by ThalcornHello and Welcome to Thalcorn’s Guide to Azjol-Nerub! This guide will explain to you the whole instance including boss encounters, loot and much more. Azjol-Nerub is intended for players of levels 72-75 or level 80 on heroic difficulty. This is also my first guide so constructive critiscism is welcome but please be nice!
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Raid Slang
- Quests
- Getting There
- The Instance
- Krik’thir the Gatewatcher
- Hadronox
- Anub’arak
Introduction
Azjol-Nerub is a 5 man instance for the 72-75 level range (80 for heroic) that is situated in the nerubian empire, in Dragonblight. The actual instance is mostly under Scourge control, under leadership of Anub’arak, but pockets of Nerubian resistance still stand. The nerubians are fighting a losing war against the Scourge.
The instance consists of 3 bosses which are:
Loot from each boss can be seen at the links above. There are NO HEROIC ONLY bosses in this instance.
Back to the topRaid Slang
This section just covers some basic Raid Slang I may use throughout this guide:
- Mobs = Monsters that you attack in the instance, not a boss.
- Adds = Additional monsters to help or accompany a boss in a battle.
- DPS = Damage characters in the group who just concentrate on dealing damage.
- Hearth/HS = Hearthstone.
- “Tank and Spank” = Literally what it says, the tank takes the boss and the dps attack it as normal.
Quests
Azjol-Nerub has a few quests that are to be completed inside the instance:
Heroic Daily:
Getting There
Azjol-Nerub is located North West of Star’s Rest in Dragonblight. Once you are there, there will be several holes in the ground you must jump down into to get the the stone and the instance. Ahn Kahet: The Old Kingdom is also located here and shares the same summoning stone as Azjol-Nerub. Azjol Nerub is the instance next to the stone whereas Ahn Kahet is the instance down some stairs and through a portal in a different room.
The Instance
As soon as you enter the instance, go down the winding path killing a few trash mobs on the way, until you come to a dark room with Krik’thir the Gatewatcher inside at the back.
Health:
-
- 164,500 Normal, 345,088 Heroic
Mana:
-
- 46,854 Normal, 54,960 Heroic
-
- Level: 73 or 82 (Elite)
This boss is said to be one of the hardest heroic bosses in the game, from discussion on this WoWhead Page.
The first thing to notice is 3 different groups of mobs in front of Krik’thir. It’s not necessary in a specific orrder to attack them though. I, myself, normally pull then group on the left first and kill them. You only have to pull once, because after the first group is dead, the other groups will come in a wave formation.
Marking these groups is crucial to this fight. Here are the mobs that can be found in the groups:
- Anub’ar Warrior
- Anub’ar Skirmisher
- Anub’ar Shadowcaster
- Watcher Silthik
- Watcher Narjil
- Watcher Gashra
Each group will contain a “miniboss” or Watcher in this case, and 2 adds. The tactic to taking down each group is to always take down or Crowd Control the Anub’ar Skirmisher first because their Backstab ability can hit very hard on DPS and Healers and also their charge can focus on a random party member for 10 seconds, possibly killing your healer and potentially, your entire group. You can then move onto the Watcher in the group and finish the rest off. After each group, there is a short time period until the next group so its a great time to eat and drink before combat continues.
After all groups are down, it’s time to take down the main boss, Krik’thir the Gatewatcher.
The fight may begin by the boss running straight at your party or it may need a pull in some cases. Whatever you do, pull and tank the boss to the middle of the room so the group can all stay close and together during the fight.
During the fight, Krik’thir will summon Skittering Swarmers that have low health and can be easily AoE’d or DPSed in a short space of time. These are to be killed to prevent a wipe in the group.
Now and again through the fight, Krik’thir will cast Curse of Fatigue and Mind Flay on a random party member. This slows down movement, attack, and casting speed and also deals shadow damage. It can be removed like any normal curse.
After getting Krik’thir down to 20% Health, he will cast Frenzy on himself, increasing his attack speed by 50% for 12 seconds. All you should do at this point is to full dps him and carry on killing any swarmers. If all goes well, you should down him with ease!
Normal Mode Loot
Heroic Mode Loot
- Golden Limb Bands
- Facade Shield of Glyphs
- Custodian’s Chestpiece
- Stone-Worn Footwraps
- Emblem of Heroism
After the boss is down, time to re-buff, heal and ressurect party members if needed. Now is a good time to do all of this before moving on to the next part of the instance.
Now Krik’thir is dead, walk through the newly opened door activated by the boss’ death which should be situated behind him.
After going through the gate, walk down off the bridge to the right onto the web and and turn around 180 degrees.
This is a main room for another boss encounter coming up. The first thing you should notice is a group of 3 Nerubian mobs.
Health:
-
- 154,230 Normal, 431,392 Heroic
Mana:
-
- None
-
- Level: 74 or 82 (Elite)
Many people describe this boss as “the gauntlet, but with a twist”. More discussion on the boss at this WoWHead Page.
Firstly, you should of spotted the group of mobs in front of you. The main mob to take note in this group is the Anub’ar Crusher. When pulling the group, tank this mob and kill the other 2 adds first before killing the crusher.
When this first group is engaged, you should see another two groups appear behind them, identical to the group you just killed. Make sure you kite the first group back a bit away from the other 2 otherwise its a potential wipe. Bad times!
A small observation will be the ability to see Hadronox below the floor fighting other mobs. He will move up to your floor shortly after killing these groups.
After the first group, take out the other 2 groups one at a time until all three are down.
Now begins the timed gauntlet event. Waves of non-elite spiders will spawn from the 3 doors located a little above the main room, and will then head down to fight Hadronox. After clearing the main room, it is recommended to just stay in it, kill the occasional non-elites that will attack you instead of the boss, and wait for Hadronox to make his way to you.
When Hadronox appears in your room, all doors will be webbed shut, preventing more adds spawning. DO NOT ATTACK the boss just yet, otherwise it will be extremely hard to survive it as he heals himself ALOT! Just be patient and wait until all the mobs attacking Hadronox die.
Now all the adds are dead, get the tank to move in if the boss hasnt already come to your group yet.
In short, Hadronox is a “tank and spank” boss. This means just tanking and killing him with your DPS group members until he dies. However he can cast some spells that should be noted.
The spell Acid Clouds is particularly dangerous and could wipe your group if not careful enough. These clouds will be seen in green around the boss so just kite him away from the clouds so your melee do not die too easily from them.
Another spell he casts on a party member is Leech Poison. This spell will need to be de-cursed by a mage or even a shaman’s Poison Cleansing Totem, otherwise the boss will heal if someone with the curse dies during the fight, becoming a potential wipe.
The other spells arent too much of a problem if your healer can actually heal the instance, they are jsut damaging spells and can just be healed through with ease.
If you just tank and spank and watch out for the noted abilities, Hadronox will be easy in the final fight stage and you will kill him easily!
Normal Mode Loot
Heroic Mode Loot
Congrats! 2 bosses down, just the 1 to go! AFter finishing this boss, head right and follow the path winding to the right until you come to another room on a web and a lot of mobs below you.
Don’t be scared of the mobs below, they are extremely easy to kill, its just a great opportunity to have an AoE fest!
Walk down the web and turn left and you should fall through a hole in the web, taking you down to the level of the mobs. Just AoE the mobs, they will die very quickly!
After the AoE fest is over and the mobs are dead, look ahead to the left and there should be another hole in the ground. Don’t worry about hitting anything on the way down, it is set so you will definately not die from this jump.
Jump through the hole and you will end up in a lake at the bottom. Come out of the lake and look for an opening around and meet up with everyone else. Go through the gate and you will see a long walkway, a boss on a platform and also two guard mobs as shown below:
The guard mobs aren’t shown there, that picture is just in front of them. But these guard mobs can be a pain sometimes. Concentrate on killing one as fast as you can before moving onto the other. It can be hard to kill them for the first time but you’ll get it soon.
After these are down, you can engage the boss when you are ready.
Health:
-
- 205,640 Normal, 512,278 Heroic
Mana:
-
- None
-
- Level: 69 or 82 (Elite)
Additional discussion relating to this boss can be found on this WoWHead Page.
Ok, this is it, the last boss here! And also a pain when it comes to fighting him the first time and if you group sucks a bit.
Firstly, this fight starts off like a “tank and spank” fight. So, the tank should pick up the boss straight away and DPS should just attack it like normal. This is phase 1.
At 66% of his health, he will enter phase 2. Phase 2 consists of the boss burrowing underground and the group now having to fight incoming mobs/adds as well as dodging his spike attacks
The first adds are 2 small non-elites and are easily killable. But watch out for the larger, elite adds who run down the web walkway to the platform. The tank should pick these up as soon as possible, tank them with all othe radds and dps should attack them and kill them.
Also, while the boss is underground, he will randomly shoot up a pike to the surface and can hit around ~8k on clothies which can seriously damage your group in the fight. You can tell where he will spike up at by looking at the ground for moving brown rocks shaking. As soon as you see this, run away from it. This means melee and ranged because he will attack near any party member at random. You will have around 2 seconds to move in time so be quick!
After a while, phase 2 will end and he will surface again. The fight from here on in is just the same but repeated. The Phase switching intervals are at:
- 66% Health
- 50% Health
- 33% Health
His abilities are as follows:
- Locust Swarm: Slows movement speed by 40%.
- Carrion Beetles: Summons 2 Carrion Beetles every second for 4 sec.
- Pound: Rears up and smashes down on all enemies in front of the caster within 15 yards, dealing 9425 to 10575 damage and pounding them into the floor for 6 sec.
- Impale: Spikes occasionally shoot up from the ground, knocking players up in the air and causing damage.
- Burrowing Underground
- Various Nerubian Assassin, Darter, and Guardian mobs spawn and must be killed. Mobs spawn faster as the fight progresses.
On heroic mode, he will summon twice as many elite adds than normal mode so watch out for more adds. Also, non-tanks really need to be careful of the Impale spell because it really can kill you if your healer is busty with other people and you get hit by it. Tanks are protected a bit more for obvious reasons such as more HP and armor.
Sticking to these tactics, it is possible to down him in an easy fashion. It may not be first time but you will get him over time.
Normal Mode Loot
Heroic Mode Loot
- Flamebeard’s Bracers
- Sash of the Servant
- Rod of the Fallen Monarch
- Ancient Aligned Girdle
- Crypt Lord’s Deft Blade
- Insect Vestments
- Chitin Shell Greathelm
- Ring of the Traitor King
- Emblem of Heroism
- Frozen Orb
- Design: Infused Twilight Opal
Congratulations, you have finished Azjol-Nerub! You can now either port out of here from a mage, hearthstone or just follow the path from the platform for a quick exit as you cannot get back the way you came!
As said at the start, constructive critiscism will be allowed as this is my first guide but please do not be rude or abusive towards this guide or myself! I tried my hardest to get this right as it stands at the moment and a lot of time and effort has gone into it like all guides on wow-pro.com!
Thalcorn, Server Anachronos EU
Malcorn – Level 80 Draenei Death Knight (Tank)
Thalcorn – Level 72 Human Paladin (DPS)
Changing Now, thanks!Changing Now, thanks!
nice guideNice guide 😀 , there are still some minor typo’s in it but should be really helpfull for someone who doesnt know the encounter’s. On the last boss you say that the fight is just the same each repeat, but atleast on heroic it isnt. Each Phase he summons more adds and the most noticable Anub’ar Venomancer should be killed asap as they do lots of poison damage. As said add the pound on heroic this can one shot your dps if they are not behind him. I also failed the first time on not standing in the ring and was forced to watch the rest kill him so you should add that aswell 😉
O.O typo![quote]After a while, phase 2 will end and [b]he willsurface again[/b]. The fight from here on in is just the same but repeated. The Phase switching intervals are at:[/quote]
I guess [b]he willsurface again[/b] should be [b]he will surface again[/b] (sorry for being picky)
Really amazing guide all the way through! a 5/5 for me!
FixedAnchors fixed now, thanks for spotting!
One thing missing from Anub’arak encounterMaybe it is worth mentioning that when you pull Anub’arak for the first time, the “Ring” in which he is standing closes, preventing other team members to enter and even participate in the fight. With a pug group once we had a healer who thought it was “safe” to stand outside the ring. That was quite a short fight! 😛
Coming SoonIll be implenting achievements soon, i just wanted to get the dungeon tactics up for now and always add in more later, depending on if people want that or not 🙂
SorryYeah, sorry about the anchors, thats basically the only thing im new to in this type of writing. Ill have a look when im back tonight and illsee if i can fix it 🙂
Thanks!Thanks for spotting that, done!
Picky word choiceJust to be picky:
I would suggest you change the wording of the sentence right before the Anub’arak section. Right now it reads: “After these are down, the boss event begins.” To someone who hasn’t run the instance before, it sounds like the boss fight starts the moment the mobs die, which is the case with some other bosses. You might want to make it more clear that the fight doesn’t start when the mobs die, and instead the players are free to engage Anub’arak at their leisure.
Oh hey, good point.
MyOh hey, good point.
My table of contents guide should explain how to make the top anchor. If I wasn’t about to head to work, I’d fix it myself.
2 things:
1 – there’s no2 things:
1 – there’s no ‘top’ anchor anywhere, so links do not bring us to the top of the page.
2 – Leech Poison is actually a poison, not curse, so paladin, shaman and druid can dispel it, not a mage.
Other than that, nice guide 😉
Agreed. While pound *can* beAgreed. While pound *can* be healed through, it’s a lot less stress on a healer to not have to worry about it. Also melee need to watch out for it and stay out from in front of him.
something u forgotgreat guide like all guides on WoW pro , but u forgot to say that when anub’arak starts to cast pound the tank should run trough him causing him to cancel pound 🙂
Heh, also my only complaintHeh, also my only complaint and the reason for my 4/5.
Nice GuideIt’s a nice guide, but it’s missing one thing: how do you do all of the heroic “extra” achievements for Glory of the Hero that involve killing the bosses in a certain way, like Gotta Go (example) 😕 I mean, what’s already there is nice, but you’re missing just that little bit that’d make it a 5. I’m giving you a 4 for now, happy guide writing!
Thanks! Im glad you like it!Thanks! Im glad you like it! Ill plan to write more like this when im back from my holiday! Hehe 😛
Wow! Now that’s a reallyWow! Now that’s a really great first guide! I’m impressed!
Great formatting which makes it easy to read. It also contains some very well-worded information which makes it a high quality guide.
Your time and effort that went into this guide definitely paid off, well done!
Thanks!Thanks for the feedback, I’ll change some stuff around for you now 🙂
Awesome first guide!This is a great first guide, Thalcorn. I’ve already sent my feedback to you via PM. For now I gave a 4/5 but I think with a few tweaks and additions this is easily 5/5 work. Awesome job and welcome to the community!