Reliquary of Souls Strategy Guide (Black Temple)

reliquary of souls strategy guide (black temple) tbc classic
  • Author: Pride
  • Date: March 8, 2022
  • Updated: March 10, 2022
  • Expansion: TBC Classic
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The Reliquary of Souls is a 3-phase boss encounter inside the Black Temple raid that players can attempt after defeating Supremus and gaining access to the Sanctuary of Shadows. Located at the very end of the Shrine of Lost Souls, the Reliquary (or “RoS”) will typically be the 5th or 6th boss that players fight, usually after defeating Teron Gorefiend.

With a combined 8.7 million HP, the Reliquary of Souls is going to be the longest encounter in the first 2/3rds of the dungeon. However, a lot of of that time is spent in the interlude between phases, as the bosses themselves die fairly quickly thanks to the massive damage buffs that players gain or the fact that the Essence of Suffering has 0 armor.

This fight is the first really mechanically tricky encounter in the raid, as the first 2 phases (the Essences of Suffering and Desire) require that specific players in your raid know exactly what to do, or you are likely to wipe. It is not exceptionally difficult, but the players with a specific assignment will really, really need to know what they’re doing here.

This guide will offer a step-by-step explanation on how to put the lost souls trapped inside the Reliquary to rest.

Role Summaries

Every Phase

  • Stay away from the boss for a couple of seconds, then stack up with the rest of the raid behind it
  • Do not take any actions until the tank has established threat on the boss, else you can wipe the raid
  • If you ever get threat, do not panic — stand still, or you are making things worse for everyone
  • Your mana will regenerate to full after Phases 1 & 2, so go crazy with using it

Phase 1 – Essence of Suffering

  • The person closest to the boss’ center will be forced to tank it for 5 seconds — don’t be that person

Phase 2 – Essence of Desire

Phase 3 – Essence of Anger

  • Don’t ever be in front of the boss
  • Use a Master Healthstone in order to survive Spite if necessary, particularly later on in the fight

Every Phase

  • Be at your maximum attack range behind the boss at all times

Phase 1 – Essence of Suffering

  • Use your 2 & 3 minute DPS cooldowns in this phase
  • There is no threat in this phase, so you can go crazy on the DPS
  • Rogues: Step in front of the MT and use Evasion to tank the boss during Enrage

Phase 2 – Essence of Desire

  • Use your 2 minute DPS cooldowns in this phase
  • You take 50% of the damage you deal, so watch your health, particularly if Deaden is on the boss,
  • Rogues: If you’re assigned to it, keep Mind-Numbing Poison up on the boss at all times
  • Interrupters: Save rage / energy so you can Interrupt Spirit Shock when it is your turn to do so
  • Interrupters: Watch the cast bar — do not interrupt Deaden unless you are explicitly told to do so

Phase 3 – Essence of Anger

  • Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust for maximum DPS
  • Keep an eye on your threat meter at all times — pulling threat here can wipe your raid

Every Phase

  • This fight is extremely rough on healers, so make sure you understand what to do in every phase

Phase 1 – Essence of Suffering

  • Use your 2 & 3 minute DPS cooldowns in this phase
  • There is no threat in this phase, so you can go crazy on the DPS

Phase 2 – Essence of Desire

Phase 3 – Essence of Anger

  • Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust for maximum DPS
  • Keep an eye on your threat meter at all times — pulling threat here can wipe your raid
  • Warlocks: Be very careful with Life Tap in this phase, Aura of Anger and Spite will both kill you

Every Phase

Phase 1 – Essence of Suffering

Phase 2 – Essence of Desire

  • This phase is very healing intensive, specially on the AoE healing side
  • If the MT takes Deaden by accident, they will need massive healing to survive
  • Focus big nuke classes like Warlocks — they are prone to suiciding on Aura of Desire self-damage

Phase 3 – Essence of Anger

  • This fight starts off easy but gets very healing intensive over time, specially on the AoE healing side
  • The tank will need big, constant healing here due to Soul Scream
  • Quickly top off people with the Spite debuff — they take 7k damage after the 6 seconds expire
  • Pay extra attention to self-damaging classes (Warlocks, Shadow Priests, Retribution Paladins)

Every Phase

  • Make sure you’re the closest player & first person to attack the boss in every phase

Phase 1 – Essence of Suffering

  • You will need to swap tanks when the current tank drops below 50% HP, as they cannot be healed
  • To swap, stand on top of the current tank then take a few steps forward, so you’re the closest player
  • Never run through the boss or move too close to it — your raid might wipe if it ever moves
  • If your raid doesn’t have a Rogue, use a defensive cooldown to survive Enrage
  • Paladins: Help dispel Soul Drain using Cleanse if you’re not tanking

Phase 2 – Essence of Desire

  • You will need to do lots of threat to keep up with the DPS players’ threat here
  • Warriors: Use Spell Reflection to reflect Deaden back to the boss
  • Use a defensive cooldown to survive if you ever get hit by Deaden

Phase 3 – Essence of Anger

  • You will need to do lots of threat to keep up with the DPS players’ threat here
  • Warriors, Druids: Soul Scream deals more damage if you are high on rage, so constantly use it up
  • Consider using your big defensive cooldowns late in the fight to counter-act Aura of Anger

Abilities – Explanation

The Reliquary of Souls encounter is split into 3 different boss fights: the Essence of Suffering, the Essence of Desire and the Essence of Anger. Each boss has a unique aura that applies to every player in the raid and makes their fight unique in a specific way, on top of several other unique mechanics.

In order to clear the encounter, you must defeat all 3 Essences. After an Essence is defeated, there is a 50 second interlude period, during which several low HP Enslaved Soul ghosts spawn. Upon death they cast Soul Release, restoring 30% HP / mana of every player within 10 yards, making this phase a nice little break period.

Abilities – Essence of Suffering

The Essence of Suffering’s aura reduces all healing done and all passive health regeneration by 100%, essentially disabling healing. Furthermore, it reduces armor by 100% and the Defense skill by 500, which makes tanking it significantly more difficult, as you have to exclusively rely on parry and dodge for damage mitigation.

As it is not possible to heal during this phase, your healers should all be helping out with DPS. They will have all of their mana restored thanks to Soul Release in the interlude anyway, so there’s no reason to hold back. On the flipside, DPS classes with self-damage spells, like Shadow Priests, should be very careful here.

Note that it’s only healing effects that get disabled — shield / absorb type effects still work as normal. Therefore it will be very beneficial to have a Priest cast Power Word: Shield on your main tank on cooldown.

The main mechanic of the Essence of Suffering encounter, and the main way you “tank” the boss.

Every 5 seconds, the Essence of Suffering will cast Fixate, which causes it to focus all of its attention on the closest player for the next 5.5 seconds. This means that as long as they’re not the closest player, your DPS players can go all-out on DPS here without ever worrying about their threat. Melee should stay at their maximum attack range.

The Essence of Suffering deals very low damage by boss standards, as just about everyone can survive a couple of hits. However, as healing is disabled due to the Aura of Suffering you will want to make sure no single player tanks for longer than their HP can sustain it. Due to its passive ability (Essence of Suffering Passive) the Essence of Suffering cannot deal critical strikes, so its damage is very consistent and predictable.

The best way to handle Fixate is by having a tank be the closest player at all times. When their HP drops to 50% or less, another tank steps between the current tank and the Essence of Suffering, so they get targeted instead.

Note that the Essence of Suffering does not cast the first Fixate until about 5 seconds into the fight. This means that threat applies as normal for that time period, so your DPS will need to be careful until the first Fixate is cast. Your raid can wipe very quickly if someone pulls threat early on, as the boss will start moving around wildly, with random players accidentally getting targeted by Fixate and dying repeatedly.

The Essence of Suffering becomes enraged, dealing 25% increased damage and having 50% increased attack speed for the next 15 seconds.

This is not the strongest Enrage type effect in the world, but coupled with the healing and tanking related debuffs of Aura of Suffering, it can quickly become problematic, as your tank’s health gets quickly reduced. For that reason, it’s a good idea to have a Rogue step in and get Fixated temporarily, so he can tank the Essence of Suffering with Evasion, pretty much invalidating the Enrage effect completely.

Cast every 45-55 seconds. If you defeat the Essence of Suffering in less than 2 minutes, you should only see Enrage once, which is ideal as it makes this fight a good bit easier overall. Most groups should have the damage for that.

The Essence of Suffering applies a debuff to 4 random players, lasting 30 seconds. Every 3 seconds, they will take 2625 to 3375 Shadow damage and have an equal amount of mana drained, for a total of 30,000 damage taken.

As damage taken during this phase cannot be healed due to the Aura of Suffering, this debuff should be dispelled immediately by your Priests and Paladins. Your tanks will need to be dispelled with extra priority.

Cast roughly every 20 seconds. It has a 1 second cast time, so your healers can tell when to start dispelling.

Abilities – Essence of Desire

The Essence of Desire’s aura is in some ways the antithesis of the Essence of Suffering’s aura. It increases healing done by 100%, which your healers can definitely use, as it additionally causes 50% of all damage dealt to the Essence of Desire to be reflected back to the attacker.

Furthermore, every player’s maximum mana is reduced by 5%, which increases by a further 5% every 8 seconds, meaning your raid will eventually run out of mana and likely wipe within 160 seconds, a soft enrage of sorts.

The damage reflect portion of this aura is very nasty, particularly while the boss is afflicted by Deaden. Your Warlocks for example can randomly kill themselves in just 2 hits unless healed. Your Shadow Priests should once again be very careful with their Shadow Word: Death — they can also basically 1-shot themselves.

The main mechanic of the Essence of Desire encounter, as it will spam it as much as it can. 1 second cast time. This ability is by far the most difficult part of the encounter and the main mechanic to cause wipes here.

It deals 9250 to 10,750 Arcane damage to the Essence of Desire’s current target, and disorients them for 5 seconds. The damage is extremely high and will likely 1-shot your tank if they happen to be afflicted by Deaden. Even if they survive however, the boss will outright ignore them while they’re disoriented, instead beginning to slaughter players one by one, very likely resulting in a wipe.

The way you deal with this ability is by constantly interrupting it with spells like a Rogue’s Kick, a Warrior’s Pummel and Shield Bash, a Shaman’s Earth Shock or a Mage’s Counterspell. In practice, the best way to facilitate this will be with 2 melee players rotating their interrupts, as they last 4/5 seconds and have a 10 second cooldown, so they can always keep the boss interrupted. A 3-way melee interrupt rotation also works.

Other interrupts should only be used in the event that your main interrupters mess up — particularly Earth Shock, as its 2 second duration means the boss will go back to spamming it before another interrupt is ready.

Your interrupters should make sure to not interrupt Deaden by accident if you are using a Protection Warrior tank to reflect it back to the Essence of Desire using Spell Reflection. Furthermore, the boss should always have a cast speed reduction debuff on at all times, such as a Warlock’s Curse of Tongues or a Rogue’s Mind-Numbing Poison, as it will make interrupting Spirit Shock and avoiding interrupting Deaden a lot easier.

Having a macro which announces that you interrupted and who should be interrupting next like the one listed below will make things significantly easier. Just replace “Kick” with your class’ interrupt and the names accordingly.

#showtooltip
/cast Kick
/y (PLAYER NAME) INTERRUPTED -- (NEXT PLAYER NAME) NEXT

Applies a debuff to the target, increasing all incoming damage by 100% for 10 seconds. 1 second cast time.

Having a Protection Warrior main tank reflect it back to the Essence of Desire using Spell Reflection will be by far the best option for dealing with this ability, as it results in a massive DPS increase. If you don’t have a Protection Warrior main tank, you should assign a player to interrupt it at all times, as it can be very lethal.

If you’re going with the Spell Reflection strategy, your DPS players should be very careful with their damage here, as they can very quickly die to self-damage caused by Aura of Desire.

The boss should always have a cast speed reduction debuff on at all times, such as a Warlock’s Curse of Tongues or a Rogue’s Mind-Numbing Poison, as it will make interrupting or reflecting Deaden significantly easier.

Cast every 30 to 40 seconds.

The Essence of Desire gains a magical shield that absorbs up to 50,000 damage for the next 15 seconds. While the shield holds, its melee attack and spellcasting speed is increased by 100% and its spells cannot be interrupted.

Needless to say that this ability is extremely problematic, as it turns Spirit Shock into an unstoppable machinegun of death. It can be dispelled using a Shaman’s Purge or a Priest’s Dispel Magic, but the best way to handle it is to have a Mage steal it using Spellsteal, as both the shield and the cast speed increase are great on them.

Cast roughly every 15 seconds. To make it slightly more fair on your raid, the Essence of Desire will not cast Spirit Shock for roughly ~1.5 second after using Rune Shield, which isn’t a lot of time, so react quickly.

Abilities – Essence of Anger

The Essence of Desire’s aura increases damage dealt by 5% while dealing 100 Shadow damage every 3 seconds. Every 3 seconds, the damage increase is increased by another 5% (so 5%, 10%, 15% etc) while the Shadow damage taken is also increased by another 100 (so 100, 200, 300 etc) — until eventually every player is a DPS monster while suffering a large amount of constant periodic damage.

This aura is the most straightforward one, but in many cases the deadliest. It will be particularly scary for groups with low raid DPS, as the damage taken gets worse over time, until your healers can no longer keep up.

Your Shadow Priests should once again be very careful with their Shadow Word: Death — at high stacks they will definitely kill themselves, or put themselves in a position where the periodic damage will kill them. Your Warlocks should similarly be very careful with their Life Tap — don’t use it right after a big tick.

If the Essence of Anger ever has to switch target, such as because a DPS player pulled threat or a tank used Taunt, it becomes enraged, gaining 100% attack speed and increasing your raid’s threat generation by 200%. Both of these effects last 10 seconds.

You only need to use 1 tank for this fight, so you should never see Seethe. Your DPS players should wait a couple of seconds before starting to deal damage and then constantly watch their threat meter to avoid pulling threat.

The Essence of Anger screams, dealing 2625 to 3375 Shadow damage to all players in a 10 yard cone in front of it. Additionally, it will drain 4375 to 5625 of their mana, or up to 100 of their rage, and deal damage equal to 50% of the mana drained, or 100 times the amount of rage drained.

This should only ever hit your main tank, as everybody else stands firmly behind the boss. Protection Paladins can’t really do much to avoid it but thankfully it doesn’t deal all that much damage to them and they will regen the mana after being healed with their Spiritual Attunement passive ability. Protection Warriors and Feral Druids should try to use all their rage before Soul Scream comes, reducing its damage done.

Cast roughly every 10 seconds.

The Essence of Desire applies a debuff to 3 random players in your raid, granting them immunity to all damage for 6 seconds. After those 6 seconds are over, they will take 7444 to 7556 Nature damage, and once again become invulnerable to all damage for 2 seconds.

Your healers will need to be attentive and react quickly to the Spite debuff. The immunity effect protects people from dying to Aura of Anger immediately after Spite, but they’ll still need to be healed to max HP to survive it, and then every quickly get healed so they don’t die afterwards.

Cast roughly every 20 seconds.

Raid Composition & Preparation

Master Healthstones are a must for this fight — they can help you survive a wide range of different effects, like Aura of Desire self-damage, high Aura of Anger tick damage, or Spite, which is highly lethal.

At least 1 player with a magic dispel ability, like a Paladin (Cleanse) or Priest (Dispel Magic) is virtually mandatory for dealing with Soul Drain during the Essence of Suffering encounter, as it will kill you unless dispelled. Ideally they are a healer, but in a pinch, a Shadow Priest or Retribution / Protection Paladin can also help dispel it. Priests have an advantage as they can dispel it off everyone in 1 Mass Dispel cast.

A minimum of 2 to 3 players with interrupt abilities is also virtually mandatory for dealing with Spirit Shock. 2 melee DPS players with interrupts (Rogues with Kick or Warriors with Pummel) will be enough, but in lieu of those, you can use any other interrupt, alas you will likely need more interrupting players as a result.

This fight is very healing intensive, at least on the raid healing side. It is recommended that you have 5-6 healers for it, with at least 3 classes that excel at raid healing, like Restoration Shamans or Holy Priests.

For Phase 1, healing is reduced by 100% so all of your healers should just DPS the boss. The only exception should be a single Holy Priest, who is responsible for using Power Word: Shield on your main tank on cooldown.

Additionally, your Holy Priests and Holy Paladins should focus on dispelling Soul Drain above all else, prioritizing tanks first. A single Mass Dispel will dispel it off everyone if your raid is stacked, but your Holy Paladins might as well do it because they cannot really contribute any DPS either way.

For Phases 2 & 3, 2-3 healers should be assigned to your main tank at all times. Holy Paladins and Restoration Druids are the best here, and indeed should be assigned to this task before the other healers as their raid healing is below average. They will need to watch out for damage spikes on the main tank due to Soul Scream, and go all-out with healing if they ever happen get the Deaden debuff.

Your remaining healers — including all of your Restoration Shamans and Holy Priests — should be assigned to raid healing. They have the most difficult job here, as there’ll be a lot of it going around, particularly with your more suicidal DPS players having heavy damage reflected to them by the Aura of Desire. During Phase 3 in particular, they will need to quickly top off players targeted by Spite, else they will straight up die.

Remember that the Enslaved Souls summoned during the interlude periods before Phases 2 & 3 will restore all of your mana with their Soul Release, so you don’t need to be conservative with your mana before Phase 3.

There’s tons of damage coming out during this fight, thus your healers should be using +healing consumables, such as Elixir of Healing Power and Golden Fish Sticks, to increase their healing output.

While there are no absolute DPS class / spec requirements for this fight, as discussed in the Everyone section, melee classes with interrupts will be very helpful here, so it will be your Rogues and Warriors‘ chance to shine at last. Rogues in specific provide additional utility with their ability to tank Enrage in Phase 1 using Evasion.

While it ‘s not completely necessary, a casting speed reduction debuff will make dealing with Spirit Shock in Phase 2 orders of magnitude easier. Warlocks (Curse of Tongues) and Rogues (Mind-Numbing Poison) are the only 2 classes that can provide that, so having at least one of them will be hugely beneficial.

There are so many things that can kill you during this fight, so you’ll really want to end it as quickly as possible. Thus your DPS players should use all of their DPS consumables for this fight. Note that all 3 bosses are of unclassified type, so things like Elixir of Demonslaying and Mark of the Champion won’t work on them.

This fight is doable with 1 tank, but having 2 will make dealing with the Aura of Desire during Phase 1 a lot easier.

Your tanks’ classes don’t really matter, all 3 are equally capable of tanking each phase. However, Protection Warrior have a huge advantage when it comes to tanking Phase 2, thanks to their ability to reflect Deaden using Spell Reflection, giving your raid a massive damage boost and removing the need to interrupt it, relieving some pressure.

None of the Essences hit exceptionally hard, so your tanks should be using a decent amount of threat gear & as many threat consumables as possible, enabling your DPS players to go all-out with their damage to end this fight quickly.

The Pull

Pulling the Reliquary of Souls is completely unlike any other boss in this tier. After you have taken out the fel-sworn orcs just outside the Shrine of Lost Souls, you will be ready to take on a gauntlet of ghosts leading up to the Reliquary itself.

ros 0

The ghosts there constantly respawn, so go in, hugging the right side. Group up a bunch of ghosts and kill them, then quickly move further in, towards the ramp leading down to the Reliquary.

ros 0 2

Finish off any ghosts that have followed you then move to the bottom of the ramp. By stacking up near the bottom, your raid will stop pulling nearby ghosts, so your mana users can drink up as you prepare to take on the boss. Don’t go further than the bottom of the ramp, as you will start the fight early, which can be catastrophic.

ros 0 4

When your raid is ready to pull, go into the Reliquary’s room. The Reliquary will churn around for a bit, giving you time to finish off any ghosts you may have pulled by accident.

From that point on, things will go exactly the same way for every Phase. The Reliquary churns around until the next Essence you’re fighting comes out, appearing directly in front of it. Your tank should stand directly in front of the Reliquary, ready to pick up the next Essence, while your raid stays a bit further behind to avoid grabbing threat. Then, your entire raid minus the MT stacks up behind the boss, with melee at their maximum attack range.

Your Hunters should use Misdirection on the main tank in every phase as it will greatly help them establish some threat. Phase 1 only has threat for the first 5 seconds, but it’s still nice to have a single Misdirection on the MT at the start.

Your raid will thus position as shown in the picture below.

ros 1 2

Phase 1 – Essence of Suffering

Phase 1 is going to be the easiest one as there are very few mechanics to watch out for. The only thing that can really trip you up is having the Essence of Suffering move around after someone pulls threat early on, causing players to randomly get Fixated and die. But that’s easy to avoid — just have everyone take it easy for the first 5 seconds.

After the main tank has successfully grabbed threat and got targeted by Fixate, your DPS players can go all-out as threat is no longer a concern. DPS classes with 2 & 3 minute cooldown spells should use them here. If your raid has more than 1 Heroism / Bloodlust per DPS group, you can use one of them here, otherwise save them for Phase 3.

Your healers should help DPS for this phase, as they can’t heal due to the Aura of Suffering. The only exception will be a single Holy Priest, who should be using Power Word: Shield on your main tank on cooldown, which helps a little.

About 20 seconds in, the Essence of Suffering will cast Soul Drain for the first time. There’s basically nothing else going on at this point, so your Paladins and Priests should immediately dispel it using Cleanse and Dispel Magic respectively. If your raid is stacking correctly as shown in the picture above, a single Mass Dispel will dispel it off everyone in your raid at once.

When the current tank drops to about 50% HP, the next tank should move right on top the current tank then take a few steps forward so they’re the closest target when the next Fixate is cast. They should NEVER run through the boss, run to its circle’s centre etc, as that will cause it to move around after it changes target, potentially causing Fixate to be used on a random player, thus beginning a chain of random Fixates, leading to potential deaths.

ros 1 3

If any players happen to get accidentally Fixated, they need to avoid panicking, and instead just stand still. Running around makes it impossible for the tank to get Fixated again, so really, they’re just hurting themselves in the long run.

The only other mechanic that players will have to deal with in Phase 1 will be Enrage, which will usually be cast between 45 to 50 seconds into the fight. You could have the current tank just tough it out, using a defensive cooldown like Shield Wall to stay alive if necessary. However, there’s a better way — a Rogue can quickly move in front of the main tank and tank the entire Enrage using Evasion, essentially completely circumventing it.

And that’s Phase 1! Dispel Soul Drain every 20 seconds, handle the Enrage every 45-55 seconds (or kill the boss before it casts it a second time) and all is good. If your raid’s DPS is good enough and you didn’t make any major mistakes during the tank swaps, the Essence of Suffering should go down with no problem at all — you’re 1/3rd of the way there!

Interlude 1

After the Essence of Suffering goes down, the Reliquary of Souls will start churning once again. You have about 50 seconds to prepare for the next boss, the Essence of Desire.

While you’re chilling, several Enslaved Soul ghosts keep spawning. They have very little HP and deal low damage, and when they die they cast Soul Release, restoring 30% HP / mana of every player within 10 yards. It’s thus a good idea to have your entire raid stack up as you kill them, so everyone regenerates quickly.

The ghosts stop spawning about 10 seconds before the Essence of Desire appears. Have your raid take a few steps back to avoid grabbing aggro on it right away, while your tank steps into position to pick it up, and your Hunters use Misdirection on the main tank to help them in doing so. Then, everyone moves back into Phase 1 positions.

Phase 2 – Essence of Desire

This phase will typically be the hardest in the entire fight, particularly on your healers and the 3-4 players that have specific assignments — specifically, the players responsible for interrupting and your main tank. Your healers will need to do a LOT of healing to offset the self-damage component of Aura of Desire, so wish them luck — they’ll need it.

IMPORTANT: Make sure that a casting speed reduction effect, such as Curse of Tongues from a Warlock or Mind-Numbing Poison from a Rogue, stays up on the boss for the entire phase, as it will make this phase a LOT easier.

Note for DPS players: If your class has 2 minute DPS cooldowns, you can use them again at this point. However, based on your guild’s kill speeds, you may want to save your 3 minute DPS cooldowns for the next phase.

The Essence of Desire is nice enough to wait between 5 to 10 seconds before using Spirit Shock, its first ability in the time, for the first time. Your first interrupter should be ready for it, saving rage or energy as needed until Spirit Shock starts being cast, and then immediately interrupting it. At this point, they should communicate to let the next interrupter know that it’s their turn — either voice or the macro from the Abilities – Spirit Shock section works.

That is the essence of this phase: a dance between your interrupters to keep Spirit Shock interrupted at all times, by rotating their interrupt abilities. If a single Spirit Shock is cast successfully, things can quickly spiral into a wipe. Therefore your interrupters will have to stay focused throughout the entire fight, making sure they interrupt when it’s their turn.

The next major ability you will have to deal with will be Deaden, coming about 30 seconds into the fight and then roughly every 30 seconds afterwards. You will need to deal with it by having your Protection Warrior MT reflect it using Spell Reflection, or a dedicated Deaden interrupter, separate from your Spirit Shock. It cannot be allowed to finish casting on your main tank unless it is being reflected, as it will very likely result in their death.

Your Spirit Shock interrupters should pay attention that they don’t interrupt Deaden by accident, as they will then be unable to interrupt Spirit Shock when it’s their turn — they will need to quickly communicate if they make that mistake.

If you are using the Spell Reflection method for handling Deaden, the boss will be taking 100% increased damage for 10 seconds, which is absolutely massive. However, that means you’re also taking that much more self-damage from the Aura of Desire, so DPS players will need to be very careful here — back-to-back crits can get them killed.

The last mechanic that players have to deal with in this phase is Rune Shield. It makes the Essence of Desire immune to interrupt effects while casting 100% faster, so it must be dispelled (Shaman’s Purge or Priest’s Dispel Magic) or stolen by a Mage’s Spellsteal immediately, with Spellsteal being the better method as it gives the Mage a DPS boost.

And that’s Phase 2! Keep interrupting Spirit Shock, handle Deaden every 30 seconds and Spellsteal the Rune Shield every 15 seconds, and you’re golden. Assuming your interrupters did their job correctly, your healers managed to keep up with the insane raid damage and all went according to plan, the Essence of Desire should finally go down. You can now take a breath — the hardest part of the fight is now over.

Interlude 2

This is the same as the first interlude. You have 50 seconds to regroup after a very intense fight. Kill the Enslaved Souls to regenerate mana, then step back in preparation for the fight with the last boss, the Essence of Anger.

Your tank should go in and be ready to pick up the boss, while your Hunters use Misdirection on them for a threat lead.

Phase 3 – Essence of Anger

This phase is somewhere between Phases 1 & 2 in difficulty, so if you’ve gotten this far, things are looking very good for you. That will be particularly true for groups with good raid DPS, as this phase is essentially one big DPS race.

Give your tank 10 seconds to build a healthy threat lead, then use your raid’s remaining Heroism / Bloodlust, along with each DPS player’s personal DPS cooldowns for maximum damage output. Always keep an eye out on your threat — if you ever pull aggro, the boss will cast Seethe, gaining a massive attack speed boost, which is ugly.

This phase starts off easy, as Aura of Anger initially ticks for a measly 100 damage on your entire raid. But the longer the fight goes on for, the higher this damage will get, and the more your healers will struggle to keep people alive.

The first ability you will see the Essence of Anger cast is Soul Scream. Provided you’ve positioned correctly, the main tank should be the only person getting hit by it so it largely won’t be a huge deal. If you’re using a rage-based main tank, like a Protection Warriors or Feral Druids they should make sure to always use their rage so it is as low as possible at all times — it can hit for up to 10k damage if their rage bar was full. Soul Scream is cast roughly 10 seconds into the fight, and then about every 10 seconds afterwards, so your tanks will need to keep it in mind.

The next ability, and likely the main cause of deaths here besides mounting Aura of Anger damage, will be Spite, about 20 seconds into the fight. Your healers will need to make sure that the 3 marked players are topped off before the debuff expires, as they will take 7k damage the moment it fades, killing most classes if they weren’t at 100% HP. Players should pay attention to their health and use a Master Healthstone if they need to.

That is pretty much everything there is to this fight. You will generally see those 2 abilities in coming in a pattern — 2x Soul Scream and then 1x Spite, repeat. Aura of Anger‘s periodic damage will keep increasing indefinitely, making these abilities increasingly lethal and giving your healers a really rough time — so make sure it ends as quickly as possible.

But if your group was good enough to get past Phase 2, it is unlikely that Phase 3 will give you major trouble. With the Reliquary of Souls put out of commission, your raid is one step closer to taking on Illidan 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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