Well, Old Kingdom has its speed bumps. Heroic AN can be nightmarish without clensing for the final boss. Skadi the Ruthless in heroic UP can be an annoyance. But if I had to vote for the most challenging, difficult, and aggravating heroic dungeon in Wrath, I’d check the box next to heroic Oculus.
The instance begins with a few standard pulls with a mix of AoE and single targets. Simple enough.
At the end of the first path we are teleported to a platform. On the platform you’re asked to choose one of three different types of drakes to pilot. Each drake has different ‘abilities’ that allow it to excel at certain group roles. So there’s a healing drake, a dps drake, and a tank drake.
The goal is to fly on these things, use your drake’s abilities to kill other dragons, land on each platform, dismount, kill things on the platform, re-summon the drake, rinse and repeat.
The annoying part is that the enemy dragons can appear under or over-top of you without you noticing and can pick off a single party member before anybody can figure out where the hell it’s coming from. Oh, and if you’re the healing (emerald) dragon, you don’t even get a healing spell until the final boss which means that when a party member’s drake is low on health the party has to stand still until he regenerates. Lovely.
All of the bosses except the final boss are manageable and can be figured out quickly, but the final boss is a challenge.
Ley-Guardian Eregos
There are a few different combinations that apparently work for this boss, but after about 45 minutes of wiping with the standard 1 tank, 1 heal, 3 dps makeup we decided to switch to 2 healer drakes and 2 dps drakes. Here is the basic strategy that I recommend:
The boss will patrol the perimeter of his platform. Have the tank attack him when he’s furthest away from where the party is waiting.
There will be one tank healer who will also use the debuff tool, and one party healer who will heal everyone except the tank. It’s important for the second healer to remember to heal the other green drake because he/she will be hurting from debuffing the boss and constantly healing the tank. The two dps will do the damage and will alternate their ‘time stop’ abilities for when the boss periodically enrages. You’ll know he’s about to enrage because he says “Such insolence… such arrogance… must be PUNISHED!”
After a minute or so into the fight, he’ll go transparent and do a planar shift. When this happens Planar Anomaly sparks will appear and follow each player then eventually explode. The damage done by the explosion is most likely too much to handle and will eventually result in death. Luckily this maneuver is easy to handle. Just fly far away. Keep flying until the boss comes out of his planar shift and hurry back to him. When he does the planar shift again, flee the opposite way as to not reset the encounter with an evade bug from being too far from the platform.
Here’s a summary:
- Have the tank engage him when the boss is furthest from where the party is.
- 1 green healer debuffs the boss with “Touch the Nightmare” and heals the tank. The other healer heals the party except the tank (unless an emergency and you have the life to spare).
- The dps must time-stop immediately as the boss enrages.
- When the boss goes into his Planar Shift phase, run far away, then immediately run back when the boss becomes attackable
If the dps coordinates their “time stop” ability correctly, and everyone flees during Planar Shift, it should be a done deal. Good luck and feel free to leave your strategy/experiences in the comments section!
