Wintergrasp 10-man Boss Strategy Guide

Archavon the Stonewatcher is the first and only boss located in the Vault of the Archavon, more commonly known as the Lake Wintergrasp boss. This boss fight is fairly straight forward and can be easily pugged so long as your raid has sufficient healers and tanks. You should note that you’ll only be able to enter archavon’s instance when your faction controls wintergrasp

Archavon the Stonewatcher Abilities

Health: 2.3 million
Rock Spikes - Sends rock spikes flying at one random member of the raid. These spikes will continue to pelt this player and will deal AoE damage to any other players near by.
Smoke Clouds - Archavon will occasionally put down a smoke cloud somewhere in the room, this cloud deals AoE damage to anyone standing inside of it.
Tank Toss - Archavon will cast AoE stomp stun on the raid and then grab your main tank and hold him in his hand. At this point your off tank will need to taunt and hold aggro on Archavon until he tosses your main tank from his hand and re-aggros him.
Enrage timer: 5 minutes

Archavon the Stonewatcher Boss Strategy

This fight is fairly basic, it’s really more of a DPS race than anything else. Start the fight by simply running into archavon’s chamber at the back of the lake wintergrasp instance. Your main tank will get the initial aggro, at which point the remainder of the raid should spread out around the room. It’s important to spread out as much as possible (not including melee players), as this will prevent the raid from taking unnecessary AoE damage during rock spikes or the smoke clouds.

As I mentioned above the 2 key AoE aspects of the fight are the rock spike and smoke clouds. These occur periodically and can be easily healed through. If you’re a DPS or tank just make sure you aren’t standing in these AoE attacks, thus putting additional pressure on your healers.

The Tank Switch

The big thing many groups might struggle with the first time is the tank switch. Periodically Archavon will grab your main tank and pick him up with his hand. At this point Archavon must be taunted by your off tank. If he’s not taunted fast enough he will simply go down the aggro list and kill off your top DPS 1 by 1, so it’s important that this taunt is quick. The off tank only needs to hold Archavon for a few seconds. Soon Archavon will toss your tank back down and resume aggro.

Beating the Enrage

The main concern with this fight is centered around the enrage timer, which is set at 5 minutes. It’s not a difficult timer to beat. Your raid will need to put out approximately 7,666 DPS as a whole, which if we assume you have 6 total DPS in the raid (less your 2 tanks and 2 healers) we end up needing 1,277 DPS per person. This is a very reasonable number for players of even the lowest gear levels.

Just stay focused, stay alive, avoid AoE, and conduct propper tank switches and you’ll be well on your way to your first kill.