Sire Denathrius Strategy Guide for Castle Nathria

Phase One:

• Split your raid in half and alternate which half gets hit by each frontal from the boss ( Cleansing Pain).
• Quickly nuke the adds from each frontal.
• Get Denathrius to 70% health after the 6th frontal, but before the last red cone.
• On Heroic, soak the two lines on random players ( Night Hunter).

Intermission:

• Run toward the boss in order to make it into his circle fast enough to survive the transition to phase two.

Phase Two:

• Kill the Cabalist adds.
• The tanks need to taunt swap on the boss and sword after each cast of Wracking Pain, and try to aim the boss at the adds when possible.
• When Denathrius pulls everyone to him, quickly run away or run into a nearby mirror ( Hand of Destruction).
• Dodge the swords by staying out of their lines on the ground.

Phase Three:

• The tanks need to keep the boss toward the middle of the room and taunt swap at as low stacks of Scorn as possible.
• Everyone needs to stay close to the boss in order to avoid getting knocked off the platform by Shattering Pain.
• When Denathrius pulls everyone to him, quickly run away ( Hand of Destruction).
• Spread out with the red circles ( Fatal Finesse), and on Heroic, soak the red orbs ( Smoldering Ire).

The Sire Denathrius encounter is a three phase fight that has hard DPS checks in the first and last phase. Each phase is very different, but you fight Denathrius directly the entire time.

We recommend saving Bloodlust/ Heroism for the last phase, because it is likely the most difficult phase and there is also a high DPS requirement.

Phase One:

• Everyone starts off with 5 stacks of a permanent debuff (4 on Normal), and the goal of the phase is for everyone to remove enough stacks of this debuff so that they can survive the transition into the next phase ( Burden of Sin). 3 stacks need to be removed on Heroic, while only 2 need to be removed on Normal. The strategy is the same for either difficulty, so this guide will focus on Heroic for simplicity.
• Before pulling the boss, split the entire raid into two halves with a tank in each group.
• The tank in Group A should taunt the boss first, while the rest of Group A stacks up tightly on the tank and Group B stacks behind the boss. Everyone in Group A will then get hit by the boss's frontal cast, Cleansing Pain. It removes a Burden of Sin stack from everyone it hits, but it also spawns a bunch of adds that do a ton of raid damage. These adds need to be immediately nuked down.
• On Heroic, while killing these adds, two players will be targeted with a line ( Night Hunter). These players need to stand slightly away from the raid, while everyone else stands in the lines in order to reduce the damage the targeted players take from Night Hunter. Never stand in both lines at the same time, and never stand on top of the targeted players. On Normal, the lines are not there, so the targeted players just need to move away from the raid ( Feeding Time).
• After all that, the boss will cast Blood Price. This cast stuns everyone, picks everyone up, and knocks everyone away, while also doing a ton of raid damage based on how many players have the same number of Burden of Sin stacks.
• Immediately after that, the tank in Group B needs to taunt the boss, while the rest of Group B stacks on their tank and Group A stacks behind the boss. Group B will get hit by the frontal cast this time, which spawns adds again that everyone needs to nuke down while also soaking the lines on two players.
• And finally, everyone then needs to quickly move out of a huge red cone that is cast from the center of the room toward the boss ( Ravage), which also leaves a red zone on the ground that does damage to players and makes them unhealable ( Desolation).
• Then you do that exact same sequence of mechanics two more times: Group A frontal, Blood Price, Group B frontal, red cone. However, on the third round, you need to make sure to get Denathrius to 70% health after the Group B frontal, but before the red cone. This last frontal is needed to remove Burden of Sin stacks, but the last red cone leaves the entire room covered in the bad red stuff. If you do this right, everyone will have 2 stacks of the debuff when Denathrius starts the transition to phase 2.

Cleansing Pain

Transition to Phase Two ( March of the Penitent):

• Denathrius teleports to the middle of the room, pulls everyone to him, and then knocks everyone away in random directions. For each player to make it to phase two, they have to run back to the center of the room before Denathrius finishes his cast. Simple enough, except you cannot use abilities while running toward him and you are slowed based on the number of Burden of Sin stacks you have left. This is why everyone needs to remove at least 3 stacks during phase one, because otherwise they will be too slow to get to the middle of the room in time and will die from the fall to phase two.

Phase Two:

• Now you are down on a new platform. This phase is more straightforward: killing adds, dodging mechanics, and getting Denathrius to 40% health. But now you are also fighting Remornia, his floating sword.
• One tank should taunt Denathrius while the other tank taunts the sword. Start out by moving to the north side of the platform, where the first set of adds spawn.
• Two Crimson Cabalist adds spawn on on the main platform, and two spawn on the side platforms that are detached. Ranged DPS will need to focus down the adds on the side platforms, unless you have melee that have ways of getting there and back. These adds channel ticking damage on the raid, so should kill them quickly to help the healers out. On Heroic, when they die, they also spawn a bunch of red swirlies under random players' feet. These swirlies do damage and can knock you off the platform, so definitely watch your feet when these adds are dying.
• The tanks need to taunt swap on Denathrius and Remornia every time Denathrius casts his new frontal, Wracking Pain, because it applies a debuff that increases all damage taken by 50% for several seconds. This frontal can also hit the adds, so the tanks should try to aim it toward the adds when possible, but it is much more important that no other players get hit by it. The sword also applies a stacking bleed to its target ( Carnage), so swapping like this effectively deals with both debuffs.
• Remornia effectively shares health with Denathrius, so it is best to keep them stacked together as much as possible for cleave damage.
• Remornia occasionally marks random players with red arrows on the ground and then charges through them all after a few seconds ( Impale). The marked players and anyone hit along the way will take a ton of damage, and on Heroic, anyone hit also drops a red pool on the ground that does damage to players. So the marked players should move to one of the edges of the platform and everyone else should move out of the arrows on the ground to avoid being hit.
• Denathrius occasionally pulls everyone to him and starts casting Hand of Destruction, which does a crazy amount of raid damage, but gets reduced the further you are away from him. You can just run away from this with movement abilities, but we recommend using the mirrors in the room. If you run into the big red mirror on the north side of the room, it instantly teleports you to the one on the south side of the room, and vice-versa. So if the tanks keep Denathrius close to a mirror, you can get super far away from that cast in no time, take almost no damage from the cast, and then easily stop back into the mirror again to teleport back if you want to. The bosses teleport to their target if they are out of range too, so you do not have to worry about them slowly running around. This mirror strategy is particularly good for the second Hand of Destruction cast, because the second set of adds spawn on the south side of the room shortly afterward, and you can just stay where you are after the first teleport.
• And finally, Remornia casts Massacre at full energy. The sword disappears and a ton of giant swords spawn on the side of the platforms, which slice through the platform in random directions for a few seconds. However, the swords show you a line on the ground where they are going to go, so just quickly move out of the lines.
• When Denathrius gets to 40% health, he starts the third and final phase. Any remaining adds teleport to the inner platform and reduce healing on the raid per add ( Dusk Elegy), so definitely make sure they are all dead before phasing.

Hand of Destruction

Phase Three:

• Denathrius blocks off the outside of the room ( Indignation), so you only have a small inner circle to work with, and he wields Remornia himself. Sections of the room slowly become blocked as well, similar to phase one, so you only have a certain amount of time to kill Denathrius before you run out of room.
• The tanks should keep Denathrius toward the middle of the room, and the tanks need to taunt swap in this phase because the boss's melee swings apply a stacking DoT debuff ( Scorn). The taunt swap should happen every time the debuff falls off of one of the tanks. However, Denathrius also occasionally casts a new tank ability, Shattering Pain. This cast hits the current tank with three quick melee swings, and then finishes with a raid-wide blast that does damage to everyone and knocks everyone away. The current tank needs to use a big defensive every time this is cast, and everyone should position themselves to avoid getting knocked off the platform by the final hit.
• Denathrius also occasionally marks random players and causes short-range AoE damage on each of them after a few seconds, as well as applying a heavy DoT to anyone hit ( Fatal Finesse). These players need to quickly spread out while everyone else moves away from them. On Heroic, a red orb is left behind from each marked player which explodes on the raid after a few seconds ( Smoldering Ire). These orbs need to be soaked in order to reduce the damage of the explosions, but soaking them does a ton of damage as well. So everyone needs to quickly help soak them up.
• Denathrius occasionally casts the same Hand of Destruction ability as in phase two. He pulls everyone to him and then explodes, but in this phase you cannot use the mirrors to get away, so everyone just has to run as far away as possible.
• And finally, the giant telegraphed swords from phase two will continue to spawn occasionally, as well as the huge red cone from phase one. There is a lot of movement required in this phase, and some very difficult overlaps of these relatively simple abilities. The biggest threats seem to be avoiding getting knocked off by the tank ability, having somewhere to run after getting pulled in, and the hard enrage of running out of room from the red cones. Execute damage is going to be massively helpful in this phase, as well as Bloodlust/ Heroism.

We have encounter journal pages for each of the four difficulties, which you can access by clicking the links below.

For each class, we provide advice on how to tackle the Sire Denathrius encounter, complete with actual tips, but also recommendations for talents and Legendary Powers.