Eredar Twins (Alythess & Sacrolash) Strategy Guide (Sunwell Plateau)

eredar twins (lady sacrolash & grand warlock alythess) strategy guide (sunwell plateau) tbc classic

The demonic Eredar Twins, Lady Sacrolash and Grand Warlock Alythess, are the 4th boss that players will encounter in the Sunwell Plateau raid. There is more than meets the eye with these two – they possess unparalleled mastery over shadow and flame respectively.

This encounter is considered the first great “wall” in the raid, blocking off an extremely large percentage of guilds from progressing further in the raid. And it is no wonder – they deal so much damage that only the best healers can really keep up with it, and they have so many mechanics that everyone in the raid must be aware of — you can’t have 1-2 slackers always failing to move in time, if you want to beat the Twins.

This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to survive fire and shadow, so you can send the Eredar Twins back to whence they came.

Role Summaries

  • Stand behind Sacrolash in a triangle pattern with the tanks at all times — see the The Fight section
  • Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust against Sacrolash
  • You must always be 3rd or lower on threat on Sacrolash, or you will likely die — just be careful of threat
  • Quickly dip into the flames left behind by Alythess’ Blaze to reset your Dark Touched stacks if needed
  • Move away from the other melee if you are targeted by Shadow Nova
  • Make sure you’re not running towards the ranged DPS / healers when moving out due to Shadow Nova / Conflagration
  • You’re staying on the ledge overlooking the Twins until Sacrolash dies, stacked with healers — see the The Fight section
  • Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust against Sacrolash
  • You must always be 3rd or lower on threat on Sacrolash, or you will likely wipe the raid — just be careful of threat
  • If the ranged stack doesn’t have any Flame Touched stacks, move out of the stack if you get targeted by Shadow Nova — otherwise, stay in the stack and make sure everyone gets hit so their stacks are reset
  • Jump down from the ledge when Sacrolash’s HP reaches 1-2% and stack up behind Alythess
  • Shadow Priests, Warlocks: Hold back with your self-damage as much as possible, particularly while Sacrolash is alive — raid damage is crazy in this fight
  • Hunters: Use Misdirection on the tanks on cooldown — the extra threat will help out a lot, particularly at the start
  • Destruction Warlocks: Make sure you are specced into Nether Protection for this fight
  • You’re staying on the ledge overlooking the Twins until Sacrolash dies, stacked with ranged DPS — see the The Fight section
  • Tank healers: Keep the MT topped off at all times as Confounding Blow deals heavy damage
  • Tank healers: Sacrolash will switch to the 2nd highest threat target for 6 seconds after Confounding Blow, so be ready to heal the off-tank
  • Raid healers: The player targeted by Conflagration will take 1600 damage per second — keep them alive!
  • Raid healers: Players afflicted by Flame Sear will take extremely high damage and must be spam healed like no tomorrow
  • There’s a TON of raid damage in this fight — stay focused at all times and heal your assigned group & targets
  • Jump down from the ledge when Sacrolash’s HP reaches 1-2% and stack up behind Alythess
  • It is highly recommended that you use a PvP trinket (Medallion of the Alliance) to remove Conflagration

All Tanks

Sacrolash Tanks

  • Stay in a triangle pattern with the melee & your fellow tank at all times — see the The Fight section
  • You must tank Sacrolash more than 20 yards away from the ranged stack, so they don’t get hit by Shadow Blades
  • The 2 tanks need to be 1st & 2nd place on threat, as she temporarily ignores the main tank for 6 seconds due to Confounding Blow
  • The off-tank should be ready to use cooldowns in order to survive when Sacrolash switches to them, as damage can be unpredictable
  • If your Dark Touched stacks are starting to get high (3-4+), you should dip into the flames left behind Alythess’ Blaze — but communicate that with your raid beforehand
  • Besides that, you should never move an inch while tanking Sacrolash
  • There’s nothing for you to tank after Sacrolash dies, switch to DPS mode

Alythess Tank

  • Quickly move Alythess away from Sacrolash & melee when the fight starts — see the The Fight section
  • Kite her in a circular pattern around her flames, taking care to never leave your healers’ range — /range 40 on DBM can help
  • You can move closer to Sacrolash in order to get hit by Shadow Blades if your Flame Touched stacks are getting high
  • Consider using defensive cooldowns if you get targeted by Flame Sear, Conflagration or Shadow Nova
  • After Sacrolash dies, you’ll want to move Alythess around a bit slower, as your raid must stay directly behind her

Abilities

Shared

Taking Shadow damage from any of the Twins’ abilities causes you to gain one stack of this debuff, which reduces your healing received by 5% for 3 minutes. Stacks up to 20 times, reducing your healing taken by 100%.

Similarly to Flame Touched, taking Fire damage from any of the Twins’ abilities removes all of your Dark Touched stacks, so you’ll want to occasionally get hit by Fire spells to deal with this — wit

Taking Fire damage from any of the Twins’ abilities causes you to gain one stack of this debuff, which causes you to take 300 Fire damage every 2 seconds for 3 minutes. Stacks up to 20 times, causing you to take 6,000 Fire damage every 2 seconds.

Similarly to Dark Touched, taking Shadow damage from any of the Twins’ abilities removes all of your Flame Touched stacks, so you’ll want to occasionally get hit by Shadow spells to deal with this — mainly Shadow Blades and Shadow Nova.

When one of the Twins dies, the remaining twin becomes enraged, gaining access to 1 of the fallen Twin’s abilities and healing to full HP. They will also use some of their regular abilities slightly more often.

Lady Sacrolash

Sacrolash attacks her current target, dealing 7353 to 9947 Shadow damage to them and disorienting them for 6 seconds. While disoriented, Sacrolash will temporarily ignore them and attack the 2nd highest threat target, which is why you’ll need 2 tanks on her at all times. The second tank needs to pump threat in order to stay 2nd on the threat table, and be ready to tank Sacrolash at any time.

Cast every 20 to 30 seconds.

Sacrolash lashes out, dealing 2550 to 3450 Shadow damage to every player within 20 yards. This is the main way that melee players & tanks will drop their Flame Touched stacks, and one of the 2 reasons why your raid must split up for this fight.

Cast every 12 seconds on the dot.

Sacrolash targets a random player, and after casting for 3.5 seconds, deals 3238 to 3762 Shadow damage to them and every other player within 10 yards. This is the main way that ranged players & healers will drop their Flame Touched stacks, and one of the 2 reasons why your raid must split up for this fight.

After killing Sacrolash dies, Alythess will inherit this ability. It is very important that your raid then stacks up and whoever gets targeted doesn’t move, as you’ll need everyone to get hit by Shadow Nova so as to drop their Flame Touched stacks.

Sacrolash will cast this ability every 30 to 40 seconds, while Alythess will cast it every 20 to 30.

Sacrolash will periodically summon 1-3 images of herself, which run around casting their 2 abilities on random players for ~30 seconds. They cannot be attacked and are mostly just annoying rather than dangerous, though their Shadowfury ability can be problematic.

Deals 1530 to 2070 Shadow damage to the target instantly, and applies an undispellable debuff to them for 10 seconds, causing them to take 450 Shadow damage every 2 seconds, for 2250 damage-over-time or 4050 damage in total. The debuff stacks up to 5 times, causing it to deal modest damage.

The image targets a random player and unleashes a shadow explosion on them, hitting them and every other player within 11 yards. Afflicted players take 1826 to 2174 Shadow damage instantly, and more importantly, are stunned for 2 seconds.

The damage portion is obviously not a huge deal compared to the other raid damage coming out during this fight. The stun however can be very problematic if it happens to overlap with Alythess’ Conflagration, which will very likely lead to a wipe.

Grand Warlock Alythess

Alythess targets a random player, and after casting for 3.5 seconds, unleashes an explosion of flame on them and every other player within 8 yards, applying a debuff to all of them, lasting 10 seconds. Afflicted players become disoriented, take 1600 Fire damage damage per second, and also deal 1600 Fire damage per second to all allies within 8 yards. This means that if, for example, 2 players get hit by Conflagration, they will deal 3200 Fire damage per second to each other.

This ability can wipe your raid instantly, so it is imperative that whoever is targeted quickly moves away from your raid so they are the only person to get hit. It is strongly recommended that you use a WeakAura which alerts you if you are targeted (such as this one). Furthermore, your PvP trinket (f.e. Medallion of the Alliance) as well as Divine Shield & Ice Block will remove the debuff, ending the disorient and preventing you from taking the Fire damage over time — but you still need to run away from the raid, even if you’re planning to use those tools, as other players still get hit.

Cast every 20 to 40 seconds. However, Alythess won’t cast this ability after being empowered by Sacrolash’s death.

Alythess casts for 2.5 seconds and then burns her current target, instantly dealing 5525 to 7475 damage to them. Furthermore, this spell leaves a patch of flames (~3 yard radius) on the ground under the target’s feet for 15 seconds, dealing 2700 to 3300 Fire damage per second to all players who touch them.

This ability makes Alythess incredibly annoying to tank, and even more annoying for melee DPS, which is why most groups will kill Sacrolash first. In the past, people used a Warlock to tank Alythess as she will spam this spell on her main target most of the time rather than melee attack, but that strategy has fallen out of favor. Instead, a single tank can just briefly attack her, dealing threat, then move away when she finishes casting Blaze. Protection Paladins are exceptional at tanking her thanks to their ranged spells & Consecration persistently doing threat to her.

This is the main way that melee players & tanks will drop their Dark Touched stacks. After Sacrolash dies, everyone can use the flames for that same purpose, quickly going into them and out again immediately as you take damage.

Alythess sears 4 to 5 random players, instantly dealing 650 Fire damage to them and applying an undispellable debuff for 6 seconds. The debuff causes them to take a further 650 Fire damage every 0.5 seconds, for 7800 damage-over-time or 8450 damage in total. This is the main way that ranged players & healers will drop their Dark Touched stacks, as they can’t touch the flames spawned by Blaze before Sacrolash dies.

Every second they’re afflicted with Flame Sear, targets will additionally gain 1 extra stack of Flame Touched — meaning if you had 0 when it targeted you, you will end up with 6 stacks; though there’s a small chance you’ll end up with 5, due to server lag. This causes players targeted by Flame Sear to take an absurd amount of damage over time over its duration, particularly if they are ranged players and Sacrolash is refusing to cast Shadow Nova, allowing them to reset their stacks.

This means that the targeted players will need to be spam healed for the duration of the Flame Sear, and doubly so if they were targeted by a previous Flame Sear without a Shadow Nova resetting stacks in-between, causing them to have 12 stacks and thus take 3600 Fire damage every 2 seconds from Flame Touched, on top of the 1300 damage per second they’re taking from the Flame Sear it self — for a massive 3100 Fire damage per second. Players in that situation should be prepared to use their Master Healthstone, though in all honesty they have a high chance of dying.

Divine Shield, Ice Block and Cloak of Shadows will remove Flame Sear, and doing so will generally be a great idea due to the absurd amount of damage it deals. Melee players & tanks will generally not need to do this, as their Flame Touched are cleared fairly regularly by Sacrolash’s Shadow Blades. Ranged DPS & healers should be ready to it if their health starts dropping quicker than healers can heal them however, particularly if they get hit by 2 consecutive Flame Sears without a Shadow Nova clearing their Flame Touched in-between. Nether Protection won’t protect you from the first tick(s) and won’t reset your stacks, but it will nonetheless prevent you from gaining more stacks after it procs, so all of your Destruction Warlocks should be specced into it here.

Normally cast every 12 seconds on the dot, but Alythess cannot cast this while casting another spell, so in practice it’ll be every 13-14 seconds. Furthermore, this interval will be shortened to every 8 seconds when Sacrolash dies.

Alythess gains a buff which increases her Fire damage dealt by 35% for 15 seconds. Must be dispelled immediately using Dispel Magic, Purge, Arcane Shot or Spellsteal, as it makes her abilities very, very deadly.

The damage of her abilities is “snapshotted” when she casts them, meaning that if she gains Pyrogenics then casts Flame Sear immediately afterwards, it will deal 1755 Fire damage per second rather than its normal 1300, even if you dispel Pyrogenics after she uses Flame Sear. Thus it cannot be stressed enough: this ability must be dispelled immediately, with players able to do so keeping an eye on it at all times.

Cast every 20 to 30 seconds.

Raid Composition & Preparation

It will be virtually mandatory to have someone who can dispel magic offensively for this fight, as Alythess’ Pyrogenics will very likely wipe your raid if not dispelled quickly. Thankfully, that’s a pretty easy requirement to meet, as Dispel Magic, Purge, Arcane Shot and Spellsteal all work.

There is an absolutely insane amount of raid damage during this fight, so it is a must for everyone to have a Master Healthstone along with Super Healing Potions for when your healers are struggling to keep you up or something goes wrong — they will save your life.

it is highly recommended that everyone gets a WeakAura (such as this one) or a similar addon, which loudly alerts them when they’re being targeted by Alythess’ Conflagration. Everyone wants to believe they’re super aware of their surroundings and will move in time 100%, but the truth is if the addon buys you even half a second, that can make the difference between a kill and a wipe.

The PvP trinket (f.e. Medallion of the Alliance) can remove the Conflagration debuff, potentially saving your life while allowing you to get back to healing / dealing damage right away. It will be a very good idea for everyone to bring their trinket and use it for the first few weeks, until your healers get the hang of the fight. Once you’re used to the fight, you can switch to your regular trinkets.

This fight is among the craziest to heal in Sunwell and indeed all of TBC. Thankfully, there’s a little bit of a silver lining – the overwhelming majority (~70%) of the damage coming out will be to your raid, so by having a high amount of classes with strong AoE healing spells (Restoration Shamans & Holy Priests) it is somewhat manageable. Regardless, it’s highly recommended that you have 6-7 healers here, and weaker groups may even want to have as many as 9, with hybrid classes like Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids healing if you’re struggling to keep the raid alive.

2 of your single target healers (Holy Paladins & Restoration Druids) should be assigned to healing the Sacrolash tank, while 1 more single target healer is assigned to healing the Alythess tank. Restoration Druids will be exceptional at this task as they can keep their healing-over-time effects on all 3 tanks at all times and then even raid heal a little bit, which will significantly ease things. Holy Paladins meanwhile should use a macro like the one below to ensure they’re always healing Sacrolash’s current tank, as she will swap targets during Confounding Blow.

#showtooltip
/target Lady Sacrolash
/cast [@targetoftarget] Flash of Light

Your remaining healers will all be responsible for raid healing. To prevent excessive overhealing however, it is recommended that you spread your healers out a little, and assign them to the correct target, with each healer being responsible for 1 group.

Holy Priests should be assigned to healing your melee DPS group(s). Flame Sear will target 4-5 random players so they generally will not be able to use their powerful Circle of Healing to heal 5 targets efficiently, as they will be in different groups. That is where your Restoration Shamans come in — assign each of them to a different ranged group, and have them focus players afflicted by Flame Sear in that group with their powerful Chain Heal, which will intelligently heal all other players afflicted by Flame Sear in other groups, giving them a better chance of surviving its insane damage.

Finally, 2-3 of your healers should be assigned to healing players targeted by Conflagration — any class will do. You will generally never get Conflagration while Flame Sear is ticking, so it’s okay for those healers to be among your general raid healers, rather than 2-3 dedicated healers.

The damage in this fight is through the roof, so it’s highly recommended that your healers use +healing consumables, such as Elixir of Healing Power and Golden Fish Sticks. The fight is generally not too long, but it can really take a toll on your mana, so all healers should bring some Super Mana Potions and Dark Runes to help their mana pool last the entire fight.

While there is no strict requirements, such as needing a specific DPS class to deal with a certain mechanic, this fight becomes a LOT easier when you have a healthy balance of melee and ranged DPS players — ideally a roughly equal amount of each. You could do the fight with just ranged players spreading out, but it’s harder, while melee-heavy compositions will really struggle here due to taking significantly more raid damage than normal.

The old strategy was to have a Warlock tank for Alythess, but that is no longer recommended — read the Tanks section below. As a Warlock tank is no longer needed, your Destruction Warlocks should be specced into Nether Protection for this fight, as it will protect them from a LOT of damage, particularly from Flame Sear.

You’re aiming to bring the Twins down FAST, so all of your DPS players should use appropriate DPS consumables here. Both of the Twins are demons, so physical DPS players should use Elixir of Demonslaying in order to get that extra “oomph” needed to kill them before they kill you.

You will need a minimum of 2 tanks for this fight, in order to tank Sacrolash, who will temporarily ignore one tank due to Confounding Blow. However, the Alythess Warlock tank strategy has fallen out of favor, so the most popular strategy needs 3 tanks, with the 3rd tank preferably being a Protection Paladin as they excel at tanking Alythess due to their ranged spells & Consecration persistently doing threat to her.

The most important thing here will be that your 2 Sacrolash tanks both deal good threat. The second tank isn’t getting hit by Sacrolash most of the time and will thus be starved for rage / won’t reflect damage if they’re a Protection Paladin so their threat will be lower. You will want to balance out your tanks based on their threat generation. For example, if you have 2 Protection Paladins and a Feral Druid, the Protection Paladins should main tank 1 boss each while the Feral Druid offtanks Sacrolash. If you have a Protection Warrior it will generally be necessary for them to main tank Sacrolash, as they have the lowest threat output already, things will get really ugly if they are rage starved on top of that.

Sacrolash doesn’t hit hard, and while Alythess does hit very hard, her damage will almost exclusively be magic — thus there’s no point in using mitigation and tankiness consumables here. Your tanks should thus use DPS / threat consumables, and if your healers are good enough, consider using a more threat-centric armor set, as it will make a huge different with holding threat on the bosses without forcing your DPS players to hold back.

The Pull

Once you’re done with the long gauntlet after Felmyst and reach the Eredar Twins’ room, there’s no more trash. That’s it, moment of truth! The Twins will be directly underneath you as you enter their domain, the Witch’s Sanctum.

eredar twins 0

The pull in this fight is fairly difficult to execute correctly, with a host of things that can go wrong and wipe you immediately, so it’s important that you understand how to pull here.

When your raid has buffed up and is ready to pull, the entire raid should approach the edge of the ramp and jump on the little orange ledge there. Don’t move too far ahead, as you can accidentally aggro the Twins — just jump up on the part closest to the door and stay there.

Note that since ranged players are staying up on the ledge, your Shamans can drop their totems on the top before the fight starts, which will make things a bit easier. Use your totems before jumping up the ledge however, as you may accidentally pull the Twins if they are spawned in their line of sight.

2 of your Hunters should use their Misdirection on each of the Sacrolash tanks. Then, start a 20 second pull timer by using the /pull 20 command on DeadlyBossMods or any similar raid management addon, and get ready to start. When there are 2.5 seconds left on the pull timer, they should start casting Aimed Shot on Sacrolash, ensuring it finishes casting just as the pull timer reaches 0.

Meanwhile, your Alythess tank use any ranged ability available to them on her and immediately jump down, 0.5 to 1 seconds before the pull timer reaches 0. This part is vital — if you are too late, Alythess will start casting Blaze on one of the Sacrolash tanks, which will complicate positioning significantly, if it doesn’t wipe your raid outright. If you don’t jump down before using a ranged ability, she may cast

Then, the moment the pull timer reaches 0, the Sacrolash tanks & melee DPS jump down as well, quickly moving into position.

The Fight

There aren’t fights per se in this fight. However, when one of the Twins dies, the other is healed to full HP and gains one of their abilities, so there’s no point in cleaving them down, and as such the fight can be seen as two separate phases. Phase 1 involving fighting both Twins with your raid killing Lady Sacrolash, and Phase 2 involving killing an empowered Grand Warlock Alythess.

Phase 1 – Lady Sacrolash

After the raid starts, you will want to position as shown in the picture below. The idea is very simple: ranged DPS and healers on the ledge. The 2 Sacrolash tanks + melee DPS stay in a triangle pattern (so as to avoid parries) more than 20 yards away from the ledge crew, so as to avoid having Shadow Blades hit ranged DPS / healers. The Alythess tank stays slightly further away from Sacrolash, kiting Alythess in a circular pattern around her Blaze flames, making sure to always stay in the healers’ range. As much as possible, everyone should stay in a tight stack, so AoE healing spells are as effective as possible.

eredar twins 1 2

The pull will be one of the hardest parts of the fight, with lots of moving parts involved, so don’t be disappointed if you find yourself wiping on the pull a few times. Thankfully, the Twins will give you 10 seconds to position before they start casting their spell, with the exception of Blaze, which Alythess will start casting on the highest threat target. Give your tanks 5-10 seconds to build some threat, and when they have a healthy threat lead, your raid will want to use Heroism / Bloodlust, as these first 10-20 seconds will be the only period where everyone can focus on dealing some big damage to Sacrolash, which will help a lot.

10 seconds in, the Twins will finally cast their first abilities: Shadow Blades & Shadow Image for Sacrolash, and Flame Sear for Alythess. At this point, you’ll see what this fight is really about – just tons and tons of raid damage, and things have just started off. Your healers will need to quickly heal this damage off, as you’ll now start getting stacks of the Dark Touched and Flame Touched debuffs. The Twins will use these abilities constantly throughout the fight.

The first 2 abilities are fairly trivial to deal with, but Flame Sear will immediately present to be one of the biggest problems for most raids. Not only does it deal a fairly high amount of damage on its own, it will also apply 5-6 stacks of Flame Touched to each player over its duration, causing its damage to skyrocket to absurd amounts. Your healers should target players afflicted by it and spam heal them as explained in the Healers part of the Raid Composition & Preparation section.

The first cast of Flame Sear will generally not be a problem, but subsequent casts can be a problem — if the same ranged DPS or healer happens to get targeted by it twice in a row, without Sacrolash having cast Shadow Nova in-between Flame Sears, they will spike up to 11-12 stacks of Flame Touched. This translates into a massive 2500-3100 Fire damage per second for the last few ticks, so they’ll need to be spam healed like no tomorrow, while also getting topped off immediately afterwards so they can survive the Shadow Nova, with Flame Touched dealing 1800 Fire damage per second to them. This will thankfully be very rare for melee DPS players & tanks, as their Flame Sear stacks get cleared by Shadow Blades every 12 seconds, which is the same timer as Flame Sear, but it can happen pretty regularly for ranged players & healers, so they should be ready to use a Master Healthstone to survive, or clear their Flame Sear debuff using Divine Shield, Ice Block and Cloak of Shadows.

Then, 20 seconds into the fight, your raid will get its first major test: Alythess will target a random player in the raid and start casting Conflagration on them. That player now has 3.5 seconds to move to their designated Conflagration spot, more than 8 yards away from other players. If they fail to move in time, you are going to wipe, even if they happen to hit just a couple of players somehow. It is highly recommended that everyone has a WeakAura like this one to alert them when Conflagration is being cast on them, and classes with mobility spells, such as Sprint and Blink, use them immediately to get out.

The PvP trinket (Medallion of the Alliance) as well as Divine Shield & Ice Block will remove Conflagration, so you can count yourself lucky if it targets a player who has the trinket equipped or plays one of those classes — though they still need to move to the Conflagration spot. Your healers assigned to this task must be ready to spam heal the targeted player, as they’ll be taking a significant 1600 Fire damage per second, during a fight with already very high raid damage.

eredar twins 1 3

There’s one more trick you can use to avoid Conflagration: Rogues can use Vanish, forcing Sacrolash to lose her target and thus stop casting it altogether, meaning you don’t need to deal with the ability at all until she decides to use it again, 20 to 40 seconds later. It is possible that Hunters can also use this trick with Feign Death as it also drops target, but it has not be tested yet, so use with caution.

Note that occasionally, Sacrolash’s Shadow Images will be jerks and decide to cast Shadowfury at this point, stunning the targeted player for 2 seconds and more than likely wiping your raid if they don’t have a PvP trinket equipped / can’t Divine Shield or Ice Block the stun. If that happens, there really isn’t much you can do, just try again. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, and your healers were on point and the Conflagration target survived… for now, as Alythess will be using this absolute nerve wrecker of an ability every 20 to 40 seconds.

Finally, there’s one more gimmick to Conflagration — it can never target the 2nd highest player on threat, which is really important, as your off-tank must be 2nd on threat at all times in order to deal with Confounding Blow, which is explained later. It will very commonly target the 3rd highest threat player, but never the 2nd highest — so DPS players must ALWAYS be 3rd on threat or below, while your off-tank is always 2nd.

NOTE: It is not enough for you to simply be 3rd on the threat meter, after the off-tank — you must make sure you have the 3rd highest amount of threat or below. Some threat meters will show ranged players as being in 3rd place because of the higher ranged aggro pull threshold, but that is not accurate for this fight. If the 1st tank has 40k threat, the off-tank has 36k and you have 37k, some threat meters will show you as being underneath the off-tank, as they will pull aggro at 44k threat, while you will pull aggro at 52k threat, so you’re lower as a percentage of threat needed to pull aggro. THIS WILL CAUSE YOU TO WIPE HERE — you must always have less threat than the off-tank.

To make things worse, the Twins still have more abilities. Sacrolash will occasionally use Shadow Nova, which deals even more AoE damage around a random player after a 3.5 second cast, which may sound familiar. Unlike Conflagration, your ranged players actually want to take this damage, as it is the only reliable way for them to remove their Flame Touched stacks and avoid dying to Flame Sear. If she targets a melee DPS player, they should move away from the melee stack, reducing raid damage, as they are already having their Flame Touched stacks cleared regularly by Shadow Blades anyway. Shadow Nova is cast every 30 to 40 seconds, so it will generally overlap with Flame Sear every 2-3 casts of Flame Sear.

But Sacrolash has one more trick up her sleeve: Confounding Blow, which deals ~8k Shadow damage to her current tank and disorients them for 6 seconds. Your 2nd Sacrolash tank needs to be 2nd on threat at all times, otherwise you’re very likely wiping — so DPS be careful with your threat. Moreover, healers will need to make sure that the current tank is always topped of so they don’t die to the direct damage, and they must quickly swap to the second tank. Sacrolash will be using Confounding Blow every 20 to 30 seconds, so it must always be on your tanks & healers’ minds, particularly as it will sometimes overlap with Conflagration.

Alythess has one last trick up her sleeve too, which is extremely lethal but thankfully not too difficult to deal with: Pyrogenics, a buff which increases her Fire damage done by 35% for 15 seconds, which will make all of her abilities incredibly dangerous. Your raid must dispel it immediately — a delay of 2-3 seconds can wipe your raid as she will snapshot her damage. Dispel Magic, Purge, Arcane Shot and Spellsteal can all dispel it, making Enhancement Shamans, Elemental Shamans, Hunters and Mages great candidates for this task. She casts it roughly every 30 seconds, so it can help if you have Alythess on your focus frame by typing /focus while targeting her, so you can quickly dispel it.

And that is all of the “first phase” of this encounter. It may sound fairly simple, and it is simple on a technical level, but it is impossible to understate just how high raid damage is during this fight. Your healers must bring their A game here to keep everyone alive, as you really need all the DPS you can get, so just a couple of deaths can result in a wipe. Players need to be aware of specific mechanics they need to deal with, and particularly Conflagration at all times.

Finally, your entire raid must be cognizant of their number of Dark Touched & Flame Touched stacks — more than 4-5 is too dangerous. Tanks and melee DPS may need to occasionally dip in the flames left behind by Alythess’ Blaze ability in order to clear their Dark Touched stacks. If a tank needs to do that, they should communicate with the raid immediately. Meanwhile, ranged DPS players may get unlucky with Sacrolash using Shadow Nova on melee exclusively, at which point the tank could move her a bit closer to the ranged group, allowing them to get hit by Shadow Blades so as to reset their Flame Touched stacks. Again, thus must be communicated to the raid in advance.

When Sacrolash reaches 1-2% HP, your ranged DPS and healers should jump down from the ledge and be ready to move into Phase 2 positions. Be careful however — don’t do this if Alythess has not used Conflagration in the last 20 seconds, as you may be setting yourself up for a wipe.

Phase 2 – Grand Warlock Alythess, Empowered

After Sacrolash dies, Alythess will heal to full HP and become empowered, which causes her to use Flame Sear every 8 seconds rather than every 12, and more importantly allow her to cast Shadow Nova. As Shadow Nova is the only Shadow damage you’ll be taking from now on, your raid will need to stack up behind Alythess as shown in the picture below, ensuring it hits everyone in your raid and thus resetting their Flame Touched. As a trade-off however, she will not cast Conflagration anymore, which makes things significantly easier.

eredar twins 2 2

In all honesty, if you have gotten to Phase 2 then you are most likely going to win, as things are understandably significantly easier with just 1 Twin to worry about, and almost half the abilities you had to deal with before. Raid damage is just a bit lower during this phase, making it seem like a cakewalk if you came out of Phase 1. Mechanics-wise, things are a lot more simple without having to worry about Conflagration.

All you have to do here is following Alythess around, as the tank moves her out of Blaze. Continue dispelling her Pyrogenics immediately, and healing through her Flame Sear. The main difference here really is that she casts Flame Sear 50% more often, causing raid damage to stay very high regardless, and making it extremely important that absolutely everybody gets hit by Shadow Nova, resetting their Flame Touched stacks.

Speaking of Shadow Nova, the targeted player should move directly underneath Alythess, allowing the tank to get hit by it as well, while the rest of your raid clumps up behind her yet again. Just be careful of flames left behind by Blaze as you move around.

And with this, you have defeated one of the most difficult bosses in Sunwell Plateau, and are one step closer to putting a stop to Kil’jaeden’s plans! Rejoice, but do not rest easy just yet — the next boss, M’uru, is widely considered to be the most difficult boss of the raid by many guilds, so be ware!

 

About the Author

Pride

Classic WoW is my jam, with a passion for PvP. Most know me as Baranor, the ret paladin guy, but I'm secretly a druid main, don't tell anyone. In my free time I play Switch games, particularly JRPGs. Some day I'll be making my own games and I humbly hope you play those too!
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