Tempest Keep - Void Reaver

[PsiVen]

This guy is pretty much a lootbag by the time you manage to get your raid force attuned to TK. The trash will take more wipes to learn than the boss. Here's where a Prot pally can fit in.

Opening Hallway
Right off the bat, there's some six-pulls. You'll want to tank one of the Legionnaires, who dual-wield and hit fairly softly, but whirlwind and need to be tanked away from the raid (kind of a trick in the cramped space you have to work with). A pull or two differ from the first, but I can't recall any mobs that would be problematic to tank.

Al'ar's Room
The packs of little birdies are not to be underestimated. They have an extremely annoying aoe silence, among other things. Have them misdirected to you in the hallway along with another tank, preferably dropping a consecrate/shield before they can silence you and then finding a nice wall/corner to tank against.
The big birds are a fine example of Blizzard forgetting that prot pallies exist when they design dungeons. Curse them under your breath and SoW/JoW until the pats are dead.

Void Reaver's Room
Sheep and banish, tank whatever you lack a CC for and kill it first. Sentinels should be tanked by warriors, since they can reflect the Overcharge attack. These pulls boil down to 1-2 people tanking, but they end up pretty easy.


Void Reaver Himself
This boss has three abilities (four if you count his 10 minute enrage):

Pounding - Every 12 seconds, basically spams a 2k Arcane Explosion for a few seconds. Big range, but melee can dodge it without too much fuss, since his hitbox is huge. Tanks are stuck eating it though, which means mana for you.

Arcane Orb - Slings a really big orb at someone in the raid outside of Pounding range. It lands where they were standing when it was thrown, so ranged can dodge it without too much fuss.

Punt - Knockback and deaggro on the current tank, making a tank rotation necessary. Might be random how much he uses this, but it looks likely that it'll happen about 4 times during the fight.

Yep, that's all there is to it. Tank him in the middle, have ranged spread out and either have melee find the maximum range on his hitbox and duck out or leave them in and heal through the AoE.


Tanking Void Reaver
Due to mana concerns, you should be either first or second in the tank rotation or the first tank will likely get it back before you ever do. Tank damage isn't too severe, but you do need to be wearing stamina + full tanking gear. The Violet Badge is perfect. For consumables, stam food + Adept's + Fort + Wizard Oil is probably best.

Oh, and turn off any Arcane Orb bossmod you might have running. You'll spam in /say for the entire time that he targets you while tanking.

If you're first in the rotation: Open with a misdirect + JoCr and build as much threat as you can. The more you get now the less you have to work at it to get him back later if necessary. After he punts you, the following applies (but you should have used AW early):
If you're not first: Be second. Put up JoCr and keep spamming consecrate/JoR/SoR. Chug some of the free super mana pots you got from clearing the trash. If you have a shadow priest handy you should even have enough mana to use Avenger's Shield every time it's up. Pop Avenging Wrath when you have an opportunity to make full use of it (enough mana to Consecrate the full duration and AS during, get in a Judgement right away). If you're not second you'll probably end up without enough mana flowing to keep up the pace, so go all-out as soon as you can.

Eventually, he'll turn and start smacking you. Keep up the threat cycle (with HS instead of AS obviously) and don't move him around. When he punts you, go back to spamming threat. DPS are heavily threat-capped on this fight, so every tank should be putting out the most possible and you should be #1 on that list since you have a high-mana situation compared to their low-rage state.

It's the same fight 100%-0%, so eventually he'll fall over dead unless you failed to kill him in 10 minutes. I don't know what he does during Enrage, but you probably won't like it.


Here's a video of our first Void Reaver kill, priest PoV (he's healing rogues but I'm in the party). I came up 2nd and 4th in what we set up as a 4-tank rotation. We ended up only getting 3 knockbacks in the fight. I almost die a couple times, but that's because I don't have any tank group buffs and none of us were used to the fight. This was our 2nd pull.

http://files.filefront.com/voidwmv/;772 ... einfo.html

[Gideon]

Thankyou for writing this. Our raid group is keying up for this now so I should be able to put this into practice soon.

[Torakka]

Oh, and turn off any Arcane Orb bossmod you might have running. You'll spam in /say for the entire time that he targets you while tanking.

That's the most important part!

BTW, that enrage is very nasty thing. We tried him first time with about 20 people and couldn't kill him in time, those 24k hits hurt, a lot... Shouldn't be a problem with full raid though.

[DracAlexstrasza]

Our guild finally got enough people attuned for the eye... and then on the same day they make it free. doh


On the bright side I tanked the void reaver for the first 40% without him switching to another tank, despite 3 knockbacks. hehe Took three attempts for healers not to die from orb thingies.

Got my shoulders. ^_^


void reaver = loot pinata

[Trevize]

We downed him tonight...i tanked VR for 3:12 before a warrior got it. gogo pally threat =)

[Gideon]

Psiven, I forwarded parts of your post to my guild officers and they actually used them on our first succesful kill. So please accept some of the credit

I was first in the rotation but I've no idea how many knockbacks I took (I know our feral holds until 5) as I spent most of the fight frantically clicking on mods trying to turn off the orb warning. I think most of the raid had me on ignore by the time he died.

[Eliane]

Thank you for the write-up. Me and my guild are going for our first attempt on this boss tonight.

[Garwin]

now that this boss specifically (and all of the eye) is effectivly open to any tom dick or harry guild, would people consider this boss a viable target for the half heroic/half kara geared guild ?

assuming you have uncrushable 12K+ hp tanks and +1k heal & 10k mana healers ?

[Lore]

I'd still recommend going after at least Gruul first.

[Dragonzbane]

My guild tried him on Wednesday and we got him down to 14% on our first night. Unfortunately, they decided to take 3 warriors and no other tanks.

We got our first Mag kill last week but we are relatively undergeared for a guild at our progression level because we started Gruul's just after we had downed the Opera Event.

[PsiVen]

Psiven, I forwarded parts of your post to my guild officers and they actually used them on our first succesful kill. So please accept some of the credit

I was first in the rotation but I've no idea how many knockbacks I took (I know our feral holds until 5) as I spent most of the fight frantically clicking on mods trying to turn off the orb warning. I think most of the raid had me on ignore by the time he died.

Cheers, and grats on the kill The orb warning was lots of fun...

[Trevize]

Does anyone know the exact amount of threat reduction he does per knockback? KTM was all FUBAR in our kill attempt. I was like 15th on the list and still had aggro.

I think I proved a lot to the warriors about paladin tank threat. I convinced them that I would be best fitted going 1st or 2nd in the rotation and they hesitantly agreed. So 3 minutes later I finally lost aggro. Only to keep getting it back as a warrior got knocked back.

Makes me wonder if I had flask of supreme power going with chain misdirects on me from hunters if I could tank the entire thing. If it happens I will have fraps ready to go lol.

[Eliane]

I think it's 20%. I took quite a few knockbacks when we attempted him last friday beore any of the other tanks got aggro tho. I did that was suggested in this guide and queued HS and AW as I ran in and JoR, Conc, SoR, JoCr and then did my normal cycle and the threat I was able to produce was insane.

My raidleaders at one point asked if I was the only one tanking All in all I think I ended up tanking him about 50% of the fight. It was awsome.

[veig]

how much +dmg are you tanking him with?

We tried it last night, me first tank, opening with avengers and would lose it to a feral druid within 30 sec every attempt at 215 or so +dmg. Or maybe I'm doing something else wrong, I'm not sure.

[Lore]

I usually pot/oil/food buff for spell damage, so I generally sit at around 400-500 +dmg.