The Karazhan Guide pt 9 - Nightbane

Nightbane is a boss that is summonable and therefore optional. In order to be able to summon him, you need to have completed the Medivh's Journal questchain, so chances are you won't be fighting him unless you have a few Kara veterans in your group.

That said, I do reccomend training on him as soon as he becomes an option to your group, since he drops two incredibly nice tanking pieces:

Shield of Impenetrable Darkness and Panzar'Thar Breastplate


Gearing for the Encounter.

Whilst not as fast-hitting as the Prince, Nightbane does hit hard, and it's definately worth stacking up as much health and mitigation as possible for him. Uncrushability's pretty much a must here as well.


The fight itself is divided into two phases: Ground and Air.

Landing

Every time he lands, including the initial pull and at the end of every air phase, he resets aggro. It's imperative that there's no Healing over time or Damage over time spells in effect when he lands, and no active totems, since he'll immediately aggro on those. Use a quick Exorcism and Judgement of Righteousness to give burst aggro on him.

Ground Phase

On the ground, he will cleave for 5k damage, and breath fire on anyone in front of him. He will also tailswipe anyone behind him, so it's important to position him correctly. I stand with my back to the railing and have him with his back to the dome wall. This leaves his flanks exposed for your melee DPS to get stuck in without fear of being swiped. He has Bellowing Roar as well, a fear with a 2.5 sec cast and a 30 second cooldown, which you can avoid in one of four ways:

1. Get a Priest to pop a Fear Ward on you.
2. Get a Shaman to place a Tremor Totem beside you.
3. Use Divine Shield to clear the fear effect. (The five minute cooldown means you'll only get to do this once or twice per fight)
4. PVP regularly for a week or two until you can afford the Medallion of the Alliance or the Horde equivalent.

There is also a fifth way:

5. Get a Warrior with a stance-dance macro to use Berserker Rage during the fears. But we shall not speak of this!

Although it's a 30 second cooldown, the cooldown only seems to start when he lands, so in reality, you should only face a fear every 2 minutes or so if your DPS. Since the changes to fear mechanics in 2.3, an unavoided fear is survivable, if annoying. Assuming you comfortably outaggro the rest of the raid, then he should still chase you. Last night Ulu tanked him with no way to avoid the fears except for Divine Shield and it went fine.

Air Phase

When his health reaches 75%, 50% and 25%, he'll take off. At that point, the rest of the raid needs to collapse on top of you. He'll target on party member with a DoT which will also cause Skeletons to spawn around you. Use Consecrate/Holy Shield to gather them up and DPS them down fast. Ten seconds before he returns, the raid should fall back to their original position and you should get ready to pick him up with an Exorcism as he lands.

And that's basically it. This is a fight all about control. As long as your raid can handle the transitions ok, and can survive the fears, this boss is reasonably straightforward.