Auriaya Strategy Guide – Ulduar (25)

Ulduar Auriaya Raid Guide Featured Image
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Ulduar (25) Raid Guide

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Flame Leviathan

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The Iron Assembly

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Hodir

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Mimiron

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Algalon the Observer

Gear & Best In Slot (bis)

Ulduar (25) Loot

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Ignis the Furnace Master

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Kologarn

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Freya

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General Vezax

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Ulduar Achievement Guide

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Razorscale

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XT-002 Deconstructor

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Auriaya

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Thorim

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Yogg-Saron

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

Auriaya causes a shockwave in front of her, dealing massive Physical damage split evenly to everyone in front of her. This makes it necessary for the boss to be facing the raid during the fight, otherwise this will easily one shot the tank.

Auriaya deals a small amount of Shadow damage to the raid and increases their Shadow damage taken by 100% for 5 seconds. This will usually follow terrifying-screech, and as stacks build this can easily wipe a raid. Make sure to break terrifying-screech and interrupt this spell.

Auriaya fears the entire raid. This is a magic effect and can be dispelled with spells like cleanse and mass-dispel, as well as prevented with fear-ward. This is followed by sentinel-blast, making it important that someone breaks fear to interrupt sentinel-blast.

A player is marked by Auriaya and after a 2-second cast they are swarmed by 10 swarming-guardians. These adds are very low health but will likely aggro onto your healers. Make sure to AoE them down as quickly as possible.

feral-defender

Increases the Feral Defenders’ damage by 50% per stack. Defenders start the fight with 9 stacks and will consume one stack on death to resurrect. You can take advantage of this by killing the Defender a few times to reduce their damage dealt, or you can ignore this mechanic and fight through the high damage

The Defender charges a random player, dealing a small amount of Shadow damage and interrupting them for 6 seconds. This will only be cast if there are targets at range, so try to stack in melee to avoid this being cast.

The Defender stuns their target for 5 seconds and deals a minor amount of Shadow damage to them every second.

Simply something you have to deal with. Unfortunate but at least it only hits one player.

Whenever a Feral Defender dies, they leave a pool of feral essence. This acts as a void zone, dealing Shadow damage every second to everyone standing in it.

By itself this isn’t very concerning. A simple void zone placed at a predictable time. The issue comes when Auriaya casts terrifying-screech, potentially fearing raid members into the void zone. Avoid this by breaking fear and positioning seeping-feral-essence away from the fight.

sanctum-sentry

The Sentry pounces on a player, dealing moderate Physical damage instantly and additional Physical damage every second for 5 seconds. This can easily give your group a hard time on pull, but once the encounter has settled down this shouldn’t be much of a concern.

Each Sentry provides a stacking buff increasing their damage by 30%. This only affects Sanctum Sentries, not Feral Defenders or Auriaya. This makes it vital that you kill the Sanctum Sentries as soon as possible to lower their damage early.

Raid Composition & Preparation

This fight has no specific class or spec requirements, and as long as your group can out heal the damage you should be able to pull through.

You will want 3-6 Healers for this fight, with Priests and Shamans offering extra value through fear-ward and tremor-totem.

There are no strict requirements for DPS classes or specs here, you simply want a combination of good raid buffs and debuffs, as well as the best players you can muster.

You will want at least 2 tanks for this fight; One main-tank for Auriaya and an off-tank for the various cats.

The Pull

auriaya pre 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.

auriaya pre pull death and decay

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

auriaya fight 1 1

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.

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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.

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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
    • 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
    • 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.

 

About the Author

Passion

I love MMOs of all shades, especially the nitty gritty numbers parts of them. You might recognize me from the Shadow Priest discord, otherwise I play a little bit of everything, especially games with support roles available.
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