- Author: Pride
- Date: May 9, 2022
- Expansion: TBC Classic
Kalecgos, the Blue Dragon, is the first boss that players will encounter in the Sunwell Plateau raid. He has been corrupted by a dreadlord called Sathrovarr the Corruptor, who is forcing Kalecgos to do his bidding. Players will have to defeat Sathrovarr in order to restore Kalecgos to normal and advance further into the Sunwell Plateau.
Kalecgos’ encounter is considered to be the easiest in the Sunwell Plateau raid, along with Felmyst. However, that is not to say that it’s easy in general, as it is surprisingly difficult for a first boss of the raid, specially compared to previous raid tiers. Many guilds will need some Arcane Resistance in order to defeat him, while underprepared guilds may find themselves unable to advance further into the Plateau.
This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to overcome Sathrovarr’s corruption and restore Kalecgos to his former self.
Role Summaries
- Stay more than 10 yards away from other players at all times while “upstairs”, fighting Kalecgos
- Don’t ever be in front or behind Kalecgos, always be to his sides
- Enter the portal if one of your portal group players gets teleported, or if the raid leader calls for it
- Renew your debuffs on Kalecgos before you enter the portal
- Once “downstairs”, stack up with your fellow players: melee with melee, ranged DPS and healers with each other
- Druids, Mages: Decurse Sathrovarr’s Curse of Boundless Agony when it has 10-15 seconds left
- Renew your debuffs on Sathrovarr before your Spectral Realm debuff ends
- Once “upstairs” again, take the first portal you can take after Spectral Exhaustion expires
- Make sure you have some Arcane Resistance if your healers are struggling with healing Arcane Buffet‘s damage
- Priests: Buff your raid with Prayer of Shadow Protection, it will help tremendously
- Be very careful with your threat if you get Wild Magic (White) or Wild Magic (Black) at the start of the fight
- Stack up with other melee when fighting Kalecgos if you can’t be more than 10 yards away from each other
- Once “downstairs”, be careful with your threat if Kalec is tanking Sathrovarr
- Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust against Sathrovarr
- Be very careful with your threat if you get Wild Magic (White) or Wild Magic (Black) at the start of the fight
- Once “downstairs”, be careful with your threat if Kalec is tanking Sathrovarr
- Stack up with other ranged players & healers when fighting Sathrovarr
- Use your personal DPS cooldowns during Heroism / Bloodlust against Sathrovarr
- Shadow Priests, Warlocks: Be careful with your self-damage if Spectral Blast or Shadow Bolt Volley are coming up
- Be very careful with your threat if you get Wild Magic (Green) or Wild Magic (Black) at the start of the fight
- The first portal will be very difficult to heal as there are only 2 healers to deal with Sathrovarr’s high damage
- Sathrovarr’s Corrupting Strike will deal 10k shadow damage to the tank instantly and stun them; keep them topped off at all times
- Throw some heal-over-time spells on the tank before you enter a portal & are ejected from the spectral realm
- Wait a few moments before entering the portal if there are no other healers around, don’t leave the tank healer-less
- Holy Paladins: You can reset your Arcane Buffet stacks with Divine Shield to keep healing if necessary
All Tanks
- After the 3rd portal, all tanks immediately enter the next portal after they are relieved and taunt the next boss right away
- Make sure there are healers nearby before taunting Sathrovarr off Kalec
Tank A – Initial Tank
- Quickly move Kalecgos to his original position and make sure his front & back aren’t facing the raid
- You will have fewer and fewer healers on you over time, consider using defensive cooldowns when there’s only a couple
- You will enter the 4th or 5th portal, the first portal after an offtank relieves you
- Protection Paladin: Use Divine Shield to reset your Arcane Buffet stacks when they’re getting high (8+)
Tank B – First Offtank
- Enter the 1st portal, UNLESS tank C gets teleported. In that case, enter the 3rd portal
Tank C – Second Offtank
- Enter the 3rd portal — you are skipping the 2nd portal
- If you get ported earlier (portals 1 or 2), you will need to announce it on voice so the raid adjusts accordingly
Abilities
Kalecgos
You initiate the fight by attacking Kalecgos in his blue dragon form, who is being controlled by Sathrovarr and forced to attack your group. You must reduce both Kalecgos’ and Sathrovarr’s HP to 1% in order to clear the encounter. Reducing Kalecgos to 1% HP causes him to be banished, becoming invulnerable to damage and unable to take any actions until your raid either reduces Sathrovarr to 1% HP as well, or wipes.
Kalecgos & Sathrovarr
Kalecgos and Sathrovarr share one spell: Crazed Rage.
Sathrovarr the Corruptor
Players can attack Sathrovarr after being teleported to his spectral realm by Kalecgos’ Spectral Blast. There, they will find him locked in combat with Kalec, who is Kalecgos’ real self. You must reduce both Kalecgos’ and Sathrovarr’s HP to 1% in order to clear the encounter. Reducing Sathrovarr to 1% HP causes him to be banished, becoming invulnerable to damage and unable to take any actions until your raid either reduces Kalecgos to 1% HP as well, or wipes.
Kalec (Kalecgos Human Form)
Thankfully, you are not alone in this fight. When you enter Sathrovarr’s spectral realm, you will see Kalec, Kalecgos’ real self, locked in combat with Sathrovarr. Kalec isn’t as strong as his physical, dragon form, but he will assist you a modest bit, tanking Sathrovarr to the best of his ability, dealing a decent amount of damage, and buffing players inside the spectral realm. If Kalec dies, your raid will wipe.
Arcane Resistance
Kalecgos’ Arcane Buffet will deal a high amount of Arcane damage to your raid over the course of this fight. Thankfully, it can be mitigated by Arcane Resistance, so similar to other raid fights, it can be beneficial to bring some here. Having said that, you don’t really want to go for very high amounts of Arcane Resistance here — typically only using 2-3 pieces of AR gear. Furthermore, when your guild gets better at this fight, you can stop using AR, as it’s not really necessary, it just helps make your healers’ lives easier while you’re progressing.
Item | Source | Enchant | Arcane Resistance | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Tailoring – Lower City Honored | 32 + 15 = 47 | Incredibly efficient | ||
Jewelcrafting – Consortium Revered | – | 30 | Very efficient, useful use effect | |
Quest: The New Directive (Karazhan) | – | 45 | A lot of resistance, but losing a trinket hurts | |
Jewelcrafting – Sha’tar Honored | – | 30 | Good if you don’t need both rings | |
Tailoring – Rare Drop | 35 + 8 = 43 | Highly efficient if you don’t rely on boots for Tier 6 set bonus |
Having Cloak of Arcane Evasion & Pendant of the Null Rune gives you 77 Arcane Resistance unbuffed, or 110 when buffed with Mark of the Wild, which is a very good starting point. It is recommended that you bring an extra piece (with Ring of Arcane Shielding being the best option for many classes that need their trinket & boots) in case your healers are struggling to keep your raid alive. On the flip-side, if it looks like your healers are doing okay with keeping everyone alive, you can remove Arcane Resistance items over time.
Raid Composition & Preparation
Portal Groups
The most important aspect of this fight will be managing who goes into the Spectral Rifts portals opened by Spectral Blast, and when. If you don’t manage portals correctly, players will die to Arcane Buffet & Curse of Boundless Agony, and you won’t be able to make progress, as both Kalecgos and Sathrovarr need to be defeated for this encounter to end.
General
In general, you will want to split your raid into 3 groups, each consisting of 7 players: 5 DPS players and 2 healers, with each group having at least one player capable of removing Sathrovarr’s Curse of Boundless Agony, aka a Druid or Mage. Ideally you will want these groups to contain classes that synergize with each other, and to make things easier, have them be similar to your raid groups. For example, if your raid’s group 1 is a Fury Warrior, a Retribution Paladin, a Beast Mastery Hunter, an Enhancement Shaman and a Rogue, give them a Restoration Druid for the decurse and another healer and you have the first group right there.
Name these groups group A, group B and group C and make sure everyone remembers what portal group they are in. Spectral Blast targets a random person and transporters them to the spectral realm. That person will need to call their group number in chat and other people in that group will need to follow in. That will change after the 3rd portal however, as the group that went into the 1st portal will go into the 4th, the group that went into the 2nd portal will go into the 5th, the group that went into the 3rd portal will go into the 6th, and repeating from that point onward.
Tanks
Tanks will also need to deal with portals, as Sathrovarr needs to be tanked and no tank can tank Kalecgos forever, they will eventually die to Arcane Buffet. The tank portal rotation looks a good bit different to the general rotation at first, though it will also eventually start repeating. Let’s say you have 3 tanks, called Tank A, Tank B and Tank C — then your tank rotation should look as follows:
Timestamp | Event | Tank A Duty | Tank B Duty | Tank C Duty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
0:00 | Fight starts | Tank Kalecgos | DPS Kalecgos Prepare to enter portal | DPS Kalecgos |
0:20 | 1st portal opens | Tank Kalecgos | Enter portal Taunt Sathrovarr | DPS Kalecgos |
0:40 | 2nd portal opens | Tank Kalecgos | Tank Sathrovarr | DPS Kalecgos Prepare to enter portal |
1:00 | 3rd portal opens | Tank Kalecgos | DPS Sathrovarr Prepare to exit | Enter portal Taunt Sathrovarr |
1:20 | 1st group ejected 4th portal opens | DPS Kalecgos Prepare to enter portal | Exit Taunt Kalecgos | Tank Sathrovarr |
1:40 | 2nd group ejected 4th portal opens | Enter portal Taunt Sathrovarr | Tank Kalecgos | DPS Sathrovarr Prepare to exit |
2:00 | 3rd group ejected 5th portal opens | Tank Sathrovarr | DPS Kalecgos Prepare to enter portal | Exit Taunt Kalecgos |
2:20 | 4th group ejected 6th portal opens | DPS Sathrovarr Prepare to exit | Enter portal Taunt Sathrovarr | Tank Kalecgos |
Note that these timestamps are simply indicative, the portals do not open exactly every 20 seconds. The table however shows the general idea – in general, your tanks will enter the spectral realm when they can and immediately taunt Sathrovarr / Kalecgos the moment they enter / exit. The only exception to this rule is that Tank C has to skip the 2nd portal, as entering would cause Sathrovarr to not have a tank for a while and start killing DPS players.
Some important things to remember:
- The first tank to go into the spectral realm should not taunt Sathrovarr right away. Make sure there are healers inside the spectral realm or you will die.
- Always wait for the next tank to taunt before you move on to your next assignment.
- Move to the DPS spot when you’re not tanking.
- Important: While Spectral Blast cannot target the main tank, it can target off-tanks. This means that the first Spectral Blast may target tank C, in which case they need to let the raid know, so tank B does not enter right away. In fact it’s a good idea for tank B to wait a few seconds before entering just in case this happens.
- Similarly, tank C might get hit by the 2nd Spectral Blast, essentially being forced to go in early. If that happens, tank A will need to go into the next portal immediately after tank B taunts Kalecgos (at ~1:20) or Sathrovarr won’t have a tank for a while.
- If you have a Protection Paladin, they should be tank A — they may have to stay “upstairs” for up to ~1:40 which is a whole lot of Arcane Buffet stacks. Having Divine Shield to reset healers’ stacks will make things a lot easier.
Flex Player
Observant readers may have noticed that 3 groups of 7 players equals 21, plus 3 tanks equals 24 — that leaves 1 player unaccounted for, which is intentional. The last player will be a healer (ideally a Holy Paladin, otherwise someone with 200+ Arcane Resistance) who will be more flexible than other healers. Their task will be to initially focus on the the first tank (tank A from the Tanks section above) until they have to go in, using Divine Shield to reset their stacks as necessary.
From that point on, their job will be to keep an eye out on groups going in and out of portals and jumping into a portal if any group’s healer all happen to die — but always make sure there’s a healer on the Kalecgos tank before going in. If everything goes well, that healer will essentially just follow tank A around.
The Pull
There is a Sunblade Protector robot enemy patrolling the path up to Kalecgos. After defeating it, your raid can resurrect the dead, buff up and regenerate mana, in preparation for your first battle in the Sunwell Plateau. Don’t forget to equip your Arcane Resistance gear!
When you’re all ready, have your tank initiate the fight by running in, supported by your Hunters using Misdirection on them. Kalecgos should be tanked on the opposite side of the entrance to his platform, so your tank will need to really go in there, and your healers will need to follow, using instant cast healing spells as necessary.
The Fight
Your raid should position as shown in the picture above. Kalecgos is tanked close to his original position, facing the side (north or south works, this picture shows north) so as to avoid having Kalecgos hit the raid with Frost Breath, his frontal attack, and Tail Lash, his backwards attack. The raid spreads out, with at least 11 yards between players so as to avoid having Spectral Blast hit multiple players; melee DPS cannot spread out so they just stack up and get healed ASAP. Portal groups stay close to each other, ready to enter a portal that spawns on top of any member of their group.
Kalecgos unfortunately has no chill and won’t wait for your group to be positioned and will use his abilities right away: Wild Magic 6 seconds in, followed by Arcane Buffet 8 seconds in. There is not much to say about the first Arcane Buffet, it will deal 500 Arcane damage to everyone and start stacking up. Wild Magic can be problematic this early on however; your tanks have not had time to build a lot of threat yet, so an overzealous DPS player (or even a healer!) can overaggro and possibly wipe your raid if they get the Wild Magic (White), Wild Magic (Black) or Wild Magic (Green) debuffs, so be careful.
Roughly 15 to 30 seconds in the fight, Kalecgos will likely cast Spectral Blast for the first time. Provided you’ve spread out correctly it will only hit 1 player and there will be no splash damage for healers to deal with, unless it happens to hit melee. That is the least of your concerns though, as the portal mechanic begins now. The player who gets teleported needs to yell on voice (or use a macro for raid chat) for their portal group to follow them. The portals last 15 seconds, so other players have a few moments to get in, but don’t cut it too close. There are 2 things that can go wrong at this point:
- Tank C gets teleported. In this case, portal group A goes in, but tank B doesn’t go in yet, and also skips the next portal.
- The flex player gets teleported. In this case, portal group A and tank B go in as normal, but one of the healers of group A should stay out.
Once inside, the tank should confirm that there healers inside with them and taunt Sathrovarr. DPS can start attacking right away, as Kalec will have some threat on Sathrovarr already, but be very careful not to overtake Kalec and die. After the tank has taken over, group A should use Heroism / Bloodlust and start nuking Sathrovarr. The “downstairs” is roughest on healers, as Sathrovarr does modest damage to both the raid and the tank. Your decurser dispels Curse of Boundless Agony when there are 10-15 seconds left, while 1 healer tops off the raid after Shadow Bolt Volley. The other healer must focus on the tank at all times, as Corrupting Strike can deal 13,000 damage to them out of nowhere, which may just kill them when coupled with a random crit.
Meanwhile, Kalecgos is increasing his Arcane Buffet stack count upstairs, but ironically as there are a lot fewer players around, his overall raid damage isn’t increasing much. Then, 30 to 60 seconds in, Kalecgos will cast Spectral Blast once more. Just like before, the teleported player calls out that they were teleported for their group to follow. The difference being that the remaining offtank, tank B, doesn’t go in yet. Once again, two things can go wrong here:
- Tank C (or tank B if Tank C was teleported earlier) gets teleported. In this case, portal group B goes in, and tank A (the current Kalecgos tank) must go into a portal immediately after the first offtank gets out of the portal and taunts Kalecgos off them.
- The flex player gets teleported in. In this case, portal group B goes in, but one of the healers of group B should stay out.
Back downstairs, group B should use Heroism / Bloodlust and nuke Sathrovarr along with group A. Things will be a lot easier this time around, as you now have 4 healers around instead of just 2, so healing and decursing will be a lot easier. The only complication is that Sathrovarr will curse a new player with Curse of Boundless Agony every 40 seconds, increasing raid damage every time you go down, essentially. That won’t be too bad if your ranged DPS players stack up however, allowing your healers to top everyone off with AoE healing spells.
60 to 90 seconds in, Kalecgos will cast Spectral Blast, and there aren’t too many targets for him to choose. The last group now goes in, along with the last offtank, using Heroism / Bloodlust once inside. If this was an “early” portal (60-70 seconds), that group’s healers should stick around for a few few moments, waiting for the first portal group’s healers to return — don’t leave the Kalecgos tank without a healer. Otherwise everyone simply goes in. The Kalecgos tank and the flex player can use Divine Shield to reset their Arcane Buffet stacks at this point — don’t go above 10 stacks if possible. The first group to enter a portal will likely be coming out at this point. Renew your debuffs on Sathrovarr, healers throw some heal-over-time spells on the main tank, and be ready to get ported again.
At this point, the portal mechanic will simply repeat. The 1st group that got into a portal will go into the 4th portal, the 2nd into the 5th portal, etc. Tanks will wait for their mob to be taunted, then immediately enter a portal / exit the spectral realm and taunt the boss there, relieving the current tank. The only things that can go wrong are tanks leaving before the next tank taunts their mob, healers entering a portal before the group before them gets ejected and thus leaving the tank without a healer, and people missing portals thus dying to Arcane Buffet.
But of course you know better after reading this guide. The last thing to watch out for is Crazed Rage, this fight’s soft-but-kinda-hard enrage mechanic. When either Kalecgos or Sathrovarr are reduced to 10% HP, they will both enrage, gaining a 5% physical damage and attack speed buff which stacks every 5 seconds. This will eventually cause them to “delete” tanks, so your raid needs to get them down to 10% HP at roughly the same time, then finish them off ASAP. If your DPS is a bit on the weaker side, it’s okay to save Heroism / Bloodlust for the enrage, to ensure you get them down.
After getting either boss to 1% HP, they will be banished and stop taking actions. If you got Sathrovarr down to 1% you have practically won, as Kalecgos won’t pose much of a challenge with all 25 of your players blasting him down from 10% HP. If Kalecgos is approaching 1% HP first however, there is a possibility that you won’t have enough DPS to finish off Sathrovarr with no more portals taking into the spectral realm, which will cause a wipe, so make sure you can finish off Sathrovarr with the players currently inside before getting Kalecgos down to 1%. You win by getting both bosses down to 1%.
Congratulations on defeating Sathrovarr the Corruptor and restoring Kalecgos to his former self! With this, you have taken a bold step into the Sunwell Plataeu raid and are one step closer to the final boss of The Burning Crusade, Kil’jaeden! The amazing Sunwell Plateau Loot can’t hurt, either.
