Boss Guide (Tomb of Sargeras II)
Tomb of Sargeras is the culmination of the Broken Shore content, starring nine bosses with a variety of new mechanics. So far it’s looking like the expansion’s best raid so far with plenty of really cool fights.
Boss strategy is currently geared toward the Heroic versions of each encounter, and will be updated for Mythic as it’s cleared. The Tomb of Sargeras guide is split into three parts for ease of navigation. You’ll want to read or watch a standard guide before you read through here since basic knowledge of the fights is assumed and only the healing side of the encounter is discussed.
Tomb Navigation Menu
Sisters of the Moon
Debuffs to add to your healing frames: Embrace of the Eclipse, Rapid Shot, Moon Burn, Lunar Beacon
Talents to run: Standard Set + Cultivation or Tree of Life + Germination
Boss Guides: Wowhead, Fatboss (video)
Sisters of the Moon goes for the ‘throw all the mechanics and see what sticks’ design philosophy. You’ll be dealing with 17 different abilities over 3 phases and this is probably the first boss in Tomb that will stress casual raiders. Healing wise the fight is quite easy outside of the tough Embrace of the Eclipse debuff which we’ll discuss below.
Tips
- [Leytorrent Timing]: Just after you’ve cleared your Lunar or Umbrage Suffusion. Make sure you time it after an Incorporeal Shot goes out.
- Alright, in phase 1 and 2 Priestess Lunaspyre (hah, nice name) will coat the raid in the Embrace of the Eclipse debuff. This absorbs close to 3 million healing per person and must be fully healed within 12 seconds or the remaining absorb amount will explode damaging all allies within 8 yards. You will need multiple raid cooldowns to remove this comfortably so pair up at least two. If you are consistently not able to remove it in time, have the raid spread out before it expires so that they aren’t sharing the splash damage.
- Rapid Shot, Moon Burn, and Lunar Beacon are all pretty generic ‘this target will take some heavy damage’ debuffs and you will get good value out of HoT’ing them. Rapid Shot is by far the most dangerous of the set with the target taking around 5 million damage over 5 seconds. Ensure they are using their defensives to buffer the damage, and that you are prioritizing them for heals.
- The core mechanic of the fight is the Font of Elune mechanic – that’s the giant moon underneath your feet. Standing in either the dark or light sides of the moon will stack a debuff on you that’ll increase your damage taken from shadow or arcane damage. You can clear it by switching to the other side (from dark to light or vice versa). There is no penalty for clearing your debuff outside of Astral Purge which only lasts 2 seconds therefore as a hyper mobile healer we can pretty much cleanse our debuff stack at will and you should do so regularly (but not on Mythic!).
- The other damage on the fight shouldn’t be too dangerous so you can spend it focusing on the boss mechanics and coaxing your DPS to remove Moon Burn as soon as possible.
Mythic
- Mythic Tomb strategies coming soon.
Mistress Sassz’ine
Debuffs to add to your healing frames: Consuming Hunger, Thundering Shock, Befouling Ink, Hydra Acid (optional)
Talents to run: Standard + Cultivation + Germination
Boss Guides: Wowhead, Fatboss (video)
Mistress Sassinze Sazzseine Sassz’ine is unlocked upon Harjatan’s defeat and is accompanied by a giant fish, a whale and several jellyfish. Blizzard didn’t really include much lore for her so I’m going to make some up and pretend she’s Harjatan’s mom and she’s out for revenge. This is a very cool fight and you can expect to pump out some big healing numbers.
Tips
- [Leytorrent Timing]: The very start of phase 3 is decent enough.
- The most important mechanic in the fight from a healing perspective is the Hydra Shot which will almost certainly be executed poorly for your first half dozen attempts. Three players are targeted at a time and the damage is split between all allies hit. You’ll want to have at least 3 players in each shot and everybody hit will need urgent healing to counteract the burst damage and the DoT it leaves ([Poison DoT]). If one of the arrows is looking a little lean numbers wise you can jump in with Bear Form (remember to follow up with Frenzied Regen). This mechanic overlaps with several others during the latter phases of the fight and getting this mechanic right is crucial to downing the boss.
- During phases 1 and 3 Mistress will throw out Consuming Hunger debuffs on random members of the raid. This deals ~400k every 2 seconds and will last until cleansed by standing in Jellyfish. As a druid we love these debuffs since it makes them perfect targets for a couple rejuvs – especially in phase 3 when they can no longer be removed.
- Getting hit by the Jellyfish AoE stuns you for four seconds but it can, and should be, dispelled.
- If the tanks aren’t quite nailing their taunts then you might see Burden of Pain contributing a lot of your incoming damage. This really needs to be fixed on their end since it is possible to take zero raid damage from this ability (and that’ll be essential on Mythic).
- You will need at least one raid cooldown to counter the whales [Devouring Maw] during the second phase. Tranquility and Healing Tide Totem are both ideal for this as there is heavy movement during the phase. You’ll see the whale more than once during the phase, so coordinate a healing cooldown for each.
- If you die to the giant fish, pretend you were lagging.
Mythic
- Mythic Tomb strategies coming soon.
The Desolate Host
Debuffs to add to your healing frames: Wither, Spear of Anguish
Talents to run: Standard + Cultivation + Germination
Boss Guides: Wowhead, Fatboss (video)
The Desolate Host is a bunch of dead night elves all churned up into a raid boss. Lovely. The raid splits into two halves at the beginning of the fight (before you even pull) with one half inhibiting the Spirit Realm, and the other the Corporeal Realm. From a healing perspective the Spirit Realm is much more intense so you should send your best healers there. If you have an even number of healers then half in each is fine, but if you’re running an odd number then stick the extra in the Spirit Realm.
Tips
- [Leytorrent Timing]: There is often too much going on in this fight to recommend a spot. If you must, time it after the Spear of Anguish is taken care of.
Spirit Realm
- The biggest source of raid damage comes from the Wailing Souls ability cast by Soul Queen Dejahna. It hits everybody in the spirit realm for ~400k damage every two seconds for a full minute. There are two ways of dealing with this mechanic.
- You can have everybody but the tank and a healer phase back to the Corporeal Realm – avoiding the damage entirely.
- You can just heal through it. This greatly simplifies the fight and is honestly not too challenging a task. Players afflicted with Wither may still want to move out (+100% damage taken).
- Keep an eye on the Dissonance damage your raid is taking. It only hits when players from opposing realms are within 8 yards of one another and should be minimized as much as possible. Most boss strategies will have your spirit realm and corporeal realm groups on different sides of the room for this reason.
- Damage ramps up in phase two as your half of the raid contends with Doomed Sundering. This is an ideal scenario for a rejuvenation blanket and you should keep it up throughout the short burst phase.
Corporeal Realm
- The Corporeal Realm is much easier to heal than the Spirit Realm. There’s no raid wide AoE to deal with like Wailing Souls and so you’re mostly keeping people topped off and healing through any mistakes that they make.
- The Spear of Anguish will be cast on random players throughout phase 1 and these players will need to be topped off to give the Spirit Realm healers time to remove the healing absorb from them. Any HoTs you throw up will persist and you should give them a full set. It’s honestly not a bad use of Iron Bark also (since there aren’t many other good opportunities for it).
- As in the Spirit Realm damage ramps up in phase two as your half of the raid contends with Sundering Doom. This is an ideal scenario for a rejuvenation blanket and you should keep it up throughout the short burst phase.
Mythic
- Mythic Tomb strategies coming soon.