Azshara’s Eternal Palace Tanking Guide

In this guide, you’ll find simple tanking strategies for Azshara’s Eternal Palace, the primary raid in Battle for Azeroth: Season 3.

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Abyssal Commander Sivara

NormalHeroicMythic
  • Don’t touch opposite colors. On the pull, everyone is randomly assigned green or blue. Do not touch people or effects that don’t match your color. Tanks get opposite colors.
  • Use a defensive for Crushing Reverberation. Splits damage with everyone who is within 5 yards, though it is soloable with just the tank. Also knocks the whole raid back.
  • Swap around 4 stacks, then let the debuff expire in a corner. The debuff depends on your color.
  • Avoid the bolts. During Overwhelming Barrage, step out of melee range and dodge the oncoming blue and green bolts.
  • Blue keeps moving. Otherwise you’ll freeze. You want to avoid filling up your blue bar.
  • Green stays still. Otherwise you’ll become disoriented. You want to avoid filling up your green bar.
  • The color debuffs now stack regularly, clear stacks of your color debuff at about 4. Clear by running into a puddle or player of the opposite color. Not everyone can clear at the same time because it deals raid damage.
  • You may want both tanks to stand near each other to split Crushing Reverberation. But not on top of each other as that would cause an explosion.
  • Flip the boss during Inversion so that Overwhelming Barrage, which also gets inverted, goes in the expected direction.
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Blackwater Behemoth

NormalHeroic
  • Click on the Oxygen Rich Membrane on the way to the boss. It gives you swim speed and water breathing.
  • Swap when the buff on the boss is around 15 stacks. Feeding Frenzy increases the bosses damage each time he melees. His melee attacks also grant Radiant Biomass, enabling healing on tanks when he attacks (look for the green glow). Otherwise you’d be immune to healing and have to get the healing buff like everyone else.
  • When the boss changes platforms, step into the Slipstream and follow. It will clear your debuff and increase your swim speed. Don’t touch the wildlife.
  • When the boss changes platforms, let your debuff drop before swimming over. Slipstream won’t clear it automatically. The sea creatures will eat you if you cross with the debuff.
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Radiance of Azshara

NormalHeroic
Boss Phase
  • Swap after Tide Fist. It deals a big burst of physical damage, knocks back, and increases all physical damage taken by 200%.
  • Avoid the myriad of environmental effects. Look out for the pools of water, purple swirlies, tornadoes, and large runic bombs.
Arcane Storm
  • Run to the adds in the Eye of the Storm. Tank them there.
  • Avoid the runic spheres, unless they are blocking the path to the storm, then soak them.
  • Position with your back to a safe place. The adds knock everyone back a large distance, try to avoid pools of water.
  • The runic spheres don’t despawn during the phase transition anymore, so they’ll have to be avoided during the boss phase or soaked.
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Lady Ashvane

Normal / Heroic
  • Shift the boss after Barnacle Bash. Deals physical damage and increases the damage of the next Barnacle Bash. Move the boss out of the puddle of coral it leaves behind. Start the boss near the wall to maximize space for this movement. You may need to stack some puddles if you start running out of room.
  • Swap and move away from other players when afflicted with Briny Bubble. It incapacitates and pulses damage, bubbling anyone within your circle. Bubbles need to be killed to free their captives. Whichever tank is active gets selected for Briny Bubble.
  • Keep the boss away from the large corals. These will spawn globules of water that will heal the boss if they are not intercepted by players.
  • Intercept water globules. Help your raid to intercept the globules before they reach the boss. Be aware that the globules deal raid damage and apply a DoT, so don’t intercept them all at once.
  • Swap if you are assigned a color, find your partner and sandwich a large coral. Arcing Azerite happens only during the exposed phase. After a time, a laser will fire between the two matching colors, destroying the large coral. Whichever tank is active gets selected for Arcing Azerite.
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Orgozoa

NormalHeroic
  • This boss hits very hard! Keep defensives active, especially right after a taunt swap.
  • Swap before reaching 10 stacks of debuff. Desensitizing Sting reduces damage taken (nice!), but will insta-kill you at 10 stacks. The timing should work out that you swap when the adds spawn, but it might not so play it by ear.
  • Tank adds far from boss. They need to be at least 15 yards away.
    • Soak blue swirls while afflicted with boss debuff. After a zoatroid dies, it leaves a blue swirl that needs one person to stand in it, otherwise it will deal raid damage. It deals a massive amount of damage to the soaker, so it’s best if the tank who’s soaking it has quite a few stacks of Desensitizing Sting.
  • Avoid the columns of water. They cover a large portion of the arena and come in waves of three, so there’s going to be some dancing.
  • During the intermission, run down the gauntlet and avoid everything. Avoid blue swirls and purple crystals.
  • After the gauntlet, new adds appear:
    • Soak the naga brute’s circle. Damage is split by all who are inside.
    • Interrupt the witches Conductive Pulse. It stuns.
  • Zoatroids (who leave behind the swirls you need to soak) continue to spawn after phase 1.
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The Queen’s Court

Normal / Heroic
  • One tank on melee guy in the center, one tank on caster lady at the edge. They gain a 99% damage reduction if they are too close to each other. The caster will occasionally create a circle that deals damage to anyone inside it, but you don’t have to move as the tank. Similarly, the melee guy will create a bubble everyone should stand in, except the caster tank. Neither mechanic requires tanks to do anything they aren’t already doing.
  • Swap bosses before caster lady’s debuff reaches 10 stacks. At 10 stacks Pashmar’s Touch will mind control the tank. Keep the bosses in the same positions, just switch the tanks. The melee guy also has a stacking debuff, which increases damage he deals, but it’s far less important to pay attention to.
  • During Deferred Sentence, move around every few seconds to keep the debuff below 3. The debuff stacks when you stay still and falls off when you move, but when it falls off it deals damage. It will kill you eventually if the stacks are high after a certain amount of time.
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Za’qul, Harbinger of Ny’alotha

Normal / Heroic
Normal, Fear, and Delirium Realms
  • Tanks stack during Mind Tether. The Mind Tether cast will link the main tank with whoever is standing closest (hopefully the off tank), and deal part of the damage dealt to the main tank as shadow damage to the linked target. Tanks should stay close to each other while tethered.
  • Move out of the path of blue portal. After a few seconds, large tentacles will reach out of the portal.
  • Tank boss near summoner adds. Summoners can’t be tanked but they deal raid damage. The small adds that they summon can be tanked, simply pick them up and keep them near the boss.
  • Move boss into purple/green void zone. If he is in the Maddening Eruption when it explodes, he’ll turn gray and take 30% increased damage.
Final Phase (All Realms Active)
  • When the Summoners appear, stand near one and use the extra action button that appears. This will take you to the Fear realm, which most of the raid should be in to kill the Summoners. Once all the summoners die, run to the purple portal nearish the middle of the room and use your extra action button to leave.
  • You can only see the Maddening Eruption in the fear realm, so either a tank should go down there or one of the dps down there should call out its location. As long as Mind Tether isn’t active and isn’t about to be cast, it’s safe to send a tank down.
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Queen Azshara

NormalHeroic
Phase 1
  • One tank on the guy, one on the girl. Azshara is not attackable during this phase. Each mini-boss applies a debuff, the most notable being the caster naga freezes the tank at a certain amount of stacks. However, it’s not required to tank swap these two. They need to die at approximately the same time.
  • Sandwich a pillar between bosses during Painful Memories. They will yell mean things at each other. If they’re within line of sight, they will deal far more damage.
  • During Longing, keep the bosses near each other. They will say less-mean things, and if they can’t see each other they will deal far more damage.
  • Tank mini-bosses away from Wards to drop purple puddles out of the way. These puddles are targeted on the tanks and stick around for the entire fight, so it’s important to place them in decent places, especially away from the wards and titan console.
  • An Overzealous Hulk might spawn, but he cannot be tanked.
Intermissions (After Phase 1 and Phase 2)
  • Do what your debuff says. It will tell you to either keep moving, stop moving, soak an orb, or not soak an orb.
Phase 2
  • Tank Azshara near a glowy orange Ward. The Ancient Wards need to be near full, but she will drain the Ward nearest to her.
  • Swap around 20 stacks of the debuff. It increases arcane damage.
  • Hide behind the titan console or a pillar during Arcane Detonation. It deals nearly lethal damage if you’re in Azshara’s line of sight.
  • Step into a Ward to get 2 to 4 stacks. Players recharge the Wards by standing in them, but it applies a debuff that reduces max health, which means tanks can’t soak a whole lot, but every bit is important.
  • Adds spawn but are not tankable. They will head straight for the center and sacrifice themselves.
Phase 3
  • Pick up the Myrmidon. Position him so that when someone is targeted by his spear, they can aim it at the caster naga without hitting the titan console. This is needed to break her shield and make her vulnerable to damage.
  • Move the boss and Myrmidon to any naga casters. They will pick one of the Wards. This is to maximize cleave damage and to make it easier to aim the Myrmidon’s spear.
  • Taunt swap the Myrmidon and boss at 20 stacks of the debuff. The Myrmidon with Azshara can hit quite hard so it’s best to keep them hitting opposite tanks.
Phase 4
  • There is no longer a taunt swap debuff in this phase.
  • Move the boss out of the large purple void zones.
  • Move out of the projected path of the laser eyes on the side of the room. They can be hard to see while tanking, so generally it’s a good idea to run if there’s red pointing at you.
  • One of the tanks can help release charges from the Titan Console. There are four charges that need to be released (by standing near the Console and clicking the extra action button that appears) before Azshara does it herself, but they apply risky debuffs that could kill someone, deplete a Ward, or deal heavy damage.
Intermissions
  • New decrees: Move, stay still.
  • You can get 1 or 2 debuffs at a time. This can lead to complications like having to stack and soak, run and be alone, soak and be alone, etc.