- Author: Passion
- Date: January 6, 2023
- Updated: January 7, 2023
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Auriaya, the archivist of Ulduar patrols the observation ring of Ulduar, slowly losing her mind over untold ages, with no company other than her feline defenders and the malignant whispers of Yogg-Saron echoing the halls.
This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to deal with Auriaya and her feline friends.
Role Summaries
- Stay out of line of sight on the pull
- Stack with the raid at all times
- Make sure sentinel-blast is interrupted quickly
- Avoid void zones
- Face the boss towards the raid for sonic-screech
- Pull Feral Defenders away from the raid when they are about to die
- Call interrupts for sentinel-blast
- Call if a vital target is stunned by feral-pounce
- Remind the tank to move Feral Defenders from the raid at low health
Abilities
This fight includes a lot of adds. At the start of the fight, Auriaya will have multiple Sanctum Sentries protecting her, and as the fight goes on she will summon more Feral Defenders to beef up the numbers.
Auriaya
feral-defender
sanctum-sentry
Raid Composition & Preparation
The Pull
The pull for this fight is the most integral aspect. The two Sanctum Sentries will immediately pounce a player within line of sight but out of melee range. This will stun that player and deal significant damage to them, and can easily set the tone for the entire fight if a healer is the unlucky first target.
To get around this, most groups will want to pull this boss with a ground-targeted spell, such as death-and-decay. Have your entire group stand out of line of sight while a Death Knight casts death-and-decay and instantly retreats out of line of sight. This forces the enemies to come to the group, removing their ability to pounce as long as the raid is stacked. snake-trap is also a very good option for the pull, as the snakes will distract the boss briefly and also potentially bait out the pounce cooldown!
The Fight
Your first focus should be killing the Sanctum Sentries, as they deal heavy damage and buff each other with strength-of-the-pack. These will need to die before Feral Defenders begin spawning. If you can’t kill them quickly enough you may have to use Bloodlust here to make sure they go down quickly.
Roughly a minute into the fight Feral Defenders will start to spawn. These will cast feral-rush on random distant players, and feral-pounce on random close players. If your entire raid team is in melee range of the Feral Defenders they won’t be able to cast feral-rush, making them slightly easier to deal with. Killing Defenders is entirely optional, and if you have enough DPS you should be able to kill the boss before they become an issue.
Whenever a Defender dies, they will resurrect on the spot, leaving a void zone behind them and dealing less damage for each death. Killing them to reduce their damage dealt is worth considering for raids struggling to burn through Auriayas health quickly enough, but the seeping-feral-essence void zones can cause a lot of issues. If you have decided to kill them, I recommend pulling them away from the raid just before they die.
Auriaya herself also throws some wildcards into the mix to make things a bit rougher. The roughest part of her toolkit is terrifying-screech, an AoE fear lasting for 5 seconds. This is almost always followed up with sentinel-blast, dealing Shadow damage to the entire raid and placing a stacking debuff on them. sentinel-blast is interruptable, making it very important that you have someone in the raid with a fear break and an interrupt. Warrior tanks can be great for this, able to break terrifying-screech with berserker-rage and interrupt with shield-bash. Otherwise, fear-ward and tremor-totem can be great protection here.
She will also cast sonic-screech every so often, a frontal cone Meteor-style mechanic, dealing massive damage split across everyone hit. Tanks will want to have her facing the raid to split the damage between as many players as possible. This is mostly dealt with passively through appropriate positioning, but an, unfortunately, placed terrifying-screech can easily demolish your positioning, making it vital to quickly get back to stacking.
Here are some of the main things that can typically go wrong in this fight:
- The pull is handled poorly, causing Sanctum Sentries to charge healers
- DPS is lacking on the Sanctum Sentries, leading to their damage being overwhelming and wiping the raid
- Feral Defenders interrupt too many Healers using feral-pounce
- sonic-screech isn’t soaked correctly, obliterating a tank
- sentinel-blast is not interrupted
Achievements
- nine-lives-10
- Fully kill a Feral Defender by killing them 10 times total, removing all stacks of feral-essence. I thought cats had 9 lives, not 10.
- crazy-cat-lady-10
- Kill Auriaya without killing her Sanctum Sentries. This means massively increased damage to your raid, requiring very high DPS to pull this off.
Congratulations on defeating Auriaya! You are now free to go about the Antechamber of Ulduar as you please, with many new paths available to your raid.
Â
About the Author
