Sun King's Salvation Strategy Guide for Castle Nathria

In the add phase:

• The general kill priority is Infusers > Occultists > Vanquishers > Assassins > Fiends.
• Stay spread out when Assassins or Fiends are active.
• Make sure to interrupt the Vile Occultists' Vulgar Brand cast.
• Use slows, stuns, and other crowd-control abilities to slow down the Infusers.
• Heal Kael'thas by healing the Essence Fonts to full, channeling on the Soul Pedestals, and simply healing him directly.
• Get Kael'thas to 45% and 90% health between add waves.

In the Shade phase:

• Tanks keep the Shade faced away from the raid for Fiery Strike, and taunt swap at as few stacks as possible.
• Stack the phoenixes, slow them, and kill them from range.
• Dodge the randomly facing frontal from the Shade ( Blazing Surge).
• Help soak the red circle on a random player ( Ember Blast).

The Sun King's Salvation encounter is a two phase fight that alternates between the add wave phase where you are trying to heal friendly Kael'thas, and the Shade phase where you are fighting not-so-friendly Kael'thas.

The fight starts off in the add phase with some adds already spawned. We recommend saving Bloodlust/ Heroism for later in the fight to help clean adds up when going into a Shade phase.

In the add phase:

• The goal of the add phase is to heal Kael'thas, first to 45% health and then to 90% health. You can heal him directly, but the fight also gives you more efficient ways to heal him.
• On pull, the tanks need to get aggro on the Bleakwing Assassins and High Torturer Darithos, while everyone else stays spread out and focus kills the Vile Occultists. Staying spread out reduces raid damage taken by the Assassins' Crimson Flurry, as well as Darithos's Greater Castigation, which both do splash damage around random players. The Occultists need to be killed quickly, because killing each one fast enough causes them to drop an Essence Font, which then needs to be healed to full in order to trigger a big heal on Kael'thas. Make sure to interrupt the Occultists' Vulgar Brand cast as well, because it puts a nasty debuff on the entire raid.
• Once the Occultists are dead, heal the Essence Fonts and start focusing down the Assassins. They are more important to kill than Darithos because they try to cast a full heal on themselves when they get low on health ( Return to Stone). Finish them off and then switch to Darithos, who you only ever have to deal with this one time at the very beginning of the fight.
• After this first set of adds, the exact add wave timings and makeups are a bit hectic, so you just have to follow a general strategy for dealing with each kind of add that spawns. The general kill priority is Infusers > Occultists > Vanquishers > Assassins > Fiends.
  • The Infusers spawn in two pairs of two, with one pair in each of the back corners of the room. They are untankable and instead try to get to Kael'thas to damage him directly. To prevent this from happening, you need to slow, root, and stun them while focus killing them as quickly as possible. Each one also drops a red orb when they die, which healers should pick up to increase their healing by a massive amount for a few seconds ( Infuser's Boon).
  • The Occultists spawn in groups at the back of the room. Focus them down quickly in order to get their Essence Fonts, and remember to interrupt their Vulgar Brand cast.
  • The Vanquishers fly in one at a time toward the middle of the room. They need to be tanked, and the tanks should taunt swap on them at as few stacks of its bleed debuff as possible ( Vanquished). They also regularly cast a raid-wide AoE that does more damage the longer they are alive ( Concussive Smash), so you do not want these alive for too long.
  • The Assassins spawn in groups toward the sides of the room. The tanks need to get aggro on them, and everyone needs to stay spread out while they are alive.
  • Finally, the Fiends spawn in groups toward the middle of the room. They do not need to be tanked, but they constantly do splash damage to random players ( Shattering Ruby). Stay spread out when these are alive, but they are the lowest priority of all adds. On Heroic, they also shatter when they die, doing damage to anyone in 7 yards ( Fragmentation). Stay away from them when they are dying.
• While you are dealing with all of these adds, there is also one other way to heal Kael'thas: the Soul Pedestals at the front of the room. These can be channeled on by one player at a time, which sacrifices an increasing amount of health to heal Kael'thas ( Soul Infusion). These pedestals are the least efficient way of healing Kael'thas, and may not actually be worth using at all, but at the very least they give non-healers something to do if the adds die too fast.
• You should aim to get Kael'thas to 45% and 90% health when there are not many adds alive, because the Shade phase starts at those percentages, and you do not want to be also dealing with adds in this phase.

In the Shade phase:

• Friendly Kael'thas cannot be healed while the Shade is active, so the goal of this phase is to damage the Shade for 10% of its health in order to despawn it.
• The Shade spawns in the middle of the room, and a tank needs to immediately get aggro on it and face it away from everyone else. Finish off any adds that are alive from the add phase and then start focusing down the Shade.
• A few phoenixes also spawn alongside the Shade. They fixate random players, moving slowly toward them and pulsing AoE damage to nearby players ( Smoldering Plumage). The pulses also leave permanent pools of fire on the ground, so these phoenixes need to be grouped up in the middle of the room, crowd-controlled, and cleaved down from range in order to prevent the fire from getting all over the place. The phoenixes revive about 20 seconds after dying, so you will need to repeat this a couple times.
• The tanks need to taunt swap on the Shade while keeping it faced away from everyone, because it frequently casts a short frontal cone that applies a stacking DoT debuff to anyone it hits ( Fiery Strike). The tanks should also try to keep the Shade toward the middle of the room to make it easier to deal with its other two abilities.
• At full energy, the Shade casts a huge frontal cone in a random direction that everyone needs to dodge ( Blazing Surge).
• The Shade also occasionally casts Ember Blast, which puts a red circle around a random player that explodes after a few seconds. Several other players need to help split the damage of this explosion by quickly moving into the circle. This also helps to share the stacks of a DoT that the explosion applies ( Lingering Embers). The explosion also leaves a pretty big pool of fire on the ground, so the player with the circle should try to move close to some existing pools to save room.
• When you do 10% of the Shade's health the first time, it despawns and you go back into the add phase, except now you have all that fire on the ground to work around. When you do 10% of the Shade's health the second time, it heals friendly Kael'thas to full and you win!

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 Sun King's Salvation encounter, complete with actual tips, but also recommendations for talents and Legendary Powers.