Herald Volazj

Herald Volazj, a faceless one, is the last boss of Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom. He is located within the Fallen Temple of Ahn'kahet. He is a herald of Yogg-Saron and enemy of the nerubians.

Abilities

 * Insanity - At around 66 and 33 percent health, Herald Volazj becomes invulnerable and applies a debuff to the entire party. Similar in nature to phasing, each individual member sees hostile copies of their original party. Clones have about 4k hp each and must all be killed. Once an individual player's copies are dead, you lose the Insanity debuff and can begin assisting other members to kill their own hostile clones. In heroic, your copies have 12k hp.


 * Mind Flay - Only targets the main tank and inflicts shadow damage.


 * Shadow Bolt Volley - Used every few seconds, deals roughly 350 shadow damage to the entire party.

Strategy
It is highly recommended to warrior tanks to Spell Reflection the Mind Flay.

Insanity

Before Volazj completes its casting, all group members should remove their weapons. This will significantly lower the damage taken during Insanity. Don't forget to re-equip them.

Damage classes face a race to kill their clones quickly so as to aid other members. The kill order should be to first down the healer clone in your party, the damage clones, followed by the tank clone last. Classes with AoE can down all of the clones when they are grouped together. Party clones will not use trinkets or your special abilities. Once out of your Insanity phase, you can assist others. If there is a Death Knight in the group, he will always death grip you to him, so be prepared.

Healers and tanks can and should use whatever means necessary to focus on survival while waiting for your party members to dispatch your evil counterparts and end Insanity. It is possible to finish off your own group in some situations with abilities like Holy Nova or Spell Reflection, but your focus should be to stay alive.

A priest used to be able to Mind Control and cancel it and it would kill the clones immediately. This little glitch was fixed.

A reasonably geared Holy paladin healer can also handle Insanity with ease. With the high armor, he can AoE tank all the clones and heal himself with Holy Shock. By spamming Consecration, Judgement, Shield of Righteousness, and occasionally Holy Shock, the clones will be finished quickly.

It should not be necessary for druids to change form in preparation for Insanity. For instance, a restoration druid switching from tree of life to dire bear just before the phasing, hoping to make the fight easier. They may find a very difficult to kill resto bear charging and healing their group members even without having the appropriate talent.

An alternative strategy is to de-equip a DPS and send him/her to their death before the tank begins tanking. With one less person in the fight, Insanity becomes much, much easier. The fight is still very manageable with 2 DPS sacrificed as Volazj does not have much health.

Group makeup can greatly change the dynamics of the fight. Having almost all ranged DPS classes can add difficulty to the encounter. If you find difficulty as a melee trying to get to the ranged, the pillars along the walls can aid in line of sight gathering the ranged. Keep in mind, the "clones" can and probably will walk through the pillars to get to you.

Heroic
Follow the same strategy as normal. When the boss is casting Insanity have everyone quickly unequip their weapon to make the fight easier. If done correctly the damage of the clones will be much lower. Similarly, hunters can switch to Aspect of the Viper to lower the clone's damage. Make sure you equip your weapons again after Insanity finishes casting or you will be there for a very long time.

Sometimes it may be better to try with fewer people. The abilities of each clone are based off of each characters' spec. This means a hybrid class that has not spec'd for healing will not heal (such as a feral druid). However, a resto druid will still heal even if they shift into bear or cat form before the Insanity cast finished. Use silence/stun on the healer clone to interrupt him and kill him first.

Macro to unequip weapons (needs 3 slots empty in rightmost backpack): /script ClearCursor for i = 16, 18 do PickupInventoryItem(i) PutItemInBackpack end

Achievement
Volazj's quick demise is easiest with a protection warrior tanking the boss. Volazj's mind flay can be Spell Reflected for considerable damage.

It is possible to complete the achievement just by nuking the boss and killing the illusions made from the two insanities as quickly as possible. Other tactics include heavy nuke on the boss when he casts the first insanity, bringing him from 66% to 33% before he finishes the cast, he will then start to cast the second insanity and needs to be killed before he finishes the cast or the party will be faced with 10 copies per person (instead of 5). Another viable tactic is to have the healer suicide (preferably just after the first insanity). This will make the second insanity much easier due to having 9 copies less to deal with, however this tactic does require a well geared warrior tank and probably the use of health pots.

If a Death Knight summons Army of the Dead during the insanity cast, the army will not phase with the players and instead will continue to attack Volazj, shortening the fight and the time between insanity phases.

Additionally, if Volazj is killed before he completes casting insanity, or if he dies during insanity from dots or other damage, he may bug. No loot icon will appear when mousing over his corpse, but he may still be looted by right-clicking. Additionally players will be stuck in their different phases and will not be able to see each other, or possibly the boss. This can be remedied by players either leaving the instance, or logging out, one at a time. After each player loads back in, they will be able to see all of the other players who have done so.

Quotes

 * Aggro
 * yell
 * whisper


 * Insanity
 * yell
 * whisper


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * whisper
 * yell
 * whisper


 * Death
 * yell
 * whisper
 * yell
 * whisper