Grand Warlock Nethekurse Tactics - Shattered Halls Instance Guide

2008-12-23

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His Grandness’ Formidable Army

With a name obviously derived from “Nether” and “Curse”, the Grand Warlock boasts quite a larger-than-life ego, but lacks the skills to back it up. When you first emerge from the sewers (or through the lockpicked door) you will see him preaching to his recruits - non-elite Orcs that stand before his dais. They are hostile to you, so you have no choice but to eliminate them before engaging the Grand Warlock. Nethekurse taunts you as you are destroying his minions, saying things like “Oh that one? You can have him.”, or “I was going to kill him anyway.” Once all the minions are dead the Grand Warlock will engage the group. Make sure everyone is ready to go!

The Warlock’s Abilities

Normal

Shadow Cleave - Inflicts weapon damage plus 275 to target and 3 nearby allies.

Death Coil - Causes target to run in Horror for 4 seconds and deals 1260 shadow damage. Nethekurse is healed for the amount of damage dealt.

Lesser Shadow Fissure - Summons a void zone beneath a random target dealing 878-1072 shadow damage every second.

Dark Spin - Launches a shadow bolt at a nearby target every second, hitting for 1200-1500 each. Also deals weapon damage to players in melee range.

Heroic

Shadow Cleave - Inflicts weapon damage plus 350 to target and 3 nearby allies.

Death Coil - Unchanged

Lesser Shadow Fissure - Void zone deals 3 times more damage than before.

Dark Spin - Unchanged

The Fight

You can do the first 75% of the fight as fast or slow as your heart desires. It is completely consistent throughout that phase. Save your high-DPS cooldowns for the end of the fight - you’ll need them. He will occasionally use Death Coil on a random person - you just have to hope the tank doesn’t get hit with it. Let the tank have a lot of room on the threat table before DPS begins. Healing isn’t particularly problematic, so long as people move out of Void Zones quickly. That is the cause of the majority of his damage. It is easy to avoid the Void Zones because they are preceded by a lovely light desplay of pink runes over the area that will be effective. Just step out and continue doing what you do. If you do not need to be in melee range stand reasonably far away. If you are doing melee DPS avoid the cleave by staying behind him.

When Nethekurse gets to 25% life phase two begins. He stands in place and performs his Dark Spin, which will last until the end of the fight. At this point the tank can move out, as he has very little to offer by way of DPS and standing in melee range will only make the healer’s job harder. All the DPS should pop trinkets, cooldowns, whatever they have to kill him quickly. If left in this phase for too long, he will eventually drain the healer and the group will wipe.

Heroic Mode

On heroic mode the fight is virtually unchanged. The major difference is the highly increased damage of the Void Zones. They are easy to avoid, but if ignored will kill a player within two seconds. Everyone shifting a few steps every 5-10 seconds will minimize the damage taken from Void Zones.

This post is part of the series: World of Warcraft Instance Guide: The Shattered Halls

The Shattered Halls is a challenging instance, both on Normal and Heroic modes. However, with the right group composition and clever tactics, it doesn’t have to be difficult. A-Z on busting open the Shattered Halls.