World of Warcraft

WoW Classic: Kel'Thuzad and Sapphiron - Experiences from the PTR

December 10, 2022

Update from 05 November:
The release of Naxxramas is less than a month away in WoW Classic, and the developers at Blizzard gave interested players their first chance to test the raid's final two bosses, Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad, on November 04. As in the previous rounds, the raids benefited from a buff that provides a bonus for damage and healing (50 percent more) as well as life (+ 3,000). They also received 200 points of Frost Resistance via the buff. Here are some of the findings from the PTR:

Even with mitigation gear and over 13,000 life, the main tanks' health regularly dropped into dangerous regions: Sapphiron hits like a truck.
The dragon's hit box is large, which melee fighters should take advantage of when a Blizzard is raging near them.
The range of Sapphiron's Cleave is quite long, so melee fighters need to pay attention to that.
Despite the buffs and Frost resistance, healers struggled to keep the raid alive for the duration of the fight. However, the damaging Frost Aura seems to have been bugged. It is supposed to tick every two seconds, but it inflicted damage every second in some cases.
Multiple shots are not a good idea in the first phase of Kel'Thuzad. However, the adds themselves die very quickly, as expected.
Kel'Thuzad's frost attacks seemed quite harmless thanks to the frost resistance buff. Still, the wipes show that Kel'Thuzad's mechanics, if not played cleanly, cause deaths quickly.
Thanks to multiple parallel mind-controlled players and the adds in the final phase, chaos is inevitable. Inexperienced raiders will have to nibble here.

Here are the shots from Baron / Cstrike Gaming and Asmongold:

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Update from October 26:
Last Friday, interested parties were allowed to take on the Construct Quarter of the Necropolis of Naxxramas for the first time on the public test server, taking on the bosses Patchwork, Grobbulus, Gluth, and Thaddius. Here are some of the findings from the PTR:

Patchwork hits like a truck even in Classic. The tank as well as the off-tanks that absorb the Hateful Blow need a lot of healing.
Grobbulus is a comparatively easy boss that should be fast enough with the current raid DPS that the poison planes, if placed halfway smartly, won't be a problem. Protect yourself with Great Conservation Potions, drag the boss slowly across the room, lay down the planes off to the side and knock down the slimes along the way, done.
With the right positioning of Gluth, the melee fighters can position themselves so that the fear effect doesn't hit them because they are out of sight.
With World Buffs and co. it should be no problem for many raid groups to send Gluth to the ground before the first decimate. Deadly Wound won't be much of a factor in that case either.
With Thaddius, there are several important lessons to be learned right away: First, the tanks need to position themselves well on the two balconies so they can be kicked to the other side. If they are positioned incorrectly, they will land somewhere else and the respective boss will leave the balcony, which will quickly lead to a wipe. On the other hand, there are a few things you should keep in mind due to the plus-minus mechanic: Resurrection in combat is fatal for the resurrected player. Also, after the kill, you can't just run back together. The debuff does not disappear with the kill. Dark runes are affected by the damage effect and can quickly become fatal. Bloodletting works.

Here's the take from Baron / Cstrike Gaming:

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Update from October 22:
In the meantime, WoW enthusiasts were also able to visit the Plague Quarter in Naxxramas on the Classic public test server and challenge the bosses Heigan, Loatheb and Noth. Included: the iconic Heigan Dance, Asmongold, and a weaker buff for the raid tests (50 percent more damage instead of 100 percent).

Noth is an add fight and, like all add fights in Classic, is again appropriately simple. The only important thing is to clean the Plaguebringer's Curse quickly.
The aggro range of Heigan is large, the fight starts as soon as you enter the entrance area of the area. However, the fight can then still be easily reset => just leave the room again.
The Heigan dance still overwhelms a lot of players. There were a lot of deaths and wipes in various groups. The good news for the one or other dance muffle: With world buffs it should be quite possible to kill the boss already before the intermediate phase.
Loatheb was a consumables-only battle in Vanilla at the time. On the PTR, raids could take down the boss without world buffs or making the most of the spore effect. The only challenge here was healing, as medics are limited in their use of healing spells in this fight.

Below you can see all three bosses from Asmongold's point of view:

Original post from Oct. 20:
Just a short while ago, we speculated on how hard the final raid challenge Naxxramas will be in WoW Classic. While we are quite respectful of some bosses and believe, for example, that average raiders without sufficient Frost Resistance won't see a stab at Saphiron, some buffed readers are looking forward to the start of Phase 6 in a relaxed manner: The whole thing will be a walk in the park in their opinion. Saphiron will fall without resistance gear and quickly PUG and random groups will casually clean up Naxxramas every ID.

On the public test server of WoW (buy now 14,99 € ) Classic, interested parties could find out last week what could actually expect us with phase 6. At least the bosses of the military and spider quarters were ready for a test round. In the following we have summarized some impressions from the PTR for you:

The trash groups have quite a large aggro range. Carefully pulled, they are well doable (even if there can quickly be isolated deaths). If you laugh at too many at once (which can easily happen thanks to fear or pokes, for example), you'll quickly get a wipe.
Many raids had problems with Instructor Razuvious. Priests had to get into tanking with mind control, paying attention to positioning (the boss can't be in line of sight of the mana classes) and getting the tank rotation right. Stupidly, mind control tends to break early. Tanks that then try to capture the boss and hold it in position either have a big defensive cooldown ready or die immediately. Taken over adds that tank the boss without their defensive cooldown also die quickly. If the boss breaks out, chaos is inevitable. In addition, the pull already has to go optimally so that there are no deaths.
Like all previous add fights, the fight against Gothik is very simple. Focus damage on the emerging adds, which die extremely quickly, and phase 1 is no problem. The actual boss fight against Gothik then even less so.
The final stage in the military district is the four horsemen, and several raids were actually able to lay one of the hardest encounters of the vanilla era after only a few attempts - without world buffs and sometimes even with significantly less than 40 players. However, there were numerous casualties in all the kills we saw. In addition, several attempts were always necessary to practice the rotation of the various groups. A chilled out "walk in the park" is not what the four horsemen are in Classic WoW either.
Anub'Rekhan was already one of the easiest bosses in Naxxramas back in the day and is clearly "first try" kill material on the PTR as well. The spider's adds die very quickly. With enough raid DpS, the tank might have to kite the boss along the side once. Pro raids might even be able to do it without a kite phase.
Don't even try to pull the adds together in front of Faerlina and bomb away. They will bomb away your raid if you try. Even two add groups are dangerous. So pull carefully and watch out for the spiders running around.
Faerlina itself dies pretty quickly, so the mechanics there hardly matter. Most likely, experienced guilds will eventually resort to pulling the adds and boss together and bombing away.
In Maexxna, only the "spin-in" phase and the enrage phase are potentially dangerous. However, the latter only lasts for a very short time thanks to the raid DpS in Classic, and if you bring your tank to 100% just before the spin-in, protect him with shields, and he draws a CD preemptively, this phase shouldn't be a problem either.

How does it look: Does the experience from the PTR match your predictions? How hard will the other quarters, Saphiron and Kel'Thuzad be? Tell us in the comments!

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