Quick Soloing Guide: Antorus

Easier than you’d think. The trick to success is simple: DO NOT destroy the guns during the Apocalypse Drive phases (don’t worry, the actual explosion from the ability is painless). The reason is simple: each time you destroy a gun, the boss increases his already considerable damage output by 20 percent AND starts using Searing Barrage. This means that he will be doing at least 40 percent more damage after you destroy the second gun, IF you survive that long. Thus, it is to your advantage to ignore them completely. You’ll have to deal with Decimation and Annihilation for the duration of the fight, but they don’t hurt THAT bad; you can ignore Annihilation, and run out of Decimation when needed. The most annoying ability by far is Fel Bombardment, which deals a good chunk of damage and tends to bounce you around a lot. You can try to outrun it to avoid a few of the impacts, if you want; I found it easier to just roll with them.

A LOT more damage than Normal, but otherwise mostly the same fight. Fel Bombardments are much more frequent, and there are large beams of Surging Fel to avoid during Apocalypse Drive phases (and for the duration of the fight following the second Drive).

Same as Heroic, but even more painful. I found the self-heal from the Crucible of Flame essence to be the key to beating this difficulty.

A simple tank-and-spank fight with a LOT of incoming damage. Since you can’t keep them separated, they will receive a HUGE damage boost from Destroyer’s Boon. You will be collecting stacks of both Smouldering and Decay (thanks to Burning Maw and Corrupting Maw), so save your biggest defensive CDs for those. There’s a bit of movement required to avoid taking big damage from Consuming Sphere; you can’t avoid Desolate Gaze. BONUS: this boss can potentially drop the Antoran Charhound mount!

Lots more damage, plus a couple of new abilities to deal with: Molten Touch and Weight of Darkness. There’s not much you can do about Molten Touch, so try to at least pop an Ignore Pain before it happens to mitigate damage during the stun. The fear from Weight of Darkness is easily broken by Berserker Rage, so be sure to save that ability as needed.

Don’t try to use the pods. Every once in a while they will actually work, but most of the time jumping in will result in an instant reset. You won’t be able to set up any shields or clear the mines, but those are minor annoyances anyway. Fusillade does negligible damage, even at high stacks of Zeroing In, so the shields aren’t terribly important. The largest source of incoming damage will be melee hits with high stacks of Exploit Weakness. Luckily, this debuff maxes out at twenty stacks, so it’s not necessarily a death sentence. In fact, if you time it JUST right, you can reset the stacks by maximizing your distance from the new commander when Assume Command happens, then Heroic Leaping away right before it makes contact with you. It’s tricky (I succeeded once in three attempts), but it CAN be done. Also, this fight has a LOT of adds, so you’ll be doing a ton of self-healing with Victory Rush. Ultimately, this is a tank-and-spank fight with a lot of adds. Have fun!

Same as Normal, with more damage to deal with. The only mechanical changes to the fight in this difficulty concern the pods, which you can’t use anyway.

There’s a new (and really annoying) ability to deal with: Shock Grenade. It’s a frequent three-second stun that’s incredibly obnoxious and can set you up for a big chunk of damage if it stops you from popping a mitigation ability.

Do NOT take any of the portals. You’ll take ramping damage while inside, lose valuable DPS time on the boss, and will likely die. Just ignore them and beat the ever-loving crap out of Hasabel. The main source of incoming damage (and the reason you need to defeat Hasabel as quickly as possible) are the ever-increasing stacks of Reality Tear. As far as I know, there’s no way to drop your stacks without using a pet; in fact, they will continue to pile up even if you enter a portal. Luckily, Warriors have a MAJOR advantage with Victory Rush: Hasabel will periodically summon Transport Portals, which spew out a number of small adds. These adds all trigger VR and will buy you a LOT of time. Save your defensive/healing CDs for the rough patches between Transport Portals, and your chances of success will skyrocket. You can safely ignore the giant swirling Collapsing World vortices, but you will need to move out of any Felstorm Barrages, lest you get punted off the platform entirely.

Mostly the same, but the incoming damage is MUCH higher, and the Felstorm Barrages now come in groups of three.

If you can get past the dreaded Sleep Canisters in phase 1, you’re golden. I haven’t been able to do this as Protection, BUT I succeeded as Fury. Here’s how: take along a PvP trinket (the kind that lets you break free from stuns/roots/et cetera) and spec into Bladestorm. Pop Bladestorm right after the first Sleep Canister cast finishes (the timing is tricky, so it may take a few tries to get it right) and you’ll be immune. Bladestorm won’t be up for the second Canister, but your PvP trinket on-use effect will break you out of the sleep stun. Burn Imonar down to 66% to force the phase transition, and the rest of the fight is a tank and spank. Good luck!

Piece of cake. Beat up the big guy, pick an add to kill during the intermission phases, cleave the remaining add down with the boss, repeat until you win and he fails to drop any loot.

A gear check for the ages! This fight has an incredibly short enrage timer (five minutes!), and you won’t be able to do ANY self-healing due to the constant application of Misery (I tried Heroic Leaping away to prevent receiving the debuff, but it didn’t work and merely reduced my DPS time on the boss). All you can do is keep mitigating as much damage as possible and keep your back to a wall to avoid losing DPS time to the knockback from Marked Prey. You’ll need to do roughly 15K sustained DPS to beat Varimathras in less than five minutes, so don’t forget your consumables!

Aggramar would be a typical tank-and-spank fight with a couple of easy add phases, EXCEPT for the inclusion of the Taeshalach Technique. Here’s how it works and how to deal with it:

• The technique consists of three abilities, cast in this order: Foe Breaker, Flame Rend, Foe Breaker, Flame Rend, Searing Tempest.
  • Foe Breaker is physical damage, so Shield Block is your friend here. SB can mitigate almost all of the damage from the first Foe Breaker, but since the second one does 500% more damage, you’ll want to stack it with Ignore Pain or something similar.
  • Flame Rend does a massive amount of Fire damage (Ignore Pain and Spell Reflection can help here), AND it does a knockback that WILL punt you off the platform into oblivion (the force of the knockback is reduced based on the number of players it hits, and since you’re soloing, you get ALL of it). Heroic Leap isn’t very useful, as it’s too finicky about placement and you only get one of them to deal with two knockbacks. Intercept is the key: start spamming it as Aggramar charges up his Flame Rend and you should be able to rush back to the center of the platform safely.
  • Searing Tempest is a GIGANTIC flaming pool of Nope that you’ll need to run out of, unless you like being disoriented for five seconds while the avatar of a Titan pummels you senseless.
• The strategy, then is this: Block the first Foe Breaker, pop an IP, spam Intercept while Flame Rend is charging, Block+IP+Demo Shout the second Foe Breaker, Spell Reflect+whatever you have left, spam Intercept again, then run out of the Searing Tempest. Use Rallying Cry+Last Stand for an emergency heal if it looks like the second Flame Rend might be lethal, and save Shield Wall as a last resort. ALWAYS save your defensive CDs for the Technique; Aggramar doesn’t do much damage outside of it.

Simple, isn’t it? Luckily, that’s the hardest part of the fight. The add phases are pretty easy, and actually give you a chance to heal back up since you’ll be proccing a few Victory Rushes.

• tl;dr strategy: beat up Aggramar, don’t touch anything that looks like fire, and survive each Taeshalach Technique via some smart tool use.

Much easier than you’d expect, UNTIL the final phase. Here’s how the fight plays out:

• Phase 1: beat up Argus. Move out of the Death Fog when required. Use your Drums at the start of the fight, and they’ll be available again for the final phase.
• Phase 2: beat up Argus. Ignore the Soulbombs and Soulbursts, as you’re already huge and golden thanks to Avatar of Aggramar so they won’t do much damage anyway.
• Phase 3: beat up all of the Constellar Designates. Don’t worry about interrupting any Cosmic Beacons.
• Phase 4: END IT ALL! You’ll want to end this phase as quickly as possible, for two reasons: you’re taking steadily ramping damage from Deadly Scythe stacks and all of the exploding Ember of Rage swirlies, AND you’re likely to hit the hard enrage timer if you don’t. Use your offensive cooldowns as often as possible (try to line them up with the availability of your Drums), ignore the scary-looking shadow pools from the Re-Origination Modules (they don’t hurt much, will go away on their own, and you need that DPS uptime for the boss), and you just might win!