Mythic +25 Upper Karazhan Cleared with 5 Tanks

Our Blood Death Knight Knight guide writer Mandl and his group managed to clear a +25 Upper Karazhan key in time with a group of 5 tanks. In this post, Mandl tells you more about it.

Team Composition

For starters, here’s our team composition:

1 Vengeance Demon Hunter (Xepheris)

2 Protection Paladins (Mandl, Demonies)

1 Protection Warrior (Nomeratur).

Clear Video

Logs

Logs for the run are available over at Warcraft Logs.

Boss-By-Boss Tech Breakdown

Before explaining, a quick disclaimer: this was not our usual comp. Our usual Demon Hunter (Cromation) was eating, and one of the two protection warriors (Meyra) was off for the week. This prevented us from pulling off some of the more interesting tech; in some of the explanations below, I will explain both what we did, and what we could have done.

Overall, this key is very straightforward as 5 tanks. Thanks to the time we gain on the last boss, we, for once, are not fighting the timer. There are also very few opportunities to pull trash on bosses, and none of them are safe – so we just opt for safety!

Dreadlords

We abuse Spell Reflection on both Nathrezim Infiltrators and Zul’gamux. The spell reflection abuse on Nathrezim Infiltrator is obvious: Vampiric Claws can be fully reflected, and massively reduces the healing they do.

Zul’gamux leads to some more interesting abuse. One application of Shadow Claws can be spell reflected on her. A protection warrior intervening somebody tanking Zul’gamux can also spell reflect it indirectly, without having to tank. The only downside to this is that Shadow Claws is bugged and currently does not scale with key level (each stack will do exactly 6784 damage irrespective of key level or affix combination). As key levels go up, this becomes less and less impactful.

With two warriors, you can bounce-reflect every 10 seconds and keep stacking the debuff infinitely, as long as you break her shield fast enough. Unfortunately, we only had one protection warrior for the 25, and he spent 2/3 of Zul’gamux licking the floor.

Curator

No particular tech here, we just stack up and focus the adds during the up phases, as they very quickly ramp up. We’re always in melee range to cleave on the boss.

Medivh

For safety here, one tank in the group has an [Ember of Nullification] equipped and will tank the boss full-time. This is not necessary, it is just us playing safe.

There is no special trick on Medivh, outside of just kicking him often. This is probably one of the bosses where a 5 tank comp really shines; nothing hurts and nothing matters. Flame Wreath gets handled as usual and is handled by personal defensives or Blessing of Sacrifice. Guardian’s Image is handled normally, except that everybody has 120k+ HP, and as a result, the phase is only dangerous if your damage is low.

Mana Devourer

Same thing – the joys of a 5tank comp is that all five tanks can load themselves up with stacks and deal a, frankly, ridiculous amount of damage. We played this run particularly badly and the boss moved a lot; this most definitely wasn’t our cleanest kill.

Chess Event

Did you know that the King’s Royal Slash can be spell reflected? on +25 fortified, each hit deals 736k. The King normally has a 90% damage reduction aura, but if you time it right, you can get the slash to start just before his damage reduction aura fades and net 730k of bonus damage!

We managed this once out of 5 slashes on this run. The other four slashes were reflected normally for 73k each, making it still one of the most lucrative Spell Reflection casts in the entirety of the Shadowlands.

Viz’aduum

This is likely one of the bosses where, as key levels go up, we will have the fastest kill times, especially on tyrannical with two protection warriors. Viz’aduum’s Burning Blast is reflectable, and stacks on the boss. With just one protection warrior on this run, and while having a small communication issue, 31% of the boss’s damage taken was his own Burning Blast.

This is by far the most lucrative Spell Reflection cast in season 4: each individual direct reflection dealt 173k on this key, ticking for a further 336k damage over 8 seconds. With a second protection warrior, you can push this to absolutely ridiculous levels of damage by just stacking it up. When he flies up, this also keeps dealing damage to him.

Viz’aduum’s cast sequence is always the same, making it very straightforward to just spell reflect specific casts. It takes ~3 successful spell reflection casts to deal enough damage per platform. The damage done by individual players on this boss does not matter in light of this, and as a result, the only priority is playing it safe, and making sure that Spell Reflection is not wasted.

On the last platform, the following assignments are done:

 The protection warriors alternate tanking the boss and coordinate spell reflections (in this run, it was just Nomeratur).

The Demon Hunter and Blood Death Knight handle the felguards; Blood Death Knights are particularly good at it as the slow applied by Blazing Hamstring cannot fully slow them down.

The protection paladin is there to support. Freedom, immunities, Spellwarding, the usual.

Overall, doing keys as 5 tanks has been an extremely fun adventure. If you want a fun little challenge and know other tank players, I would strongly recommend you give it a whirl. Off-meta comps are, at worst, a way to get a bit of a break from the norm; at best, they provide a reason to re-think certain mechanics and pulls.