Lazy Tank’s Guide to Mythic Gorefiend

[wowheadrename]

Gorefiend? More like Borefiend.

For a verbal version of what one lazy tank and one very busy tank have to say about this boss fight, listen to Episode 28 of TankCast, starting at 01:45.

Preparation

Key things to plan for (via Talents, Glyphs, and/or Trinkets):

  • DPS cooldowns (3 min cd or less) for Feast of Souls. On-demand dps is much more valuable than sustained dps, though you don’t want to sacrifice vital survival for it.
  • Some sustained magic damage from the Gorebound Spirit, though most damage is physical.
  • Avoidance is helpful against the Gorebound Spirit.
  • Some bursty melee damage while the add and boss are both being tanked.
  • Lots of sustained raid damage, where reducing your own incoming damage will help the healers.
  • Trinkets: I used defensive/smoothing trinkets (Warlord’s Unseeing Eye, Anzu’s Cursed Plume) because I wanted to make the healer’s lives easier. Burst dps during Feast of Souls and/or on enraged spirit (in stomach) is nice, but sustained damage outside of that isn’t important.

Outside Gorefiend’s Stomach

  • Tank swap on Gorefiend: Shadow of Death will teleport the affected tank to Gorefiend’s stomach.
  • Gorebound Spirit
    • Tank swap often to keep the stacks of Fel Flames manageable.
    • Save avoidance AM for tanking him. Avoidance reduces the chance for his debuff, Fel Flames, to land.
    • Interrupt Bellowing Shout
    • Use cooldowns if tanking both the Spirit and the boss
    • Have a targeting macro to quickly find and taunt him once he spawns. He has a tendency to charge healers.

Inside Gorefiend’s Stomach

  • New for Mythic: When you’re selected to go into the stomach, you leave behind a spirit that must be killed by other people when you need to leave the stomach. You have no control over when you leave, other than letting your raid know you’re ready. You can safely call to be broken out once your Enraged Spirit is at or near 70% health.
  • Tank the Enraged Spirit (a large, purple orc).
    • Avoid the Enraged Spirit’s Fel Fury by moving away during the cast.
    • Interrupt Bellowing Shout
    • At 70% life, the Enraged Spirit will run away and spawn outside the stomach.

Feast of Souls

  • New for Mythic: Unlike other difficulties where tanks were likely tasked with intercepting all the Unstable Souls, that duty has to be shared with the entire raid so that everyone’s Gorefiend’s Corruption debuff (the one that will actually kill you next time you die) is removed.
  • Tanks should intercept any missed orbs before they hit the boss.
  • Once everyone else has their debuffs cleared, tanks can intercept the rest.
  • Tanks will probably intercept all souls for the final Feast of Souls so that everyone else can focus on dps, assuming the boss will die very soon.
  • You can still spend most of your time dpsing and using dps cooldowns.