soon as the crystal appears.
- Be prepared for escalating raid damage as Unstable Monstrosity ticks faster for every minute that the fight goes on.
- Discipline Priests may want to lean into Atonement early in the fight to help the raid get ahead on damage, and then switch to more direct healing spells when they pick up their buff and the incoming damage escalates.
- Holy Paladins should cast nothing but Holy Radiance if they have Source of Magic.
DPS
- When you get Fading Light, try to wait until the last second to use Heroic Will, but always use it before the debuff expires.
- Use your cooldowns liberally. Do everything you can to maximize your DPS so your group can beat the tight enrage timer.
Mechanics & Strategy
This fight has only one phase, which takes place inside the Twilight realm, a separate plane that is pretty much the same as the normal realm except that everything is a little darker and the sky has a cool purple effect (ooh, ahh!). Before we get into the boss mechanics, there are a few helpful abilities that you’ll have access to during this fight.
Heroic Will
This ability will allow you to leave the Twilight realm for 5 seconds at a time. Before you start the encounter, you should make sure that you have it keybound: it’s in the Key Bindings menu as ExtraActionButton1. This ability appears as a special action button in the middle of your screen when the fight begins. It will allow you to avoid certain mechanics, but you won’t be able to do anything else, so it will cost you precious time in a fight that is a tight DPS and healing check. You should avoid using this ability unless the mechanics call for it. We’ll talk more about how to use it under the boss abilities.
Protection of the Aspects
As well as the Heroic Will ability, each member of your raid will be able to benefit from 1 or 2 of the following buffs that is provided by the Aspects. Technically, these abilities will show up as debuffs, probably to improve their visibility.
These buffs will be granted at specific times over the course of the fight. Thrall’s buff is only available to tanks. Healers will have to choose one from Alexstrasza, Ysera, or Kalecgos. Nozdormu’s buff will go out on the entire raid at the 5-minute mark. We’ll cover the three healing buffs in their own section since they are a bit more complicated.
Thrall: Last Defender of Azeroth
Thrall automatically grants his buff to your tanks right at the start of the fight, allowing them to use their defensive cooldowns more often and for longer. Tanks will need to take advantage of these improved cooldowns to survive Ultraxion’s punishing damage. Note that this also instantly resets all of the tanks’ defensive cooldowns when it goes out, so you can effectively get a free use out of them at the start of the fight.
Nozdormu: Timeloop
Nozdormou automatically grants his buff to everyone in the raid 5 minutes into the encounter. It will allow each raid member to cheat death one time as the encounter becomes more hectic and the enrage timer counts down. The first time that each player receives damage that would normally kill them, they will instead be healed to full. This will only happen once and it will remove the buff from your character.
Healing Buffs
You must decide ahead of time which of three buffs each healer will take: Alexstrasza (red), Ysera (green), or Kalecgos (blue). Once a healer gains one of the buffs, they will be unable to benefit from the others. There are only 2 of each buff available in a 25-player and 1 of each in a 10-player group, so the healers will not all be able to use the same one or two buffs. The buff they choose will last through the end of the fight, although it won’t persist through death if they receive a battle rez.
Alexstrasza: Gift of Life
Alexstrasza grants her gift through red crystals that appear on one side of the platform about 90 seconds into the fight. Clicking one of these crystals will give you the Gift of Life buff, increasing all of your healing done by 100%.
Your strongest raid healer(s) should get this buff. All else being equal, Restoration Druid and Discipline Priest may benefit the most, but individual output is what counts. Discipline Priests who take this buff should forgo Power Word: Shield, which does not benefit from the buff, in favor of Prayer of Healing, as the additional healing done will proc larger Divine Aegis bubbles.
Ysera: Essence of Dreams
Ysera grants her gift through green crystals that appear on one side of the platform about a minute after Alexstrasza’s, so 2 and a half minutes into the fight. Clicking one of these crystals will give you the Essence of Dreams buff, which adds a raid-wide AoE heal to every heal that you cast.
This buff is considered the weakest, and should be taken by your healer(s) who are not planning on taking the other two buffs. It can be good for Restoration Shamans who can proc lots of extra heals with Healing Rain. Even though this gift is not usually as sought after as the others, it’s still a huge buff for any healer,
Kalecgos: Source of Magic
Kalecgos grants his gift through blue crystals that appear on one side of the platform, about a minute after Ysera’s, so 3 and a half minutes into the fight. Clicking on one of these crystals will give you the Source of Magic buff, which lowers the mana cost of all of your spells by 75% and increases your spell haste by 100%.
This buff should always go to a Holy Paladin first and foremost, after which they should be able to spam Holy Radiance for the rest of the fight. A Restoration Shaman might be a good second option. It’s best on healers who have powerful-but-expensive heals with a longer cast time.
Ultraxion
Now to cover the actual boss abilities that you’ll be dealing with throughout the encounter. Although there are several of them, this is actually one of the most straightforward fights in the raid. There is little to no movement required, for one thing. Ultraxion stays planted at the front of the platform and does not move, and he can’t parry, so you’ll be able to stack in front of the boss for the entire fight. His hit box is enormous, so you should position yourselves close to the stairs so your healers can easily pick up their buffs when they spawn.
Twilight Shift
This is cast at the start of the fight, pulling your raid into the Twilight realm. There’s nothing you need to do to try to counter or react to this; it will just happen.
Unstable Monstrosity
This is the main source of incoming damage throughout the encounter. Your raid will take constant Shadow damage from this ability (except when you use Heroic Will to temporarily leave the Twilight realm). At the beginning of the fight, Ultraxion will cast this every six seconds, but the time between casts will be reduced by one second for every minute that passes. So at one minute in, he’ll start casting it every 5 seconds, and so on, until the damage is going out every second.
Your group must stay stacked in order to spread this damage out. Your healers will also need to be prepared to deal with intense, escalating raid damage as the fight goes on. The healing buffs that are provided by the Aspects will help tremendously, but it will still be a challenge.
Twilight Burst
If no one is within his melee range, Ultraxion will deal heavy damage to the entire raid every second while also stacking a debuff on them that increases their magic damage taken by 50% for each stack. Your group should be stacked in front of the boss at all times, so you should hopefully never have to worry about this, as it would most likely cause a wipe.
Hour of Twilight
Ultraxion will cast this ability every 45 seconds throughout the fight, dealing massive Shadow damage to anyone who is still in the Twilight realm when it happens. If not enough players are in the Twilight realm when it goes off, he will hit the Aspects with this ability instead, which will cause a wipe. This means that at least 1 player will need to stay in the Twilight realm in a Normal 10-player raid, at least 2 in a Heroic 10, 3 in a Normal 25, and 5 in a Heroic 25. On Heroic, each soaker will be affected by Looming Darkness and will only be able to soak every 3rd Hour of Twilight.
You’ll need to have designated soakers for each Hour of Twilight who will stay in the Twilight realm to be hit by this ability. Soakers will need to have powerful defensive cooldowns available to survive the damage. Your tank may be an option if they are topped off and have appropriate defensive cooldowns available. Other good options for soakers include a Shadow Priest with Dispersion, a Mage with Ice Block/Cauterize, or a Paladin with Divine Shield. Holy Priests can also use Guardian Spirit in a pinch on themselves or another player. Beyond these examples, just look for anyone with strong defensive cooldowns.
Everyone else will need to use Heroic Will to peace-out before this ability lands. Hour of Twilight is a 5-second cast and Heroic Will lasts for 5 seconds, so as long as you use your special ability between when he starts casting and when it goes off, you’ll be safe. However, you can minimize the time you are removed from the fight by casting Heroic Will as close to the Hour of Twilight as possible, since the latter will pull you back instantly. Just don’t push it too close and get yourself killed.
Fading Light
Ultraxion uses this ability after the first Hour of Twilight, and always uses it twice in between subsequent Hour of Twilight casts. He will place the Faded Into Twilight debuff on the current tank as well as a number of random DPS (never healers):1 DPS in Normal 10-player, 2 DPS in Heroic 10-player, 3 DPS in Normal 25-player, and 6 DPS in Heroic 25-player. It has a random duration of 5 to 10 seconds and it will instantly kill the target if they are in the Twilight realm when it expires. The only way to escape this fate is to use Heroic Will right before it ends. After it expires, if the tank lives, they will get a residual debuff that prevents them from being able to pick up the boss right away. In Normal, the tank’s threat will be reset and they will be unable to generate threat for 10 seconds. In Heroic, they will take 100% increased physical damage for 5 seconds.
Everyone who gets this debuff on them will need to use Heroic Will to remove it. It’s best to do so just before it expires. Heroic Will removes you from the fight for 5 full seconds, but the debuff will pull you back when it goes off, so you can maximize your uptime on the boss with careful timing.
This debuff will also force regular tank swaps since the tank it targets will not be able to pick up the boss right away. This is why you absolutely need 2 tanks for this fight. The other tank should taunt as soon as the debuff goes out to ensure the boss is always tanked.
Looming Darkness (Heroic Only)
On Heroic difficulty, players who soak an Hour of Twilight will receive this debuff. It lasts for two minutes, and during that time they will not be able to soak another Hour of Twilight. To deal with this, your group will need to rotate between 3 different groups of soakers. So you’ll need 6 total soakers for 10-player and 15 for 25-player.
Enrage
This boss has a 6-minute enrage timer, so you’ll need to defeat him within that window to avoid a wipe.
Twilight Eruption
This is Ultraxion’s enrage ability. He will cast it 6 minutes after the encounter begins, killing everyone in the raid.
Â
About the Author
