Gothik the Harvester Strategy Guide – Naxxramas (25)

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Gothik the Harvester is the second boss of the Military Wing in Naxxramas. He is one of the Scourge’s master necromancers, capable of instantly reviving armies of the dead to continue their fight for the Lich King.

Gothik, the Harvester. A master of necromancy and conjuration, Gothik is said to be able to beckon forth legions of the undead at a moment’s notice. It is with his guidance that even the weakest of Death Knights can raise the dead.” –Commander Eligor Dawnbringer

This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to deal with Gothik the Harvester’s onslaught of both the living and dead.

Role Summaries

Pre-Pull

  • Everyone should have potions, elixirs, and flasks appropriate for their role
  • Make sure your raid is properly split between the two sides

Phase 1

  • Avoid the Death Knights to minimize AoE damage on the raid

Phase 2

  • Make sure your DPS cooldowns are active for this Phase, you want it to end as fast as possible

Phase 2

  • Make sure your DPS cooldowns are active for this Phase, you want it to end as fast as possible

Phase 1

  • There can be a lot of AoE damage, be proactive with healing

Phase 1

  • Make sure you are ready to grab any adds on your side, except for Trainees.

Phase 2

  • Gothik is tauntable during this Phase and will need to be taunted as he swaps side, because the teleport does not reset threat.

Abilities

Phase 1

During this Phase, you will be fighting against the living and undead legions of Gothik. Each individual enemy type has its own abilities, most of which are best handled by simply killing the enemy before it has a chance to become a problem.

Living Enemies

Every melee hit applies Death Plague, a disease dealing a small amount of Nature damage every 3-seconds for 15-seconds, stacking infinitely. This can be dispelled or handled by simply killing the Trainees before you have too many stacks.

Every so often these enemies will do a melee-range Whirlwind, applying Shadow Mark to everything it hits. Targets with Shadow Mark will be hit by Shadowbolt Volley. Ideally, melee DPS should be focusing on other targets, so that this debuff can be avoided for most players.

Unholy Aura deals Shadow damage every 2-seconds to everyone within 45-yards and lasts until the Rider is dead. Burn them down quickly to minimize the damage this deals to the raid.

Shadowbolt Volley hits everyone with the Shadow Mark debuff, dealing 6000 Shadow damage. Everyone with the debuff will need a lot of healing, but ideally, that should only be your tank.

Undead Enemies

As enemies on the living side die, they will be resurrected on the undead side, transforming into spectral versions of themselves with similar abilities that are again best dealt with by simply killing them before it becomes a problem.

Arcane Explosion deals 700 Arcane damage to everyone within 20-yards. This is just a little extra nuisance damage and is managed with light AoE healing and by killing the Trainees quickly.

Whirlwind deals 4000 damage to everyone in melee range. This isn’t a lot of damage or much of a problem, so a lot of groups will just be able to tank through this. If your group can’t just burn the mob down, keep your melee elsewhere to minimize damage taken by the raid.

Drain Life drains 12000 health over 5-seconds from the tank, healing the Spectral Rider in the process. Just burn them down and keep your tanks topped and this will be fine.

Unholy Aura deals Shadow damage every 2-seconds to everyone within 45-yards and lasts until the Rider is dead. Burn them down quick to minimize the damage this deals to the raid.

Stomp deals 2313 to 2687 Physical damage to everyone within 10-yards, reducing their movement speed by 60% for 10-seconds. This can be a hassle if you end up slowed before Gothik comes down from the balcony, but most classes either have a way to deal with it or aren’t going to be bothered by a short slow.

Phase 2

For this Phase, the only concern is Harvest Soul, which puts a timer on the raid to kill Gothik before you reach too many stacks.

Gothik the Harvester

Gothiks basic attack, throwing a Shadowbolt every second for 4500 to 5500 Shadow damage at his current target. This is what he does in place of auto swings and doesn’t require any special behavior to handle.

Every 15-seconds Gothik will reduce the stats of everyone in the raid by 10%, stacking up to 10 times. By 9-stacks you will have 10% of your base and if he doesn’t die here the fight is essentially over. This is just a timer for Gothik, forcing you to kill him at a decent speed, giving you around a minute to beat him.

Raid Composition & Preparation

This fight has no specific class or spec requirements, as long as your group can deal enough DPS to kill Gothik in Phase 2.

You will want between 4-7 Healers for this fight, but it is important to remember that this fight is a DPS check, so if you bring more healers, that means you are bringing fewer DPS.

There are no strict requirements for DPS classes or specs here, you simply want a combination of good raid buffs and debuffs, as well as the best players you can muster.

You will want at least 2 tanks for this fight, each tanking their own area of adds to make sure they don’t spread around too much.

The Pull

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Before you pull you want to make sure everyone is on appropriately split between the Living and Undead sides, having at least 1 tank on either side, as well as enough DPS and Healers to not be overwhelmed. The Undead side can sometimes be the harder side as they get more enemies at a time than the living side, so some raids may want to weigh their group heavier towards that.

When everyone is in position, simply pull Gothik with any ranged attack to begin the encounter.

The Single-Side Pull

Some groups opt to do this fight on one side instead of split between the two. This strategy requires less micromanagement but can lead to raids being overwhelmed later in the fight. This is the more common strategy, but generally, neither is faster or easier, only different.

For this pull, simply gather everyone on the Living side and pull Gothik with any ranged attack to begin the encounter.

Phase 1

gothik p1 positioning

Gothik will periodically spawn waves of enemies for 4 minutes. These enemies will spawn on one of the 3 platforms on the Living side and once killed will respawn on the bone piles on the Undead side.

The Unrelenting Trainees and Spectral Trainees are mostly fodder enemies that will quickly crumble, tanks will typically not want to bother with these as they will die too fast to worry about anyway.

Unrelenting Death Knights and Spectral Death Knights are mostly simple and quick to deal with, but they will need to be tanked as they can easily kill squishier DPS classes. Melee may want to avoid engaging these all together to avoid their AoE’s, but this fight is generally very slow and very boring so it may be hard to resist engaging.

Unrelenting Riders are the main threat on the Living side, they need to be killed as soon as possible to minimize the damage dealt by Unholy Aura. They also deal a lot of damage to the tanks and need to be handled because of that.

When an Unrelenting Rider dies, a Spectral Rider and a Spectral Horse spawn on the Undead side. These two together are the strongest adds in the fight, dealing constant AoE damage with Unholy Aura and Stomp. Because of this, it can become an issue if Living adds are killed too quickly, potentially overwhelming the Undead side.

Here are some of the main things that can typically go wrong in this phase:

  • The Undead side gets overwhelmed because the Living side kills things too tightly together
  • Players get bored and lose focus, leading to adds not dying or players dying.

Phase 2

After a long and boring 4-minutes, Phase 1 will end and Phase 2 begins. Gothik will teleport down from his balcony down to the Living side, teleporting between the sides every 10-seconds or so, until he is at 30% health. At 30% health the gate in the middle will open, letting players from both sides gather together and DPS him down.

Gothik himself does nothing particular during this Phase, but every 15-seconds the raid will gain one stack of Harvest Soul, effectively putting a timer on killing him.

Congratulations on defeating Gothik! Next up is The Four Horsemen, so I hope you feel well rested and ready after Gothik!

 

About the Author

Passion

I love MMOs of all shades, especially the nitty gritty numbers parts of them. You might recognize me from the Shadow Priest discord, otherwise I play a little bit of everything, especially games with support roles available.
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