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Nefarian

Blackwing DescentMagmawOmnotronDefenseSystemMaloriakAtramedesChimaeronNefarianNefarianBlackwing Descent

This NPC can be found in Blackwing Descent.

Quotes (10)

Guides

Guardian Druid Solo
PvE Guide [L90]

Heroic		Deadly
Important		Tank
DPS		Healer
Interruptible		Magic
Curse		Poison
Disease		Enrage

Tooltips and dungeon journal reflect ability values for one encounter version. Please refer to "Effect" section on spell pages to see values for all raid sizes and difficulties.

Electrocute – Throughout the battle, Nefarian electrocutes the entire raid every time he loses 10% of his health. Electrocute generates a massive crackle of lightning that inflicts 18918 to 19302 Nature damage on all players.

Stage One: Rise, Sister!

Nefarian reveals the undead form of his sister, Onyxia, and the two dragons attack the raid.

Children of Deathwing – Nefarian and Onyxia attack 100% faster when they are within 50 yards of each other.
Nefarian
- Hail of Bones – Before Nefarian lands at the beginning of Stage One, he summons some Animated Bone Warriors. Each summoning inflicts 6236 to 6894 Shadow damage to nearby players within 0 yards.
  In 25 player raids Nefarian summons additional Animated Bone Warriors.
- Shadowflame Breath – Nefarian's dragon breath inflicts 9100 Shadowflame damage to players within a 60 yard long 60 degree cone, and fully recharges the energy of any Animated Bone Warriors in the breath's area.
- Tail Lash – Nefarian sweeps his tail at any enemies in a 60 degree cone facing behind him, inflicting 4550 to 5850 Physical damage and stunning them for 2 sec.
- Animated Bone Warriors – Early in stage one and before he lands, Nefarian summons Animated Bone Warriors. The skeletons possess an energy bar that depletes over time. They collapse if they run out of energy, but restore energy if struck by Shadowflame Breath or Shadowblaze.
  - Empowering Strikes – The Animated Bone Warriors grow more powerful over time, increasing their damage dealt by 100% and their movement speed by 10%. This effect stacks.
- Dominion – Nefarian periodically dominates the mind of random players, seizing control of their bodies for 20 sec. Dominated players walk towards a portal that appears. If a Dominated player reach the portal, it kills them.
  Dominion grants players access to three special abilities.
  - Siphon Power – Dominated players absorb a little of the immense power Nefarian is using to control them to gain the Stolen Power effect.
    Stolen Power – Dominated players strike back against Nefarian with vengeance and anger, increasing their damage and healing by 3% for 15 sec. This effect stacks.
  - Free Your Mind – Dominated players focus their will to break Nefarian's Dominion over them, which also increases their movement speed by 120% for 10 sec.
Onyxia
- Electrical Energy
  Onyxia gains energy over time and more energy when Nefarian casts Electrocute. If Onyxia reaches full energy, she explodes in an Electrical Overload, killing all players.
- Lightning Discharge – Onyxia discharges electricity from the orbs along her sides, inflicting 6084 to 6396 Nature damage to targets within 60 yards.
- Shadowflame Breath – Onyxia's dragon breath inflicts 9100 Shadowflame damage to players within a 60 yard long 60 degree cone, and fully recharges the energy of any Animated Bone Warriors in the breath's area.
- Tail Lash – Onyxia sweeps her tail at any enemies in a 60 degree cone facing behind her, inflicting 4550 to 5850 Physical damage and stunning them for 2 sec.
- Electrical Overload – If Onyxia reaches full energy, she releases a massive Electrical Overload and causes 222300 to 271700 Nature damage to all players.

Stage Two: Curse You, Mortals!

When the players kill Onyxia, Nefarian takes to the air and fills the room with magma except for three platforms. Nefarian then summons a Chromatic Prototype upon each of the platforms.

Stage Three: You Simply Will Not Die!

After the players kill all the Chromatic Prototypes, the lava subsides, and Nefarian lands to finish the battle.

Comments

Comment by Userroll

This is the new Nefarian model that is currently being used for the final boss in Blackwing Decsent along with the new Onyxia

Comment by theBestInTheGame

It's just a flesh wound.

Comment by RipperGand

Blackwing Lair was merely a setback!

Comment by ShadCroly

Why can't this family just stay dead?

Comment by OverlordAxefury

technically he is a undead dragon like his sister at you see his gut is spit open in 3d module viewer and his skin is called DragonNefarianZombified1

Comment by Shadowzero

That's Chris Metzen, aka The Voice of Half of Azeroth.

Comment by Sabbie

Once all bosses are dead the orb in front of Atramedes will light up and need to be actived by clicking on it.. A platform in the lava will rise up with a little RP with a zombie Onyxia standing in the pit and Nefarian flying around.

Players will jump into the pit to engage Onyxia with Nefarian flying down soon after.

Comment by Nethris

There actually havent been any tactics regarding this boss so far, so heres..

How to: Nefarian (Normal)

Boss is split in to 3 phases, p1 with nefa/ony, p2 with magma/nefa flying/adds and p3 with nefa/fire.

(Note for 10man: You absolutely NEED 3 healers, unless you have extremely good self heals combined with some luck in phase 2, as you can not reach from one platform to another. And the boss does stupid amounts of aoe damage anyways.)

Phase 1

Fight starts with pulling ony, and the idea here is to nuke nefa as close to 71% as possible but not to 70% and then kill ony.
One tank pull ony to one side of the room, bosses side facing the raid (To make this more clear, look at the minimap. For example, tank ony at the east side of the circle, with her head being south and tail at north. Nefarian on the other side, same thing). Ony does tail lash behind her (~40k physical dmg to clothies, ~50y range), breath in front of her and lightning to her sides (can not be outranged). Nefa has same breath/tail lash, but no lightning to sides.
During phase 1, adds spawn which periodically stack a buff on themselves increasing phys dmg and movement speed, simply cc the adds (fear/trap/root/shackle/whatever) but make sure you do not cc them in front of the bosses breath, as the breath frees them from cc and gives them max energy again. Once the mob runs out of energy, itll die until phase 3.

As mentioned above, tank ony with her side facing the raid. When lightning sparks start forming around ony, turn onys tail towards raid to avoid massive aoe damage. When it ends, turn it back again.

As for dps, melee can go straight for nefa when he lands (unless you are very melee heavy), rest of the dps get ony down to around 10-15% (tank can whittle her down) then move to nefa. The thing about dps'ing nefa is that everytime you take 10% of his health off, he does a ridiculous aoe nuke to everyone in the raid, which is unavoidable (hits for ~105k before resists). Make sure you use nature res aura/totem, def cooldowns and be topped off before it hits (the boss will emote as well). After 2 electrocutes and nefa at ~71-74%, kill ony to trigger p2.

Edit: If you feel like you are wiping due to staying in P3 too long, do this. Get ony VERY close to death (<100k), get nefa to 70% to trigger the third electrocute then IMMEDIATELY kill ony. The third electrocute will hit approximately as nefa starts moving towards the middle of the room to start phase 2 and you should have enough time to heal the raid up to not die to the lava (pop tranquility/hymn/even more cooldowns if need be). This way you can move one electrocute from p2/p3 off and nuke nefa more in p2.

Phase 2

Nefa flies to air and the platform sinks in to magma. Split the raid in to 3 evenly and jump on the pillars and IMMEDIATELY start interrupting the adds spawned on the pillars. Melee nuke down the adds on pillars, ranged nuke either nefa or the adds, depending whether you want to nuke nefa down more during p2 and eating another electrocute (remember, ~100k aoe on top of already nefa spamming random aoe). Nefa himself will simply spam random shadow bolt thingies which have a tiny aoe upon landing, so spread on top of the pillar to minimize damage (Needs confirming, not 100% sure about whether they have aoe at all). Phase 2 ends when the last add dies.
(If you didnt nuke nefa during p2, he will still be at ~71% hp, otherwise, you could theoretically even kill him in phase 2 if you can just eat all the aoe thrown at you while keeping at least one add alive. Dont know if theres an enrage timer or anything or if he comes down at some point regardless of adds, but if he does, its a very forgiving timer)

Phase 3

Nefa has the same abilities as in p1 and one additional ability which will resurrect the adds in phase 1 back. The new ability will spread fire on the ground, which will reignite the adds from p1 back. The idea is to have one tank, one dps who can snare (frost mages are the #1 for this) and one heal kite all the adds around while attempting to keep them out of fire to have them deactivate for a little while, resetting their stacks of their self buff (The snaring DPS doesnt have to help the tank 24/7. Warrior tanks can do it by themselves with Piercing Howl). Pay attention to the flying meteors which indicate where the fire will land, move accordingly and reset the mobs as much as possible (Unless your DPS is very good or you took nefa down close to ~50% already during phase 2, you HAVE to reset their stacks or they will mow down your raid at some point.)

The rest of the raid nuke nefa, tank him in the middle of the room, watch out for tail lash/breath (still reignites adds!), move out of fire if needed and remember, for every 10% nuked, 100k aoe to everyone. If/When fire spreads to the middle, move accordingly, but make sure you dont have nefa breathing at the adds.
As long as you have either very good dps or your add group kites successfully, nefa will go down eventually.

Honestly, in my opinion, this fight is an example of bad mechanics from blizzard. Being the "final" first tier boss (not counting sinestra), the boss mainly rotates around incredibly amounts of aoe damage at set intervals. Its like they ran out of ideas how to make the boss hard and just went with the "Damn, how do we make this boss harder? I know, lets add in seemingly random ~100k aoe nukes to the whole raid! Huzzah!"

Comment by MrSeagull

It looks like someone skinned him before he was resurrected.

Comment by Sanryo

I guess this is what black dragons look like when their gear is broken.

Comment by MachineHead933

During the phase 2 > 3 transition, Nef will cast Shadow of Cowardice on anyone who is still standing on the pillar when he lands ... so make sure you jump down when you are supposed to so you don't get 1 shotted.

Comment by milkflavor

In order to fight the raid wide aoe Electrocute, I find Mirror of Broken Images seems be a lifesaver, an additional 25% resistance cuts off incoming lightning damage is enormous, this is especially critical for the off tank who is on add duty that often times get zapped and one-shotted by the skeletons. My question is this. Since it's on a 1-min cd, the raid could theoretically time its use every 10% when the lighting strikes. I wonder has anyone ever tried it, and perhaps recommend it for the whole raid to purchase it? I'm considering to demand my guild to equip it for progressions and maybe future heroic mode encounters. Some actual usage comment would be appreciated.

Comment by Brunpal

I need a timer for Shadowblaze. DBM is announcing Shadowblaze after it goes off but it's not including a timer. By the time it's been announced it's already too late. I need to know 3-5 seconds before it goes off.

Shadowblaze follows a set timer of:

0:00 - First bolt
0:30 - 2nd
0:55 - 3rd
1:15 - 4th
1:30 - 5th
1:40
1:50
2:00
2:10 etc.

BigWigs addon does this but I'm not crazy about BigWigs and would prefer a different timer mod.

Comment by pthor1234

Since warlock fear is no longer a viable option to control the adds in phase 1, I (Frost DK) was in charge of kiting them until they de-animate. What seemed to work best for me, was to do 2 blood strikes on Onyxia right at the start, then swap over to blood presence. Do this to have 2 blood runes pop up when the adds start coming - it is very helpful. Then I would have our hunter MD the first add to me, Death and Decay the second add, Outbreak the third add, and howling blast the 4-6th adds.

You will eventually get a feel for it, and it can be very effective to let healers aggro some of the skeletons with healing aggro while non-slowed skeletons are running towards you from the MD / DnD / Outbreak, and hit multiple skeletons with Howling blast at once, as well as be able to get some distance. Once you have 2 or so howling blasts worth of aggro on all skeletons, you can swap to Unholy presence for the additional run speed.

At this point, circle around then and group them up as tight as possible, and then right as the first skeleton dies, go in to the pack of them and use hungering cold. This will freeze them in place long enough for 3 more to die, and it least the last two with 4% and ~12% energy. Chains of ice root them both, and all the skeletons should die in a nice small clump, making it very easy for your add tank in Phase 3. If you have a warlock with Shadowfury, get them to pop it on the group right as the first add dies, and you might only have one add left when Hungering cold wears off.

I made a simple focus macro and hit that when I have the first skeleton targeted, that way I know when he is about to die, so I don't end up leaving a pile of skeletons everywhere. That made a big difference, since it can be cumbersome to tab through 6 targets to find the lowest energy.

Comment by kybotica

As a tank, I find getting initial aggro on Nef himself to be VERY annoying if you're doing it from range. When I taunt, hit with a judgement, and hit with AS, he still seems to enjoy dropping aggro and switching targets for one melee strike, regardless of whether or not they even touched him (he one-shot one of our add-kiters on multiple occasions). The only solution I've found to guarantee he WON'T do this is to make sure you (the tank) are in melee range when he lands, then start backing up.
Not exactly fun, I'd have much rather been able to avoid having both tanks get hit by a "buffed" dragon due to ony/nef proximity, but alas. You have been warned, it can happen to anybody.

Comment by Zabuzan1

After getting Nefarian down yesterday for the first time, some tips for general survival!

During phase 1, we had a fire mage and me (ret paladin) kiting the adds. My job was to look after any that spawned in the north whilst the mage took the adds spawning in the south, I repentanced one and turn eviled the other (usually only had 2 to worry about) and after that we chain cc'd them down, kiting them in tight circles when CC broke to ensure they all died on one spot. The mage took the aggro, while I was ready with a Hand of Protection for him, as well as some heals. If I had to HoP him, I immediately applied Righteous Fury and dropped a Consecration and Divine Storm, with taunt ready for any loose adds. While not a conventional kiting combination, it worked very well for our raid group as I am currently threat capped when dpsing so was more useful kiting than auto-attacking Nef or Ony.

Phase 2 - Anyone with bubble, iceblock, cloak of shadows and so on, save your damage reduction or cancellation spells/techniques for phase 2 if they are on a cool down of greater than 2 mins. Depending on whether or not your group is doing 1 or 2 electrocute during phase 2, either get everyone use the cooldowns at once for 1 electrocute or alternate who is using their cooldown if you have the dps to do a 2nd.

Phase 1 and 2 are not dps races as such, ensure you will have all your best DPS increasing cooldowns for phase 3.

For cooldown use throughout the fight, if you've got a priest aoe bubble on the ground or a paladin's Divine Guardian during an electrocute and you are covered by it, don't waste a personal cooldown, save it for the next electrocute.

If you are a dps class with healing spells, remember that a living dps doing lower dps does a lot more damage in a fight than a high dps dieing a preventable death! If you have a warlock get some Healthstones on the go. Paladins have LoH, both for themselves or a fellow raid member in need (try and time it so bubble is available for phase 2 though, usually LoH is only necessary during phase 3 as the damage in P1 is light). Mages can Evocate for health as well as mana. Have a health pot rather than a dps pot. Use bandages - this is best done just before an Electrocute in P1 or P3 as you can get around 5 ticks of a bandage channeled on yourself before any damage interrupts it.

All the various methods of healing mean that prior to an Electrocute, everyone should be topped up to the max, even if you have to OOM yourself (as Ret paladins may do with FoL) to survive the Electrocute damage, it's better to be alive and regenerating mana just after than licking the floor.

Anyway, I had a more structured explanation planned, but my time has been cut short and I've got to go now! I hope some of this may have been beneficial, though tbh it's mostly common sense :)

Comment by sanjiyan

Phase two will have a Chromatic Prototype add spawn onto each of the 3 pillards. They must be interrupted, but to note that they are lvl 85, so you only need +5%hit

Comment by thunderzebra

In regards to the heroic version of this encounter:

Domination - Phases 1 and 3

Dominion

During phases 1 and 3, random players will get 'dominated' by Nef's 'dominate' and given 2 abilities.

*the first ability (1, by default) breaks the mind control
*, the second ability (2, by default) gives the player a stacking buff up to 150; as you increase your stacks, you gain more stacks per application, so that you get ~30 stacks for one use of Stolen Power by the time you get to 120 stacks. The buff increases damage done by 5% * number of stacks for 18 seconds. 150 stacks increases damage done by 750% for 18 seconds.

While dominated, players will move toward a portal, if the player reaches the portal they die instantly. Players may be slowed - earthbind totem, frost trap etc., so that they may stack the buff to higher levels before breaking the mind control.

NOTE 1: ~~as of this writing, you can use RP walk (default numpad /) before being dominated, resulting in a slow enough movement that you can easily stack the damage buff to 150.~~ Has been fixed.

NOTE 2: if you are dominated during an electrocute, you will not take damage.

NOTE 3: it takes a second or so for the game to register raid-wide buffs (ie - resistance aura) when you release domination; if you release right as an electrocute happens, there is a good chance you will be 1 shot without the resistance.

NOTE 4: as the ability which breaks mind control will usually be bound to 1, you will want to avoid spamming abilities you normally have bound to 1 while Nef is casting domination.

Due to the enrage timer on Nef, not stacking the buff is not an option. Healers may choose to stack the buff or not, it does increase healing, and, for example, with 150 stacked an efflorescence will full heal everyone standing in it every ~2 ticks.

Explosive Cinders - Phase 2

Explosive Cinders

Explosive Cinders is randomly placed on several players (my only experience is 25 man, in which, iirc, 4 players get the debuff). When this debuff expires, the player will knockback anyone within ~10-12 yards (not certain of the exact range). Due to this, the player(s) with Explosive Cinders must jump off the platform into the lava, far enough way so they won't knock the remaining players on the platform off.

NOTE 1: when in the lava, do not jump. Every time you jump, you will gain an additional stack of Magma.

NOTE 2: this is cast several times during phase 2 (not sure of the interval between casts), and may be cast as the lava is residing - you still need to stay away from raid members if you have the debuff when the lava is down.

The knockback knocks back extremely far. We had people knocked to other platforms.

Additional Notes

*Walking through fire in p3 while dominated will still cause the fire to grow; cancel MC if you're going to walk through fire.

*The adds in p3 tend to have huge spike damage and, along with electrocute, will often be destroying your kiter. We had 3 (+1 on occasion) out of 7 healers dedicated to focusing on this tank. You will need to use Blessing of Sacrifice/Pain Suppression etc. when adds have recently been rez'd and many are hitting your tank.

*We used a holy paladin with righteous fury to pull adds to the tank. Simply healed and ran slightly ahead of the kiter.

*At current gear levels, you will not be able to push Nef to 70% before phase 2.

*Phase 2 is by far the most difficult phase for healing, so you will not be able to push Nef to 70% (or whatever your next threshold electrocute is, assuming somehow you did get Nef below 70 p1) during this phase.

*More than likely, if you need to use a healthstone, you'll use it phase 2.

*All information was taken strictly from 25 man.

*All raid members should use personal cooldowns for electrocute: Barkskin, Shield Wall, Feint, Raptor Strike (glyph) etc. as much as possible.

*Acquiring Mirror of Broken Images for the electrocutes/having to stand in lava with Explosive Cinders is highly recommended. Useful for most end tier bosses.

Comment by mejarema

I'm somehow less excited about Nefarian giving epic head.

Comment by Wowfan12

any emotions of him and his undead sister? i'm just make sure

Comment by Aisi

is there any walk fixes since 9 march?

Comment by sightblinder

Found an odd problem on Nef tonight. P1 adds were randomly running across the room and aggroing onto the tanks for no apparent reason. DK and Pally tanks, neither using AoE, single target only on their respective tanking targets. They don't appear to go for anyone else in the raid who isn't trying to CC them.. Anyone else seen this happening?

Comment by Extropian

Tip: The dragon up top that does the shadow volley needs to be killed, it aggros the raid during the nef encounter.

Comment by Ixia

In this encounter, does Nefarian hit harder than Ony, or are they at about the same damage (with their melee and breath attack)? Gonna be tank healing for this soon, so I'm curious.

Comment by Mitbrandir

In ph2 its very handy to get your warlock on the platform where you jump on in the start of the fight. You can easiliy drop your teleport pat on the edge there , and when onxyia dies , walk to the wall at the platform to get in range and instantly keep walking so you jump on the platform , even before there is lava

Comment by lyom

I have fought many bosses and I must say there is nothing as pleasent to hear as the sound of a male night elf dying to this boss.

Uwwgwgh AAAAAAAAAAH.

Comment by Avslutarn

My guild downed him last night. A bit late but we started out late too :P

Anyways...
We ran with a _4_ healer set up (10man normal). We had been wiping on him for about 2-3 full raid nights when we finally decided to try a 4 healer set up since our healers always were running low on mana and couldn't keep up with the immense damage output.

We downed him on the first try with that setup.

It's strange that I have not seen any tactics suggesting a 4 healer set-up for 10-man.

Comment by Yorgl

How I manage to jump on the pillar without more than 4 stacks of magma (usually 3, like in the video) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrD_YO2XwIA
Sorry for the poor quality... I'm not used to frap fights and upload them on YT. =)

Hope this helps.

Comment by mysticalos

something key that is not mentioned about phase 2 mechanic, it has a built in failsafe. From the start of phase 2 to end, nef can only take 15% worth of his health in damage, anything more and he auto pushes, regardless of chromatics or 2 and a half minute auto push (which btw, 3 min i believe applies to 10 man 25 ma seems to be 2:30 on normal, heroic seems to be more like 4 min, it's wierd but there are variations)

So basically, phase 2 ends if any of following happen.

1. Nef takes 15% damage
2. All 3 chromatics die on normal
3. ANY of the chromatics die on heroic
4. after set time (variable based on difficulty/size)

This is very important when doing the achievement in meta. It means that for him to actually go below 50% before phase 2 ends, he has to be below 65% when phase 2 starts. Since pushing him below 70% auto explodes onyxia 5 seconds later. the ideal strat is to push him below 70%, then, kill onyxia within the 5 seconds he's channeling electrocute, make sure she does 1-2 seconds before it goes off, so she doesn't explode, once she dies, phase 1 ends as soon as lava fills room, which means you have until then to get him to < 65%. this is easier then it sounds since he's already probably at 68 or 67 by end of electrocute cast, if you held off ony til last second, you only have another 2-3 percent to burn while he walks from hopefully close to wall, to center of room, then takes a couple seconds to lift off ground and fill room.
The achievement itself will turn red, indicating failure, it's WRONG. As long as he was below 65% when phase 2 started, you have not failed. To ensure success however, shoot to push him using number 1 above in my list. That is the way to know for sure you were successful. In other words, if phase 2 ends when he reaches 51% with chromatics up, you failed, because that means he was at 66% when phase 2 started, and 15% auto push ended the phase before achievement completed. If phase 2 ends when he'sa t 49% with chromatics up, you were successful, achievement success. Finish off chromatics AFTER you pushed him 15% of his health and know for sure achievement successful

Comment by pend

Can Devotion Aura be used with to mitigate aoe dmg?

Comment by mukynoha

Hi all, did somebody skin Nefarian ?
I did it yesterday and drop was 29 Blackened Dragonscale. (require 550 skin. skill; worgen + knife) So, here is no information about skinning drop of the Nefarian.
Thx for answer ;)

Comment by barbeque

A tip for groups facing problems in P1.

A hunter with a tenacity pet, glyphed for improved mending and unlimited mis-direct to the pet, is able to take care of all the adds without much problem. Pets can also use cower and other defensive CDs to stay alive when damage spikes toward the end.

Naturally, a dedicated healer is needed to keep up the pet, but the combination of easy threat and the ability to let all the adds die in the same place (so the tank add doesn't burst a blood vessel in P3) makes hunter pet tanking the most clean solution for P1.

A hunter using pet tanking should stay on adds while they are up to ensure a constant stream of threat to the pet. Since the threat from MD only lasts for a short while, healer aggro may pull off some adds just as they are about to "die".

Naturally, the hunter should also dismiss the tenacity pet and summon a DPS one quickly as soon as the adds "die".

Comment by Fulgorater

For tanks having trouble kiting in P3
My guild kept progressing flawlessly into P3.

We tanked Nefarian in the middle facing the 10 o'clock position, as the adds from P1 were placed in the 12 o'clock position. Both tanks progressed clockwise to minimize fire exposure and maximize kiting room.

However the timing of the fire to the adds were an issue, and the tank had trouble pulling them at the right moment.

We got a suggestion from a friend to use BigWigs instead of DBM. As soon as we switched add-ons, we killed him. The timers and the "more visible" effect was clutch. Hands down now the guild favorite Raiding Add-on.

Comment by jabalor

No one mentioned it but he appears to be skinless you can see muscles and veins

Comment by ZelosRaine

While the strategies posted here are good, I haven't seen much about the specifics of kiting for each class or about possible synergies. While I can't speak for every raid situation, I can say that, having just learned tonight how to kite these adds on my Frost DK (our Frost Mage wasn't available), there are some tips and tricks aimed at 10 mans that can't afford a third tank.

Obviously reading a strat isn't as a good as watching a video, but I don't have one of those for this fight. :(

What I can say is that, if a Frost DK or any other class with similar ranged slows (mage, hunter, etc) is having trouble, here is what helped me.

1) Remember, above all else, they (seem) to stack their haste and attack power buff by HITTING YOU. I know wowhead says they get a buff over time, but that is not what I saw. The first phase seems to be them hitting you. Therefore, it is imperative that you not let them hit you. Great ways to actually do this are to remember to refresh chillbains early on those mobs you picked up early as it will have worn off by the time the 5th and 6th add are up and getting ANY raid member with a stun (warrior, pally, etc) to stun them. Remember, speed debuff doesn't work if they hit you; they have to be STUNNED for you to get away.

2) You cannot, unless you are uber pro, kite them by yourself. Our Hungering Cold is on too long a cooldown. Having stuns from pallys and warriors helps alot. You should save your own Hungering Cold and (hope that you have one) your mage's Ring of Frost for the final 30% of their energy.

Basically, you do the following:
Drop down, dps Ony for a few secs.
Switch to Blood Pres.
~~Howling Blast~~ Chains of Ice mobs as they come up.
~~If a mob is too close to you in comparison to the others, Chains of Ice it.~~ as the mobs start to group up and their Chillbains from the Chains wear off, Howling Blast them.
Try to run in a circle to gather the mobs behind you and then use any speed boost/leap of faith you have (I am a Worgen so, "tee hee") to get out in front of the pack in the direction you are supposed to drop them. If you don't have a speed boost or even if you do, this a perfect time for a Pally etc to stun them.
Once you are where you need to drop them, pop your Ice Bound Fortitude, run through the pack, and hit your Hungering Cold as soon as you are sure you will get them all (this needs to happen as soon as they touch you as you will die VERY fast if you try to tank them).
Watch the timer and have your mage (cross fingers for a mage) drop their Ring of Frost with 3 seconds left, meaning that they get insta frozen again as they break out.
Once that wears off, simply tank the one or two who are still alive, making sure they drop right on top of the others (your phase three add tank will thank you).
If you don't have a mage, just stun them as soon as they break it/kite them in a tight circle and have healers use a cooldown. A few should die as your Hungering Cold breaks with more to follow.

Best of luck!

Edit: Not a PvP, so I never realized until I came back to kill him the next week that Chains of Ice does not have a cooldown. :P

Comment by Manbewbs

This comment is meant to help people doing it on 10 man hard mode, especially add tanks, and is from a warrior off tank point of view.

Got this down tonight with 2 days of wiping, although we had a lot of wipes it was fun for everyone and I strongly suggest doing this hard mode before omnotron defense system if your healers and tanks are capable. It is a lot less awareness based and more of an execution fight - but one mistake can become a wipe and it is very unforgiving.

Our comp was a paladin main tank, warrior off tank.
DPS were MM hunter, Assas rogue, Feral druid, Arcane mage, and Shadow priest.
Healers were Holy paladin, Discipline priest, and Resto shaman, all with four piece.

Dominion was handled with AoE snares, such as frost trap, earthbind totem, and most importantly, crippling poision as crippling is a 70% snare and makes the entire difference.

First phase was pretty simple, I vigilance our paladin healer with righteous fury, and pick up Onyxia, bringing her to the right side of the pit, positioning does not matter as long as both dragons are separated for their buff. Pick up each Bone Construct as the Onyxia tank, letting them hit the paladin a couple of times at the beginning is fine. I suggest not spreading rend. Each time Onyxia does her flame breath, Stun the Bone Constructs on each breath, glyphed it should be up each time. Everything else stays the same with Electrocutes from Onyxia's side hitting extremely hard.
At around 2 million HP, we AoE CC'd the constructs, in our case a Ring of Frost from our mage. Note that if your mage gets Dominioned and you step into the ring, you will get frozen and Onyxia will deselect you, often causing a wipe.
All the adds die about 5 seconds after Onyxia dying, so there are no worries about them during the second phase.
We did not push a crackle or touch Nefarian during phase 1.

Phase 2 is also pretty simple, we split our raid with 4-3-3, with a back up healer on each platform. In our case, the shadow priest, feral druid, and prot paladin were on different platforms. Each platform should have a dedicated back up interrupter. Mirror of Broken Images was absolutely amazing from this point. We used them for half our raid.
When you get cinders, wait for the debuff to tick to about 4 seconds. Use the trinket, start swimming into the lava, and watch it explode (Although for the first couple of attempts I'd play it safe and start heading into the lava at about 6 seconds). The resistance on the trinket makes this mechanic much more easier to heal through, and is in our opinion much more valuable than mana regen or a couple hundred DPS, as DPS and mana was not an issue on our kill. We bloodlusted during this phase to make it end as soon as possible as it's definately the most healing intensive phase. Do note that you should have a good balance of DPS on each platform, once the first Chromatic Prototype dies, the lava starts sinking and anyone on a platform will take damage after the first dominion on phase 3.

Comment by Manbewbs

Phase 3 will be the most demanding on your healer and tanks, the main tank must always prioritize movement on your off tank, as a tail swipe or a breath will cause unnecessary damage or adds resetting. The challenge of the main tank will be to move out of fire (the first fire almost always followed him) and to have a personal CD up for every single crackle, as we had to use all the external cooldowns on the add tank.
Using Sindragosa's Flawless Fang and the BH trinket made me not need a large CD on every other one. You can use both trinkets at the same time, providing a whopping 50%+ personal CD for every other one.

I suggest saving Shield block for each crackle too (It was up for every one) as specced into shield mastery it reduced the damage even more. If you're a paladin, I strongly suggest glyphing into Divine Protection as you are most likely going to die from either nefarian's breath or a crackle.

Each crackle had a raid CD, and each tanks had a CD.
90%: raid-rallying cry, tanks-trinkets/DP
80%: raid-trinkets, tanks-Shield Wall/GoA
70%: raid-power word:barrier, tanks-trinket/DP
60%: raid-trinkets, tanks-Bubble Sac/Ardent
50%: raid-divine guardian, tanks-trinket/DP
40%: raid-trinkets, tanks-Shield Wall/LoH
30%: raid-spirit link totem, tanks-trinket/DP
20%: raid-rallying cry, tanks-Pain suppresion/GoA
10%: raid-anything left over, tanks-anything left over.

So as you see we had to coordinate CD's, and some attempts because of RNG with DPS we didn't have a CD for the raid.

When it comes to add tanking, the first Shadowblaze should re activate all of the adds, because if you were tanking them in phase 1, they would be in a neat pile around where Onyxia died. I strongly suggest letting the adds stay in the pile of shadowblaze, having their energy bars resetting for about 10 seconds, as done incorrectly and not letting them reset for 10 seconds, they will all die at the third shadowblaze, thus making them either scattered because you were kiting them away from the third one, or them dying and instantly respawning again. Giving them a 10 second period of wallowing in the fire will make them despawn after the third shadowblaze and give your healer a lot of breathing room before the fourth one, which will ideally reactivate them all.

After each shadowblaze, the timers between them will become faster and faster until they're at a point where a shadowblaze will come in 10 second intervals(need a confirmation, as I'm not sure on that) but they will not spawn any faster.

The key to making sure that you don't run out of room towards the end, is to move at about 2 seconds left on the shadowblaze timer, and not at the 5 second mark, when DBM usually yells at you. After kiting them away from the shadowblaze, it's usually a good idea to immediately stun them, as long as you're about 10+yards away, to reduce damage taken as shockwave or holy wrath, as long as they all don't miss, is pretty much a 100% damage reduction from melee attacks.

A thing to note about stunning though, is to NOT run before the stun duration falls off IF one of your stuns miss. Reason being is that if you panic and run away because you stunned them and a shadowblaze timer is incredibly close, there is a chance that the shadowblaze will spawn underneath the add that was not stunned, so while the adds that were stunned come out of the stun and start following you, the shadowblaze that was underneath the add that wasn't stunned probably spawned while they were running towards you, and will reset their energy and it's almost guaranteed it's a wipe, depending on how many stacks of the damage increase they had when they reset.

When positioning the adds, keep your back towards the direction you are going to kite, and the adds making a fan shape in front of you. The reason for this, is that if you keep your back towards the edge of the pit, and the adds between you and Nefarian, they will try to get to the sides of you, so that they have room for themselves (a thing all mobs do if you're used to AoE tanking) and if a shadowblaze comes and you start running, the add is likely to be trying to get to the position where they were heading towards while they were funneling around you, and then start running towards you, becoming a likely reset of their energy bar. The most frustrating time when an add resets is when one or two of them do, and 3 of them don't. It makes it much more harder to pick them up and kite shadowblazes from then on unless you purposely reset them, obviously becoming more damage that the healers need to heal on you.

Paladin healers are my favorite for this (<3 josh), they have a speed increase when they pop holy radiance, and strong single tank healing and strong output cooldowns such as Avenging Wrath, Guardian of Ancient Kings, and Divine Favor when the add buff starts getting into the 10's. They also have righteous fury for when the adds die scattered. When it comes to the positioning of the healer, have them in front of you, but closer to Nefarian than you (at about 7 o' clock) and try to have him always in the front of your kite path. Healing will get tougher and tougher the longer the adds are up, so he is going to stop to hard cast a lot more the farther you get into a set of adds and will start lagging behind, sometimes ending up at about 11 o' clock. When the adds finally die, this is the healer's que to start making distance again and to regen as much as possible, as a shadow blaze is going to come soon. Use dominion to your advantage, as after dominion wears off it will give you a run speed increase.

If you end up kiting too fast and reaching fire towards the end, it may be a good idea to wait and keeping the adds in the shadowflame for 2 shadowflames before you start kiting again, but I do not know if this will work as I have not tried it (theoretically it should).

Although this is months behind, I hope it will help you and your raid get a better understanding of the fight. Enjoy the fight! It was definitely my favorite fight this tier :)

Comment by Camren2468

As of 4.2, its Nerfarian.

Comment by Zandol

Looks like Kael'thas has given him the lesson about setbacks.

Comment by Niqita

Since patch 4.2, is the only thing, that can make some problems to ur raid. Everything else is radically nerfed.

Comment by gifu

Our tanks seem to be getting 60k breaths ticks in normal 10 man version. Bug or working as intend?

Comment by Goats

How can nefarian walk around with his head chopped off in org! This makes no sense.

Comment by Runemonger

Why doesn't he have stiches on his neck? He's undead, like Onyxia, and we've decapitated both of them thousands of times...

Comment by GeneralK

Nefarian 10m or Nerf-arian as they now call him, is super easy.

The fight focuses around 3 phases.

The object is to burn Onyxia to 25% then switch to nef while only the Onyxia tank is attacking Ony, going through 2 crackles. Each crackle occurs at 10% past Nef's hp and does approx 60-70k raidwide aoe dmg. Tanks dps and healers should make sure they are topped up before pushing one. or be ready to use a survival Cooldown.

Phase1. have the kiter pickup adds and run them away from nef/onyxia ( a frost DK is preferred because he can blast adds from afar and spec into chillblains for the fight so he never gets hit, being hit by an add will increase its dmg by 100% making you very likely to die. as a Dk kiter you will probly get zapp'd by onxia once or twice. be sure to pop AMS before that occurs and glyph it for 7 seconds. adds fall over in around 30 seconds so go back to ony after that.

Burn Onyxia and ignore nef for the most part. Onyxia should be in the farthest right side of the room past the right pillar, and Nef on the far left one. This prevents the 2 dragons from enraging and killing everyone. The only concern with Phase1 for dps/healers should be staying clear of Onyxia's lighting attacks, this is the Onyxia tanks job. turn ony when she starts sparkling then turn her back. when in doubt, stay behind Onyxia, its far better than being zapped continously.

Phase2. burn the add and interrupt it from casting blast nova, You must have 1 solid 10 second interrupter on each platform and atleast 1 healer on each as well. swimming across the lava may be done but its a very bad idea.

Phase3: the Add tank will need to kite the bone warrior adds around as Nef is faced in a single direction. just tank n spank mainly till nef's dead. BL whenever u feel comfortable and be sure to survive every crackle.

nef has been severly nerfed but can still pose problems for pugs. the main key is just to focus on certain elements.
p1. proper onyxia positioning, purely the tanks job (as long as the dps didnt pull aggro at the start)

p2 making sure everyone moved to the correct platform

p3 ensuring the adds are kited around in a good pattern without being breathed on.

following this will ensure victory.

enjoy.

Comment by WaffleIs4eating

Now what? Gnome turn evil, and resseruct Nefarian as 'robotic' form? You never know . . .

Comment by Vegasboy

Well my guild is doing heroic Nef. With all the Firelands gear out is there any tips or "eazy" ways of doing this boss now? not sure if anything has changed about this boss thought i would ask . also what is the best way of dealing with adds in phase 1 , and what would be the best comp for this fight? again any tips will help :)

Comment by AmoTHRILL

Ok, next time you see Deathwing and his kids playing with the stapler, TAKE IT AWAY FROM THEM. Also, apparently he tried to get liposuction. I don't think it works on dragons, and it just sucked away his entire abdominal cavity.

Comment by MiltiadesBooga

Nefarian yells: You really have to want it!

I lol'd.

Nefarian still has the best snarkastic lines in WoW.

Comment by Euphemia

For anyone interested in a video "guide" for normal still on this one, our 2% wipe should be pretty instructional. Now working on heroic modes on this guy, cause we'd all love "Blackwing's Bane-titles", now wouldn't we?
Flaskaholics vs Nefarian 10m normal
Anyways - best of luck to you all, the fight should be way easier now, with people geared up and such as well.

Comment by Bugfinder

Hardest boss is the elevator right before Neff..

Comment by monatu

Nefarian Heroic 10
Warrior add / assist POV
4.3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGEFaDR8qf0&list=UUgcm0Fnh1f94mcBHB9vmqig&index=1&feature=plcp

Comment by Nythias

didnt well kill him?

like... twice?

Comment by Caglock

Soloed 10N as a 550 Destruction Warlock, but since no solo guides are posted I will do it for all classes. If you have a pet tank then this fight is really easy, if not then you need to be either really hard to kill, have really high DPS to kill Nefarian before the Animated Bone Warrior become problematic, or duo with a tank. Tanks can get a lot of vengeance here, so it might be worthwhile to swap to a tank spec if you have one. Warlocks and Hunters shine here, Warlocks can facetank the bone warriors and Hunters can kite them. Guardian Druids also look to be good enough due to . If you have any form of remote taunt, then nothing else can threaten you. The better gear you have the easier it gets. Better gear lets you burn Onyxia faster, tank bone warriors longer, and/or kill Nefarian faster before the bone warriors become a threat due to Empower.

When you jump down to fight Onyxia, if you have a pet then DO NOT land on the three platforms, the fight starts and your pet is stuck there. Anyway, she should die fast from your opener if you're a DPS, I can't comment for tanks because she died before any major mechanics happened. If you're ranged, as she dies, stand in between two platforms (think about the sides of a triangle), don't worry about the lava. Start shooting one of the three Chromatic Prototypes, and interrupt the other immediately as Blast Nova is casted. Make your way to a platform, any platform, once the nova is interrupted. Phase 3 will start as soon as you kill one, and the lava will disappear, but the two other adds are still alive. Kill those, you don't need any more headache in the hardest part of the fight.

Phase 3 is where it gets difficult. The Animated Bone Warriors hit for ~30k, which doesn't sound bad until you consider that there are several of them, and they eventually become untankable due to Empower. As to why pet tanking is so good here? Shadowflame Breath and Shadowblaze Spark refreshes and reanimates the bone warriors, so if you can get a pet to face Nefarian away and move the bone warriors away from the fire, they die, good job. They will eventually get reanimated, it's not the end of the world, just repeat the process. He's not all that remarkable after that, dragon rules (stay to his side, not front or back) still applies, like it has always been for almost 10 years. He doesn't seem to hit particularly hard against my Voidwalker, and his health isn't exceptionally high, so killing him isn't too problematic if you can deal with the warriors.

Haven't had any success 10H though, I die too fast to run into MCs but it seems like it's really hard not because of impossible raid mechanics (Chimaeron), but because they just hit too hard for a 559 clothie to handle.

EDIT: 564 now, and even when duoing with a 523 Prot Warr we still can't kill him 10H. The bone warriors just hit for such a ridiculous amount, and if even one breath or spark hits them before they go down, might as well throw yourself into the lava. It's doable, just not worth the immense effort required. One advice I can give for those who try, however, is to burn defensive CDs in phase 2. It really hurts compared to normal mode, and it's where a lot of our wipes happened.

EDIT 2: I haven't soloed it since 6.0 but I would imagine that it would be easy now. The adds would get AoE'd down super fast, and even if they get ignited back up then they will still die fast. Mind controls won't be a problem when you can easily pull over 1 million DPS on burst classes, neither will any of the mechanics. Lava phase may still hurt. Note that this entire edit is speculation, the newer comments are far more helpful now.

Comment by DavivMcD

Soloed 10 heroic as a 491 Blood DK. It was a pretty close shave, but there are some things I learned to help avoid as much damage as possible:

Get out of the lava as fast as possible, and stay out. It does way more relative damage in 6.0.2 than before. It feels far too strong and is probably an oversight in the stat squish changes, keeping it at 'big stat' damage numbers.
KILL ALL 3 CHROMATIC PROTOTYPES. As big and bad Nefarian and the skeleton adds can look in phase 3, they will not do nearly as much damage to you as the constant barrage of Blast Nova, if you let it continue.
The biggest single hit you can take in this fight is from Electrocute, which occurs at each and every 10% of Nefarian's health. This means you can control it. The faster you try to burn Nefarian down, the faster you will take damage. If you can't keep up with it, back off of Nefarian and play with the skeleton adds for a while, until your health is back to safe levels or you get a defensive cooldown available again.
Don't stand in the purple fire. Duh

Comment by bluudbath

90 hunter easily soloed 10n.

Comment by mjmill4

Dropped as a Prot warr in 551 SMF gear w/a 489 shield. Used ER, LS, and a lot of SB to keep health up, can't HL or charge the little guys on the platforms, so keep your HP pool up as much as possible. Other than that, simple fight, 2 min 25 sec.

Comment by nubbers

Soloing this on 10H as Destro was a little challenging at first because I couldn't just burn the boss down in time like most fights.

I use the Soul Leech talent and Glyph of Healthstone. Just slowly dps'd down Ony and saved embers. Once in phase 3 I summoned my void walker to tank the adds and my doomguard to help burn the boss down. A couple adds hit me but was a cake walk.

550 ilevel full pvp gear

Comment by Marfol

As a guardian druid still very doable ... In the phase when lava comes up, kill the platform adds and heal yourself afterwards with healing touch and rejuvanation... 532 guardian.

Comment by Boanerges4

I want to preface this with the fact that I was not playing when the Cata raids were current and have never done this particular raid before. Also, I am a 550 Fury War.

This fight was tough! Especially considering the lack of healing output the Fury Warrior has to offer. Honestly, none of these comments helped me much at all! I hope those that are soloing this in 6.02 can gleam some wisdom off of this post!

Using the strategies that have been posted, I ended up wiping a good 5-6 times. The lava was too much and heroic leap was not useable. I could never get to a second platform to even attempt to kill any other mobs. On another run, I noticed that if I continued to stay on the first platform and use my ranged(what little range I have!) on Nef, then the lava would start to drop. But I took too much damage from the mobs on the platforms for this observation to do me any good. I decided to try and do things without advancing to phase 2. And it worked!

I killed Nef in phase 1.

It appeared that if I killed Ony, that's what triggered phase 2 eventually. However, I simply brought her down to ~15% and Nefarious came down to the platform. I was able to then kill him by single target focusing him down.

Die by the Sword helped tremendously while I had Ony, Nef, and the spawned mobs wailing on me.

My advice, if you can manage it, is to not kill Onyxia on phase 1, and simply take her down enough so that Nefarious comes down and then you can roflstomp him. Good luck, heroes!

Comment by AikaRed

Solo'd heroic 25 as a 581 prot paladin. I got nefarian to come down by damaging onyxia a little bit, then I focused nefarian to get as much damage as possible on him before phase change. The aoe damage from the adds werent a problem for me, i only killed one during the lava rise. Move him out of the purple fire and keep holy wrath on cooldown to minimize as much damage as possible from the undead minions. Buffs used were str flask, seal of insight, kings, drums, and str potion. It should be possible to do it with lower gear levels.

Comment by Angelhearth

25-man HC Suprisingly easy to solo.

100 Frost DK (648) in Blood Presence

I was about to skip it on my way through BWD, but I gave it a shot.

1. Burn down Onyxia
2. At the end of her life stand near a pillar and burn down the adds
3. On pillar kill add (shouldn't it be one on each of the 3 pillars)?
4. When lava disapears engage Nefarian and burn him down. Use some AoE's on the adds, but it doesn't realy matter.

Comment by fosley

Just did 25H as a 630 demo lock. The rest of the instance was a joke, even with severe lag. This fight was much harder. The adds were by far the biggest issue, because they have a buff that keeps stacking. At one point they were doing like 5000% of base damage because I was focusing the boss.

To beat this:
1. I started by burning Onyxia down (but no cds, just burn her), then the first set of adds disappear (no need to hurt them).
2. Get some damage on Nefarian while you can until the lava rises. Be near a pillar before the lava so you can get out quickly.
3. Get on the pillar quickly, then blow up the add on the pillar if you want.* Try to get some healing in during this part.
4. Once the lava goes down, get off the pillar or the adds will destroy you with throwing knives or something.
5. Get some damage on Nefarian while you can, building up fury (or whatever resource your class uses). Put some dots on the other pillar adds if you want. Try to be at full health before the adds come out.
6. When all the adds come out, blow every aoe cd you have and focus them. Don't even worry about Nefarian, just blow the adds to hell as fast as possible. Use any kind of defensives or healthstones/pots during this phase.
7. Move out of purple, but quickly return to killing adds.
8. Once the adds are done, Nefarian is a joke. Murder him with fire. Or ice, or steel, or whatever you have handy.

*I jumped onto the first pillar to start the fight and left a demonic circle up. When the lava came up, I climbed onto one of the other pillars and killed that add. While the lava was still up, I demon leaped towards the first pillar so I was in range, then teleported to it and killed that add. This way I had two adds down without being in the lava much, but you're probably fine with none of them dead.

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