Mother Shahraz Strategy Guide (Black Temple)

mother shahraz strategy guide (black temple) tbc classic
  • Author: Pride
  • Date: March 8, 2022
  • Updated: April 5, 2022
  • Expansion: TBC Classic
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Mother Shahraz, the Shivara, is the 7th boss inside the Black Temple raid. She is located at the end of the Den of Mortal Delights, which can only be accessed by defeating all 4 bosses after Supremus: the Shade of Akama, Teron Gorefiend, the Reliquary of Souls and Gurtogg Bloodboil.

Most players have probably heard of Mother Shahraz, as their guild likely required them to gather some shadow resistance gear. She is generally not particularly difficult, provided you use a decent strategy. However, unprepared guilds may be walled off completely from progressing further in the raid as they fail to take down Mother Shahraz due to a lack of shadow resistance, so make sure you have enough — see the Shadow Resistance section below.

This guide will offer a step-by-step analysis on how to toy with Mother Shahraz’s emotions.

Role Summaries

  • This fight is your worst nightmare made manifest, be prepared for it and stay calm
  • Main Tank healers: The MT will take unpredictable damage spikes — don’t lose focus and stop healing when they’re looking healthy
  • Raid Healers: Make sure the raid is topped off at all times — Sinful Beam can kill people from almost full health
  • Raid Healers: Try to heal people targeted by Fatal Attraction, using any instant cast heals you have — they will die very quickly
  • Don’t hesitate to use survival cooldowns like Divine Shield or Desperate Prayer if you get targeted by Fatal Attraction
  • Keep an eye out on your mana as Wicked Beam will drain it — use mana potions if you need to
  • Main Tank: Don’t move or turn Shahraz after getting her to her designated spot. You can wipe the raid with Saber Lash or Silencing Shriek
  • Main Tank: Use any defensive cooldowns you have when Shahraz enrages at 10% HP
  • Offtanks: Use your mitigation gear & stand on top of the MT at all times, so as to soak Saber Lash damage for him

Abilities

This is Shahraz’s most feared ability and the main reason why your raid is bringing shadow resistance.

3 random raid members will get teleported to the same random spot inside the room. They become linked by purple beams, which cause them to deal Shadow damage to every ally within 15 yards (including themselves) every second. The first tick will deal 1000 Shadow damage, the second tick will deal 2000 Shadow damage, and subsequent ticks will deal 3000 Shadow damage – meaning they’re going to be taking 9000 Shadow damage per second starting with the 3rd tick.

The beams can be broken by moving 15 yards away from players you are linked to, so all linked players will need to start running in a different direction to break them ASAP. Even if they’re quick with moving however, the damage is incredibly high (they’ll take 9000 Shadow damage within the first 2 seconds), which is why shadow resistance is incredibly important here. Not only will it save your life if you get teleported by Fatal Attraction, but it also gives you a chance to resist the teleport outright, meaning only 2 players get linked, which is significantly easier to deal with.

Besides shadow resistance, different classes have mechanics that can help them survive or get away from Fatal Attraction, such as Blink, Sprint, Intercept, or even an Engineer’s Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite. Note that immunity effects like Divine Shield and Ice Block will protect you from the damage yourself, but your beam is not broken — you will still keep dealing damage to your allies.

However, even when you’re using shadow resistance, mobility spells etc, the damage is incredibly high and can kill you very quickly. Everyone will need to do everything they can to survive, such as using a Master Healthstone, Major Shadow Protection Potion, etc, while moving ASAP to avoid killing other linked players, or the rest of your raid if you happened to get teleported close to them.

This ability is used every 30 to ~50 seconds.

Shahraz has 4 different beams she can use. She will pick 1 type of beam and use it 3 times in a row, once every 9 seconds, before changing to a different beam — though potentially picking the same beam again. Each beam will hit up to 10 random players in your raid.

The scariest beam and the second reason why your raid is using shadow resistance.

Deals 6938 to 8062 Shadow damage. Straightforward, but extremely deadly — anyone who is not at full health at all times runs the risk of dying to a random Sinful Beam, if they get unlucky and don’t resist it. So really, bring shadow resistance!

Normally, this is the second scariest beam. However, if your raid uses specific positioning, it’s not really that bad.

Deals 2000 Shadow damage and knocks the target high into the air. The fall will not kill them, but they’ll take even more damage, in a fight that already has pretty high raid damage, so it’s good to try to mitigate this ability. The best way to do it will be to stand in specific spots inside Shahraz’s room where you cannot get knocked up, or there’s an object above you making it so you don’t get knocked up too high.

The second scariest beam if your raid is standing at a good spot to mitigate Sinister Beam.

Drains 1000 mana from every target who has mana, and then deals Shadow damage to them equal to twice the amount of mana drained — so 2000 damage. The damage isn’t too bad, but this is fight is pretty healing intensive, so your healers really won’t like having their mana drained.

This beam is the scariest on paper, but in practice it will be the easiest to deal with.

Applies a damage-over-time effect to every target hit for 8 seconds, dealing 2500 Shadow damage to them every 2 seconds, for a total of 10,000 Shadow damage over its duration. This is an incredibly high amount, make no mistake, but if your raid is properly stacked up, then it will be fairly easy to deal with it using AoE healing spells.

Deals 76,000 to 84,000 Physical damage to all enemies in a 20 yard frontal cone in front of Mother Shahraz. The damage sounds absurdly high, and it is, but the catch is that it is divided evenly between all players hit and it’s mitigated by armor. You will therefore want to have 2 tanks standing in front of Shahraz along with your main tank at all times to help soak the damage, preventing your MT from getting instantly killed by Saber Lash.

In addition to its damage, every target hit by Saber Lash gains immunity to knockback and teleport effects, so they essentially cannot be affected by Fatal Attraction and Sinister Beam, which makes the fight a bit more fair, as your raid can no longer wipe to your tanks randomly getting teleported.

Each of Shahraz’s attacks have a 85% chance to proc this ability, but it has a 7 second cooldown – so you can essentially expect to see it roughly every 10 seconds. However, the fact that it procs off her melee attack means your main tank will randomly take massive damage spikes, so your healers will need to always pay attention.

Shahraz howls, silences every player within 18 yards for 10 seconds, preventing them from casting spells for that duration.

Damage is incredibly high during this fight, so if your healers happen to get hit by this ability, that is likely a wipe right there. You will want to avoid that at all costs, by having your healers make sure they’re standing far away from Shahraz. However, your melee DPS that need to cast spells (Enhancement Shamans & Retribution Paladins) will really suffer here, and Protection Paladins will struggle to deal threat as they get constantly silenced, so they should not tank this boss.

There is a little bit of a saving grace however — Silencing Shriek can be resisted via shadow resistance, which you’ll be using to deal with Shahraz’s other abilities anyway. So your spellcasting melee DPS players should use the period after a resist to the best of their ability, before they get silenced again.

This ability is cast every 20 to 30 seconds.

Over the course of the fight, Shahraz will be activating her different Prismatic Auras. These last 15 seconds, and reduce her damage taken by one school of magic by 25%, while increasing her damage taken by another school (usually its “opposite”) by 25%. She will use a new aura every 15 seconds, which will sometimes be the same as the previous aura.

Your DPS players should be using their DPS cooldown when they get an aura favorable to them (for example, Prismatic Aura: Holy for Warlocks).

The auras Mother Shahraz can use are as follows:

Shadow Resistance

Everyone in your raid, except for your tanks, will need shadow resistance to make this fight go smoothly. How much you actually need will depend on how good your healers are, and how quickly everyone can move way from each other during Fatal Attraction.

We recommend that everyone has at least ~130 SR unbuffed. This will be easily attainable for most guilds / players by using the following 3 items:

Then, your choice of crafted bracers, depending on your armor type. These require Friendly with the Ashtongue Deathsworn.

The bracers and cloak cost 1 Heart of Darkness, along with other materials depending on the item, which make them the cheapest and most cost efficient sources of shadow resistance you can get. Those 3 slots (neck / back / wrists) are generally fairly weak from a DPS / healing stat trade-off perspective, making them very appealing.

Using those 3 items will get you 135 Shadow resistance, or 205 when buffed with Prayer of Shadow Protection by a Priest. That will usually be enough for most guilds to clear, provided their healers are decent. If you’re still struggling with 205 buffed shadow resistance, here are some other good options:

  • Glyph of Shadow Warding – Helm enchant that provides 20 shadow resistance. Put this on your previous helm for some nice, cheap shadow resistance.
  • Void Sphere – +4 to all resistances gem. Put this in any old gear you may have, including your Glyph of Shadow Warding helmet, for a little bit extra.
  • Heart of Darknes crafted legs & boots. These aren’t as efficient as the previous options, but they will help in a pinch.

The maximum I’d recommend that you run would be about ~300 buffed, or 230 unbuffed. Going that high however will heavily decrease your damage / healing output, so ideally you will want to get to a point where your healers can keep everyone up with just the neck / cloak / bracers.

Raid Composition & Preparation

The most important thing that everyone will need for this fight is shadow resistance so make sure you have read the Shadow Resistance section and understand how much you need & come prepared. Don’t slack and expect to get carried here — you will die without shadow resistance!

At least 1 Priest is practically mandatory for this fight, thanks to their Prayer of Shadow Protection buff.

Beyond that, everyone should have Master Healthstones. In addition, it will greatly help if people bring some Major Shadow Protection Potions — they can save your life if you get teleported in an unfortunate position and aren’t generally too expensive, specially if you just save them for emergencies.

This fight cranks the healing requirement up to 11 – it will be the most healing intensive fight in all of Phase 3 for many guilds. To that end, it is strongly recommended that you bring 5 to 6 healers, and weaker groups may even want to have a 7th healer for this fight. You will want at least 2-3 healers with strong AoE healing spells, like Restoration Shamans and Holy Priests, as AoE healing is the name of the game here.

This fight is not exceptionally healing intensive, but it requires a modest amount of raid healing — your raid will take slightly more damage than your tank will over the fight’s duration. 5 to 6 healers are recommended, and you will need at least 1 Holy Paladin or Priest in order to dispel the Incinerate debuff before it kills players.

Assign to 2-3 healers to your main tank. Holy Paladins and Restoration Druids are the best candidates for this task thanks to their constant healing, but it’s not a bad idea to assign a single Restoration Shaman to the MT as well, spamming Chain Heal so as to heal your melee DPS in the process. Restoration Druids will also shine here, as they can keep heal-over-time effects rolling on all 3 of your tanks for constant, reliable healing.

Your remaining healers should be assigned to healing the raid — the hardest task in this fight. They will need to heal constant raid damage due to the various beams (but mostly Sinful Beam) and try to quickly react & heal people targeted by Fatal Attraction, increasing their chances of survival.

Your healers will need all of the +healing power they can get here in order to quickly top their assigned targets off. Thus, it is highly recommended that your healers all use +healing consumables they can get, such as Elixir of Healing Power and Golden Fish Sticks.

There are no specific DPS class / spec requirements. This is one of the rare fights where ranged DPS will have a slightly more difficult time than melee DPS, as Shadow Bolt causes spell pushback. Melee away!

Once more, Warlocks are exceptional during this fight. Master Healthstones will greatly increase people’s chances of surviving Fatal Attraction, while their Master Soulstone can get your healers back in the game — and they’ll typically be dying the most due to their low HP.

This fight is a DPS race, with your healers quickly running out of mana due to the constant healing they’ll need to do. Therefore, your DPS players should really, really be using DPS consumables here. Shahraz is a demon, so they should also be using anti-undead items like Mark of the Champion and Elixir of Demonslaying.

A minimum of 2 tanks is needed for this fight, with 3 being strongly recommended, as it greatly reduces the amount of spike damage your main tank will be taking to Saber Lash. Going with less than 3 will essentially make this fight a gamble.

Protection Paladins will struggle to main tank due to being constantly silenced by Silencing Shriek, but other than that, tank classes don’t really matter. Your off-tanks don’t need to race for threat, and should instead be using maximum avoidance gear to reduce the amount of damage they take from Saber Lash.

Shahraz does a pretty ridiculous amount of tank damage due to Saber Lash so your main tank will be getting a lot of rage to convert into threat. For that reason, they may want to use mitigation gear & consumables, as they generally won’t need the extra threat.

The Pull

Make sure you have cleared the entire room that Shahraz is in. You most likely won’t need all of that space, but better be safe than sorry, specially with a boss that’s as challenging as Shahraz. This will give you all of the room you need to res people, regenerate mana, buff up etc, while preparing for the fight.

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This guide will be covering the “fish position” strategy. All of your ranged players will be stacking under the fish statue by the pond in Shahraz’s room, specifically the one furthest away from Shahraz’s original position. Your melee DPS meanwhile will be stacking underneath the opposite fish statue, with Shahraz being tanked right in front of them, facing your ranged players. All of the tanks will stack on top of each other.

The reason for this positioning is simple: being underneath the fish statues prevents you from being knocked up in the air by Sinister Beam. This will reduce the damage your raid takes by a very decent amount, while also giving your DPS players maximum DPS uptime & letting your healers heal without being interrupted by the knock-up, potentially causing players to die while they’re unable to heal due to being mid-air.

Note that certain races will struggle to get under the fish because they have a different hitbox. If any of your players find themselves unable to get underneath them, they can instead stand underneath the hand of the night elf statue right next to the pond. This won’t prevent them from getting knocked up altogether, but it will stop their ascend early on, causing them to land without taking fall damage.

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When your raid is ready to pull, a single Hunter should cast Misdirection on your main tank and start moving towards Shahraz, pulling when your raid leader says so. Your MT should be in position, ready to pick up Shahzrah when she reaches her designated spot, and moving slightly if necessary — you’ll want to make sure that she’s never within 18 yards of your ranged players, as a single Silencing Shriek on your healers will wipe you.

Your melee DPS should make sure they’re never in front of Shahzrah as she’s being pulled. There’s always a chance that they get hit by Saber Lash which will get them killed, so they should only move in when the MT has gotten her into position. Once she’s there, your remaining Hunters should use Misdirection on the MT, officially starting the fight.

NOTE: If it’s ever looking like your raid will wipe, all you have to do is move towards the room’s entrance. Shahraz will then reset, allowing you to res and try again.

The Fight

Your raid should use Heroism / Bloodlust along with personal DPS cooldowns right away, before you start losing players to Fatal Attraction. This fight is a DPS race and getting all of the damage you can in there can make a difference between a kill or a wipe.

The first thing you’ll notice during this fight is that Shahraz does a lot of damage. Your main tank healers will need to be constantly healing the tank from the start of the fight — there’s a decent chance that one of Shahraz’s first attacks trigger Saber Lash, causing them to take a big damage spike and potentially dying. She will not be kind and wait for your raid to be nice and ready before using Saber Lash.

15 to 20 seconds into the fight, Shahraz will activate her first Prismatic Aura, reducing the damage taken by one school of magic by 25%, while increasing damage taken by its opposite school by 25%. Raid addons like DeadlyBossMods will announce this, so your casters know when they can use their cooldowns to maximize their DPS, and when their DPS will suffer due to having an unfavourable aura. She will keep changing auras every 15 seconds, so they’ll need to pay attention.

The next ability you’ll see will most likely be one of Shahraz’s Prismatic Beams, roughly 20 to 25 seconds into the fight. Provided you’re stacking correctly, the only beam that your raid has any reason to be afraid of is Sinful Beam, which causes a very high amount of damage. For that reason, your raid healers will need to go into overdrive starting at this point, making sure everyone is topped off as much as possible, minimizing random Sinful Beam deaths. She will use her selected beam 3 times total, once every 9 seconds. It will be up to your healers to keep track of incoming beams and heal people as necessary.

The next ability that Shahraz uses will be Fatal Attraction — which will be the first moment of truth for your raid. 3 random raid members will be teleported to a random nearby spot and get linked by purple chains, which cause them to deal damage to all nearby players, including themselves — read the Fatal Attraction section under Abilities for more information on how this works.

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It will be vital that the targeted players start moving away from each other immediately, breaking the chains in the process. If possible, they should do so without moving towards other raid members, to avoid causing unnecessary raid damage — but sometimes there’ll be no option but to run towards the raid, which will usually be okay if the chains break quickly.

Your healers will need to keep an eye out for this and as much as possible try to heal the targeted players, to give them a slightly better chance of surviving. However, the damage comes so fast that your healers may very well not be able to react to it, so each individual player will be responsible for moving quickly and using everything they can to stay alive, such as Master Healthstones, Major Shadow Protection Potions, etc. Realistically however, people will be dying to this ability, so you should be ready to combat res them as necessary to keep your raid going.

Note that occasionally, Shahraz might choose to teleport the 3 targeted players into your ranged stack. When that happens, you’re likely going to wipe, as your entire raid takes an unhealable amount of damage. That is an unfortunate byproduct of using this “fish position” strategy, and there’s not much you can do – just res and try again. This scenario will be rare enough that it’s not worth it to use a different strategy for most guilds.

The final ability you’ll see from Shahraz will be her Silencing Shriek. Provided you’ve positioned correctly, this ability will just be an annoyance for your spellcasting melee DPS — Enhancement Shamans & Retribution Paladins. However, if your tanks weren’t on point with positioning Shahraz at the start of the fight, you can expect to wipe, as 10 seconds with no healing will very likely be lethal for your main tank and several raid members.

And that is the entire fight! You have now seen all of Shahraz’s abilities. She will keep changing her beams up every 3 casts (so every ~27 seconds), her aura every 15 seconds, and occasionally casting Fatal Attraction & Silencing Shriek. Provided your healers are on point and can keep up with the main tank & raid damage, and your raid has enough shadow resistance that people don’t just instantly die to Fatal Attraction, then you are very likely walking away from this fight with some tasty new loot.

The only thing that may yet trip you up is that at 10%, Shahraz will enrage, increasing her attack speed and damage dealt by a small amount. You are hardly going to notice it as she hits like a truck and the buff isn’t that major, but it is a good idea for your MT to use a defensive cooldown to ensure a kill.

Congratulations on beating Mother Shahraz! With this, only the Illidari Council stands between you and the final boss of the Black Temple, Illidan Stormrage himself!

 

About the Author

Pride

Classic WoW is my jam, with a passion for PvP. Most know me as Baranor, the ret paladin guy, but I'm secretly a druid main, don't tell anyone. In my free time I play Switch games, particularly JRPGs. Some day I'll be making my own games and I humbly hope you play those too!
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