Last Updated on Sunday, 14 February 2010 13:02 Written by Werten Sunday, 14 February 2010 12:39

Sammath Gul is a 6-man instance located in Dol Guldur, just north of the Sword Halls - cross the courtyards to the north and up the stairs

Hard Mode triggers

To complete hard-mode, you need to kill Gorothúl - the third boss - without killing any of the fell-spirit adds.

Entrance

When we enter, we get into a hallway with stairs on each side up to a larger room. On the platform upstairs is a Brute and some adds. First pull is a long range pull to get the brute down. If you try to run to them, there will be waves of elite guard adds coming throug the side doors, while a ranged pull avoids this.

The brutes are a bit special: The EM brutes have some elite adds. The Brute has, at times, a buff up where he can't be damaged directly as long as the adds are up, and the adds seem to absorb damage. However: Any damage to the adds are transferred to the brute, and eventually he will go down. After this, dispatch of the remaining mobs.

As you move inside the instance, there are more groups with combinations of the following types - apart from the brutes they are all elites at abt. 21k morale:

 

• Brutes - these are described above. They have a nasty frontal cleave, so the tank should try to turn them. They also have a possible corruption in three tiers with +melee damage (50%, 25%, 10%) that should be removed to reduce damage on the group.
• Guards - These are only present in brute groups. Similar corruption to the brutes.
• Sorcerers - These guys have soem dps, and a fear-based root. Pretty easy to handle.
• Lore-masters - These bad boys have an interruptable knockback attack with some damage. In addition they have a special attack where they put down a damage area (also fear-based?). The knockback must be contained, either by stun/mezz or by off-tanking from an interrupter. If none of this is possible, you need to make sure that anyone is not lieable to be knocked back to a bone pile or over any walls.
• Summoners - The summoners have the ability to summon (quelle surprise!) spirit adds. The adds are elites of abt. 9k morale. Summoners are troublesome in that the summoned adds can swamp the healers if not controlled. They can be CCed, but the summon can not be interrupted by normal means (addls, clobber, kick, stamp etc). They can, however, be taken out by other means - mezz, daze, stun and fear. E.g. a hunter with Bard's_Arrow, and a minstrel with Cry of the Valar can together keep a summoner permanently feared to avoid any adds.

There are also some piles of bones on the floor throughout the instance. If you get too close to these, you spawn an EM spirit who will summon skeleton (corpse) adds until killed. Be careful around these piles, as you wouldn't want to add this to an already tough fight.

Boss #1: Urchír

Urchír is a 197k arch-nemesis wight soldier. When you encounter him, he's on a platform in a room with groups of adds along the sides. These adds can be picked off in four separate pulls without triggering the boss.

Special attacks

Urchír has two special attacks. One is where he calls your name in a warning ("Will you bring doom to your friends, <name>?"), and  you get a green "eye" over your head, like the one Krankluk give in the Forges. When you get the eye, you need to move away from the group, or everyone will be stunned.

The other is a "splash damage" attack, where he targets one member of the group ("Can you handle the burn, <name>?"). When this happends, you need to move close to the one targeted, as the damage will be shared. If not, the target get the full 6k-ish damage on their own.

There is also a wound - possible related to the fire splash attack.

Positioning

Positioning is quite important here, as the room will eventually fill with fire. At around 60k, the fire will appear by the altar and spread throug the room. It either spreads to the entrance or away from the entrance, then fill the room in a clock-wise swipe. There's a safe area in the non-grated areas to the right or left of the entrance

The best is probably to start the fight on the right side, like in this pic (the grate to our left is right inside the entrance):

 

If the fire moves towards the entrance, we don't have to cross it's path to the safe spot, as we're already there. If it moves away, we have time to cross to the other side before it catches up with us (as you may see, the fire has almost reached our first position):

Boss #2: Alagossír

Alagossír is a 197k arch-nemesis wight soldier. When you encounter him, he's on a platform out in the open, with a storm brewing in the clouds. This boss has two main phases. In every phase he does a frontal cleave. Also there will be non-elite adds (limrafn-ish) spawned every so often which need to be killed fast because they stun. They go down quite easily. This boss will go down faster if there is more ranged DPS in Phase 2.

Phase 1 - melee

The first phase is a simple tank'n'spank where you only have to look after two things:

• At times, the boss will do a punt/knockback. This resets aggro, so everyone should drop attacks until the tank has safe aggro again.
• Positioning:
  
  • It's important to stay together, as he's got a splash damage attack where he calls out someone's name. If you're alone you will take 5k in damage on your own...
  • In addition he has a frontal AoE cleave, so the best is to have the tank turn him and keep the rest close behind, like this:

As long as everyone stays behind the boss and remember the knockback resets aggro this will be quite easy to handle.

 

Phase 2 - ranged

When the boss is down to 100k health he will go back to the middle of the platform and stay there for the rest of the fight, while lightnings are striking around the room in special patterns. It is possible to work out the patterns and when you can get into melee or not, but what we have found by far easiest is to stand in a "safe spot" (in the screenie above, in the corner between the platform and the brazier to the left) where lightning strikes are rare while ranged dps takes him down.

The healer should stop healing any damage on melee classes since they are expendable in this phase. Focus healing on ranged classes only. From here on just slowly nuke him down while preserving Power since he can't touch you and the lightning is easily healable. The melee can run in a few times and hit him on the head (mainly special attacks for debuffs, FMs etc.) and then run back to the brazier to get some health back. The healer should focus on the ranged (hunter/RK) only, and LMs/burgs should help ranged/healers with power.

 

Boss #3: Gorothúl

If you have done the Epic quests in Moria, you may remember Gorothúl. If not I won't spoil anything. The main difference is that this time we get to fight him  Gorothúl is a 222k arch-nemesis.

Special attacks

He has an interruptible AoE punt (guess he's the guy training those lore-master mobs we've been fighting up to here...) that should be stopped. Failing that he will kick everyone within range around and at the wrong spot this will be a wipe. He may do a special attack where you are feared, running around like a headless chicken. Just let it wear out and run back to your position.

Throughout the fight there will be adds in the form of spirits and ghosts. The important thing here is that the ghost loremasters are mezzed. The Ancient Fell-Spirits that come after a while are part of hard mode (you can't kill them), and they spawn skeleton adds.  The main challenge in this fight is to keep the adds away from the healers while maintaining mezzes on the loremasters.

Positioning

Once the fight starts, he will be stationary in one spot. The tank should tun him from the group. The minstrel should position so that it's easier for the tank/champ to grab add aggro...



Near the end of the fight it's more of a dps race - get the boss down before the adds overwhelm the group...

Boss #4: Demafaer

Once Gorothúl is down, the door to the last boss area opens. Demafaer is an ancient spirit boss with one special twist: He can not be damaged directly.

The boss effect tooltips does give a hint though: He is weakened by nearby bones (IIRC). There are spawning spirits in the room and by triggering these, the skeleton adds should do the trick. Make sure you position such that the adds can be drawn to the boss (tank/champ) and killed there. This will weaken the boss so he also take damage.

After a while, the floor around the boss will be covered by green flames. This debuffs anyone standing in it, so you should stay away. The green area moves (and expands from a quarter to half the room later on), so keep moving clockwise around the boss while dpsing skeletons and interrupting the boss.


Happy fighting and enjoy the loot

Notable loot:

• Gorothúl:
  • Symbol of Celebrimbor (Second Age legendary craft item)
  • Tolloch (nice melee earring)
  • Bregloch (nice ranged earring)
• Demafaer:
  
  • Rochben (+25 radiance heavy armour gloves)
  • Glass Flask (nice caster (mainly) pocket item)
  • Ril-mir (nice melee (mainly) ring)