The Karazhan Guide Pt 8 - Prince Malchezaar

I'm now going to skip ahead a bit in Karazhan and bypass Netherspite to talk about Prince Malchezaar. Netherspite is an optional boss, and a pain in the ass to explain. We didn't even try him in CD until we had The Prince down.

On the way to the Prince, you'll have to do the Chess Event. I'm not going to go into any detail on this one. It isn't a boss encounter, it's more a reward for persevering this far. You control some pieces, you kill the opposing King, you get 2 free badges and some free epics. If you don't master this within your first visit, I'd reccomend replacing the captain of your brain ship because he's obviously drunk at the wheel!

After all this, you reach The Prince. This is a gear check for the entire raid, since it needs good sustained healing, high, sustained DPS and a great-geared tank to do the job. Back when I acted as CD's tanking rep, I'd require all tanks to successfully tank the Prince before graduating to 25-man content.

Gear Requirements

To tank him, you'll want to be able to reach a minimum of 15k Health buffed. More is always good, but he can hit you for around ~14k in less than a second in Phase two, so 15k is the minimum required to survive this. Whilst you can get through most of Kara without needing to be Uncrushable, uncrushability is absolutely required for this guy.

In Phase 1 and 3, you'll want to use a Spelldamage weapon to boost your threat output, but during phase 2, it's useful to have a decent avoidance weapon like The Sun Eater enchanted with either Mongoose or +20 Agility depending on wether or not you intend to disengage in this phase. (More on that in the Phase write-up).

As for the rest of your gear, I'd emphasise avoidance and mitigation as much as possible. If you can comfortably get 15k Armor and over 20% Dodge for this fight, do so, your healers will thank you. Spelldamage isn't too important since you can spam Exorcism for more threat on him. If you have any items with Expertise, equip them if possible. Less Parries from the boss will help a lot if you stay engaged during Phase 2.

On Consumables, Elixir of Major Fortitude and Elixir of Mastery or Flask of Fortification are the way to go, plus the best Stamina food you have and Ironshield Potions will be your best choices throughout the fight.


The Fight

I'm not going too much into positioning. We learned the fight without the safe spots listed in the WoWWiki article, but if you want to use them, go for it, they'll probably make life easier. I pick a position halfway along the near wall and pull him to there with a quick Exorcism. I nominate one ranged DPs to act as Infernal spotter and to warn the ranged/healer group when they have to move.


Phase 1

This is fairly straightforward. He hits hard-ish, but not too bad. Hit him with all you've got to build up a threat lead. He'll periodically cast Shadow Word: Pain on the tank. If there's a Priest or Paladin in the group, they can cleanse this for you, otherwise, you'll have to do it yourself. Either turn on self-casting in your UI options or make a macro to cast Cleanse on yourself.

Phase 2

At 60% health, the fun really begins. He summons two axes into his hands that boost his DPS through the wall. He gains the Thrash ability which can cause his mainhand to attack a further two times. Since his mainhand hits for around 4k and his offhand for just over 2k, then the result is a 14k burst in less time than your healers can say "oh shit". It's imperetive that your DPS blows all their cooldowns to get him through this phase asap. There's two opposing ideas about what to do in this phase:

1. Disengage. Click off your auto-attack and maintain aggro via Exorcism, Judgement of Righteousness and Holy Shield. This prevents his attacks getting a slight haste from your Parries and will lower his overall damage output. If you're gonna do this, I'd reccomend getting +20 agility on an avoidance weapon to equip for this phase.

2. Engage! Keep swinging and hope for the best! I personally favor this, if I'm not swinging, I'm not tanking. I have my Sun Eater with Mongoose for this phase and it gives me +5% dodge when it procs.

Just ask yourself: What Would Captain Picard Do?



Whatever you do, if you have a trinket with an avoidance on-use ability, try and use it when the Prince hits ~40%. That seems to be when I've died most often.

Phase 3

At 30%, you enter the home stretch. The Axes leave his hands and fly around attacking random party members, so he goes back to Phase one levels of DPS. At this point you just have to kill him before your raid gets swamped by Infernals.

Once he's dead, loot and party, you have just achieved a genuine tanking milestone.