Tempest Keep - Void Reaver Guide

While Al'ar is technically the first boss most raid groups heading to Tempest Keep will go to take down Void Reaver first. Void Reaver is incredibly easy to take down for any group that knows the tactics, and does not require a substantial amount of gear. The best part is though that he does drop some nice things, including the Tier 5 Shoulders.

But to the basics, Void Reaver stands at about 4,750,000 health. He is untauntable and life draining and mana draining effects do not work on him, tough luck to the locks I guess! His melee hits for between 3-4k a hit on tnaks, so melee watch out he can and will one hit you on occasion. Due to his untaunatability and agro reduction pushback effect you will require 3-4 tanks on this boss. Void Reaver is however fairly simple and only has three abilities, these are,

• Pounding: 18 yard AoE around the Void Reaver, lasts for 3 seconds and hits for around 1k to 2.3k arcane damage per sec, This can be resistible and will not be used for at least 3 more seconds.
  
• Arcane Orb: A ranged AoE with a 6 second silence effect that hits for around 6k Damage. This has a 3 second cooldown and will be fired at a random player, it moves fairly slowly so can be avoided, or more accurately must be avoided to avoid taking damage. This will only be fired at people outside the 18 yard range of Pounding.
• Knock Away: Single target push back ability used on the raid member with the highest aggro and reduces the players aggro significantly. It has a 20 sec cooldown and can be missed, parried or dodged to avoid the threat reduction debuff.

The tactics on this boss are fairly simple. The ranged players must stand at maximum available range to increase the distance the arcane orbs have to travel. Melee should be placed in one or two groups if needed and the tanks should be placed in another (mixed with Melee DPS if you have any spare) These should all fight Void Reaver in the middle of the room to give ranged space to maneuver.

The key to winning this fight is avoiding the arcane orbs, these are fired at the location a player is standing and move with relative slowness. Players should move out of the way as soon as they see these appear and then return to their previous positions once the Arcane Orb Explodes. Doing this is Key to downing this boss and must be done by all ranged players in the raid.

Pounding is an AoE which will affect all your melee and tanks, this should be healed through. Circle of Healing from Priests or Chain Heal from Shamans is ideal for this situation and is why your melee and tanks must be grouped together.

Threat management is absolutely essential in this Raid fight, Void Reaver will regularly knock back tanks reducing their agro on him. Therefore having at least three and preferably four tanks keeping up agro is essential (As the more tanks there are the fewer get hit by the knock back effect) and all DPS must use their entire array of threat reduction spells. If you are having trouble with this combining a threat reduction trinket with all of your cooldowns on damage can greatly increase your damage while not increasing your threat to dangerous levels. Remember to keep your threat below as many of the tanks as possible or you may pull.

Spotting Arcane Orbs can be difficult, if you are having trouble this you can use the script

/script SetCVar ("cameraDistancemax" ,50)


This will give you much better visibility of the battleground and allow you to spot any incoming problems. Healers have an easy time of avoiding orbs since they can cast healing spells behind them. This means they can face away from the fight the entire time, saving valuable split seconds.

Keep all this up and you should have no trouble taking down Void Reaver.