Anetheron Strategy Guide (Mount Hyjal)

anetheron strategy guide (mount hyjal) tbc classic
  • Author: Pride
  • Date: January 29, 2022
  • Updated: January 29, 2022
  • Expansion: TBC Classic
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Archimonde

Anetheron, the dreadlord, is the second boss that players will encounter in the Mount Hyjal raid, and the last boss of the Alliance base camp section of the raid. Your raid will move to the Horde base camp after he is defeated.

Similarly to his predecessor, he is not viewed as a particularly difficult boss, with only 4.25 million HP and 6200 armor against a raid assisted by multiple NPCs. His mechanics however, although simple, can prove lethal to an underprepared raid, as they all rely on good positioning and awareness to deal with.

This guide will offer a step-by-step analysis on how to deal with Anetheron’s every trick, so you can banish this demon back to whence he came.

Role Summaries

  • Make sure you know where your group will stand, and stack with them
  • Stack right on top of each other — not around each other, directly on top
  • If you get targeted by Inferno, quickly run to the designated infernal spot
  • If you get aggro on the Towering Infernal, quickly move towards the infernal tank
  • Use your Master Healthstone if you get hit by Immolation to avoid dying to Carrion Swarm
  • Make sure you are not standing in front of one of the ranged stack groups
  • If other groups get hit by Carrion Swarm aimed at melee, you will need to reposition slightly
  • Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust for maximum DPS
  • If your raid is killing the Towering Infernal, you will need to burn it down after the tank has enough threat
  • Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust for maximum DPS

Main Tank Healers

  • Stand at your special designated spots, behind the main tank and off to the sides
  • You should never get hit by Carrion Swarm aimed at others at your spot, including the main tank
  • Move if you find yourself getting hit by others’ Carrion Swarm

Towering Infernal Tank Healers

  • Pay attention! Follow your tank around if they have to move
  • Be careful, do not stand behind other groups and get hit by their Carrion Swarm

Raid Healers

  • Heal your designated group if they get hit by Carrion Swarm
  • Don’t bother healing while afflicted by the Carrion Swarm debuff – just do some DPS instead
  • Quickly heal people targeted by Inferno

Main Tank

  • You have the easiest job here – stand at your designated spot and never move
  • Use defensive cooldowns if your designated healers get incapacitated by Carrion Swarm or Sleep

Towering Infernal Tank

  • Notice which way Anetheron faces while casting Inferno and move towards the respective infernal spot
  • Make sure to keep the infernal away from other raid members — its Immolation aura hurts
  • You can wake Sleeping people up by dragging the infernal to them, but let your raid know beforehand

Abilities

The main complicating factor throughout this encounter.

Anetheron turns towards a random raid member and sends out a wave of dark energy that hits all enemies in a cone in front of him, dealing 4250 to 5750 Shadow damage and reducing their healing DONE by 75% for 20 seconds.

This is the reason why your raid, and particularly the healers, will need to be spread out. You want to avoid a situation where multiple healers all have the debuff at once. Note that Paladins can remove the debuff using Divine Shield in case of emergency.

Cast every 10 to 20 seconds.

Anetheron puts 3 random raid members to sleep for 10 seconds.

This sleep effect cannot be removed or dispelled by players in any way. However, taking damage causes it to end early, so your Towering Infernal tank is essentially immune to this effect, and indirectly remove it off other nearby players by taking the infernal to them, though this is very dangerous.

Cast every 15 to 30 seconds.

Anetheron targets a random member of your raid and causes a level 72 Towering Infernal with 250k HP to fall down from the sky, right on top of them.

The infernal deals Fire damage and stuns all players within 10 yards of its landing zone, and has an Immolation aura that deals roughly 3.5k Fire damage to players within 10 yards every 2 seconds. It also hits pretty hard, so you will need a tank pick it up and move it away from the raid, where it gets killed by ranged DPS players.

This spell has a 3.5 second cast time, so if your raid is aware enough, the targeted player can quickly begin moving towards the designated infernal tank and away from other players so he doesn’t get them stunned.

Cast about 30 seconds into the fight for the first time, and then roughly every 45 to 60 seconds afterwards.

Strong groups can kill this boss in 2 to 3 minutes, seeing only 2 to 3 infernals as a result. Thus if your healers are good enough, you could choose to ignore the infernals and focus all of your DPS on the boss instead.

When the infernal first falls from the sky, it causes an impact on the ground.

All players within 10 yards take 2500 Fire damage and are stunned for 2 seconds.

While it is alive, the infernal is surrounded by an aura of fire.

All players within 10 yards will constantly take 3325 to 3675 Fire damage every 2 seconds.

Anetheron’s melee attacks heal him for 300% of the damage they dealt to their target.

Many players reported that Anetheron was not using this ability in the PTR, so it might have been removed, or Blizzard may have forgotten to implement it. If he does end up using it in the live version, it is recommended that your raid uses a healing reduction effect like Mortal Strike or Wound Poison to mitigate it.

Raid Composition & Preparation

Everyone should have a Healthstone, which can save your life if you get targeted by Inferno immediately after Carrion Swarm.

This fight is not particularly healing intensive but due to the nature of the Carrion Swarm healing reduction debuff, your raid will need a healthy balance of single target and AoE healing, with 5 to 6 healers being recommended.

2-3 healer will need to heal the main tank full time. A single Holy Paladin and a Restoration Shaman alternating between Healing Wave and Chain Heal (when Carrion Swarm hits melee DPS) make a good pair for this. A 3rd healer in a Restoration Druid is also good here to mitigate unfortunate damage spikes during Carrion Swarm.

Following that, 2 healers should be assigned to healing your Towering Infernal tank. 1 healer can handle this task alone, so the 2nd one is essentially just a back-up in case the first one gets the Carrion Swarm debuff. Class doesn’t really matter for this task, but if you’re using a Restoration Druid for main tank healing, you could have them keep the infernal tank up as well by keeping healing-over-time spells running on both.

The rest of your healers will need to focus on raid healing, as there is a decent amount of raid damage in this fight. Holy Priests and Restoration Shamans are exceptional at this job, particularly if you’re using the stacking up in groups strategy, which this guide details.

The raid healers should bear in mind that they are not healing the group they are stacking with, as that would mostly be futile due to the Carrion Swarm debuff. Instead, they’ll be healing adjacent and nearby groups who just got hit by Carrion Swarm, while they themselves can do some DPS while affected by the debuff.

There are no specific DPS class / spec requirements for this fight. As most of this time is spent standing still and nuking as hard as you can, this is one of the rare fights where melee and ranged DPS are about as good as well.

If Vampiric Aura ends up being included in the live version of this fight, it is recommended that you use a healing reduction effect like Mortal Strike or Wound Poison. Arms Warriors and Rogues finally get to feel useful here! If they remembered to bring Wound Poison, at least.

You could technically get away with only using 1 tank for this fight, but 2 will make it significantly easier. One main tank that takes the boss, and a single Towering Infernal tank.

Protection Paladins are exceptional infernal tanks, as they are demons. They can use Exorcism to instantly generate a high amount of threat on them, making it very easy to pull them away from the raid.

Any class works as a main tank. If Vampiric Aura ends up being included in the live version of this fight, it is a good option for your main tank to use avoidance gear to avoid getting hit as much as possible, reducing the total amount healed by the aura throughout the entire fight.

Anetheron’s melee damage isn’t particularly high, so your main tank can use DPS / threat gear and consumables for maximum threat, allowing your DPS players to go all-out.

The Pull

The pull for this fight is virtually identical to Rage Winterchill’s, except for positioning. After the 8th wave of undead invaders is fully defeated, the wave counter is replaced by text saying “Invading Enemies = 1”, with Anetheron yelling in chat as he spawns and begins to slowly move towards the Alliance base camp.

Your raid will now have roughly 1 minute to heal up and re-buff before Anetheron finally reaches the Alliance base camp and the fight begins.

anatheron 1

You want to engage Anetheron on your own terms, so it is very beneficial to have a hunter pull him with Misdirection on the main tank, who should be standing just before the cross-roads, as shown in the picture below.

The rest of your raid should already be standing at previously determined spots, split into distinct groups as shown in the picture below. Members of each group should be standing directly on top of each other in order to minimize the amount of space they take up and consequently avoid getting multiple groups hit by Carrion Swarm.

Your healers in specific will need to be very careful with the positions. Each group should have 1 healer that’s responsible for keeping that group alive, and the Towering Infernal healer(s) will need to stand alone by one of the infernal spots, making sure they don’t get hit by Carrion Swarm targeting other players except for melee.

Your main tank healers will need to stand far behind the main tank and off to the sides. Ideally, they only ever get hit by Carrion Swarm if they themselves are the target — they should not be getting hit if the tank or other players are targeted. They may need to adjust their position if they get hit by Carrion Swarm on other players.

Your melee DPS will also need to stack right on top of each other, making sure no other group is behind them so that their Carrion Swarm isn’t hitting other players. They will need to reposition slightly if that ends up being the case.

anetheron 2 2

The Fight

The rest of your hunters should now use Misdirection on the MT. 

Anetheron has a small grace period during which he won’t use any of his more lethal abilities, so you have a short amount of time to reposition if something went wrong. However, don’t take too long, as the first Carrion Swarm will come about 10 to 15 seconds into the fight, and things can quickly turn ugly if it hits too many players by accident.

Your raid will take a modest amount of damage from Carrion Swarm, that your healers will need to deal with before more AoE damage comes and kills people. However, somewhat unintuitively, they should not be healing the group they are part of, but rather an adjacent or nearby group. They really won’t be doing all that much healing with a 75% healing reduction debuff – they can use that time to help with some DPS instead.

After the first Carrion Swarm, Sleep will be the most likely 2nd ability and there isn’t much you can do at this point. Your raid will just need to have good communication here, with your healers needing to call out their situation. For instance, if your first MT healer gets the Carrion Swarm debuff and another falls asleep, your raid will need to know that information ASAP so another healer steps up and takes over MT healing for a little bit.

Roughly 30 seconds into the fight, you’ll be getting your first Inferno. Most raid addons, like DeadlyBossMods and BigWigs, have a warning if you’re targeted, but it still good for your raid members – and specially the healers – to pay attention and see if they’re being targeted.

The targeted player should move away from his group and towards your designated infernal spot within 3.5 seconds, where your designated Towering Infernal tank will be waiting to pick it up. The most important part here is to avoid having the infernal land on top of other raid members and thus stunned by Inferno Effect.

To make this process a bit easier, the infernal tank can pay attention to which direction Anetheron is facing and begin moving towards that spot in advance. Meanwhile, the designated infernal tank healer(s) should be ready to follow the tank if needed, while minding their position relative to other groups.

Melee DPS practically cannot DPS the infernal due to its Immolation aura, so your ranged DPS will need to burn it down. However, a popular strategy that has emerged is having your off-tank pick them up while the raid keeps focusing on Anetheron instead, as you will only see 2 to 3 infernals assuming your raid’s DPS is decent, which is generally no problem for one tank to handle for a while. So if your DPS is good, you can just have them tanked away and ignored.

After the infernal is dead, or after it has been moved to its designated spot safely, it is time for your raid to use raid cooldowns — Heroism / Bloodlust. The next Inferno will be at least 30-45 seconds away, giving you full up-time to nuke Anetheron as hard as you can. Your healers can even help DPS a little at this point to help burn him down.

The infernal tank can even cheekily move an infernal towards raid members affected by Sleep in order to wake them up and maximize the raid’s DPS output. This will be specially helpful while under the effects of Heroism / Bloodlust, but as it’s a dangerous trick, your raid will need good communication to pull it off.

At this point you have seen all of Anetheron’s abilities. He just keeps repeating them throughout the entire fight, without any change regardless of his HP. So if your raid’s DPS is good enough to take the infernals down in time, and your healers can keep up with their healing assignments, you will most likely be coming out of this fight with some nice purple loot.

Congratulations on defeating Anetheron! With this victory, your raid is yet another step closer to challenging the big bad of Mount Hyjal and an iconic villain from Warcraft 3 — Archimonde, the defiler!

 

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!
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