Well of Eternity

[Aliena]

This is a walkthrough to Well of Eternity, one of the new heroics going live with patch 4.3. Keep in mind that the footage in this video was taken just shortly after release of the instance, and certain details about the encounters as well as difficulty might still be adjusted in the future.

Well of Eternity is an NPC-led, dynamic instance delving into the history of the night elves. During this instance, every party member will be transformed into a Night Elf, and you meet up with Illidan and Malfurion Stormrage as well as Queen Azshara.

As you enter the instance, you're faced with one large demon that must be defeated before you stumble upon Illidan. Upon talking to him, he'll give your entire party a stealth buff and lead you through a courtyard full of demons. Just follow him and wait for a break in the demons before crossing the courtyard. Your objective here is to destroy three sets of crystals, each of them accompanied by a trash pack of demons.

Follow Illidan to get this task done, and once you destroy all three crystals, the first boss will spawn in the middle of the demon courtyard. Peroth'arn is a very simple, two-phase encounter - in the first phase you simply need to avoid the felfire circles he'll spawn under random party members. Once he hits 60% health he'll hit a transition phase in which he'll deal AoE damage to every party member - but don't panic, you have time to heal this back up.

Peroth'arn will go invisible after his transition and spawn a bunch of eyes. You're supposed to use the pillars of the courtyard to hide behind so the eyes won't see you, and after 40 seconds Perotha'rn will re-appear and be significantly weakened. However, don't expect that to happen if you're pugging this instance shortly after release. It's more likely that someone will get seen by an eye and trigger Perotha'rn to instantly re-appear, stun the seen player and give himself a temporary attack speed buff.

Still, he doesn't hit very hard so unless he receives a significant buff, this mechanic shouldn't make or break your party. At 25% health, he'll enter an enraged state but should quickly be burned down.

Ater his demise, Illidan will take a temporary leave. Head up the stairs and prepare to fight a few trash packs. The eyes in this area of the instance do a fairly significant chain fel-lightning type of ability, so make sure to stay spread out and focus them down quickly. The Highmistresses will make two copies of a random player that need to be killed. Once at the top of the stairway, you'll find Queen Azshara surrounded by 6 magi.

Once you engage the encounter, two of the magi will become active and need to be killed. After a certain amount of time elapses or after one of them dies, two more will become active, so try to kill the active ones simultaneously. The magi come in all three mage specs and will use abilities depending on their school of magic. The only really important things to look out for are the Frost Magis' Coldflame, which looks like blue fire on the ground and can't be stood in, and the arcane magis' arcane bomb. The animation for this one is really obvious, so don't stand in that either.

There are a lot of AoE abilities going out, so try to stay spread out to lessen the likelihood of having more than one person get hit by the magis' spells. A few times during the encounter, Azshara will start casting an 8-second spell called Total Obedience. Should she succeed, every party member will be mind controlled for 20 seconds, so make sure to interrupt it. There'll be a gigantic emote going across your screen, so it's pretty hard to miss.

When all 6 magi are defeated, the encounter is won and there'll be a fairly lengthy RP scene leading you into the center of the Well of Eternity, where you'll be re-united with Illidan, Malfurion and Tyrande. A short gauntlet of trash will follow - for the first pack, stand in Tyrande's moonwell and for the big demon take advantage of Illidan's buff by standing near him. After a pack of bats that you need to use AoE spells on, you'll engage the last encounter in this instance - Mannoroth and Varo'then.

Illidan will handle Mannoroth at first while Tyrande takes care of the portal spawns, leaving your party to deal with Varo'then. Throughout the encounter, Mannoroth will use Fel Firestorm - simply keeping your entire party moving during this seems to be the best way of dealing with it. You could also huddle up near Illidan to reduce fire damage taken, but tons of stacking Felfire will still do quite some damage. Varo'then himself doesn't really have any outstanding abilities.

When Varo'then is near death, Dreadlord Debilitators will spawn and prevent Tyrande from taking out the demons, so have your DPS stand in the moonwell she puts up and help her out by killing the Debilitators and any leftover demons. Once the Debilitators are dead, she'll resume her position and your party is free to help Illidan on Mannoroth.

Pick up the sword that Varo'then dropped when he died and throw it at Mannoroth to weaken him, which will cause him to regularly emit Felfire, so have party member huddle up near Illidan to counter the damage. Mannoroth will open up a demon portal and a constant stream of demons will pour out of it, but Tyrande should manage to deal with them while your party should continue to stay near Illidan and concentrate on killing Mannoroth.

Eventually, Tyrande will collapse and Illidan will give himself and anyone near him a crazy buff that should finish the fight within seconds. An RP scene follows and you have finished Well of Eternity. Congratulations!

[Plx]

Look's like a fun instance, but a lot of NPC talking involved.

[severyn71]

Yeah awesome Vid!, and the "Toon hating Well!" lmao! It sure seemed to like you a lot Aliena! Thanks for the video, looks awesome and I enjoy the RP scenes as they breath life into the dungeon, IMO!

[hanchan]

When we're fighting the first 2 trash packs that are guarding the green crystals, sometimes one of the big guys that are flying in the middle of the room closer to the army of demons will use green beams on us and that usually wipes us. Any idea how to avoid that from happening?

[dacoolist]

Woot! Thank you, my core set of buddys across 3 relms (including mine) have all watched the vids and can't wait to take these new heroic 5 mans on! You are a true b@da$$ for showing us these videos ahead of time... I can remember back in BC when HMGT came out and pretty much just destroyed every single group that didn't have amazing players/TONS of CC... I guarantee these new 5 mans will not be easy, and with at least knowing how the fights work a bit before getting owned, will make our experience a Fun event!

Keep it up Aliena!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[Gladíus]

Just a heads-up... when you finish the Azshara fight and mount your drakes, you can skip the RP scene by talking to your drake.

[Martie]

I wonder why Deady is already fixed there. I mean, why did he wait so long in Earthrealm if he was already plated up, and how did he become so damaged so soon?

[metalbunny]

A couple notes on this instance, after running it 30-40 times:

When fighting the very first felguard right inside the door, he will jump at a player every few seconds, mainly the ranged players. If you stay far enough away, you can see the felguard jump at you and run out of the way before he gets to you. If he hits a player, the damage he does to the entire group is much greater than if he don't hit anyone. Therefor I found that fight smoothest if the tank stays in the middle of the room, and the ranged spreads out as much as possible, and try to run out of the way before the felguard slams down on them. I've done this fight as healer, tank, ranged and melee dps, and running away when he jumps makes this fight so much easier to heal. The group wide damage seem to scale with the number of people he hits on each slam (so if 2 people stand on top of each other, the damage taken is much greater), but since we've been trying to avoid the damage, I can't confirm it.

As for the trash guarding the crystals, though it should be obvious (though I've found it apparently isn't since there are way too many tanks that are simply dps looking for faster queues), the tank needs to tank these groups from the side, so they don't spew their green stuff all over the rest of the group. For a decent healer, it should be manageable to deal with these groups being tanked wrong, but proper positioning with a proper tank means these fights are easily healed, to the point where only the tank needs healing.

The fight for the 2nd boss, people appear to have started to understand the whole hide behind the pillars thing, but I have yet to have a group that was able to avoid the eyes for more than a few seconds (that mechanic seem to be lost in explanation). I did find that deliberately running into the eyes as tank is not recommendable because of the stun. Dps will start attacking and you will have near no threat because you're stunned, and getting threat back after than can be tricky, even with the new threat increase.

But since people are impatient, I found an alternative strategy for this second encounter, though hard to execute in randoms because of the apparent language issues (or just lack of comprehension): Have the highest armor dps hide in range of the healer, the healer heals them up, and the dps gets sacrificed into the eyes. He gets stunned, but since he is healed up the tank will be able to pick up the boss before they die. Most importantly about this boss is that after he jumps on a player he will be focused on attacking that player, and it will take a few seconds for the tank to get enough threat to peel the boss off the victim.

The mages on the Azshara fight are really hard to control, so when tanking these, all I can say is, use every offensive and taunting ability you got to try and keep them in check. They WILL run all over the place, but with a bit of creative silencing (Avenger's Shield is amazing for that fight), you can actually keep them grouped up on you. There should always be someone in your group that can silence Azshara when she casts Total Obedience (usually about every 30 seconds with decent dps). I recommend keeping Azshara as your focus target the entire fight (atleast with the custom unit frames this lets you keep an eye on her cast bar), so if the dps fails to interrupt her, let mages be mages and get her silenced nomatter the cost in threat or damage. Total Obedience is a wipe if it gets off, plain and simple.

As for the mages themselves, the arcane mages will run to a player and dump their aoe spinning thing on top of that players location, so if one of the arcane mages (the purple ones) come at you, simply move away. The frost mages will leave frostfire trails across the platform, which can actually be difficult to see on the glass parts, but otherwise easily avoided. I honestly haven't figured out what the fire mages do other than fireballs, as I use my avenger's shield very generously on that fight.

The rest of the instance is really simple, run from the fire, and kill anything that moves. Only issues are the massive amount of trash on Mannoroth. It is extremely hard to control in between the fires, running around, and simply the sheer amount of them, so they will be going all over the place.

[metalbunny]

Just a heads-up... when you finish the Azshara fight and mount your drakes, you can skip the RP scene by talking to your drake.

You don't even have to use the drakes. There's a portal in the corner of the room where you enter, that you can use to skip straight to the next area.

[Gladíus]

I wonder why Deady is already fixed there. I mean, why did he wait so long in Earthrealm if he was already plated up, and how did he become so damaged so soon?

Wondered the same thing. Apparently a lot of other ppl did, too. Blizz put out a Blue post saying, basically, that they just didn't want to devote the time and resources to making a new Deathwing model. Or, if you read between the lines, they wanted to rush the patch without really giving the care and attention to detail it deserved.

Hence why 4.3 came out with raid exploits, broken quests, broken loot, and a handful of other problems. I find it hard to believe that despite making close to a half BILLION dollars a year with WoW, they didn't "have the resources" to design one model that they KNEW fans (especially RP'ers) were going to /rage about.

[Rhysen]

I know the video didn't show the Queen fight but there is a time when the Queen takes control over one of the players (mind control) and it makes the person look like a puppet being controlled by a hand. All DPS need to make sure they kill that hand to release the player from the mind control. Please forgive me as I forgot the name of the spell.

[theodisius]

What's the best way to deal with the hiding behind pillars phase on the first boss?

I got abused by a PUG for trying to hide (as tank), but next PUG when I let myself get seen, I got stunned and killed. Earlier attempts, hiding and then intervening to save the unmasked dps seemed to work better.

The eyes always seem to find someone - is the idea to move around the pillar when they reach it, to LOS them?

[Kulantan]

After a certain amount of time elapses or after one of them dies, two more will become active, so try to kill the active ones simultaneously.

This isn't true on live (or at least it certainly doesn't seem to be for me). The Mages will become active only after a certain amount of time has past. The next lot will not become active merely because one has died. Perhaps the death of one starts a timer which activates the next group, but I haven't had to worry about that yet. I find it better to focus them down, always killing in the order Frost>Arcane>Fire (which means a kill order of Frost, Fire, Arcane, Fire, Frost, Arcane)

The fight for the 2nd boss, people appear to have started to understand the whole hide behind the pillars thing, but I have yet to have a group that was able to avoid the eyes for more than a few seconds (that mechanic seem to be lost in explanation). I did find that deliberately running into the eyes as tank is not recommendable because of the stun. Dps will start attacking and you will have near no threat because you're stunned, and getting threat back after than can be tricky, even with the new threat increase.

As always, us pally tanks have a way around this. Divine Shield (macro with /cancelaura) will clear this. I still try and avoid, but if it is obvious that somebody is going to get hit, I try and get to an eye first. If that doesn't work then the person might die no matter what you do, but Hand of Protection, taunt and Righteous Defence significantly increases their survival chances.

The rest of the instance is really simple, run from the fire, and kill anything that moves. Only issues are the massive amount of trash on Mannoroth. It is extremely hard to control in between the fires, running around, and simply the sheer amount of them, so they will be going all over the place.

The trick I find is to go to the healer and ask them to come to you. The adds will always make a beeline in that direction and it is much easier if the healer isn't running away from the only person who can really help. Also make sure not to panic if there are mobs who you aren't tanking right this very second. Pick them up ASAP but they hit like a wet noodle and only if there 5 or more on the healer is it a real cause for alarm.