Instructor Razuvious (original)

Instructor Razuvious is the first boss in the Death Knight wing in Naxxramas. He comes with four additional mobs when pulled.

Abilities
NOTE: He should almost never be tanked by a player due to Unbalancing Strike. But at level 70 he can be tanked by a well-geared t5-t6 tank. He will get ~ 3000 dps then.

The only time you should tank him is as a last resort when all the understudies are dead and he has very little health left. Some tips on tanking him are using Evasion/Shield Wall and Shield Block/Limited Invulnerability Potion and taunt, then mocking blow.

He has the following abilities:
 * Unbalancing Strike: Similar to that of the Twin Emperors. Can easily deal 50K damage to a cloth wearer, and even a shield walled warrior will be lucky to survive being attacked by this. It will deal 350% damage to the Instructor's target and reduce their defence skill by 100 for 6 seconds.
 * Disrupting Shout: AoE shout, with a range of roughly 45 yards, which reduces the mana of everyone it hits by up to 4000 and deals twice the damage to the amount of mana burned this way. Also has a stun effect.  This ability is cast every 25 seconds. Mages can ice block through it.
 * Triumphant Shout: Razuvious will emote with Triumphant Shout when someone of your raid is hit by Disrupting Shout. It doesn't have any other effect.

Deathknight Understudy:
 * Roughly 100,000 Health
 * Main attacks available when mind controlled are Taunt and Shield Wall, both lasts 20 seconds. Shield Wall recently had its cool down reduced to 30 seconds, allowing it to be used twice every mind control rotation. Taunt is on a one minute cool down.
 * Deathknight Understudy auto attack hits for roughly 4K damage on Razuvious, generating significant threat. If Razuvious is properly sundered or improved expose armor is used, understudies hit around 6k. Against tanks, they hit for a little over 1.5k, and, once the Instructor dies, take massive damage (5000% more damage ~3000 = ~125000).
 * After Mind Control is interrupted in any way (including release of the caster) he gains a debuff that makes him immune to Mind Control for 45 seconds.

The Instructor and the Understudies can be reset/leashed by running up the stairs. Although you should be careful, as it is possible for Instructor or Understudies to melee strike you over looking the balcony.

Strategy
NOTE: Clear entire stables before attempting a pull. Failing to do so will cause your first attempt to be very short-lived.

The pull

 * Several methods have been used with success to do the pull:
 * Have a hunter pull the boss and kite him straight back, through the circle where the boss starts. Once a priest has the first Understudy ready to tank, the hunter only needs to FD, and the Instructor will run right back to the raid, past the Understudy, who would only need to taunt in order to gain aggro.
 * Alternatively, two priests can mind soothe the two closest adds, and proceed to mind control without interruption when Razuvious is on the far side of his patrol. Watch out when he stops to talk to them, though, as that will throw things off.
 * Another alternative, a rogue with the talent Preparation can bow pull and 'evasion tank' the Instructor until one of the adds are mind controlled and have him taunted.
 * Alternative 4 is to send in hunter pets on the boss to keep him busy while organizing positions and getting mind controls in place. Once pets are dead, he will have to pass the Understudies, where he can be picked up and positioned.


 * Finally have four other hunters pull the adds back to the raid group, where their respective tanks can pick them up.

The fight

 * Create 4 tanking groups, each with a warrior, and a hunter (for pulling). Place the entire raid on one side of the ramp leading down to the Instructors starting location. The DPS can easily hide behind the railing along the ramp to be out of the LoS of the shout. Note: this is different from the above picture, which has a more extreme run for the DPS: instead the DPS can be placed on the other side of the ramp, so that should one of them pull aggro, the healers would not be hit by an untimely shout. In the rare case of this occurring, they should immediately run down the ramp to avoid wiping the rest of the ranged dps.


 * One of the main sources of damage to Razuvious on this fight is the understudies, keep them healed and fighting for as long as possible.


 * It is VERY hard for DPS to take the aggro off the Understudies, for they hit very hard against the Instructor. However, be ready for early mind control breaks, because if the next Understudy is not ready to tank, rogue evasion is your best bet (pray that you will dodge his first attack, and be ready to hit evasion before the second hit). This means that casters should be careful, because pulling Instructor to the raid before he does a shout could be very dangerous.  Casters will have less aggro, because rogues and warriors have no mana and therefore no break in DPS.


 * Rogues should dps all out throughout the fight, no need to feint at all as Raz will be under taunt constantly. Our nonstop dps should insure that we are at the top of the aggro list (assuming no skill/gear imbalance).  This will guarantee that if MC breaks early then a rogue will have aggro, and a good team of rogues should be able to evasion tank 1 or 2 MC breaks without a problem.  In this fight rogues off-tank Raz, as they are the only class capable of reliably surviving more than one hit - provided the first hit is dodged/parried etc.


 * Tanking the Understudies:
 * Tank the Understudies with your back to the boss. This way, they are facing the Instructor and whoever is mind controlling doesn't have to worry about turning the Understudy around.
 * The adds do not hit very hard, and therefore not much healing is required to keep the tanks alive.


 * Tanks need to be aware of two things:
 * Should an Understudy break MC with little life left, he needs to be tanked without taking damage. shield bash works well here, and if a tank comes out with low health, sunder to get aggro, then don't even auto attack. Demo shout and battle shout should be enough to hold them.
 * Sunder Armor should NOT be used against the Understudies at any time. At most, a few sunders can be put up for initial aggro, but never a full five sunders. You don't want to have the Understudies going in to tank the Instructor with Sunder Armor up.


 * Contrary to common conception, only two priests are needed for this fight. Four may be used, but it is really just overkill. One priest can be tanking while the second prepares the next mob.


 * For some tips on Mind Controlling, go to the priest forum


 * Since it is possible to have a macro set up to execute Taunt and Shield Wall the same time it is recommended one do so, placing Shield Wall first on the list so that there is no chance of Razuvious hitting one of the controlled understudies without shield wall being up. If shield wall is not up Razuvious can kill an Understudy in about three or four hits.  With shield wall up they can be healed indefinitely, provided the raid has a good amount of mp/5 on the healing. Here's an example macro to target Instructor Razuvious, pop shield wall, taunt and start melee attacking with your mind controlled Understudy:


 * Due to patch 2.0 you are no longer able to use this macro! however most /script commands have new commands that do the same thing.

/target Instructor /script CastPetAction(5); CastPetAction(4); CastPetAction(1);


 * This patch 2.0 macro works

/target Instructor /petattack /click PetActionButton4; /click PetActionButton5;


 * Apart from executing the Pull without casualty, the hardest part of the fight is making sure the next understudy is controlled and ready to shield block/taunt as the previous MC/shieldblock wears off. (whichever happens first)


 * If you happen to wipe on Instructor Razevious, before you die run up to the boxes in the back of the room, jump up on them fast and the boss + adds won't aggro you. And you get out of combat. No need for soulstone!

Instructor Razuvious at Level 70

 * Can't be tanked by a T4/5 Warrior cause of 16k+ critical strikes (without shieldwall)


 * Successfully tanked by a 70 druid with 28 000 armour. Unbalancing strikes hit for ~10-15 000 and other hits for 1-2000. Adds off tanked until dead.


 * During a fun run in Naxx, our T5 geared warrior successfully tanked Instructor Razuvious. No need for shield wall unless the healers were a bit slow.


 * Tanked with a T6 warrior with ease; Unbalancing Stike hit ~9k (just over half his health)


 * After a jaunt into Naxx last night where we wiped twice to Razuvious, I am skeptical that it is possible to tank him. Per the above tips, I should be able to tank him; I am crit immune, and I am armor capped versus raid bosses with 23k HP on top of 40% Dodge. However, he still managed to take me from 100% to 0% with a 4k hit and a 19000+ Unbalancing Strike, stacked fast enough that it appeared to be one single hit. According to the above, he should not be hitting me for this much, yet I have 2 screenshots of my combat log wherein these massive hits are recorded. Recommended to still use his students to tank him.

In Wrath of the Lich King
Razuvious will also be located at Acherus: The Ebon Hold to train new death knights. He is involved in the following quests:

Quotes

 * Quotes that occur in the midst of battle:
 * Hah hah, I'm just getting warmed up!
 * Stand and fight!
 * Show me what you've got!
 * You should've stayed home!
 * You disappoint me, students!


 * Quotes that occur at the start of battle: (The yell text has been removed in patch 2.0, the sound is still played)
 * Do as I taught you!
 * Show them no mercy!
 * The time for practice is over! Show me what you've learned!
 * Sweep the leg! Do you have a problem with that? (A reference to Karate Kid)


 * Quotes that occur at death:
 * An honorable... death...

Videos
And here is a shorter (4MB) video of just the initial pull, done by a mage, which is half the battle.
 * http://poptix.net/WoW/Instructor%20Razuvious%20Pull.wmv

This is a high quality video of a live server kill, though the positioning differs a small amount from the above picture.
 * http://poptix.net/WoW/Instructor%20Razuvious.wmv

Ice Block Mage pull + Mind Control Priest PoV:
 * http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-673349682657406050

Mind soothe pull (Priest PoV):
 * http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=804850298470048350