Ko'ragh Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic+Mythic Modes included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Normal and Heroic Difficulty
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
• +2. Summing Things Up
  • 2.1. Tanks
  • 2.2. Healers
  • 2.3. DPS
  • 2.4. Everyone
• 3. Overview of the Fight
• 4. Abilities
• +5. Strategy
  • 5.1. Strategy Overview
  • 5.2. Nullification Barrier and Soaking Overflowing Energy
  • 5.3. DPS While Nullification Barrier is Recharging
  • 5.4. Handling Ko'ragh's Other Abilities
• 6. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• +7. Mythic Mode
  • 7.1. Differences From Normal Mode
  • 7.2. Strategy
• 8. Learning the Fight
• +9. Loot
  • 9.1. Armor
  • 9.2. Weapons
  • 9.3. Amulets, Cloaks, Rings, and Trinkets
• 10. Concluding Remarks
• 11. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Ko'ragh in Highmaul. It is targeted at anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

Ko'ragh is one of the bosses in the Highmaul raid instance. The fight requires your raid to handle adds throughout the fight, all while fighting Ko'ragh himself. Positioning is also very important during this encounter.

This main part of this guide covers both the Normal and Heroic versions of the encounter, as far as mechanics and general strategy is concerned. The only difference between these two modes is found in the tuning, with Heroic being more difficult.

When we speak of extreme situations (such as the difficulty of a soft enrage timer, or damage from a certain source being too high to survive), we mostly refer to Heroic mode.

In addition to this, we have a specific Mythic mode section, where we present all the differences between Normal/Heroic and Mythic, as well as the strategy to defeat the Mythic encounter.

We do not currently know what the hard enrage timer for this encounter is. There do not seem to be any soft enrage mechanics in the fight.

In this section, we will very briefly summarise what the players belonging to each of the three roles have to do during this fight. This is by no means meant to provide sufficient information to master the encounter, and it is only supposed to give you a very rough idea of what to watch out for.

• Perform a tank switch when the tank is targeted by Expel Magic: Arcane, allowing them to run out to safety.
• Pick up the Volatile Anomalies and drag them into a Suppression Field void zone as they are about to die.

• Watch out for the many moments in the encounter when small mistakes can lead to high amounts of damage. Particularly, be careful when Volatile Anomalies are being killed, and when Expel Magic: Fire is about to expire.
• Pay special attention to the health of the player who enters Ko'ragh's rune to gain a Nullification Barrier.
• Use cooldowns to quickly heal the raid up when they are affected by Expel Magic: Shadow.
• In Mythic mode, pay special attention to the health of the players who are inside Ko'ragh's rune, as they will need a lot of healing.

• If assigned to do so, move into Ko'ragh's rune when he is recharging his Nullification Barrier until you receive your own Nullification Barrier. Then, use this to soak the falling balls caused by Overflowing Energy.
• DPS the Volatile Anomalies, but only kill them when they are inside a Suppression Field void zone.
• In Mythic mode, interrupt the mind controlled players' casts of Forfeit Power. Physical DPS players will have to attack these mind controlled players until their mind control breaks (when they reach 20% of their health).

• Avoid standing in a Suppression Field void zone.
• Spread out at least 5 yards apart when Expel Magic: Fire is about to expire.
• Do not stand next to the orb of Frost from Expel Magic: Frost.
• In Mythic mode, if affected by Expel Magic: Fel, do not run in an area that will cause the fire lines you leave behind to inconvenience the raid. Ideally, try to stay still until the debuff expires.

The encounter against Ko'ragh is a single-phase fight during which you will face Ko'ragh and one type of adds. Throughout the fight, Ko'ragh uses a number of basic abilities against your raid, but this is not the central element of the fight.

The fight revolves around the fact that Ko'ragh has a magic damage absorption shield on himself. This absorbs a large amount of magic damage (so, bringing at least some casters to the fight is required), and when it is depleted, Ko'ragh goes to the center of the room and spends 20 seconds recharging his shield. At this time, a raid member can join Ko'ragh at the center of the room and gain a (massive) damage absorption shield of their own. This is actually required to complete the fight, since one of Ko'ragh's abilities causes several damaging balls of energy to fall slowly to the floor throughout the fight. These balls deal lethal damage to anyone who intercepts them as they reach the ground, or very high raid damage if no one intercepts them. Therefore, players who get the damage absorption shield will go around intercepting the balls throughout the fight, to prevent the raid from taking damage.

We have released a video preview of the encounter against Ko'ragh, based on our (Heroic) Beta testing. You can watch this video to get a good idea of how the fight works, but keep in mind that some things can still change before the fight goes live.

Throughout the fight, you will face Ko'ragh, and adds called Volatile Anomalies. We will go through all their abilities in this section.

Ko'ragh uses the following abilities against your raid.

• Nullification Barrier is a magic damage absorption shield that Ko'ragh has on him at the start of the fight. It absorbs a massive amount of damage (which scales with your raid's size). There are several important elements connected with Nullification Barrier.
  • Breaker's Strength is a buff that Ko'ragh continues to stack on himself while Nullification Barrier is active. It increases Ko'ragh's damage by 6% every 10 seconds. When Ko'ragh's Nullification Barrier is removed, Breaker's Strength is also removed.
  • As soon as Ko'ragh's Nullification Barrier is removed, he moves to the center of the room to recharge it. A rune appears on the floor, and Ko'ragh spends 20 seconds there recharging his Nullification Barrier. Additionally, the first raid member to enter the rune receives a buff called Caustic Energy.
    • Caustic Energy deals a moderate amount of Arcane damage to its target every second, and causes them to receive 35% less healing. Caustic Energy disappears as soon as a player exits the rune, and its damage cannot be reduced or avoided through immunities. When Ko'ragh finally recharges his Nullification Barrier, the player affected by Caustic Energy also receives a Nullification Barrier of their own, the size of which is proportional to the amount of time they spent inside the rune. The maximum size of the player's Barrier is 15,000,000 damage.
• Overflowing Energy are balls of energy that fall slowly from the ceiling to the ground. When a ball reaches the ground, it explodes and deals a high amount of Arcane damage to all raid members. However, if the ball is intercepted by a player as it is landing (that is to say, if the player is standing under it), then it deals a fatal amount of Arcane damage to this player instead (but it does not damage the raid). The damage done by Overflowing Energy cannot be reduced, and it bypasses all immunities.
• Suppression Field is an ability that Ko'ragh regularly uses throughout the fight. He charges a random player's location (he seems to prefer ranged raid members), and deals high Arcane damage in an 8-yard radius. This leaves behind a void zone that damages and silences players who stand in it. The silence effect also affects the Volatile Anomalies (as we will see below).
• Expel Magic: Fire is an ability that Ko'ragh uses throughout the fight. He places a 10-second Fire damage DoT on all raid members. When the DoT expires, it deals a high amount of Fire damage to all players in a 5-yard radius.
• Expel Magic: Arcane is an ability that Ko'ragh uses against his tank. It places a debuff on the player, causing them to mark their location every 0.5 seconds for 10 seconds. 1.5 seconds after a location is marked, it explodes, dealing a very high amount of Arcane damage in a 5-yard radius. While active, this debuff also causes the tank to take 100% increased Physical damage. This ability requires a tank switch.
• Expel Magic: Frost is an ability that Ko'ragh uses throughout the fight. He creates an orb of Frost that moves around the room slowly. The orb persists for 20 seconds, and when it spawns, it deals raid-wide Frost damage. While it persists, it slows the movement speed of all players within 30 yards by up to 85%, with the slow being weaker the farther players are from the orb.
• Expel Magic: Shadow is an ability that Ko'ragh uses throughout the fight. He places a debuff on all raid members that absorbs healing (the exact amount depends on your raid size and difficulty).

While Ko'ragh is recharging his Nullification Barrier, adds called Volatile Anomalies spawn from the rune. 3 Anomalies spawn every 8 seconds (including 3 that spawn just as the boss begins recharging Nullification Barrier), so a total of 9 spawn for each Nullification Barrier recharge. The adds have normal threat tables and they have no abilities, but when they die, they cast Destabilize. This deals a moderate amount of raid-wide Arcane damage. If the Volatile Anomalies die inside a Suppression Field void zone, the silence will affect them and Destabilize will not be cast.

We will begin by giving you an overview of the strategy for this fight, before going into more detail about the important tasks your raid has to perform.

• Have your tanks perform a switch whenever Ko'ragh affects his tank with Expel Magic: Arcane, and have this tank run out of the raid to avoid damaging anyone with the explosions.
• When Suppression Field is about to be cast, try to avoid Ko'ragh's charge (he faces his target while he casts Suppression Field, before charging). Also make sure to avoid standing in any Suppression Field void zones.
• Designate some ranged raid members to stand next to Ko'ragh while he is recharging his Nullification Barrier in order to gain a Nullification Barrier of their own (only one player can gain the shield each time). These players should then go around the room soaking the balls caused by Overflowing Energy.
• When the Volatile Anomalies spawn, have your tanks pick them up and have them die inside Suppression Field void zones.
• When Ko'ragh uses Expel Magic: Fire, make sure that everyone in the raid (including melee DPS players) be spread out at least 5 yards apart.
• When Ko'ragh uses Expel Magic: Frost, get away from the orb of Frost. You will have a visual indication of where it will spawn a few seconds before it starts dealing damage, allowing you to get a good distance away from it.
• When Ko'ragh uses Expel Magic: Shadow, use healing cooldowns to heal the raid up through the healing absorption.

To begin with, it should be stated that the boss' Nullification Barrier has only a small effect on your raid's raid composition, assuming normal circumstances. If you bring a balanced raid group, then you will be fine. Having only Physical DPS players in your raid will cause you problems, leaving you unable to break the barrier, while having only magic DPS players means you will break the barrier to quickly, and that you will therefore have to deal with adds much too often.

There is no special way to handle Nullification Barrier. All you have to do is DPS Ko'ragh normally, and eventually the barrier will break.

The next step is to decide which players will get to go into Ko'ragh's rune and obtain their own Nullification Barriers. It is important to restate that each time Ko'ragh is recharging his barrier, only the first player to step into the rune will receive the Caustic Energy debuff, and will thus be able to receive a Nullification Barrier at the end. So, it is not possible to send multiple players in at once. However, a Nullification Barrier can last a player for quite a long time, certainly longer than it takes your raid to break the Ko'ragh's Nullification Barrier, meaning that a second player will be able to go in and get their own Barrier while the first player still has theirs.

Indeed, having multiple players assigned to do this in a rotation is essentially, because a player who already has Nullification Barrier cannot (or at least, could not, on the Beta) go in to have it refreshed. Moreover, the number of balls from Overflowing Energy increases throughout the fight, so having more players to soak them is needed.

As soon as the boss begins charging his Nullification Barrier, it is important that the player who is assigned to this task be the first one to get inside the rune. All raid members will be slightly knocked back when the rune becomes active, but everyone should still make sure not to get too close. Inside the rune, the player will take damage, and the healing they receive is reduced by 35%, but the damage is not very high. As long as the healers are paying attention to this, there should be no problems. As we mentioned earlier, the damage done by Caustic Energy cannot be avoided or reduced in any way, so players who are inside the rune should not try using defensive cooldowns, since they will be wasted.

Likewise, there is no great complexity to soaking Overflowing Energy. Players just have to position themselves under the ball as it is about to reach the ground. A special resource bar indicates how much magic damage absorption is left on players' Nullification Barriers, and it is important to be mindful of this, because soaking Overflowing Energy without a Barrier is fatal.

Keep in mind that it is not possible to prevent all the balls of Overflowing Energy to land. One or two will be cast even before a raid member has a chance to obtain a Nullification Barrier, and even after that there will sometimes be cases when not all of them can be intercepted. The damage that they deal should be manageable.

When the boss goes to the center of the room to recharge his Nullification Barrier, Volatile Anomalies will begin to spawn. Ko'ragh does not need to be tanked at this time, so the tanks can focus on picking up these adds and moving them towards one of the Suppression Field void zones.

During this time, the raid's DPS players should focus on DPSing the Volatile Anomalies, only killing them off when they are inside a Suppression Field.

It is not catastrophic if some Volatile Anomalies die outside of Suppression Fields, but this will certainly place unneeded strain on your healers, and it can even cause a wipe if it happens too many times.

Keep in mind that the Volatile Anomalies spawn in three waves, spaced out 8 seconds apart, meaning that picking them all up together is difficult. One possible strategy is to have the raid DPS Ko'ragh while the tanks pick up all 9 Anomalies, and only then have DPS players switch to them.

The rest of Ko'ragh's abilities are quite straightforward.

Whenever Expel Magic: Arcane is cast on the tank, the other tank will have to taunt Ko'ragh. This will allow the first tank to run out, away from other raid members, and leave behind the marked locations in places where they will not damage anyone. Once the debuff wears off from this tank, they can return and taunt Ko'ragh once again.

When Suppression Field is cast, Ko'ragh will face his target for the duration of the cast time, and then he will charge them. Players located where Ko'ragh is charging should move away and try to avoid being hit. When a Suppression Field void zone is cast, raid members will have to make sure to avoid standing in it. The zones are quite large, and multiple of them will be up at the same time.

With regards to Expel Magic: Fire, the raid must be extremely careful. The splash damage that this ability deals is very high, and if players are careless it is very easy to have many casualties.

Finally, it will be mostly up to the healers to handle Expel Magic: Frost and Expel Magic: Shadow. All raid members should stay away from the orb of Frost caused by Expel Magic: Frost, and healers will have to be prepared to heal the raid-wide damage it deals when it spawns. Expel Magic: Shadow will call for the use of healing cooldowns, because the healing absorption can coincide with other damaging mechanics, which can make it impossible to save damaged raid members. Therefore, healing everyone up until the healing absorption debuff disappears is a high priority.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp at the start of the fight, when all players have their cooldowns and potions available, and when there are no adds alive.

The Mythic mode of the Ko'ragh encounter presents several differences from the Normal/Heroic mode versions, leading to moderate strategy changes. It is one of the more difficult Mythic modes in Highmaul.

As with all Mythic modes, the mobs in the encounter deal increased damage with all their abilities and they have more health. In addition to this, there is one change to existing mechanics, and two entirely new abilities. We will first look at the change to the Normal/Heroic mode mechanic before talking about the Mythic-only abilities.

Two players can now receive a Nullification Barrier when Ko'ragh is recharging his own, up from just one. This is compensated, however, by an increase in the number of Overflowing Energy balls that the raid has to deal with.

The two new abilities are the following.

• Throughout the fight, Ko'ragh will cast an additional Expel Magic spell, Expel Magic: Fel. This places a debuff on 3 raid members, lasting 12 seconds. While active, the debuff is harmless, but when it expires, it leaves a damaging fire line on the floor. Each player's fire line is dropped at the location that they traveled between when the debuff was applied and when it expired. The fire lines persist for 90 seconds, and they deal heavy Fire damage to players who come in contact with them.
• Every second wave of Overflowing Energy balls will cause the players who come in contact with them (that is to say, the soakers) to become affected by Dominating Power. These players become mind controlled, and they also become immune to magic damage. The mind control is broken when the players' health reaches 20%.
  • While mind controlled, the players will cast Forfeit Power. This is an interruptible spell that removes 5% of the player's Nullification Barrier and restores 5% of Ko'ragh's Nullification Barrier.

The strategy does not change fundamentally from Normal/Heroic mode, but there are two notable additions.

Firstly, the raid will now have to deal with the players who are mind controlled by Dominating Power. This is achieved by having all Physical DPS players in the raid quickly focus them down (since they are immune to magic damage), and also by making sure that all their casts of Forfeit Power are interrupted.

This leads to another change in assignments from Normal/Heroic mode. Whereas in that case, having Hunters soak the Overflowing Energy balls was recommended (due to their high mobility and ability to DPS while moving), on Mythic mode it is instead advised to assign casters to this task. This is because Hunters deal Physical damage, and they will therefore be needed to help break out the mind controlled players.

Secondly, players who are debuffed by Expel Magic: Fel will have to be careful not to drop their fire lines in ways that inconvenience the raid by cutting off portions of the room or otherwise crossing areas that are vital to the raid's set-up. Ideally, you should try not to move at all while affected by this debuff, so that you can drop it in a single location on the floor.

The raid will also have to contend with highly increased damage. This is especially true when it comes to healing the two players who enter Ko'ragh's rune to obtain Nullification Barriers. Aside from the fact that there are now two players taking damage and receiving reduced healing, the damage that they take is higher as well (by virtue of the Mythic mode damage increase). This means that all healers will have to focus on keeping these players alive while they are inside the rune.

Most of the tasks that have to be performed throughout this encounter are simple, so learning the fight is not more than a question of perseverance. That said, you will have to pay special attention to some of the events in the fight that require precise timing, most notably the killing of the Volatile Anomalies inside the Suppression Field void zones, and the proper spreading for Expel Magic: Fire.

In this section, you will find the loot table for Ko'ragh. The section is divided in 3 subsections: armor, weapons, and the rest (neck, back, finger, and trinket items).

Item Name	Armor	Slot	Secondary Stats
Fel-Flame Coronet — LFR	Cloth	Head	Critical Strike Mastery
Destablized Sandals (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloth	Feet	Haste Mastery
Alloy-Inlaid Cap — LFR	Leather	Head	Haste Multistrike
Rune-Enscribed Hood (Heroic, Mythic)	Leather	Head	Haste Mastery
Crackle-Proof Chestguard — LFR	Mail	Chest	Haste Critical Strike
Leggings of Broken Magic (Heroic, Mythic)	Mail	Legs	Critical Strike Multistrike
Bracers of Mirrored Flame (Heroic, Mythic)	Plate	Wrists	Critical Strike Haste
Legplates of Arcanic Absorbtion — LFR	Plate	Legs	Critical Strike Haste

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Rod of Fel Nullification (Heroic, Mythic)	Wand	Intellect	Mastery Critical Strike
Ko'ragh's Boot Knife (Heroic, Mythic)	Dagger	Agility	Haste Versatility
Gar'tash, Hammer of the Breakers (Heroic, Mythic)	2H Mace	Agility	Haste Multistrike
Polearm of Expulsion — LFR	Polearm	Agility	Haste Mastery
Shield-Shatter Longbow — LFR	Bow	Agility	Critical Strike Mastery
Magic-Breaker Greatsword — LFR	2H Sword	Strength	Critical Strike Haste

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Necklace of Volatile Anomalies — LFR	Amulet	Agility	Mastery Multistrike
Ko'ragh's Family Locket (Heroic, Mythic)	Amulet	Strength	Mastery Versatility
Cloak of Overflowing Energies — LFR	Cloak	Intellect	Haste Mastery
Cloak of Searing Shadows (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloak	Intellect	Critical Strike Haste
Spell-Sink Signet (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Agility	Haste Critical Strike
Seal of Unbound Frost (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Agility Strength	Armor Mastery
Emblem of Caustic Healing (Heroic, Mythic)	Trinket	None	Spirit Haste on use
Idol of Suppression — LFR	Trinket	None	Armor Multistrike

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

• 15 Dec. 2014: Added Mythic mode strategy.
• 08 Dec. 2014: Removed an outdated mention of the boss taking increased magic damage while recharging his Nullification Barrier.

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