The Oculus is probably the dungeon that gives me the most apprehension. Mainly because back when I was the level to actually run it, it was HARD and people hated it and stayed away.

This unfortunately has left us with a lot of players who don’t know what the heck they’re doing with the instance. (Or, how many bosses there are. >_<)

So, here is

Caliban’s Guide to : The Oculus

(intro post to guides here)

General Zone Info

The Oculus lies in the western part of Borean Tundra, and the intance itself encompasses the floating rings and platforms suspended above the Nexus. It has a bad rap because it used to be REALLY hard, and about 2/3rd’s of the instance requires vehicle combat in the form of flying drakes.

In 3.2 and 3.3, the health of many mobs was reduced, and the drakes were made to scale with the rider’s Item level.

There are 4 bosses, and you need to kill all of them to progress.

The Bosses

Drakos the Interrogator

Drakos is the first boss you encounter. He’s a pretty straight up tank-and-spank.

He does an unavoidable AoE stomp. He also randomly teleports players to his location. This is more an annoyance, than anything.

Drakos also summons little bombs that randomly explode (they are not proximity triggered.) They fly about so randomly that trying to avoid them is usually an exercise in futility, IMO.

Tank boss, spank boss, get drakes.

Wait … isn’t that supposed to be “loot” ?

The Vehicle Boss

At this point, you free three NPCs who are really dragons captured by the blue flight. Each party member must choose one of 3 drakes, Amber, Red Green. NOTE: You can pick any of the three drakes, it is not limited by your chosen class for the instance (ie, Tree Druid can take the Ruby Drake and tank.)

Amber Drake: DPS.

On Trash, use your Time Stop (2) to freeze them, then do damage with your Shock Lance (1)

Ruby Drake: Tank

You have a Chain Lightning type ability, and one that allows you to dodge attacks, once you’ve already been hit.

Green Drake: Healer

Trash: Not really useful on trash, because you can’t heal at this point.

Varos Cloudstriker

Varos is the second boss.  He is initially protected by a shield that you cannot get through. In order to get to him, you have to kill 10 Centrifuge Constructs before you can get to him. These constructs are on the two platforms that Varos is not on, and around the center ring.

You will need to use your drakes to clear your way through the Blue Drakes around the platforms.

Varos has two major abilities that affect the party: Energize Cores & Call Azure Captain

Energize Cores: Varos will energize the cores on 1/4 of the platform. This happens in 2 stages. A light, no damage stage, and the heavy, Chain Lightning, LOLurded stage. Basically: don’t stand in the lightning.

Tank him at the middle of the platform, and rotate around as necessary.

Call Sky Captain: Varos calls a Sky Captain who swoops in on a drake with frickin laserbeams on their frickin foreheads. They target one party member and follow them around (aka Kologarn.) Run away from the beam, avoiding the lightning and other party members.

Clearing all the drakes from around the platform prior to the fight will NOT prevent this from happening, but it WILL prevent accidental aggro of these mobs during the fight.

Mage-Lord Urom

Mage-Lord Urom is one of those “kill me four times, LOL” bosses that Blizzard seemed to like this expansion. (AN: Anub, VH: Ichoran, I’m looking at you.) After defeating Varos, fly up to the next ring.  If you look at the map on the wowhead link, you will see there are three outer bits and one inner bit.

Urom is on each of the three outer bits. However, when you get close, he summons 4-5 adds, and vanishes like a hoser, leaving you to deal with the mobs he summoned. One is a set of beasts, one is a set of elementals, and one is a set of random NPCs. Then you finally get to fight him in the inner ring.

Frostbomb: An AOE that drops a Frost zone on the ground. Zone does DoT damage and slows. Healers, AoE heal, tank & dps drag Urom out of it if you can, but he’ll just drop more.

Time Bomb: Does direct damage to a player. Then after  a few seconds, does damage equal to their health deficit to everyone they’re close to.

Healers: top them off (so no aoe damage)

Other: Move away, but not out of range of heals.

Arcane Explosion: Urom will teleport to his starting location and begin casting this. Line-of-sight him behind the two pillars conveniently located on either side of his starting location. Otherwise, expect about 13k damage.

Ley-Guardian Eregos

Ay, now we come to the rub. Eregos is the last boss, and the bane of many pugs. I’m going to summarize the contents of the wowWiki page here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Ley-Guardian_Eregos

Arcane Volley/Barrage: Arcane damage to single/multi targets

Enraged Assault: increased damage. Amber Drakes need to use their Time Stop ability to freeze this. Set up a rotation before hand.

Planar Shift: at 60 & 20% He becomes unhittable, and summons orbs. RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL. Outfly the orbs (it might be useful to have everyone fly one direction, but isn’t necessary). Once they explode, get back on the boss.

This is an Aggro Wipe.

Summon Whelps: Eregos will summon whelps to assist him. Ruby Drake, target the whelp and cast Searing Wrath. This will jump to nearby enemies, growing in strength as it goes. You want to target the whelps so hopefully the final hit will land on Eregos for more damage.

Amber Drakes can help this. Time Stop applies 5 Charges to each enemy affected. Using Shock Lance on a whelp w/ 5 charges will 1-shot them.

Strategy:

The WoWwiki link above discusses several strategies. It is helpful to have unit frames that will show the various charges. My Pitbull set up is currently NOT doing so, and I may have to fix that.

In general:

Amber Drakes: Cast Temporal Rift, let it channel till you have at least 5 stacks. Hit Shock Lance to detonate charges. Repeat. (If you don’t have unit frames that show charges, channel it once to start, then twice before Shock Lancing.)

During Enrage, cast Time Stop.  Make sure you set up a rotation with the other Amber Riders.

Help clean up whelps during Time Stop if the Ruby rider is a noob.

Ruby Drake: Cast Martyr as much as possible to redirect incoming damage to you. Cast Evasive Maneuvers as much as possible to avoid incoming damage.

Cast Searing Wrath on the whelps, so it will jump to Eregos.

Green Drake: Stack Leeching Poison on Eregos to heal your self, as your healing ability takes YOUR health and give it to someone else. DO NOT HEAL YOURSELF TO DEATH. Refresh Leeching Poison as necessary.

Otherwise, target the Ruby Drake (or whoever’s damage is low) and cast Dream Funnel on him.  Ideally, the Ruby Drake should be the only one taking damage, but we know Ideal doesn’t happen very often.

That is the long and short of it! You have time before the encounter to make sure which ability is which, so take it if you need to.

The Achievements

Well, now that you are no longer an Oculus noob, what achievements can you get?

The Oculus / Heroic: The Oculus – Kill all 4 bosses. You have to do that anyway.

Make It Count - Kill Eregos within 20 minutes of killing Drakos. We almost had this this weekend in our pug group. If you’re doing the instance for the first time, don’t expect this. But once you’ve got a couple runs under your belt, you should get it without even trying.

Experienced Drake Rider: Defeat Eregos 3 times, once on each of the drake types.

Thanks to this guide, you now know how to do that!

Amber Void / Emerald Void / Ruby Void – Defeat Eregos without any of the named dragon type in the party. Probably not for the faint of heart, or for pugs. Not having done any of these myself, I don’t really feel qualified to offer comment on them. I will hopefully remember to update this page once I have done so.

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