History
We created our first Heroic guides for the Siege of Orgrimmar back in 2013 and continued them in WoD.
What set our guides apart was that we didn’t write them until we had defeated the bosses at least once. This ensured that,
unlike some other guides, we could describe a proven strategy and also address new insights that emerged in the weeks leading up to the kill.
Unfortunately, many other guides were created only once based on the PTR and never received any updates.
At the time, our guides only covered the differences from Normal Mode, since we could assume that most players were already familiar with them.
Since Heroic bosses can now be challenged starting at lockout #1, the guides have been updated to include the bosses' standard abilities.
These guides are tailored for the 10-man version of the bosses, which are often only briefly covered in the 25-man guides. The first 10 bosses in SoO are usually considered easier in 25-man, while 10-man requires a few refined tactics here and there to compensate for the lack of the various cooldowns or ignorable abilities in 25-man.
Guide Contents
You can always find the recommended standard setup for first kills in the Quick Facts. For example,
you’ll be able to play Immerseus later on, or, if you’re ambitious, right away with just one tank.
But that won’t be covered in detail in these guides, as it would otherwise make things too confusing.
The Introduction includes a few sentences about the mechanics of the specific fight. After that, it usually covers the
Phases (if present) and, if relevant, their exact sequence.
Each phase describes the respective abilities in detail, along with how they are handled.
If there is a large number of mechanics that interact with one another, this will be explained in a separate chapter.
The TL;DR section is intended more as a list of the most important boss abilities than as a brief guide, and naturally does not cover important abilities in detail.
The class tips are based on our experiences from back then, mostly from the perspective of Rogues and Brewmasters.
These guides are not meant to be skimmed over quickly; rather, they are designed to provide a comprehensive description of every aspect of a boss fight. In the standard guides, some crucial mechanics are often only touched upon briefly or not at all, which can make them difficult to understand when facing the boss for the first time.
The guides do not cover advanced tactics, which usually involve reducing the number of tanks and healers, such as solo-tanking Immerseus, Thok, or Kardris (in the latter case, even without a healer) and solo-healing Garrosh. These options are briefly mentioned but not discussed in detail. Separate guides for some of these tactics may follow in the coming weeks and months.
Please note that the ability tooltips are from the 25-player Heroic Mode. Unfortunately, these cannot currently be changed to 10-player Heroic Mode. The damage numbers listed directly in the guides are the 10-man values listed by Wowhead. In some cases, Wowhead has listed them wrong. For these abilities, the numbers come from old logs or the MoP PTR.
Order of Bosses
The first 10 bosses can be tackled one after another, as there isn't a huge difference in difficulty between them. After that, you can choose between Thok and Siegecrafter, though we definitely recommend Thok. He's much easier mechanically, but still a significant step up from the first bosses.
Research
The abilities have been verified to the best of our knowledge using many sources: videos from 2013/2014, external guides, our own guides,
Wowhead, forum posts, old logs, and the in-game compendium from Retail WoW and the MoP PTR. This also includes occasional visits to the
raid in Retail.
For some abilities, it has become difficult to determine the exact mechanics, as the guides from back then sometimes contain a mix
of misinformation, misleading phrasing, PTR information, and outdated descriptions.
Personally, I would estimate that the number of errors in our guides is minimal and that they can be relied upon.
If new information becomes available or something behaves differently in Classic MoP, the guides will be updated.
AI Disclaimer
No AI was used in the creation of these guides; everything was written and collected by hand. No information was taken from an AI and included in the guides.
The few times I’ve desperately searched for detailed information on a fight's mechanic and asked the AI for
sources, it came up with some ridiculous things. So don’t rely on it for your own research, and if you do happen to
use the AI as a substitute for a search engine: always ask for a source. You can safely discard any statements without a source
unless you remember the ability again with the AI’s help.
I would say that it is completely unsuitable, even for answering simple questions. Generally, the statements are mostly correct,
but they contain incorrect ability names, incorrect numbers, and made-up interpretations of mechanics that simply cannot work that way.
Here are a few wild claims regarding the following question: “How do the Mogu bosses from the large chests work in the ‘Spoils of Pandaria’ raid?”. I didn’t have to look far to find this; it was actually my first attempt at providing an example. (Note: this was done in German, the AI's answers have been translated.)
Anyone standing in this frontal cone will suffer heavy physical damage and be stunned for 2 seconds.
— Gemini Pro
(the damage isn't particularly high at 200 k physical damage)
Jun-Wei: Uses Demon Volley
— Gemini Pro
(made-up ability name)
The longer a statue remains alive, the greater the boss's AoE damage becomes.
— Gemini Pro
(only the number of statues determines whether damage is increased)
The tanks must immediately taunt the stone statues [...]
— Gemini Pro
(they cannot be tanked)
If you're playing on Heroic difficulty, an Unstable Spark will spawn when you open the large chest. It deals high raid damage and triggers a massive nova when it dies. The spark must not die while the raid is taking massive AoE damage from the Mogu boss.
— Gemini Pro
(nothing here makes any sense, the spark from the Burial Urn is probably confused/mixing with the Unstable Spark)