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Comment by soontobeDK

A Quiaji! in northrend? look at the 'view in 3D'.

Comment by Dungeon

Interesting fight, as of build 8885 (first release of Ahn'kahet), this boss is one of the more fun of WOTLK.

At a set percentage he will take control of your party and force you to kill shades of your party members, it appears everyone has to do this in order for the fight to proceed onward. Each person is responsible for killing their own set of 'phantom' party members.

So far no other gimmick was encountered, besides the fact that he hits relatively hard.

Comment by 50617

He casts Mindflay (seemingly at random) and it is completely reflectable. It was ticking on me for about 3-4k, but reflecting it appeared to make it tick for about 5k (this is with Imp Defensive stance and the -10% damage taken)

If you have the rage to spell reflect every 5 seconds, you should do so.

Comment by Skreeran

Oh man... I loved the subtle Lovecraftian theme War3: TFT had, and now we get the faceless ones again. And he has an insanity ability! That fits fantastically! Praise Cthulhu! Urm, I mean, Blizzard...

(Cthulhu)....

Comment by Cogzwell

this was a very cool and fun boss cause you got to (SPOILER!) kill versions of your party members, very satifying. but only 4 faceless ones? ok... that is either stupid.... or..... *cough* *cough* future raid *cough* think about it in the Frozen Thrown there was a huge tunnel filled with faceless ones and that huge C'thun like thing... that HAS to be in WOTLK or I'll throw a fit

Comment by ArgentSun

Fairly straight-forward fight, but a fun one too.

Volazj will occasionally Mind Flay, hitting for ~1k per tick - nothing to be concerned about. His melee isn't that bad, but he will cast Insanity every now and then, triggering a cool mini event:
Every party member will see the other party members turning hostile, and attacking. It's a phasing event - your friends didn't turn against you, as the Herald suggests, they were merely shifted into a different phase, fighting their own "bad" friends. Each one of the images has 4,000 HP, and casts 1-2 spells specific to the class and spec the original player belongs to. It is recommended to nuke the healer first, or any fast-hitting class if you are the healer yourself. Volazj will remain invulnerable and channeling the spell until the event is over.

Whenever one of the players kills all 4 images assigned to him, he will phase out seeing another of his friends fighting, and will be able to give a hand. When all 20 images are dead, Volazj will become attackable again, and in fact will attack. From now on it's rinse and repeat fight.

Comment by 24777

This boss on heroic is ridiculous. When the insanity phase starts where everyone needs to fight clones of the rest of the party, healers just need to run around and try to stay alive until some DPS are finished with their's and can help.

In my opinion this boss is ridiculously hard right now. We've had to deal with the insanity phase twice in a fight and couldn't make it past the 2nd one. Not really sure what else we can do.

Alright so we were able to down him. I think the Insanity thing might be bugged. The time we downed him, the 2nd insanity phase I only had to deal with 1 clone. And one time right away I was in with one of my group members already.

Comment by Spiderjon

"Your lack of face disturbs me."
-Darth Vader.

Comment by reidsb

Amusingly, I did this as a Tauren Druid, and after realizing what was going on and killing my four copies, discovered that for the rest of my party, their copy of me was in Night Elf cat form, not Tauren.

Easily one of the most fun boss fights I've done in a 5-man.

Comment by 195360

The copies of the party members will behave as normal players. They are vulnerable to CC, disarms, stuns, interrupts and all kind of control.

As a protection warrior, Interrupt and stun the healer to bring him down. After that, Shockwave, Thundrclap and Revenge the rest down.

Comment by vaad

During the "Insanity phase" will a hunter's pet be duplicated as well?

Comment by 103045

Our setup for this boss on heroic

MT- Warrior;NE (Use Shadowmeld as insanity is being casted and they'll fail to spawn for only you so; you don't have to fight copies of others.)

Healer- Shaman

DPS
RetPaladin
Mage
Warlock

as a ret-paladin i was able to burn through everyone without any problems, shaman first, then clothies, and leave the warrior as the last target.

Comment by 219351

It might be a good idea depending on group composition for your party to move to certain spots during when he casts insanity for maximum group efficiency. Like a group with 4 casters and a warrior ,the casters would all go on the warrior so he can kill them faster, and so a caster can aoe the whole group more effectively.

And a group with 4 melee and say a priest, the priest would get far away from everyone else so he wont get instagibbed.

Comment by franzie

This is an incredibly fun fight on Heroic mode. A straight forward tank and spank until Insanity, which creates adds with 12k ish health. Always have your healer spam heals on himself to keep himself alive. Warrior tanks have an easy job here since we have so many stuns and interrupts. Concussive blow, shield bash, and shield reflect, shockwave and charge your healer's reflection till it dies, then everyone else is easy enough to kill.

Comment by 79637

As a Hunter:

- Tell your party that everyone should stand together near you, or run to you before the cast.
- Lay a aoe frost trap.
- Run away while the boss casts.
- Your pet can tank those npcs! Use it and heal the pet if necessary.
- You can misdirect and multishot the npcs on your pet.

You should kill melee dd first, because they will kill you in closed combat. Then healers.

Comment by 254169

Heroic mode:

Our setup
Paladin - protection
Priest - shadow
Druid - resto
Hunter - marksman
Mage - fire

Mage and Hunter died on the first Insanity but it was easily soloable on 3 people, after the mage died he left the party (It was only 5 minutes until server reset). The hunter started to corpserun after he died.

Notice: The hunter didnt roll fast enough after we downed the boss so we lost our items, server reset came... Sucks eh?

Comment by 6133

what an awesome fight on heroic mode.
it helps a lot if melee classes put some other weapons on, when insanity is casting.
our tank and paladin switched to their fishing pole, so it was a bit easier...
still quite hard, but awesome and fun to do!

Comment by 221542

Having a Death Knight in the party can be very beneficial for this fight on heroic. Have them cast Army of the Dead immediately as he begins casting Insanity. The additional ghouls will trivialize the Death Knight's own battle with the party and free him up to assist everyone else. Depending on how fast he kills his shades, the ghouls can last long enough for him to help kill the shades of up to two other party members.

Comment by cerah

This boss fight is SOO fun! My boyfriend (warrior) and myself (mage) went in with 2 rogues and a holy paladin. It is really fun! The best part is, once you kill your 4 bad dudes, you join another party member to help them kill theirs!

I got to kill myself about 5 times cause I phased into the pally's and rogue's group who were killing melee and healer first. /evil laugh

Enjoy yourselves! This is one unique fight!

Comment by 79396

This fight is actually easier the fewer people you have, even in Heroic. With a Protection Warrior and a Holy Paladin he is duoable (I'm sure other healers would work, but Protection Warrior is vital).

Wait 6 seconds or so after the first mind flay at the beginning of the fight and after every Insanity and pop Spell Reflection. Spell Reflection should be up for almost every Mind Flay after that, which is going to be the source of almost all the damage to the boss.

During insanity, you'll only be fighting each other. Fighting one person as opposed to 5 is much easier, and makes this part of the fight trivial.

It was a lot of fun doing this, and as long as your tank is a Protection Warrior and your Healer stays alive through insanity, it's alright if all of your DPS dies :)

Very fun and easy fight.

Comment by 255916

Some interesting things:

Our comp for Heroic was:
Feral Druid Tank
Mage
Ele Shaman
Death Knight
Resto Druid (me)

Wiped a couple times because apparently resto druids are pretty OP at healing the shades during insanity.

I tried switching to cat form right before insanity, and apparently it was a lot easier for the dps to kill their shades. According to them I was still casting heals in cat form (like nourish) but they werent healing for as much, so overall it made the fight much easier.

It was also pretty easy for me to stay alive against my shades - root the DK, hibernate feral druid, and alternate cyclones on the shaman and mage. So druid tank and healer seems to make it easier.

Comment by 146010

It's worth noting (I havn't seen it posted about much), that you don't HAVE to kill all the images yourself. If you're having severe difficulties with that, simply survive until the rest of the group finishes theirs. Once all your 'party' is dead, you will be able to see and attack the remaining hostile images that are still attacking the others.

On a sidenote, it's pretty creepy seeing how uncannily accurate some of the images are. Like the holy paladin clone that sits there and just spams flash of light nonstop. :P

Comment by 256915

On normal this is relatively straightforward and easy.

On Heroic the HP of the phased copies makes it insane.

People dying can help if you can get enough people through the initial insanity.

We had three get through, which made the 2nd insanity much easier (bizarrely).

But there was a trick to this as well. I died during first insanity as an Ele Shammy, but used my Ankh to rez. I wasn't able to help others, but was able to heal up and rest until the Pally healer and Warrior managed to burn through their adds, then I rejoined the fight.

2nd insanity wasn't too bad, we all survived and burned him down slowly.

Comment by 257475

If any of you priests are having a hard time with the adds, you can mind control->release them and they die. MC is a relatively low mana cost now, so it should help.

It doesn't work with the last add, though.

-- supposedly fixed and does not work anymore.

Comment by 8153

He is MUCH easier with less people. On our sixth try we simply fed some of our DPS to the lions and it was cake. If you have a priest then keep everyone very close the boss so you can bounce Prayer of Mending off eachother. We had a Druid tank but I'll bet it would be even easier with a Warrior. I'm talking of course about heroic mode.

Comment by AzjolYai

Anyone know if FD can be used to avoid his insanity?

Comment by 145840

Attempting this boss heroic, I noticed that after approximately 3 minutes he comes back to normal phase. Stressing on healer? Yes. Doable? Also yes.

Comment by Wuumaster

This fight can be pretty brutal. I ran this on heroic as a Survival Hunter with a

Protection Warrior
Holy Priest
Elemental Shaman
Fire Mage

The Warrior & Priest used the 'stay alive & wait for help' strategy. Priest found she could heal through the damage with the help of fear; the Warrior spammed Shockwave & Spell Reflect while trying to keep the Priest's shade locked out of the Holy school. The both typically brought one or two shades down themselves.

The Mage typically Polymorphed one shade & just burned down the Priest's shade, using Counterspell & Dragon's Breath as interrupts.

The Shaman had the easiest time, Hex'ing the Priest's shade and being quick with Earth Shock when it broke. Being able to heal himself was very useful.

I found the best way to get through it myself was to Freezing trap the Priest's shade & Wyvern Sting the Shaman's shade, then burn the Mage down. My pet seemed to be able to distract the Warrior with Growl - not sure if the shades obey normal threat rules or not.

We had trouble with the shades and decided to use a 'sacrificial lamb' approach - I started the fight naked. This made it easier on the others, since my shade would run into melee and try to slap people around - not very threatening, to say the least. The Mage & Shaman were enough DPS to get the boss down in a resonable amount of time, and not having to deal with a ranged physical DPS shade helped the casters stay alive.

Couple notes.

The Priest's heals were through the roof. If you can't interrupt spells (Kick, etc), recommend CC'ing (I used a trap on the Priest, and Wyvern Sting'd the Shaman
The Priest's shade casts Renew on occasion; our Mage Spell Stole it to keep himself up.
The Shaman's shade did NOT heal. Thankfully.
The Herald only makes shades of people still alive. If someone dies before he finishes the channel, you won't have to fight their shade.
Your shades imitate your gear. We were having trouble and decided that I (the Hunter) would fight naked. All of my shades ran in and melee'd, which made it easier on the cloth.
Insanity can time out. If you can live long enough, the shades will disappear on their own, allowing you to get back on the boss. Difficult for a non-healing class though, as it does take a while.
Next time I fight this boss on Heroic, I'm going to try unequipping my weapons before the Insanity finishes casting, then put them back on when the shades appear. Might be able to trick my shade into melee'ing without having to get naked.

Comment by 93008

As a prot pally, a holy priest was very, very hard to kill. Renew ticking for 4k+ and I can't burst down 12k in the time available via HoJ. Group makeup worked against me - Holy Priest, Shadow Priest (who dropped heals) ele shaman (who dropped heals)...

Got some lucky crits first time and managed to burn through my adds. Second insanity I just had to live through until rest of the part was free and could help.

Comment by 223121

A tip for warriors here on heroic here.

Spell Reflecting his Mind Flay (which I've managed to work out is roughly a 10 second cooldown) will help a lot. He loses ~4% health from that ability on heroic in 3 seconds which is a lot aswell as saving your healer 15k+ health worth of mana.

After about 5 seconds into the fight, pop spell reflect. If he uses Mind Flay, you now know to use Spell Reflect as soon as it comes off cooldown everytime and the boss eats his own Mind Flay. This helped us a lot, I'd estimate I took off something like 15-20% of his health with spell reflect alone.

Comment by 40287

We had our lock die on heroic - so I (BM hunter) only had to deal with tree druid, DK and prot warrior. After interrupting the tree druids heals with Intimidation and killing him the rest was easy enough.

Comment by 261340

hey guys,

today i found a easier way to kill this boss.

first thing is have your tank, tank him near a pillar whichever pillar in there. then have your range dps near the the pillar and as soon as he cast the insanity get LoS behind the pillar and have the tank stay. If u successfully got LoS you will only fight the shade tank one on one. and NOT 5 on 1..

- tank him near a pillar (whichever)
-range dps stay near the pillar as well as healers.
-as soon as he cast INSANITY get LoS and have tank just stay there
-you will one fight the tank 1 on 1
- makes the fight easier and healers from OOM

bloodhuntah deathwing

Comment by Morina

Heroic:

If you're a melee class or healer you should kite them behind around one of the pillars at the back, it keeps your healer from healing the rest of your party and lets you dps them down one by one easily. This works especially well if you're dps is ranged.

For druids/warriors etc. switch to normal form/berserker stance before insanity starts. We for example had a moonkin druid and a feral druid, both of them went into normal form and were very easy to kill.

Good luck!

Comment by 253439

The easiest way to do this fight on heroic mode is with 3 people. The Tank, the Healer, and your DPS. It's a cakewalk that way. The biggest difficulty in the encounter is people killing the healer during the illusion, some either can't do it, or it takes to long while getting slamed on by 3 other illusions. That or they have trouble with the healer keeping the other ones alive.

To a few posts above me - Prot warriors aren't vital. Perhaps if you are 2 manning it, but 2 manning is unnecessary, keep one DPS alive and let 2 of em rot for 5 minutes and you'll kill him. I've done this numerous time as a Paladin healer with a Death Knight Tank and w/e DPS for the 3rd.

Also regardless of how you do it, I'd tell healers to ignore the popular advice of staying alive. Every single time I've done this (again, I'm a paladin healer) It is both faster, and safer, for me to fight my way out of the Illusion. Healers don't have to fight healers, so they either break the illusion faster, or just as fast as some other classes (depending on gear, obviously) which means you're out and able to help out some other members of your party.

I took the initial advice of keeping myself alive on the first few heroic attempts and found it only succeeds in getting my tank and other members killed. Fight through it.

Having said all that, the easiest way to do it is infact the 3 man it. It really is a breeze.

Comment by 146010

So, after a few more random runs of this, I've started to note what each of the clones tends to do. My list is not very big, sadly.

It's also probably incomplete, since I don't know how much of a player's talents and specs are translated over to the copies.

Death knight copies - Will immediately death grip you (results in you getting dragged around a bit if there's more than one). Will attack with plague strike, I havn't noted anything else yet. Not sure if it removes HoTs like the real version, since my healer is a paladin.

Mage copies - Will spam fireball. I don't know if different specs will use different spells here. If you close on them in melee, they will frost nova and back up a few paces, then continue.

Hunter copies - Stand there and shoot for the most part. If you close on them, they use Disengage once.

Warlock copies - Use corruption and shadowbolts.

Holy priests - Renew, flash heals.

Holy paladins - Flash of light spam

I'll edit in others as and when I get the opportunity to observe them :)

Note that regardless of whether or not the player has a pet/minion active, the clones will not.

Comment by BujuArena

Have all your group members including the tank run out of line of sight of the boss when he casts Insanity. You won't have to fight any shades at all.

Edit: Why was this down-rated? This is the easiest way to do this boss, hands-down.

Edit: This was "hotfixed" by Blizzard.

Comment by creiij

Well me, a bm hunter, warlock, resto druid and 2 palas, one tank and one dps. Did this on hc just now. I died during the first insanity and so did the warlock but the other once 3 manned him easily. Guess I should have places a frost trap and dps the druid during insanity but I could not get them to attack my pet. And I melee I really suck =)

Comment by senseless

Few things that would be interesting to help out, if someone could clarify.

1. If you disband during insanity, what will happen?
2. If you unequip your weapon, will the close also have no weapon?

One thing that helps almost everyone out, is please, please bunch up. As an arms and fury warrior, i had a pretty hard time when the group did not bunch up, in fact i died each time(didn't help out healer could heal anyone full with 1 cast)

Comment by Sybex

If you interrupt healer classes during a heal they will just sit there and heal their self. This really helps out when u have 1 main healer and 2 hybrid healer classes on heroic difficulty. My typical hero group setup: DK tanking, Disc/Holy Priest, Elemental Shaman, Enhance Shaman, and a Ret Pally. With every class able to self heal, this really really helps :P

Comment by 265519

As others have added, changing forms/switching weapons during the Insanity cast seems to alter the shades somewhat, but can anyone confirm whether or not completely removing a weapon works?

I tried this on our last run through the place (I'm an Enhancement Shaman), and it really seemed to help - the healer wasn't oom after the first Insanity and the tank was still alive when we got to him. I'm not sure if it actually removes weapon damage, but maybe it at least keeps weapon buffs from activating such as WF. Try this out if you have some melee on your next run and see if it helps you out as well.

Comment by 108775

* "They are not dead. They are not alive. They are outside the cycle."
* "Gul'kafh an'shel. Yoq'al shn ky ywaq nuul." ("Gaze into the void. It is the perpetuity in which they dwell.")
* On player death: "Ywaq ma phgwa'cul hnakf." ("They are the whisper on the shivering wind.")
* On death: "Iilth vwah, uhn'agth fhssh za." ("Where one falls, many shall take its place.")

From wowwiki

Comment by havokas

From a Protection Warrior PoV:

- You can easilly kill the shades, even be the 1st one to do so.

Comment by smcn

It looks like Blizz did another round of heroic hotfixes today, the adds can no longer be mind controlled (immune), and running around the pillar has no effect.

Comment by Cross88

He looks like a Donphan.

Comment by 191682

Resto Shamans on Heroic:

If you need to get mana back, do this - at 25% "Insanity" time, drop your Fire Elemental Totem, Earth Shield him, and bandage/drink/potion as needed. He can easily handle a group full of people with a few Shocks on your part.

Comment by 238018

man, i did this guy on heroic today... it was ridiculous...

DK with a really really bad frost spec for tanking,
tree druid healing,
2 locks in all blues,
and me ret pallyin it up in assorted epics/blue mix...

the druid and i were the only ones to survive insanity, and we almost 2 manned him after that first insanity... but it was just ridiculous... tryin to kill anything during insanity without repenting the druid or something seems like itd be impossible... im not really surprised the druid lived through it, but just wow... number one most tough fight ive seen yet if youve got a terrible comp

Comment by 274900

I'm a Deathknight tank (unholy) and the entire DPS of our group went down on the first insanity so it was just me and the healer left. She was a discipline specced priest. Anyway, his damage isnt really anything special so we 2 manned him from 60%. You only get one clone to fight with 2 people so what we did was I would kill mine and then kite the clone she was supposed to fight while she regenned mana for about 3 minutes. Then we proceeded to kill him...slowly. We were hoping for insanities actually because it was just a regen period for us. Only dangerous thing is mind flays on healer but if the healer stays topped off it is no worry.

Dropped my tanking bracers also which I think was justified. This tactic may be useful if your group is having trouble with the clones, maybe just try him with the healer and tank if they have good mitigation and mana regen, it was really easy...no lies.

Comment by 275398

For Hunters, drop a Freezing Arrow on top of the healer when the fight starts. When he uses Insanity, the copies show up about one or two seconds after the players disappear in the exact same spot the players were in. After the healer clone is frozen, drop a Frost Trap and kite the other dps around. Rogues and Death Knights should be top priority on kills, as rogues will hit you for about 3k and Death Knights will drag you back into the melee. You should be able to burn two easy, and kill the third before the healer has a chance to heal him.

For killing the Healer, either use Intimidation to stop his cast or Aimed Shot to out dps his heals. If you're marks Silencing Shot is excellent. I can't speak for Survival though, though I think Survival has enough burst via LnL procs to get him. Hard part is the healer has no mana pool, so you can't just kite the mobs and mana drain the heals, you have to burn him. I wish our healer was that powerful, Blizzard seriously should look at this guy.

One thing, I think unequipping your weapons does create much less powerful clones. Most of the clones abilities require weapons in the main or ranged weapon slot, a rogue without his daggers is just another sissy slapfighting you.

Comment by 275627

This boss is tough now. We tried a couple different strats, such as unequipping weapons before insanity, LoS'ing behind pillars, and others.

Our group consisted of a Pally tank, Combat Rogue, BM Hunter, Fire Mage and me the Holy Priest.

After 4 wipes, the strat we finally beat him our last attempt. Our group's dps was low, so our best bet was to just let a couple people die during the first insanity, and it worked perfectly. During the first insanity I killed the 2 ranged dps first, then the melee. Our Rogue/Mage died. I had the Pally tank heal himself up before finishing off the last add, so I could regen mana, then we just dps'd nice and slow. It was a war of attrition. When phase 2 hit, had to dps 2 shades instead of 4, and it was super easy.

Sacrifice a couple of dps and its all downhill from there.

Comment by 276267

This is easily one of the most epic fights I have been in on World of Warcraft. I am praying for a raid that goes deeper into Azjol Nerub or Ahn' Kahtet.

Comment by 34882

The healing abilities used by the shades appear to have a much shorter range than the normal 40 yards.

This allows druids to root the healer and pull the other NPCs away where they can easily be dispatched of. Other classes may be able to also use this to their advantage

Comment by Ixio

This boss on Heroic mode is extremely hard with a Druid healer.

My group wiped 3 times purely because the healer wouldn't die. We're not talking about nearly killing the healer, we're talking about nowhere near downing him / her.

~ Please update your findings about this boss with a Druid healer ~

Comment by stiqqan

One of the funiest battles I've done in WoW. Its also very easy. Why anyone would want to skip the insanity part is beyond me.

Comment by 245938

Be careful! If someone dies, releases and zones in during the fight (yes, the game allows this) Herald will reset during the next insanity phase.

This is important to note because by far the easiest way to do this fight (especially on heroic) is to 'kill off' the weakest 2 dps (suicide to a pat or something) and 3-man it. Herald does not seem to have an enrage timer, so with a decent tank/heal/dps group he can be downed quite easily and insanity is much, much easier than with a full group of 5.

Comment by Vanthalas

I'll tell you guys something: this fight, on heroic mode, can go really crazy when the images starts spawning. As a hunter in blue gear and few epics, it was horrible to kill the healer with all the adds rushing on you and mana issue - I did it twice, with a resto druid and a holy priest for different attempts. They simply heal up all the time with direct heals if they have any or hots if priest or druid, which might be able to compromise your burst damage if they heal t. I can sense incoming nerf on this boss.

Comment by Iroared

Well now the achievement is pretty hard to get.

I'm not sure how the add phase works, I noticed that if you spend quite a bit of time on it other party members will appear and help you with the adds (maybe it happens if you're the last one to kill your adds).
Tell your healer to unequip most gear before the encounter, or just unleash all your cooldowns on him as soon as the phase starts.
Also note that this boss is actually easier with 4 players than 5, because you have to fight one less image in each phase.

Other than that, the boss itself is rather easy, we had everyone die and our tank and healer (warrior and druid) did it themselves (pretty mana intensive for healer though).

Comment by Miljan

does he drop winter hat?

Comment by 285309

I was curious if there was a way to make a macro that targets the healer while insanity is going on, that way i can target him first right off the bat, and CC him so he doesn't heal the rest of the group.... if anyone has any tricks to this fight for heroic, please respond! The boss is easy enough, but the insanity is very difficult with healer healing the ones I'm attacking to full.

Comment by 286448

From a Hopriest on heroic-
I just went straight-up evasive manuevers on the insanity phase with a shieldy and maybe a renoob and ran giant circles around the room. It wasn't hard at all to survive till help came. Try to have your party topped off before the insanity sets in cause they'll be without your life-giving superpowers for awhile.

The MC-and-drop tact sounds nice, maybe I'll try that next run to speed-up the overall killing of the clones task and get my holy hands dirty.

Comment by 153834

I just killed him today with
- a healing druid
- a dps DK
- a beastmastery Huntard
- a prot warri
and me a destruction lock.
The fight was the nightmare for me, cause druid spammed Nourish on shades, the dk interrupted my spells with Death Grip, and warri reflected my spells/ stunned me. Hunter just shooted me not any special thing. I only feared them, and spammed Chaos/Shadow Bolts on them. My group members appeared a little time later, and helped to kill the shades.

This boss is the pain in the ass, i hope, that Blizz nerf Herald a bit.
Note: trying the achievment, to kill him in 2 minutes, only try when u got full 10 man naxx gear :P

Comment by banko

I don't get it. People tend to complain that this is a tough fight. I've done this numerous times, and haven't wiped once on this one. I have both healed and DPS'd on this, and haven't had any problems whatsoever surviving the insanity phases.

Just make sure you stay alive and kill the healer first. It's that simple, doesn't require any LoS tricks or unequipping weapons or whatnot.

I imagine that people with ample arena experience will find this fight easier due to the survival abilities needed in both arenas and on this fight.

Concerning a possible nerf, I hope Blizzard won't do it, Wrath of the Lich King is easy as it is. This isn't that hard of a fight, the only tough part is getting the achievement, which can be done only when your gear improves.

Comment by Binary

It took my group three attempts to down this boss.

As a DK tank with mostly crafted/rep gear, I found it easiest to bring my 4 mobs together and lay down all my diseases/AoEs. I then DPSed the healer down, using Plague Strike to remove HoTs and Mind Freeze/Strangulate to silence the heals.

I can confirm that Mind Control does indeed kill the insanity mobs. My group considered having our healer (priest) MC her mobs, and then MC our healers. This would end up costing almost 4k mana, though, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Comment by 75697

3 man!
Downed him with a warrior tank, a resto shaman(me) and a hunter.

When the adds come, I simply killed the hunter, then used the warrior to regain all my mana... And when at full mana, I killed him to. Then rinse and repeat.... Used grounding totem at every occation...

The stupid wand dropped though :(

Edit: Nothing special of the gear, hunter was blues... Me in some HC epic's and the same with the tank.

Comment by Samweller

Did heroic with Shadow priest, lock, DK, Resto Druid, and me (prot Pally). Wiped four times trying to take down with all of us. Finally had the DK and lock get naked and aggro the boss to suicide - proceeded to three man with ease using only tank, dps, and heals.

The NPC healers are almost impossible burst down and having the extra dps there during the insanity only kills off group members.

Highly recommend 3 manning on heroic.

Comment by 166496

After a whipe we succeded.

the group was:

Retri paladin (me, geared with some naxx gear)

Holy Priest

Prot Pally as tank

Combat Rogue

Destro Lock

At the first try, all tried to kill their shades: All except me and the tank died.

At the second try, I told everyone to survive their shades while I killed mine and helped them after.
Easily, I killed my shades. Lock ---> Rogue -----> Priest -----> tank
Then I helped the others. The rogue died but the rest was alive, we repeated this and we succeded.

I also had the rogue to take off his weapons and I took off mine, it helped, I was the toughest member and I was the cause of my mates' death even without weapons.

Edit: I know some abilities that clones used.

Lock - Shadow Bolt, Corruption

Rogue - Punching cuz no weapons :P
The Ability list may be incomplete :)
Priest - Renew , Greater heal

Protpally - Avengers shield

Me - Judgement of light :D

Comment by 290407

Just tried this as a prot paladin with a shammy healer and I don't see how any prot pally can kill the healer.

I used Seal of Corruption, judge, shield of right, hammer of right, even avenger shield and I couldn't kill the Shaman to save my life.

I could only kill him once if all my CD's were up, AoE silence (blood elf) and Hammer but even then it's really hard.

The shammy just spam heals and switching targets doesn't change anything he will out heal my dmg with no mana issues.

Comment by 295775

Quick tip that I've found useful - if you post someone that's good at killing the clones near the beginning of the instance (all the way back to the 2nd boss), it gives your party time to heal up between. Then all you have to worry about is killing clones yourself and dealing with only 4 people.

Comment by Selana

It's a really fun and easy fight if everyone knows what they're doing, even on Heroic. When I was in there once, none of the DPS were quite sure what they had to do and died on the first Insanity. Myself (Unholy DK tank) and my healer (Holy Priest) managed to two-man him the rest of the fight. This was on heroic and it took a little bit of time, but it was fun as hell ^^

~Selana~

Comment by 297105

Our group found that this boss is best fought with 2 people. Each time we did this with dps, me(Holy paladin) and the tank(Prot paladin) would be the only ones left after insanity. After that it was cake, just keep your mana up. However, if there are no dps during the first insanity, it saves mana for the healer, and allows the tank to live easily.

My suggestion for the fight. Let the dps go....do as much damage as they can, and die BEFORE insanity(Stop healing before the first insanity). Then, just have the tank fight while the healer heals and keeps mana up. During insanity, the healer will want to keep using all mana regen CDs while the feather-hitting tank beats on you. The tank will want to stun the healer and get it down, and wait for the healer to mana up. Rinse, and repeat. This process took us 8 minutes to down the boss, but was the best we could do after 3 tries.

Comment by 297225

The first time I fought him on heroic, I had a terrible time as a Combat Rogue. I tried to take down the healer first (a resto druid), but was killed by all the other shades before I succeeded. Luckily, the rest of my group did better and took him down regardless.

Tonight, I went again, with a terrible group to boot (numerous wipes throughout the instance), and yet we one-shot him. I was prepared to go all-out with Blind and all my other tricks, but this wasn't even necessary. Before the pull I asked my group to stand together close to the boss (we had a resto druid, a mage and a shadowpriest), and this allowed me to kill my shades almost instantly with Blade Flurry/Fan of Knifes/Killing Spree. Me being out of my phase so quickly naturally helped everyone else surviving the Insanity.

We still had a death during the second Insanity phase, and I probably wouldn't have had my cooldowns available in time for the second phase if our group dps wasn't so low, but this should help any Combat Rogue who's struggling with this fight.

Comment by Factsfountain

Contrary to popular belief it is NOT possible to survive insanity as a rogue if your group has a healer and a tank. Vanish does not work, and rogues do not have enough armor to survive 2 dps, a tank, and a healer all zerging you at once. Rather, it is easier to just die and make it so theres one less enemy for your teammates to worry about when volazj casts insanity.
Sad, but its the truth. (Yes, i do play a rogue)

Comment by 300317

I tried this fight tonight on heroic mode with a group consisting of resto druid (me), prot warrior, two mages, and a warlock. DPS was nothing stellar but definitely workable. However, not a single member of the group was able to kill my shadow clone. On previous runs the heroic Insanity event was challenging, but in this case it was literally impossible.

The warrior felt particularly helpless, as every time he hit me I would immediately return to 100% health. This seems consistent with a warrior doing slightly under 1,000 DPS against a Lifebloom stack ticking for slightly over 1,000 HPS.

For this reason, and because the event seemed to have gotten harder rather than easier as people geared up, I wondered if the shadow clones scaled with gear. For the second attempt I removed most of my gear, ending up with 200 +healing rather than 1800. This of course gimped the real me, but shadow me was still untouchable.

Let me reiterate this: Even after removing almost all gear and losing 1600 spellpower, my shadow version's heals were still strong enough that not a single party member could kill him. The "remove your gear" method may no longer work.

After reading that the line-of-sight glitch has been fixed, and that changing forms does not prevent my shadow version from healing, I am out of ideas. Unless I can put together a group specifically designed to own trees (death knights and rogues perhaps?), I won't be going back to the Old Kingdom anytime soon.

Comment by 179515

In heroic mode the Images got 12000 HP.

Comment by nerael

Our group conceived a different strategy for the Volazj's Quick Demise achievement. Despite having really good dps, my party members were taking too long to kill me (Druid) and we didn't quite have enough dps to squeeze past the second Insanity before the two minute time limit had expired. Be prepared to be blown away.

Group makeup:
Warrior Prot Tank
Tree Druid (me)
Enhancement Shaman
Warlock
Hunter

The essential components of this strategy are the Warlock (for summoning) and the Shaman (heroism).

First off, you can run along the right pillar behind Volazj and not aggro the boss, he has a very small aggro radius. We ninja'd past the boss up to the area where you burn the corpse and had the warlock place summons on the druid, hunter, and warlock. None of these players accept these summons - yet. We had the warrior tank the boss down the web-ramp by the brazier. and the Hunter MD pulls to him, then runs up to join the druid and the warlock standing by the exit instance portal. The shaman blows heroism as dps starts as possible and we burst the boss down as far as possible until he casts the first insanity.

Now, when the insanity cast begins we have the druid, lock, and hunter zone out of the instance, still keeping those summons on themselves that will bring them back into the instance next to the boss. These three will wait until the shaman and warrior call them back before they use their summons - they will have to wait until the second insanity at 33% health has already been cast.

Meanwhile inside, the shaman and warrior will only have to kill one evil clone each because they are the only two people in the instance for him to cast insanity on, then they dps the boss to 33% (Our initial dps and warlock dots on the boss brought him down to 37%) and if need be they use healthstones and shield wall to stay alive for that short amount of time. When the warrior and shaman reach 33% Volazj will cast his second insanity and AFTER insanity is finished casting is when the other three people accept their summons and zone back in. The shaman and warrior will quickly dispense of their second evil clones and then everyone has about a minute left over to dps the boss. Game. Set. Match!

We couldn't believe it when this actually worked, it only took us two tries using this method to do it. =D

Comment by 302536

This was an epic fight. When the first Insanity popped in the dps players died eventually. I was tanking as Protection Warrior and had Resto Druid healing. Only me and the healer were alive after first insanity but we managed to continue and survive through the second insanity. The boss still had around 200k Hp so it took a while for me to take him down. No bracer drop though...

My advice for Prot Warriors is to wait for all Stun & Silence abilities to be ready, then unleash them on the healer in the hope for crits.

Comment by Stigmata

Late night, my group tried him, and during insanity the 3 dps died. Being exhausted, they just left group, released, and were done.

However, not willing to go down, I kept fighting and my heal buddy stayed with it. Low on mana, i tossed her a mana pot during the fight , and continued tank dpsing him down. Next insanity, it was just me against heals, and her against tank. She used that time to use mp5 and mana up and I couldn't for the life of me kill the heals - though i wouldnt die to it either.
After this we continued, and we killed him. it was rather epic.

I'll probably get downrated for not bringing useful info so here goes.
I learned that insanity does have a timer so if your group cannot kill, just outlast it. I cannot be sure but i'd guess it's around a minute and a half to 2 minutes.

Comment by Soltris

The Benny Hill method (credit to Agogoer-Shadowsong):

DPS as normal until Insanity phase. During the cast, everybody runs back out to the plaza where Jedoga Shadowseeker is. Lead the copy party on a chase up the stairs to Jedoga's platform, then to the other side and back down the stairs (if you left trash mobs in this area, they should have despawned during insanity). Do one big lap around the room, basically, and make your way back up to Volazj's room. You'll arrive with a few seconds to spare before the copies despawn on their own and the fight begins again. We ran this way when our prot warrior kept dying during Insanity and after one mishap it worked. No speed records this way but it's entertaining.

Comment by PureGold

During insanity:

I personally (as a prot pally) had no trouble burning down anyone, just group them up and try your hardest to keep the healer stunned and arcane torrented if you are a bloodelf.

Over all dps die pretty quickly, I did notice I was the first done so I think I was a bit hard to kill.

Comment by zarathorn

My run against this boss today made me want to quit this game. We made the mistake of bringing two prot paladins and a holy priest. Needless to say, all the squishies died fast during insanity, due to large shield of the righteous crits from the paladins. Lesson learned: two tanks = bad.

Comment by 267196

This is a fun, yet difficult fight, especially on heroic with a resto druid healing.

While Vanish apparently does not work, judging by the comments (and I've no way to test it myself, being a Druid), I was able to Shadowmeld out of the Insanity and help the rest of my party.

Edit: As it turns out, it was just lucky timing. I must have shadowmelded as soon as someone else killed their group, as when I tried it again, I noticed that the "Twisted Visage"s had detect stealth.

Comment by Zekeman

the shadows of your friends once u kill em you can see the real people and u can help fight the other ones that are fighting your friends.

Comment by Ruskin

Very fun fight and it seemed to be one of the easier fights of the instance for our group to complete. Group was ( Holy Priest, War Tank, 2x Hunters and Druid in Kitty). We used the fishing pole idea and it seemed to help in the first insanity, just dont forget to switch back to your real weapons/shield after the cast. Like everyone says kill the heals first as they seem to heal hard and fast and that can make things a nightmare if allowed to continue. Priest just spammed fear and shield and kited around the room until we came to help. I guess I (warrior) was hard to kill as I seemed to be first to finish and we lost our druid and one hunter to the first insanity.... which was a blessing in disguise. Less dps made the 2nd insanity easy. We finished him off with heals tank and hunter and were not really in any trouble of dying.

ps. the hunters disengaged. it was funny but nothing to worry about. also there pets do not turn.

Comment by 308846

If you have a holy priest as your healer, I don't think this fight can be done without the Mind Control trick. I just did this fight and it was such a pain until I read up about it. Make sure to take advantage of it!

Comment by 258919

This boss is interesting, if anything.

First you must clear the room of forgotten ones, or else they'll cause you way too much pain. Watch out when you fight the forgotten ones- if they use their fear attack on you, you may run right into the boss.

He uses shadow damage, so use buffs that negate it. He has a few AoE attacks and a Mind Flay attack, which causes shadow damage and a minor speed debuff.

His main feature is the fact that he can clone your players into enemy NPCs. These enemies are not too hard to kill, but behave somewhat like players (they cast healing spells on eachother and use your abilities). Killing your healer's counterpart first would make it easier.

After the clones are wiped out, keep hitting the boss. Make sure your clothies stay away from him to avoid AoE damage. He will clone your party one or two more times before he dies.

Comment by caridor

has there every been a better reason for a SOC spam?
i found that using seed of corruption on all 5 and then triggering a hellfire, caused all to explode simultaneously and hit the others for 2.5-3k ish. the advantage of that was that no-matter how good the healer was, it was impossible to heal through it. makes the warlock's fight easier.

Comment by 222832

Being the healer in there for the first time, it scared the heck out of me when my teammates began to attack me.
I just tried to outheal them, thinking if i killed them, my party would wipe ;P
Of course, abit after they came to help me against them selves...
Abit confusing ;P

Comment by 95657

Trying this now with group make up of me tanking (prot pally) druid healer, lock, rogue, hunter. and i must say it is impossible for me to kill the druid on my own. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Comment by 314628

noone has added a mages point of view.. im full on arc mage decked in naxx/heroics gear.. have done this multiple times 1 time with pally heals 3 times with druid heals 1 time with priest

being arc with burst damage i can burn heals down fairly easy only melee give me trouble so here is wat i do for each of these class heals for this fight
===heals===
Druid= target immediatly at insanity pull all together nova/arctorrent for silience pop cds counter spell spellsteal hots druid is no problem cuz only melle suxes for me

priest= by far the easiest jus mass dps 10k crits help alot

pally is by far the hardest for me so i jus out last nova/ice lance the heals/melee blink alot if u have pally tank

no data for shammy heals

=melee=
simply grp up and blizzard down after u burn down healer ( have rogues unequip weps )
note dks death grip ur ass off so max range the dk b4 any other melee
=tanks=
all the tanks are ez mode pallies aven shield kinda sux but shield up cast ffb (more haste the better) blink out and rape

very survivable for a good mage with good DPS (if ur below 2.2k dps ur screwed)

==best grp makeup==
for this fight the best grp i have done this with successfully numerous times is

warrior tank
ele shammy
mage
mage
priest heals

mage clones are uber easy to down id say any clothie type is in grp is easy to pwn

====================
for those that do the let dps die crap approach thats lame get ur dps up or ppl that know wat they are doing this is by no means an easy fight for anyone that is cloth but very survivable if geared/prepared i hope ur paying repair bills for anyone u let wipe jus to down the boss... if u survive ur insanity grp the healer in someone elses grp is top priority ALWAYS heals go down fist *** caster grps definitly way to go for this from my point of view mage armor+glyph+ talents for resistance in tree= not much damage to me but this is coming from a mage so ; )

Comment by 315935

A tip i learned today was to soul stone yourself as a lock and when you first start the fight hellfire volazj till your death wait for the first insanity to pass the use your soul-stone and hellfire again if you want you can die before first insanity and wait till after second one either way it eliminates you as an opponent during insanity but you can still attack the boss although make sure your dead both times before insanity for this trick to work.

Comment by 315935

This really is golden i did it for the second time today died before first insanity ressed straight after second one my group 4 manned him for the last 33% (hunter died on second insanity) but all in all for a lock this makes the fight so much easier( tell the healer to not heal you i had the same healer the second day as the first by freak coincidence) .

Comment by lizbliz

I did this as a hunter and tank was a paladin.

So yeah, try kiting that group when you have a enemy spamming a ranged stun as often as possible. Not fun. Doesn't work so well.

Comment by Dokandre

this boss is especially fine to do with people we dont like :)

"insanity is up.. omg i can attack you MUHAHAHAHA DIE!"

Comment by 299935

Any mages out there know if you can use Iceblock to avoid his Insanity spell? If a Paladin's Divine Intervention works, you'd think Iceblock would do the same.

Comment by Shadowlyger

As a Deathknight tank with another DK, a priest, and two hunters, the insanity phase was laughable. Strangulate on the priest when he first attempts to cast Greater Heal, then mind freeze on his second attempt and he's down. The other DK seemed to just melee, and not very hard. The hunter clones didn't even seem to be hitting me with their arrows, I think I just dodged most of them; a dodge chance of slightly over 1 in 5 attacks is nice. The hunter copies died easily enough, and thus it was on to helping the rest of the group, none of which seemed to have any trouble at all, though the hunters did dip a bit in health on the second insanity phase.

Very fun fight, but from what I've read, I wouldn't want to try this with a resto druid on the team... I'd have to see about my holy paladin friend.

Comment by vaarsej

please tell your feral druid not to bring his Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole.

Comment by 318849

So my group just did this, here was makeup--

Me (FFB MAGE)
DK Frost Tank
Hunter
Boomkin
Priest

We wiped like 5 times trying to figure out a strat-- only hunter and priest were surviving instanity, due to "THAT MAGES" untimly novas and such, so I just went in first and died, watched the whole fight. No1 got below 50%.

Comment by lizbliz

The best strategy here is like others have said, kill the healer first. Other wise you will have major issues doing the false allies.

Here are a few things I have learned that might help (for hunters at least)

1. Don't try to click on your party's icons to find and target the false ally healer, they are not the same thing.

2. As a hunter, kiting multiple people (4 in this case) at the same time is not the easiest thing, but the best strategy I find for it is to lay down a frost trap and kiting them in a circle while you kill the healer. As a survival hunter, after that you can wyvren one and freeze the other and kill the highest dps there if you think you can do it that way but it might be better to keep up the circle kite until you get it down to two of them. Once you do that it's easy to keep one of them on cc lock down until you are finished with the other dps. Always leave the tank for last if you can help it, they will not be doing near as much damage to you. Also, if you spec'd for scatter shot, use it as often as possible against the dps. If you are MM and spec'd for silencing shot, use it on the healer as you kill them. Before I might have suggested also using viper sting on the healer or any other mana users you think need it but now that viper sting is a pile of ^&*! in terms of amount drained you just need to keep your mind on burning them down as fast as possible.

3. seriously, the name of the game is 'where's the healer', remember that. If you don't kill the healer if will be many times harder to get this done without dying. Because of this it seems having a resto druid healer would make it easier. That way you just have to look for a tree.

4. Get in the open, if you were fighting this guy near the doorway arch, get into the middle of the room so you don't run yourself into a corner and get wtfpwnt. Jump and disengage if you have to but get your self some maneuvering room quickly or you will die quickly.

5. If you happen to have a pally in your group, you stay the #$%^ away from him. I mean it. Wyvren sting him right away before you go into any sort of kiting (using frost trap or other wise) because they will rang stun you and while frost trap kiting you are in range of the range stun. If they land one on your you are pretty much &*!@ed, that's all there is too it. You can pop deterrence and disengage to get away for the moment but you just left you frost trap, the best kiting tool for this situation, behind and still on CD most likely. And that is if you are quick enough, because once you are stunned you are about to get jumped big time by 2 dps and a tank.

If you are in a group is a dk and a pally I think you are better off just playing keep away until help shows up. (this is based on theory as I have never done this with a dk, but I assume one of the moves they use it death grasp and between DG and the pally's ranged stun if you get anywhere near them you will never get away so drop a frost and switch to cheetah if there are no ranged dps and run around the room until you're team mates arrive.)

Comment by 325066

Just did it without shaman.
DPS specced DK + two rogues + shadowpriest + mage.

Army of the dead at the pull, went all out. Be sure to dot him before he manages to cast second illusion (you skip first by nuking 66->33 under 5 sec). DK surviving illusions, achievment done.

Comment by Khanor

our group makeup here was a mage, tank (me), resto druid, all in naxx 10 gear with a lock and dk in heroic grear, and we still had trouble here.

after many many wipes (counted 7?) we tried having the resto druid switch to cat form right before the insanity ticked off (easy with show enemy cast bars) and it worked wonders. he still casts nourish but they heal for MUCH less. basicly turned the fight into 4 + an off healer. the healer is good to jump back to tree form once his copy shows up as a cat but he MUST be in cat form when the cast completes or your going to have trouble here.

Comment by 309391

That's true what some people said, insanity has a certain time before it's removed. the first time i did it i Freaked out as i was attacked by my group but if you can survive 1:30 minutes, the clones will Despawn and the fight will continue ...
I was a DK with 31k health so surviving was not an issue really

Against Hunter, DK, Paladin, Warlock

Comment by Bobrik

Little advice for all priests out there.

Use Divine Hymn, stuns for 20 secs, gives a lot of time to mind-control all of them.

Edit: Not possible anymore, only thing I could suggest is MCing stunner/interruptor first, fear the rest of the group and MC one by one.
Edit: Not possible anymore (again, *sigh*). As of 3.1.2, MCing the target and realeasing them does not work anymore.

My only advice would be Fear the clones, Lightwell (If you're Holy. Lightwell doesn't phase too so others can see it) and keep yourself alive.
And most importantly, Don't DPS them, it takes a hell lot of mana which you will need later in the fight.

Edit: Sigh, now even the Lightwell gets phased.
_______________________________________________________________
I'm not gonna delete this post, I'll keep it here for archiving reasons ;)

Comment by 342852

So to clarify, the insanity is cast based on %?

any idea about mind flay? or you just have to have lucky timing with spell reflection (warr tank)

Comment by Solacia

insanity is extremely easy to deal with as a blood specced death knight. build up runic power and get 4 death runes ready for when insanity hits, when it does pop dancing rune weapon and hysteria in succession. Anything with 5 yards is going to die in a couple seconds of heart strike spam, most healers won't have time to finish a single cast.

This was also effective when the group managed to dps the boss so hard before the first insanity finished casting that we got both insanities stacked and had 2 copies of each player to kill, or 8 total. They all went down more or less immediately, both healers never even casted

Comment by wingsofscion

To add to all the various experiences here, I thoguht I'd throw in my two copper as a protection warrior. From my experience with this boss about an hour ago at this time. Group makeup: Prot Warr, Holy Priest, 2x Shadow Priest, Fire Mage

Holy Priest will cast Renew, Greater Heal, Flash Heal, Shadow Word: Pain
Shadow Priests will Shadow Word: Pain and spam Mind Flay (very hurtful to a melee class of any kind, even less fun with more than one at the same time), but I have not noticed them healing ever
Fire Mage will Fireball, Frost Nova, Blink, Fire Blast
Prot Warrior will Sunder Armor (not Devastate!), Shockwave

I have done this instance with a variety of other players as well:

Shaman will use Lesser Healing Wave, Chain Lightning and Frost Shock;
Hunters will use Serpent Sting and Disengage;
Rogues won't stunlock (thank the gods), but they will use Backstab and I think Deadly Throw
Warlocks will use Corruption, Curse of Agony, Curse of Weakness, Shadow Bolt
Feral Druids will use Mangle, Rake (if kitty), Maul (if bear)
Ret Paladins will use Consecrate, Judgements, Flash of Light

Haven't run with everything there is to this point, yet, but I will also note that if you silence a caster, they will try to melee.

Also, shades will not, from what I have seen, attempt to use racials (such as Berserking or Gift of the Naaru).

Comment by 252675

I don't know why everybody is having such a hard time killing their shades as a prot warrior. You've got several abilities that will help take down healers within seconds, and with your healer down, the rest of the party should be a cake walk.

Open up with a charge towards your healer and shield bash them to silence them for a few seconds. If they already popped a HoT on themselves at that point, hit them with shield slam to dispell it. From there, use concussive blow, shield bash, shockwave and heroic throw. Once you're through with that rotation, your healer should be dead, leaving you to take out the rest of your party with relative ease.

I would also suggest going for ranged DPS right after your healers, silencing the casters and doing a charge/SS combo on hunters.

Leave the DPS for last, as that whole time, you should be blocking a good portion of their attacks, damaging them with damage shield and also dealing damage to them with your AoEs.

With this strategy, I've never had a problem being the first one to come out of insanity to help out the rest of my party.

P.S. If you're having trouble keeping your health up during the insanity phase, pop shield wall/last stand THEN enraged regeneration. If you pop ER after your other two abilities, you'll be regenerating a lot more health, as ER calculates how much to regen after all the buffs and abilities are counted. 30k total health = 10k health regen over 10 seconds.

*edit* If you're still having trouble taking down your healer, go do some pvp and focus on the casters. Not only is it fun, but you'll get plenty of practice keeping them silenced and stunned.

Comment by 192185

As of 3.1, priests can no longer use mind control to insta-kill the copies. Holy priests beware, the changes to mana regeneration, coupled with the innate lack of DPS, is going to make the insanity phases much more difficult on Heroic.

Comment by sunderwear

As of 3.1.0, The MC trick no longer works. Targets are immune.
On the plus side, any healers or any capable of healing appear to heal for less.

Edit: I have done this as a Prot War, Ele Shaman, and Disc Priest so far. And with crappy casual gear (I.E. Heroic badge only) The prot war has the easiest time. I can keep the healer stun locked the entire time. Ele Shaman comes in 2nd (12k Lava Burst crits negate any heals done!) The disc priest just has to stay alive...make sure people use the 'unequip' macro to use when he casts insanity. Just don't forget to put the weapons back on!

The boss still hits like a kitten. If you're having trouble and you have a hybrid DPS (Shaman, Druid, Paladin, Priest), just have them get naked and die. It will make it easier to get through insanity.

And at the end of the fight you will see that's the only hard part about it. I've two manned this boss more times than I've done it with a full group in pugs.

Comment by aceysmith

Solo or nobody else alive, his Insanity is pretty tame..
Soloing on my hunter

Comment by Ahyb

This guy totally bugged out for my group today. We got him to 40% or so then we get Insanity phase in which we kill our groups and then converge with a few group members and then all of the sudden we're alone with the mobs that were up plus going through another insanity phase 2 more times alone. It was not doable at that point, some members ran out the instance the others died.

Comment by mattmojo2

A word of warning:

If you dps the boss too fast, and get him to 33% by the time he casts insanity, he will double cast it, causing you to have to fight 8-10 clones of your party, which is VERY hard to get through. My group kept wiping thinking the boss was glitched since it kept spawning so many, but it was actually due to over dpsing him.

Comment by asloversgo

So THIS is what's been haunting all these hentai girls... Finally we get to meet it.

Comment by tappertrainman

Be careful of killing him too fast, we killed him in 19 seconds and he bugged out, we were stuck in our phased condition, we had to hearth out and come back.

Comment by 296147

The other party members in the Insanity "room" all have 1,200 HP.

Comment by 321871

One thing should be noted; it is possible to nuke this boss down BEFORE he phases your group. My group downed him in 21 seconds, guildrun. Our group consisted of DK-frost tank, warlock, boomkin, elemental shaman(me) and a pala, we did not have a healer, we just zerged.

Basically I buffed the DPS with Totem of Wrath and Heroism, pala did BoK and used concentration aura. We also had the well fed buff. I can post a screeny.

Comment by 510121

As a resto druid, I hot up the tank then throw rejuv and wg on everyone. As soon as madness hits, drop out of treeform, barkskin and hurricane everything down. When your adds are dead, toss a quick wg and help hurricane down everyone else's adds. Everyone stays alive and it's much faster this way. Rinse and repeat for second madness.

Quite often I've topped the chart on damage done on the twisted visages, sometimes more than the rest of the party combined. No need to run around healing yourself waiting for a rescue. Playing aggressively helps your party more and certainly saves on healing and a battle rezz.

For that matter, tossing wraths at the twilight volunteers on Jedoga has made the difference on whether she gets the buff or not. Saves you healing in the end if you can prevent that.

Comment by malletin

anyone got any clue of what "they do not die,they do not live they are outside the circle" means? my guess is that he talks about how the undeads doesnt fit into the circle of a living being seing as it doesnt die but neither does it live to begin with.

Comment by 236163

In a completely unrelated note, one of the most bizarre revelations I had in WoW was to discover that the nonsensial gargling sounds Volazj makes during the fight were actually voiced by a woman - Lani Minella, no less, who also provided the voice of the Succubus, Banshee, Harpy, Sindragosa and possibly Lady Blaumeux.

Comment by Bogrim

While tanking normal, I casted Blessing of Protection on the healer in the last second of Insanity's cast. It saved the fragile healer a great deal of damage in a pure melee dps group. You can cast other protection spells on party members before Insanity kicks in to buy your DPS more time to get to the healer before he runs out of mana or dies to the illusions.

Comment by 662504

Just in case someone was wondering what happens when you fight him solo: he will not cast insanity at all. It's a boring tank'n'spank thing. I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped I'd get to fight myself.

Comment by 269502

Did this boss one day without having a single insanity. we kinda rofled hard when we thought that the achievement is to kill him in 2 minutes... the fight took 12 seconds :D

Group was pretty much ICC geared Warlock/rogue/paladin dps, don't remember the tank and a shaman that had 6k dps (healer).

Comment by Deshala

I think this boss is speaking Welsh.

Comment by 857089

Easiest boss in here to solo as a protection paladin, i'm level 75, and i have 19k health, his Mind Flay is the deadliest ability he has, but a complete joke if you interrupt it, his insanity dosent do anything since you are the only one there, and he hits really low.

Comment by spartondan

I loved this fight. I just did it again a few minutes ago and I can't get over how great it is! I just love killing the PUGs and even myself.

Comment by jankojankov

We did make a party , got wiped 2 times ...but 2 dks can manage disturbing him upon insanity cast with Death Grip, it was just enough time to get the other persons Death grip cool down fade .... 1 time per DK and the guy died before the 3rd Insanity cast ...

Comment by MABGamer6407

It says "They drink your fear: it is the blood of life." But we should say.

"We drink your fear! We drink it all up!"

Comment by Stakiyah

For a demonology warlock in 5.0.4, the Twisted Visages are laughable. Make sure you have a little fury on hand, then pop either Dark Apotheosis or Metamorphosis, turn on Hellfire and spam Touch of Chaos. It's like mowing the lawn.

Comment by WyrdreaperVI

I just solo'd him as a level 85 Demonology Warlock. Insanity Phase did not exist.
/foreveralone

Comment by Ainmhi

I just noticed in a LFG queue that the Twisted Visages didn't spawn as group doppelgangers, but as red sparks that don't do much of anything. Was wondering if this was a glitch on my system or if someone else had seen it.
If this is a change it's kind of a bummer- that was pretty much the best part of that fight.

Comment by Tenjen

Insanity has been nerfed at some point during the expansions. instead of creating copies of your team mates, you now have red mist enemies spawn who copy your team mates abilities.

really the whole fun of the fight was that they created actual models of your team, making newbies to the fight think it was mind control.

Edit: seems it was restored again but they made some changes to what needs to be done with it

Comment by ItalianGoat

Just tried to do the heroic achieve on him as a level 100 hunter. Threw my glaives, arcane shot and dead.

The thing is, I didn't get the achieve - it glitched or something. According to the 'Dungeon Objectives' on the side, I hadn't defeated him at all. Guess I'll have to come back tomorrow...

Note to self and others doing this achieve late like I am: don't kill him too fast.

Comment by jaxdaws

As of 6.2, during the Timewalking encounter this fight appears to be bugged. My group and I went into the Insanity phase, and each of us only reported having to kill one or two of the enemies before the phase ended and we were kicked out.

After that, Volazj began to replenish his health at a rate that made it much harder to defeat him, enough that we wiped at least once.

So.. Just something to be aware of.

Comment by volvagia65

Confirmed! In the newest Hearthstone expansion "Whispers of the Old Gods" this is the Priest legendary card.

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Herald Volazj

Ahn'kahet: The Old KingdomElder NadoxPrince TaldaramJedoga ShadowseekerHerald VolazjAmanitarHerald VolazjAhn'kahet: The Old KingdomVolazj's Quick DemiseOverview

At 66% and at 33% of his health left, Herald Volazj will drive all party members insane. forcing them to enter phased instances where each has to kill the Twisted Visages of the "copied" party members. Once one has killed his four Visages, he may help another player. When all have killed, Herald Volazj may be attacked again.

Apart from casting Mind Flay on his primary aggro target, he will inflict Shadow damage to everyone in the party through Shiver and Shadow Bolt Volley.

AbilitiesHerald Volazj

Mind Flay - Inflicts 2,828 to 3,172 Shadow damage every second for 3 seconds and reduces movement speed by 50%. Cast on his primary aggro target.

Shadow Bolt Volley - Inflicts 850 to 1,150 Shadow damage to all players in the room.

Shiver - Inflicts 1,414 to 1,586 Shadow damage to a player, then jump to another player in a 20 yard range. Can affect up to 5 targets.

Insanity - Drive all players in the room to Insanity. During this time, players are phased and can't attack the Herald, but will be forced to fight 4 Twisted Visages. Used at 66% and 33% of Volazj's health left.

Herald Volazj

Mind Flay - Inflicts 5,655 to 6,345 Shadow damage every second for 3 seconds and reduces movement speed by 50%. Cast on his primary aggro target.

Shadow Bolt Volley - Inflicts 2,550 to 3,450 Shadow damage to all players in the room.

Shiver - Inflicts 2,828 to 3,172 Shadow damage to a player, then jump to another player in a 20 yard range. Can affect up to 5 targets.

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Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom (Timewalking) Dungeon Strategy Guide Wrath Timewalking Guide

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

Herald Volazj

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