Nefarian Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot

• If you are targeted by Dominion, use Siphon Power to stack up Stolen Power buff, using Free Your Mind only right before you touch the Dominion Portal or if it will walk you into fire.
• Ranged DPS can hit Nefarian in the air during phase two, but makes sure you do not trigger an Electrocute.

• You will need to use a raid-wide defensive cooldown for each Electrocute to survive.
• Tanks will take very high damage on this fight, especially in phase three.
• Break the Dominion instantly with Free Your Mind as you do not need the damage buff.

• Keep both Nefarians and Onyxias heads and tails faced away from the raid.
• Try to always have a defensive cooldown available for each Electrocute.
• Try to kite the Animated Bone Warriors as much as possible, avoid tanking them if you can. Do not break CC on the adds with DoTs or damage, you do not need to damage the adds at all once you have established a high threat lead.

Phase one of this fight starts off with you engaging a revived Onyxia, and Nefarian flying down to join in battle 30 seconds after the encounter begins. Both Onyxia and Nefarian use Shadowflame Breath and Tail Lash, requiring them to be faced away from the raid and all melee DPS to stack on their sides to damage them. Onyxia and Nefarian must be split apart across the room, as if they are within 50 yards of each other they will each gain Children of Deathwing, increasing their attack speed by 100%. Before landing Nefarian will cast Hail of Bones, dealing Shadow damage to nearby players in an area and summoning multiple Animated Bone Warriors, which start with a full energy bar that slowly drains over time. When the Animated Bone Warriors energy bar reaches 0, they will become inactive. They will gain stacks of Empowering Strikes as they lose energy, increasing their damage dealt and movement speed the longer they are alive. As their damage is very high, you will want a tank to gather them early on to generate some threat, then move them towards the bottom of the room and kite them around until their energy reaches 0 and they collapse. If a collapsed Animated Bone Warrior is hit with Shadowflame Breath or Shadowblaze Spark, they will return to 100 energy. Make sure both Nefarian and Onyxia are faced away from the area that the Animated Bone Warriors are being kited.

You will deal with Onyxia first, and when she dies phase two will begin. Onyxia gains over time, and if she reaches 100 energy she will cast Electrical Overload and wipe the raid. She will periodically use Lightning Discharge, dealing damage to all enemies on both sides of her; the damage of Lightning Discharge increases with the amount of Electrical Energy Onyxia has. When the orbs on the sides of Onyxia start to spark she will use Electrical Overload shortly after; the tank will need to turn her sideways, facing her tail towards the raid to prevent everyone from being hit by Electrical Overload. While this will mean players can be hit by Tail Lash, it does far less damage than Electrical Overload, making it the better choice. As killing Onyxia starts phase two, you will want to swap over to Nefarian after Onyxia is low health, only killing Onyxia right before she reaches 100 Electrical Energy. Doing this will greatly increase your chances of success in this encounter once you reach phase three.

After casting Hail of Bones to summon the Animated Bone Warriors, Nefarian will fly down and engage the raid. He must be quickly picked up and dragged away from Onyxia to prevent him from gaining Children of Deathwing, and tanked in a similar way to Onyxia with his head and tail facing away from the raid. Every time Nefarian loses 10% health he will attack the raid with Electrocute, dealing massive Nature damage to all players. Coordinate a raid-wide defensive cooldown for this every time as this can cause deaths easily. If Onyxia is still alive, she will gain 25 Electrical Energy whenever Nefarian uses Electrocute, so keep this in mind when you are damaging Nefarian in phase one. On heroic difficulty, Nefarian will use Dominion to mind control some players for 20 seconds. These players will walk towards a nearby Dominion Portal, dying if they reach it. While you are under the effect of Dominion you will gain two new abilities, Siphon Power and Free Your Mind. Your DPS players should use Siphon Power a few times to gain some stacks of Stolen Power, increasing your damage done per stack, and use Free Your Mind to break out of the mind control before they reach the Dominion Portal; healers should use Dominion Portalright away.

The goal in this phase is to deal as much damage as possible to Nefarian before you must kill Onyxia. Get Onyxia down to around 10% before swapping all DPS over to attacking Nefarian, while keeping an eye on Onyxias Electrical Energy. Whenever Onyxias Electrical Energy is getting close to 100, swap all DPS back to her and kill her before she can reach 100. Remember that every time Nefarian loses 10% health he will use Electrocute, which gives Onyxia 25 Electrical Energy; make sure that this won't cause Onyxia to reach 100 Electrical Energy. Depending on your raid composition, another strategy is to have all of your melee DPS attack Nefarian only in this phase, and have your ranged DPS stick to Onyxia. Regardless of your tactic, you will want to get Nefarian to use Electrocute twice in this phase before killing Onyxia and starting phase two.

At the start of phase two Nefarian will fly into the air and fill the room with lava. The three pillars in the room will be the only safe spots for players to stand on to avoid taking damage from the lava. Split your group up evenly so each platform has a healer, someone that can interrupt, and fairly similar DPS. On each platform there will be a Chromatic Prototype dragon add, which will constantly be casting Blast Nova. If this is not interrupted, it will deal massive Fire damage to the entire raid, likely causing deaths. Make sure each platform has a reliable interrupt and these casts never go off. During this entire phase, Nefarian will bombard random targets with Shadowflame Barrage from the air, requiring a healer on each platform to keep the raid alive. On heroic difficulty a random player will get debuffed with Explosive Cinders, dealing damage to them every 2 seconds and exploding after 8 seconds, dealing damage and knocking back all nearby allies. Whoever gets the Explosive Cinders debuff must quickly jump in the lava and swim away from the platforms, only returning to the platform after the debuff expires. Phase two will end after all three Chromatic Prototypes are dead.

This phase is almost exactly the same as phase one, but you will only be fighting Nefarian. At the start of phase three all Animated Bone Warriors will gain 100 energy; grab them, slow them or crowd control and kite them around the same as phase one. Position Nefarian against the wall again, with the raid stacking on his side. The main difference in this phase is that Nefarian will frequently use Shadowblaze Spark, throwing a projectile at the Animated Bone Warriors. This will deal 50,000 Shadowflame damage to all nearby enemies, restore all Animated Bone Warriors to 100 energy, and remove any slows or crowd control effects on them. It will then spawn a purple fire patch that will continue to move around the room, eventually covering up the entire area.

The tank assigned to the Animated Bone Warriors will need to constantly kite the adds around the room, avoiding the Shadowblaze Sparks as much as possible, and using the areas where there is no fire. You will need to assign a few DPS players to crowd control the group of Animated Bone Warriors from time to time to allow your tank to kite more easily; for example a Mage using Ring of Frost, or a Frost Death Knight using Hungering Cold. On heroic difficulty, Nefarian will keep using Dominion, be sure to stack up the buff as a DPS and break free before you reach the Dominion Portal, or if it will force you to walk through fire.

Aside from the limited time you have in this phase because of the Shadowblaze Spark fires that will eventually cover the room, the main threat of this phase is the Electrocute. Be sure to rotate raid defensive cooldowns and healer cooldowns to keep the raid alive for each of these. Tanks will especially need to be ready with personal defensive cooldowns as it is very easy to die when the Electrocute goes off. Once you have Nefarian and the raid in position, burn all of your DPS cooldowns and finish him off.

Achievement	Description
Keeping it in the Family	Damage Nefarian below 50% health before he lands for the final confrontation and then defeat Nefarian in Blackwing Descent.
Heroic: Nefarian	Defeat Nefarian in Blackwing Descent on Heroic Difficulty.
Heroic: Nefarian Guild Run	Defeat Nefarian in Blackwing Descent on Heroic difficulty while in a guild group.

Nefarian is just one of the six encounters present in the Blackwing Descent raid of Cataclysm. If you would like to learn more about the others, please see our other pages for the raid below.