The Shade of Aran is a boss in the abandoned tower of Karazhan. He is the spirit of Nielas Aran, the father of Medivh - the previous occupant of Karazhan. He is located in the Guardian’s Library. After Aran’s dead a teleport to his room becomes available from Berthold the Doorman, and all trash mobs from the Curator to Aran (excluding one pack outside Illhoof’s door), will cease to respawn. The packs above his library are linked to Netherspite.
Shade of Aran’s Abilities
- Aran does not have a controllable agro list, he rarely melees and his spells lock on to random target players. Aran?s health must stay below his mana, if he runs out of mana before killed he will polymorph the entire raid and kill everyone, fortunately being a caster physical damage is incredibly effective against him.
- Aran is an Arch-mage and casts spells from all school, his basic Fireball, Frost Bolt, and Arcane Missles can be interrupted or counterspelled. This will help in reducing his damage output as well as stopping him from using mana.
- Aran has 5 special abilities that he can cast at anytime, they can not be stopped.
- Flame Wreath - when he casts this spells a targeted player will be surrounded in flames, no one can move in or out, if he casts Flame Wreath nobody moves until it is gone.
- Blizzard - a large AoE Blizzard that rotates clock-wise around the outside of his room, the center of the room where melee is will be unaffected, ranged and casters can run around clockwise to avoid it or if all else fails run to the center where it will not affect.
- Arcane Explosion - Aran will summon the entire raid to him and slow everyone, this slow debuff is removable. Everyone must run to the wall to get out of the way of his explosion, it is a 10 second wind up; even slowed players if they move immediately will get out of its range in time.
- Counterspell Aura - Aran spams an AoE counterspell that affects everyone in melee range, it may be an Aura.
- Chains of Ice - 10 second root, can be dispelled.
Defeating Shade of Aran
Phase 1
During the initial phase, Aran is a surprisingly easy encounter. The main importance here is to be fully aware of his Abilities (see above) and for the Raid Leader to communicate over your guild’s voicechat what the raid should do. Simple commands such as “Blizzard”, “Stand STILL”, “Move OUT” should suffice during this phase. Make sure the interupts are top-notch and that nobody gets caught by the Arcane Explosion, and you will burn through this phase without any trouble.
Phase 2
At 40% health Aran will summon 4 Elite Water Elementals, they can be feared and banished, after 90 seconds they will despawn, during this time all DPS remains on Aran as he will remain unchanged.
By far the easiest way of dealing with the Elementals is by assigning a Warlock to banish 1 and fear the other. If you have 2 Warlocks in your raid, perfect. If not, let a Warrior pick up 2 of the Elementals, he only has to keep them busy and this is not a hard task. If you have no Warlocks at all, your raid set-up sucks. (Illhoof) Nevertheless, let your tanks pick up the Elementals and you will do fine. Remember, Aran does not need to be tanked.
Additional Tips %26amp; Strategies
Basically you can just start the fight with crazy DPS, you want to get him down as fast as possible. Your tank can also wear DPS gear because he won’t be tanking. Also everyone should have AT LEAST 7500 hp for this fight and bring pots and healthstones if you have a warlock. Throughout the entire fight he will use his primary abilities and use his special ones in random intervals. The important thing is just keep EVERYONE topped off at full HP and be paying attention to what moves he is using. Have 2 people assigned to interrupting each normal spell cast he has, so like the warrior and a rogue to intterupt his fireball and a shaman and a rogue to interrupt his frostbolt. I would let him cast his arcane missles as it takes more time and is easier to heal. You can pretty much lock him out of casting frostbolt and fireball.
The Blizzard can be easily avoided, just look where he is casting it and follow behind it. If you get caught in a blizzard run through the middle and get out of it, you can not outrun it since it moves. The flame wreath just means DO NOT MOVE…at all. Do not jump, twitch, turn, anything. You can cast, but that is it. If he does a flame wreath and a blizzard after one another still don’t move. Call out that you are stuck in the blizzard and the healers will act accordingly. His Arcane Explosion move is RIDICULOUSLY easy to dodge and if you get hit by it you need to be removed from the raid. He will pull everyone to the middle and as soon as this happens just start running to the walls. As the healers are running take this opportunity to cast HoTs on people and PoT or bandage once you get to the wall as he does no DPS during this. Also, dispell anyone who is chains of iced needs to be dispelled.
Keep everyone topped off and keep the DPS up until 40%. At 40% he spawns 4 water elementals which can be completely CCed. I reccommend having your tank pick one up, fear and banish 2 if you have a warlock, and rogues can stunlock the last one. Hunters can also trap and priests can fear. They are affected by silence as well. Healing gets a bit intense here but just last for 90 seconds of this and they despawn. Once they despawn it is the same thing as before they spawned and you can just DPS him down. I would reccommend saving cooldowns for after the adds so you can DPS Aran down quicker as your healers should be close to running out of mana.
Also if Shade of Aran gets to about 30000 mana he will do an AoE polymorph for about 10 seconds and then pyroblast everyone in the raid for ~7k. You can line of sight this so when he gets close to 30% mana everyone run to the wall and use the bookcases to line of sight him can avoid the sheep and AoE allowing you time to regen. Top everyone off before this so in case someone gets sheeped they don’t instantly die from the pyro. If you get hit with the pyro IMMEDIATELY use a potion or get a heal. Before you go into this fight you need to make sure you equip some stam gear and get above 7200 hp with buffs so that if you get hit by the Pyroblast you won’t die.
Key Notes
- LISTEN and PAY ATTENTION, I can not stress this enough. Basically if you move with a flame wreath up, you wipe the group. Also you are a moron if you die to the arcane explosion. Just run when he draws you near him.
- Get out of the blizzard, do not try to outrun it just run through the middle is the best way. You shouldn’t ever get hit by it cause it moves and you can just follow behind it, it always moves clockwise.
- If you get hit by a pyroblast IMMEDIATELY potion or get healed. Same thing applies if you combat rez or ankh, Aran has a semi smart aggro in which if someone is low on HP he will target them and try to burn them down.
- The adds can be completely CC, forget DPS on Aran when they spawn as CCing them and waiting to DPS is much easier.
- Pay attention to his mana, around 30% run to the sides and line of sight him, just heal people till he does his sheep and take the moment to regen.
- Set up good spell interrupt rotations and let the arcane missiles be the move he casts, they are the easiest to heal through.
- Save cooldowns for after his adds despawn, then burn him.
- If you ankh or get combat rezzed immediately pot or ask for a NS heal before the rez as you will most likely die as soon as you resurrect if you don’t get a heal.
- Make sure to have 7200 hp so that you can live through a pyroblast if it hits you. Just get topped off IMMEDIATELY once it goes off. Healthstones and Pots help a lot, just pop them as soon as you are hit and you don’t have to worry.
Shade of Aran’s Loot Table
[Aran's Soothing Sapphire]
[Boots of the Incorrupt]
[Boots of the Infernal Coven]
[Drape of the Dark Reavers]
[Mantle of the Mind Flayer]
[Pauldrons of the Justice-Seeker]
[Pendant of the Violet Eye]
[Rapscallion Boots]
[Saberclaw Talisman]
[Shermanar Great-Ring]
[Steelspine Faceguard]
[Tirisfal Wand of Ascendancy]