Dark Animus Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Health Values
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
  • 1.3. Raid Composition
• +2. Loot
  • 2.1. Armor
  • 2.2. Weapons
  • 2.3. Cloaks, Rings, and Trinkets
• 3. DPS Requirements
• 4. Overview of the Fight
• 5. Class-specific Advice
• +6. Abilities
  • 6.1. Anima
  • 6.2. Golems
    • 6.2.1. Anima Golems
    • 6.2.2. Large Anima Golems
    • 6.2.3. Massive Anima Golems
  • 6.3. Dark Animus
• +7. Strategy
  • 7.1. Your Goal
    • 7.1.1. Optimal Dark Animus Activation
    • 7.1.2. Tip for Gaining a Few Seconds
  • 7.2. Ignoring Large Anima Golems
  • 7.3. Dealing with the Golems and the Dark Animus
    • 7.3.1. Anima Golems
    • 7.3.2. Massive Anima Golems
    • 7.3.3. Dark Animus
• 8. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• 9. Learning the Fight
• +10. Heroic Mode
  • 10.1. Differences From Normal Mode
  • 10.2. Strategy
    • 10.2.1. 10-man
    • 10.2.2. 25-man
    • 10.2.3. Massive Anima Golems and Empower Golem
• 11. Concluding Remarks
• 12. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Dark Animus in Throne of Thunder. It is targeted at anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

The encounter against the Dark Animus is the ninth boss encounter in the Throne of Thunder. This is a very unconventional fight, during which you will face the Dark Animus, as well as a large number of adds.

The fight puts a strain on tanks, healers, and DPS players, but it is perhaps most straining for the raid leader.

The 10-minute enrage is not relevant, as there is a soft enrage mechanic that wipes the raid 216 seconds after the boss, which is not originally active, has been activated (more explanation). Therefore, the DPS requirements are as follows (considering that a tank does half the damage of a DPS):

• 10-man with 5 DPS: 68k DPS;
• 10-man with 6 DPS: 57k DPS;
• 25-man with 16 DPS: 76k DPS;
• 25-man with 17 DPS: 72k DPS;
• 25-man with 18 DPS: 67k DPS.

During the encounter against the Dark Animus, you will face, in addition to the boss, a large number of adds called golems: Anima Golems, Large Anima Golems, and Massive Anima Golems. Initially only the Anima Golems are active. Killing them in the proximity of larger adds or the Dark Animus will causes these larger adds or the boss to become active. This is due to the core mechanic of the encounter, Anima.

Anima is the resource that animates the golems and the boss. When the fight begins, the Large Anima Golems, the Massive Anima Golems, and the Dark Animus all have empty Anima pools and are thus inactive. All the Anima Golems have full Anima Pools, and are active. Killing an Anima Golem causes the Anima contained within it to jump to the nearest golem that can accommodate that Anima (so, the Anima cannot jump into a golem that is already full on Anima).

The Large Anima Golems activate once their Anima pool is full (that is two Anima Golems' worth of Anima), while the Massive Anima Golems and the Dark Animus activate as soon as they receive any amount of Anima.

Each of the adds has its own specific abilities, which they use as soon as they are active. The Dark Animus, however, has several abilities which are unlocked by his Anima level. If he is allowed to reach maximum Anima level (that is to say, if all the golems in the room are killed, thus leading all the Anima into the Dark Animus), then he will wipe the raid.

Your raid's goal will be to strike a balance between killing enough golems so that their numbers do not overwhelm you, all the while leaving enough of them alive so that too much Anima does not go into the Dark Animus.

We have prepared the following video preview of the fight against the Dark Animus, based on the testing from the Public Test Realms. The fight has not changed much since then, but our understanding of the optimal strategy has become much clearer. Therefore, we advise you to check the video in order to get a visual feel for the fight, but it is best to refer to this guide for specific tactics. Once we can do the fight on live realms, we will also publish an up-to-date video guide.

On our forums, we are maintaining threads with class-specific advice for each of the fights of Throne of Thunder. So, make sure to check them out, and if you have things to share, do not hesitate to contribute!

Class	Forum Threads
Death Knight	Blood Frost/Unholy
Druid	Balance Feral Guardian Restoration
Hunter	All specs
Mage	All specs
Monk	Brewmaster Mistweaver Windwalker
Paladin	Holy Protection Retribution
Priest	Discipline Holy Shadow
Rogue	All specs
Shaman	Elemental Enhancement Restoration
Warlock	All specs
Warrior	Arms/Fury Protection

We will first explain how Anima works, before looking at the abilities of the golems, and those of the Dark Animus.

Anima is a resource that is integral to the mechanics of the encounter. All types of golems, and the Dark Animus, have Anima pools of different sizes. When one golem is killed, its Anima automatically jumps to the nearest golem who has room in its Anima pool to accommodate the new Anima.

At all times, there will be a fixed amount of 100 Anima, shared between the boss and the golems.

There are 25 Anima Golems present in the fight. Each Anima Golem has an Anima pool of 4, and they all start out with full Anima.

Anima Golems melee their main aggro target, and they have a single ability, called Acceleration Link. When an Anima Golem is within close proximity of another Anima Golem (i.e. practically right on top of each other), they both receive this buff, which increases their damage and attack speed by 250%, and their movement speed by 30%. If the Anima Golems are separated, the buff wears off immediately.

In 10-man, 13 of the 25 Anima Golems are disabled, to account for the lower number of raid members present. The disabled Anima Golems (critically damaged, as they are called in-game) do not attack and cannot be killed, but they too start out with 4 Anima, which the Dark Animus will start draining when he becomes active.

There are 8 Large Anima Golems present in the fight. Each Large Anima Golem has an Anima pool of 8, and they all start out with 0 Anima (thus being inactive). When a Large Anima Golem receives 8 Anima (so, for example, by killing two Anima Golems close to it), it becomes active, and it uses its only ability, Crimson Wake. Crimson Wake is a very damaging void zone that lasts for 30 seconds, and fixates on a random raid member, following them.

Just as with the Anima Golems, 3 of the Large Anima Golems are disabled in 10-man. This means that even when Anima goes into them, they will not activate. Anima from disabled Anima Golems will be drained by the Dark Animus when he activates.

There are 2 Massive Anima Golems present in the fight. Each Massive Anima Golem has an Anima pool of 36, and they all start out with 0 Anima (thus being inactive). When a Massive Anima Golem receives any amount of Anima (so, as little as 4 Anima, from the death of an Anima Golem), it becomes active.

Massive Anima Golems have two abilities.

• Matter Swap is a dispellable debuff that the golem places on its current target, lasting 12 seconds. When the debuff wears off or is dispelled, the affected player has their position swapped with that of the raid member who is farthest away from them at the time. Moreover, Arcane damage equal to the affected player's maximum health is split between the two players, with the portion of damage that the other player takes increasing the longer the debuff remains on the affected player.
• Explosive Slam is an ability that the Massive Anima Golems regularly use. The golem strikes the ground in front of it, dealing damage to all players within 12 yards, and causing them to take increased damage from future Explosive Slams.

Unlike with the previous adds, both Massive Anima Golems are functional in 10-man.

When the fight starts, the Dark Animus is inactive. He has an Anima Pool of 100, and he starts out with 0 Anima. When the Dark Animus receives any amount of Anima (as little as 4), he activates.

The Dark Animus has several abilities. Some are used by default, regardless of how much Anima he has, and other abilities are unlocked as the Dark Animus gains more Anima.

• Siphon Anima is an ability that the Dark Animus uses from the moment that he activates. Every 6 seconds, he drains 1 Anima from any golems in the room that have Anima (including disabled golems in 10-man, if they have received Anima). When Siphon Anima drains all the Anima from a golem, it dies.
• Touch of the Animus is an ability that the Dark Animus uses from the moment that he activates. He places a debuff on a random raid member, which deals a moderate amount of Fire damage every 4 seconds for the rest of the fight.
• Anima Ring is an ability that unlocks when the Dark Animus has 10 Anima. He creates a ring of spheres around his current target, which closes in on the target. Coming in contact with a sphere consumes it, applying a stack of a debuff that increases damage taken from melee attacks by 50% for 15 seconds.
• Anima Font is an ability that unlocks when the Dark Animus has 25 Anima. Each time he casts this, the Dark Animus causes one of the players debuffed by Touch of the Animus to also deal damage to allies in a small area around them.
• Interrupting Jolt is an ability that unlocks when the Dark Animus has 75 Anima. It deals a large amount of raid-wide Nature damage, and it interrupts the spellcasting of any players (also silencing them for 8.5 seconds) who are in the middle of a cast at the time.
• Full Power is an ability that unlocks when the Dark Animus has 100 Anima. The boss channels this spell for the remainder of the fight, and it deals extremely high damage to random raid members every second, wiping your raid very quickly.

The strategy for defeating this encounter is centered around the idea that you must not allow the Dark Animus to reach 100 Anima. We will lay out the best strategy below, before going into detail in subsequent sections.

1. At the pull, assign tanks, plate DPS players and any other players who can survive melee attacks to tank the Anima Golems so that they remain somewhat spread apart.
2. Kill the Anima Golems in such a way that their Anima jumps to the Massive Anima Golems (or one of the Massive Anima Golems in 10-man). Have your tanks ready to pick up the Massive Anima Golems when they activate.
   • Tank the Massive Anima Golems in the center of the room.
3. Kill the Anima Golems to activate the Massive Anima Golems and the Dark Animus. See the next section to know exactly how you should proceed.
4. Use DPS cooldowns and burn down the Dark Animus while tanking the two Massive Anima Golems, and dealing with the various abilities used against you.
   • Dispel Matter Swap after 4 or 5 seconds and make sure both targets are topped off. The reason why you want to wait a few seconds is for the damage to be properly shared between the two players. Dispelling too early would cause the tank to take most of the damage, while dispelling too late would cause the player to take most of the damage (which would be very high since that damage is based on the tank's maximum health).
   • Avoid being hit by Explosive Slam (the affected area on the ground is clearly indicated).
   • Make sure the tank affected by Anima Ring runs out of the ring. This will consume a sphere and the tank will be debuffed to take increased damage from melee attacks. This prompts a tank switch.
   • Make sure players affected by Anima Font stay away from other raid members, so as not to deal damage to them.
   • Make sure not to cast any spells when Interrupting Jolt is being cast.

As you can see, we advise you to completely ignore the Large Anima Golems.

To counter the way in which Siphon Anima works, your goal is to activate the Dark Animus only when there are a few golems left in the room.

Indeed, the more Golems are active when the boss casts this ability, the more Anima he will siphon from them. So, if you kill the first Anima Golem next to the Dark Animus, and activate him early, he will then siphon 1 Anima from all the other Anima Golems, which means that within 20 seconds or so (4 casts of Siphon Anima), he will have drained all the Anima in the room.

At the same time, however, you have to keep in mind that you cannot simply kill the Massive Anima Golems, even though that would make handling the boss easier. The reason for this is that if they die, their Anima will go into Large Anima Golems (which you do not want to activate) or into the Dark Animus (which would cause him to reach 100 Anima faster).

Therefore, your raid's goal is to concentrate all the Anima from the room in as few golems as possible, and to then kill the Dark Animus before he reaches 100 Anima through Siphon Anima.

Before activating the Dark Animus, you want to have a Massive Anima Golem at 36 Anima. This will ensure that it takes the Dark Animus 36 casts of Siphon Anima (or 3 minutes and 36 seconds) to drain all the Anima from that golem, and reach 100 Anima.

In 10-man, the optimal activation is to bring one Massive Anima Golem to 36 Anima and leave the other Massive Anima Golem inactive. Then, kill an Anima Golem next to the Dark Animus to activate the boss with 4 Anima.

1. After 24 seconds, the Dark Animus will be at 68 Anima (4 from having been activated, 8 drained from the remaining Anima Golems, 52 drained from the inactive Anima Golems, and 4 drained from the Massive Anima Golems).
2. After 66 seconds, the Dark Animus will be at 75 Anima and he will gain Interrupting Jolt.
3. After 216 seconds, the Dark Animus will have drained all the Anima and he will wipe the raid.

In 25-man, the optimal way to activate the Dark Animus in 25-man is to bring both Massive Anima Golems to 36 Anima (which requires 18 Anima Golems). Then, kill one Anima Golem next to the Dark Animus to activate the boss with 4 Anima.

1. After 24 seconds, the Dark Animus will be at 36 Anima (4 from having been activated, 24 drained from the 6 remaining Anima Golems, and 8 drained from the Massive Anima Golems.
2. After 144 seconds, the Dark Animus will be at 76 Anima and will gain Interrupting Jolt.
3. After 216 seconds, the Dark Animus will have drained all the Anima and he will wipe the raid.

After the Dark Animus has drained 2 Anima from the Anima Golems, you can kill an Anima Golem next to a Massive Anima Golem. This will cause the Massive Anima Golem to go back to 36 Anima, giving you 12 more seconds to kill the boss.

We recommend entirely skipping activating the Large Anima Golems. The reason for this is that their Crimson Wake ability is extremely damaging and disruptive to your raid (basically requiring several raid members to be constantly on the move, and everyone else to make sure not to touch the void zones).

Doing so requires you to be careful, and to make sure that no Anima Golems die close to the Large Anima Golems than to the Massive Anima Golems or the Dark Animus himself.

The first stage of the fight requires your raid to handle the Anima Golems. You should have your tanks each take one of the Anima Golems that are located next to the Massive Anima Golems, while the rest of the Anima Golems should be tanked by random raid members. Plate DPS players make good tanks, but other classes work as well, provided that healers are aware of the incoming damage.

Anima Golems must be kept apart, as they otherwise gain Acceleration Link. This buff is also gained if an Anima Golem is kept in the proximity of a disabled (or critically damaged) Anima Golem.

Your goal will be to kill the tanks' Anima Golems first, so that they die right next to the Massive Anima Golems, activating them. The tanks will pick these two adds up, and additional Anima Golems should be killed next to the Massive ones in order to pour more Anima into them. When their Anima pools reach the desired levels, have the remaining Anima Golems killed close to the Dark Animus.

It is very important for players who are tanking Anima Golems not to do damage to them if they do not intend to kill them in that location. The Anima Golems have very low health, and they die quite easily.

Your raid members should not bother DPSing the Massive Anima Golems. The goal is to keep these two adds alive until the end of the fight. Dealing with their abilities is pretty straightforward.

Matter Swap, as we said, should be dispelled after a few seconds. In the event that the affected tank is low on health at this time, they should be topped off quickly before being dispelled.

Explosive Slam can be avoided rather easily, since there is an effect on the ground warning you of where the ability will strike for one or two seconds.

Massive Anima Golems should be tanked in the middle of the room. This way, when a tank is swapped for another player with Matter Swap, the Anima Golem from that other player will not run across the entire room, buffing other Anima Golems with Acceleration Link.

As soon as the Dark Animus activates, everyone should switch to him and DPS him. Naturally, if there are any remaining Anima Golems alive, those should be killed next to the Dark Animus first.

Initially, the boss will not use many abilities. Siphon Anima is not really of concern to anyone, and only has implications for the overall strategy. Touch of the Animus is a passive source of constant damage that the healers will need to become accustomed to, but it is not something people should concern themselves with either.

At 10 Anima (so, immediately upon activation, basically) the Dark Animus will start using Anima Ring. Since the tank who is targeted by this will have to come in contact with at least one sphere to exit the ring, they will take increased melee damage for 15 seconds. The boss casts Anima Ring roughly every 15-17 seconds. Once the tank has had Anima Ring cast on them, the other tank should taunt Dark Animus. The tank affected by Anima Ring, once they have left the ring, can then pick up one of the Massive Anima Golems to ease the damage on the Dark Animus' tank.

When the boss reaches 25 Anima (which should happen quite soon after he activates), he will start casting Anima Font. This spell essentially "corrupts" a target affected by Touch of the Animus, causing them to now also deal damage to players within a small area around them. Any players affected by Touch of the Animus should make sure to stand away from any other raid members from this moment on.

When the boss reaches 75 Anima, he begins casting Interrupting Jolt. This is a source of great raid damage, and it also disrupts healing and DPS because everyone must make sure that they are not in the middle of a spell cast when the boss uses this ability.

Finally, the Dark Animus should die before he reaches 100 Anima, as otherwise, you will wipe. Fortunately, he does not have a lot of health.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp after the Dark Animus becomes active. At this time, you have to focus your DPS on killing the boss before he gains 100 Anima, so this is the most pressing time of the fight from a DPS point of view.

The most important part of the Dark Animus encounter is understanding the strategy for the fight, and what needs to be done in order to execute it correctly. While this takes place firstly (and mostly) at the raid-leading level, it is still important for everyone in the raid to understand how things work.

Also very important is the proper spreading of the Anima Golems, so that they do not gain Acceleration Link. On a related note, players must learn not to kill their Anima Golems prematurely - most players will find that even auto-attacks may be too much damage, and they will need to cease everything.

Finally, the other important directive in the strategy for this fight is not to activate any Large Anima Golems. Everyone in the raid must understand this, and they must be well aware of the positioning of their Anima Golems relative to Large Anima Golems.

The Heroic mode of Dark Animus is extremely similar to the Normal mode version of the fight, but the strategy ends up being considerably more elaborate.

All of the hostile NPCs in this encounter have increased health and deal increased damage, when compared to their Normal mode counterparts. In addition to this, there are four mechanical changes, the first of which is very important.

• Instead of there being a total of 100 Anima present in the encounter, there is 152 Anima present in Heroic mode. The consequence of this is that, at the start of the fight, in addition to all Anima Golems having 4 Anima each, 52 Anima also goes into Dark Animus himself, activating him from the start of the fight.
• Dark Animus gains a new ability called Empower Golem. The boss periodically targets the golem with the least health, healing it by 3% and increasing all the damage that that golem deals by 24% until the end of the fight. The damage increase stacks.
• Dark Animus does not begin casting Siphon Anima until 2 minutes of the fight have gone by.
• Coming in contact with an Anima Ring sphere also applies a Fire damage DoT to the player, instead of simply increased the damage that they take from melee attacks.

It is also worth nothing that the inactive golems in 10-man can be killed in Heroic mode.

As in Normal mode, when Dark Animus reaches 100 Anima, he casts FULL POWER and wipes your raid shortly thereafter. This must be avoided at all costs. Making sure that there as few possible adds for Dark Animus to siphon Anima from, and of course making sure that he dies before reaching 100 Anima are the chief concerns in Heroic mode.

We recommend different strategies for 10 and 25-man, and we discuss each in its own separate sub-section below. In each case, as you will see, we focus mainly on the overall strategic goals, since the abilities are the same as in Normal mode, and you will handle them in much the same way.

As you will see in the following section, the 25-man strategy is a bit more elaborate than the 10-man one (and you can try to derive some help from that strategy if you find that your raid is struggling).

Unlike in Normal mode (and unlike in the 25-man Heroic strategy below), we advise you to make use of the Large Anima Golems. Your first goal will be to kill 6 Anima Golems (active ones) early on in the fight, making sure that their Anima goes into the three inactive Large Anima Golems.

The next step is to kill the remaining Anima Golems so that their Anima goes into the Massive Anima Golems. This is something you should do, in a coordinated manner, around the 90-second mark, so that it is completed before the boss begins casting Siphon Anima (at the 2-minute mark), but not too early, since this also activates the Massive Anima Golems, and you do not want to have them up earlier than they need to be.

This will leave you with 1 Anima Golem (6 were killed at the start, and another 18 were killed to fill up both Massive Anima Golems), which you can simply kill so that its Anima goes straight into Dark Animus.

From this point on, the boss will Siphon Anima from the two Massive Anima Golems, and from the three inactive Large Anima Golems, meaning that eventually he will reach 100 Anima and wipe your raid. You must simply make sure to kill him before that time.

When the boss is engaged, Dark Animus will start out with 52 Anima. Your first goal is to must make sure that, around the 1 minute and 30-second mark (so before Dark Animus begins casting Siphon Anima, 2 minutes into the fight), both Massive Anima Golems have 36 Anima each. During the first 90 seconds of the fight, you can DPS Dark Animus as much as you can (possibly even using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp).

Around 90 seconds into the fight, you must kill 18 of the 25 Anima Golems, leaving you with another 7 of them alive. You can kill one of these 7 and have its Anima go directly into Dark Animus, since, as you will see, this makes no difference later on in the fight and it simply makes things easier.

Next, at the 2-minute mark, Dark Animus will cast the first Siphon Anima, which will hit the remaining 6 Anima Golems, and the 2 Massive Anima Golems, thus providing the boss with 8 Anima, putting him at 64 Anima. The second Siphon Anima (20 seconds later) will put Dark Animus at 72 Anima. At this point, you should perform two important tasks.

• Kill two Anima Golems, having their Anima go into the two Massive Anima Golems (the Anima Golems will each have 2 Anima, and the Massive Anima Golems will each have 34/36 Anima, meaning that this is possible to do).
• Kill two more Anima Golems, having their Anima go into two other Anima Golems.

After the third Siphon Anima is cast, Dark Animus will go to 76 Anima (and also begin casting Interrupting Jolt, which you should handle just as you do in Normal mode), since he is only draining Anima from 4 targets now (the two Massive Anima Golems, and two Anima Golems).

Finally, after the fourth Siphon Anima is cast, you should kill the remaining two Anima Golems, making sure that their Anima goes into the Massive Anima Golems. Then, you must simply finish off the boss before he reaches 100 Anima.

Towards the end of the fight, the Massive Anima Golems will have a fair number of Empower Golem stacks, meaning that they will be doing ridiculously high damage to their tanks. There is not much you can do about this, and it is just something that you must be prepared for.

This concludes our raid guide for the Dark Animus. We hope you have found it helpful. Please do not hesitate to post any feedback you may have on our forums.

• 22 Jun. 2013: Added Heroic mode.
• 06 Apr. 2013: Updated frequency of Siphon Anima, which is cast every 6 seconds (the guide was saying every 5 seconds). As a result, the DPS requirements have been updated.
• 29 Mar. 2013: Added a mention to clarify what close proximity means for Acceleration Link.
• 13 Mar. 2013: Added link to forum threads that contain class-specific advice for the encounter.
• 12 Mar. 2013: Interrupting Jolt also silences players for 8.5 seconds, if they are caught by this ability.
• 12 Mar. 2013: Anima Golems gain Acceleration Link even in proximity of disabled Anima Golems.
• 12 Mar. 2013: Added advice for tanking the Massive Anima Golems in the middle (this prevent issues during Matter Swap).
• 12 Mar. 2013: Fixed the number of Anima Golems (it is 13, we were saying 12) and Large Anima Golems (it is 3, we were saying 4) disabled in 10-man difficulty. Note that this slightly changes the optimal activation in 10-man.
• 12 Mar. 2013: Improved explanations for when to dispel Matter Swap.
• 11 Mar. 2013: Improved optimal activation section.

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