Ulduar: Auriaya Boss Strategy Guide - World of Warcraft

General Information

7th Boss of World of Warcraft’s latest raid instance Ulduar. She has approximately 16.700.000 Health Points on heroic and approximately 3.200.000 Health Points on normal mode.

Abilities

Auriaya

• Sonic Screech: A Sonic Shockwave that deals 231250 to 268750 Physical damage to all enemies in its path. The Shockwave damge is split between all targets in its path. 50000 yd range, 2.5 sec cast, 4 sec cooldown
• Sentinel Blast: Inflicts 6000 Shadow damage and increases Shadow damage taken by 100% for 5 sec. Stacks. Instant
• Terrifying Screech: The screech strikes fear into the hearts of all nearby enemies, causing them to flee in horror for 5 sec. 2 sec cast, 8 sec cooldown
• Summon Swarming Guardian: Auriaya occasionally spawns a wave of panther adds (~20 mobs) with a low amount of health points. You can easily AoE them.

Feral Defender

• Feral Essence: Each essence increases the damage dealt by the Feral Defender by 50%. The Feral Defender can revive itself at the cost of one of its Feral Essences.
• Feral Rush: Charges an enemy, dealing Shadow damage and interrupting spell cast for 6 sec. 80 yd range
• Feral Pounce: The Feral Defender pounces the target stunning them for 5 sec and inflicting Shadow damage every 1 sec. 5-45 yd range
• Seeping Feral Essence: The Seeping Essence of the Feral Defender Inflicts 9000 Shadow damage every 1 sec. This is a void zone-like effect triggered where the Feral Defender spawns and dies.

Achievements

Heroic

• Heroic: Crazy Cat Lady - Defeat Auriaya without destroying her Sanctum Sentries on Heroic Difficulty.
• Heroic: Nine Lives - Defeat the Feral Defender while defeating Auriaya on Heroic Difficulty.

Normal

• Crazy Cat Lady - Defeat Auriaya without destroying her Sanctum Sentries on Normal Difficulty.
• Nine Lives - Defeat the Feral Defender while defeating Auriaya on Normal Difficulty.

The Encounter

One minute after the encounter was engaged, Auriaya will spawn a Feral Defender. It has 9 charges of Feral Essence. Each of the charges, increase it’s damage by 50% (as seen in the Abilities list).

Killing the Feral Defender, will remove one of the charges and the Feral Defender will be revived again with full health. Until you kill him 10 times (9 resurrections).

More coming soon…

Tactic and Setup

The pull is very tricky. If you simply pull her, the 4 adds will tear appart your tank or whoever had initial agro.

Requirements: 2-3 Hunters, 1-2 Rogues, 3 Tanks at least.

The trick is to work with Misdirection and Distract (Rogue Ability). Wait until she comes to the entrance and in the moment she turns around, have a Rogue distract 2 of the cats. Now wait and have her walk away. Before Distract fades off, have a second Rogue distract the cats (the once which were distracted by the first Rogue). Now wait again a few seconds, until she's gone further.

Now have the hunters use Misdirection on the 2 distracted adds. The adds will run to the tank and this will also initialize the combat sequence and Auriaya and the other two adds will come towards the raid. While your damage dealers now focus on the first cat, have the second hunter misdirect the remaining to pets to the other tank. If you have a 3rd Hunter have him misdirect Auriaya to the main tank. If not, let a rogue use his agro-redirect Ability on the main tank.

If done right, you should survive the pull with ease. If not, train a bit more ;)

Important: It's very important to have 2 tanks for the adds (Sanctum Sentry) which tank 2 adds each and have a significat distance from each other (at least 20 yards). The Sanctum Sentries will get a 50% damage increase when other Sanctum Sentries are within 20 yards (150% more damage wouldn't be healable anymore). So having 2 tanks who are 30 yards away of each other will prevent this.

That being said, the pull is the hardest part of this encounter, if you're not going for the Nine Lives Achievement. (Note: I wouldn't go for this achievement, unless you have some really high dps setup and damage dealers who really play their class perfectly for max dps. So the not-so-hardcore guildes should better to her normal, until their get some good equip from Ulduar).

The positioning of the boss and your raid is very important. It's necessary to tank her facing the raid, as she casts Sonic Screech regularly and the damage is split to all members she hit (like Brutalus in Sunwell). If there aren't enough people who to split the damage, they will eventually get 1-shoted.

Now that you position yourself correctly, you have to kill the Feral Defender a few times. Every time you kill the Feral Defender, he will lose 1 stack of the Feral Essence buff. Additional to that, a void zone will spawn on the place where the Feral Defender died. The Void zone WILL NOT DISPAWN until the boss is dead or the raid wipes! That being said, it's very important to (at least try) place the void zones on tactically good positions. This includes not to kill it when it's at the melee camp, as this could easily decimate your melee and really hurt your dps. In additon, she will spawn many small cat's on you. AoE taunt them and take them down with AoE as soon as possible.

A good tactic is to get it down to ~5-7% and stop dps until the Feral Defender stopped jumping around, have them taunted from a free tank (at that point you should have 1 free tank, as you only need two after you survived the intial pull and killed the 4 adds. 1 Maintank, 1 for Trash spawn).

Make sure there are always Tremor Totems around, as she will regularly fear the raid and in worst case a player will be feared forth and back through the void zones and die. Avoid this to happen.

Important: After the fear ends, it's VERY IMPORTANT to run back to your position as quickly as possible (and avoiding every Void Zone)!!! Failing to do so, you risk your main tank dying from Sonic Screech resulting in a wipe.

The reason you have to kill the Feral Defender a few times is, because with full stacks, it's damage is so high and could kill a raid member (healer in worst case) in a critical phase. The general tactic is to kill the defender 4-5 times, this will reduce it's damage from 450% to 200% or 250%. Don't kill it 9 or 10 times, as it will leave many void zones and the time to kill the boss will be increased significantly (and you risk that more people die due to void zones or running out of mana).

When only 4-5 stacks are left, focus Auriaya and only bomb the trash adds from time to time. Ignore the Feral Defender completely. As there are many void zones now (4-5), you should choose a place, which will make it harder to be feared into the void zones. One very good position (for ranged damage dealers and healers) is the slot/corner left and right of the stairways you come in. So if you get feared, you will have a wall left, right and behind you and only way to be feared out is if you get feared in front of you. From now on, it's tank and spank fight only.

This will greately reduce the damage taken from Void Zones in this "Phase" as well as reduce the time to walk back.

Hard Mode

Well Hard Mode is, if you wanna call it this way, to kill the Feral Defender befor you kill her. Much dps and luck/heal is necessary there, as you'd have much more void zones and probably have many dead players before the Feral Defender dies, suffering a significantly loss in dps.