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Comment by 15777

Harbinger Skyriss is the final boss of Alcatraz. It is "a servant of the Old Gods" as described in the quest Harbinger of Doom. It resembles the Prophet Skeriam in Ahn'Qiraj.

The fight begins when you engage the Warder in combat. There are 3 mobs that needs to be killed before the Harbinger is released. They are the Phase-Hunter, Akkiris Lightning-Waker and the Blackwing Drakonaar. Whenever a pre-boss is low on health, the next pre-boss will be summoned. Its very important to drink between each fight if possible. Oh and save the gnome, save the world.

The Phase Hunter has no secondary targetting abilties and is just a tank and spank fight. After the Phase Hunter, a gnomish Magical Mage named (The Magnificent) Millhouse Manastorm will come to your aid (but only after he makes water, buffs himself, and drinks to full).

The Akkiris Lightning-Waker does a secondary Hurricane/Lightning Cloud that hits all the party members for ~1200. We simply healed through this.

The last pre-boss is the Blackwing Drakonaar. It is similar to the Blackwing trash mob and has Brood Power: Black which appears to be an aoe aura that ticks for ~2000. It is important to finish this fight quickly so you can drink before the Harbinger enters the fight.

Harbinger Skyriss itself has an array of powerful spells:

Mind Rend - It stuns any target and does ~5k over 5 seconds. Typically if the target is at full health they will be able to survive. They cannot drink potions or take any action while being flayed. Be careful as your healers may be flayed twice in quick succession before they get a chance to heal.
Dominate - Skyriss will randomly possess a secondary target (non tank) for around 5-10 seconds. Not sure if it can be dispelled.
Image Split (Not the actual ability name) - At 66% and 33%, Skyriss will teleport and split into 2, like the Prophet Skeriam. One of these two will be the "fake" target and can be taken down much faster than the original. You will retain your original target when the split happens so the fake will be the unselected Skyriss.

EDIT: Cleaned up & URLs added. Wonderful post. —Arideni

Comment by ruck

Also note that the "fake" split of Skyriss does a weaker version of his Mind Rend, ticking for about 750 shadow dmg.

With a single healer and unlucky mind rends, this encounter can be painful. You could have a perfect run up to this point, and your healer gets double mind rend...and that's all she wrote.

Comment by 19312

Fairly easy event, if you have good dps.

First 3 waves are nothing special, and you have time to drink in between.

Skyriss looks and acts like a mini Skeram, splitting at ~66% and ~33%. DPS the fake Skyriss down quickly and resume killing the real one.

Main problem is the random-target 5 second, 5000 hp mind-flay, which also stuns you. Make sure, especially if you only have one healer, that everyone is topped off at all times (especially you healers).

If you've done the rest of the instance, really no reason your group couldn't kill Skyriss.

Comment by 20993

My first 2 cracks at this fight I got pwned by a 7500 and 8k Blastwave on wave 3, the Drakonaar, and thought, WTF!!!, Wowhead said nothing about this!

The Drakonaar has a curse that increases magical damage taken by 100% and lasts for one minute. He also has a Brood Affliction: Red ability, not mentioned above. Put them both together = 8k Blastwave = wipe.

So...you will want to be very careful if you have the curse and dont have a decurser, which we did not.

Once we figured that out and backed out and lowered our damage/aggro when cursed, it was ok, we got the Harbinger first time we saw him. You will want to make sure you don't get flayed by Skyriss with the curse still on you...back away :D Highly recommend a second class able to heal on this fight - we had a shadow priest stay out of shadow form and it saved us a few times. Most fun fight of the pre-raid BC content IMHO.

Comment by Russta

Make sure your tank DOESN'T put his back to a wall during Blackwing Drakonaar as he can knock them up onto the ledge and evade bug back huge chunks of life. He managed to regen three sets of 30% doing this and the first time it happened was below 20% causing Skyriss to pop.

Comment by Hilda

The three mini bosses leading up to this event seemed to have been buffed (retuned?) slightly since I had first done it.

They definitely have more HP now, so your DPS has to really push hard to get them down before the next one spawns. Skyriss emerging while you are still fighting the Draconid is pretty much a guaranteed wipe.

Comment by 18001

When fighting Skyriss, be careful not to get feared into the back behind the Blood Elf NPC that starts the event. You can get stuck down there and can no longer contribute to the fight. We like to tank him a little farther back to limit the chances of this bug from happening. You can get out if you time your jump just right, on the left side of the room if you're looking at him. Best of luck!

Comment by briyan

A good tip during the Skyriss fight is to have hunter(s) put down a snake trap. There is a decent chance that the boss will direct a flay onto the snakes from the trap, saving your party a lot of damage =)

Comment by 25744

Just finished doing Heroic Arcatraz. It's a complete shi*-hole.

Here's the deal with the last boss. If you can make it passed the 3 pre-bosses, the final boss is a joke.

The Imp shoots his fireballs like a machine gun, Shaman Grounding Totem owns, it will absorb 2-3 of them. They hit for 2600~ but can crit for near 4k. Gotta keep everyone topped off because they can end up taking 2-3 to the face and get dropped in an instant.

The second guy we ended up getting was a Air Elemental. He didn't hit that hard MT, I couldn't give an exact number, but it's not bad, maybe 1k. The problem with this guy is if you don't have a mage or druid, you're through. He randomly puts a CURSE on someone in your party (and he keeps putting them up) that causes you to take 100% more magic damage. He has an AOE called Lightning Discharge. It hits for 2500~, but with the debuff you're taking 5000 a hit, and he does it about every 4-5 seconds or so. I was able to get off two flash heals in-between each one, or maybe one greater and one flash. He also has a blink. He seemed to blink to the farthest person away from him, or whoever was 2nd on the agro table, we couldn't really tell. He just bliked to our warlock and 2shot him. Try to stay close, because you can't range his AoE, that way the tank can pick him back up.

The third guy we got was the Drakanoid. Has a Blastwave that hit for about 4k, Mortal Strike and some kind of Flame Shock. All in all he was a pussy. He also puts up the 100% increased magic damage debuff, so if anyone other than your MT ends up getting this, just range him down. No real trouble there.

The Boss in Heroic is no harder than in normal mode imo, the hard part is getting through the three adds, kind of like the second boss in Heroic Blood Furnace.

Skyriss's Mind Flay was buffed a bit, it ticks for 2000 a tick, for 4 ticks doing a total of 8000 damage. If you don't get a heal while you're getting flayed, and have under 8k hp, you're dead. We didn't know this the first time we fought him, he flayed me right off, having only 7500 hp in healing gear, I died. Not fun. You can however pot during the mindflay, so if you get a hit by it, just pop a potion half-way through it. Best idea is to try and have near 9000 Hp and always be topped off. Millhouse is pretty easy to keep alive for he's got an IceBlock in the Heroic instance.

Hope this helps and good luck.

P.s. Fk Heroic Arcatraz.

Comment by 26954

Found out the hard way... the Drakanoid is immune to fire damage of all sorts.

Comment by 31930

https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/item=30534
drops in heroic

Comment by 28611

FYI, the Drakanoid's 50% magic reduction buff can be Spellsteal'd, and lasts for 1 minute.

Comment by 15462

Here's the info on the boss:

Divides at 66% and 33%. Mark the boss right before he runs in, and you can take down the fake fast.

Mind Reed-1.8k damage/1 sec for 4 secs. Heal the person, because 5 seconds later, there will be another mind rend right after it.

Dominate Mind-MC. Only lasts like 5 secs, so it's not bad.

Fear-fear. Only lasts like 4 secs.

Not hard, if you have a healer. My group was:

Shadow priest (main healing, but did a good job)
Ret pally (off-healing/DPS)
Mage
Warrior (fury)
me (rogue)

Easiest instance I've done so far. Most of the bosses are ridiculously easy if you have 2 healers.

Comment by 22924

He also drops a +11 healing, +4 resilience gem (yellow/red) in Heroic...

Comment by 31363

As a mage, you can blink right out of the mind rend just like any other stun. Just hope he doesn't go after you twice within a 15 second span. >_>

Comment by 24350

2 things for mages to note on this fight...

1.) The air elemental has a magic buff that can be stolen via spellsteal. It reduces magical damage taken by 50%. This should make it easier for your healers to heal you during the encounter.

2.) Skyriss's mind rend can be blinked out of.

Comment by 40832

(Done him on Normal Mode)
If you have a hunter in your team, make sure that the pet stays alive until the fight with Skyriss. Send the pet in, and Skyriss will cast Dominate on the pet during the entire fight, instead of your party members!
Sometimes you could get unlucky, if you only have one healer with you. Ours got Mind Flayed a lot and wasn't able to heal. The second try, Skyriss Mind Flayed the hunter instead and it went a lot smoother. A bit luck is needed as well!

A fun and interesting fight, all in all, me thinks!
Good luck in downing him, cheers!

Comment by 28929

Won this with prot warrior, healadin, 2 locks and a mage.

Double voidwalker absorbed a lot of mind rends etc. Tank had to taunt the clone but didnt have to worry about it further than that.

Comment by 6460

Hunters should get love in this boss fight.

One word: Snakes.

Watching Skyriss mind-flay snakes left and right is pretty funny.

Watching him then flay the hunter and warlock pets is funnier.

Dancing on/in his corpse is funniest.

Comment by 46738

===Heroic Arcatraz===

Class: Frost Mage, Fire Mage, Holy Pally, Shadow Priest, Prot Warrior

Basically, we fought 3 waves and they were too easy.....1) Imp 2) Gehennas (look alike) 3) Drakanoid

Note: All fire-based mobs so turn on fire aura if you have a pally and the mobs are not immune to fire.

Imp was just tank and spank where the mages just cast fire ward and just dps him down as fast as possible

Gehennas was also just tank and spank. Just decurse people when they have the debuff which increases fire dmg taken and move when rain of fire is right on top of you.

Drakanoid was also tank and spank. Just heal the tank and dps the mob down and do not overdps bc he hits hard and cast blast wave when you aggro and make sure the mob is face away from Millhouse bc Millhouse was taking dmg from that nasty aoe breath thing.

Ok, the main fight....make sure you put a mark on Millhouse (Circle), so it's easier for the healers to know where Millhouse is when they need to find him and keep him alive. Also as soon as you killed the fourth wave (Drakanoid)....immediately put a skull mark on the final boss...Prophet Skeram (look alike) so you know which one is the real one and which is the fake one during 66% and 33% which needs to be dps down as fast as possible (fake one is the unmarked one) and the mages dont need alot of heals bc we can blink or iceblock. Just keep Millhouse, the tank and others up if they are really low on hp. Also, its a really easy fight, but if the Prophet mc'd the wrong person such as a mage then it can cause problems bc we can counterspell another dps or healer. Just be aware about it and control it with sheeps, stuns, and fear if possible.

I hope that this helps...and good luck :)

P.S Millhouse is a beast, he can take almost 4-5 mind rend.

Comment by Kathucka

Hunter snake trap is useful for most of the mini-bosses in addition to the main boss. Most have randomly-targeted debuffs and/or nukes which you would really prefer to hit a snake over a player character. Drop snake traps as fast as you can. Note that the Blazing Trickster does not move, so the trap must be dropped right on top of him.

All characters capable of summoning a combat pet should do so to help eat the random mind rends and fears. If possible, the pet should be saved for the main boss so it is alive at that point. If the pet is out before then, remind the healer to take care of it.

Also, the mind rend spell is a binary resist channeled shadow spell. You either get hit with the whole stun and every tick of damage, or you resist it entirely. For this reason, shadow resistance is a big help with this fight.

Mana users must bring plenty of water and everyone should bring plenty of food and bandages. You'll need to use it in the few seconds you get between fights. Pet users should bandage their pets instead of using mana to heal them.

If the encounter goes badly, run out of the room to reset it. Skyriss will go back to his cell (complete with an animation) and you will get the same three mini-bosses and gnome again.

Everyone needs to self-heal (bandages, potions) to ensure that they have enough health to withstand a mind rend. Your healer is very busy. Take care of yourself as much as you can.

Other than the basics, the real key to this fight is nuking down the clones as quickly as possible. It's not possible to heal through double mind rends. When a clone is coming up, save your cooldowns to really knock it down as fast as you can and reduce the chance of that happening. You need to have enough DPS available for this fight to do that.

Comment by 57225

I'm a 70 spriest healing this fight (~1000 +healing) and found Skyriss himself to be very easy to heal. It's keeping the mana pool and everyone's hp up for the 3 pre-bosses that is challenging.

Specifically the most difficult part I found was the short duration you have to drink/regen between boss #2 and boss #3. After boss #1 you get plenty of time to drink because Milhouse is supposed to be the next boss to fight but ends up joining you (funny guy).

I'd suggest using one of those TK mana pots immediately after boss #2 goes down and get everyone to eat+drink immediately. You all have a few seconds before boss #3 comes out. After boss #3 goes down you get a bit more time to regen before Skyriss himself, we were able to fully regen hp/mana just as Skyriss came out.

Skyriss from a healing priest's point of view is easy. His melee dps is almost negligible on a decent tank, so just keep up renew with the occasional direct heal, his hp will hardly ever go low.

The important part by far is watching for his Mind Rend (I prefer to call them Mind flays but w/e). It will incapacitate a player and tick alot of dmg over 5 secs. I found that a single renew+ downranked gh was enough to manage each mind rend that he did..

DPS must do their part and focus fire on the clone after each split. This time is more critical for u as a healer as there will be 2 mind rends (2 incapacitated players for 5 sec) so just renew+flash heal on each mind rended player and keep an eye on the MT/OT.

After the 3 bosses Skyriss was cake.

GL

edit: the odd renew on milhouse won't hurt but keeping him alive shouldn't be a priority, i let him die about half way (wasn't watching his hp) didn't significantly impact the fight. /shrug

Comment by Hugsforfun

This guy dropped Truestrike Ring for me...may wanna add that to drop list

Comment by 45422

Did this on heroic today with a druid tanking, druid healing, afflcition lock, bm hunter and fire mage.

Honestly the first boss is the hardest of the instance, imo.. the last boss is easy and we didnt need 2 healers healing, in fact, our only healer got mind flayed like 4 times and we still 1 shotted the last boss.

The snake trap works good on last boss too , good tip.

Comment by 17976

Did this on normal last night, but if you have a shaman in your group, the MC is considered a Charm effect and thus can be dispelled by a Tremor Totem. So just have a shaman keep one up near the boss and then put it down again whenever someone get's mced to break it.

Not sure if that will work on heroic.

Comment by 93490

This is a last note on this boss: The third mob, the dragon thing, is fire immune, or atleast he was to me.

as a firemage, this hurt me a little :(

Comment by 78626

One VERY important thing to note on this final boss fight is try not to wipe on the 3rd mini boss, from the front left pod, because if you do there is a chance that as the mini boss is running back to his pod, the final boss' pod will open and he'll step out, then when the group comes back into the instance the final boss, Harbinger Skyriss, will still be standing there and you can not aggro him to fight him, you can start the mini boss fight thing over but after you kill the 3rd mini boss again nothing happens, Harbinger Skyriss just stands there frozen and your group is forced to call it a night and go there ways.

This happened to me my first Heroic visit to the Arcatraz after being there and fighting our way to the end for about 3 hours and wiping quite a few times. Every member of the party opened a ticket with a GM, he tried to unstick Skyriss and warned us to be ready for an instant attack, so we buffed up, poisoned up, and got healthstones but nothing. He just started twitching a bit and walked around then back to his starting area. The GM told us that he could kill Harbinger Skyriss himself but the corpse would dissappear and there would be no loot, and he also said that this is a problem that a lot of people have reporting and they're trying to find a fix for it.

It was a disappointing end for not only the first Heroic Arcatraz visit and no badges, but being a rogue and the boss has a good chance on dropping nice epic rogue boots :( , but our group did get a free port to shat courtesy of the GM.

Comment by Krakatau

Be sure that healers have mana to resurrect the dead ones before one of minibosses dies because there is no time for manabreak and ress before next combat.

Comment by sokercap

be careful.. and don't wipe. We wiped once after killing all 3 bosses before he came out.. and he came out, killed the gnome, then despawned and it reset. good. ok.

Next time we wiped on third boss, not sure if he actually died. When we got back harbringer was standing there, but could not be targeted. We ran up and event started again with him just standing there.

This time we kill all 3 bosses with whole party intact.. harbringer comes out again. And then doesn't do anything. Can't be targeted and just stuck. couldn't stick around for hours to find out a response from a GM. So moral.. he's majorly bugged so don't wipe.. or at least wipe early.

Comment by 128746

i know a guy who killed him solo , very smooth !

Comment by 139706

We did heroic Harbringer last night and got a different 1st boss. Warp Hunter who was a tank and spank. Main ability was to teleport behind tank, at this point damage was increased when attacking from behind.

Apart from that, the 1st boss is still the hardest in this instance.

We wiped on 3rd miniboss but didnt get the bug.

Comment by 55322

A Hnter's snake trap takes up mind flays and Fears.

Comment by 164124

This night I ran Arcatraz normal with my group this boss spawned twice.
First we wiped on the third miniboss, then we corpsewalked back and we killed the boss.
Then after we got our loot, the event started again :D so we killed the boss again and got more phat loot :) Nice way to farm this boss

Submitted a screenshot of the two corpses..

Comment by 156993

This fight was a breeze (my group was a little overkill i have to admit.)

We had
Prot pally (me)
Holy Priest
Fire Mage
Fire Mage
Fire Mage

All in Kara/ZA gear.

Comment by Allakhazam

Some additional notes about the minibosses. Theya ll use soem kind of fire based attacks so if you have a pala or shaman they can keep fire res aura/totem up, it helps.

Sicne the imp hits like a 5 year old and the fireballs are random just goa ll out and nuke him down as fast as possible.

The Drakonik hits fairly hard in melee and also does a fairly nasty blast wave attack. So make sure anything that aint melee stays at good range.

Comment by Allakhazam

really hard..

Comment by Allakhazam

Killed him after what was probably a 4 hour run... did like five replacements... and when we finally kill him the scroll doesn't drop. We've been waiting for GM response for like 1 hour... good game.

Comment by Allakhazam

I just solo healed this today. Group build was Pally(me), Lock, Rogue, Hunter and Warrior. It was incredibly hard to solo heal, and the lock and I were the only ones left standing at the end...he mind flayed me alot, I only had time to get a heal off on myself before id get hit with it again.

Not impossible by any means, and I could have done alot better if I was fully specced to heal...lol

Edited, Apr 5th 2007 7:11pm by Iambungle

Comment by Allakhazam

Something that helped my recent run: Shamans and pet classes can make this fight easier. Gives Skyriss additional mind flay targets. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth tanking him. Even with hate on me, he seems more interested in everyone else and his regular attack doesn't hit for much. Mind flay is the real danger and he picks random targets for that.

Comment by Allakhazam

Group Set Up:

2 Healers (Feral Druid and Priest/Paladin is the best, as the druid can DPS through the whole instance and heal for this fight. Can't be two druids as you need a rezzer in case you lose someone in the first four stages).

2 DPS- Can be anyone, just make sure they bandage after mind flays and heal themselves.

1 Tank

The encounter:

Walk up next to the guy by the cage and he'll start the encounter. He'll begin releasing prisoners from their "pods". You have a ~2 second drop in combat after each prisoner, so be sure to drink/cast rez after each. Prisoners are as follows:

Pod 1- Fireball Spamming Imp. The imp's fireballs are random target (impossible for the tank to hold aggro). Just heal through it.

Pod 2- Milhouse Manastorm, a friendly gnome mage. It is imperative you keep him alive throughout the encounter as not only will he be a target to take away mind flays, but he'll also add alot of DPS.

Pod 3- Wind Elemental. He doesn't do anything special but blink towards the second highest aggro target. Run back towards the tank afterwards for a smooth pick up.

Pod 4- Black Drakonoid. Nothing special, just watch your aggro.

Pod 5- Harbinger Skyriss.

Harbinger Skyriss' battle-

This guy is like a mini- Prophet Skeram. As soon as he comes out of his pod, it is imperative the raid leader place an icon on his head. At 66% and 33%, he will split into two copies of himself. One will have very little hp and do half the melee damage, but they will both use the same abilities! In other words, you must kill the add quickly (he hits light enough that a rogue can evasion tank, and he has low enough HP that a warlock/mage/hunter can kill him before he gets to them). Either way, make sure it dies fast (it will be the one without a mark on it). As for Skyriss' other moves, he has three:

1.) Single Target Fear- This will be on the person with second most aggro. This person can be feared into a pit behind Skyriss and glitch out, so make sure to pull skryiss back from his original location. This is not part of the intended fight, just a glitch.

2.) Single Target Mind Control- This will also be on the person with second most aggro, usually on the same person who got feared. If not, you'll need to fear/sheep or dispel their mind control. Again, not a very serious threat.

3.) Mind Flay- This is the %^&*! of the fight. He will select a target at random every 5 or so seconds and mind flay them. While he is mind flaying he is doing no melee dps. However, the mind flay stuns his selected target for its duration (6 seconds or so) and deals 5.4k damage over that time. Also, just because a target got mind flayed does not mean he will not mind flay them again: he can mind flay the same target, multiple times. This is why you need two healers: it is imperative that a mind flayed person is at full HP after the mind flay is over. This is easy to do with two healers, but very difficult with one. Also keep in mind that his spawned add can also mind flay. If both of them mind flay the same person at one time, that person is going to need insane heals and will probably die. This is what makes the encounter so hard.

If you can keep the mage up, kill the adds as quick as they spawn and heal through the mind flays, you'll win. Best of Luck, he is not easy.

Comment by Allakhazam

We attempted it last night, the instance is cake, we even managed to 4 man the third boss, the only problem we had was the final boss. I'm a shadow priest with 991 shadow damage, I had to take off most of my gear and throw on diff pieces i had and mix match damage + healing to get a good sum of health (7771) unbuffed, and have 803 healing + 653 shadow damage to do enough dps in between mini bosses. We managed to get him down to 20% with me, a paladin, a mage, a ms warrior, and a prot warrior, I decided they should replace me with a second full healer, and so they brought in another paladin, they got him down to 4k life.

When we do it again, I'm suggesting for the final fight, we should do 2 Paladins(Paladin/Shaman) a mage, prot war, shadow priest, or Warlock + shadow priest.