World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade – Shadow Labyrinth Heroic mode

The whole Shadow Labyrinth (Heroic-mode) is a nightmare. But there are a few helpful tips. If you have the trinkets that reduce threat such as the one that drops from Vorpil, or the Timelapse trinket obtained at the Keepers of Time (Exalted), or the Sporeggar Quartermaster’s Cloak (at honored)—it might help during the Overseer (Felguard) encounters. Stand near the Felguard at all times. He doesn’t cleave so you can just stand next to him. Make sure you get feared. It cancels any threat to you. If you use will of the forsaken prepare to die … it is an auto-threat tag on your head.

The Hellmaw room has four Ritualists instead of three in Heroic-mode. The priest has to be alert to dispell any fire debuffs on the tank and the team. Crowd Control takes care of the rest. Fairly easy pulls.

HELLMAW
There is nothing special about Hellmaw in Heroic mode, except maybe extra damage. He died pretty fast with no issues.

When reaching the Inciter’s Room, this is really a nasty part in Heroic-mode. The Shadow Priest NPCs simply melt faces. Try to kill the first pull of mobs. Once killed, the priest now has enough room to attempt a strategy.

The only solution we found after a lot of trial and error, was me removing cloths—if you have enough bag slots—and keeping the team at the other room away from sight. The Priest has to solo this part. Try to position yourself where you won’t get aggro, and mind control the Shadow Priest. The mobs will kill it. Run to a safe spot and die. The Second healer (if secondary Priest, Shaman or Paladin) should resurrect you. Do the same for every shadow priest in the room. However, remember the more you die the longer the countdown timer is to be able to resurrect.

Once all Shadow Priests in the room are dead, your team can resume safely. Again, this is only in Heroic-mode. Shadow Priests really melt faces and cause the tank to die faster. The Hunter has to keep laying traps often. Make sure you communicate with your team. Mages, Warlocks and Priest need to stand behind the Hunter. Any aggro will get trapped.

Once trapped, the Hunter has to move at least 40 yards away from the trapped mob, allowing him time to set a second trap across the room. The Casters need to adapt and move again behind the Hunter’s new position. This way you can effectively crowd control without losing a caster or healer. Takes time to adapt to cooperate with each other, but you have to chase your hunter around to protect yourself with his traps.

BLACKHEART THE INCITER
The Inciter doesn’t have anything special in Heroic-mode, except he does over 8,000 damage on cloth. Keep aggro low and stay at max range. A priest should run toward the stairs, shield self, and renew self when it is evident his mind control ability will be soon. This way, since the priest is afar, not much damage will be caused to self by other players.

GRANDMASTER VORPIL
With Vorpil, the story is very different … you can no longer Zerg Vorpil and burn him with DPS. His armor seems to be lower because he loses health pretty quick. But more voidwalkers spawn in Heroic-mode and faster. So keep killing those voidwalkers and don’t let him get healed.. Besides the Voidwalker’s number increase, there is nothing special to this event in Heroic-mode.

MURMUR
During Murmur, a second healer is needed to assist with heals during the Deep Breath.

Murmur (lvl 72 Elite) has new abilities in Heroic-mode that need to be studied and synchronized among the group members before attempting him, to avoid wasting time. To engage Murmur, positioning is critical to win the event. Players need to spread inside the black ring where Murmur stands.

Spread using the clock-positioning. The priest should be in front of Murmur at 6 o’clock. The Tank has to position himself at 4:30 o’clock.  Another player at 3 o’clock, 9 o’clock and 12 o’clock. You will first wish to take this positioning outside the ring before engaging Murmur. Once everyone is ready, tell the team to move into the ring and to keep their positions.

1. DEEP BREATH
Do not move away from the inner ring for any reason. When Murmur starts to channel “Deep Breath” stand where you are. Do not move. In Heroic-mode you have to withstand the Deep Breath. In normal-mode, players are used to run away from it heading to the outer ring to avoid the explosion. However, in Heroic-mode, if you run outside the ring, Murmur will start nuking everyone with Sonic Boom. The Deep Breath will cause 90% damage of your total health. And the after-effect debuff will do 307 damage per sec for 5 seconds, thereafter. To counter this, ask your priest to synch with the Deep Breath. There are seven visible inward-waves before he relesaes Deep Breath.  Count one, two, three, four … start casting Prayer of Healing … five, six, seven … Deep Breath goes off … and your Prayer of Healing goes off a second after, effectively healing everyone out of harm.  If the Priest starts Prayer of Healing after Deep Breath goes off, the cloth players will die with the after-effect debuff. The Second Healer: Shaman, Priest, or Druid, needs to synch healing when seeing Deep Breath reaching its # 5th inward-wave.  Remember Deep Breath goes off at the seventh. The Priest will keep everyone alive long enough with Prayer of Healing, but the Second Healer has to toss a big heal on the Tank. It is the tank who gets more damage than anyone since he was reduced to 10% of his total health and Murmur is meleeing him. If your tank dies, it is the second healer’s fault.

2. MURMUR’S TOUCH
Murmur’s Touch is the debuff that makes a single-target the bomb. In normal-mode, the debuff has a 12 seconds countdown. Players run toward the tent on the right side so the explosion doesn’t hit anyone else and will cushion the victim since the tent’s ceiling won’t let him levitate 30 feet above the ground causing around 300 damage on the fall. However, in Heroic-mode, Murmur’s Touch has a different behaviour. This is why the team is spread in a clock-positioning. When a single target is debuffed with Murmur’s touch, the other four players are drawn magnetically toward the debuffed player. In short, expect to be telekinetically pulled toward the bomb. The debuff now has 5 seconds countdown, but he magnetically pulls everyone toward the player with the debuff, which means players have only 3 seconds to run away from the debuffed player. In short, as soon as you land, run away to your original position or you die. The debuffed player has to remain immobile on his position and simply wait for the explosion. This can be tricky if the Priest or the Tank become debuffed. If the Priest is debuffed with Murmur’s Touch, the tank has to move from 4:30 o’clock to 3 o’clock to avoid damage from the explosion. Then the Tank should return back to 4:30 o’clock. If the tank is debuffed however, the priest has to run to 9’oclock, and return to 6’oclock, back to the original position—while the player at 3 o’clock needs to move to 12 o’clock, away from the Tank.

TIPS
If you master these two new changes in Murmur heroic-mode, you will most likely win. There were no elixirs or flasks drank at the moment of killing Murmur as the elixirs and potions were wasted in previous attempts. The only exception was applying Wizard’s oil on the priest weapon and Super Mana Potion. Potions of course will be useful, so come ready. The dungeon resets in 12 hours, and there are no respawns, except for the three Overseers located at Hellmaw’s room, and the three patrols located prior to Vorpil. You can skip the two patrols in Hellmaw’s room easily. Watch the third patrol walking in and out of the tunnel to the Inciter’s room. You can bypass him easily.

Priests should drink a Super Mana potion after losing 4,000 mana when starting the Murmur event. That way, you can drink a second Super Mana Potion within next 2 minutes. The same applies to other casters. That way you can drink two during the event.

Warriors should Shield Wall when Murmur is around 20% health. Tell your team you will have a macro set to announce Shield Wall before you engage Murmur. Type /macro and set an icon and a name for your macro. Then type

/p SHIELD WALL ON

You can open your abilities book, and right-click the Shield Wall ability so that it gets added to the macro textbox. That way when you hit the macro button, you active Shield Wall and send an alert to your team. Shield Wall will cause the Warrior to not get damage during 20 seconds, which means all casters, including the healers will have a grace period of mana regeneration. Do not set the shadowfiend pet loose during Shield Wall. You can set it loose after Shield Wall is over.

Shamans need to pop Bloodlust when the Warrior announces Shield Wall—which happens when Murmur reaches 20% health.

TEAM SETUP
An ideal team setup for Shadow Labyrinth Heroic-mode would be:

Warrior, Priest, Shaman/Druid (Resto), Hunter, Mage. (Sheep, Trap, Blind shot, Frost Nova, Fear, Innervate)

Warrior, Priest, Priest, Mage, Mage (You have two sheeps, two frost nova, a mind control and a fear).

Druid (Tank), Priest, Hunter, Rogue, Shaman/Druid (Resto).

For as long as you have two very good healers and two crowd control players you can beat Heroic mode. However, it will take longer than normal. Be ready to spend many hours here. When I completed my quest: Trial of the Naaru: Strength, it was a PUG. That quest ask you to get the trident from Kalitresh in Steamvaults (Heroic) and Murmur’s Essence from Shadow Labyrinth (Heroic) it is one out of three quests that lead to getting attuned for Kael’Thas Dungeon Key.