Mind Controling adds during Instructer Raz (25man): How to.

The purpose of this guide is to make an easily accessible guide to the one fight left in the game that simply can not be done without a specific class present. Gratz priests, your raid slot is guaranteed.

Instructor Razuvious is the first boss in the Military Wing of Naxxramas. He hits far too hard to be tanked by conventional means, but fortunately he comes with 4 adds called Death Knight Understudies that have the ability to gain/maintain threat on him and have the ability to take the huge amount of damage he puts out. These adds can only be Mind Controled by priests. Finally a use for Mind Control other than jumping people off cliffs in EotS.

Part 1: Gear.

Before I begin here I'd like to say that the very first time I attempted to Mind Control the adds for the heroic Raz fight I had 0 hit rating. Hit rating is not required to do this fight, if just makes it easier.

Hit rating is, however, the ONLY stat that will make any difference what-so-ever in this fight. You will not be healing/dpsing at all. Mind Control will be the only thing you have to cast once the fight starts, and the only stat that effects Mind Control's effectiveness is hit rating (ok I guess haste reduces the cast time, but whatever).

So obviously, before the fight starts, put on anything you have with +hit on it. It can be blue, green, purple, whatever it doesn't matter.

So how much hit do you need to be capped? Well, since the Death Knight Understudies are only level 82 (as opposed to level 83 which is the level of all raid bosses) you DO NOT need to have +17% hit in order to be capped. The cap for spell hit against level 82 creatures is only +6%.

Hit required: 158
with Drenai racial aura: 132
with 3/3 shadow focus: 79
with Drenai racial aura and 3/3 shadow focus: 53

Part 2: The Pull.

This is more important than you might imagine. You must, repeat must, cast Mind Soothe on the two closest Understudies prior to attempting to Mind Control one. Mind Control is the only CC spell in the game with a range of only 20 yards. If you attempt to Mind Control from maximum range you will pull the Understudies early and you'll have to finish the 3 second cast while 4 level 82 elites beat on you. The few times I've seen priests start this fight without casting Mind Soothe first have resulted in a wipe more times than not. So cast Mind Soothe.

Some guilds will have a tank make the initial pull. This does work, but if the priests just cast Mind Soothe before the pull this becomes unnecissary.

Instructor Razuvious, however, is immune to Mind Soothe, but he patrols around so just wait until he has moved to the far side of the room.

Something else to be aware of is that Instructor Razuvious will not run into the fight immediately. He will stay wherever he is and watch for the first 4-5 seconds or so. Its important to NOT run your Understudy to him right away since this will put you too far from it and Mind Control will break early. Just stand there and wait for him to run into the fight and grab him as he gets into range.

Part 3: Tanking.

When you Mind Control the Understudies you gain a new bar with their abilities on it. Their abilities are: Attack (assigned to "1"), Blood Strike (assigned to "4"), Taunt (assigned to "5"), and Bone Barrier (assigned to "5"). Attack begins auto-attack. Blood Strike is just an instant attack that does a few thousand damage. It has a 4 second cooldown and should be used whenever its available. Taunt (obviously) taunts the boss onto your Understudy for 10 seconds. It has a 20 second cooldown. Bone Barrier reduces the damage your Understudy takes by 75% for 20 seconds. Razuvious has an attack that can hit plate for over 100,000 so this has to be up while your Understudy has aggro. It won't one shot you even if you don't have Bone Barrier up, but you still don't want to take a full-damage hit from Razuvious if you can avoid it. This ability has a 30 second cooldown.

The idea is to hit Bone Barrier immediately before Taunting. After 10-15 seconds of tanking (depending on if there are 2 or 3 priests Mind Controling) the next priest needs to make his Understudy Taunt. This allows for a 100% uptime of Bone Barrier.

After the first round of Taunting, the cooldown on each Understudy's Bone Barrier will rotate who is tanking by itself. It is important that the SECOND Taunt comes 10-15 seconds after the frist one (the first one being the one that initially pulls Razuvious) to allow the rotation to occur.

Taunts will be every 15 seconds with 2 priests in order to keep Bone Barrier up 100% of the time. If 3 priests are in the raid, Razuvious should be taunted evert 10 seconds which makes it impossible to pull aggro.

NOTE: DPS need to be careful not to pull aggro after one Taunt wears off but before the next one is applied.

Lastly, it is highly abvisable to cancel Mind Control and re-cast it immediately after Razuvious is taunted off of you. This makes it impossible for your Minc Control to expire mid-tanking (assuming you are hit-capped). You can cancel Mind Control either by right-clicking the Mind Control buff on the top right of your screen, or with this macro:

/script PetDismiss()

Part 4: Macros

Macros are not a requirment, but God damnit if they don't make it a whole lot easier.

First, set your Mind Control target as your focus by either right-clicking it and selecting "Set Focus" or targeting it and typing /focus. Then add this first macro to your hot-bar in a place where it can be reached easily. Do not assign it to 1 through = since those hot-keys will be replaced by the Understudy's abilities when you Mind Control them.

/target focus
/cast Mind Control

You can even combine this with the macro from the end of part 3 to end your Mind Control and re-cast it with 1 button.

/script PetDismiss()
/target focus
/cast Mind Control

Also make this macro. It will target Razuvious which helps a great deal once the fight starts and he is being swarmed by melee.

/target Instructor Razuvious

Any other macros are relly just for fun, but can be helpful too. If your Mind Control ends unexpectedly, for example, you could use this macro to alert your raid.

/yell Jesus tap-dancing Christ! MC ended early! Someone save me! AHHHHHH!

Part 5: Recap.

Let's review:

1) Cast Mind Soothe on the closest Understudies. If you don't the raid will probably wipe.
2) Don't run to Razuvious right away or you'll get out of range of Mind Control. If you do the raid will probably wipe.
3) Allow for enough time before making the second taunt or else the tanking rotation will get out of sync and the raid will probably wipe.
4) Never taunt if Bone Barrier is not active, otherwise your Understudy will die and the raid will probably wipe.

No pressure. Good luck.