This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Occu'thar in Baradin Hold. It is targeted to anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide applies to patch 4.3 of World of Warcraft.

Occu'thar is a new boss within the Baradin Hold raid instance with Patch 4.2 of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. He is a fairly simple encounter in terms of mechanics and gear requirements, and will only test a few basic skills for your raid.

As Argaloth corresponds to Tier 11, so Occu'thar corresponds to Tier 12, dropping various Tier Set pieces in addition to a large variety of PvP items.

1. General Information↑top

1.1. Health Pool

Occu'thar has the following health pool:

• in 10-man difficulty: 27M;
• in 25-man difficulty: 80.9M.

Occu'thar will summon Eyes of Occu'thar adds regularly throughout the fight. These have 165k health in in both 10-man and 25-man difficulties.

1.2. Enrage Timer

Occu'thar has an enrage timer of 5 minutes.

1.3. Raid Composition

The following raid compositions are are advised:

• in 10-man difficulty: 2 tanks 2/3 healers, 5/6 DPS;
• in 25-man difficulty: 2 tanks, 6 healers, 17 DPS.

2. Overview of the Fight↑top

Occu'thar is a single phase encounter, which will test your raid's ability to quickly kill adds, while performing a tank swap.

In addition to Occu'thar himself, your raid will regularly have to kill some Eyes of Occu'thar which the boss will spawn. These have fairly low health and must be killed speedily or your raid will face heavy damage.

If executed correctly, the fight is extremely easy.

3. Abilities↑top

Occu'thar himself has only two abilities:

• Focused Fire: an ability which targets a random raid member and places a void zone on his location. The void zones do a large amount of Fire damage each second and last 15 seconds. This ability is cast roughly once every 15 seconds.
• Searing Shadows: a frontal cone attack which deals a very high amount of Shadow damage to any players in front of the boss, and increases their Shadow damage taken by 100% for 30 seconds. This ability is cast once every 20 seconds.

In addition to this, the boss will spawn an Eye of Occu'thar for each raid member, except for Occu'thar's current tank. The eyes will attach themselves to the players, and move with them.

Eyes of Occu'thar have the following two abilities:

• Gaze of Occu'thar: each Eye of Occu'thar damages the raid member it was spawned on for a small amount of shadow damage per second for 10 seconds.
• Occu'thar's Destruction: any Eye of Occu'thar that is not killed when 10 seconds from spawning have passed will detonate and deal a large amount of raid-wide Shadow damage.

4. Strategy↑top

The strategy for Occu'thar is simple. Your tank should always face Occu'thar away from the raid, so that no one other than himself is ever damaged by Searing Shadows. After the first Searing Shadows, the off-tank should taunt the boss and continue to face him away from the raid, while the main tank should move behind the boss while his debuff persists.

Your raid should be slightly spread out to reduce initial damage from the void zones placed by the boss through Focused Fire. As the Eyes of Occu'thar spawn, your raid should collapse to a location not affected by a void zone, and AoE down the eyes.

The tank who is currently not tanking the boss will also have an eye placed on himself, and will have to stack with the rest of the raid. The tank who is tanking Occu'thar when eyes are spawned has no special task to perform, and should simply tank the boss (as no eye will be spawned on him).

Your aim is to ensure that no Eyes of Occu'thar live beyond 10 seconds. Should this happen, raid damage may quickly overwhelm your healers, though a few Eyes surviving may be manageable.

5. Final Considerations↑top

As you can see, this is not a difficult encounter at all and so long as the tanks do not get more than one stack from Searing Shadows and there is decent DPS on Eyes of Occu'thar, a kill should be following soon. Good luck!