Tactics: Moroes

Strategy
The Moroes encounter tests your raid's ability to control several targets while also maintaining high DPS. In order to succeed, you must go in with a solid crowd control strategy for the four adds. 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 your dps 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.

The Adds
Moroes will have four different random adds from the following list in every instance, much like Chromaggus' breaths. Each add will be based off a class and spec. The following table lists them in a good kill order:

Name Class Health Abilities
Baroness Dorothea Millstipe Shadow Priest 66k Mana Burn, Mind Flay, Shadow Word: Pain
Lady Catriona Von'Indi Holy Priest 66k Greater Heal, Power Word: Shield, Dispel Magic
Lady Keira Berrybuck Holy Paladin 68k Holy Light, Cleanse, Divine Shield
Baron Rafe Dreuger Retribution Paladin 68k Hammer of Justice, Cleanse, Blessing of Might
Lord Robin Daris Arms Warrior 84k Mortal Strike, Whirlwind
Lord Crispin Ference Protection Warrior 84k Disarm, Shield Bash, Shield Wall

As many adds as possible should be crowd controlled (starting from the rear of the list). The adds are susceptible to most forms of CC like shackle, Turn Undead, Freezing Trap and most kiting techniques. Each of these methods has its drawbacks: shackles can break early or be dispelled by the holy priest and paladin type adds, fear can drive the adds out of the room and thus reset the fight, and all kiting tactics require great skill by the kiter. If an add does break loose, a tank should taunt it; however he should not attack in order to allow CC to be reapplied soon. Also be aware that the paladin type adds can cast blessings on Moroes and his entourage, so be ready to dispel or purge.

Adds for which no control is available need to be killed before Moroes. One good sequence is to follow the above list from top to bottom - the priests have the least health and require no tank, the paladins can dispel, and the warriors take quite long to kill due to their high HP (particularly the protection warrior). Generally, if the raids DPS are high enough, it is a good idea to kill all adds first, this makes the fight much safer. Having some CC'd or kited add around while Moroes is nuked is dangerous, because the the control could break (for example because the controlling player dies from a garrote).

If the add which is due to be killed doesn't deal high physical damage it is not imperative to tank it, instead some combination of slowing effects should be used (i.e. kite it). If it does need tanking and only two tanks are present, a good offtank can take both, an add and Moroes at the same time. The offtank will need extra healing when Moroes gouges, however.

Doubling up on CC is also not a bad idea. For example having a hunter lay a Freezing Trap in front of a shackle can give the priest more time to reshackle.

After Moroes is dead, any remaining adds still need to be killed. Alternatively, the raid can leave the room, which will cause them to despawn.

Garrote
Moroes vanishes every 30 seconds, and upon return randomly Garrotes a raid member. Garrote is a bleed effect and will deal 1k damage every 3 sec for 300 sec (5 minutes, for a total of 100k damage). After he garrotes, he will immediately return to the highest aggro player prior to the vanish. Garrote can be removed by the following abilities only:

Dwarves Stoneform
Paladins Divine Shield (self) and Blessing of Protection (others)
Mages Ice Block
Items which remove bleeding effects (Luffa no longer works)
Dying and combat rez
Since the possibilities to remove Garrote are limited, there is no choice but to heal through it on most raid members. One active HoT from a well-equipped healer should heal enough to survive while the HoT is active. It is highly recommended that Priests liberally use Prayer of Mending when at least 2 targets are garroted. This spell will greatly lessen the healing load from garroted raid members.

In theory, all garrotes should be automatically removed when Moroes is defeated. However, in practice, they never seem to be removed. If the encounter is reset the garrotes are not removed.

Dying from garrote does not inflict a durability loss penalty. It is a good idea to plan ahead (while clearing other bosses) and save all combat rez cooldowns (Soulstones, Shaman Ankhs, and Rebirth) for Moroes. Do not cast soulstones (as usual) before the encounter, but wait until an important target is garroted, and only then soulstone. This method of garrote removal has the additional advantage that the rez will also restore some mana. If a raid member is garroted and a combat rez will be used, the player should quickly spend all his mana, just die and be rezzed.

A reduced cooldown on Blessing of Protection (Guardian's Favor) is a big bonus in this fight.

If possible, Garrote should always be removed raider members who have to control an add. All healers are very important too. DPS classes should be cured only towards the end of the fight, while the tanks should never get the garrote removed - they are the main heal targets anyways, and BoP temporarily removes aggro.

Paladins can use Blessing of Sacrifice on a garroted party member to mitigate the damage. This can make a difference for low HP casters.

The Addon Deadly Boss Mods will announce using the raid warning system when someone gets garrote and who has it if it is activated by the raid leader or a raid assist.

Off-Tank
Two tanks are needed on Moroes. The off-tank must always be second on the aggro list, because the main tank will periodically be gouged and Moroes will then turn to the person with the second-highest aggro. When a tank is blinded, it needs to be removed immediately by a Shaman, Paladin or Druid (it is a poison). If no one in the raid can remove poison, the secondary tank needs to work from maximum melee range and have someone stand very close (on top) of Moroes to soak up the blinds. For the first part while killing adds its best to designate one of the ranged DPSers to stand on top of Moroes. While killing Moroes himself, simply have at least one melee DPS hugging him.

Since the off-tank will only get hit while the main-tank is Gouged, rage will be a problem. To counter rage-starvation, consider having the Moroes off-tank grab one of the adds to act as a rage battery. If it's one of the dispelling adds, make sure that the magically crowd controlled adds are held far away from it. It is not a good idea to use the protection warrior type add for this purpose, because he will regularly disam the off-tank, greatly obstructing threat generation.

The off-tank would, of course, be required to build threat on both Moroes and his designated add simultaneously. This effectively turns the off-tank into both, a poor-man's crowd control and a more effective off-tank.

If the main tank is a Paladin, then they can keep a blessing of Sacrifice on the off-tank at all times. This means that gouge will break after one hit on the off-tank which makes it easier for the healers.

Things are a lot easier if a third tank is available to tank the add which is due to be killed. The off-tank can do that job, but it requires quite a lot of skill.

Hunters
Hunters are a great asset in this fight. A hunter can kite (chain frost trap) one of the adds, and his pet can either dps or tank a second add. Two hunter pets are enough to control one add (except the mortal strike warrior). If pets are used as tanks, one healer should keep them alive. A hunter that is not kiting can drop a frost trap in front of a shackled add.

When using Frost Traps, extra care must be taken. If Moroes accidentally (on his way to the next garrote target) runs over the trap he simply removes it, because he's immune. Therefore the traps should be set up away from all players, best would be a small area in the back of the room designated as off-limits to everyone else. Kiting should be done in a big circle along the outer limits of the room, while everybody else stands closer to the center