World First Solo Kill: Venn Takes Down Echo of Neltharion
While many players are busy dealing with frogs, cranes, and other shenanigans in MoP Remix, Retail WoW still manages to offer new and exciting challenges to those who look for them – such as soloing Raid bosses.
Venn, who you may know from our previous coverage of his Solo Normal Rygelon kill back during Shadowlands, has done it again: he took down Awakened Normal Echo of Neltharion in a 1 versus 1 fight – and lived to tell the tale! With a total fight-time of over 40 minutes, and multiple enrage mechanics that had to be dealt with, this was one of his toughest challenges yet.
Read on for further insight into Venn’s incredible solo feat!
To defeat the Echo of Neltharion, numerous hurdles had to be overcome (thankfully, Private Auras weren’t one of them this time!). According to Venn, some of the biggest pain points were the following:
- The Phase 1 Tank mechanic, Calamitous Strike, is a hard-hitting Tank Buster. As it only has a 15y range, it can be out-ranged with well-timed casts of Infernal Strike.
- After 10 minutes in Phase 1, the boss begins casting the Phase 3 enrage mechanic, Ebon Destruction. There is no way to avoid this damage, which meant Venn needed to survive a ~3 million damage hit every ~12-14 seconds, for about 5 minutes, until hitting the boss HP required to phase the boss into P2.
- The Phase 2 Enrage mechanic was a repeat cast of Umbral Annihilation. The increasing damage of the spell thankfully capped out at 2000%, or the kill would’ve been impossible!
- After over 25 minutes already of dealing with P1 and P2, Phase 3 is the hardest part of the fight. Phase 3 brings back Calamitous Strike, and this time it is a lot more unforgiving. Additionally, the Enrage mechanic, Ebon Destruction comes back as well, and there’s a myriad of adds spawning that must be dealt with. The worst part is that this Phase is an actual DPS check, as he eventually runs out of Sundered Reality portals to avoid taking damage from Ebon Destruction.
All of this was done on the Normal Awakened difficulty of the boss, as any higher difficulty was simply impossible due to the much higher damage intake and DPS required to deal with Phase 3 in particular.
To get a better understanding of what goes through the mind of someone deciding to fight a boss, by himself, for over 40 minutes, we asked Venn a few questions!
What made you choose this boss over any of the other Awakened bosses?
Venn: A lot of what made me chose this fight was the sheer determination to solo it. I first started attempts on this fight on my Protection Paladin a year ago, using Divine Shield to immune the Calamitous Strike tank buster, but I ran into trouble surviving the second phase enrage. I then tried Blood Death Knight, just brute forcing Phases 1 and 2, and got so close but could never survive Phase 3. All of these attempts took so much time - gearing and practicing/learning the fight – that before I got a chance to try on my Vengeance Demon Hunter, the season was over. Awakened gave me another chance to try it as current content, and I NEEDED to get the kill this time. The other thing that made this boss my target was that the enrage WAS survivable. Sometimes bosses enrage by gaining 500% attack speed and damage, and that's not really doable 😄
How much time did you spend preparing and practicing this fight, before finally being able to grab the kill?
Venn: Back when Aberrus first released, I spent about 50 pulls just trying to get through Phase 1 to even figure out what happens in the fight. Sometimes, the only way to learn a boss's enrage mechanic, is to find it out yourself -- no one else out there is spending 10 minutes in phase 1 of Echo of Neltharion. I then spent around 80 pulls in Phase 1, across both Pally and Death Knight. When I went back to it during Season 4, I was much more efficient, only spending around 20 pulls to practice and 30 or so pulls to finally get the kill! The worst part was that I wiped mostly in phase 3, which was over 25 minutes into the fight. But I spent all of the time in 10.2 thinking and planning for Echo of Neltharion - once I set my eyes on a boss I sort of obsess over it until I've soloed it!
Do you have any other bosses in your sights that you would like to take down before The War Within releases?
Venn: I do have my eyes on 2 other Awakened bosses before The War Within! I don't want to spoil too much, but some of the bosses I'm looking at are Gnarlroot and Amalgamation Chamber 😉
If you want to check out the full kill video, Venn also uploaded it at 2x speed, and it is well worth the watch – achievements like this are what makes WoW so great, with players constantly finding new ways to challenge themselves and push the limits of what is possible within the game!
Congratulations, Venn! We can’t wait to see what you’ll get up to next.
