- Author: Furious
- Date: December 2, 2021
- Updated: November 19, 2024
- Expansion: WoW Classic
In the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj there is a specific encounter called the Twin Emperors, which is a fight that 2 Warlocks in the guild have to prepare for. The boss fight consists of two bosses: Emperor Vek’lor and Emperor Vek’nilash. Vek’Nilash is immune to all spell damage and Vek’lor is immune to all melee damage which means that a “normal” tank cannot tank Vek’lor, you have to have a spellcaster doing it. Vek’lor casts Shadow Bolts on its target, so a lot of Shadow Resistance is needed for the caster tank. Since Warlocks has an easy time resisting Shadow damage and causing threat it’s the best class choice for that role.
The one tricky part with this encounter is that the two bosses cannot be close to each other during the fight, since they heal very quickly if they are within a certain distance of each other. The other tricky part is that they switch positions every 30 seconds by teleporting. This means that you need to have a Warrior tank and a Warlock tank on each side of the room (so 4 tanks in total, two of them Warlocks). Before we take a look at the fight in itself, let’s go through the gear needed for it.
The Shadow resistance cap is 300 and it’s highly recommended to reach it for this boss as all the damage done by the spellcasting boss is by Shadow Bolts. The buffs Mark of the Wild, Prayer of Shadow Protection, and Demon armor gives you around a hundred Shadow Resistance so you need ~200 Shadow Resistance from gear. Optional: You can also respec into MD/Ruin (0/30/21) and summon a Felhunter which passively gives you +60 to all resistances.
Best Twin Emperor Tanking Gear
The best Twin tanking gear is listed below. If you get them all you will end up with more SR than needed, so prioritize the ones you can get and use your best damage gear for the other slots as damage is obviously important for keeping threat.
- Head – Tier 2
- Rings: -Anything
- Neck – Eidolon Talisman
- Shoulderpads – Tier 1
- Back – Juno’s Shadow or preferably Cloak of Untold Secrets dropping from Fankriss.
- Chest – Garb of Royal Ascension (AQ40 trash drop)
- Bracers – Funeral Cuffs
- Gloves – Rank 7 or Rank 12 PvP gloves are extremely useful and highly recommended to use.
- Belt – Runed Stygian Belt or Tier 2
- Legs – Runed Stygian Leggings
- Boots – Runed Stygian Boots
- Rings: – Anything with +Shadow Resistance, search the AH as well as you can. Jasper Link rings are usually useful.
- Trinkets – Any on-use Spell Power Trinket will be very effective in this fight so Zul’Gurub or MC, on-use Trinkets are recommended. On the other Trinket slot you should fit Ultra-Flash Shadow Reflector (Engineer only) or Ward of the Elements (from the Onyxia attunement quest).
- Wand – Serpentine Skuller
- Weapons – The best weapon(s) you have.
Twin Emporer Warlock Tanking Strategy
Bring any +Stamina consumables you can and pre-pop a Greater Frost Protection Potion (against the blizzards). If you are the one pulling the boss then just run up to Vek’lor, pop Shadow Ward, cast Corruption, and spam Searing Pain until the bosses switch positions. Avoid Blizzards as well as you can, they do a lot of damage so if you get targeted by one don’t just keep casting.
After that keep track of the timers. Every 30 seconds the caster and the melee boss switch sides, so you have to be ready to pick up the caster boss (if he’ll be on your side) as soon as the teleport happens. Right before the switch stand as close to the melee boss as you can (right below him). Instantly after the switch, you Shadowburn the boss and start to run away from him while dotting him. The caster boss does an AoE knockback so make sure to create some distance from the boss.
When you are ~25 yards away from the boss start spamming Searing Pain to cause as much threat as possible. Keep spamming and avoid any blizzards. Do this until your 30 seconds of fame is over and the melee boss appears on your side. Now take your time to Life Tap to full mana and use Shadow Ward until the next teleport, and then do the same thing again. Repeat until the boss is dead.
It’s very hard to move the boss to where you want it and it’s usually much better to just keep aggro until the switch happens and let the Warrior tank move the boss to where it should be standing. Practice makes perfect.
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