There is only one mount in Mogu’shan Vaults, but it is a very pretty one. Who could say no to a sparkle dragon?
Unfortunately it does mean dealing with Mogu’shan Vaults, a raid from Mists of Pandaria.
- Requirements
- Getting there
- Boss 1: The Stone Guard
- Boss 2: Feng the Accursed
- Boss 3: Gara’jal the Spiritbinder
- Boss 4: The Spirit Kings
- Boss 5: Elegon
Requirements
Thus Mists raids you don’t have the hidden buff which you may be used to. The damage and healing you do in Draenor is what you’ll see in Mists raids.
When I first poked MSV on my shadowpriest when he turned level 100 and had some basic raid gear, it didn’t go very well. I think the first boss turned him into a shadowy smear across the floor!
In the writing of this guide I managed to solo all of Mogu’Shan Vaults, up to and including Elegon using the following:
- 703 ilvl shadow priest – lots of healing and absorbs. And good damage
- 677 ilvl blood death knight – the healing and absorbs make DK tanks a good solo class
- 671 ilvl BM hunter – a tanking pet, I use a turtle for the shield, is essential here
I also tried with a 671 ilvl demonology warlock, but the void lord was just too squishy for even the first boss. However I know from experience that this warlock can solo Elegon.
Until this weekend I’ve been using a save of Mogu’Shan Vaults with the first 4 bosses killed on a character on another account; not only does this save time, but it also means that more characters can solo the boss you need for the mount. And more chances mean you’ll get the mount faster!
If you do not have such a save or a character similar to one of the above, I strongly recommend that you either go in a group or wait until the expansion after Warlords of Draenor.
You will need a tank here or a way to heal lots – I ran my DK as frost on one or two bosses and the end result was a death knight sadly shaking her head at me as the boss killed her. My shadowpriest was doing an average of 9k healing per second from shielding and devouring plague. Without that he’d have been killed twice over by the bosses.
I got the save on the second account at the start of Warlords by taking it and my Blood DK with @Ottahz‘s mage to kill the first four bosses – at the time the 3rd boss did too much damage for my Blood DK thanks to how the fight works.
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Getting there
Mogu’Shan Vaults can be found in the north of Kun’Lai Summit, just to the east of the Temple of the White Tiger.
The fastest way there is to hearth to the Shrine and fly from there:
I tend to check out the spawn point for the Kun’Lai Zandalari Warbringer on my way over as I’m still missing one of their mounts. However they’re so farmed and with Pandaria being cross-realmed means they’re almost never up.
The entrance can be found on the side of a cliff – you can only reach it by flying.
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Boss 1: The Stone Guard
Before the Stone Guard can be engaged you’ve got some trash to handle. The dog statues either side of the staircase are mobs which you aggro by running up to them – or sending my pet to play in the case of my hunter!
Before the boss themselves you’ve got two more packs of statues as well as a pair of patrolling Quilen. These apply a debuff called petrification which will turn you to stone for ~18s when it reaches 100 stacks. If you’re solo when this happens the mobs will reset – I recommend you pull the mobs individually and wait for petrification to drop off between each of them.
The boss is a rotating set of three guardians of the four total which could be present. This does mean you may need to worry about different abilities week to week.
- Amethyst Guardian: purple pools to move out of
- Cobalt Guardian: freezing mines to move out of
- Jade Guardian: jade shards which do raidwide damage
- Jasper Guardian: chains between two players
The only ones you need to worry about are the purple pools and freezing mines – worse being the combination of the two as you’ll end up being rooted in place with a purple pool under you.
This week saw the Amethyst Guardian in play, thus the purple pools below:
The guardians share a health pool so cleaving is handy here.
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Boss 2: Feng the Accursed
There is more of the “trash you have to walk through” to deal with here. And you need to handle it otherwise the boss isn’t summoned.
The in normal Feng the Accursed has three phases, based on the amount of health. He changes phases at 95%, 66% and 33%.
- 95% -> 65%: Dodge the lightning fist strike by straffing away. You may need to pop a damage reduction cooldown during epicenter
- 66% -> 34%: The fire is annoying and does enough damage you’ll need to move away from it
- 33% -> 0%: does some damage; absorbs/healing is handy here
The above is the view of my hunter doing this during the fire phase. The crystal in the top right of the picture can only be used by a tank class; the one above allows you to channel a nullification field which is handy during epicenter and stops the boss gaining the stacks of fire during the fire phase.
There is another crystal which can be used to steal a boss ability, but only when its cast onto the other tank. This makes it less than useful when you’re doing this solo!
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Boss 3: Gara’jal the Spiritbinder
Once you’ve cleared all of the Zandalari trash – including the ones flying around – the boss is spawned.
Gara’jal used to be a tricky fight – often done using an addon to coordinate who’d go into the spirit realm by using totems.
When doing this solo it has been turned into a DPS race – will you kill the boss faster than the increasing damage kills you.
As the fight goes on more and more ghosts are spawning in the spirit realm, all firing shadowbolts at you. Unfortunately you can’t go into the spirit realm to kill them when you’re soloing this. You’ll also not be pulled into the spirit realm as a tank to face the big spirit there.
As a result you have to kill the boss before he kills you. This wasn’t a problem for my shadowpriest – with his high DPS and his ability to heal / absorb the damage it was easy. My hunter only just made it and ended up using an agility rune and +100 stat food to increase her damage. My blood DK had the damage output to kill Gara’jal before the ghost damage killed her.
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Boss 4: The Spirit Kings
The Spirit Kings was a fun fight to do and probably caused me the most issues here.
The trash though. That’s fun. You speak to Lorewalker Cho to start it off. He runs off to press buttons…
… which summon mobs. I really hope that Cho & Brann don’t decide to dig up things; they don’t have a track record of digging up nice things!
There are four kings you’ll here, each one activating after the last one has been killed.
Qiang the Merciless isn’t too bad, although the massive attacks will do a lot of damage. Dodge the annhilate and the line of mogu warriors summoned by Flanking Orders. You’ll need to dodge flanking orders throughout the fight.
Subetai the Swift is the annoying one here. Volley should be dodged. However what is really annoying is the pinning arrow which you will be hit by from Rain of arrows.
This stuns you until the arrow is killed – not a problem for my hunter as her pet killed it – but an issue for my shadowpriest and DK! On them I used a PvP trinket to remove the stun, with Draenic Living Action Potion at the ready if I didn’t get the boss down in time.
The Rain of arrows happens every minute or so. This means that with the trinket and living action potion you’ve got three minutes to kill the boss if you use the trinket for the 1st pinned down and the potion for the 2nd. By the 3rd pinned down the PvP trinket should be up again.
All of my characters only got a single pinned down, although it was close with my blood DK!
Meng the Demented does some damage and you’ll take damage for the rest of the fight thanks to the Maddening Shout the boss will do. As there are no other players here you can’t remove this debuff.
Zian of the Endless Shadow summons skulls which make a large void zone when killed. Just kill the skulls and move out of the zone made.
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Boss 5: Elegon
The trash before Elegon does a reasonable amount of damage, although if you’ve gotten this far it shouldn’t be a problem for you. The main thing to avoid is the Forceful Swing the Mogu’shan Wardens do as this knocks you back a long way – its possible to be knocked into the pit below where the boss spawns with this!
Its also how you gain the achievement And… It’s Good! – stand on the console used to summon Elegon and be hit by a forceful swing.
Once you’ve killed the trash and asked Cho to start up the engine of Nalak’sha, Elegon appears.
Its a shame we have to kill Elegon really; such a pretty boss! When you step onto the platform you’ll become empowered – looking like Algalon from Ulduar and increasing your damage done. Unfortunately you also get stacks of Overcharged which increases your damage taken as well.
Elegon uses Celestial Breath on a regular basis which does a good amount of damage. Above 50% health celestial protectors will be summoned which you’ll need to kill.
At 85% and 50% health Elegon will try to reactive the engine by sending out waves of energy charges. In the past you’d kill all of these, increasing the stacks of Draw Power on the boss – each one increasing the damage taken by Elegon by 10%.
You do not want to kill the energy charges
In my experience killing any of the energy charges can cause the encounter to bug out, leaving Empyreal focuses up, even when they’ve been killed. If it ends up in this state you’ll have to restart the encounter by jumping in to the pit which openned up under the boss.
You’ll probably find that there will be a 2nd wave of energy charges even if you don’t kill the first wave. As I said, buggy.
When the charging phase is over and the pillars come up you run off the platform before it disappears, and then run around killing all of the pillars. Back in the day the walls of energy would force you split the raid up to handle killing the pillars. With our increased health you can just run through them.
As you do this you’ll have to handle mobs which spawn from energy zones put at your position. Just dodge the zones and kill the adds.
Once Elegon goes below 50% health the engine starts to self destruct so you have to stay in the center and just DPS Elegon down.
Good luck with getting Elegon’s mount to drop!
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