Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ20) Raid Guides

As with previous raid tiers, Season of Discovery adds improved gear and even some brand new challenges for players to overcome in the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. Below you can find out about all of the custom changes coming in Phase 6 of SoD.

• Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj is now tuned for 10 players and allows up to 15 players in a raid.

Inside the raid at the first boss, players will find an Obelisk that can be interacted with. The Obelisk is activated by default, offering players the standard-tuning difficulty of the raid; if disabled however, players will face a more challenging raid overall, need to deal with the sanity mechanic, and will have limited attempts to clear sets of 3-bosses for a bonus chest full of extra loot.

Bonus chests are available every 3 bosses, and act as a checkpoint, meaning your attempts only matter for for each individual checkpoint. Failing a "bonus chest checkpoint" however, will cause you to lose the bonus chest, and be unable to attempt any future bonus chest checkpoints. With this new checkpoint system, raids will need to kill the bosses in order of their checkpoints, found below:

1. Checkpoint #1 — Kurinnaxx → General Rajaxx → Moam
2. Checkpoint #2 — Buru the Gorger → Ayamiss the Hunter → Ossirian the Unscarred

As with previous phases during SoD, bosses will drop new and improved loot for players to collect. Below you'll find all of the improved loot available in this raid, and all raids currently available, as well as the newly improved tier 2.5 sets!

Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, or more commonly called AQ 20, is the smaller of the two raids released with the Ahn'Qiraj update in Phase 5 of WoW Classic. This raid is meant to be an introduction into the major raid of this content update, the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (or AQ 40), where you will face off against the Old God C'Thun. Within the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, however, you will face off against far fewer bosses, eventually facing Ossirian the Unscarred.

In order to open the Wall, and allow access into both the 40-man and 20-man raids, your server will need to complete both the War Effort and Scepter of the Shifting Sands questline. You can find our guides for these below:

While there are 6 bosses in total in this raid, 3 of them are optional and can be skipped to get to Ossirian the Unscarred faster, or if you do not need their loot. Once you kill the first two bosses, you will have access to all of the remaining bosses and can pick and choose which ones you would like to attempt.

1. Kurinnaxx
2. General Rajaxx
3. Moam (optional)
4. Buru the Gorger (optional)
5. Ayamiss the Hunter (optional)
6. Ossirian the Unscarred

Luckily, there is no attunement for this raid! As long as your server has gotten rid of the Scarab Wall by completing the two questlines described above, you are free to enter. As a 20-man raid, this raid is meant to be similar to Zul'Gurub as a catch-up raid for guilds, so do not be afraid to try it out!

The Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj is a 20-man raid, which means you can have up to 20 people in your raid group while inside. Because of the more relaxed difficulty compared to the 40-man raid, you should not be afraid to run a less ideal composition. If you do wish to run a strictly optimal raid composition, however, the best setup is detailed below.

Warriors and Rogues continue to be the overall strongest DPS in WoW Classic, but Mages can finally specialize into the Fire tree and start getting some really strong caster gear, which will make them very competitive until the end of WoW Classic. That being said, ranged DPS will actually be preferable for some of the fights, with Warlocks and Priests being especially useful for Moam.

Unfortunately, it is around this point that Hunters start falling off, doing significantly less damage than other ranged damage dealing classes, due to the powerful caster gear from these raids. Because of this, only one is recommended in an optimal setup, and mostly for their unique utility. Alliance players might want to bring more for their Aspect of the Wild aura, in which case they would replace other DPS players in the setup.

• 5 Warriors (1 dedicated Tank Warrior and 2+ Warriors that can off-tank when needed)
• 2 Rogues
• 3 Mages
• 3 Warlocks
• 1 Hunter for Tranquilizing Shot and trash pulling or kiting.
• 2 Holy Paladins / 2 Restoration Shamans
• 3 Priests (all healers)
• 1 Restoration Druids

For more information about the best healers, tanks, and DPS, check out the tier lists for each here.

While the above setup is what would be considered an optimal group in a perfect world, it is important to emphasize that you can complete the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj with almost any raid composition, due to the lower difficulty of the raid compared to its 40-man counterpart. This raid is meant to be more of a catch-up raid, so do not be afraid to make use of it for just that, to get newer or lesser geared characters up to speed.

At the end of the day, players are more important than specs and classes in WoW Classic, so try not to focus too much on crafting an ideal group if it will hurt the social cohesion of your group.