Posted by admin on 01 25th, 2009

Mother Shahraz Strategy Guide

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Raid Setup

Tanks: 3
Healers: 9
DPS: 13

Buffs, Potions and Gear

Full Black Temple craftable shadow gear is required, as well as Medallion of Karabor. With these items and the shadow resistance buff from priests you will reach the shadow resistance cap.

Also, Major Shadow Protection Potions are useful, as are lots of Major Mageblood Potions and Super Mana Potions.

Everyone is wears the shadow resistance gear except the main tank who uses his regular tanking gear.

Boss Abilities

Health - 4,500,000 HP
Melee Strength - 6-7k per hit
Enrage - 10 minutes

Silencing Shriek

A melee range 9 second silence.

Beams

Constantly throughout the fight, Mother Shahraz is going to shoot 1 of 4 different Beams at a random player. Each beam “chains” to a total of any 10 players, and most of them do shadow damage. She will shoot 1 type of beam 3 times in a row and then switch to another type of beam. They are as follows:

Sinister Beam – Deals 2000 shadow damage and does a small knockback to affected targets. This knockback effect does not affect the 3 tanks.

Sinful Beam - Deals 6938 to 8062 shadow damage.

Vile Beam - Applies a debuff causing 2500 shadow damage every 2 seconds for 8 seconds.

Wicked Beam - Drains 1000 mana from affected targets. Not affected by Shadow Resistance.

Fatal Attraction

Teleports 1-3 players to a random location, giving them a debuff called Fatal Attraction that deals 2500 damage per tick, to all players in a 25 yard radius, every second for a total of 30 seconds. The debuff itself is not dispellable or removable, but Iceblock and Divine Shield make you immune to the damage component. The debuff disappears as soon as all of the players with it are 25 yards away from each other.

That separation is the key to winning the encounter. If you stay close to each other for more than 5-10 seconds, no matter how much shadow resistance or potions or healthstones you have, you and the people around you are going to die from the massive damage.

If just one person is affected by Fatal Attraction, they can simply ignore it and run back to their original position.

This ability DOES NOT affect the 3 main tanks.

Saber Lash

Deals a base value of 76000 to 84000 physical damage spread out amongst everyone in 1-2 yards range from the target highest on aggro (the main tank). To survive this ability, you need to have your 3 tanks stacked on top of each other so that the Saber Lash affects them all and spreads out the damage evenly between them.

Prismatic Auras

Every 15 seconds, Mother Shahraz will switch between each of her Prismatic Auras. A Prismatic Aura can be seen as a debuff on each player. They affect everyone in the raid within 99 yards of Mother Shahraz. Each Prismatic Aura reduces damage done by one spell school, while increasing the damage done by another spell school. The auras are as follows.

Prismatic Aura: Arcane
Arcane damage done reduced by 25%.
Nature damage done increased by 25%.

Prismatic Aura: Fire
Fire damage done reduced by 25%.
Frost damage done increased by 25%.

Prismatic Aura: Frost
Frost damage done reduced by 25%.
Fire damage done increased by 25%.

Prismatic Aura: Holy
Holy damage done reduced by 25%.
Shadow damage done increased by 25%

Prismatic Aura: Nature
Nature damage done reduced by 25%.
Arcane damage done increased by 25%.

Prismatic Aura: Shadow
Shadow damage done reduced by 25%.
Holy damage done increased by 25%.

Strategy

Positioning

Generally, Mother Shahraz is tanked somewhere on the path leading up to her, with the 3 tanks in front of her, and melee DPS behind her.

There are many possible positions for the rest of the raid, and ultimately they are all up to your personal preference. Some guilds prefer to have the raid all bunched up in 1 spot, some decide to make 2 camps, some prefer to go with 3 or 4.

It is all about how Fatal Attraction will affect your raid.

If for example you have the raid in 1 group, there is a very low chance of people with Fatal Attraction getting teleported onto this one raid spot. However, if it does happen, the entire raid is going to take 3000 shadow damage (much of which will be resisted) each second. That’s a lot of damage, even with shadow resistance gear.

If you have the raid in 3 groups, you have a 3 times higher chance to get the Fatal Attraction people teleported inside a group, but when it happens the raid also takes 3 times less total damage, as it only affects a third of the raid.

In that line of thought, you might think that spreading everyone all over the place is the best thing to do. However, that way, the Fatal Attraction people are going to run past almost every single raid member in order to get away from each other and the raid as a whole is going to be taking a lot of damage every teleport. It’s probably the worst positioning you can chose.

This guide is based on a balanced 3 group position.

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Alternative Positioning

This positioning scheme’s advantage is that it gives players 3 clearly defined spaces to move to: Stage, Door, and Waterfall. Door is where the entrance to the room is, Stage is where Mother is pulled from, and Waterfall is that pool to the south of the pull spot (the picture is oriented so that the leftmost side is actually North on the in-game minimap).

The Fight

Before the pull, everyone goes to their pre assigned spots, even the melee DPS. A hunter then Misdirects Mother Shahraz to the main tank, and the fight begins.

Mother Shahraz will start shooting her beams as soon as she gets to the main tank, and her Prismatic Auras will activate soon after.

After the first 3 beams, she’s going to pick another type of beam to shoot out. This isn’t really much of your concern since all you can do is just take the damage from the beams.

Soon into the fight she’ll start doing her Prismatic Aura rotation, switching it with a new one every 15 seconds (you see an indication of the time until the next aura, as the Prismatic Aura takes up one of your debuff slots). Mages, Warlocks and Shadow priests pay special attention to the Prismatic Auras and the different vulnerabilities as they’re key to maximizing your DPS.

The Saber Lashes are pretty random and can come at any moment. Each tank will take about a solid 10k damage when hit by a Saber Lash so healers should be ready to heal up the 3 tanks, especially the main tank, pretty quickly.

Another random event is the Fatal Attraction teleport. It comes at a completely random time. The first one can come after 90 seconds, or it can come after 15. The second one can follow also at a random time. Fatal Attraction will often teleport 3 random people, but sometimes it can teleport only 2, or even just 1. Main tanks can never be the target of this ability.

A very tricky moment with Fatal Attraction, is when the 3 affected players are teleported inside a player camp. It’s best for everyone in the camp to just stay put as the 3 teleported players get away from each other. Otherwise, you’ll just take too much damage in the confusion.

Having the Teleport happen right on top of Mother Shahraz or any of the melee/tank guys can have disastrous consequences. Some players can linger for a few seconds until they choose where to head to, or simply “load” the new location on their computers. Whatever happens, everyone in melee range (especially the main tank who has no shadow resistance gear) are going to take a lot of damage. Main tank healing needs to be strong if you happen to get such a teleport. The most common reason for an unavoidable wipe is a teleport like this and a Saber Lash at the same time, since the damage from the 2 abilities is often too much to handle.

Deciding how to split the Fatal Attraction people from each other depends solely on you. One good strategy if you get 1 Healer and 2 other classes teleported, is to have the healer sit in place and heal himself and them, while the 2 others get away from him. The problem comes when you have 2 or 3 healers teleported. That’s when you need to communicate well so you make sure that the 3 of you don’t just sit and wait for each other to run.

Thus, in order to avoid such cases, it is often easiest for everyone to run for themselves away from the other 2 players. Making sure all 3 players run in different directions and you don’t have 2 people sprint off together, each thinking the other one will break off, is probably the main challenge of this encounter. Also, often 2 people will run in the same direction, and to one guy it will seem that the other one is following him and vice-versa. In reality they’re both running on the same spot on the server. This vicious cycle of, “No, you were following me!” can often be the reason why people die from Fatal Attraction.

Again, the key in the encounter is making sure people don’t die from the Fatal Attraction damage, by making sure they get away from each other as fast as possible. This will inevitably take some practice.

The fight goes on with it’s 15 second switch Prismatic Auras, Beams, random Saber Lashes and Fatal Attractions, until Mother Shahraz dies. There is only 1 Phase to this encounter.

Class Assignments

Tanks - The main tank can use regular tanking gear, while the other 2 tanks should focus on shadow resistance/pure HP gear. Make sure you stand on top of each other 100% of the time or you risk the main tank dying. Whilst the main tank holds aggro as normal, the two off tanks do not need to worry about their position on the threat meter, and can simply DPS the boss.

Melee DPS - Go all out DPS to your heart’s desire as long as you don’t take aggro. This fight was made for you.

Ranged DPS - Mana users beware. The mana draining beam can become a serious issue if it hits you a few times in a row, as it’s going to burn your mana pool (and thus your damage) really fast. Use Mageblood Potions, Mana Oils, Mage Armor, and chain drink Super Mana Potions, all so you don’t run out of mana.

Healers - Again, beware. This is a very tough fight for you. The constant mana drains and the massive damage taken by the raid combined with the fact that you have almost 30% less healing and mana regeneration due to the shadow resistance gear makes it even tougher. Conserve mana as much as you can, drink down many potions, and do everything you can so you don’t run out of mana too quickly.