Illidan is the big baddy of Black Temple, rather, its resident badass and the final test after beating on all his pansy blood elf advisors and otherwise ineffective subordinates.  Given the massive health pool combined with his arsenal of abilities, you’ll be in for a long and tough fight.

Abilities

HP – Lots

Melee – 6,000 – 8,000

Phase One

Shear – Reduces the health of his current target by 60%, negated by shield block.

Draw Soul – Forward cone effect dealing 5,000 shadow damage and healing Illidan for 100,000 HP

Flame Crash – Illidan leaps into the air and lands with a splash of blue flame, deals 5,000 fire damage a second within a 10 yard radius, lasts a total of 2 minutes.

Parasitic Shadowfiend – Randomly targeted raid members will gain the Parasites debuff, lasting 10 seconds and dealing 3,000
shadow damage every 2 seconds.  Once the debuff has expired 2 parasites will spawn at the afflicted player and attack the highest total threat target, this applies once more the parasitic shadowfiend debuff.

Phase Two

Flames of Azzinoth – Rather large fire elementals summoned by Illidan at the beginning of phase 2, these each require a fire-resist stacked tank and must be destroyed to reach phase 3.

Fireball – Whenever Illidan is not utilizing his eye beam ability, he will instead fire off volleys of fireballs dealing around 3,000 short range AoE damage on impact.

Eye Beam – Literally a lazor beam fired from his eyes, sweeping across the platform and dealing around 20,000 fire damage initially, the remaining flames tick for 2,000 additional damage every second afterwards.

Dark Barrage – Randomly targeted attack that is applied to a single player, dealing 3,000 damage every second for a total of 10 seconds/30,000 damage.

Flames of Azzinoth

Slightly more than 1,000,000 HP

Melee – 2,000 – 3,000 fire damage against maximum fire resistance.

Blaze – Seen as a yellow trail/cloud of flame beneath the elemental, deals 5,000 fire damage a second, damage does stack with multiple elementals within range of one-another.

Flame Blast – Frontal cone attack with a 15 yard range, deals 7,000 – 9,000 fire damage.

Charge/Enrage – Should a player move further than 25 yards from one of the blades/lure the elemental further than 25 yards from their requisite blade they will instantly enrage and wipe the raid.

Phase Three

Shear, Draw Soul, Parasitic Shadowfiend and Flamecrash will all be utilized throughout this phase.

Agonizing Flames – Randomly targeted AoE attack, unleashes a flamestrike beneath the targeted player, dealing 4,000 fire damage initially and dealing and ever increasing amount of damage over a period of 60 seconds to anyone within the residual flames.

Phase Four

Demon Within – Tradtitional demon hunter transformation, Illidan turns all black and glowy, ceasing to move and instead utilizing a number of ranged abilities.

Shadow Blast – Targets the highest threat player, deals around 8,000 – 11,000 shadow damage as well as lesser splash damage to all within 20 yards of the targeted player.

Shadow Demons – Spawns four shadow demons at Illidan’s position that will proceed to target random raid members, paralyzing them.  These demons will slowly approach the affected player, slaying them instantly if they reach them.  Around 22,000 HP.

Flame Burst – Flames assault the entire raid for an average of 3,500 damage every 10 seconds, affected players deal additional damage to all within a 5 yard radius.

Aura of Dread – 15 yard range aura dealing 1,000 shadow damage a second as well as increasing shadow damage taken by 30%, this effect will stack.

Phase Five

Shear, Draw Soul, Parasitic Shadowfiend, Flamecrash and Agonizing Flames will all be used throughout this phase.

Enrage – Triggered a short amount of time into the phase, greatly increases attack speed and damage.  This can be countered by luring Illidan into Maiev’s traps.

Phase 1

Phase one is begun once a player finishes speaking to Akama, triggering him to first walk up and engage Illidan in a short dialogue before the true fight begins with ‘You are not prepared!’

Now, hopefully reading this guide can rectify any issues of preparedness, catching Illidan off-guard from all the easy times he had previously when wiping unknowing raids with his variety of deadly abilities.

Phase 1 at its heart is a tank n’ spank fight, the only tricks beings abilities such as Shear and Flame Crash.  Shear is an attack with a 1.5 second cast, allowing the tank a short period of time to prepare for it.

Shear will, if shield blocked, do absolutely nothing, being 100% negated, however, should this attack not be prevented like so, it will effectively cripple your main-tanks health-pool and spell almost inevitable doom should Illidan land a remotely high-damage attack.

Another attack to watch out for is Flame Crash, flying up into the air briefly before smashing down with an explosion of flames beneath him.  Move Illidan away from the flames immediately as it deals an easy 5,000 fire damage a tick, just be careful not to expose the raid to a draw soul while doing so.

The final ability to watch for within this phase is the Parasitic Shadowfiend, mainly ranged DPS should be picking these off while melee DPS focuses entirely on Illidan, only backing off should the tank himself receive the debuff.

Phase 2

Phase two begins once Illidan reaches 65%, marked by his flight into the air and subsequent summoning of two immense elementals, the flames of azzinoth.

At each side of the circular grate, one fire elemental will spawn upon the thrown blade previously wielded by Illidan.  These must be picked up by a full fire-resist geared tank immediately, given even a second free they can drop more than one or two players.

The unique requirement of this phase is that all players must be within at least a 25 yard range of either one or the other of the
blades, doing so prevents one of the flames from accidentally leaving the ‘safe zone’ and enraging, leading to a massive damage spike if not almost immediate wipe.

Additionally, the tanks as well as all other players must be on their toes to avoid eye beams, this will primarily harry tanks with the need to both position their flame correctly, avoid being charged by the opposite tanks elemental, and re-position as eye beams fly by.

As with all stages of Illidan, this is a healing intensive fight, healers will be both healing tanks, countering the random fireball volleys/flame patches, and watching out for a possible Dark Barrage, the true terror of phase 2.

Dark Barrage deals the massive 30,000 damage over 10 seconds, requiring immediate aid to prevent the targeted player from dropping due to both this and the many flames patches/fireball residues left behind from Illidan’s other attacks.

Tanks may need to shield wall to avoid death when targeted with Dark Barrage.

Phase 3

This phase is begun once the flames of Azzinoth are slain, Illidan landing in the middle of the grate and proceeding to dish out the damage once more in a rehash of phase 1, just one added twist this time.

Agonizing flames is a rather nasty power, dealing both the instant fire damage as well as an ever increasing DoT to whoever is within 5 yards of the impact zone leading up to more than 4,000 damage per tick.

All other abilities from phase 1 are still functional and must be countered as previously dealt with.

Phase 4

Phase four, demon form, will occur every 60 seconds and lasts for a total of 30 seconds.

In this stage you’ll be using a ranged tank, a warlock in particular, to counter the bosses abilities, healing through the combined damage of aura of dread as well as his other attacks Is simply too devastating to both the tank and healers mana pools.

Melee DPS must back off immediately, leaving only the warlock to DoT the boss up and build threat as entering demon form, this takes the boss about 10 seconds, wipes all previous aggro built.

The second threat is the 4 shadow demons now spawned, needing all players including the warlock-tank to stay at maximum range possible, avoiding any quick and unavoidable deaths via a sudden shadow demon attack.

DPS should all move as swiftly as possible to drop the various demons as soon as possible, using all slowing abilities/cooldowns required to prevent them from reaching their target.  As soon as the demon is slain the affected player is released from stun.

Phase 3 and 4 will be alternated until Illidan reaches 50%.

Phase 5

Reaching 30% Illidan will imprison the entire raid, preventing any movement/attacks, etc. until the semi cut-scene ends, Maiev arriving to save the day and engaging Illidan who will now being to enrage and so on.

Transitioning to Phase 5 should be done only when Illidan is both within regular form, meaning no demon within, etc. as well as any and all parasites dealt with prior to triggering this, otherwise the parasites will inevitably infect whoever has their aggro as soon as the imprisonment ends.

Throughout phase 5 Maiev will both aid with DPS and drop traps, these traps being the only method of halting Illidan’s extremely damaging enrage.  Leading him onto a trap will result in his being stunned, kneeling onto the ground, for 10 seconds and increasing all damage dealt to him for this duration.

Despite how easy it sounds, re-positioning the boss repeatedly is simply asking for an inconvenient draw soul/missing a shear, therefore only move him when everyone is ready, even his enrage can be healed through for a time if that’s what it takes.