Supremus Strategy Guide (Black Temple)

Author: Pride
Date: January 29, 2022
Updated: February 11, 2022
Expansion: TBC Classic

Supremus, the towering abyssal, is the second boss that players will encounter in the Black Temple raid. Players need to defeat him in order to gain access to the Sanctuary of Shadows, the central hub of the Black Temple.

At 4.55 million HP and 7700 armor, he is one “beefy” boss. He is not particularly difficult, but his tankiness along with his multiple annoying mechanics that force your raid to run for their lives, makes this fight one of the longer ones in the tier, and puts great strain on your healers to manage their mana while your raid members constantly avoid taking damage.

This guide will offer a step-by-step explanation on how to finally topple this fiery demon and gain access to the temple.

Phase 1

Move to your designated spot quickly once the fight starts
Stay spread out, but relatively close to your other group members, throughout the fight
Quickly move away from other people if the Molten Flame flames are moving towards you

Phase 2

Make sure you have at least 1 Master Healthstone for this fight — you’re going to need it
Other healing items like Super Healing Potion and Major Fire Protection Potion are also helpful
Quickly move away from Volcanic Geyser — use your healing items to survive their damage
Kite Supremus in a circular pattern around the courtyard if you get targeted by Gaze
Threat resets during the Phase 2 -> Phase 1 transition, so be very careful

Phase 1

Use your personal DPS cooldowns during this phase for maximum DPS
Stand at maximum melee range, away from your fellow melee DPS players

Phase 2

Don’t even try to DPS Supremus if a Volcanic Geyser happens to spawn on top of him — you’ll die

Phase 1

Use your personal DPS cooldowns during this phase for maximum DPS
Spread out as much as possible to avoid having to move during this phase
Hunters: Use Misdirection on the main tank every time this phase starts
Warlocks: Make sure high priority players in your raid, like your Holy Priests, are Master Soulstoned

Phase 2

Don’t get greedy, trying to DPS close to a Volcanic Geyser — you’ll die

Phase 1

If you’re assigned to tank healing, be proactive with your heals
If your assigned tank has to move out because of Molten Flame, focus your heals on the other offtank
Druids: This is your time to shine — keep all of your healing-over-time spells on all tanks at all times

Phase 2

Success during this phase depends almost entirely on your ability to stay focused — no pressure though
You really need to spread out in this phase in order to avoid having to move around too much
Don’t panic and stop healing while moving around — people will die
Prioritize healing people with instant-cast spells like Circle of Healing, Swiftmend, Holy Shock, etc
Use cooldowns like Desperate Prayer, Nature’s Swiftness etc to survive if you take any damage here

Phase 1

Stay away from other tanks, but in front of the boss, to avoid having to move because of Molten Flame
If you get targeted by Molten Flame, call it out on voice chat ASAP so your raid can react quickly
Main Tank: Use survival cooldowns if either of your assigned healers get targeted by Molten Flame

Phase 2

You don’t have any particular task for this phase — just stay alive
Main Tank: Do as much threat as you can right after the Phase 2 -> Phase 1 transition, as threat resets

Abilities – Phase 1

This phase is the standard “tank-and-spank” part of this fight. Supremus can only cast these 2 abilities.

This phase will last 60 seconds, after which Phase 2 will begin.

This is the bread-and-butter of many bosses in WoW’s history, so your raid likely already knows it.

Deals 27,750 to 32,250 Physical damage to the targest with the highest current health in melee range, among the 3 highest threat targets after the main tank. It cannot target the main tank, only people who are 2nd on threat or below, unless the main tank is the only target in melee range – in which case, they’re probably going to die, so this must be avoided.

This will hit armor capped tanks for 7-8k damage while instantly killing everyone else, making it extremely important that during Phase 1, your off-tanks are healed consistently to avoid melee deaths. They will also need to race for threat, always staying within the 4 highest threat spots among melee players.

Your off-tanks and melee DPS players will need to watch the threat meter at all times during Phase 1. If any melee DPS players overtake off-tanks on the threat meter, they run the risk of being targeted by Hateful Strike.

Note that due to how Dire Bear Form works, Feral Druids make the best Hateful Strike soakers.

Cast every 3 to 5 seconds.

Supremus punches the ground. A 5-yard radius patch of blue flames appears on the ground shortly afterwards, and more flames keep spawning, chasing after a random raid member. Standing in the flames will cause players to take 3325 to 3675 Fire damage every second, which will very quickly become lethal.

A new flame patch is spawned about once every second. The flames will chase their target for roughly 10 seconds, and they despawn after 10 seconds, which means a decent part of the arena will be covered in flames.

Supremus will punch the ground, spawning flames every 8 to 12 seconds.

Abilities – Phase 2

Supremus will stop using both of his Phase 1 abilities during Phase 2. He will instead gain new abilities and gain a significant damage increase, while having significantly reduced movement speed.

This phase will last 60 seconds, after which the fight reverts back to Phase 1, starting the cycle anew.

Remember Thaladred from the Kael’thas fight? This is basically the same ability.

Roughly every 10 seconds, Supremus will choose a random player in the raid and focus his attention on them. While fixated, he will slowly move towards the targeted player. If he reaches that player, they are probably dead — tanks included. So similarly to Thaladred, the Gaze target will need to kite Supremus.

If the target is within a certain of distance to Supremus when they are targeted by Gaze, Supremus will use Charge to knock them back, to avoid situations where melee players get instantly killed. Furthermore, if the target moves further than ~40 yards away from Supremus, he will gain a massive speed buff in order to catch up to them, so moving very far away from him is mostly pointless and just complicates things.

If the target is somewhere that Supremus cannot reach for whatever reason, he will cast Summon Player on them, teleporting them right on top of him and most likely killing them. So it is best that you avoid trying to glitch his pathing by standing on various objects or elevated terrain.

Supremus charges the target, knocking them back.

For 3 seconds, Supremus has massively reduced attack speed, so he can’t kill the charged player right away.

Supremus teleports his current target to him, likely instantly killing them.

Supremus will only use this ability if he cannot reach his current target. In rare situations, that might include targets who have been knocked into the air and over unreachable terrain by Charge, so be careful.

Supremus summons a volcano underneath a random player in the raid. The volcano constantly shoots out a geyser of flame, dealing 4163 to 4837 Fire damage to all players within 15 yards every second.

These mini volcanoes will be the most common cause of deaths, and likely wipes, in this fight. They are extremely lethal — it only takes 2 to 3 hits to kill most players, and they will start spouting fire almost the moment they become visible, making it very likely that nearby players get hit at least once, possibly twice.

The only effective way to deal with this ability is to spread out, so it can only kill one to two players in the worst case scenario. Fire resistance abilities, like Fire Resistance Aura, and healing items, such as Master Healthstones and Super Healing Potions, will help significantly here. Players WILL die to this ability, and you should be ready to combat res them with a Druid’s Rebirth, while important players like healers should be Master Soulstoned.

Supremus will spawn a volcano as soon as Phase 2 begins and then roughly every 10 to 15 seconds, for 4 to 5 volcanoes every Phase 2. The volcanoes will keep spouting fire for 30 seconds, at which point they despawn.

Raid Composition & Preparation

Master Healthstones are an absolute must for this fight, necessary to survive Volcanic Geyser. Your entire raid should have at least one, and in fact should have multiple — though they are unique, Warlocks with different ranks of the Improved Healthstone talent can make Healthstones that aren’t unique with each other.

Major Fire Protection Potions will also increase your chances of surviving a geyser, though they are pretty expensive. Super Healing Potions will also work as a budget alternative, and the two share a cooldown.

This fight is an absolute nightmare from a healing standpoint. Your healers have to constantly heal 2 tanks taking massive damage thanks to Hateful Strike, and a raid taking heavy AoE damage by abilities like Molten Flame and Volcanic Geyser, which has to be healed instantly. 5 healers are the absolute minimum here, with 6 being strongly recommended, and 7 being a very good idea for raids that struggle with healing.

2 healers should be assigned to the MT — this is where you’ll want to stick your Holy Paladins. 1-2 healers should be assigned to each designated Hateful Strike tank. Restoration Shamans and Holy Priests are good candidates for this task, thanks to their armor boosting buffs, Ancestral Fortitude and Inspiration, respectively.

You will generally only need 1 healer per off-tank, 2 is just a precaution. This is particularly true if you have multiple Restoration Shamans using Chain Heal on the raid anyway, or a Restoration Druid using heal-over-time spells on all of your tanks, which makes keeping them up orders of magnitude easier.

The rest of your healers should be assigned to raid healing — at least for Phase 1, as all of your healers will need to raid heal in Phase 2. Holy Priests are miles above everyone else at handling this task thanks to their instant-cast Circle of Healing being able to save multiple players at once.

Your healers should prioritize instant-cast (Power Word: Shield, Swiftmend, Holy Shock, etc) and low cast time spells during Phase 2. Chain Heal is a very strong spell, but it isn’t as useful if your target dies before the cast is completed — Lesser Healing Wave and other similar spells with 1.5 second cast times will work better.

Your healers can use all the +healing they can get for this fight, so they should default to using +healing consumables, such as Elixir of Healing Power and Golden Fish Sticks.

There are no specific DPS class / spec requirements for this fight. Due to the constant movement, this fight slightly favours classes with instant cast damage spells, like melee DPS and Hunters.

Though they are by no means mandatory, Warlocks will make this fight significantly easier, by providing multiple Master Healthstones to the raid and Master Soulstones for key players.

There is a threat reset mechanic after Phase 2 ends, so your Hunters will come in handy with their Misdirection to help give the tanks a quick threat lead. The Phase 2 -> Phase 1 transition will happen once every 2 minutes, which coincidentally is the same as Misdirection‘s cooldown, so your Hunters will have it available for every transition. It can be beneficial to have a pre-determined Misdirection rotation to help out with this process.

The longer this fight goes on for, the more people you are going to lose to its various mechanics. Thus it is heavily recommended that your DPS players go all-out with DPS consumables for this fight, including anti-demon consumables like Elixir of Demonslaying and items like Mark of the Champion.

This fight is doable with 2 tanks, or even 1 if you really hate your melee DPS and don’t want them to play the game. However, 3 is strongly recommended, as it makes dealing with Hateful Strike significantly easier.

While all classes can handle main tanking and off-tanking, Feral Druids have a clear advantage at tanking Hateful Strike thanks to their higher than normal health and armor.

Your off-tanks will need to use a mix of threat and avoidance gear & consumables in order to deal with Hateful Strike. They will need enough mitigation and health to survive getting hit, but enough threat they always stay within the 3 highest threat spots among melee players, else your melee DPS will start getting slaughtered.

The Pull

Make sure you clear all of the trash in the courtyard before Supremus. You will need all the space you can get in order to deal with his many abilities, particularly in Phase 2 — so make sure there’s nothing left when you pull him

Supremus is among the easiest bosses to pull. Have your Hunters use Misdirection on the main tank, who will go in and tank him exactly while he’s standing, while the other tanks follow soon afterwards, also standing in front of him.

The rest of the raid should spread out around the courtyard, in a semi-circle or crescent moon shape in front of Supremus. Your melee DPS meanwhile should spread out behind him, staying at their maximum melee range.

Your raid should spread out as much as possible, but it’s still a good idea to have players of the same group closer to each other, so group-based AoE healing spells like Circle of Healing and Chain Heal can heal many players at once.

Your healers in specific will want to stay away from each other as much as possible throughout this entire fight. Your raid’s healing output will be reduced significantly if multiple healers all need to move at the same time to avoid the same ability, possibly resulting in multiple deaths, including a tank — which would likely result in a wipe.

Phase 1

This is roughly what ideal positioning would look like for Phase 1. Note that where exactly you tank Supremus doesn’t matter too much, just the relative positions between players – tanks in the front, melee behind him, ranged far in the back, and healers somewhere in the middle between the tanks and ranged DPS, with Supremus facing your raid.

Supremus will give your raid between 5 to 10 seconds before he starts using Hateful Strike, at which point he’ll begin spamming it relentlessly. Everyone needs to take their position and spread out sufficiently in that time frame.

Your healers will need to be ready to start dealing with the back-to-back damage spikes on their targets. They should not wait to react to it — they need to be proactive here. All of the tanks should have heal-over-time effects on them in advance, and your healers should be pre-casting their heals before they take damage, canceling their casts as necessary.

Your off-tanks meanwhile should do all they can in order to get high on the threat meter here. They need to get hit by Hateful Strike in order to generate rage or deal reactive damage. If any melee DPS players get higher than them on the threat meter, they should move out and stop dealing damage for a bit, else they will probably die.

Your raid should use Heroism / Bloodlust along with personal DPS cooldowns as soon as possible, preferably in the first 5 seconds. That is because there is no AoE to dodge yet, so your DPS players will have extremely high uptime, and you are likely going to lose a few players during Phase 2, which will reduce your overall raid DPS — so now is the best time.

About 10 to 15 seconds in, Supremus will use Molten Flame. Provided you have spread out as shown in the picture above, it will be extremely easy to see who its target is, or at least which side it is headed towards, so your raid will need to move very minimally. The targeted player should stay away from everyone else, so only 1 player needs to move.

Things can get slightly messy if the targeted player is one of the offtanks. They will have to move out, meaning there are only 2 tanks soaking Hateful Strike. The healers who were assigned to healing that tank should temporarily switch to the other offtank, to make sure they are always topped off and Hateful Strike doesn’t target melee DPS. Alternatively, you could have the targeted tank stay in while your healers spam big heals on them.

The fight will go on like this for roughly 60 seconds, during which you will likely see 5-6 Molten Flame casts and a truckload of Hateful Strike. An emote saying “The ground begins to crack open!” signifies the start of Phase 2.

Phase 2

This is where things get pretty chaotic. Supremus will waste no time casting his first Volcanic Geyser, spawning a volcano that shoots out flames at nearby players. Your raid will need to be ready to move away from them as soon as they appear, while your healers will need to be hyper-vigilant with using instant-cast healing spells to save people caught in their area of effect, as they will die VERY quickly.

For the first couple of seconds of this phase, Supremus will keep attacking your main tank, so keep healing them. Very soon afterwards, he will cast Gaze on a random raid member and start moving towards them, albeit very slowly.

He will typically cast Charge if the targeted player is nearby, knocking them back and thus preventing them from being slaughtered immediately. After that, the targeted player has to kite him in order to survive. A circular path around the sides of the courtyard as shown in the picture below is ideal. If he reaches his target, he will 1-shot them — tanks included

The rest of your raid will need to position in a somewhat similar fashion to Phase 1: melee spread out behind him, tanks spread out in front of him, while the rest of the raid spreads out as much as possible around the courtyard area. Healers in particular will need to spread out even more, ensuring they don’t all need to move at once because of a Volcanic Geyser.

Supremus will keep his Gaze focused on a player for 10 seconds before casting Gaze on a different player, indicated by an emote saying “Supremus acquires a new target”. Meanwhile, your raid will have to deal with multiple Volcanic Geysers dealing damage to everyone. It is messy and chaotic and you will likely lose a few people with every Phase 2.

The main reason why people die in this phase, besides losing focus and forgetting to kite Supremus when targeted by Gaze, will be the Volcanic Geysers. Too many people getting hit at once, your healers all having to move at once thus being unable to heal, healers panicking and forgetting to heal while moving, people not using healing and defensive effects like Master Healthstones, etc — all reasons why people will die. Ress them ASAP!

Phase 1… Again

60 seconds after Phase 2 starts, Supremus will transition back to Phase 1, indicated by an emote saying “Supremus punches the ground in anger”. There is a ~5-10 second grace period before Supremus starts using Hateful Strike, so your raid should use that time frame to quickly reposition for Phase 1 as necessary.

Threat is reset after the transition so your raid will need to be careful with threat — a stray Shadow Bolt right after the threat reset will get your Warlocks killed. Your Hunters should be ready to use Misdirection on the main tank right away, who should quickly deal as much threat as they can on the phase transition to prevent unnecessary deaths.

Note that Volcanic Geysers will still stick around for a bit, so a small part of the map will be essentially disabled for the beginning of Phase 1, and your raid will need to reposition after the geyser despawns.

And that is pretty much the entire fight. Supremus will keep transitioning between phases 1 and 2 every 60 seconds while using the same spells every time, until you kill him or wipe. It will be a test for your healers, as well as for some of your less attentive players who don’t pay as much attention to the ground around them or their health as they should.

Congratulations on defeating Supremus! After banishing this horrid demon, your raid has finally gained access to the inner sanctum of the Black Temple and the horrors that lie within. The tasty loot doesn’t hurt either!

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!

Role Summaries

Abilities – Phase 1

Abilities – Phase 2

Raid Composition & Preparation

The Pull

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 1… Again

About the Author

Pride

Lok-tar ogar!

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