Hey guys I’m Sulya from WoW Weekly and today we’ll be taking a look at Socrethar the Eternal in Heroic Hellfire Citadel. These tactics also apply to the normal version.
This is a 2 phase encounter in which you will have to deal with the Soulbound Construct in one phase and with Socrethar in the other phase.
The Construct has 4 abilities. The first one is Reverberating Blow which will deal a large amount of physical damage in a cone towards the tank. So you will want to face him away from the raid. This has a second effect called Shattered Defenses, which is a stacking debuff increasing all damage taken from Reverberating Blow by 200%. It will distribute 3 stacks of the debuff on anyone close to the tank. This means that if noone is close to the tank, the tank will get all 3 stacks. To deal
with this we had the tanks soak 2 blows in a row. For the first one they did not need cooldowns, but for the second blow they did.
The next ability is Fel Prison. A ring on the floor will spawn and anyone that gets hit by it will be put into a prison for 30 seconds. They will be linked to a crystal via a chain and the crystal will need to be broken. Simply move out of the prison before it activates because you don’t want to waste dps on this crystal.
The next ability is Volatile Fel Orb. This will be put on a random player and they will get a green arrow above their head. They should move away from the rest of the group because an orb will be thrown at them dealing damage to anyone near that player.
The construct will also put a dot on random players called Overwhelming Power. This will have to be healed up.
The final ability is Felblaze Charge. With this he will target a random player and charge after him. This charge will leave a line of fire behind him, meaning your group will have to move.
In phase 1 we started on one side of the room. If a player got targeted by the charge they moved to the left. If they got targeted by the orb it didn’t matter much where they moved as long as they moved out of the raid. And then finally if a Prison got put on the raid, we all moved to the right.
Once your defeat the Construct, Socrethar will come out and you will have to battle him. 1 player will be able to take over the Construct and this should be one of the tanks. The construct will have all of the abilities except for the dot. The construct can still harm your players so don’t accidentally put your raid in a prison or a fire line.
Socrethar himself will have 2 abilities. Exert Dominance with which he will damage the Construct for 10% health, can and needs to be interrupted. This is because once the construct reaches 1 health, Socrethar will go back in it and you will go back to phase 1.
His second ability is Apocalypse. This is a 10 second raidwide AoE which will deal damage to everyone in the raid.
The reason you need to use the construct in this phase is because of 3 types of portals that will spawn adds. You’ll want to use the construct to help with them.
First off there’s the purple portals. These will spawn the Sargerei Shadowcallers. These puts Shadow Word: Agony dots on random players. This dot can be dispelled. They also cast Shadow Bolt Volleys which can be interrupted.
Secondly there’s the blue portals which spawn Haunting Souls. These will fixate on random players and if they reach them they will explode for a massive amount of damage and fear anyone nearby for 8 seconds.
Finally there’s the red portal that will spawn a Sargerei Dominator. This add will make Socrethar immune to all damage and interrupts. Every single dps should switch to this as soon as possible, because the longer it is up, the more damage it will do to the Construct. The Dominator will also put a pulsing debuff on random players. This debuff will deal damage to anyone near you. So if you get it, get away from the rest of the group.
This fight has been hotfixed which might force you to change the way you deal with phase 2.
You can use all of the abilities from the construct on the adds, including the prison. Before the hotfix you used the construct to prioritise getting rid of the Haunting Souls. However because of the hotfixes more Dominators will spawn meaning you’ll likely go back into phase 1 one more time.
If you just had the construct deal with the Souls it would mean that you would have to deal withthem once phase 1 started again. So now instead we just have the construct leave the flames from charge in the line between the portal and the raid, and have destruction warlocks kill the souls when they spawn. This gives the construct more time to deal damage to the boss himself and the dominator when they spawn. You do not want the construct charging over the Souls when they are up as they will deal a massive amount of damage to the construct when he is within 5 yards of them.
The Shadowcallers should be dealt with by the raid. Let a ranged player interrupt them and let your tank taunt them. You can assign a few dps to kill them, but you can also passively cleave them down as you’re dealing damage to Socrethar.
When the Construct reaches 1 health, Socrethar will go back in it and you’ll go back to phase 1. The adds that are still alive will stay and you will have to deal with these as well. However if your raid can kill the Dominators quickly enough you can get through the encounter without ever switching back to phase 1. Should you have the dps to do so, it also means that you can just use the Construct to prison the Haunting Souls.
When it comes to the adds in phase 2 it comes down to this: If you have the burst to quickly get rid of the dominators have the construct deal with the Haunting Souls, otherwise kill them off. You can use slows and stuns on the souls to make sure they don’t reach your group. Have your entire raid stack up on melee so that they all move in the same direction. The portals will occasionally change position so don’t be afraid to use a druid’s roar to get across the room quicker. Have your tank in the construct communicate to the group when they need to kill the Souls, and really put your burst damage into killing off the dominators as quickly as possible
In phase 1 remember to move away from the prisons. If you get targeted by the orb, move out of the raid. Tankswap after 2 Reverbating Blows. In phase 2 have an interrupt rotation going for Exert Dominance.
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