Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ40) 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.

• Temple of Ahn’Qiraj is now tuned for 20 players and allows up to 25 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 — The Prophet Skeram → Bug Trio → Battleguard Sartura
2. Checkpoint #2 — Fankriss the Unyielding → Viscidus → Princess Huhuran
3. Checkpoint #3 — Twin Emperors → Ouro → C'Thun

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!

The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj is the third major raid in World of Warcraft Classic. Found beyond the Scarab Wall in Silithus, in the southwest corner of Kalimdor, this ancient Temple houses C'Thun, the first Old God players can face in World of Warcraft.

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 9 bosses in total in this raid, 3 of them are optional and can be skipped to get to C'Thun faster, or if you do not need their loot. This is especially relevant for Viscidus, which requires a lot of Frost damage in the raid to kill, and might require additional preparation from most groups before a kill is possible.

1. The Prophet Skeram
2. Silithid Royalty (optional)
3. Battleguard Sartura
4. Fankriss The Unyielding
5. Viscidus (optional)
6. Princess Huhuran
7. The Twin Emperors
8. Ouro (optional)
9. C'Thun

In order to get to each boss you will have to face, and defeat, the trash mobs of AQ40. These have varying levels of difficulty, and the packs before C'Thun are often considered harder than most bosses, so make sure to read our detailed guide on dealing with them!

Check out our detailed guide on AQ40 loot (including quests and turn-in NPCs) below:

Each boss page also contains a list of the loot that the specific boss drops.

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. Do keep in mind this is a much harder raid than Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, so come geared and prepared!

• Friendly reputation unlocks the Glyph of Madness affix which will Summon Claw Tentacles throughout boss encounters. These just need to be DPS'd down and are not particularly dangerous unless they are ignored and allowed to spawn freely.
• Honored reputation unlocks the Glyph of Darkness affix which will Summon Eye Tentacles throughout boss encounters. These are more dangerous than the Claws spawned by the previous tier of affix and should be a focus of all ranged DPS as soon as they spawn; melee should also switch to them if they are in range to hit them.
• Revered reputation unlocks the Glyph of Chaos affix which will Summon Giant Claw Tentacles throughout boss encounters. These are extremely dangerous and will need to be picked up by a tank and focused down by all DPS as soon as possible or they will quickly begin to kill members of the raid.
• Exalted reputation unlocks the Glyph of the Void affix which will Summon Eye of C'thun throughout boss encounters. This is by far the most dangerous of the affixes as the Eye spawned will cast the same Eye Beam ability from the C'Thun boss encounter. The moment you see the eye spawn your entire raid will need to spread as the beam chaining to any additional targets will almost certainly result in a death.

The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj is a 40-man raid, which means you can have up to 40 people in your raid group while inside. Because of the increased difficulty, having a setup with geared players of the right classes will make things a lot easier.

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. The The Twin Emperors encounter also favors a balanced setup of melee and ranged, in order to DPS down both Emperors equally.

Unfortunately, it is around this point that Hunters start falling off, doing significantly less damage than other damage dealing classes, and as such, only one is recommended on 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.

• 10 Warriors (1 dedicated Tank Warrior and 2+ Warriors that can off-tank when needed)
• 6 Rogues
• 8 Mages (more if struggling with the The Twin Emperors)
• 4 Warlocks (same as above)
• 1 Hunter for Tranquilizing Shot and trash pulling or kiting. Alliance raids might want to use more for their Aspect of the Wild aura, which is covered on Horde by Shamans.
• 5 Holy Paladins / 5 Restoration Shamans
• 5 Priests (1 Shadow, the rest 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 could probably complete the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj with almost any raid composition, due to players having a much more complete vision of the game and its min-maxing meta in the current age.

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.