Completion Guide - Challenge Mode Shadowmoon burial grounds

[Lockybalboa 618]

Attention: This is a rough guide for completing the Shadowmoon Burial Grounds (SBG) on Challenge mode. As Challenge modes are the best way of acquiring raid level gear before the new raids come out it is important to many people that they finish their daily challenge mode - regardless of time taken. This guide will be updated in the next few weeks to help guide players through Gold level SBG, but for now the goal is helping people complete it.

 

 

Try to have as many buffs as you can as a little goes a long way. It is highly recommended that you have at least 3 good interrupts and 1 good CC option. Bloodlust is highly recommended.

 

Scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the hardest, this CM averages a 5. The final boss and hardest boss around a 6.5.

 

Trash to Boss #1 "Sadana Bloodfury"

 

Major mobs to look out for in this trash are Shadowmoon Bone-Mender and Void Spawn. Shadowmoon Bone-Mender packs a very powerful heal that needs to be stunned or interrupted. Void Spawn casts Void Pulse, a VERY powerful AoE that must be interrupted.

 

The first pack you find has a Bone-Mender and two skeletons in it, CC is not required as long as you interrupt the heal from the Bone-Mender.

 

Following this is one Void Spawn, again make sure to interrupt the AoE.

 

After the Void Spawn is down you'll take a left and find a large pack. This has two Bone-Menders and 4 skeletons in it, CC the skeletons as best you can and one of the Bone-Menders. Pull the rest and watch for the Bone-Mender's heal.

 

Just past this pack you run in to some spiders are that quickly AoE'd down then you will need to drop through a hole in the ground - make sure to dismiss pets before dropping down.

 

One last pack of skeletons and Bone-Menders await before the boss.

 

First Boss Sadana Bloodfury

 

As soon as you enter the room, look down. If you cannot see purple runes on the ground change your graphic settings so that you can see them. These are important.

 

Don't run over any purple rune.

White runes are good to run over and give you an 80% less damage taken buff for 8 seconds.

 

Main spells to deal with are Daggerfall, Dark Eclipse, Whispers of the Dark Star, and Dark Communion.

 

This is a very AoE healing heavy fight so anything that can be done to lessen that should be done for the sake of your healer.

 

Strategy

 

When running in make sure none of you run over the purple runes as they will deal very heavy damage.

 

If you only have one melee you can tank the boss in the center of the room with the ranged DPS and healer standing along the edge. If you have more than one melee then you will need to tank the boss on the edge of the room.

 

Daggerfall will target players and fall from the sky placing a black/purple animation on the ground where they are falling. Since the AoE from these is small you can stack up, drop all of them in the same spot and move away safely. This keeps as much of the room open as possible and allows healers to better heal the group. From our testing it seemed that in order for the Daggers to fall on the ranged there needed to be no more than one melee + the tank in melee range of the boss.

 

Starting at the time of the boss pull Dark Eclipse will come once a minute. One spirit add will spawn about 20 seconds in to the fight and Sadana will start to cast Dark Communion. The add does no damage but will be pulled toward the boss fairly quickly, snares seemed to only have a minor effect on it but stuns worked very well. Very quickly stun, snare, and kill the add. There does not seem to be a way of controlling where the add spawns but it seems to always spawn fairly far away from the boss. The boss cannot be moved during the add phase.

 

Soon after the add is dead it will be time for Sadana to cast Dark Eclipse. On the ground there are two sets of rings of runes, the outside ring is the ring with the purple runes. The inner ring is uncolored. When Dark Eclipse is cast half of the outside runes will turn white and all of the inner runes will turn white.

 

Find and stand on a white rune as quickly as possible, once you pass over it you will gain a buff that decreases damage taken by 80%. This is really the only way to survive Dark Eclipse.

 

Sadana will frequently cast Whispers of the Dark Star sadly there is not much you can do about this other than heal through the damage.

 

Rinse and repeat through the killing of the add, standing on white runes, dodging Daggers, and the fight will quickly be over. Bloodlust is recommended on this boss due to the very high healing requirements and the DPS requirements of killing the add before it is able to heal the boss.

 

 

Trash to Boss #2 "Nhallish"

 

After you leave Sadana's room you'll find two mobs on the left and two more standing slightly behind them on the right, all four of these are considered one pack and will pull together. Shadowmoon Enslaver are the Orcs and Subjugated Soul are the spirits they are channeling on to. Neither of these mobs alone are dangerous, however if allowed to the Enslavers will empower the Souls  with Domination increasing their damage by 100% and making the souls rather deadly.

 

If possible CC the two orcs and fight the souls by themselves, once they are dead pull one or both of the orcs. If the Enslavers do not have a soul to channel on to they will cast Rending Voidlash dealing heavy damage, interrupt this quickly.

 

After the Enslavers and Souls you will find a Shadowmoon Exhumer - almost always the first thing this mob casts is a spell to summon two spirits, interrupting this will stop the spirits from being summoned and allow you to kill the Exhumer quickly and without fuss.

 

 

Nhallish

 

Before entering Nhallish's room you will see books on the ground with a purplish smoke on them, do not walk over these. Walking over this summons a spirit that must be tanked and killed and will only slow you down. Especially do not walk over these books during the boss fight. If you think your group might do so, walk over them before the fight starts so you can kill them and not worry about them mid boss fight.

 

Spells used by the boss are Planar Shift - a simple teleport to a random player that is always followed immediately by Void Vortex a short ranged inhale that will pull players toward the boss and deal damage doing so.

 

Void Blast a cone of damage that is fired at the tank and any players standing behind the tank dealing very heavy damage. Tanks should use CDs here and face the boss away from others so they are not insta killed.

 

Void Devastation fires bolts in to the air that will fall to the ground and make void zones. These void zones deal very heavy damage when they land and ticking if players stand in them. Dodge these, do not walk over them.

 

Soul Steal rips your soul from your body and places you in a sort of phased place. During this you will be taking ticking damage, oddly the ticking damage is lighter than in the heroic mode of this boss, only dealing 8,000 damage per tick in Challenge mode where as it deals 12,000 per tick in Heroic. 

 

You may still attack the boss during this phase but if you target your soul and kill it you will stop the ticking damage and gain a damage buff Returned Soul for 20 seconds increasing all damage and healing by 40%.

 

Strategy

 

Pull the boss and face it away from the group. The group should lightly spread around the room staying about 10-15 yards from each other but still in range of the healer. Because of the long cooldown on the bosses most deadly spells you should only have to deal with one or two Soul Steal phases and one Void Devastation phase. The other spells are on a fairly small cooldown but are mostly nonthreatening, other than Void Blast but it should be dealt with only by the tank.

 

Mechanically this boss is simple, once spread out DPS the boss and wait for the teleport and vortex. If spread out well only about half the group should be affected by the vortex no matter which it picks to spawn on, this greatly reduces the damage taken and the DPS loss from having to run out of it.

 

Kill your add when you go in to the Soul Steal phase, the add has very little HP and the damage/healing buff gained is well worth the 6 or 7 casts required to kill the add. 

 

Void Devastation can be tricky due to how the room is built. If you zoom your camera out to far you will have issues bobbing around the room. If possible look slightly up and watch for where the orbs will fall. These are random and do not particularly target anyone. You will need to stay mobile and dodge the void zones quickly.

 

Bloodlust is not recommended here as the boss is not too hard and the DPS or HPS is not very high.

 

 

Trash to Boss #3 "Bonemaw"

 

Easy trash, there are a couple of Enslavers, a couple of Exhumers, nothing you haven't done before.

 

After the Enslavers and Exhumers you will run in to a few packs of spiders. These do nothing of note and can be very quickly AoE'd down.

 

Once at the bridge to Bonemaw you'll get jumped by a smaller version of Bonemaw that you will need to kill. Move out of the ground slam. 

 

You might pull some bats that are flying around in the room, much like the spiders they do nothing of note and can be AoE'd down fast.

 

 

Bonemaw

 

Before the fight if you have any personal teleports or ways of getting back on to the platform in case you get knocked off, place them now.

 

Bonemaw only has a few spells to deal with, Body Slam will be cast directly in front of the boss leaving the same ground slam animation that the trash right before Bonemaw left, dodge this. If hit it will deal heavy damage and knock you off the platform.

 

Body Slam cannot be dodged or avoided and just deals a lot of damage. Healer CDs and personals should be used.

 

Necrotic Pitch will target random players and to be fired at leaving a void zone on the ground that will slow players by 75% and deal damage to them. But this is important to use during Inhale when the boss casts a very powerful vortex pulling players to it. If eaten the player will take 200,000 damage and be throw off the platform. It is better to take the ticking damage from the Pitch then to be eaten.

 

Corpse Breath cannot be dodged or faced away from the group, healer CDs and personals should be used.

 

Along with this the boss will summon two copies of himself to fight alongside of him. These will cast the Body Slam like Bonemaw does and will spit venom at random players. They cannot be tanked and can be killed fairly quickly.

 

 

Strategy

 

Body Slam will deal about half of your health, dodge it. This only becomes hard when the two adds are out and casting it also (See bad drawing below)

 

 

 

As you can see the Red dot is Bonemaw and the two orange dots are the adds, when all three cast Body Slam at the same time it can be hard to find a safe spot to stand. Try to stay near where the safe spots will be so you are not stuck in a bad place, it is very possible to be hit by more than one Body Slam at a time and if so will one shot you.

 

Kill the adds quickly and return to the boss.

 

the only other thing you need to be worried about is Inhale. You can out run inhale but the strength of the vortex grows as it goes on so it can be very hard to out run it unless you have very good speed boosts. If at all unsure just stand in a Necrotic Pitch and you won't move. The damage from it is fairly light and can be healed though without much issue.

 

Lastly be ready for Corpse Breath the damage from it is rather high to be hitting all players and cooldowns should be used to survive it.

 

Trash to Boss #4 "Ner'zhul"

 

One pack of two spiders and two bats, CC one or two and pull the rest. 

 

One last trash pull remains and it is by far the hardest. Two Void Spawn at the same time. If you remember from the start of the zone, Void Spawn cannot CC'd in any way and have a massive damage AoE spell Void Pulse.

 

There is no trick to this, just grab them both and interrupt as many of the Pulses as you can. Burn one down as fast as possible so that focus interrupts on the other and if you wipe you'll have at least one of them dead.

 

Ner'zhul

 

 

Boss spells are Malevolence a large cone of damage that will apply a graphic to the ground before landing, tanks face this away from the group.

 

Omen of Death Bad stuff that falls from the sky and does AoE damage around where it lands. You cannot out range the damage totally but it is based on proximity so the farther away you are the better. 

 

Ritual of Bones works just as it did in heroic, Ner'zhul summons a wave of skeletons that sweep across the room acting as a large cutter beam. Anyone who touches it will most likely be one shot on the spot. Target and kill one of the skeletons to make a hole for your group to pass through.

 

 

Strategy

 

It is highly recommended that you Bloodlust for this boss at the start of the fight, it should give you a solid lead on the boss and last long enough to help you down the first Ritual of Bones.

 

Tank pull the boss and place him off center of the room with the ranged DPS and healer about 10 yards off the edge of the room farthest from the boss, don't hug the wall though so you can have some breathing room in case Ritual of Bones is summoned behind you.

 

Stack and drop the Omen of Death before moving away from it at least 30 yards. Circling around the room you should be able to drop the Omens far enough from where your group is stacked that you are not taking massive amounts of damage. 

 

Avoid dropping the Omen in the center of the room or near melee.

 

Once Ritual of Bones is cast the tank should move to the opposite side of the room from where the skeletons are coming from. All DPS, melee included, should turn and focus down one skeleton. The party leader should mark the skeleton with a Skull marker so that there is no mistake. 

 

Melee be very careful when DPSing the skeleton and stay on the move. The cutter wave damage is slightly large then the animation.

 

Save your second potions for the second Ritual.

 

Rinse and repeat these steps, tank facing the boss away from party members, dropping the Omens around the edge of the room, DPSing a single skeleton when Ritual is cast. Assume a bad Omen placement or two especially during Ritual of Bones, this would be what to save a healer CD for and a personal just in case.

 

 

Hope this guide helps, question or commons are welcome.

 

[Lockybalboa 618]

Please forgive spelling and grammar errors, normally when I write a guide I take a couple of weeks to do it and proof read it 40-50 times. Since these guides are much more urgent then normal I only take a day or two to write them and only proof read 10-15 times. Once these are updated for Gold they will be cleaned up much more.

 

 

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