Illidari Council Strategy Guide (Black Temple)

illidari council strategy guide (black temple) tbc classic
  • Author: Pride
  • Date: April 6, 2022
  • Updated: April 13, 2022
  • Expansion: TBC Classic
tbc classic raid guide

Black Temple Raid Guide

tbc classic attunement

Black Temple Attunement

Gear & Best In Slot (bis)

Black Temple Loot

high warlord najentus strategy guide black temple

High Warlord Naj’entus

supremus strategy guide black temple

Supremus

shade of akama strategy guide black temple

Shade of Akama

teron gorefiend strategy guide black temple

Teron Gorefiend

reliquary of souls strategy guide black temple

Reliquary of Souls

gurtogg bloodboil strategy guide black temple

Gurtogg Bloodboil

mother shahraz strategy guide black temple

Mother Shahraz

illidari council strategy guide black temple

Illidari Council

illidan stormrage strategy guide black temple

Illidan Stormrage

The Illidari Council is the 8th and penultimate boss encounter of the Black Temple raid. They are located in the Chamber of Command, which is locked until players defeat Mother Shahraz.

Comprised of 4 separate raid bosses with a shared health pool, the Illidari Council is considered to be one of the most challenging boss fights in the entire raid. Players can die very easily and things can go wrong very quickly during this fight, so your raid will need very good coordination and communication, with everyone clearly understanding what they need to focus on doing during this fight. Thankfully, players have discovered some clever tactics, making this fight a little bit easier. However, it will still not be a cakewalk — so beware!

This guide will offer a detailed breakdown of what each boss does and how to handle it, so that you can dismiss the Council for good.

Role Summaries

  • The Council has a large aggro radius — don’t move close to them before they are pulled
  • When the fight starts, quickly move to your designated spot and stay away from other players as much as possible
  • There is heavy AoE damage coming out during this fight — stay focused and quickly move out of Flamestrike, Blizzard & Consecration
  • Don’t hesitate to use your Master Healthstone if you drop below 50% HP — you can die very easily during this fight
  • Watch out for Deadly Poison after Veras uses Vanish — use defensive cooldowns to survive it & the subsequent Envenom
  • Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust for maximum DPS
  • Attack Veras Darkshadow (the rogue) as much as possible, he has virtually 0 armor so you do huge damage to him
  • When Veras uses Vanish, switch to Gathios (the paladin)
  • Switch back to Veras when he becomes visible again, but give the tank a few seconds to establish threat first, as he resets threat
  • Quickly follow the tank as he moves Gathios out of his Consecration
  • Warriors: 1 Sunder Armor gets Veras to 0 armor, which will boost your raid’s damage significantly
  • Retribution Paladins: Make sure Judgement of Wisdom stays up on Gathios at all times, use Crusader Strike on him when necessary
  • It is vital that you understand how to initiate this fight with Misdirection — a mistake will wipe you
  • A Hunter with the Hawk Eye talent needs to pull by attacking Zerevor (the mage) with a Misdirection on the Mage tanking him
  • If none of you have the Hawk Eye talent, the Mage tank will need to initiate the pull by running in with a Blessing of Protection
  • DO NOT USE Arcane Shot ON ZEREVOR — YOU WILL DISPEL HIS Dampen Magic AND WIPE YOUR RAID
  • All of your remaining Hunters should now attack the other Council members with Misdirection on the respective tank
  • You will be attacking the same target as melee DPS players, not casters, so check out the Melee DPS tab
  • Remove your Greater Blessing of Salvation for this fight, so you can do as much threat as possible
  • Wait for a Hunter with the Hawk Eye talent to pull with a Misdirection to you
  • If your raid doesn’t have a Hunter with the Hawk Eye talent, you will need to initiate the pull by running in with a Blessing of Protection
  • Spellsteal Zerevor’s Dampen Magic right away, else you are probably going to die and your raid will wipe
  • After you have the Dampen Magic buff, use your personal cooldowns and nuke Zerevor — you want to have threat on him
  • After you have dealt 30-40k threat on him, you will want to switch to the kite strategy
  • Kite Zerevor around the room by running up the ramps in the back of the room, as shown in the diagram in the The Fight section
  • You will need to Spellsteal Zerevor’s Dampen Magic multiple times, as it only lasts 2 minutes — make sure you renew it
  • Call out on voice chat if you need healing as you’re running past the raid near the middle of the room
  • Don’t hesitate to use your Master Healthstone if Zerevor hits you multiple times while you’re in the back of the room
  • Call out on voice if Zerevor starts casting Flamestrike, to help your raid avoid it
  • Gathios Tank healers: Gathios does a lot of damage, sometimes out of nowhere — do not lose focus, pump heals on the tank
  • Veras Tank healer: Your tanks will spend long periods of time not taking damage, don’t lose focus because of that
  • Raid Healers: Don’t panic and stop healing if you have to move out of AoE — keep using your instant cast healing spells!
  • Raid Healers: Make sure the raid is topped off at all times — there’s a lot of stuff that can suddenly kill players in this fight
  • Raid Healers: When Veras uses Vanish, quickly top off people targeted by Deadly Poison, or they will die to Envenom
  • Raid Healers: If Malande manages to cast Divine Wrath, top off her target asap — it does a huge amount of damage
  • Mage Tank healer: Top off your Mage every time he runs by the middle of the room while he’s kiting Zerevor
  • Don’t hesitate to use survival cooldowns like Divine Shield or Desperate Prayer in order to avoid nasty AoE & Deadly Poison
  • This fight can be pretty long, so make sure you’re using Super Mana Potions and Dark Runes to avoid running out of mana
  • Gathios Tank: Quickly move Gathios to his assigned spot, you don’t want Consecration hitting the raid
  • Gathios Tank: Move Gathios out of AoE, but be careful to not move towards or away from the raid, so you don’t outrange healers
  • Gathios Tank: Use Spell Reflection when Gathios uses Judgement to reflect his Judgement of Command
  • Gathios Tank: Gathios hits very hard — don’t hesitate to use cooldowns in order to survive if you’re not getting healed in time
  • Veras Tank: You can DPS Gathios when Veras uses Vanish, but you’ll need to quickly pick him up afterwards, as his threat table is reset
  • Malande Tank: Make sure Malande is not close enough to Gathios to benefit from his Chromatic Resistance Aura

Abilities

Gathios the Shatterer (Paladin)

Similar to the player Paladin class, Gathios uses Seal spells which buff him temporarily, and can then unleash their energy using Judgement to trigger a different effect based on which Seal was currently active.

Gathios’ Judgement has a 2 second cast time, which makes it possible to react to it, including by using Spell Reflection.

Gathios will change Seals roughly every 20 to 30 seconds, and then use Judgement every 15 to 20 seconds. This means that there will be periods of time wherein he won’t have any Seal active, severely reducing his damage output.

For the next 30 seconds or until Gathios consumes this seal with Judgement, his attacks have a chance of dealing an additional 1500 Holy damage. Holy damage ignores armor, so this will result in occasional fairly modest damage spikes on the tank currently holding his threat, meaning your tank should be read to react with a defensive cooldown if necessary, while your healers should take care to quickly top them off.

If Gathios uses Judgement while Seal of Command is active, he will trigger Judgement of Command, which consumes the Seal of Command and instantly deals 6175 to 6825 Holy damage to his current target. Gathios already hits very, very hard, making this extra damage extremely scary to deal with — however, there is a way around it: a warrior tank can reflect this spell using Spell Reflection. Doing so causes the spell to fizzle out, which unfortunately doesn’t mean that Gathios takes that damage instead, but at the very least prevents your tank from taking a very large damage spike.

For the next 30 seconds or until Gathios consumes this seal with Judgement, his attacks will deal an additional 800 Holy damage. This is essentially just a slightly less scary version of Seal of Command — your tank will take extra damage with every hit they take, but each individual hit isn’t as scary as Seal of Command‘s.

If Gathios uses Judgement while Seal of Blood is active, he will trigger Judgement of Blood, which consumes the Seal of Blood and applies a debuff to his current target, dealing 1200 Holy damage every second for the next 9 seconds, for a total of 10,800 Holy damage. Unfortunately, Judgement of Blood cannot be reflected, so your healers will just need to keep an eye out for it and heal that extra damage off.

This spell is virtually identical to a regular Paladin‘s Consecration, albeit with significantly higher damage, range and duration. Specifically, it creates a 10-yard radius zone on the ground that persists for 20 seconds, and players inside that zone take 2250 Holy damage every 3 seconds.

While this spell is not particularly difficult to deal with or deal particularly high damage, this fight in general has very high AoE damage that players can die to very easily, so the tank tanking Gathios and all melee DPS players on it should be prepared to quickly move out of his Consecration.

Furthermore, your Retribution and Protection Paladins should let their raid know if they’re using their own Consecration, as it has the same visual effect as Gathios’, which can make things pretty confusing. Thankfully, raid boss addons like DeadlyBossMods have warning messages to let you know that you’re currently standing inside Gathios’ Consecration, rather than a player’s.

Cast every 30 to 45 seconds.

Gathios will choose one of the other Council members at random and grant them Blessing of Protection, which makes them invulnerable to Physical spells and effects for the next 15 seconds. Unlike a regular Paladin‘s Blessing of Protection, this effect cannot be dispelled — your physical damage dealers simply cannot touch the target for the next 15 seconds.

If the target of this spell is Lady Malande, then your Rogues and Warriors will be unable to interrupt her spells for the duration. Your Shamans and Mages should be ready to take over interrupt duties on her for the next 15 seconds, using Earth Shock and Counterspell respectively.

This spell has a 15 second cooldown, but Gathios will typically only cast it roughly every 30 to 40 seconds, and most often on lady Malande.

Gathios will choose one of the other Council members at random and grant them Blessing of Spell Warding, which makes them invulnerable to all magical spells and effects for the next 15 seconds. Similarly to his Blessing of Protection, this effect cannot be countered in any way — your caster DPS players simply cannot damage that target for the next 15 seconds.

If the target of this spell is Lady Malande, then your Shamans and Mages will will be unable to interrupt her spells for the duration. This won’t be a big issue for most guilds, as typically there will be a Rogue assigned to interrupting her full time, but it may be important if that player dies.

This spell has a 15 second cooldown, but Gathios will typically only cast it roughly every 30 to 40 seconds, and most often on Lady Malande.

Gathios gains an aura which increases the armor of every Council member within 30 yards, including himself, by 20% for the next 30 seconds.

This means that your physical DPS players will deal less damage to him while the aura holds. However, Veras Darkshadow (the Rogue) has so little armor that he actually reaches 0 armor after just 1 Sunder Armor, meaning your raid can pretty much ignore this aura if Veras happens to be nearby by switching your focus on him.

This spell has a 1 minute cooldown and Gathios will use it pretty much every time it’s available. However, he can only benefit from 1 aura at a time, so he will generally not use it while Chromatic Resistance Aura is currently active.

Gathios gains an aura which grants every Council member within 30 yards, including himself, 250 resistance to every school of magic for 30 seconds.

This will translate into a very harsh damage reduction for your caster DPS players, as well as a vastly increased chance for Lady Malande to resist your Shamans and Mages‘ interrupts. A Warlock‘s Curse of the Elements can mitigate this a little by reducing the target’s resistance by 88, and should thus be active on Gathios, Veras and Malande at all times. However, the best way to counter this aura will be to simply have Malande stand more than 30 yards away from Gathios, so your casters have a viable target to attack while the aura is active — else they will suffer.

This spell has a 1 minute cooldown and Gathios will use it pretty much every time it’s available. However, he can only benefit from 1 aura at a time, so he will generally not use it while Devotion Aura is currently active.

Veras Darkshadow (Rogue)

Veras teleports to a random spot within 20 yards, becoming invisible and rooting himself in place for 30 seconds and resetting all threat on himself.

This spell is one of the biggest oddities of this encounter and perhaps of any TBC raid boss encounter. While invisible, he has a massive -9900% attack speed penalty so he technically cannot attack. Occasionally however, he may be able to attack, so he will randomly kill players that are unlucky enough to walk by the spot he happened to teleport to.

This spell has a 55 second cooldown and Veras will use it pretty much every time it’s available.

Veras can only use this ability while under the effects of Vanish. He will target a random player in the raid and apply a debuff to them for 4 seconds, dealing 1000 Nature damage per second, for a total of 4000 Nature damage over the debuff’s duration.

This debuff cannot be dispelled — the target must be healed quickly, because the damage is already pretty high, and will be followed by the extremely powerful Envenom, which will result in player deaths very, very often.

Veras will use this ability between 3 to 5 times during each Vanish. However, he can only have the debuff up on 1 target at a time, so he will only use it a maximum of once every 4 seconds. Note that its range is global — it can be any player in the raid.

When the Deadly Poison debuff fades from a player, Veras follows it up with this finishing move, instantly dealing 4250 to 5750 Nature damage to them.

This means that Deadly Poison effectively deals 9000 damage over 4 seconds per target, which will kill many players flat-out, specially so if they have taken prior AoE damage, which this fight has no shortage of.

Lady Malande (Priest)

Deals 5463 to 6037 Holy damage to Malande’s current target.

While this damage is by no means low, it is significantly less scary than her other abilities and as such will have the lowest priority for interrupts. Your Rogue assigned to interrupting Malande should interrupt it as much as possible, but while she has Gathios’ Blessing of Protection, your Shamans should focus on interrupting her other abilities instead.

Has a 2 second cast time, and Malande will be casting this ability as often as she can — it is her primary spell. It is heavily recommended that you use either Mind-Numbing Poison III or Curse of Tongues to make interrupting this ability a bit easier on your interrupters.

Deals 5000 Holy damage to a random player in the raid, and applies a debuff to them for 8 seconds, which deals a further 2500 Holy damage every 2 seconds, for a total of 10,000 damage over time or 15,000 Holy damage including the initial damage portion.

This spell is absolutely terrifying. The fact that she targets a random player with this spell makes it extremely lethal, as for example she could target your Gathios tank, which will very likely result in a wipe. As such, this will be your raid’s #1 interrupt priority — your Rogue assigned to interrupting her should make sure they always have energy or combo points to interrupt it with, while your Shamans should make sure they can interrupt it when it comes while she has Gathios’ Blessing of Protection.

Has a 2 second cast time, and Malande will typically try to cast it every 20 to 30 seconds. It is heavily recommended that you use either Mind-Numbing Poison III or Curse of Tongues to make interrupting this ability a bit easier on your interrupters.

Heals every Council member for 95,000 to 105,000. As this affects every single Council member and they have a shared HP pool, this means that your raid was just set back 400,000 damage, or 6% of their total HP — an absolutely massive amount.

For this reason, this spell be your raid’s #2 priority to interrupt, since it’s not quite as lethal as Divine Wrath — it just annoyingly prolongs the fight. Your Rogue assigned to interrupting her should have no trouble with handling it thanks to its long cast time, but you may want to set up an interrupt assignment for your Shamans to ensure that you can interrupt it when it comes while she has Gathios’ Blessing of Protection, after Divine Wrath.

Has a 2.5 second cast time, and Malande will typically try to cast it every 15 to 20 seconds. It is heavily recommended that you use either Mind-Numbing Poison III or Curse of Tongues to make interrupting this ability a bit easier on your interrupters.

Malande applies a shield on herself, which will absorb the next 25,000 damage she takes. Furthermore, 50% of the damage she takes while the shield is up will be reflected back to her attacker — which means a careless player may just deal 12,500 damage to themselves out of nowhere. This shield cannot be dispelled or removed in any way besides absorbing 25,000 damage or naturally expiring after 20 seconds.

This ability is typically fairly easy to deal with: your Rogue assigned to interrupting her moves out and only goes in to interrupt her casts, while the tank tanking her stops attacking her unless it is absolutely necessary in order to gain threat on her. The only time this ability may be an issue is if your caster DPS players switch their focus on her while the other Council members have Chromatic Resistance Aura. In that case, they will need to be careful and quickly use a Master Healthstone to heal themselves, else they risk killing themselves with their next attack.

Cast every 30 to 50 seconds.

High Nethermancer Zerevor (Mage)

Zerevor applies a buff to himself for 5 minutes, reducing magic damage taken by 75%, and incoming healing by up to 500 — a flat 500, not 500%.

The catch with this spell is that its buff can be stolen by a Mage using Spellsteal. This will be vital to tanking Zerevor, as his Arcane Bolt will be extremely lethal without the ability to mitigate 75% of its damage with Dampen Magic.

Zerevor will use this ability roughly every 1 minute and he will have it up when the fight starts. Your Mage tank should pay attention — this fight can be pretty long, so will likely have to Spellsteal it multiple times throughout the fight, as it only lasts 2 minutes after being stolen, particularly if you’re using the kite strategy that this guide highlights.

Deals 12,950 to 15,050 Arcane damage to Zerevor’s current target.

This spell will 1-shot everyone except your tanks. It is therefore vital that you have a Mage tank him after Spellstealing his Dampen Magic buff, reducing the damage of Arcane Bolt to a significantly more manageable 3500 average damage per hit.

Has a 2 second cast time, and normally Zerevor will spam it endlessly. However, its range is only 40 yards, which is a weakness we will be exploiting, by having the Mage tank move very far away from him, causing Zerevor to start chasing after them and thus using his abilities, including Arcane Bolt, significantly less often.

Zerevor targets a random player in the raid and causes an explosion of flame around them, instantly dealing 4625 to 5375 Fire damage to all players within 8 yards of the impact point, and then creating an 8-yard radius persistent zone of fire, which deals 2806 to 3194 Fire damage every 2 seconds to players who stay in the zone.

This is essentially a significantly beefed-up version of the Mage class’ Flamestrike. It is extremely lethal — it will very often kill players who are not quickly topped off, and if any of the players who got hit happened to be targeted by Veras’ Deadly Poison as well, they’re very likely going to die.

Has a 1.5 second cast time and is normally cast every 15 to 20 seconds. Thankfully, the kite strategy that this guide explains results in Zerevor casting Flamestrike significantly less often than normal, which will help prevent deaths. It can also help if the Mage tank kiting him announces on voice chat that Zerevor is casting this ability, so your players (and healers in particular) are aware and quickly react to it.

Zerevor targets a random player in the raid and starts channeling a 10-yard radius Blizzard around them for 12 seconds. Players inside the Blizzard will take 4375 to 5625 Frost damage every 2 seconds.

This is essentially a significantly beefed-up version of the Mage class’ Blizzard. While it is not as lethal as his Flamestrike spell, which deals damage instantly, it can still kill some of your less aware players.

Normally, this spell is cast every 20 to 25 seconds. Thankfully, the kite strategy that this guide explains results in Zerevor casting Blizzard significantly less often than normal, which will help prevent deaths.

Raid Composition & Preparation

Everyone should have Master Healthstones and other healing consumables, like Super Healing Potions. There are many, many opportunities for people to die to sudden damage spikes in this fight, where using a healing item could have saved their life.

This fight is among the most healing intensive ones in this tier. It is strongly recommended that you bring 5 to 6 healers, potentially up to 7 if your healers aren’t the strongest. Strong AoE healing specs, like Restoration Shamans and Holy Priests, will make a massive impact in this fight, so it’s recommended you have at least 3 of those.

Assign at least 2 healers to the Gathios tank. Holy Paladins are the best at this task, thanks to their constant healing and great mana efficiency. It’s not a bad idea to assign a single Restoration Shaman to the Gathios tank as well, spamming Chain Heal, buffing the tank with Ancestral Fortitude while also healing your melee DPS.

The Veras Darkshadow and Lady Malande tanks should also have 1 healer assigned to them each. Veras disappears for long periods of time, so his tank won’t be taking damage at all times, and Malande’s damage is pretty low. This means that the healers charged with keeping them up don’t really need to focus all of their attention on tank healing, and can multi-task. However, don’t slack off — if they die, you’ll likely wipe.

Your remaining healers should all be assigned to raid healing. Restoration Shamans will excel at this task, as their Chain Heal jumps between groups to heal wounded players, making them very efficient healers. Conversely, Holy Priests won’t have as easy of a time here — their Circle of Healing only heals players in the same party as the main target, and very often the players getting damaged by a spell won’t all be in the same party. Thus they will need to rely on Renew a lot more, which isn’t their strongest point, though still very potent.

Restoration Druids will really shine in this fight. They can they keep their heal-over-time effects rolling on all of your tanks if needed, giving them some very constant, reliable healing. Moreover, they can throw HoTs around for some great raid healing, while their ability to instantly heal someone for a hefty amount using Swiftmend can save people from Envenom, which will be one of the most common sources of player deaths.

Note that one of your raid healers should be assigned to healing your Mage tanking Zerevor. They’ll only need to consistently heal him at the start of the fight — after the Mage transitions to kiting Zerevor, they will need significantly less healing. That healer should instead make sure to heal the Mage while they’re running by.

Your healers will need all of the +healing power they can get in order to keep your entire raid up. For that reason, it is highly recommended that they use +healing consumables for this fight, such as Elixir of Healing Power and Golden Fish Sticks. Furthermore, as this is one of the longer fights, it will be extremely beneficial for them to bring mana regen consumables, such as Super Mana Potions and Dark Runes.

A single Mage is virtually required for this fight. Their job will be to tank Zerevor, or kite him if you’re using the strategy this guide recommends, after using Spellsteal to steal his Dampen Magic. It is technically possible to do this fight without a Mage, but it is orders of magnitude harder, so really, bring one.

While not completely required, a single Rogue and 1-2 DPS Shamans (preferably Elemental) can make this fight significantly easier as well.

Your Rogue will need to interrupt all of Malande’s casts. In order to do that, they will need to have a set of PvP gloves (f.e. Merciless Gladiator’s Leather Gloves) in order to interrupt with Deadly Throw when their Kick is on cooldown. By rotating these 2 interrupts, they can prevent her from casting altogether, except while she has the Blessing of Protection buff. If you don’t have a Rogue with the PvP gloves, then you will need a 2nd player to keep her interrupted. Rogues can also keep Mind-Numbing Poison III on Malande, making interrupting her easier.

Your Shamans will be responsible for interrupting Malande while she has the Blessing of Protection buff. You can get away with only having 1 Shaman assigned to this task, interrupting Divine Wrath exclusively, but having 2 of them rotating their interrupts will make things a lot easier, thanks to the short cooldown of Earth Shock allowing them to also interrupt nearly all of her spells. Elemental Shamans are slightly better at this task than their Enhancement brethren, thanks to the fact that they can continue doing damage normally as they have long range.

The pull is one of the hardest parts of this fight, so it can be very advantageous for your raid to have a few Hunters, using Misdirection on your tanks — meaning 4 Hunters total is ideal. However, the Council’s aggro range is higher than a Hunter‘s base range, so you will need to have a Hunter with the Hawk Eye talent (typically a Survival Hunter) initiate the pull, otherwise things can get ugly. Hunters are extremely strong in this fight in general, as their damage isn’t impacted by Chromatic Resistance Aura and they can deal respectable damage while moving.

Finally, if you don’t have a Rogue to keep Mind-Numbing Poison III on Lady Malande at all times, a single Warlock will be extremely useful as they can instead keep Curse of Tongues on her, to the same effect. Their Master Soulstones will also be invaluable here, saving your healers’ lives.

The longer this fight goes on for, the more deaths you can expect to have — so all of your DPS players should be using flasks and other DPS consumables. All of the Council members are humanoid, so anti-undead and anti-demon effects, such as Mark of the Champion and Elixir of Demonslaying should not be used here.

Besides Zerevor who needs to be tanked by a Mage, there are 3 more enemies in this fight that need to be tanked in the traditional way: Gathios (the paladin), Veras (the rogue) and Malande (the priest). Veras vanishes for long periods of time, and neither he or Malande hit particularly hard, so you could have a tank tank them both. However, the optimal and easiest way to handle tanking in this fight will be to have 1 proper tank for each of these enemies, for 4 tanks in total, with Gathios and Veras being tanked next to each other while Malande is tanked further away.

You can get away with any 3 tanking classes, but it is strongly advised that you have a Protection Warrior tanking Gathios, thanks to their ability to reflect his Judgement of Command using Spell Reflection. The next best tank for this job will be a Feral Druid — Gathios’ attacks cannot be crushing blows, so their extremely high health and armor will help them soak Judgement of Command at lack of a reflect mechanic.

As Veras will vanish and not need to be tanked for long periods of times, Feral Druids make for a great candidate for tanking him, as they can switch to Cat Form and help by dealing very respectable damage to Gathios. Veras’ damage is not the highest either, so they can go for a more DPS-heavy set. Your feral kitty should remain focused however — they’ll need to pick up Veras the moment he reappears, else he’ll kill random healers.

Protection Paladins meanwhile get the shortest end of the stick here. They can tank all 3 of the Council members that need tanked just fine, but they do not particularly shine at tanking any 1 of them — they’re just okay at tanking them all. For that reason, if you will probably want to assign your Protection Paladin to tanking Lady Malande, as she has the fewest things for them to care about. Alternatively, if you have multiple Protection Warriors, you could have one of them tank her instead, freeing your Rogue from having to use Deadly Throw in order to interrupt her.

The Pull

There is no trash in the Illidari Council’s room, so you can just go in and get ready for the fight. The one thing to watch out for though is that they have a pretty large aggro range, so stay close to the door until everyone’s fully buffed up and regenerated.

illidari council 0

The pull is one of the most important parts of this fight, as a small accident while pulling will immediately wipe your raid.

Note: Your Mage tank should make sure to remove Greater Blessing of Salvation for this fight, so they can do maximum threat.

You will need to rely on your Hunters and their trusty Misdirection to make the pull a bit more manageable. You’ll ideally want 4 Hunters for this, so each Council member gets 1 Misdirection each — if you have fewer than 4, then the priority for Misdirections will be Zerevor > Malande > Gathios > Veras. That is because Zerevor and Malande have ranged spells that they may start using right away, so if they did not have their attention misdirected immediately, they might cast them on a random player in the raid — likely a healer or tank — and possibly healing them.

IMPORTANT: The Council’s aggro range is higher than a Hunter‘s base range of 35 yards. Thus, you will need to have a Hunter with the Hawk Eye talent (Survival Hunters typically take this talent) initiate the pull by attacking Zerevor with a Misdirection on your Mage tank. This hunter should NOT use Arcane Shot while pulling, as it will dispel Zerevor’s Dampen Magic, causing the Mage to be unable to steal it and thus immediately die on the pull.

If you don’t have a Hunter with the Hawk Eye talent in your raid, then the next best option will be to have a Paladin use Blessing of Protection on your Mage tank, who then simply walks towards Zerevor, casting Spellsteal before starting to deal threat on him. If you are using this strategy, it will be very important that the other 3 Council members get a Misdirection to their respective tank immediately afterwards, as things will get ugly with them running all over the place.

After the pull, you will ideally want your raid to be positioned as follows:

illidari council 1 3

An explanation for this positioning:

  • Your raid spreads out in the middle of the room so as to avoid having multiple players get hit by Zerevor’s Flamestrike & Blizzard.
  • Gathios & Veras are tanked next to each other on one side of the room, so that they can be cleaved by your physical DPS players. Veras has practically 0 armor so this will result in a huge DPS boost. Being away from the center means your ranged players don’t have to move to avoid Consecration.
  • Malande is tanked on the opposite side from Gathios & Veras, at least 30 yards away from Gathios at all times. That way, your caster DPS players have a viable target to attack when Gathios uses Chromatic Resistance Aura & she will not be resisting your interrupts.
  • A single Rogue (or another melee player with a low cooldown interrupt, but preferably Rogue) is behind Malande, assigned to interrupting her.
  • Zerevor is kept while he is, with the Mage tank doing threat to him. This is only temporary, however, as explained in the The Fight section.
  • Your healers spread out even more than other players. You ideally don’t want any 2 healers to be within ~10 yards of each other. That way, you minimize instances where multiple healers all have to move at once in order to avoid a single Flamestrike or Blizzard, and thus nobody is healing.
  • Finally, 1 healer assigned to the Gathios tank (ideally a Holy Paladin) should move far away from everyone else. Gathios does very high and very consistent damage, so having this healer away from other players ensures he will practically never need to move, and can thus keep healing without interruption throughout the entire fight. This avoids situations where nobody is healing the Gathios tank, which will very often result in tank deaths and thus wipes.

The Fight

If you handled the pull correctly and everyone is positioned as shown in the picture above, then one of the hardest parts of the fight is already done. After your tanks have had a few seconds to build some threat, your raid should use Heroism / Bloodlust along with personal DPS cooldowns right away. People can die at any point in this fight, mainly to Envenom, so you’ll want to use your cooldowns early to maximize DPS.

Your Mage tank should be spamming their highest damage / threat ability to get his threat up ASAP. After they have built up about ~30-40k threat, they should transition to the kiting strategy. Simply put, they Blink away from Zerevor, towards one of the ramps on each side of the room, on the opposite side of the entrance to the room.

illidari council 3 2

They will then need to kite Zerevor around the room in the following pattern:

illidari council 4 2

By running around the back of the room and then stopping out of Zerevor’s line of sight, Zerevor is forced to chase the Mage tank around the room, unable to cast spells consistently. While chasing the Mage, Zerevor cannot cast Flamestrike & Blizzard as often as he normally would, which makes this encounter significantly easier for everyone else as those are his most powerful spells. He will still be casting them occasionally — but if your Mage tank communicates when he starts casting on voice chat, dealing with those otherwise scary spells will be a lot easier.

Note that the Mage tank will still be getting hit by stray Arcane Bolts with every “lap” he does around the room, thus taking a small bit of damage. A single healer should thus be assigned to topping them off every time they run through the middle of the room (the skull in the picture above) so that they remain healthy — if the Mage tank dies, you will likely wipe. Furthermore, the Dampen Magic they stole from Zerevor only lasts 2 minutes, so they will need to Spellsteal it multiple times, preferably when they are near the middle of the room, so they can get healed before moving away again.

With Zerevor handled, the remaining fight is nowhere near as difficult.

The first thing you are probably going to notice in this fight is that Gathios hits very hard. It will thus be important that your tank pays attention to which Seal he is using, reflects Judgement of Command as much as possible, and uses defensive cooldowns reactively if necessary in order to survive a large damage spike. Your healers assigned to the Gathios tank meanwhile should remain focused throughout the entire fight and be ready to use their instant healing spells if necessary, particularly when they have to move to avoid AoE — that tank must always be receiving heals.

Your raid should initially be focusing Veras, the rogue. He has an extremely low amount of armor (~146) and thus will take the most damage out of any target — your physical DPS players in particular will love getting the chance to hit him while he’s around… which unfortunately won’t be often. Roughly 20 seconds into the fight, and then about every minute after that, Veras will cast Vanish, becoming untargetable for about 30 second periods. At this point, your raid should switch their focus to Gathios.

The periods of time where Veras is invisible will be one of the scariest parts of this fight. He will randomly target players and apply Deadly Poison on them, followed by Envenom when the Deadly Poison expires, for a total of ~9000 damage dealt to them over 4 seconds. Coupled with the very high AoE damage in this fight, this combination of spells can kill your players very easily, so your raid healers need to be alert at all times, ready to heal those players quickly.

Thankfully, after about 30 seconds, Veras will quit his little hiding game and stop being invisible. The tank assigned to him should quickly pick him up and move him back to Gathios — a task that can be pretty annoying as he will reappear anywhere within 20 yards of his original position and his threat table is cleared every time he reappears, meaning he’ll start running after a random player (like a healer) so your tank will need to be very quick with picking him up.

This will be most of the fight for your physical DPS players. Attack Veras, then switch to Gathios when he uses Vanish. Melee will need to constantly follow the Gathios tank around as he moves out of Consecration. When Veras reappears, give his tank a few moments to establish threat, then switch back to him — rinse and repeat. The only thing that can complicate things is having Flamestrike or Blizzard on the melee stack along with Consecration, but if your melee players are aware enough and move quickly, or if your healers are just good at their task, then you likely won’t have a problem.

Caster DPS players meanwhile don’t have a reason to focus down Veras, so they will instead attack Gathios, who will never Vanish thus complicated their DPS rotation. That is until he uses Chromatic Resistance Aura, at which point they will switch to Malande, the priest. The only thing that can make their life harder while following this strategy is if Gathios uses his Blessing of Spell Warding on Malande, forcing them to switch back to him temporarily, or if Malande uses her Reflective Shield, reflecting a large crit back to them. If they’re quick with using a Master Healthstones when that happens, and your healers are on top of their healing game, that will generally not be a major issue.

And speaking of Malande, she’s the only enemy you’ll really have to make sure you’re handling correctly if you’re kiting Zerevor.

You will want to have a Rogue on her at all times. Not only can they easily keep up their Mind-Numbing Poison III debuff on her at all times, making interrupting her casts a lot easier, but by using their PvP gloves (f.e. Merciless Gladiator’s Leather Gloves) in order to interrupt with Deadly Throw when their Kick is on cooldown, they can single-handedly prevent her from casting altogether. If you don’t have a Rogue with the PvP gloves, you will instead need to have 2 melee DPS players with low cooldown interrupts rotating interrupts on her, similar to the Reliquary of Souls boss fight’s phase 2.

Occasionally, Gathios will be a jerk and use Blessing of Protection on Malande, preventing your Rogue from interrupting her casts. At this point, you will need to have at least 1 Shaman dedicated to interrupting her casts, prioritizing Divine Wrath above other casts. Ideally, you’ll want 2 Shamans assigned to this task, rotating interrupts so you can easily interrupt her Circle of Healing as well, with Elemental Shamans being ideal at this task thanks to their range. However, if you don’t have an Elemental Shaman or multiple Shamans, just 1 focusing interrupting Divine Wrath until Blessing of Protection fades is fine.

And with that out of the way, you have seen all there is to see in this fight. Every player will generally follow the DPS strategy outlined above, changing targets as necessary. Your healers will need to stay focused in order to keep up the raid and particularly the Gathios tank up, while your Malande Rogue and Mage Zerevor tank handle their specific tasks throughout the entire fight. There’s a few key players that must be kept alive at all times, but even if you suffer a few casualties to one of the multiple AoE spells that’s coming out, you’ll generally be fine — just keep at it and don’t panic.

Congratulations on besting Illidan’s council of trusted advisors! With this, none other remain to threaten the Outland, bar the Betrayer himself! And so, only one question remains — are you prepared?!

 

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!
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Scroll to Top