Disclaimer: This is the heroic version of the fight, and I will only be going into changes and the strategy specific to heroic mode. For a full list of abilities and general strategies, please check out the normal mode guide.
Introduction: Remember when heroic modes added new phases, abilities, and RP? Yor’sahj doesn’t.
Difficulty (Heroic): 2.5/5: Even given the little changes to the fight mechanically, what does change, changes the entire strat. Couple that with a lot of health, tons of damage, a strict enrage, and an element of randomness this fight will prove fairly challenging.
Comp and Stats:
Tanks: 1 (DK preferred)
Healers: 2 (You can use 3, but this strat will revolve around 2)
DPS: 7 (Cleave is nice)
Yor’sahj: 90M
Ooze: 2.5M
Mana Void: 2M
Forgotten Ones: 830k
Enrage: 10 minutes
Heroic Changes:
- The only major change outside of more health and Yor’sahj and friends dealing more damage is that Yor’sahj will spawn four oozes instead of three.
Strategy:
Ooze Combinations: There are still only 6 possible ooze combinations that Yor’sahj can throw at you. They are the following:
- black — blue — green — purple
- black — blue — green — red
- black — blue — purple — yellow
- black — green — red — yellow
- black — purple — red — yellow
- blue — green — purple — yellow
Dealing with oozes: It is important that everyone be familiar with what each ooze does, and how one ooze set followed by a different set can change the encounter. The general idea is that Yellow is the worst and should always be top. Next is Green. These are not dogma however, here is my personal list of priorities for each set.
- black — blue — green — purple ==> Kill BLACK
- black — blue — green — red ==> Kill GREEN
- black — blue — purple — yellow ==> Kill YELLOW
- black — green — red — yellow ==> Kill GREEN
- black — purple — red — yellow ==> Kill YELLOW
- blue — green — purple — yellow ==> Kill YELLOW
You can see here that the Yellow > Green is not followed on certain combinations. There are also folks who use different kill orders, like on black — green — red — yellow they choose to kill yellow. You will ultimately want to experiment some with the kill orders, but this works well for us.
Yor’sahj will go through these 6 combinations in a random order. You must experience all 6 combinations before they are able to be reused by Yor’sahj. This means if you are very unlucky you can have a bad combo for set number 6, and the same bad combo for set number 7. Otherwise the combos will not double up.
Mana Voids and You: Dealing with Mana Voids is very important in heroic and requires staging them for future use. Once the encounter begins and you get a blue ooze, healers should be ready to use regen cooldowns once they lose their mana. DPS should remain on the boss, but DoT classes should DoT up the void. Once the next set of oozes spawn a couple of melee should switch to the void to get it around 20%. It is extremely important that the void not be killed until a new void has been cast. The mana void is now “staged” for use.
On your next blue ooze, keep aware of what other oozes are coming with it. Is there a red? If so, the tank will need to move the boss to the old void with the raid moving in lockstep with the boss. Is there a Green that will be up? If so casters and heals will want to position themselves close to it right after the boss absorbs his new oozes. Make sure to stay 4 yards apart from each other.
The most important thing is to not kill mana voids preemptively but have them low and kill them very fast once the new mana void is on the field. Do not kill it when Yor’sahj is casting it, the new void must be on the ground.
Ooze combo strategies:
Black — blue — green — purple ==> Kill BLACK
The reason behind killing Black here is to maximize DPS on the boss versus having adds. The forgotten one adds damage is also very spikey whereas the ooze from Green hits somewhat hard, but it is a set amount and not spikey. This is a fairly easy combo as there is only one damaging ooze. Make sure your raid is 4 yards apart, DoT up the mana void, and blow up the boss. If there is a previous mana void up going into this phase casters and healers will need to position themselves by it while still remaining 4 yards apart from each other.
Black — blue — green — red ==> Kill GREEN
Killing green here allows for a simple stack on the boss. This is a higher raid damage phase and can be tricky if you have a mana void up from a previous combo. Everyone will immediately stack on the boss, if a mana void has to be killed, the tank must move the boss to the low health mana void and the raid must move with him. This is due to the red ooze being active. If this is not executed properly people will die to being hit by the red ability too far away from the boss. Priority for this combo is: Stack->Move boss to low health void->Kill Void->Kill adds/boss
Black — blue — purple — yellow ==> Kill YELLOW
This is a fairly easy combo. Stack up on boss and kill the previous void if you have one up once new void is down. Damage will be from the adds, kill them quickly and continue on boss.
Black — green — red — yellow ==> Kill GREEN
This combo is one of the worst. There will be immense damage to the raid and to the tank in this phase and you will have two waves of adds. The second wave will always spawn right before Yor’sahj begins the next ooze set. The strategy for this phase is to have raid cooldowns and spam healing available. Everyone should be stacked on the boss. There is no healing debuff so be very liberal. DPS should use personals here to survive (Feint, Healthstone, LoH, etc…). This is also a good combo to use heroism. Healers need to be sure they have adequate mana before going into this phase. Once the second wave of adds spawns, Yor’sahj will quickly begin casting the next ooze set. Everyone should be moving with the adds to the next ooze to kill. You can kill the ooze and adds fairly easily here.
Black — purple — red — yellow ==> Kill YELLOW
Another quite challenging combo. You will have two damaging oozes up along with the healing debuff. Everyone should stack on the boss, kill adds, and resume DPS on the boss. You will want some raid CDs here as well. This is a phase where it is very important for DPS to keep up personals that will not tick Deep Corruption. Having a SL totem, AM, or PW: B is pretty much mandatory here.
Blue — green — purple — yellow ==> Kill YELLOW
This combo is fairly easy. If you have a void up from a previous combo, casters and healers should position themselves by it. Kill the old void once the new one spawns and resume on the boss. Make sure to stay four yards apart and DoT up the new mana void.
Dealing with Purple: In normal mode, purple was always killed, but in heroic you will never kill purple. Dealing with purple is fairly simple once your healers get the hang of it. Purple will place a stack of Deep Corruption on anyone who receives a heal. Upon reaching 5 stacks they will explode and deal a huge amount of damage to anyone nearby.
Split your heals up, one in each group. Assign each to heal and watch their own group. They should have an addon like Grid to track the stacks of deep corruption. Make sure they know that bigger heals are king. They should do their best to make sure a single heal will bring a sub 50% HP back to full.
Not every healing ability will trigger a stack of deep corruption, and some will near-instantly stack it to 5. Here is a great list of what will and will not stack deep corruption: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3657444001
Survival Cooldowns: It is important to have assignments for every cooldown available to you. In our group we have a Paladin and Holy Priest healing. So for us I have the Holy Pally use AM, DG (if needed), and LoH (if needed) on Red/Black/Purple. I have our holy priest use Lightwell and GS on Yellow/Red/Black. We also have a DK tank so I have them prioritize their CDs for Yellow/Red/Black. We have a ret also watch the tank with a LoH during Yellow/Red/Black. Personal CDs are prioritized for these two phases as well.
The Ooze Run: During the time Yor’sahj calls his oozes to aid him and when they reach him you have around 22-23 seconds. I have the tank and one melee DPS (with the biggest ramp-up) stay solely on Yor’sahj. Melee will switch over to the ooze once some of this time has passed to lessen the run distance and to keep up more DPS on Yor’sahj. You will need to watch how much it takes to kill the ooze close to Yor’sahj without it actually getting to him. If the ooze is substantially over 1M HP when it hits the water, everyone should switch to it and blow it up fast.
Video:
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