Lady Deathwhisper (10 Player)

[Luskan]

Lady Deathwhisper is fought in two phases, of which the first is by far the most complex. She'll shield herself with a mana barrier that causes any damage she takes to drain her mana instead. In order to get to phase 2, you'll need to empty out her entire mana pool. Deathwhisper herself has no aggro table during this phase, and will stand still chaincasting Shadow Bolts at random raid members, along with a handful of other abilities I'll cover shortly. Meanwhile, waves of adds will be spawning from the edges of the room -- 3 from each side, and 1 from the stairs at the entrance.

Two types of adds can spawn: Cult Fanatics and Cult Adherents. Cult Fanatics are fairly straightforward melee attackers, although they do have a very powerful cleave that will need to be avoided by melee DPS. Adherents are casters who will spend most of their time casting some fairly inconsequential DPS abilities. However, they do have a very dangerous Curse called Curse of Torpor that increases ability cooldowns by 15 seconds. This should be dispelled immediately.

The key to this phase is putting just enough DPS on the adds to kill them before another wave spawns, and letting the rest of your DPS focus on killing the boss. Ideally, you should have melee DPS split between the two sides, with one tank for each group, and a third tank picking up the single add that spawns from the entryway. Although the type of add that spawns from the entrance appears to be random, the two side groups are always the same. As you're facing the boss, the group on the left will always be two Fanatics and one Adherent, and the group on the right will always be two Adherents and one Fanatic. The Adherents should be quickly burned down by melee DPS while the tank focuses on picking up the Fanatics. Once all three adds on a side have been killed, melee should run over to kill the entryway add.

Meanwhile, your ranged and caster DPS will be focusing on the boss while also dealing with the rest of Deathwhisper's abilities. She'll be dropping large green Death and Decays on the ground from time to time -- move out of them. She'll also occasionally mind control a single raid member, who will need to be crowd controlled quickly.

The final tricks up Deathwhisper's sleeves, at least for phase 1, come in the form of spells she casts on her Cultist minions. Deathwhisper can empower a cultist, granting it a couple extra abilities. Empowered Adherents can cast a magic shield and a dangerous AOE, while empowered Fanatics will deal increased damage and heal for 300% of the damage they deal. These are somewhat dangerous, but it appears that they can be purged or possibly even spellstolen. She can also resurrect fallen cultists as Skeletal Adherents or Skeletal Fanatics. Skeletal Adherents have a 99% reduction to magical damage taken, and should simply be picked up and killed by the melee DPS. Skeletal Fanatics, however, have a 99% reduction to physical damage, so the casters will need to swap off of the boss temporarily and burn these down when they appear.

Phase 1 can take a while to get through, but if you can keep everything under control, it's fairly simple. Melee kills the adds, ranged kills the boss. Healers will need to be on their toes as damage has a tendency to come fairly quickly without warning on random raid members. Crowd control will need to be fast as well.

Once Deathwhisper's mana has finally been depleted, her mana shield is destroyed and phase 2 begins. Adds will no longer spawn, so it's best to try to time this to happen just after a wave has been killed. At the very least, make sure a tank is available to pick her up once the shield drops.

Deathwhisper gains a few abilities during Phase 2. The first is a single target Frostbolt that she casts on the tank. This hits for around 50k and cannot be resisted, so you'll need to set up an interrupt rotation to make sure none get through. She also casts an AOE Frostbolt Volley that appears to be unavoidable and simply needs to be healed through. Probably the most dangerous ability gained in Phase 2 however is her Vengeful Spirits. She'll spawn a large number of these around the room, which will move to nearby raid members and explode for a very large amount of damage. These are unfortunately very small and somewhat hard to see, especially in the melee, so be watching carefully for them. Of course, she'll still be casting Death and Decay and mind controlling raid members during this phase, so be sure to keep moving out of green circles and crowd controlling.

Her last ability is called Touch of Insignificance. It's a debuff that reduces threat caused by 20% per stack, with up to 5 stacks. She casts this on the tank, so your tanks will need to taunt off of each other every so often to keep from having threat issues.

Sincerely,

Luskan