What’s up, it’s Jimfro from Ready, Check, Pull, and this is our official boss guide for Normal and Heroic Council of Blood.
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Alright, The Council of Blood is a heavily dance-themed encounter. The general idea of the
fight is that you have to kill the three members of the council, but you can only kill one of them at a time, because each of their deaths full-heals and empowers the remaining members.
You get to choose your own kill order though, based on which members you want to get rid of and which empowered abilities you’d prefer to deal with. It’s 100% possible to kill this boss with any kill order, but we think there’s one order that’s a little better, so we’ll focus on that one.
Long story short: you kill Baroness Frieda first, then Castellan Niklaus, and then Lord Stavros.
So on pull, tank the bosses together, with Stavros slightly away from the other two, and start attacking Frieda. It’s super important that your raid understands that this is a single target fight and everyone should build their character that way.
All other boss damage is pretty irrelevant, so make sure you’re focusing down the main target.
The tanks need to taunt swap on Niklaus and Stavros, because they both apply stacking debuffs that increase the damage taken from each of their tank abilities.
Niklaus’s ability is simple, it just hits the tank for physical damage, but Stavros’s ability is a little weird. He teleports behind the tank and then charges through them, hitting anyone in a 20 yard line in front of the tank. So the tank with Stavros should aim the charge away from everyone else.
This is also why you should generally keep Stavros slightly away from the other two bosses.
You’ll frequently need to interrupt Frieda’s Dreadbolt Volley cast. If the cast goes off, it does damage to the entire raid and applies a dispellable DoT to the entire raid. This DoT stacks too, so continually interrupting the cast is a big deal, and it’s one of the main reasons Frieda should be killed first.
She also occasionally channels Drain Essence on a few random players. This just does ticking damage, and these players need to be focus healed.
Niklaus will occasionally summon an add that protects the council member with the lowest health, making them immune to all damage. So everyone will need to focus this add down every time it spawns in order to keep doing damage to Frieda.
And Stavros will occasionally pair several random players together with Dark Recital. These players will need to find their partner, stack with them, and move away from the rest of the raid. You tak a ton of damage when you aren’t close enough to your partner, and red swirlies spawn under the paired players’ feet which do even more damage. So everyone will need to dodge these swirlies while the paired players are running around together.
When Frieda gets to 50% health, all of the bosses retreat and it’s time for the dance.
Everyone will need to quickly run to their indicated place in the room, and then move in the
same directions that these little servants move. Moving correctly gives you a stacking haste buff, while moving incorrectly causes you to take damage and lose your haste buff.
After a few movements, the dance will end, the bosses will return, and the players who did the entire dance correctly will have a nice little haste buff for a few seconds to get right back into nuking Frieda.
By this point, a passive DoT debuff that has been slowly stacking on the raid will have gained several stacks, so healers may find the need to use cooldowns in this sub-50%
phase.
When Frieda dies, that debuff resets, and then it’s time to switch to attacking Niklaus
.
Now you don’t have to worry about constantly interrupting Frieda anymore. The tanks are
still taunt swapping on Niklaus and Stavros, while everyone is killing the shield add when
it spawns and moving for Dark Recital.
But now both bosses each gain a new ability.
Niklaus occasionally spawns a few little servant adds around the room that do damage to random players. Try to bring these in closer to the bosses to cleave them down.
And Stavros occasionally spawns these untargetable dancers that slide around the room and stun anyone they come into contact with.
They spawn in these square patterns and only move within their square, so the entire raid should move to a different section of the room to completely nullify this mechanic.
When Niklaus gets to 50%, you’ll have to do the dance again. Then you come back to finish him off.
We recommend using Bloodlust here after the dance, because this is likely the hardest part of the fight, but you can pretty much use lust whenever you want in this fight.
Once Niklaus is dead, you finally switch to Stavros.
Now the tanks only have to taunt swap on Stavros, and neither the shield add or the servant adds will spawn anymore.
But now Stavros gains his final ability, which spawns more dancers around the room that occasionally explode around themselves. Just stay out of all of their explosions.
On heroic, Stavros also gains an aura that applies a stacking slow to players while they are moving. The slow stacks up quickly, but standing still for long enough makes the stacks drop. So just make sure to only move when you need to.
Melee will need to be especially careful to avoid Stavros’s charge now that they’re attacking him, the frontal happens in the direction that the tank is facing, so you need to stand on either side of the boss and you should be fine.
When Stavros gets to 50%, you have to do the dance one last time. And then you come back to kill him to finish the fight!
Alright so quick recap.
- Kill Baroness Frieda, then Castellan Niklaus, then Lord Stavros.
- Nik stav Frieda
Throughout the fight:
- Taunt swap on Stavros and Niklaus, and tank Stavros slightly away.
- Interrupt every cast of Frieda’s Dreadbolt Volley.
- Quickly kill the add that shields the bosses.
- When you get the Dark Recital debuff, stack with your partner and keep moving away from the raid.
- At 50% health of each boss, get to your indicated dancing spot and copy the movement of the NPC servants.
After Frieda dies:
- Bring the servant adds toward the bosses and cleave them down.
- Dodge the dancers that slide around in a square pattern.
After Niklaus dies:
- Dodge Stavros’s charge by not standing behind him.
- Avoid the explosions from the dancers.
And that’s pretty much it!
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