Spoils of Pandaria 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. Amulets, Rings, and Trinkets
• 3. Overview of the Fight
• 4. Class-specific Advice
• +5. Environment and Fight Structure
  • 5.1. The Catwalk
  • 5.2. Quadrants
  • 5.3. More on Crates and Energy
• +6. Mobs and Abilities
  • 6.1. Mogu Crates
    • 6.1.1. Lightweight Crates
    • 6.1.2. Stout Crates
    • 6.1.3. Massive Crates
  • 6.2. Mantid Crates
    • 6.2.1. Lightweight Crates
    • 6.2.2. Stout Crates
    • 6.2.3. Massive Crates
  • 6.3. Pandaren Crates
• +7. Strategy
  • 7.1. Mogu Quadrants
  • 7.2. Mantid Quadrants
  • 7.3. Pandaren Crates
• 8. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• +9. Summing Things Up
  • 9.1. Tanks
  • 9.2. Healers
  • 9.3. DPS
  • 9.4. Everyone
• 10. Learning the Fight
• +11. Heroic Mode
  • 11.1. Differences From Normal Mode
  • 11.2. Strategy
• 12. Concluding Remarks
• 13. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Spoils of Pandaria in Siege of Orgrimmar. 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 Spoils of Pandaria constitutes the tenth encounter in the Siege of Orgrimmar. This is an unusual fight, where your raid will not have to face any boss. Rather, you will have to split up into two teams, each one opening a multitude of crates which release adds that must be defeated. Your raid must effectively clear the room in a given amount of time in order to succeed.

The Spoils of Pandaria encounter is an unusual fight. Instead of facing a boss, your raid will have to get through a large number of different adds in order to succeed. While the mechanics and strategy of the fight are not particularly difficult to understand, the structure of the fight is quite complex.

The fight takes place in four different quadrants of a large room. Each quadrant is filled with a large number of differently-sized crates that your raid members can open, which contain the adds. There are two Mogu-themed quadrants and two Mantid-themed quadrants.

• Initially, only two of the quadrants (one Mogu and one Mantid) are accessible to your raid, and since you will need to engage mobs in both quadrants at the same time, your raid will have to split up. After killing enough enemies in the first two quadrants, your raid will be able to open two gates allowing them to access the other two quadrants. The four quadrants are linked together in pairs of two, so the two different teams in your raid group will never reunite during the fight.
• The last two quadrants will present similar challenges to the first two. In that second quadrant, the group that defeated Mogu adds in the first quadrant will fight Mantid adds, and the group that defeated Mantid adds in the first quadrant will fight Mogu adds. Once your raid kills enough mobs in both of these quadrants, the encounter is defeated.

In order to access the last two quadrants, the raid members in each of the first two quadrants will have to pull a lever that opens a gate. Each quadrant's lever must be powered up in order to be usable, and this only happens once enough mobs have died in that quadrant. All raid members have a special resource bar on their screen that indicates how close their quadrant's lever is to being powered up. The doors to the last two quadrants will only open when both levers have been pulled. The entire fight is timed, and raid members have a fixed amount of time to activate the first two levers, and then another set amount of time to activate the final two.

Videos:

• PTR Preview — a short overview of the boss, based on PTR testing, which is extremely useful for getting a rough understanding of the fight.
• Video Guide — a video guide of the boss, based on live-realm experience.

On our forums, we are maintaining threads with class-specific advice for each of the fights of Siege of Orgrimmar. 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

The environment and the structure of the fight are more complex than those of most other encounters, so understanding its mechanics well is important. This section is dedicated to this purpose.

Before the pull your raid is located on a sort of catwalk overlooking four rather small rooms, henceforth referred to as quadrants. Your raid is not able to jump down to these quadrants at this time, since they are blocked by a small fence. To pull the fight, one of your raid members must interact with a control panel located on the catwalk, which causes the fences of two quadrants (north-east and south-west) to disappear. As soon as this happens, any raid members who are located on the catwalk take Fire damage every second, effectively forcing you to jump down into the two quadrants.

Before jumping from the catwalk, the raid must be divided in two groups, each group jumping in a different quadrant. From then on, the groups are on their own and will not be able to meet again until the end of the fight. It is possible for players to use the crate lifting hooks to get back to the catwalk and jump on the quadrant on the other side to join the other group, but while the fight is going on, interacting with the lifting hooks takes too long for it to be viable (or so it did in our experience).

Each quadrant works exactly in the same way.

1. A quadrant contains a large number of crates that can be opened by right-clicking them. This causes hostile adds to appear (in Mogu quadrants, the adds are Mogu, and in Mantid quadrants, the adds are Mantid).
2. Killing hostile mobs fills up an Energy bar that is added for the duration of the encounter to the user interface of every raid member.
3. When the Energy bar is filled, the lever of the quadrant becomes usable.

In the first quadrant, the groups have 270 seconds to kill enough adds and use the lever. Once the levers in both quadrants have been used, the doors to the second quadrants open up. After that, groups have 300 second to use the levers in the second quadrants. Doing so successfully will defeat the encounter, after which time you can use one of the crate lifting hooks to travel back to the catwalk.

Failing to use the lever of a quadrant before the time is up causes your raid to wipe instantly.

There are three crate sizes (Lightweight, Stout, and Massive). A single crate will always spawn a single add (although this add can summon other adds). That add is chosen randomly among a predefined set of aads that the crane can contain. The strength and health of the add depends on the crate size: the bigger the crate, the more powerful the add.

Each lever requires 50 Energy to become usable. Killing an add grants a number of Energy that depends on the size of the create from which the add spawn:

• killing an add that spawned from a Lightweight crate gives 1 Energy;
• killing an add that spawned from a Stout crate gives 3 Energy;
• killing an add that spawned from a Massive crate gives 14 Energy.

There exist a few Crates of Pandaren Relics, which contain hostile Pandaren mobs that grant buffs to your raid members when killed. These crates are located randomly in both Mogu and Mantid quadrants.

Since your raid will engage both types of quadrants simultaneously, we have no choice but to present all the abilities of all the mobs before we discuss the strategy. This may appear overwhelming at first, but things are not as complicated as they seem.

Note that unless stated otherwise, all abilities only affect players in the quadrant where they are cast.

Each Lightweight Crate contains one of the following three mobs.

• Animated Stone Mogu have two abilities.
  • Harden Flesh is an interruptible and dispellable 10-second DoT that deals Physical damage over time, as well as progressively slowing the target by 30% every second.
  • Earthen Shard is an interruptible nuke that deals moderate Nature damage.
• Burial Urns are mobs that have no abilities of their own, but instead summon other adds called Sparks of Life.
  • Sparks of Life deal high pulsing Nature damage in a 4-yard area around them, and, when killed, deal is a high amount of Nature damage to all players within 8 yards.
• Several Quilen Guardians spawn from the same crate. They only have one ability.
  • Carnivorous Bite is a stacking bleed effect that they apply on their main aggro target.

Each Stout Crate contains one of the following two mobs.

• Modified Anima Golems have two abilities.
  • Matter Scramble places two beams of light at two locations in the room, and, a few seconds later, swaps the locations of the players who are standing in these beams of light. If there are no players standing in a beam of light, the entire raid will take a very high amount of Fire damage.
  • Crimson Reconstitution places a void zone on the ground at the location of the Modified Anima Golem, which heals any mobs standing it.
• Mogu Shadow Ritualists have three abilities.
  • Torment is a dispellable DoT that deals a fixed initial amount of damage, and increasing Shadow damage over time. When dispelled, the DoT jumps to a nearby target, dealing its initial damage to them, but having its over-time damage reset to its base amount. All instances of this DoT disappear when the Mogu Shadow Ritualist dies.
  • Forbidden Magic is an interruptible channeled nuke.
  • Mogu Rune of Power is a void zone that the Mogu Shadow Ritualist places at his location, which increases the melee, ranged, and spell haste of anyone standing in it.

Each Massive Mogu Crate contains one of 4 Mogu Elders. Each NPC has one ability, and all of them have a shared ability, called Return to Stone. Return to Stone is cast on random players, dealing a moderate amount of Shadow damage to them, knocking them back, and spawning a Stone Statue add at their location. The Stone Statues do not have any abilities, they do not attack raid members (they appear to just wander aimlessly around the room), but while they are alive, each one buffs the damage of the Mogu Elder, increasing its damage dealt by 10%.

Below, we list each of the 4 Mogu Elders and their abilities.

• Jun-Wei casts Shadow Volley, which deals a high amount of Shadow damage to nearby players.
• Zu-Yin casts Molten Fist, which deals a high amount of Fire damage to nearby players.
• Xiang-Lin casts Jade Tempest, which deals a high amount of Firestorm damage to nearby players.
• Kun-Da casts Fracture, which deals a high amount of Nature damage to nearby players.

Each Lightweight Crate contains one of the following three mobs.

• Sri'thik Bombardiers have two abilities.
  • Gusting Bomb fires a projectile at a random ranged raid member, dealing a high amount of Nature damage in a 5-yard area, and leaving behind a damaging void zone.
  • Throw Explosives throws a bomb at random raid members, which deals a moderate amount of Physical damage in a 2-yard area.
• Amber-Encased Kunchongs have one ability.
  • Encapsulated Pheromones is a gas cloud that deals a moderate amount of Fire damage every second to players standing in it.
• Kor'thik Warcallers have one ability.
  • Enrage is a self-buff that increases the Warcaller's damage by 200%, but reduces its movement speed. While active, their melee attacks apply a stacking debuff to their target, which reduces armor by 20% per stack.

Each Stout Crate contains one of the following two mobs.

• Zar'thik Amber Priests have two abilities.
  • Mantid Swarm summons several small adds with no abilities to aid the Amber Priest.
  • Residue is a dispellable buff that the Amber Priest places on an allied mob. This spell heals the target and any other allied targets around them, with the healing being split evenly amongst all targets.
• Set'thik Wind Wielders have two abilities.
  • Windstorm is a moving tornado that deals high Nature damage in an area. It lasts for 18 seconds, and its movement speed increases over time.
  • Rage of the Empress is a dispellable buff that the Wind Wielder casts on all nearby allies, increasing their damage done by 50%.

All Massive Crates contain a Ka'thik Demolisher. This mob has two abilities.

• Set to Blow is a 15-second debuff with 5 charges that the Ka'thik Demolisher places on a random raid member. This player receives an extra action button. The debuff itself does not do anything, but when it expires, the player takes a high amount of Fire damage for each stack of the debuff that he has, and deals the same damage to any players within 9 yards. Clicking the extra action button consumes a stack, and places a bomb on the ground at the player's location. A few seconds after being placed, the bomb becomes armed, and any player who comes within 9 yards of it detonates it, causing it to deal a high amount of Fire damage to anyone within 9 yards, also detonating any other bombs in that area. If it is not detonated by a player, the bomb detonates on its own 30 seconds after being placed. The extra action button has no cooldown or resource cost, allowing players to get rid of all 5 stacks of Set to Blow.
• Pheromone Cloud is a raid-wide pulsing damage aura that is active while the Ka'thik Demolisher is alive. It deals low Nature damage every second.

Each Pandaren Crate contains one of the following three mobs.

• Ancient Brewmaster Spirits have two abilities, and upon their death they buff your tanks.
  • Keg Toss throws a keg at a random ranged raid member, dealing a high amount of Nature damage to players within 5 yards, and slowing all affected players by 50% for 15 seconds.
  • Breath of Fire is a frontal cone attack that deals a high amount of Fire damage to all affected players. If the players are currently debuffed by Keg Toss, then they will have a 6-second Fire damage DoT and disorient effect placed on them, which can be dispelled.
  • Blade of the Hundred Steps buffs your tanks, giving them a chance on attack to deal a massive amount of Nature damage to enemies within 4 yards, stunning them for 1.5 seconds. This effect works even on creatures that are normally immune to stuns, and it has a 15-second internal cooldown.
• Wise Mistweaver Spirits have two abilities, and upon their death they buff your healers.
  • Gusting Crane Kick pulls players within 40 yards to the Wise Mistweaver Spirit's location, and deals moderate Physical damage every second to players within 10 yards. It lasts for 4 seconds.
  • Eminence is a passive ability that causes the Wise Mistweaver Spirit to heal herself for 150% of the damage that she deals.
  • Staff of Resonating Water buffs your healers, granting their heals a chance to create a healing wave that travels in front of the caster, healing any damaged players it comes in contact with until all its healing (a base of 100,000 health) has been used. The wave also damages any enemies it comes across. It has an 8-second internal cooldown.
• Nameless Windwalker Spirits have one ability, and upon their death they buff your DPS players.
  • Path of Blossoms charges a random ranged raid member, leaving a trail of fiery blossoms in the Windwalker Spirit's path, and stunning any targets within 3 yards of the destination for 6 seconds. The fiery blossoms last for 30 seconds, and if a player comes within 3 yards of a blossom, it will explode, dealing a high amount of Fire damage in a 3-yard radius.
  • Claw of Burning Anger buffs your DPS players, causing their attacks to have a chance of dealing a moderate amount of Fire damage to the target. This effect has a 5-second internal cooldown.

The strategy for the encounter is much simpler than the overwhelming number of adds and abilities would lead you to believe.

Before starting the encounter, you should split your raid up into two balanced groups (with an even number of tanks, healers, and DPS players in each group). As the fight starts, each group should jump down into their designated quadrant and begin opening crates.

There is no truly ideal order or combination of crates to open in each quadrant, and such a combination would, in any case, depend heavily of the exact tuning of the fight on live servers. We will provide you with a few guidelines, however.

• Always open the Pandaren Crates first when they are available, since the buffs offered by these Spirits are very powerful, and it is best to have them active for as long as possible.
• Try to calculate things in such a way that you do not open more crates than you really need to. For example, knowing that a Massive Crate awards 14 energy when the mob contained within it dies, it is pointless to open a Massive Crate when your raid only needs 2 more energy. In this case, it would be faster and safer to open two Lightweight Crates, or one Stout Crate.
• Take advantage of your raid members' ability to cleave and multi-DoT by always having one or more Lightweight Crates open while you are handling the more powerful mobs from Massive or Stout Crates. The enemies from the Lightweight Crates are weak enough so as not to cause problems in small numbers.

In the sections that follow, we will look at how to deal with the mechanics in each of the two types of quadrants.

All the Mogu Elders should be handled in the same way. Whenever they spawn Stone Statues, your ranged DPS players should focus these down immediately. Aside from this, ranged raid members and healers should stand far away from the Elders so as to avoid the damage of their abilities (which all deal damage, albeit of different schools, to players in a small area around them).

The Modified Anima Golems should be moved out of the healing void zones that their Crimson Reconstitution ability creates (and any other hostile mobs should be kept out of these void zones as well). Whenever Matter Scramble is cast, at least one raid member should quickly move to stand in each beam of light, thus rendering the mechanic harmless.

The Mogu Shadow Ritualists should likewise be moved out of their Mogu Rune of Power void zones, and raid members should again stand in them when possible, to benefit from the effects. Torment should be dispelled, although given the relatively low health of the Shadow Ritualists, the DoT will probably not be up for very long anyway. Forbidden Magic should be interrupted whenever possible.

The Animated Stone Mogu should be interrupted whenever possible, and if they manage to cast Harden Flesh on anyone, this DoT should be dispelled.

The Burial Urns and their resulting Sparks of Life should be killed. The Urns do not need to be tanked (they are stationary), and the Sparks of Life should be killed by ranged DPS players, while melee players must make sure not to be within 8 yards of them when they die.

The Quilen Guardians should be killed quickly enough that their Carnivorous Bite bleed does not get to stack too high on your tank, but in general these adds are not very dangerous unless they are left alive for far too long.

Except for the Burial Urns, the Sparks of Life, and the Stone Statues, all other mobs in this quadrant must be tanked.

Players who are affected by Set to Blow must make sure to get rid of at least 4 out of the 5 stacks of the debuff before it expires. Ideally, they should go to a vacant area of the quadrant and place their bombs on the ground there. They must make sure to immediately move more than 9 yards away from every bomb that they place, since otherwise they will detonate them themselves. The damage from Pheromone Cloud must simply be healed through.

The Zar'thik Amber Priests' Residue must be dispelled as soon as it is cast, in order to minimise the amount of healing it does to the enemies.

Players must avoid the Windstorm tornadoes, and the Rage of the Empress buff should be dispelled from any enemies who will live long enough to be dangerous with this increase in damage done.

When Sri'thik Bombardiers are alive, your raid must be spread out to minimise the damage caused by Gusting Bomb and Throw Explosives, and raid members should stay out of the void zones left behind by Gusting Bomb.

Amber-Encased Kunchongs are not problematic, the only thing to note here being to avoid standing in the Encapsulated Pheromones clouds.

Finally, the Kor'thik Warcallers should be kited by their tank whenever they Enrage themselves.

All the mobs in this quadrant must be tanked.

In this section, we will very briefly explain how to deal with the abilities of each of the three Pandaren Spirits.

Players should simply spread out for the Ancient Brewmaster Spirit's Keg Toss, and the targeted players should attempt to avoid the barrel before it lands. Players should be spread out, and they should try to move out to avoid being damaged by Breath of Fire. If any players who are debuffed by Keg Toss get hit by Breath of Fire, they should be dispelled immediately.

Whenever the Wise Mistweaver Spirit casts Gusting Crane Kick, everyone should run away from her until the cast ends.

Finally, when the Nameless Windwalker Spirit charges a player, this player and any other players in their proximity should move away. Everyone in the raid should then be careful not to come within 3 yards of the fiery blossoms on the floor.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp during the part of the fight that is proving to be most difficult for your raid. It is hard to tell ahead of time what this will be. Given the immense benefit that it is to have Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp up at the start of the fight, when all DPS cooldowns are available, we advise you, if possible, to use it at the start and to open a large number of crates than usual.

Note that a Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp used in one quadrant does not reach the players in the other quadrant, allowing your two groups to manage their casts independently from one another.

In this section, we will very briefly summarise what the players belonging to each of the three roles have to do during this fight.

• Pick up and tank any mobs that spawn in your quadrant. Make sure to move the mobs out of void zones that heal them or buff their damage.
• Kite the Kor'thik Warcallers when they become Enraged.

• Face as many raid members as possible so that the buff you gain from the Wise Mistweaver Spirit is efficient.
• Dispel Torment, as well as any other harmful debuffs whenever possible.

• DPS the adds while making use of cleaving and multi-DoT-ing. Make sure to respect the kill order called out by your raid leader (in general, kill the most dangerous enemies first).

• Avoid the numerous ground-based attacks present in the fight, and make sure to spread out when the adds that are alive call for it.
• If debuffed by Set to Blow, make sure to place the bombs in an area of the quadrant that is not occupied by your raid.

Given the fact that there is both a Mogu and a Mantid quadrant active at the start of the fight, it is possible to rotate your two groups in such a way that everyone can have ample practice on both types of quadrants without having to go through several minutes of fighting first. You should make use of this to iron out any strategy issues you may have.

After that, it will really all come down to practice. There is no great strategy involved in the fight; rather, your raid members will have to learn to adapt and react to the many different mechanics that they will be faced with.

The Heroic mode of the Spoils of Pandaria encounter contains a new mechanic that has an impact on the strategy, changing it somewhat from the Normal mode strategy. That said, the fight feels fairly similar overall.

Aside from the mobs all having their health and damage increased, there are two mechanical changes to the fight.

The first change is that the Crimson Reconstitution void zones now also deal Fire damage every second to anyone standing in them.

The second change is that each time the mobs contained inside a crate are all killed, one Unstable Spark add (and only one, regardless of the number of mobs in the crate) will spawn in the other active quadrant of the room. The Unstable Sparks do not spawn in fixed locations, but they have a tendency to spawn around the center of the quadrant. The sparks do not melee, and they do not need to be tanked. As soon as they spawn, they begin casting Supernova, an uninterruptible spell with a 10-second cast time that deals a massive amount of damage, essentially wiping the raid.

Dealing with the change to Crimson Reconstitution is not problematic, and requires practically no change in strategy whatsoever. Mobs will still need to be moved out of these void zones as soon as possible, but the only difference now is that players will take damage if they linger inside the void zones (which, therefore, they should not do).

The Unstable Sparks, however, have rather profound consequences on the strategy for the fight. There are two main issues to discuss here.

First of all, properly dealing with the sparks themselves, once they have spawned, is very important. None of the sparks can ever be allowed to finish their 10-second cast, since this will practically guarantee a wipe. That means that as soon as a spark spawns, ranged DPS players will need to switch to it and kill it. The sparks' health is not very high, so in 10-man, a single ranged DPS can kill a spark in less than 10 seconds, while 3 ranged DPS players suffice in 25-man. With that in mind, it is best to be cautious and assign more than the minimum number of players needed, especially in the Mantid quadrants where ranged DPS players may be debuffed by Set to Blow, preventing them from standing still and focusing on the sparks.

Second of all, it is essential to your raid's success to minimise the number of sparks that spawn throughout the fight. Therefore, while in Normal mode your raid generally did not care what combinations of adds were killed to reach the 50 energy required to complete a quadrant, in Heroic mode this becomes a very important issue. You will have to open both of the Massive Crates in your quadrant (something you generally avoid doing in Normal mode), and you will have to obtain the remaining 22 energy through an efficient combination of crates.

We would also like to mention that, given the increased health and damage of the mobs, the Pandaren buffs become very important in Heroic mode. While for DPS players and tanks, these buffs require no management, healers will want to make sure that they position themselves in such a way that the healing waves the buff creates have a strong impact (they touch as many allies and enemies as possible).

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

• 08 Dec. 2013: Added Heroic mode strategy.
• 08 Oct. 2013: Added link to video guide.

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