This article is part of a series in which we will discuss the different roles, as a warrior, that you might find yourself asked to complete in various raid instances. This will not be a rehash of entire boss strategies, only the parts that are relevant to warriors.
Today we’re going to begin with Greenscale’s Blight! This instance is what really begins to teach you the various things you have to become familiar with as a warrior. From tanking adds in a DPS spec, to announcing commands to your team, it really gets you comfortable with your place in the raid.
This is intended to be read after knowing basic strategies of the fights.
Duke Letareus
DPS:
You’ll have to do one of a few things here. First, the easy job is straight-up DPSing the Duke. You’ll probably be hearing your raid leader or tank calling out when you might need to slow or stop damage on him because of his Frenzy. Run out when he’s casting Unleash Wrath, and always stay behind him due to his cleave. You can safely follow him and continue damage unless given other commands. Everyone’s strategy varies a bit here, so listen to your raid lead.
You can also be asked to do one of two things; the first would be to interrupt the Devious Faeries. The Devious Faeries do AOE damage that would lead to raids wiping. For guilds just getting in to GSB, interrupting these is very important, keep your Bash, Flinching Strike, or any other interrupts out of your main macros and ready to use on demand. This is a very important role, and one you will become quite accustomed to.
Lastly, another very important thing you can be tasked with is killing the shamblers that are found in the corners of the room. As you already know at certain percentages Duke goes in a to a frenzy. Your job is to make this phase manageable. Here’s what happens: when you kill a shambler, a small circle where it dies a ground effect spawns. When the Duke is dragged in to his effect is slows him down immensely. Depending on your groups skill and overall DPS you will need to use 1-3 shamblers. This is left to your raid leader’s discretion. You’ll want to keep your shambler low and kill it within a few second of pursuit beginning (the percentages this happens being 85/60/35/10). With good timing and quick burst DPS you should have no issue completing your goal here.
Tanking:
This fight is going to be quite strait-forward for you, at the previously mentioned percentages (85/60/35/10) you, like the DPS, are going to have to run out of range of his instant-kill AoE; where your task differs, however, is in that you have to kite the Duke through the spots on the ground created by the dead shamblers. Depending on the DPS of the raid, you might find yourself kiting him through a varying number of shambler puddles. Our raid typically uses one to two per phase, a raid just starting out might use three or so. While the Duke has the Frenzy buff, you should never be in front, and within melee range of him, or you will die.
Infiltrator Johlen
DPS:
This fight only has one potential role for us outside of the normal strategy. If you are so asked, you will, as a beastmaster be on “bomb duty”. All this entails is you sending your pet to attack a target on the ground named “Concussion Bomb” that spawns every other cycle (where a cycle is him placing different things on the ground, this covers Landmine and Concussion Bombs). The trick here is to do it immediately after everyone gets out of the circle. Anyone in range of the bombs you explode will get knocked back, and post 25%, probably killed. Timing here is something you’ll just have to pick up with practice and learning how your group moves.
Tanking:
This fight uses only one tank, and your only task is to get out of anything on the ground, and look away from blinding bombs. Note that the boss has no cleave, so do not worry that much about positioning, try and keep him roughly in the center, for sake of the final phase, and that’s about it.
Oracle Aleria
DPS:
There are two tasks you can be given here. Depending on your guild strategy, sometimes you’ll do both at once. First, you might be asked to be on “pollen duty”, what this means is killing the wisp like creatures that spawn from the four openings in the hedges around you. The adds on this fight die pretty quickly, and shouldn’t be a problem. You have to prevent the adds from getting to either werewolf in phase 1, or Aleria herself in phase two; any of these mobs that get to Aleria or the adds will give them a stacking debuff and make the fight needlessly difficult.
Secondly, if asked to simply DPS, you will be on the right werewolf (looking from the entrance) , making sure it doesn’t fall too far away from the other in percentage. Always make sure that these adds die around the same time, the last one alive will enrage and do significantly more damage. If you melee the left werewolf it has a pulsing damage aura that will most likely kill you in a short time. Some guilds will do things a little differently and if one gets too far ahead, those people switch to killing the pollen. When phase two comes, we have everyone on Aleria herself just AoEing as needed to keep pollen under control, in less geared groups you might still have dedicated people on the pollen to maintain control.
Do this all the while line of sighting if you get the debuff, and you win.
Tanking:
This fight requires two tanks, generally a magic mitigation tank on the left side to counteract the damage it does to melee attackers, and any other on the right. This ‘any other’ today is you! Drag your target to about the middle of the hedge to your right, on the inside; sit there until both are dead. Exciting, yes? Note that if the debuff goes out early on in the fight you might still get it, so keep an eye out in the first 15~ seconds of the fight, and let none of the raid follow you (I’ve only seen this happen once, but be prepared, just in case).
Once both werewolf adds are down, one of the two tanks will pick up Aleria herself, let’s assume this person is you. Drag her back roughly to where your add stood, take a moment to think of philosophy and the deeper meanings of the world, and the boss will die and loot will be had.
This covers part of Greenscale’s Blight, next up is the remainder of it, where we cover how to not be ‘that guy’ on Prince Hylas and Lord Greenscale himself!
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