Moroes as seen in World of Warcraft.
Template:Karazhan
Moroes <Tower Steward> is an undead rogue boss found in Karazhan. He is not optional; killing Moroes unlocks the Opera Event, which in turn opens the door to the Curator.
Background (Lore)
In The Last Guardian, Moroes was described as Medivh's castellan, or personal house servant. He was an oddly thin man, ghostly in appearance, who wore horse blinders over his eyes in order to escape the wandering visions that plagued Medivh's tower. He described to Khadgar (who had traveled from Dalaran to serve as Medivh's apprentice) how he had seen a vision of him breaking one of Cook's crystal dishes and - despite trying to avoid doing so - ended up shattering it anyway; he wore the blinders until the day he died. He was killed by Medivh in the final stages of his madness, and is now buried beside his master and Cook outside of Karazhan.
Moroes has been resurrected by the new master of Karazhan, and it is speculated that the intent may have been to resurrect Medivh but since his grave was empty, Moroes was resurrected from the next grave. He is one of the first bosses encountered by adventurers. He has been revived as an undead and wields two wicked daggers when attacking. He seems to have retained much of his personality during life.
General Information
Abilities
- Basic Melee: 1600-2500 on plate.
- Vanish: Vanishes, does not drop aggro.
- Garrote: After reappearing from Vanish, he will immediately
[Garrote] someone, dealing 1000 damage every 3 seconds for FIVE MINUTES (100k total damage). 
[Blind]: A poison that occasionally blinds a target in melee range (apparently the closest person in melee), causing them to wander. Dispellable. If one tank is Gouged, and the other tank is Blinded, Moroes will run rampant on the group.
[Gouge]: Gouges the highest aggro, incapacitating them. Moroes will attack the second highest aggro.- Enrage: At 30% Moroes Enrages, increasing his damage.
Adds
Moroes will have four different random adds from the following list in every instance, much like Chromaggus' breaths. Each add will be based off a class and spec.
| Baron Rafe Dreuger | Retribution Paladin | Health: 68k | can dispel shackle, casts blessings |
| Baroness Dorothea Millstipe | Shadow Priest | Health: 66k | Casts mana burn |
| Lady Catriona Von'Indi | Holy Priest | Health: 66k | can heal and dispel shackle |
| Lady Keira Berrybuck | Holy Paladin | Health: 68k | casts Holy Light, dispels shackles, casts blessings |
| Lord Crispin Ference | Protection Warrior | Health: 84k | very hard to kill |
| Lord Robin Daris | Mortal Strike Warrior | Health: 84k | hard to kill, can easily one-hit clothies, does melee-AoE |
Strategy
The Moroes encounter tests your raid's ability to control several targets while also maintaining high dps. In order to succeed, you must go in with a solid crowd control strategy for the four adds. If allowed to go free, they will quickly put an end to the squishies. Control must be established immediately on the pull and maintained throughout the fight.
Once control is established, the encounter becomes a race between your dps and the building damage caused by Garrote. Each time a Garrote is applied, the strain on the healers increases. Moroes must die before the healing needed becomes too much to handle.
The Adds
As many adds as possible should be crowd controlled. The adds are susceptible to most forms of CC like shackle, 
[Turn Undead], 
[Freezing Trap] and most kiting techniques. Each of these methods has its drawbacks: shackles can break early or be dispelled by the holy priest and paladin type adds, fear can drive the adds out of the room and thus reset the fight, and all kiting tactics require great skill by the kiter. If an add does break loose, a tank should taunt it; however he should not attack because CC will hopefully be reapplied soon. Also be aware that the paladin type adds can cast blessings on Moroes and his entourage, so be ready to dispel or purge.
Priests and hunters must move around 40 yards away after shackling and frost-trapping, to give them ample time to reapply their CC when it breaks.
The remaining uncontrolled adds should be killed quickly. If you manage to kite the add which is due to be killed, a third tank is not imperative (examples: crippling poison from a rogue and DPS from a mage or ice effects from a mage and DPS from a warlock). If the add must be tanked and only two tanks are present, the offtank can tank an add and offtank Moroes at the same time; the adds don't do much damage. The offtank will need extra healing when Moroes gouges, however.
It is a good idea to kill the priest(s) first, because they go down fastest (just make sure to interrupt all heals and mana burns) and they also do not need to be tanked as they deal only low melee damage. The warriors are very tough, so they are good candidates for CC.
Garrote
Moroes vanishes every 30 seconds, and upon return randomly Garrotes a raid member. Garrote is a bleed effect and will deal 1k damage every 3 sec for 300 sec (5 minutes, for a total of 100k damage). After he garrotes, he will immediately return to the highest aggro player prior to the vanish. Garrote can be removed by the following abilities only:
- Dwarfs
[Stoneform] - Paladins [Divine Shield] (self) and [Blessing of Protection] (others)
- Mages [Ice Block]
- Items which remove bleeding effects ( [Luffa] no longer works)
- Dying and combat rez
Since the possibilities to remove Garrote are limited, there is no choice but to heal through it on most raid members. One active HoT from a well-equipped healer should heal enough to survive (while the HoT is active). It is highly recommended that Priests liberally use 
[Prayer of Mending] when at least 2 targets are garroted. This spell will greatly lessen the healing load from garroted raid members.
Another useful tip is to have the tank intervene a healer as soon as Moroes vanishes. This will ensure that if Moroes decides the garrote that healer, he will instead garrote the tank.
All garrotes are automatically removed when Moroes is defeated (though it sometimes is not due to a bug). If the encounter is reset the garrotes are not removed.
The last removal method deserves some consideration. Dying from garrote does not inflict a durability loss penalty. It is a good idea to plan ahead (while clearing other bosses) and save all combat rez cooldowns (Soulstones, Shaman Ankhs and 
[Rebirth]) for Moroes. It is a good idea not to cast the soulstones (as usual) before the encounter, but to wait until an important target is garroted, and only then soulstone. This method of garrote removal has the additional advantage that the rez will also restore some mana. If a raid member is garroted and a combat rez will be used on him, he should quickly spend all his mana, just die and be rezzed.
A reduced cooldown on BoP (
[Guardian's Favor]) is a big bonus in this fight.
If possible, Garrotte should always be removed from Priests while they're still shackling. Other healers are important too. DPS classes should be cured only towards the end of the fight, while the tanks should never get the garrote removed - they are the main heal targets anyways, and BoP removes agro.
Paladins can use Blessing of Sacrfice on a garroted party member to mitigate the damage. This can make the difference between life or death for low HP casters, effectivley transferring 10% of the garrote damage to a paladin.
Off-Tanking Moroes
Two tanks are needed on Moroes. The off-tank must always be second on the aggro list, because the main tank will periodically be gouged and Moroes then will turn to the person with the second-highest aggro. When a tank is blinded, it needs to be removed immediately by a Shaman, Paladin or Druid (it is a poison). If no one in the raid can remove poison, the secondary tank needs to work from maximum melee range and have someone stand very close (on top) of Moroes to soak up the blinds. For the first part while killing adds its best to designate one of the ranged DPSers to stand on top of Moroes. While killing Moroes himself, simply have at least one melee DPS hugging him.
Since the off-tank will only get hit while the main-tank is Gouged, rage will be a problem. To counter rage-starvation, consider having the Moroes off-tank grab one of the non-dispelling adds to act as a rage battery. The off-tank would, of course, be required to build threat on both Moroes and his designated add simultaneously. This makes your off-tank both a poor-man's crowd control and a more effective off-tank.
If the main tank is a Paladin, then they can keep a blessing of Sacrifice on the off-tank at all times. This means that gouge will break after one hit on the off-tank which makes it easier for the healers.
Paladin AoE Tank Strategy
Another strategy that can be employed if your main tank is a paladin is to simply have him tank all of the adds and Moroes at the same time. Single target the adds down one at a time but leave one add alive. As long as something is beating on the main tank, they are near immune to the blinds and gouges as it will break when the player is hit.
One thing to note is that the ads WILL de-aggro off of the Paladin if he or she is gouged. If the gouge is not instantly broken, the adds will most likely attack your healers - make sure you employ an off-tank who is keeping secondary aggro on all the adds.
Notes
- Moroes is immune to Taunt.
- The encounter can be reset by pulling an add out of the room. However, Moroes leaving the room will not reset the encounter.
- Dropping an [Earthbind Totem] or positioning a mage between shackled mob and the priest to [Frost Nova] if shackle breaks is a good idea. A paladin hitting the mob with a [Hammer of Justice] or [Turn Undead] can help give the priest the time s/he needs to get the shackle off as well. A hunter that is not kiting can drop a frost trap in front of a shackled add.
- All pet users: Keep your pet on passive, make sure that it doesn't attempt to attack a shackled add when Moroes vanishes
- After Moroes dies, his adds will remain. It is currently possible to exit the room and reset the event. With Moroes dead, they will simply disappear.
- The adds are immune to bleed, and, as of patch 2.1, so is Moroes. (Prior to 2.1, he was not)
- Mana Burn (Dorothea), Heal (Catriona) and Holy Light (Keira) can (and should) be interrupted to speed up killing the four adds. Rogues are especially good for this between stuns and [Mind-Numbing Poison]. Curse of Tongues also works on them. Unshackled adds can be kited with Crippling Poison.
- Since they're all undead, the Argent Dawn trinkets can be most useful here ( [Rune of the Dawn] and [Seal of the Dawn]).
- If a [Blessing of Protection] is received by a tank or a melee DPS class, that person can cancel the Blessing immediately to get back in to the fight. If a tank must recieve it, wait until Moroes vanishes to prevent the chaos from temporary aggro loss.
Class Specific Tips
Paladin
As a Paladin, it can be very difficult to fear one add and to maintain healing on the tank at the same time. A simple macro can do the Fear. Assume you had to keep Lord Robin Daris shackled all the time.
| /cast [target=Lord Robin Daris] Turn Undead |
Turn Undead: The macro system in WoW 2.0 introduces a new element called focus which allows a player to save a target as its "focus" and, using macros, cast spells on the focus without losing your current target. Similar to the Shackle Undead Macro for the priest see Useful Priest Macros for detailed examples and explanation. Here's just the macro:
| /clearfocus [modifier:shift] [target=focus,dead] [target=focus,noexists] |
| /focus [target=focus,noexists] |
| /script SetRaidTarget("focus", 1) |
| /cast [target=focus] Turn Undead |
Priest
As a priest, it can be very difficult to reshackle one add and to maintain healing on the tank at the same time. A simple macro can do the reshackle, you can push it between two heals every 5-10 seconds. Assume you had to keep Lord Robin Daris shackled all the time.
| /cast [target=Lord Robin Daris] shackle undead |
This will do the work and eases the fight a lot.
Shackle Focus Macro: The macro system in WoW 2.0 introduces a new element called focus which allows a player to save a target as its "focus" and, using macros, cast spells on the focus without losing your current target. See Useful Priest Macros for detailed examples and explanation. Here's just the macro:
| /clearfocus [modifier:shift] [target=focus,dead] [target=focus,noexists] |
| /focus [target=focus,noexists] |
| /script SetRaidTarget("focus", 1) |
| /cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead |
Warlock
A similar macro can help a Warlock make the shackling a lot easier. A Voidwalker is required for this maneuver, although some adjustments could have a Felguard do it with his 
[Anguish] ability.
| /clearfocus [modifier:alt] |
| /focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead] |
| /clearfocus [target=focus,help] |
| /petstay |
| /petfollow |
| /cast [pet:voidwalker,target=focus,exists,harm] Torment; Torment |
You keep the Voidwalker in passive, and spam this macro during the fight to use the 
[Torment] ability to make your pet gain aggro on the shackled target. As such, it will run for your pet rather than the shackling priest. This is particularly useful for Baron Rafe Dreuger as he tends to stun the highest aggro target the second he breaks.
Edit: Updated now that the UI includes a Focus command for Macros. New macro allows you to set focus on shackle, then switch to whoever you are DPSing. Simply press the macro again to recast Torment on shackled add without switching targets. Will not work with other macros that use Focus. Focus clears on FocusTarget death, player death, or when cleared with /clear focus or /focus none. Holding Alt while using macro sets new Focus.
Hunter
When using Freeze Trap to CC an add, extra care must be taken. If Moroes accidentially (on his way to the next garrote target) runs over the trap he simply removes it, because he's immune. Therefore the traps should be set up away from all players, best would be a small area in the back of the room designated as off-limits to everyone else.
Bug
If Moroes dies from DoT while in a vanish, he can still be looted but your group will not be correctly credited for the kill. As such, the Opera event will remain locked. If you leave in this situation the instance for 30 minutes a soft reset of Moroes's wing will occur, respawning Moroes (with four new adds) and all trash mobs. Appears to be fixed in 2.1.
Quotes
Aggro Hmm, unannounced visitors? Preparations must be made.
Special Now, where was I? Oh yes...
Special You rang?
Killing A Player One more for dinner this evening
Killing A Player Time... Never enough time.
Killing A Player I've gone and made a mess.
Death How terribly clumsy of me...
Loot
External links
Ampwow.com Karazhan strategy Last Resort guild Forums
WarCry.com Melee PoV (latter half of video) Filefront.com Hunter PoV Filefront.com Hunter PoV