The Karazhan Guide Pt 6 - Shade of Aran

The Shade of Aran is the boss you should probably take next after The Curator. Terestian Illhoof is geographically the next boss to take, but Aran is a more vital target for two reasons:

1. Once he is dead, almost all the trash between there and The Curator stops spawning.

2. Once he's dead, you can speak to the Doorman by the stairs to the Ballroom to be teleported straight there, making a faster corpse run for any attempts on Illhoof, Netherspite or Prince Malechazzar.

As for the fight, well I hope you brought an alternate set of gear, because there's nothing to tank!

Well ok, that's slightly untrue (details later), but this fight is basically a raidhealing/DPS race. The Shade has no aggro will switch target randomly. When we first attempted him with Ulu, I used to strap on my healing gear and spam my targetstarget healing macro (see the Opera guide) on the Shade (thus healing his current target). These days, I slap on my spelldamage-heavy 5-man/solo gear and just go at him with Seal of Vengence and Exorcism. Judgement of Wisdom or Light on the boss is also a good thing.

He'll alternate between Arcane Missles, Fireballs and Frostbolts as his main attack. It's a good idea to have Shamans, Warriors or Rogues interrupt the Fire and Frost attacks. The Arcane Missles is the easiest of the three to heal through, and if you interrupt all three, he'll run around the room, to melee whoever he's targetted, which you don't want.

He also has three big attacks, here's how you survive them:

Flame Wreath: Stand perfectly still, you can cast spells freely but don't move at all.
Blizzard: This moves round the outskirts of the room, run through the boss to the other side when it gets near you. If the boss is in the centre and you're in melee range of him, it shouldn't be a problem. P.S. Don't move during Flame Wreath.
Arcane Explosion: He teleports everyone to the centre, casts a mass slow and then begins channelling a massive explosion. Immediately turn and run to the wall (the slow can be cleansed) to avoid it. P.P.S. No move-o during Flame Wreath?

At 40% health, he'll summon four Water Elementals. These can be tanked, but Aran continues to do his normal attacks (including Flame Wreath et al). Get your ranged DPS to burn them down quickly, or fear/banish them. They will despawn after 90 seconds (a Warlock can take two out of the fight with Fears and Banishes and two Warlocks make the Elementals trivial).

When his mana gets down to 20%, he will polymorph the entire raid into sheep and take a drink. You'll recover health and mana during this time, but once he's finished, he'll cast a mass Pyroblast that'll hit everyone in the raid for about 7k damage. Make sure before you go in that all your raiders have at least 8k health buffed to survive this.

Ideally he should die before his mana gets that low, but you may find this difficult on your first few kills. It's a fun, if chaotic fight, which'll prove a challenge to a new group in Kara.