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Comment by 583527

Be careful even when soloing this guy on normal mode. He WILL take you to low health with Asphyxiate

Comment by 693610

Ran through on my 80 rogue to see the new version, and yes... Asphyxiate hurts. This guy hit me for 2k a second, and I was running the low level version.

Comment by beno113

I've had some right bollocks on this guy, Was at full health with my lvl 19 druid (690 Health), and even with a Rejuvenation on me, his asphyxiate made me go from Full - Zero health

Comment by Angelshifter

He should have a title:

Baron Ashbury <The 80 Slayer>

Aphyxiation will Kill a level 80 soloing as there is no one to break his casting of it, so do not grab him while oneshotting the whole room.

Nothing says Embarassing than getting smacked down by a level 21 elite.

Comment by 631216

notes: THIS FIGHT IS CURRENTLY BUGGED FOR DRUIDS. shift out of your form during asphyxiation or you will die.

heroic guide:

- interupt the heal after it pulses once or twice.

after the asphyxiation - use self heals

-interupt the damage

-dispel shadow word pain.

-dont get scared if your dps are full hp

this is the heard part. at 25%, let the boss asphyxiate and after this asphyxiate heal everyone up to 60% ish (everyone should be self healing). then lust- and nuke him down. keep your tank up and your top dps. boomkin, eleshaman, should aoe heal

Comment by TheAmadaun

On heroic, ~~it's important to interrupt the Mend Rotten Flesh~~ (outdated). Stay of Execution should be allowed to tick once or twice and then interrupted as well. Pain and Suffering can be easily dispelled, so it's not important to interrupt.

Save long cooldowns for Dark Archangel Form, where he will start AOEing the group. This fight is a DPS check - as you fight him, he stacks Wracking Pain on the group, so it's imperative to not let him heal too much, because Wracking Pain increases your susceptibility to shadow damage. So the quicker you kill him, the less damage Dark Archangel Form will do to your group and the less chance of wiping then.

Comment by 2919

Heroic:
They key to this fight is to interrupt as much as possible.
Asphyxiate will bring you to 1% HP.
Stay of Execution(Used after Asphyxiate) will heal him(and you) for 10% max health per second(for 10 seconds?)
Mend Rotten Flesh will heal him for about 30% of his max life, about 3 second cast time.
Pain and Suffering(Basically like Mind Flay) will do little damage at first, and will increase in damage every time he applies his debuff(20% increased shadow damage, stacks to infinity)
His overall DPS is very low, and after he is interrupted, he will usually pause a second before meleeing, giving time for a heal on the tank.

Light of Dawn(Paladin) used immediately after asphyxiate will allow you to interrupt his Stay of Execution after 1 tick, or as soon as it is cast, to minimize on his self healing, without worrying that someone will die from Pain and Suffering on the first tick.

Interrupt, interrupt, interrupt, and win. This fight is also very DPS oriented, for if your DPS is low you will not overcome his heals.

Comment by 238696

If the healer is having trouble with mana, allow the boss to get off one tick of Stay of Execution. It will give everyone enough of an HP boost that the healer can stick to more efficient spells to get everyone up to a safe level. The boss' dps is weak, so 20% health is probably enough to protect your damage dealers from Wracking Pain.

As a resto druid, pop Tree of Life when the boss gets to 30% health. Start to roll Lifebloom on everyone. A triple stack on everyone will be more than enough to survive Calamity (the final phase).

Edit: this applies to Heroic, of course.

Comment by Donnis

As a Resto Shaman I did it this way (on heroic ofcourse):

I realised that the only raid damage that actually could kill us was Pain and Suffering.
So what I did was when he used Asphyxiate I threw one Healing Wave on each DPS and as soon as Pain and Suffering appeared I dispelled it. Then I kept everyone except the tank at around 10% hp since Asphyxiate only brings you down to 1%.
When he began casting Dark Archangel Form I popped Hero, Healing Rain and spammed Chain Heal until the boss died. One of the DPS died in Phase 2 but we made it.

Comment by 730122

here's a tip for hunters doing this on heroic: Right as he casts his chocking spell, feign death! This way you stay at 100% hp AND can continue dpsing. Will also work for other classes too but you MUST use the spells as he starts casting it or it will not work!

Hunteralla

Comment by wtfletigre

After a short amount of testing, it seems that you can still use Lightwell within asphyxiate as of 12/13/10.

So keeping this in mind, my opinion on how best to handle this fight on Heroic Difficulty;

Interrupt the spell Pain and Suffering as often as is possible. It should be able to be done by a single person.

Any class that can Dispel Magic may remove Pain and Suffering by that rout as well.

Healers: Don't top people off. Give them just enough health to live through Wracking Pains, due to the % based nature of Asphyxiate.
Use Health Potions, Health Stones or any ability that will otherwise restore your health ( such as Recuperate) after Asphyxiate.

If there is a Holy Priest in the group, make certain to use Lightwell as Asphyxiate is ending (Within the last Second to Half Second would be best).
Rogues, Hunters, Death Knights and possibly Mages, just as he begins to Asphyxiate, attempt to Vanish,
Feign Death, Anti-Magic Shield or Iceblock. Hopefully the spell will fail on you and you can continue to DPS (Or Tank).
Save the afore mentioned Health Potions, Health Stones etc. for the second Asphyxiate (due to the stacking damage of Wracking pains that will follow it shortly after).

Baron Ashbury will begin to cast Stay of Execution directly after he finishes Asphyxiate.

For every second he casts it, it will heal your party for 10% of their health. The downside is it also heals him (although it doesn't quite seem to heal him for 10% of his health).
Most groups I've been in have found that it's best to interrupt this immediately early on (since you won't take too much damage from Wracking Pains afterward) and then letting a single or even two ticks go off after the second or third Asphyxiate.
Wracking Pains will come about 10 seconds after you interrupt Stay of Execution. This is the point at which the healer must have the party healed to whatever level they'll need to be to live through the damage (which will quickly ramp up as the fight progress').

Sadly, in his hubris he has forgotten how to Mend Rotten Flesh.

Once the boss is sub 50% health he will intermittently attempt to cast Mend Rotting Flesh. This must be interrupted at all costs!

The extra Wracking Pains and Asphyxiates he will get off due to the gain in health will likely cause even the best groups to wipe during the second phase of the fight (assuming an average ilvl of 333 - 346).

At 25% Health: Baron Ashbury will enter his Dark Archangel form and begin channeling Calamity

Use any and every Cooldown you have left. If you've got a Bloodlust, save it for this portion of the fight. Do everything you can to reduce incoming damage to you (Feint, Anti-Magic Shell / Zone etc).
This is strictly a burn phase, and subsequently seems to be the phase of the fight that most groups wipe on (due to healers being Out Of Mana). That said, Healers: Do your best to conserve mana for this portion of the fight.

Comment by 724458

I'm not sure if this a bug, but when he asphyxiates it drops me from full health and always kills me, with combat log saying (531) overkill, and i am a pretty decent geared feral druid... and as far as i know it shouldn't be doing that?

has this happened to anyone else?

Comment by anathama

Do not try and fight Asphyxiate, no matter what you do it will take you and your group to 1% health.

A group member kept insisting that it could be interrupted which is not the case.

Allow the Stay of Execution (the Holy Nova looking ability) to tick at least once, or your healer will not be able to get the group healed up in time and people will die. This is the ability that must be interrupted. It occurs immediately after Asphyxiate.

Comment by Sovrinn

This was, in fact, bugged for druids; specifically Troll druids. Note the following hotfix:

Troll druids in particular, when shapeshifting into Cat/Bear form, were dealing an extra 5% damage to themselves via Beast Slaying when afflicted by Barion Ashbury's Asphyxiate. This caused them to die instead of being taken down to 1 health. This has been corrected and Asphyxiate now properly ignores damage modifiers.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1232869

If you experienced having your druid tank get destroyed during this fight, that's why. Very confusing when it happened, but funny in retrospect.

Comment by 545693

Protection Palis should always have 3 holy power ready to self heal right after the Asphyxiate. When you are at higher life earlier, you can interrupt his Stay of Execution earlier as well.

Avengers Shield does NOT stop Mend Flesh (bug?). Though your stun (Hammer of Justice) does interrupt it, but it's on a full 1 minute cooldown - which is not fast enough. If anyone else can handle Mend Flesh then it's best to leave you on the Stay of Execution duty.

The healers can almost always remove Pain and Suffering. And since healing people above 40% is a waste, they can stay on on top of keeping this off of everybody and allow for interrupters to concentrate on the other spells.

Comment by Sersi

Unfortunately he is immune to Curse of Tongues, so no cheesing it. Just have to be on point with the interrupts.

Comment by Bobblybook

One strategy I found useful when healing this is to watch the bosses hp (via focus frame).
Heal as normal until around 30-35% (depending on your dps) - wait for the next asphyxiate, then top everyone off with aoe heals (possibly with cooldowns/mana reduction stuff etc).

You can't do this too early or you'll get another asphyxiate and effectively waste all your mana, but if you time it right, he will reach 25% hp before he does it again. That way everyone can enter the archangel phase with full health and everyone has a bit of a health buffer, approx 6-7 seconds worth of survivability.

It can help towards the end if things are getting close or you're running out of mana spamming inefficient heals.

Comment by 400357

I have a question about Stay of Execution and Mend Rotting Flesh. Regarding interrupts, are these abilities susceptible to counterspell? I was doing a run with the guild and our mage said that they were trying everything they had. Counterspell, spellsteal, nothing worked. And yet I managed to keep the interrupts flowing somewhat smoothly with my fel hunter's spell lock. I'm just wondering. Maybe it was the timing of the counterspell, I'm not sure.

Comment by 729771

HEROIC:
i agree with above posters, but just wanted to throw my viewpoints in for a healer's perspective.

Asphyxiate:
i had to continually fight the urge to heal everyone up before and after this ability. no matter how high or low anyones health, this ability will not kill them. don't waste mana healing everyone to even 20% after it, and don't waste mana on heals before the first round of it.

Pain and Suffering:
as a priest i took care of this easily with "dispell magic". it hits only one member at a time from my experience. everyone being low health after Asphyxiate is at risk of dying quickly so a dispell must be quick. keep everyone at minimal health with enough wiggle room to catch this ability with a dispell in time. This is the only major threat of death before the final phase.

Calamity:
took me by surprise the first time i made it to the end of the fight. this is what you're saving your mana for. i can't say what % health he goes into this phase, but this is when you heal like a regular boss fight, no more Asphyxiate afterwards.

Basic Strat:
1) little bit of group/AoE heals after Asphyxiate to buffer for Pain and Suffering
2) HoT/small efficient heal on tank for Baron's weak hits
3) someone to catch dispell on Pain and Suffering or just be ready to heal through it
4) try and save your mana until the end for Calamity

also... lightwell CAN be clicked during Asphyxiate, but that's a waste of charges. that health will be instantly depleted. have your group save the clicks until AFTER so you can save mana healing everyone back up.

Comment by wtfletigre

Asphyxiate:
i had to continually fight the urge to heal everyone up before and after this ability. no matter how high or low anyones health, this ability will not kill them. don't waste mana healing everyone to even 20% after it, and don't waste mana on heals before the first round of it.

If you don't heal everyone to a safe health point, such as 20%, they WILL die from Wracking Pains.

The first will be for 10,000 damage and the damage will increase by 20% every time he uses it from there.

10,000
12,000
14,400

etc.

Pain and Suffering:
as a priest i took care of this easily with "dispell magic". it hits only one member at a time from my experience. everyone being low health after Asphyxiate is at risk of dying quickly so a dispell must be quick. keep everyone at minimal health with enough wiggle room to catch this ability with a dispell in time. This is the only major threat of death before the final phase.

A shaman friend had also noted this. I'll have to make sure to add that any class that can Dispel Magic can remove Pain and Suffering that way.

also... lightwell CAN be clicked during Asphyxiate, but that's a waste of charges. that health will be instantly depleted. have your group save the clicks until AFTER so you can save mana healing everyone back up.

The reason you use Lightwell at the end of asphyxiate (within the last second to half second) is due to Lightwell being a HoT. The initial tick might be wasted, but we found that getting the rest of the ~5 seconds of healing out of it before ANYTHING would happen to the group was completely worth it.

Comment by SuperJudgeJudy

This fight is very nice to have a DK tank on. If used at the proper time, AMS will negate the Asphyxiate, and the tank will not lose any health.

Comment by 617122

Unholy DKs: Do NOT use Unholy Frenzy - if it is up when he releases you from Asphyxiate it will kill whoever has it.

Comment by 63881

Looks like this guy got a mention in the Patch Notes.

Shadowfang Keep
Baron Ashbury
Sadly, in his hubris he has forgotten how to Mend Rotten Flesh.

Comment by Malderon

As patch 4.0.6 applies, no longer has Mend Rotten Flesh, which heals him for 25%.

Comment by saruu

Notdryad,
Not every class/spec has a interrupt so calm down.

Comment by 83509

So which, classes/specs have the "interrupt" that works on this guy?

Comment by Kathucka

The problem is that you need two interrupts in a row to succeed, with three in a row being much better. While every class has an interrupt, it may be available only in certain specs, or with certain pets. Or, it may have a very long cooldown.

Once he's below 50%, he'll cast Asphyxiate, immediately followed by Stay of Execution, Pain and Suffering and then Mend Rotten Flesh. These spells cast rapid-fire, with each starting right after the preceding one is interrupted.

You must interrupt the Stay of Execution. Period. The tank can get this one.

The healer can dispel the Pain and Suffering. Really, though, you want the healer to heal at this point, as everyone has very low health. it's much better to interrupt here.

After that, though, there may be no interrupts available for the Mend Rotten Flesh. While all damage-dealing specs have an interrupt of some sort, they may be on a very long cooldown or require specific pets. The interrupts I could find are as follows:

So, most groups will have enough interrupts. However, if you have a group with a boomkin, a beast mastery hunter without a gorilla, a survival hunter without a gorilla, and a holy priest, you could easily find all the interrupts on cooldown when it's time for Mend Rotten Flesh and this boss will be unbeatable.

Comment by Kanariya

Think of Wracking Pains as a Four Horsemen Mark. The more you get, the more damage you take. Essentially, this is a bit of an enrage mechanic. You take too long, you will die in phase 3. However, unlike 4H, you can completely resist a mark application.

Comment by omber

This fight is demanding on all standpoints although it has become easier with 4.0.6.

a) this is a DPS demanding fight - he must be killed quickly or Wrecking Pain will kill you off eventually especially during Phase 2;

b) this is a healing demanding fight - the healer must be able to bring the group up to high health in preparation for Phase 2;

c) it is critical that you have DBM installed - the Dark Angel (Phase 2) begins at 25% - at this point if the group will take massive damage and it is important to top everyone off. DBM (deadly boss mods) will tell you what is the cooldown on Asphyxiate.

d) it is critical that you do not let Asphyxiate happen too close to 25% - if the cooldown on this ability has expired and he is at 30% it is best to stop all DPS and wait for him to choke everyone down - otherwise you may find your group one or two shotted when the Dark Angel AoE starts.

Comment by HordeSkorp

Arguably the hardest boss of SFK.... all i want to know is who crapped in his cornflakes this morning O.o

Comment by Antigroup

When he gets to 50% health or lower, Ashbury will start using Mend Rotten Flesh, which should also be interrupted every time.

This is no longer true as of patch 4.0.6.
This is quite good, especially for pugs, where before you might not have had enough interrupt-capable classes/specs to interrupt all the necessary abilities.

Comment by Psychotic

Anti-Magic Shell makes this fight so trivial as a tank but is just as handy as a dps death knight.

Does anyone know is you can bubble out of it, or no?

Comment by sildani

Key to heal this fight is simply not topping off everybody after . As a Holy Priest I use COH, FH on MT, FH on myself, POH then COH again. After that I just cast Heal on each party member to get them to about 35% health and then look after the tank. Add to this interrupting pain and suffering (or dispelling it yourself if you're a priest), and you will be fine. Spam POH for the last 25% of his health, if you didn't have enough mana for that part then you overhealed the first one.

Comment by 666150

Just out of my experience on my Warlock for this boss.

It would be a good help for you and your healer to have on you specially on the last phase.

Comment by megapull

Kinda soloed this on heroic as a blue geared affli warlock. Everyone failed at interrupting so the group died at 50% boss hp. I managed to survive and I actually killed the boss by spamming drain life and keeping up haunt.

(Don't know why the others refused to run in though)

Comment by 701558

I can haz hat?

Comment by 821910

I've been trying to cap Ashbury's ZOMGARCHANGEL! business for ages to no avail, the spell effects get in the way hardcore every time.

Ashbury, you are just SUCH a gonad.

Just sayin'.

Comment by Rynna

Failed attempt at soloing him on heroic as a blood dk today. It was incredibly easy up until the dark archangel part, where he was pulling about 12-15k dps, i popped all my cds(offensive and defensive) and i died when he had about 180k hp left. After I died i realized i should have got a shadow resistance buff, and if i did i would have probably defeated him :\. Btw I have mostly 378 gear.

Comment by Senka

Important warning after 5.0. Stay of Execution is bugged and is uninterruptible. It makes the fight pretty much impossible for anyone that doesn't hugely outgear it.

Comment by 325248

I wonder why he heals you back, after he JUST brought everyone down to 1 health?
Either he´s stupid or just wants to have fun.
Nevertheless he´s the strongest NPC ingame.

Comment by pilot13

This is probably a really stupid question, but is his hat obtainable?

Comment by 1032778

Possible reference to Ian Astbury:
http://live4ever.live4evermediall.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/ian.jpg
They even both have a skull on their pointed hat.

View in 3D Links

Baron Ashbury

This NPC can be found in Shadowfang Keep .

Shadowfang KeepBaron AshburyBaron SilverlaineCommander SpringvaleLord WaldenLord GodfreyBaron AshburyLady Sylvanas WindrunnerGilneasShadowfang KeepHeroic Strategy

This is a very healer demanding fight. Make sure your healer knows the mechanics of the encounter as well as everybody else, as he or she will need to react quickly.

You will need at least one interrupt.

Ashbury will cast on random people. Due to fight mechanics, your entire party may be very low on health, so this needs to be interrupted every time.

He will also cast Wracking Pain, making both his Pain and Suffering and Calamity, which he uses in the last part of the fight, deadlier.

Approximately every 40-45 seconds, Ashbury will the entire party, bringing everyone to 1 health. Immediately after that he will channel , which heals both him and your party for 10% every second. Interrupt that after about 1 tick, as letting it heal for more will likely cause a stalemate.

At 20% the boss will take on Dark Archangel Form, chain casting his Calamity AoE. Fewer stacks of Wrecking Pain, as well as cooldowns, both survival and DPS, will help you get through this phase. Try not to push him into this phase too soon after an Asphyxiate, as the AoE combined with everyone being low on health is sure to wipe you out quickly.