After your raid has killed Aran and enabled the teleport to Aran’s room, you have several choices open to you. One of these is Netherspite, one of Karazhan’s optional bosses at the Celestial Watch. We highly recommend you fight Netherspite and get him on farm status as soon as possible as he has some great gear that any raid could seriously benefit from.
Netherspite’s Abilities
- Basic Melee: Netherspite hits for roughly 8k on cloth, without any buffs stacked on him.
- Nether Burn: Aura type spell, deals 1200 shadow damage every 5 sec, affected by line of sight. This damage is resistible, so shadow resist buffs beforehand can negate much of it. Only active during Portal phase.
- Void Zone: Opens a massive void portal that lasts 25 sec., inflicting ~1k shadow damage every 2 seconds to all enemies in the selected area. (Similar to that in the Four Horsemen fight of Naxxramas, or Zereketh the Unbound in Arcatraz) Simply move out of the affected area immediately.
- Netherbreath: An attack hitting everyone in front of Netherspite for 4500 arcane damage in addition to knocking them back for ~20 yards. Will be chain cast during Banish phase. Cast time: 2.5 seconds.
- Empowerment: Undispellable self-buff that increases damage by 200%. Cast during Portal phase a few seconds after beams come up and will remain for the whole phase.
- Enrage: After 9 minutes, Netherspite will enrage, increasing his damage done by 500%. Will generally make quick work of your raid, dealing upwards of 30000 damage per hit in melee.
Defeating Netherspite
There are two phases to this fight, which alternate between each other. The Portal phase, which is the first one and lasts for a minute, and the Banish phase, which lasts for half a minute. They alternate until the encounter is over or Netherspite enrages.
Void Zones will spawn under random players during the entire encounter, dealing large amounts of shadow damage to those who aren’t moving out of them quick enough.
Portal phase
At the beginning of this phase, three portals of different colors will spawn at fixed locations in the room and will begin emitting a beam of their respective color towards Netherspite.
If the beams are allowed to hit Netherspite freely, they are granting him stacking buffs which strengthen or even heal him. The buffs on Netherspite last 5 seconds from last application (instead of the 8 to 20 seconds it does on players). The beams can (and must) be blocked by players who position themselves between a portal and Netherspite. Players blocking the beams are also affected by a stacking buff, having a positive and a negative effect which grow with each second that they spend in inside the beam. Although the positive effects are quite helpful for the fight, the negative effect makes it hard to nearly impossible for one player to block a beam for the complete duration of the Portal Phase.
Once a buff “ticks out” (player leaves the beam long enough to lose the debuff - 8-20 sec), another debuff is applied to the player called Nether Exhaustion, which prevents him from intercepting that color beam for the next 90 sec.
Red Beam
Perseverance - Tank Beam
- Lasts for 20 sec after leaving the beam.
- Hits Netherspite:
- Damage taken reduced by 1% per tick.
- Hits Player:
- Netherspite will aggro you.
- Damage taken is reduced by 1% per tick.
- Defense is increased by 5 per tick.
- Health is modified - the first application gives +31,000 maximum health, with additional stacks reducing maximum health by 1000 per stack.
- Replenishes full health every tick.
If no one is standing in the Red Beam, Netherspite uses his standard aggro table.
Green Beam
Serenity - Healer Beam
- Lasts for 10 sec after leaving the beam.
- Hits Netherspite:
- Heals for +4000 health per tick. (Stacking so it heals for 4K, 8K, 12K, 16K etc. — it is very important not to let Netherspite get hit by this beam.)
- Hits Player:
- Healing done is increased by 5% per tick.
- Spell cost reduced by 1% per tick.
- Greatly increases mana regeneration rate.
- Maximum mana reduced by 200. Stacks up until your mana pool reaches 0. Affects druids in feral forms as well.
Blue Beam
Dominance - DPS beam
- Lasts for 8 sec after leaving the beam.
- Hits Netherspite:
- +1% spell damage increase per tick.
- Hits Player:
- Damage dealt is increased by 5% per tick.
- Healing received reduced by 1%.
- Damage taken by spells is increased by 8%.
Portals will always spawn at the same locations in the room during all Portal phases, but their colors will semi-randomly change each time after the first Phase.
Beam Blocking Assignment
Players should block all three beams as soon as possible in the fight. The beams are generally assigned to individual players before the pull using the following criteria:
Red Beam - Classes with high armor, defense and health (i.e. Warriors, Bear Druids, Paladins, Shamans and Hunters). The red beam gives them the massive healing and health needed to tank Netherspite. But despite the replenishment to full health every second, Netherspite can sometimes crit them for very high numbers well above 10,000 (even on plate). So leather and cloth wearers can still get easily one-hitted despite the augmented health maximum. Resilience from PvP gear is a useful attribute here.
Blue Beam - DPS classes (preferably with high health or shadow resistance). While their damage output increases rapidly, the damage received by them from Netherspite’s shadow aura is also rapidly increasing and healing spells on them will become more and more ineffective. Players staying inside this beam for too long are also becoming highly prone to be killed by a Void Zone appearing under them. If you have a Warlock in your raid, assign him/her to the Blue Beam.
Green Beam - The “Healer Beam”. Can also be blocked by classes without a mana pool (Warriors and Rogues) who remain entirely unaffected by the beam. A manaless class can stay for a whole beam’s duration within the beam and still be used to take their turn blocking the red or blue beam in the following phase.
Those not blocking a beam will be DPSing, or raid healing.
A good strategy to assign beam blockers for a regular Karazhan raid composition (3 healers, 2 Tanks and extras) could look like this:
| Class | Odd Portal Phases | Banish | Even Portal Phases | Banish | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Healer A | ||||||
| Healer B | ||||||
| Healer C | ||||||
| Tank A | Red Beam | Green Beam | ||||
| Tank B | Green Beam | Red Beam | ||||
| Melee A | Red Beam | |||||
| Melee B | Blue Beam | Red Beam | ||||
| Damage Dealer A | Blue Beam | |||||
| Damage Dealer B | Blue Beam | |||||
| Damage Dealer C | Blue Beam | |||||
Notice that the first Red Beam blockers of a Portal phase in this example are your main tanks. This is highly advisable, because they should also be the ones to grab Netherspite’s aggro after a Banish phase and have to be able to withstand 10 seconds of his melee attacks without the augmentation of the Red Beam.
Healers are entirely unassigned in this example, so that they don’t have to bother with locating a portal and moving towards it when they should actually all be concentrating on healing up the raid after a devestating Banish phase. Thus the tank who isn’t used to block the red beam in that phase sees after that instead. Healers can still choose to take the green beam from them anytime they find the opportunity and need for it.
Beam Blocker Transition
Players who are setup as beam blockers for the second half of a Portal phase should be positioning themselves in front of the beam blockers of the first half once those have their beam secured. Once these have acquired 25 stacks of the beam’s buff, they simply need to move out of the beam to have it hit their successor in front of them.
Banish Phase
The Banish phase lasts about 30 sec:
- Netherspite is banished, remains mostly stationary but still vulnerable to all damage.
- Netherspite is still able to deal melee damage to you during the Banish phase if you get too close to it. Only tanks should stay in melee range.
- Damage from Nether Burn aura will stop and no new Void Zones spawn during this phase.
- After a few seconds of inactivity he randomly fires Netherbreath hitting up to three players standing in a cone in front of him, inflicting up to 4.5k arcane damage on each, accompanied by a knock back.
Dealing with high damage bursts from Netherbreath becomes another difficult challenge after the raid has learned to cope successfully with beam management. Everyone who does not have a maximum health pool of more than 9000 HP is prone to be killed by two consecutive bolts if Netherspite aims his breath in the same direction twice in a row. It is mandatory that every player’s health is kept above 4,500 HP at all times. Every player should use Healthstones and healing potions in this phase rather than rely on healers who will often have range problems due to the knock back effect. It’s also possible to use bandages, since the Nether Burn aura is inactive during this phase.
Players should stand either very close to Netherspite so they are likely still in range of a healer after a knock back, or at maximum range, so that they are being knocked out of Netherspite’s breath range and can bandage themselves safely before running back in. In any case, healers should make sure to spread out equally around Netherspite to cover every angle of him.
DoT effects should be timed very carefully in this phase, because after 30 seconds Netherspite will unbanish and reset his aggro table which he will go by for the next 10 seconds until someone can block the Red Beam again. The next Red Beam tank should immediately try to gain his aggro (save up some Rage for this during the Banish phase as he can’t be taunted) and position himself between the dragon and the next Red Portal.
Key Notes
- No one should ever cross the Red Beam behind its designated blocker. He would temporarily gain Netherspite’s aggro who would move in order to reach this player and together with him the Green and Blue beams - which might slip off their respective blockers. This can whipe an entire raid.
- The Green Beam can be temporarily “stolen” from its blocker to gain a few stacks of its buff for its mana regeneration effect. Make sure to move out after you’ve gained 5-6 stacks or the original blocker will become unable to accept the Beam back due to having gained Nether Exhaustion. Only do this if you know what you are doing.
- Warriors should never use Berserker Stance when blocking the Red Beam. Netherspite can crit them for up to 30,000 damage if they do so.
- Red Beam blockers do not need to move out of Void Zones. It’s better to keep Netherspite fixed in its place, so that the other beams will not move when he does. Let the healing of the beam take care of the damage from the Void Zone too.
- Warlocks can sustain a full duration of the Blue Beam by keeping themselves healed with Drain Life, since drains are not affected by the decrease in healing effects and the increase in damage done is almost as great as the increase in damage taken from Nether Burn. Warlocks with 2 points in the Soul Siphon talent can even surpass the increase in Nether Burn damage when there are 6 Affliction debuffs on Netherspite.
- The three different portals always spawn at the same location in the first Portal Phase:
- Red to the right of the entrance
- Green to the left of the entrance
- Blue opposite of the entrance
- During the Banish phase, healers should spread out to cover every side of Netherspite, so that no one ever gets knocked back out of every healers’ range. It’s a good practice to put raid target symbols on your healers so they can better coordinate their positioning.
Netherspite’s Loot Table
[Cowl of Defiance]
[Earthblood Chestguard]
[Girdle of Truth]
[Jewel of Infinite Possibilities]
[Mantle of Abrahmis]
[Mithril Band of the Unscarred]
[Pantaloons of Repentance]
[Rip-Flayer Leggings]
[Shining Chain of the Afterworld]
[Skulker's Greaves]
[Spiteblade]
[Uni-Mind Headdress]