Monday, January 19, 2009

A guide where I show you how to REALLY own Anzu.

*Updated 8/27/2009: With the advent of Savage Defense, you probably don't even have to be 80 to do this. In fact, I don't even bother to shift out and heal any more. Still don't have my mount drop. /cry

The rest of the guide is unedited from its original form, due to laziness, mostly.*

This is a guide for Feral Druids to stealth to Anzu and kill him solo. This guide does assume a few things.


  • You must be Level 80. Mostly because the gear you need to do this requires it.
  • You must be reasonably well-geared. When I say that, I don't mean you need to be fully raid geared. See the picture above? That is me in my (slightly old at this point) bear gear. I have 32597 health, unbuffed. You could probably do it on 28k health and 22k armor.
  • You must have done the Epic Flight Form Quest. None of that silly, "I waited until 71 and just bought it from the trainer" stuff, you have to be one of the druids who EARNED epic flight form.
  • Bring a potion or a healthstone. Or both. You probably won't need him, but there is a chance that you can be stunned at the beginning of a banish phase, in which case, you'll want the extra healing.
With that out of the way, head to Sethekk Halls! In case you've forgotten, it's in Auchindoun. It's the east instance. When you enter the instance, hit cat form and stealth.

Getting There



In the picture above, the orange line is the instance portal. The yellow line is the path you will be taking. For the most part it's a linear walk to Anzu. The thing to keep in mind is that though Darkweaver Syth can see stealth, at level 80 you can walk by him without so much as a fuss, as long as you stick to the outside of the wall. If you're a Night Elf and you happen to aggro him, you can run outside the far door, break line of sight, and Shadowmeld.


In the picture above you can see about how close you can get to Darkweaver Syth. Just follow along the wall and you should have no problems with him noticing you. After you go up the stairs, and into the next room, you should encounter the Avian Rippers. Staying along the right wall will get you past them, but beware the one ripper in the middle that likes to brush right up against the wall.


When you get past this room, you are now in the room where the battle takes place. Now all you have to do is clear the trash in the room and summon Anzu.

Clearing the Trash

When you clear the trash, for each pull, it is important to note what mobs are in what pull. As the illustration below suggests, there is a specific order in which you want to do things.

Prophets die first, because they fear, and if you end up getting feared into another pack, it's probably game over, try again. Next on the kill list is the Shamans, as they heal, and that's never a good thing. Next should be Talon Lords as they have a rather annoying stun. From there, just kill whatever has the lowest health.

At the beginning of each trash pull pop Berserk and Barkskin. Berserk will keep you from being feared, and Barkskin should just be used every cooldown anyway (general tanking advice here.) Targetting a Prophet, spam Mangle and Maul until it dies. If there's another Prophet, do the same. You should basically kill in the order outlined in the paragraph above.

As to the order of the pulls, refer back to the map of the path. I have six grey circles marked and one green one. The grey circles are the 4-pulls that are a random assortment of bird people. The green circle is the drake that pats in a circle around Anzu's summoning claw. The first thing you want to do is buff Thorns and Mark of the Wild. Then pull the group on the southeast corner. Then, heal up using Regrowth followed by Nourish spam. Pull the drake circling the middle when he's closest to you. Then pull the remaining groups in any order, waiting for your Berserk in between each pull. No, it's not necessary to do so, but Berserk makes these pulls a lot easier, both by increasing DPS substatially, and removing the possibility for fear.

Fighting Anzu


Look at the picture above (click to enlarge.) This is where you will be tanking Anzu. This coffer is in the southwest corner of the room. Now, look at the following picture (again, click to enlarge:)


After Anzu banishes himself, this is where you should go to heal.

There is one macro you should have for this fight:


/target Eagle Spirit
/cast Rejuvenation
/targetlasttarget

This will cast Rejuvenation on the Eagle Spirit, which will cause 500 DPS to all mobs in the room.

Make sure your buffs are still up, and all your cooldowns are available (The important ones for this fight are Barkskin, Berserk, Enrage, Frenzied Regeneration, and Survival Instincts.)

Summon Anzu.

If you wait near the coffer, he won't pull right away. When you're ready pull him. This is how I do the fight:

Start off by using the Eagle Spirit macro. This will not pull Anzu, so hit Bear Form, Enrage, and pull him over to the tanking spot, making sure to position him in a way that is outside of line of sight to the healing spot. When he is positioned, pop Berserk and spam Mangle+Maul. When that expires, start using Lacerate+Mangle+Maul, refreshing Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire when needed. Keep 5 stacks of Lacerate up. Anzu will occasionally stun you, but this should not be a problem at this point.

Eventually, he will Banish himself, at which point you should run to the healing spot. Cast Regrowth on yourself, then spam Nourish until you are either at full health or half mana. Use your Eagle Spirit macro and go back into bear, Demoralizing Shout the birds, and use Swipe+Maul to get the birds down. With nameplates up, you can easily target the lowest health bird to make sure it dies first, then move to the next lowest, and so on.

When Anzu comes back in the fight, you may still have one or two birds up. Get them down quickly, reposition Anzu, and get back to fighting him the way you were before, using Lacerate+Mangle+Maul and refreshing Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire when needed. If Berserk gets off cooldown, save it. You may find yourself getting pretty low during this phase. If that happens, use Survival Instincts+Frenzied Regeneration. Don't use Maul while regenerating. Continue through this phase until he banishes himself again.

When he does, it's back to the healing spot. Again, cast Regrowth on yourself, then spam Nourish until you are either at full health or half mana. Half mana is much more likely at this point, unless you just did a regen. If he stuns you at the beginning of this phase, you probably only have time for a Regrowth+Nourish, Eagle Spirit macro, and then back to Bear Form. You may have to use a potion or a healthstone. Use Berserk on the birds to clear them quickly, then Anzu should come back out. At this point, there is no Banish phase (since he does it at 66% and 33%) so you can tank him anywhere. Just keep up your rotation of Lacerate+Mangle+Maul, keep Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire up, and you should be done! When he falls, pray to the loot gods for your mount!

Now, the most important thing about this fight is keeping Anzu out of Line of Sight while you're healing. If he sees you cast a spell, he'll put Spell Bomb on you, which drains 2000 mana and does 1000 damage whenever you cast a spell. Since that's likely a third of your mana pool, you can't afford to get hit by it even once.

Good luck!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi and thank you for a great post!

Suddenly I got a very strong urge to start levelling my druid to 80 (she is hibernating at 71 at the moment) to finally get me that Raven mount!

Anonymous said...

Secret Agent Cat sparked my interest in trying this and your guide made it a reality. Thanks so much for the detailed write up. The only problem I had was losing the LOS mostly because I kept getting hung up on all the crap at the front of the coffer. I decided to tank him at the the southwest corner facing the west wall. Worked like a charm.

Awesome write up it would have taken forever to figure this out on my own. :)

Corgii said...

This guide is *great*!

After finding this guide I promptly specced feral and went to try this. It took me a little while to get the trash down and about 4 tries to kill the big bird himself (failed at LoS a few times), but I did it!

Sadly, no mount dropped but I did manage to fraps my kill. I may make a video for it if it's ok with you; some people might like to have a visual aid to go along with the written one =)

Dessyreqt said...

Making a video for this would be great, and was one of my original goals, however my version of FRAPS doesn't like my version of Windows.

Anonymous said...

1 tip if you keep getting feared into other trash packs is to kill Talon King Ikiss first, and then work your way back from the last room.
This way you have a lot more safe space to get feared around in.
By doing this the back door will be open if you die, so you don't have to stealth through the whole thing again. I also heared something about the instance resetting if you take to long and don't kill any boss. Killing Ikiss should also prevent that.

The first pack will be the hardest now though, but with cc-ing the bird and talon lord you should be fine.

Dessyreqt said...

Or because you are using Berserk (as mentioned in the guide) and killing the prophets first, it's impossible to fear you unless your damage is so pitiful that you can't up to two prophets before the Mangle fades. In which case, you should probably gear up a little more before trying this.

You shouldn't have to kill any mobs in the instance other than the ones in Anzu's room, and even then, you can get away with only killing the pulls in the front of the room (though I wouldn't recommend it as the back has pulled on me midfight for no reason.)

coil said...

My gear is good enough to do this without much risk, but I wanted to offer one alternative to the "hide and heal" part. I use this macro:

/cancelform [stance:1]
/use Heavy Frostweave Bandage

Clicking it automatically pops you out of bear form and starts using a bandage (caster form so you're healing 20k health instead of 30k). Since Bandage isn't a spell, you can't be nailed by Spell Bomb - so the only thing you need to do is make sure he's not about to throw a stun your way.

Beyond that, I honestly found the banish phase to be my personal "regen phase" -- I could crit well enough against the birds to gain a substantial portion of my health back from Imp. LOTP.

Triplet - Mug'Thol said...

I soloed my Raven Lord mount a month or so ago and just stumbled across this post. Some thoughts:

1: Get a stack of Stamina scrolls. Cheap and they help alot

2: Get the Maul Glyph. Kill stuff twice as fast.

3: Always pull trash with a root. I'd recommend the talon lord. Some trash has a bird in it. In those cases you can root one, hibernate a second. I never had to beserk on trash.

4: I would really recommend killing the last boss first. This opens up the back door in case you screw up, and gives you about 15-20gold in loot. You do not need to kill the trash in the room with the last boss first.

5: I didn't mess with hot'ing the statues.

6: Barkskin when Anzu stuns you. Stunned bears don't dodge.

7: You can do this in your sleep with bear block and butt swipe (patch 3.1).

8: Find your heroic reset timer. Half hour before that, kill Anzu. Walk out of instance (important) and wait 5 minutes. [Heroic Reset] Go back in kill him again. You get two attempts in one hour and you get a day off farming this.

Anzu Fight:
1: Click Statue to start fight
2: Hot self up (you should be at almost full health by first banish phase)
3: Pull. DPS.
[First Banish Phase]
4: Heal to full, kill adds
[Anzu comes out of banish]
5: Finish adds, then DPS Anzu
[Second Banish Phase]
6: Heal to full, Beserk, kill adds fast
[Anzu comes out of banish]
7: Kill bad guy. This should be the first time you get low on health, if so use Survival + Frenzy to heal up. If you are still low health pot, if you are still low use herb heal, if you are still low panic.
[Loot]

I made ~40 attempts pre-WOTLK with no drop. On the 25th or so SOLO run in WOTLK I got it.