zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

This is it. You’ve skinned the beasts, banished the demon lord back to his realm, made short work of the opposing faction’s champions and clipped the wings off the twins. It’s time to face the Nerubian Lord Anub’arak, who’s back for round two.

Phase One is a tank and spank with adds. Anub’arak has a cleave attack so make sure you’re nowhere in front of him during the fight. DPS the boss, switch to the adds when your off-tank picks them up (one add in 10-man, 2 in 25) and then go back to the boss. A second set of adds will spawn shortly but we usually ignore those until the boss burrows.  The adds can also burrow and then pop back later. To prevent this, they have to be tanked on frozen ground. If they’re not, you can interrupt their burrow cast by using Kidney Shot.

When Anub’arak burrows, Phase Two begins. Kill the adds that your off-tank is dealing with then proceed to killing scarabs. These do not need to be tanked so just DPS away. They cast a stacking damage debuff on you so watch for it. If it becomes tough to handle you can use Cloak of Shadows to get out of it. The boss himself will cast spikes that chase random raid members. Just stand on frost (or get frost between you and the spikes) if it targets you. The spikes will hit the frost in a rather violent animation and then switch targets. Once Anub’arak pops from the ground, it’s back to Phase One.

Phase Three starts when the boss’s HP hits 30%. He’ll stop burrowing and will cast a life leech spell that will drain HP from the raid and give it back to him. This phase has more to do with your healers than you but the idea is to keep everyone except the tanks at 30-50 percent HP throughout the remainder of the fight. Just DPS the boss, pop your trinkets and enjoy the loot.

That’s it. I hope you enjoyed this guide to Trial of the Crusader. I know it’s delayed as hell but real life got in the way again. I was actually forced to a 3-week break from the game because of Ketsana and other shit (and when I say it’s shit, it really is shitty).

The fourth fight of TotC pits your group against Fjola Lightbane and Eydis Darkbane, the Twin Val’kyr. Four portals will spawn, 2 light and 2 dark. When you click one, you will see a matching aura on your feet, indicating what color you’re attuned to. The gimmick of the fight is knowing when to use which color.

• The fight itself is a tank and spank. Seriously.

• Install DBM or any similar addon. DBM will literally tell you what color to use if you need to switch. The version I downloaded today also tells me if I need to switch targets and it also shows when I should use Kick to interrupt the heal. We’ll cover that later, but what I want to emphasize here is that the fight is simplified exponentially by using DBM.

• You will always DPS the target opposite your color. If you’re white, you DPS black and vice-versa.

• Black and white orbs will spawn around the area. Grabbing orbs that have the same color as your attunement will buff you. Touching different colored ones will hurt you. So if you’re white, grab white.

• At certain points during the fight, one of the twins will cast one of two abilities. One is an AoE ability called Vortex. To avoid taking damage from it, switch colors to match the caster’s. If Eydis Darkbane is casting it, switch to black. If your color already matches that of the caster’s, then you don’t need to do anything.

• The second ability is Twin’s Pact, which heals the Twin Val’kyr for 20% of their health. One of the twins will cast it. The spell has a long cast time and can be interrupted, however the caster will have a shield up. Burn the shield, interrupt the spell. Remember that you have to switch colors if the caster happens to have the same color that you do so you can bring that shield down faster.