Thoughts and musings on Kara – part 2

Moroes the Steward

Moroes is a pain for beginning raiders because the fight is a real test of your ability to manage multiple targets under a tight deadline. Once you get the knack of it though, he’s not so tough. As a bit of lore, he was the personal servant to Medivh while the master mage ran the tower. Medivh was the son of one of the guardians who fought Saragas in ancient times and was born possessed by the villain – long story. Toward the later stages of his life Medivh cum Saragas killed off Moroes and the castle cook, named … Cook. They are buried outside near where you rez. NOTE: you have to kill Moroes or you cannot proceed to the Opera Event – he’s a required boss. Attumen isn’t, nor is the next boss the Maiden of Virtue.

First of all your raid should gather on the stairs near the door leading out of Kara. We usually group near the base of the second flight of stairs. Up ahead of you – which you can’t see – is a large dance hall with a mess of non-elite AOE packs and a few single elites as well as some smaller elite AOE packs. Off to the left is the banquet hall, to the right is a door leading to the prostitute’s quarters.

Get a rogue or cat to stealth up and start marking targets. The single elites will be patrolling around – mark them up first. Toss a mark on each of the nearest AOE packs as well – one mark for each pack.

Once everything is marked – specifically watch those patrolling elites, you can pull one of the nearest AOE non-elite packs to you. Pull them down the stairs and let your casters go to town. Focus heals on the cloth cannons so you don’t lose too many – we usually end up with at least one dead.

Now that you’ve cleared the annoying non-elites, start pulling the single pats as they come by – take your time – the respawn on this area is a lot longer than on the stable trash. Kill each, pull the next, rinse and repeat. Now you should have a clear field within about 30 yds of the top of the stairs. It’s not necessary to clear the room – just anything that might wander into your raid or that is near enough to aggro on them.

You have the option here of doing the next pulls 2 ways. What needs to happen is this. There’s a banquet hall off to the left of the top of the stairs and in it are several tables, each with a non-elite AOE pack. There’s also some wandering single mob, elite Stewards (waiters). Your choice is to have the raid remain on the stairs and have your tank pull them to you OR have the raid hug the left wall, bunch up in the corner at the immediate top left of the stairs and have your tank pull the mobs there.

I’ve done both and each has its plusses. I like the stairs best ‘cause it lets me see more, but you also get a scatter effect as well. At any rate – the mobs at the table and the patrolling elites all need to be cleared (one group at a time!) Once you clear the near portion of the banquet hall you can move the raid inside -- MAKE DAMN SURE NO ONE PULLS THE AOE ELITE PACK standing nearby in the dance hall. It’s all too easy to do and can cause a wipe.

As you enter the banquet area, there’s two elite mobs standing on the right wall – their counterparts are on the far left wall – leave them alone for now. Also – there’s a raised stage at the back wall (the boss is there with his buddies) and there’s a table on either side of the raised area – more non-elite AOE packs. And finally there’s a couple more elite single mobs patrolling the area between the long table and the two smaller ones. There is also something called a Brittle Bones debuff the patrolling mobs give out when attacked – make sure if your tank has it that he isn’t the one pulling the next mob – let the OT handle.

To clear the room you want to mark up the patrolling elites and the non-elite AOE packs at the small tables. Pull each individually and burn em down. Next pick on one set of the paired up elite mobs standing on the wall on either side of the room. Each tank takes 1 each – focus fire on one til it’s down then shit to the OT’s target. Healers watch VERY CLOSELY to the drunken debuff the tanks can get – it’ll screw them up bad if you don’t dispel it fast. I’ve seen a lot of raids wipe on these.

Now we come to the boss fight.

Moroes is a rogue – not that he isn’t likable but he has Vanish, Gouge, Blind and Garrote capabilities and wields two daggers. His friends are worse.

From Wowwiki: The Moroes encounter tests your raid's ability to control several targets while also maintaining high DPS. Success requires a solid control strategy for his four dinner guests. If allowed to go free, they will quickly put an end to the squishies. Control must be established immediately on the pull and maintained throughout the fight.

Once control is established, the encounter becomes a race between the raid's damage output and the building damage caused by Garrote. Each time a Garrote is applied, the strain on the healers increases. Moroes must die before the healing needed becomes too much to handle. (interpretation – healers need big mana pools)

In fact – so this doesn’t get too long just go read the strategy page at WoWwiki that I linked at the top. About the only thing I’ve done on this fight that is different is changing up tank roles. New raids will want to have both tanks on the boss at all times – since either can be stunned or blinded and will lose aggro for a second or two – dispel the affects when you can and it should go smooth. We usually have the MT pull the boss and both MT and OT gank him while keeping him on the right wall of the room. You’ll want one of your melee nearby because both tanks can be stunned/blinded – doesn’t happen a lot but it does happen. Keep a melee near so Moroes doesn’t go for a healer.

The casters need to go down fast – esp the Spriest if she’s there – her mana burn can wipe your raid. A good rule here is to shackle/trap/sheep all but one of the adds, leave a priority cloth target out and have your melee and ranged DPS burn the add down. Recast your shackles and other CC every 10 secs (or chain trap/kite) or so to keep them locked up. Then take the next that doesn’t need a tank. Keep anything CC’d that might require a tank to kill. You should be able to burn 2 mobs, leave the others CC’d and turn ALL DPS on Moroes, healers are gonna get a work out if you dilly dally around due to the garrote ability – they basically have to heal through it. Shammy healers can mitigate this threat nicely with chain heal, but any good healer can make it happen. Pallys can BoP someone out of it – Divine Shield themselves if needed.

Once the boss is down get the raid out of the room and back on the stairs ASAP (without pulling the dance hall mobs) and let the tanks break CC and kite the adds to the door – no need to kill them, they will reset if pulled to the door. Once they do go get your loot. And get your fannies back on the stairs outside.


The alternate way I’ve done this fight was to have a single tank on Moroes and let the other tank the un-CC’d adds one at a time. This is an okay way of doing it – the non-boss tank needs a few shots on the boss to register on the threat meter – but it’s more risky if your tanks are less than ideally geared. I do like the method though because you can use a tank to bash the cloth around and that helps protect the raid. Just remember – the longer the boss is up, the more dmg your healers have to deal with due to Garrote.