Well, not a huge red beam, but if your tanks make a slight mistake in kiting along that path, you're going to have a giant red flame hitting them for 40k+ pre-resist. That's pretty nasty. Also, your pictures are inaccurate and a substantial amount of the kite path on either end has you in eye beam land. You also have a substantial amount of unnecessary raid movement, and, in the end, the only major difference between your strat and the conventional method, other than the flaws, is the fact that you kite the flames along a different part of the grate because you're worried that the melee would occasionally not be able to DPS.

Also, as has been said, doing Illidan with 2-3 ranged DPS is stupid. You are making every phase much, much harder than it should be. Agonizing Flames is twice as bad. Assuming you made it to phase 4, multiple shadow demons on the same target is enormously dangerous instead of just pretty dangerous. (No one besides melee to kill demons makes it VERY hard to spread out properly.) Don't forget that melee DPS can't run near the demon phase tank if he's got a demon, or near the same tank if a demon is going near him to eat the healer, which further complicates the same phase.

Melee won't get hit by blaze if they follow the Ember correctly, but that's true of any viable strat.

I fail to see what your strategy brings to the table besides unnecessary change. I realize, if it's up to you, you're probably going to force your way through the fight over the next few weeks using this strat so you can post "I TOLD YOU SO," but it's not going to change the fact that you're just making things harder than they need to be by not fixing your raid setup. The strategy you've posted also isn't substantially enough different that I really see this as a solution to melee sometimes not being able to DPS - the normal kiting has embers positioned so that breath only hits the tank and blaze follows the ember's tracking along, just like yours. It's the kite back where melee sometimes has to sit around, and your kite strat doesn't involve a much longer run, so that's still going to be present.

I think you need to realize that sometimes, the strategies that everybody uses are the ones that everybody uses because other ones don't work as well. There are fights like Tidewalker with dozens of variations, but Illidan, especially phase 2, is just not a place where the same holds true.

Also, please proofread your posts, the amount of spelling errors you've made is ludicrous.

sorry, english is not my main, say thx that u understand the basic meaning of my posts thats alot

well, with the last 2 posts i get enoug info, thx guys

Well, my guild got our second Illidari Council kill this week on a Wednesday night. We flew through the content, going 5/5 3/9 in 4 hours on Tuesday, and then the remaining 5 bosses in BT on Wednesday, leaving 2 full raid-days for Illidan. I was pretty confident we could get him, but I clearly under-estimated the head-honcho of BT. Most of our wiping came from switching an FR tank (the other tank). Our first one went on vacation, so our new one had to figure it out tonight.

We seem to have phase 2 down perfectly. In our last few attempts, we were getting through it with 0 deaths. The first flame was dying just before the first dark barrage, the second one dying somewhere around the 2nd. Very few deaths, dark barrage healed through (about 50% of the raid had a way to drop it).

Our problems came in phases 1, 3, and 4... Our best attempt was 46%. I guess here's my specific questions:
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1) We're using a Protection Paladin to MT Illidan. He's occasionally getting sheared, which kinda destroys our attempt. Sometimes, it actually is on cooldown and Illidan ate through all of the charges. Other times, it took too long to cast. I can't really figure out how to help him here. On one attempt he died and I ended up tanking Illidan and managed Shears pretty fine, but obviously healers were strained by the fire-resistance gear. Do any Paladins have advice on tanking this boss?

2) Mages are sometimes getting hit by parasites, or the parasites were getting away from them. We're using 2 frost mages that alternate. Obviously this shouldn't be happening. Is "don't suck" the "easy fix"? Any mages have advice?

3) The worst part, and probably what's preventing us from the kill, is the phase 3 --> 4 transition. It always seems during his "transformation," all hell breaks loose. The melee try to run to the back of the room, people try to "reposition" a few steps back, healers try to check range and such on our warlock tank. We just can't really get it down effectively, and somewhere during all the chaos, a few people get close together and they die. Are there any good strategies out there on these phase transitions?

Just seems like this transition is killing us. People running around everywhere, trying to get things stable, and we either lose someone to the fireballs, or someone to the eyeballs.

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I've read everywhere that phase 2 is the hardest phase, and we're hoping for a kill later this week, but we've got it down and are having trouble tweaking the last few things.

Thanks for the help!

As deep fire my preferred way to handle parasites for phase 3 onwards is this:

Anyone (other than the MT) gets parasite they run to the centre of the grate. This I find important to drill into people: know where to go when you have parasites.

Knowing where the afflicted person is going to stand lets me handle the parasites with ease:

Watch the timer of the parasite infection on the person, when it reaches just less than 3 seconds left start casting a flamestrike on that persons location. The flamestrike will hit just as the parasites pop out. I then follow with a dragons breath and a blastwave (and a arcane explosion if necessary). Usually the parasites don't even start moving before dying.

A frostmage could do similar. Flamestrike, Frostnova + Cone of Cold then AE spam

1) Just like a warrior, a paladin should only use his holy shield to prevent shear, Illidan can't crush. That way it can never be on cooldown when Illidan uses shear.

2) Parasite handling should be a group effort. If you really wanna prevent parasites running around in your raid, you should assign mages and hunters to the task of killing them. A combination of Frost Trap (the slowing one), Frost Nova, Ice Lance and Multishot should take care of parasites in every phase easily. The center of the grate is also the perfect spot for phase 3 parasite disposal.

3) You have more than enough time to move during the transition. I don't see why that would be such a big problem. Are you sure your ranged players aren't drawing aggro? Because that was a big problem for us during the first few nights.
The best way to handle phase 4 is to move all players as far away from Illidan as possible without spreading too much, you don't want beholders moving in every direction. Only your mages and warlocks for beholder-AoE, your warlock tank and his healers (3-4 are enough) should be standing "close" (as in: max range for their AoE/heal abilities). A combination of Blizzard, Frost Traps and a slowing totem as well as AoE on Illidan the moment the demons spawn should take care of them really fast, provided you have 5+ AoE classes.

Actualy shaman tank could get 28.18% avoidance.

Practice phase 3/4 positions before you even start the fight. If necessary show every single raid member where they need to stand and where they are not allowed to stand (Parasite area, Warlock Tank). Place every Shadow Priest in his place, every Warlock, every Hunter etc.

Get someone to call out Flame Bursts/Demon spawns. I do this for our raid. Basically it's:

Demon form incoming, get to your positions.
Flame Burst incoming, make sure you are spaced correctly.
Demons incoming. Closest dps move back a bit, ranged dps attack the shortest Demons
2nd Flame Burst cast. Melee run in and finish off Demons.
3rd Flame Burst incoming, get back to your positions.

I noticed some comments on this earlier in the threat, but didn't really see any resolution to the problem. Here's a log of our tank tonight during phase 1:



Gear can be seen here.

WWS of that moment: Wow Web Stats

As you can see, there's about half a second between shield block going up, and shear landing. If this was an isolated incident, I'd not care, but it wiped us probably three or four times, including twice in P3. It seems kind of unlikely that the combat log could be that lagged - and our tank swears he's hitting his block as soon as shear comes up and I tend to believe him.

If anyone's got any solutions or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Either your combat log doesn't show blocked amounts, or he also took an unblocked hit immediately after putting SB up, which raises a second question: Why did he take a melee hit during Shear at all? It's also separated by a fair bit from Shear.

I would guess terrible lag.

I Should of clarified, the red damage is a flame crash patch, not a melee hit >> That threw us for a minute until I remember that. From the WWS:

I'll ask our MT, but I seem to remember him having the same issue until he worked out Illidan's attack pattern.

Once you work out his rotation it's pretty easy because you can predict with reasonable certainty the window in which Shear will cast and Imp Shield Block just makes things even easier. I don't think he's let a Shear hit him since our first kill, if there was a bug anywhere it's unlikely for that to be the case.

Bear in mind of course, your MT's latency will kill you in this fight if it's not reasonable. There's nothing you can do about Shear if the MT doesnt even see it casting until it's too late.

If they're fully specced into frost, this should be extremely easy for them. Keep in mind that Frost Nova has a 10 yard radius (or 12 yard if they're specced into Arctic Reach). Be about ~8 yards from the afflicted player, cast Frost Nova as soon as you see the parasites spawn. Now the important thing here is to maintain distance, as the parasites move quite fast and have a large melee range. They will head for the group first, but they won't hesitate to attack a mage if they're in range, so it's important that the mages are not standing between the parasites and the rest of the raid. After they're a good distance back, start Ice Lancing. You say that they alternate, do you mean on everything, or just the Frost Nova? Because if you only have 1 mage actually lancing the parasites, then you will most likely have issues with the parasites getting away from them. If parasites are still getting away, even with both mages, make sure that they're using whatever snares they can. Cone of Cold, Imp. Blizzard, or the Water Elemental's Freeze ability.

The flame burst doesn't have a very large splash range...there really is no reason why people can't stay more than 5 yards apart from each other for a few seconds, especially considering how long the P3 -> P4 transition is. DPS should not need to be in range of Illidan during this transition...the vast majority of damage done to him should be handled during the human phase. Have everybody get as far away from him as they possibly can, with the exception of the warlock tank, his healers, and a select few members that will AoE the demons. Make sure anybody with Agonizing Flames stays far away from anybody else as well.

Have one of your frost mages (3/3 Permafrost and 3/3 Imp. Blizzard definitely helps here) start to cast Blizzard right on top of Illidan just before the Demons spawn. This will give them an immediate 75% snare. Meanwhile, your warlocks should be spamming SoC on top of Illidan as well, and any other classes with targeted AoE attacks should help too. If all goes well, you can have all of the demons dead within about 5-6 seconds of when they spawn.

I am a P2 tank and having wiped the raid a few times, I wish I had better knowledge of the flames. I decided to make a video to show how we do it. I saw Tamzins strategy guide to make sure I wasnt just repeating what was already available. I believe a tank perspective is a lot different with all the fire.

The flames of Azzinoth

I use the minimap to keep track of where I am at usually. The jpg on page 1 was very very useful. I use the markings on the ground inside of the green circle.

I realize I am a bit late doing this, but my friend's guild just got there. Also a lot more guilds will be getting there because of no attunements.

Not bad. You do have slightly more room to play with at the edges of your path, but what you were doing seemed to work. One of the things that I noticed was you were really slow to move out of Blazes. As soon as the Blaze damage starts on SCT, you should be moving. Ideally use a semi-turn+strafe which can be faster than just backing up. The other thing was that you avoided the Blue fire entirely, which I wouldn't have done. The blue fire hits are minimal at best, I just keep the path going regardless of where the Eye Beam stuff is.

This week, I had an opportunity to pull off as both a P2-Elemental Tank and P3/P4 Demon tank. Most fun I've had in a long time. Thanks to whoever suggested that a Warlock could pull it off.

Hello everyone. Just came here with a few questions. We have been having some great attempts on illidan but when we have had those great attempts we have had the same problem.

The problem that we are having is whenever he gets out of a trap, someone either

A. Pulls aggro (dont know if this is possible)

B. Tank doesn't pick him up fast enough.

This leads to him not being positioned correctly and drawing the souls of all of the raid and it becomes a wipe.

Is there a possible solution to this problem?

Thanks in advance.

A) Yes, this is very possible, threat continues to build, there is no threat wipe associated with a trap

B) No such thing, other than "A" happening and your dps'ers are out-threating your tank during the increased damage debuff

Simply put, when you use traps you need to either:

1 - Activate the trap nearer to demon phase so there is no remainder of humanoid phase after the trap fades

2 - Have your dps be VERY CAREFUL and make sure your tank continues to build max threat during the trap

So you get to phase 3 and beyond. Illidan enrages, and your tank is looking for the trap. Your tank shield walls while scrambling to get to the trap. In the process, shield wall fades, and he's still looking for the trap. He turns his back while attempting to get Illidan into the trap, and takes a shear and dies, even while having shield block up - because his back is turned. He promptly eats the shear and dies.

Am I right? (That's my best guess as to how it happpend, anyway, judging by the combat log info and timespan)

Edit: Actually, I'm really wrong, since that was phase 1, and not even during enrages. Sweet. Looks like there's just a bunch of lag then, or your tank turning his back inbetween swings or something! Sorry.

The best flame-kite-video I have seen so far:
YouTube - Illidan Flames of Azzinoth Perfect Kite

The inferno-like spell of the flame has sort of a cone effect, so the fastest way to get out of it is to just strafe left a bit. When on the outer ring try to kite the element while having it faced away from the center of the circle. Do not have it look in the direction you are kiting! You probably will have to do it on the inner ring though. Be prepared to kite it faster on the inner ring and slow and steady on the outer ring. When you start your kite, pull it to the outer ring and start from there.

Does anyone have problems with massive FPS lag during Flame Burst? We were doing out first attempts on Illidan last night (20%!) and pretty much everyone in the raid had massive FPS lag while Flame Burst is in the air.

Normally I get about 30fps during raids; Illidan's other phases are no different. But while Flame Burst is in the air, I get maybe 2-3 frames the entire duration. As soon as it's gone, my FPS returns to normal.

Has it always been like this or is it a recent bug?

This mini-lag exists since patch 2.4. It's annoying but it shouldn't be a problem.

Hi everybody:
We´re working in Illidan during two nights, we reach almost always Demon Phase, since Flames phase it´s dominated. But we have a strange issue wiht the Shadow Blast. The hability description is as follows:

Shadow Blast - Will Shadow Blast the target highest on threat for between 8k and 11k shadow damage. This Shadow Blast has a splash effect - raid members within 20 yards of the affected target will receive the damage from the spell. Resistible.


Our warlock tank aggroes quickly Illidan, without any problem, raid is far from Illidan, but always (and I said always) Illidan casts Shadow Blasts apparently random into the raid. Sometimes on the warlock healers, sometimes in a shamy running at 40 yards, sometimes in one of the fire res OT, who hasn´t done any action and has 0 threat.

We can´t explain what´s happening, it´s no aggro problem, because the warlock tank is always on top in Omen, we´ve checked it. And of course it´s not problem of beiing to close to the lock, we can see the Shadow Blast flying over the screen, from Illidan to the targeted

Any idea????


Sorry about my english ^^