User:Kiltek/Dev

'''Please review the content at Wowpedia talk:Village pump before editting or commenting on this page. Anything changed that I find to be unconstructive will be reverted.'''

The Curator is an Arcane Guardian boss in the Menagerie in Karazhan. He has around 660,000 HP and high armor.

His normal attack will hit for somewhere around 3000 on a well-geared warrior tank.

Abilities

 * Summons Astral Flares, 1 at a time. Summoning an add will drain 10% of his mana. After 10 seconds he summons another one. The adds have ~11,000 - 13,000 HP and attack using a Chain Lightning-style AoE attack on a maximum of 3 targets within 10 yd range range for 675-825 Arcane damage. Everyone needs to be spread out to avoid this damage. They do 100% Arcane melee damage and are "tankable" but not tauntable.
 * Evocation: When the Curator runs out of mana, he will evocate his mana for 20 secs, during this evocation he will take 200% damage. During evocation, The Curator will not attack or summon adds. The list of "prime" targets for Hateful Bolts is reset at this time.
 * Hateful Bolt: The Curator occasionally shoots a single target arcane bolt for 4000-5500 Arcane damage. This will always afflict the person on his "prime" list with the most health.
 * Berserk: After 12 minutes he goes berserk and will wipe your raid.
 * Enrage: At 15% he goes into Enrage mode. This largely increases his melee DPS against the MT and greatly increases the rate at which he shoots Hateful Bolts. He is unable to summon adds or becomes Weakened while he is Enraged.
 * Immune to arcane damage

Strategy
Depending on raid composition, some DPS should be kept on the Curator, generally a feral bear offtank, shadow priest or a rogue are useful for soaking the Hateful Bolts and for staying on the boss to DPS while everyone else kills the adds.

The Astral Flares are tankable, however this does not have to be done by a traditional tank. Since they only do damage in a 10 yard radius, ranged DPS and healers should stand on one side of the hallway, with the flares on the other, out of range. They can be pulled by the off tank, but since they start off chasing a random target, it's much more effective to have a class that can generate ranged aggro (e.g. a Warlock's searing pain, a Shaman's frost shock) pull them off to the side.

He should be tanked where he stands when he is nearest to the entrance of the room on his patrol. The raid should be spread out at the wall nearest to the entrance. To allow rogues and other melee DPS easy access to his back it is best to face him away from the group. (Note: Curator has a very large aggro radius.)

Adds will spawn fairly quickly, and the basic goal is to burn one down before another spawns. Once Curator is out of mana, the remaining adds should be finished off and all DPS on the Curator. Healers are encouraged to sneak in some DPS via DoTs or wanding while The Curator is weaked whenever possible, and judging Wisdom can help regen a bit of mana.

At 15%, he will enrage, increasing his melee damage and his attack speed. He will fire Hateful Bolts extremely fast, and no longer summon adds or evocate. At this point, DPS should finish off any remaining adds and nuke down the Curator.

The raid must kill him before a 12 minute timer is up, or else he will wipe it with his Berserk ability. With sufficient DPS this should not be a problem.

The adds and The Curator himself are immune to taunt.

Theory
The Curator prefers to Hateful Bolt people closer to him, but never the MT. He also considers targets on his prime list - a composite of threat and health. A rogue on him is far more likely to take a hateful bolt than some warlock who is DPSing, and a nearby shadow priest with constant DoTs/flays whilst tapping health/mana will easily draw 95% of bolts.

Arcane resistance for the Hateful Bolt soak should be at least 150 unbuffed with added Mark of the Wild buff is recommended).

Arcane resistance also helps against the flare's chain damage as well (the chain lighting the flares do is arcane based). However, it should be noted that not every guild uses arcane resist gear (outside of perhaps the AR trinket you receive from the questline to kill the prince, but by then, you've already killed the curator).

Shadow Priest strategy
A shadow priest makes an excellent Hateful Bolt soak. Buffed to 165 resistance, 50% to 75% of damage will be absorbed, with the occasional full resist (or full damage) bolt. The Shadow Priest can usually vampirically heal through damage with only the occasional support heal from the main healers.

By downranking Shadow Word Death, Mind Flay and Vampiric Touch by 2 levels, the Shadow Priest can provide constant health and mana to himself and other healers in the raid (mana is an issue in this fight), as well as effectively soaking up Hateful Bolts through close proximity to the Curator and high threat/health.

At every Evocation, the Shadow Priest needs to unload with full rank DPS, preferably landing Vampiric Touch just before Evocation so that the maximum number of Mind Blasts can be delivered. Devouring Plague also helps.

Such a deluge of damage can restore huge amounts of mana for everybody in the shadow priest's group.

Trash Mobs
The trash, consisting of Arcane Watchman, arcane elementals, and mana wyrms, is on a 45-50 minute respawn timer, so make sure you start fast and keep a quick pace in order to avoid respawns.

Arcane Watchman: These two mobs are similar to the Curator themselves, and come in a linked pull. They hit hard (proportional to their size), and are untauntable. Their unique ability is a debuff called 'Overload' which is cast on a random player in the raid. This debuff causes the player to explode, dealing an exponentially increasing amount of damage to nearby players. The first explosion causes 400 arcane damage, but subsequent explosions double the damage, finally ending with a 3.2k damage explosion. The simplest way to counteract this is through placement of the raid.

Sample Raid Placement: Have a main tank and an off-tank for each watchman. Position the two mobs separately, so that if a tank gets the overload debuff the OT will not have to suffer through the explosions. All ranged DPS and healers should stand together at the entrance to the hallway. Once overload is cast on a player, that player simply runs back across the plank bridge and waits by the barrels. Alternatively, the player can simply strafe off the bridge (this will cause 0-1 ticks of the explosion on the raid) and then run back up the stairs to the raid to receive heals.

Arcane Elementals and Mana Wyrms: This pull consists of one Arcane Elemental and 5-6 Mana Wyrms. The elementals have a mana shield, meaning their mana bar acts as their health bar. They also have a blink ability, which they use often. The blink causes an aggro dump, meaning the Elemental will often aggro onto a nearby healer. To avoid unnecessary deaths, the OT should be prepared to taunt the elemental. However, if the MT has a quick reaction time, they should be able to intervene or intercept and pull a taunt off in time. Also, tanking the mob near the healers also works well. We fight the first 2-3 groups in the room with the statue, and the rest at the end of the hall that the Curator patrols. If you have a paladin, have them consecrate to hold down the adds and then continuously decurse the group to remove the "drain mana" the wyrms will constantly do. They definitely need to keep it off the MH and Mages for the AoE. When the pally has aggro, lay down Flamestrike and/or Blizzard. (Personally find Flamestrike works better overall). When the adds are down, take down the elemental. When his shield is completely gone, he will explode into a mana shower that restores mana to all in the nearby vicinity. Get all mana users in it for some free mana. Shadow Priests and Hunters are encouraged to mana drain these, but it may not be necessary.

Class Strategy Suggestions
Priests - Using your Shadowfiend during an evocation vulnerability will restore a large portion of your mana pool. Normally a Shadowfiend does about 100-200 damage a hit. However, an evocation vulnerability will increase this to 300-600 damage a hit, giving this damage to the caster directly as mana. Dependent of how many healers you have, it is advisable to use the Shadowfiend in the second or third damage phase.

Just before the Curator does his Evocations, priests (especially shadow priests) should cast maximum rank SWP and Vampiric Touch, and then max rank Mind Blast and Mind Flays - this can restore a HUGE amount of mana during the Evocation period.

Shamans A bloodlust just before the evocation can be used to both increase the speed of killing the final add and contribute a substantial amount of damage to The Curator.

While learning this encounter as a healer, you will use a lot of mana healing people. Bring at least 5 Major/Volatile/Super Mana Potions per attempt -- it may save a wipe.

Rogues - Learn to use Cloak of Shadows at the right time to maximize the amount of damage you can negate from the adds. Don't blow it as soon as it is up; rather, save it for right when a spawn is about to begin hitting you with lightning. As melee, you will be taking damage from every spawn, and you must mitigate as much of it as you can. Evasion will also allow you to dodge their melee hits, which are also Arcane damage.

Warlocks - He spawns adds at an interval of about 10 secs and 10 adds on one mana bar. Getting a Curse of Doom on him when there is just under 1 minute left till evocation will deal massive damage (around 20k) to the boss.

Loot
Tier 4 glove tokens:

Other drops:

Movies
Mage perspectives
 * The Curator kill movie from Forlorn Legacy guild.
 * Ordo Solaris (Alliance Azgalor) kill- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l68MhwCai6k
 * Resolute (Alliance Malygos) kill- http://youtube.com/watch?v=XSXy7i7QeCU
 * Last Resort (Horde Kazzak) kill- http://www.lrguild.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3131

Hunter perspectives
 * Going Merry (Alliance Kilrogg) kill- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXXRwYkEySg

DPS Warrior perspectives
 * CS (Horde Arthas) kill- http://www.dailymotion.com/thehighway/video/2609520