Rogue vs. Attumen

note: this is not a complete Attumen strategy guide. There are plenty of those already in existence. This is rogue-specific advice on the fight.

Attumen is the introductory fight in Karazhan. He is optional.. you can skip him and go straight to Moroes. But why would you want to? He’s pretty straightforward and he drops the Worgen Claw Necklace and Steelhawk Crossbow (hunter gear, but still a stat upgrade for many rogues if there are no hunters in your party). Also, he has a rare mount drop. He’s not hard, and gives up one BoJ.

The worst part of the Attumen experience is the trash. It is on a 25 minute respawn timer. Unless you are overgeared, you only have time for one or two pauses/wipes before you start to get repops showing up behind you. When you start the boss fight, any trash mobs that have respawned behind you will also pull.

For the trash on the way to Attumen – a rogue can evasion-tank or stunlock the undead humans, if necessary. Don’t try it on the horses. They hit much harder and can one- or two-shot most rogues.

Also note that the undead humans can be pickpocketed.

Once you do the boss pull, its exactly the kind of fight a rogue likes – your target can be tanked in one spot standing still, so you can park yourself at his back and go to town. My guild pulls Midnight over to the wall and starts light dps on him. Rogues, don’t even bother doing more than white damage here. You want the tank to get a big head start on threat.

Attumen himself spawns and the 2nd tank picks him up (hunter misdirect is useful there). Our guild burns Midnight down at this point while Attumen is tanked well away from the rest of the group so that his cleave doesn’t catch anyone else. You can dps Midnight fairly hard. Since he is undead, he is immune to rupture. Keep SnD going at all times. If you have combo points to spare you can use eviscerate every now and then. You can always use Vanish to reset your threat, but I prefer to save that until the last phase if I can.  Edit: Since Patch 2.4 undead mobs can be Ruptured.

Attumen will periodically drop an AoE curse on the raid that reduces your chance to hit by 50%. Use Cloak of Shadows to remove this, but be careful. If you’re hitting, and the tank is missing a lot, you can overtake his threat very quickly. Hopefully someone in the raid can decurse the tank.

When Midnight reaches 25% health he and Attumen join together. Attumen mounts up and their health resets to 100%. STOP DPS AT THIS TIME. Threat is wiped and you need to let the tank reestablish aggro. Once the tank has good aggro, plant yourself behind them and go all-out. I like to save my Vanish for sometime during this phase – I catch up to the tank’s threat, hit Vanish, drop back to zero threat, Ambush and start again.

Watch out for Attumen’s charges. You won’t be a target because you are melee. But if you have anyone standing at range then Attumen may charge them, then slowly trot back to the tank. While he goes back to the tank he may do a shadow cleave on the way that will one-shot a rogue. Don’t stand between him and the tank in this case. (even better – if no one is at range he won’t charge, so have everyone cluster around behind him)

This fight is ideal for a rogue. If you are a damage-meter watcher you should be at or near the top on this fight. Enjoy it because you probably won’t be there for most other fights in Karazhan.

Attumen is optional, but a nice thing about taking him out is that you can go around the corner (careful! there is one more pull there!) and have access to a repair NPC once you reach Honored with Violet Eye. At this point, its time to move on to Moroes.