The Four Horsemen Strategy Guide – Naxxramas (25)

wotlk classic naxxramas the four horsemen featured image new
  • Author: Passion
  • Date: September 7, 2022
  • Updated: September 19, 2022
  • Expansion: WotLK Classic

The Four Horsemen of Naxxramas are the third and final boss of the Military Wing. They are one of the hardest encounters in the entire raid and will test many different facets of your team.

This fight will have players constantly rotating between the four bosses, unable to stay in one place for too long without being overwhelmed by the stacking debuffs placed on them.

The most powerful death knights within Naxxramas are the four horsemen. They represent the pinnacle of Kel’Thuzad’s guard. The first, Thane Korth’azz, holds the power of flame. The next, Lady Blaumeux, calls forth the power of shadows, drawing the souls of the living into the voracious embrace. Sir Zeliek, a paladin in life, so strong in his faith, that even in undeath, the power of the light still heeds his call, smiting his foes in battle. Sir Zeliek still tries to make players run so he does not have to kill another person. The final death knight, Lord Mograine, was the finest warrior that the death knights had ever seen. However, after the events of Azeroth, he vanished without a trace. Kel’Thuzad has appointed Baron Rivendare in his place.Commander Eligor Dawnbringer

This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to deal with Kel’Thuzad’s personal guard and their deadly marks.

Role Summaries

The Fight

  • Always keep an eye on your Mark stacks, no matter how you go about this fight. If you end up too high you will have to swap your boss, even if that wasn’t the original plan.
  • Use cooldowns early, potentially getting two uses out of them.
  • Positioning matters for all the Horsemen, watch your feet on all of them!

The Fight

  • Be very mindful of your positioning against Blaumeux and Zeliek, in melee range you can easily wipe the raid.

The Fight

  • Stay with the melee DPS for the melee Horsemen, both for soaking Meteor and for ease of AoE healing.

The Fight

  • You can potentially avoid Marks entirely by staying in range of friendlies but out of range of the boss. Use this to your advantage.
  • Cover multiple bosses if possible, don’t limit yourself to one tank unless positioning is rough.

The Fight

  • Be ready to tank swap even before your Mark stacks are too high, you don’t want to take an extra stack while moving.
  • Make sure to be the closest player to the ranged Horsemen.

Abilities

Each individual Horseman has their own set of abilities alongside an almost identical Mark, such as Mark of Rivendare and Mark of Blaumeux. These Marks stack individually, consistently ramping up and forcing players to swap to a different Horseman to survive.

These Marks will hit everyone within 45-yards of the boss, and if no one is within range the Horseman will AoE everyone in the raid using Unyielding Pain and Condemnation

The individual spells of each Horseman such as Meteor and Void Zone all need to be handled in their own unique ways, meaning that everyone will need to know the abilities of each Horseman.

Baron Rivendare

After 24-seconds Baron Rivendare will cast his Mark, and then again every 12-seconds after that. Every stack will deal progressively more damage, escalating rapidly until it is impossible to outheal. These Marks are handled by rotating to a different Horseman when you have too many.

Every 15-seconds Baron Rivendare deals 4500 to 5500 Shadow damage to the player tanking him, applying a DoT to them that deals 1500 Shadow damage every second for 8-seconds. This can be a lot of damage and you will always need a healer taking care of the tank for this fight.

Lady Blaumeux

After 24-seconds Lady Blaumeux will cast her Mark, and then again every 15-seconds after that. Every stack will deal progressively more damage, escalating rapidly until it is impossible to outheal. These Marks are handled by rotating to a different Horseman when you have too many.

This is Lady Blaumeux main attack, instead of auto attacks. She will cast a Shadow Bolt at the closest target dealing 8483 to 9517 Shadow damage. Because this isn’t based on threat, whoever is closest becomes the tank, so make sure the right person is up front!

Lady Blaumeux spawns a Void Zone under a random player within 45-yards that deals 4250 Shadow damage per second to everything in it. These spawn every 15-seconds and will last for 75-seconds. With these scattered around, it is incredibly important that everyone fighting Lady Blaumeux watches their feet constantly and gets out of these as soon as possible.

Sir Zeliek

After 24-seconds Sir Zeliek will cast his Mark, and then again every 15-seconds after that. Every stack will deal progressively more damage, escalating rapidly until it is impossible to outheal. These Marks are handled by rotating to a different Horseman when you have too many.

This is Sir Zeliek‘s main attack, instead of auto attacks. He will cast a Holy Bolt at the closest target dealing 8954 to 10046 Holy damage. Because this isn’t based on threat, whoever is closest becomes the tank, so make sure the right person is up front!

Every 15-seconds Sir Zeliek will cast Holy Wrath on a random player within 45-yards, dealing 2700 to 3300 Holy damage and bouncing to another player within 10-yards, dealing 50% more damage with every bounce. This mechanic requires the raid to spread more than 10-yards apart when fighting Sir Zeliek, and unfortunate positioning can easily lead to this quickly bouncing between everyone and wiping your raid.

Thane Korth’azz

After 24-seconds Thane Korth’azz will cast his Mark, and then again every 12-seconds after that. Every stack will deal progressively more damage, escalating rapidly until it is impossible to outheal. These Marks are handled by rotating to a different Horseman when you have too many.

Every 15-seconds a Meteor falls onto a random player currently fighting Thane Korth’azz, dealing 47500 to 52500 Fire damage split between everyone within 8-yards. To deal with this you will want all of your players to be stacked together, so that it always hits as many of them as possible to spread the damage as much as possible.

Raid Composition & Preparation

This fight has no specific class or spec requirements, and as long as your group can manage the ranged Horsemen you should be fine with whatever you bring!

You will want between 4-7 Healers for this fight, at least one for each Horseman tank.

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 need at least 2 tanks for this fight: One to tank Baron Rivendare and one to tank Thane Korth’azz.

You will also need 2 players to tank Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek, but these do not need tank classes or specs and can easily be covered by a lot of different ranged classes and specs. If you do happen to have 3 tanks anyway, you can send one to tank a ranged Horseman.

The Pull

As soon as any of the Horsemen are engaged, they will all scatter into one of the corners of the room, with Baron Rivendare and Thane Korth’azz running towards the entrance. Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek will run towards the back wall.

All of the Horsemen need a tank, but Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek don’t attack based on threat, so you can easily use a high health caster or healer to tank these temporarily. If you do have 3 tanks, one of them can tank either of the ranged Horsemen to reduce the healing needed.

Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek will need at least 1 Healer assigned to their tanks, but some classes such as Holy Paladins can both tank and heal themselves to tank one of the ranged Horsemen. The tanks for these do not need to be actual tanks, something like a Balance Druid or Shadow Priest make solid tanks as they both have fairly high survivability, as well as the ability to heal themselves in a pinch.

The Fight

The majority of your raid will run towards the melee Horsemen. You can do one of two things here, either focus all of your damage onto Thane Korth’azz, burning him down quickly, and then moving over to Baron Rivendare. This works fantastically if your raid has high damage, but if your DPS is on the lower side, you will end up needing to swap between them before they die.

four horsemen thane first naxxramas

If you don’t have the damage to kill Thane Korth’azz before his Mark of Korth’azz stacks too high, you should split your group between Baron Rivendare and Thane Korth’azz. When you reach 3-4 Marks, these two stacks should swap places, tanks included. The tanks will meet each other in the middle and taunt off each other, running back to their new target’s corner.

four horsemen thane rivendare same time naxxramas

No matter which strategy you go for, the people fighting Thane Korth’azz must be stacked at all times. Every 15-seconds he will call down a Meteor, dealing massive damage in an 8-yard range split between everyone hit. Because of this, you also want to make sure that everyone is standing as close to the boss as possible so that the tank is within 8-yards of everyone else. If your group is killing Thane Korth’azz first, you will have a significantly easier time dealing with the Meteor simply because you have more players in position to split the damage.

When Thane Korth’azz is dead, focus all your DPS onto Baron Rivendare. When he is dead you will need to move towards the ranged Horsemen.

Just like for Thane Korth’azz and Baron Rivendare, you can either all focus one of the ranged Horsemen and attempt to burn it down ASAP, or split the raid between the two and swap when stacks are too high. No matter what you do, remember that the person closest to Sir Zeliek and Lady Blaumeux will always be their tanks.

Both of these Horsemen can be rough for melee DPS. Sir Zeliek will periodically cast Holy Wrath, hitting a player with Holy damage and bouncing to another player within 10-yards. If your melee group is stacked on the boss, this will simply bounce between them all and quickly kill them. Lady Blaumeux instead places down Void Zones on players fighting her. These are easily handled by moving out when you see them, but for melee DPS it can be hard to avoid Void Zones and still be in range to actually deal damage.

At 3-4 stacks players fighting Sir Zeliek will want to swap to Lady Blaumeux, and vice versa.

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

Once you have the rhythm of the fight down, this fight can feel very simple and is in my opinion one of the most enjoyable in the entire raid!

Congratulations on defeating the Four Horsemen and clearing the Military Quarter! One step closer to the Frostwyrms Lair, and to Kel’Thuzad himself.

 

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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