Netherspite is a large Nether Dragon that patrols back and forth throughout Celestial Watch, Medivh’s observatory.  The Netherspite fight is indeed unique and interesting in both its execution as well as the requirements placed upon the raid to achieve victory, the boss operating differently than most dragon fights.

Abilities

Nether Burn – An aura style spell, similar to Baron Rivendare’s ability, inflicts 1200 shadow damage every 5 seconds to all targets within line of sight, can be resisted/negated by shadow resistance and is active only during the portal phase.

Netherbreath – Massive cone style breath attack hitting everyone in the direction Netherspite is facing for 4,500 arcane damage in addition to a 20 yard knockback effect.  This is used frequently throughout the Banish phase with a cast time of 2.5 seconds.

Void Zone – A massive void portal is opened that inflicts 1,000 shadow damage every 2 seconds to all players within the affected area, lasts 25 seconds.
Empowerment – An irremovable self-buff that increases damage by 200%, cast during the portal phase.
Enrage – Cast after a 9 minute timer, increases his damage by 500% and will basically spell the end for your raid.

Portal Phase

The beginning of the Portal phase is marked as by an emote, “Netherspite cries out in withdrawal, opening gates to the warp.”

At this point three portals of differing colors will spawn at set locations throughout the room, emitting beams(lasers lol) of their respective colors towards the boss.  These beams, should they be allowed to touch the boss, will grant him buffs that make him practically invulnerable, including healing and damage increase.

Each buff on Netherspite lasts 5 seconds from the point of application until dissipating, however instead of allowing the boss to receive these goodies you’re going to have to have players intercept the beams by standing in the way of their path.

Each beam will grant the affected player both positive and negative effects, each stack of the buff increasing the good and the bad by a slight amount that steadily grows the longer the player remains within the beam.

Finally, should a player exit the beam long enough to lose the effects of the buff entirely, they’ll gain the debuff called
Nether Exhaustion that prevents them from intercepting the specific beam color for 1 minute and 30 seconds.

Red Lazer

Each stack/tick of the buff lasts 20 seconds after leaving the beam.

Should this hit Netherspite the buff will reduce all damage taken by 1% per stack, meaning you can’t let him have this as it’s quite overpowering.

Now, on the other hand if a player stands in the path of the beam the following affects will occur, foremost being that Netherspite will unconditionally aggro the player currently standing within the beam.

Damage taken is reduced by 1% per tick as with Netherspite, Defense is increased by 5 per tick, all life is replenished to maximum every tick, and the players maximum health is increased by 31,000, each additional ‘tick’ afterwards reducing the maximum health by 1,000.

Blue Lazer

The blue beam lasts for a total of 8 seconds until fading should the intercepting player leave the beam, this is generally a DPS player beam due to its specific enhancements.

Should Netherspite gain the effect of the beam it will increase his spell-damage by 1% per tick, not much but still, it stacks and therefore will inevitably become quite the problem.

If a player intercepts the beam they will gain the following effects: Damage dealt is increased 5% per tick, healing received is reduced 1% per tick, and damage from spells is increased 8% per tick.

Green Lazer

This lasts for a total of 10 seconds after the player leaves the beam.

The green lazer is probably the worst possible beam to allow Netherspite to possess, healing him for 4000 health the first tick and increasing by an additional 4K per tick, meaning the next tick is an 8K heal, 12K, 16K, and so on.

If a player intercepts the beam they gain the following effects: Healing done is increased by 5% per tick, spell and ability costs are reduced by 1% per tick, maximum mana is reduced by 200 per tick, and mana is replenished to full with each tick.

The maximum mana reduction will continue until the players mana pool is at 0, this does affect druids in alternate forms despite the mana bar being hidden.

Beam Interception

As a whole this fight’s unique design both introduces a certain amount of ease to the mechanics of the encounter as well as making a few simple requirements that, if failed to be fulfilled, will inevitably wipe the raid.

One thing to consider is that the red beam will make your tank of choice both invulnerable, meaning healers should likely spend the entire fight without needing to heal the tank, as well as the fact that no matter the DPS whoever is tanking cannot lose aggro whilst within the red beam.

Within each portal phase you’ll most likely assign a single player to each beam, multiple can be utilized yet this is likely un-required.  Due to the lack of needed healing for the tank you’ll find that healers only need throw out small heals to DPS/other classes in a much less intensive manner.

Red Beam – Tank

The red beam will be used by a tank, someone with high enough defense, armor, and health(counting the buff) to take the damage incoming from Netherspite throughout his shift.  One thing is that, Netherspite can critically hit for immense amounts of damage, therefore they will rarely need some slight healing to keep them up for the next tick.

The trick to this beam is that the designated tank will be regularly ‘dancing’ in and out of the beam, in this way do they refresh the buff and therefore the healing, but also prevent their maximum health from deteriorating to a level wherein they will be one-shot by the boss.

A general number for this is 5 seconds, every 5 seconds the tank will move out of the beam to make certain that it ticks just enough to maintain the buff and health at maximum yet avoid being rendered one-shottable by the boss, in general the buff will have stacked somewhere around 25-30 times in a successful phase.

If the tank does somehow lose the buff, gain the nether exhaustion effect, then have someone such as a paladin rush in and pop divine shield to hold the boss hopefully until the phase ends.

Blue Beam – DPS

Blue beam holding is for a DPS class, and among those, although almost any will work, Warlock and Shadow Priest are the primary weapons of choice due to a few factors that lessen the incremental damage factor considerably.

As the increased damage debuff stacks Netherspite’s shadow aura will steadily increase in damage, this combined with the negation of healing effects from repeated stacking of the buff will begin to wear down any class, this is where Warlocks/Shadow Priests come in.

Due to damage scaling the Warlock’s life drain and Shadow Priest’s Vampiric Embrace will also steadily climb, leading to them aiding the healers mana usage greatly as they replenish large amounts of their own life simply through damage, a win-win situation per say.

Still, an ill-placed Void Zone can easily drop whoever happens to be holding the Blue Beam in check, this is probably the riskiest position to hold but almost any class can intercept this if needed.

Green Beam – Misc.

Indeed, the effects of the green beam would often indicate its usefulness to healers, however given that this fight is less mana intensive than others and has a few large breaks during the Banish Phase, this is a duty better left to a manaless class, Warriors and Rogues.

Beam Rotation

Due to the Nether Exhaustion debuff you’ll require two shifts of players for each rotation from Portal – Banish – Portal phase.  Basically as you exit the banish phase you’ll switch your previous tank into the green beam, and substitute another player for both the red and blue beams.

As you enter and exit the next banish phase it’s simple to just revert to the first shift, something like this.

Red – Tank 1
Blue – DPS 1
Green – Tank 2

Shift 2:

Red – Tank 2
Blue – DPS 2
Green – Tank 1

In doing this like so you’ll avoid complicating the procedure in any way and make this easiest on yourself.

Banish Phase

This phase will last for a total of around 30 seconds, the warning that Netherspite is entering the phase being an emote, “Netherspite goes into a nether-fed rage!” will appear as he changes color to that of a banished monster.

During this phase Netherspite will cease to move nor aggro players, however should they approach to closely he will attack them with melee, otherwise he’ll only utilize Netherbreath and the nether burn aura/void zones will ceases to occur.

No matter where the boss is at this point everyone will want to move away from him to the other side of the room, exiting the 60 yard range of Netherbreath to exit combat and therefore allow mana, health, cooldowns, etc. to be replenished.

In general if you need to DPS during this phase you’re not pulling enough damage from the portal phases, it is possible yet I recommend against doing so as the Netherbreath can easily drop a player or two should the boss be engaged.

30 Seconds into this phase the boss will exit banished mode and re-summon/start the portal phase once more, switch shifts as required and begin again.