Nightbane is a summoned boss that is similar to Onyxia’s fight from pre-Burning Crusade raid dungeons. To summon Nightbane, a person must have completed the Medivas Journal questline. Here’s how to defeat Nightbane once he’s summoned.
This fight is a two-phase fight consisting of a ground phase and a flight phase.
positions
During the ground phase, the tank should tank it somewhere along the battlements in a curve so that the width from the wall to the rim is the smallest. The tank must be rotated so that the tail is inside the wall as much as possible.
Ranged players should stay on one side at their maximum range near the edge. Melee must stand near Nightbane’s tail.
A symbol must be placed over a player’s head. (See why, below.)
The fight
If the fight is tanked correctly, most of what Nightbane does should only affect the tank.
His ground abilities are:
Bellowing Rage: This is a fear that can be resisted by Fear Ward, Will of the Forsaken, Berserker Rage, Recklessness, or any trinket such as Insignia of the Horde.
· Cleave: This is a front shot that hits for 6k at the plate.
Target Charred Earth – This creates an area of charred earth that does over 20k damage over 30 seconds. You should get out of this unless you’re the tank. Melee players should run through Nightbane to the other side and ranged players should get out of the area.
Distracting Ash: This reduces your chance to hit with your abilities or spells by 30%. This can be dissipated.
Smoky Breath: Deals Fire damage in front of the caster in a cone, dealing 3700-4300 damage and an additional 1688-1933 damage every 3 seconds.
Tail Sweep: Deals 450 damage and an additional 2250 damage over time. It can be avoided as long as your box is buried in the wall.
Every time his health drops below 25% (75%, 50%, 25% hp), Nightbane enters his flee phase. When this happens, everyone must run to the symbol placed above a raid member’s head. Doing this ensures that no one in the raid gets hit with Fireball Barrage. If any player is out of the group, they will be hit for 2550-3550 damage per second.
While in the flight phase, Nightbane will take a deep breath and cast Rain of Bones, which sends out tons of skeletons with 18,000 hp. These are not elites and can be dealt with quickly using AoE, or Area of Effect, spells.
A person will also be attacked with Smoking Blast during the flight stage. This is a Damage Over Time, or DOT, that does 2k damage and fire damage over time. It can be dispelled and should be fast as it can stack up to 4 times.
While in his flight phase, Nightbane can be hurt by ranged attacks. 10 seconds before he lands, everyone in the raid should return to their places for the ground phase. No one should cast any spells until the hunter uses Distracting Shot or the tank becomes aggressive and sets up Nightbane instead.
These steps must be repeated until Nightbane is dead. If you want to learn more about World of Warcraft strategy, you can read the Team Idemise Guide.
