Beta 5 Man Instances: Violet Hold (Major Spoilers)

As usual, we did this with a resto druid, rogue, and myself - a protection warrior.


The Violet Hold is a level 75-77 instance found in the city of Dalaran. Similar to The Stockades in Stormwind, it has several guards at the ready outside, and the prisoners inside the hold are trying to break free and attack Dalaran.

You find the instance next to the quest givers that give you the daily heroic quests. First you have to visit the Violet Citadel and receive a quest to talk to one of the guards outside the Hold to get the key which lets you open the door into the instance.

The instance itself is very similar to Black Morass. When you enter, you will find a group of guards holding back small waves of enemies (big screenshot). There is one NPC behind the guards who you speak to when you wish to start the event.

Now, I checked this instance again before writing this and it seems to have changed from when I did it. When I did the instance, the NPC who begins the event would give you a Defense Control Crystal, similar to the Chrono Beacon from Black Morass, which you used if you were in trouble. She no longer gives these to your party, and instead there is some sort of fixed version of it on a wall or something. I don't have a group around to actually see how it works, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave it up to you.

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When you start the event, the small waves of flavor NPCs stop attacking and all the guards leave. A big blue portal will open just like in Black Morass (Portal), and a counter will display at the top of the screen. Portals spawn just like in Black Morass, with either a melee or caster guardian that you must kill to close the portal. Different flavors of small mobs will spawn from the portal and run for the door, which they damage over time just like Medivh's shield.

When I checked the instance again today, it seems they added something new. Sometimes a portal will spawn and be normal and a text warning will let you know ("A Guardian Keeper emerges from the portal!"). But sometimes a portal opens and there is an alert that a small elite group has spawned. The small elite group is a small group of mobs with lots of health, and no portal guardian. So the portal doesn't need to be closed - it closes itself, and instead some high health mobs will go for the door and need to be picked up.

On the 6th and 12th waves, an invincible mob will show up and open one of the prison cells, similar to in Arcatraz. The cell which opens is random and chooses which boss you face.

The cells containing 3 arrakoa all come at once as one boss. I was able to easily tank the three of them and don't remember them doing anything difficult. One of them is a healer and should probably be killed first.

The ethereal boss summons little orbs that you have to run away from, similar to when Kael'Thas in Magister's Terrace uses his gravity lapse ability. The orbs can also teleport you to them, and then begin casting arcane explosion which you must run from.

The core hound boss was very simple. I just tanked him facing away from the group due to past horrible core hound experiences that I'm sure we've all had. I don't even remember him doing anything interesting.

The big voidwalker looking guy was pretty annoying. He puts a debuff on someone (I think it's only the tank, I think it's related to his melee attacks), which is just like the debuff you get when fighting Jin'Do in ZG. It lets you see little mobs that he constantly spawns. The spawns will AoE your whole party throughout the fight and the tank (or whoever has the debuff) has to kill them. They die in pretty much one shot, but it's rather annoying to run around killing them while tanking.

The water revenant boss isn't in one of the cells, but behind the bars that block a sewer area. He will give himself a shield which makes all your attacks hit for like 5 damage. The shield breaks after he has been hit 50 times, so have people downrank and whatnot to spam him (similar to Viscidus breaking after a number of frost attacks). Also similar to Viscidus, after the shield breaks, it seems to explode into a bunch of little globs that will run toward the boss. If they reach him, they heal him, so kill as many as you can and DPS him hard because he puts the shield up again very quickly. Personally I tanked him on the very thin ledge above the stairs in the little nook leading to the sewer area he comes from, so the globs had to come down a very narrow path to reach him and were easy to AoE.

In the several times I've done this instance, I haven't seen the giant eyeball boss.

On the 18th wave, you will fight Cyanigosa, a large blue dragon. She is a lot like Azuregos. Tank her facing away from the group of course. She constantly casts blizzard and will teleport the party into her front, so they must run. She also casts a dispellable debuff that does damage over time.



Overall, this instance is pretty entertaining. I always enjoy Black Morass so this is right up my alley. The adds that come from the portals will all die to prot warrior AoE damage in non-heroic, so you can have the rest of the group just focus on the guardian.

Of note, the instance was very buggy for us and we had to run it many times as a result. They seem to have updated it since then so hopefully they fixed the bugs. One fun bug was when portals would spawn in groups of two and no bosses would spawn. It was actually more fun than normal that way, because I <3 the new warrior AoE capabilities.