Lord Kelris is a raid disbander in Blackfathom Deeps in WoW Classic Season of Discovery. I have now could clear BFD multiple times with random groups and organized groups, and here’s what I’ve learned. Please make sure you have enough SOD Gold, then continue reading my guide below.
Firstly, you’re going to need two people with short cooldown kicks. You can use a Paladin with Rebuke and a Rogue. These two have to kick Shadowy Chains every time it is casted. This is easier said than done, as Kelris resists fairly often. If they miss or resist happens, it casts a nasty DOT on a player that can and must be dispelled.
Kelris also chooses a player and casts a ramping Mind Blast. He will cast this four to five times back-to-back, with each spell doing more damage. Ideally, you have a couple more people there to kick these Mind Blasts as well. If no one heals or interrupts this, it will kill the person he’s targeting by the first spell.
Kelris also takes reduced damage from casters. Mages have a tough time in this fight. That being said, December 12th, they reduced his resistances. So hopefully, this has been addressed. But prior to the patch, if you had two or more caster DPS in your group, it was near impossible to do enough damage to beat him during phase one.
In phase one, he pulls the two closest people into a sort of spirit realm. The two people need to immediately group up and start killing the yellow NPCs. Roughly around five kills, a portal will spawn and take you back to the fight. Now, this seems semi-random. We’ve had people get the portal on the first kill, and we’ve had people kill seven of them and not get a portal. If you do not get out fast enough, all the NPCs will rush you and kill both players. The portals are fairly hard to see and take a second to spawn, so make sure you’re glancing behind you every few seconds to make sure a portal didn’t spawn after you left.
There are also red-named plated Voidwalkers scattered around. I haven’t been able to confirm it, but I’ve heard rumors killing these will either weaken Kelris or remove some of the poison mist that fills the arena as the fight goes on. If you’re hard-stuck in this fight, maybe it’s worth trying to kill some of these Voidwalkers before taking the portal to see if it’ll give you any advantage.
Kelris will continue to pull two more members into the spirit realm, never pulling the same two people twice. This means if phase one takes too long, he will cycle through all the melee and end up pulling the healers down, which will be a wipe for the casters.
During this phase, he will throw a ranged AOE on the ground where the casters are standing. We have all the casters stacked at near max range and slowly moving clockwise around the room during the fight to keep the AOE as far away from the group as possible. If you have hunters or mages, it’s best to have them stand slightly in front of the healers. So if the spirit realm mechanic cycles through all the melees, it will pull the ranged DPS down before the healers.
Around 35%, Phase 2 starts. This is considered a bit of a DPS check. As soon as phase two starts, the melee needs to spread out as much as possible, as Kelris has a cleave attack that hits hard, and his hitbox is huge. So just spread out as far as you can while still in range to DPS. The gas is going to be creeping in here; make sure you don’t walk backward into it.
That’s a majority of the mechanically heavy parts of the fight. There’s a good chance that the tank is going to get pulled down into the spirit realm, either first or second group. So if you don’t have a secondary tank, Lord Kelris is just going to go wild. A hunter pet taunting and just holding him over during this time phase is very doable. So if you have a hunter, have him ready to taunt. Ideally, you have a second tank ready to take over, but if they’re both standing close, it’s possible both tanks go down the first portal.
The recommended approach is for the secondary tank to stand a little behind the DPS, in theory. So first Spirit realm pull, it pulls either a tank and a DPS or two DPS. So there’s a good chance that at some point your tank’s going to be gone, so make sure that someone’s ready there to pick it up. This is an expensive tip, but he does a lot of Shadow Damage in phase two. You can pick up Shadow protection potions, they’re roughly like 70 silver a pop. So if the raid leader is really coordinated and paying attention and thinks that you can actually beat him in the state you’re at in Phase 2, raid leader can call for everyone to pop those Shadow pots, and that could be enough to push you over the edge.
