Wither Scenario Guide

[Deleted]

The Withered Army Training scenario is a great way to get some extra Nightfallen rep, toys, pets and various other goodies. Some people are struggling with it though so I'm aiming to help a few people out who might need it.

The first thing I suggest is to go the distance and pay up the full 2000 (or 1300 if you aren't honored) mana cost. The scenario only resets every 3 days so it's worth the extra bit of time investment. The second thing is to use a tank spec, if your class has access to one. Not only can you protect your withers from melee damage, but you often gain access to plentiful stuns and interupts.
Thirdly, don't open any chests until the end, it consumes your withered and you want to hold as many as possible to get through the bosses.

The first room of the scenario introduces you to the basic Withered Shambler mobs. These guys do very little but can sometimes fixate a withered and beat on him a bit. It's important to watch out for this and protect them accordingly. The real meat of the first room is the Volatile Wraith. These are the ones that are going to cause problems for newcomers to this scenario. They have a 2.5s cast time skill called Arcane Munition, this is going to cause an explosion at your location and deal heavy damage to your withered. Interrupt this at all costs. Unfortunately he casts it more often than the interrupt skills cooldown, however you can run out of line of sight to delay him. At 25% he attempts an Unstable Explosion. This will deal heavy damage and a knockback. This is where stuns come into play, stun him and have your withers nuke him down before he can cast again.

Truthfully none of the other enemies are too dangerous, so I'll skip going over every single one and just give a bit of a rundown of the bosses and how to deal with them. Worth noting that every boss is stunnable. Additonally a good technique to practice is to clear boss rooms before engaging a boss, thus allowing you to use the withered frenzy mode safely.

Lapillia – The first boss you usually run into, locked behind a door that requires 10 withered to open. She has a cast time bolt attack that deals single target damage but is interruptable. The real problem is the Crystalline Shrapnel. She'll throw a debuff onto you and at the end of the duration you will damage all of the withered close to you. It's important to run far away as the debuff expires because the effect is bigger than the animation would suggest.

Leystalker Dro – Arguable the toughest boss in the scenario. He'll ambush you from stealth at some point during the Falanaar Tunnels section, so it's important to pull slowly and carefully here so not to be caught off guard. Really the most you can do with this guy is just hope to kill him really quickly. He's going to charge around and slash withered for heavy damage, as well as buffing himself with an attack speed buff and slamming you for massive damage too. Stun and engage frenzy mode to deal with this guy swiftly.

Brood Guardian Phyx – Trivially easy boss. He'll try to summon in extra spiderlings with his Brood Expansion cast, just stun this to minimise the number that spawn, and pick them up to protect your withered. He boasts a frontal cleave attack called Cleaving Claws, however you can interrupt this and he doesn't use it very often. Should have no trouble here if you managed to pass Leystalker Dro with minimal losses.

Volatile Wraithlord – This guy is an exact clone of the regular Volatile Wraith, except with more HP. Deal with him in the exact same way as the other mob.

Furog the Elfbreaker – As the name suggests, this guy will break your elfs. His room is full of constantly spawning spiderlings, so a good technique is to kite him back into the hallway so you can use frenzy mode without being disturbed by the spiders. He has 2 abilities, both of which can be stunned but neither can be interrupted. The first is Grab Withered, he'll pick up one of your withered and deal damage over time to them, at the end of the duration he'll slam them into the ground, usually instantly killing them. It's tempting to try and stun this but saving the stun for his 2nd ability is more important. Either eat the loss of 1 troop, or use external cooldowns on the troop to save him (Blessing of Protection works well). The more dangerous ability is Stomp. This one deals heavy damage in a large area around him and knocks everything back. You absolutely don't want your withered taking this damage, so stun him to prevent this one.

Past this point you will be assaulted constantly by small spiderlings until pulling the final boss.

Psillych – An easy final boss compared to the Elfbreaker. Casts a web blast which leaves webs on the ground, damaging and slowing anything caught in them. You can stun this, however he casts it reasonably frequently so the chances are some withered will be caught in it. He doesn't do anything special besides boasting a large health pool. If you manage to make it this far you can probably beat him easily.

If you're interested in more detail, I have a video with a complete walkthrough of the scenario, detailing every section. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upHYIokrsg8

[Kazezoku]

Good guide, not sure why this hasn't seen much comment attention.

[Deepfreeze]

As a rogue I do not get very far. Not fun, but I do it for the reputation, which is not much. The guide is probably great for classes with a tanking spec. Otherwise no help at all.

[Verdugo]

What if I play class with no baseline interupts.

[FelBraids]

if your a warlock you can spam fear on them

[Radio]

What if I play class with no baseline interupts.

Most mobs requiring interrupts are also stunnable/ccable/fearable/etcetc. If all else fails and you have nothing left, usually the casts from those mobs just requires that you are not standing near your withered when it goes off.

[DJ117]

This is legit. I had 51 withered as Prot Pala and raped everything in scenario. It is a shame they didn't tune it to be equal for healers and dps as well.

[Kyrenna]

It's really a cakewalk as a prot pala indeed. The talent that reduces hammer of justice's cooldown is outstandingly useful for this scenario.

Overall, I think the best advice you can get is: take your time. There's no timer, no special bonus for speedruns, enemies won't respawn, withered won't flee if you do nothing. For instance, you may want to enter the main room with all your cds up and proceed carefully until Dro spawns, pull him in a safe spot, berserk and stun the living hell out of him.

[davac002]

Just incase it helps anyone with Leystalker Dro in the future, some little information:
- Boss has 8-9 spawn locations, and he does not patrol. You can see him chilling around if you are a demon hunter and use spectral sight.
- He kills mobs in 1 charge (keeps charging until all but 1 are dead). Stunning him stops the charging and he starts again after 15-20 seconds.
- If your withered have the +25% hp buff, they will not die in 1 charge rotation.
- He seems to pull when you kill the webbed cocoons within 50-60 yds of him, or if you walk into him (proxy aggro) - however the proximity seems to be very close for him to pull.

There are 3 strategies to countering him:
- Zerg with stuns and high dps / lots of withered on mayhem mode
- Face pull everything and don't let your withered kill the webs as it could pull him. Remember if you face pull something but do not hit it (or taunt etc), the withered will not aggro the mob so you can position yourself safer / away from the webs.
- Use all your withered except for 1 on earlier chests before getting to him so he never charges around.

You can skip him if you are extremely careful, however you will cap out at around 420 points without killing him and going into his room (assuming no other doors are opened). Skipping him also misses out on a lot of possible withered since you are not kiling any webs along the way, so it is not really recommended.

Hope that helped you a little.

[SilverHeimdall]

Guardian Druid for that scenario, got 51 withered at the end of it. backtracked to carry 5x 10 withered chests and ended the scenario with 1. Perfect count. Lost none.

Also went for the spider before elfbreaker, just to stop the spider gauntlet. Too annoying. This positioned my army on the stairs against elfbreaker, had no issue focus firing him down that way, and my stuns helped too of course.

[Syld]

Good guide, unfortunately this scenario has bugged for me 3 FREAKING TIMES, I randomly get kicked to the character selection and after i log back in I'm in a cemetery and all my progress and ancient mana is gone and the quest cannot be retaken. Sent a ticket 2 days ago and I'm still waiting for a response.

[Sounder]

Super helpful, thanks!

[TrollShaman]

Good guide! It's too bad the scenario favors tanks (so non-tank classes like priests will have a harder time). And although taking your time to go through the scenario is important, don't take too long since disconnecting for any reason will end the scenario prematurely without getting loot AND you don't get the ancient mana refund.

[Deleted]

Leystalker Dro can be rooted, making him trivial for patient druids.

[Vagabond]

Good guide.
Doing scenario in BM hunter. Most annoying thing that Berserker always outaggro my pet-tank and dying fast. I think having more than 2 Berserkers is not necessary (at least for dps class?)

EDIT: Had stupid fail in room with full of eggs. I pushed Mayhem! in that room and they break all eggs then all spiders killed me quickly. Ouch!

[Deleted]

As a rogue I do not get very far. Not fun, but I do it for the reputation, which is not much. The guide is probably great for classes with a tanking spec. Otherwise no help at all.

Hmm what spec are you playing? I've cleared it the past 3 times in a row on my Rogue :/ Playing Outlaw here, just keeping bosses stunlocked, using Parry on CD on bosses, waiting on Crimson Vial to reset before starting elite/big creatures as well.

[faithbane]

I finished with 57 withered yesterday on my DK as blood (+stun trinket from odyn). I really feel bad for non tanks on withered tho, its legitimately unfair.

[zito]

I finished with 57 withered yesterday on my DK as blood (+stun trinket from odyn). I really feel bad for non tanks on withered tho, its legitimately unfair.

DH tanks have an equally hard time because we only get 1 stun and we have to spec for it. The only other CC is the fear sigil but it takes 2 seconds to activate so it's not reliable on someone like dro.

[Mystrome]

As Enhancement shammy I've been having issues getting far in as well, however on my last attempt last night I noticed you can Hex Leystalker Dro. I haven't tried it on other 'bosses' yet, but I managed to to kill him with just 1 withered left (I fucked up badly before) that was at only 30% HP when he ambushed me.

I blew my CD's and took 20% of Dro's hp, then hexed him as I was getting dangerously low. Kept him hexed till my CD's were up again, and my own HP & mana at 100%. Rinse & repeat. Killed him and my withered took 0 damage. After that I managed to find about 7 extra withered before I fucked up again.

It took long and was boring, but did the trick.

[faithbane]

As Enhancement shammy I've been having issues getting far in as well, however on my last attempt last night I noticed you can Hex Leystalker Dro. I haven't tried it on other 'bosses' yet, but I managed to to kill him with just 1 withered left (I fucked up badly before) that was at only 30% HP when he ambushed me.

I blew my CD's and took 20% of Dro's hp, then hexed him as I was getting dangerously low. Kept him hexed till my CD's were up again, and my own HP & mana at 100%. Rinse & repeat. Killed him and my withered took 0 damage. After that I managed to find about 7 extra withered before I fucked up again.

It took long and was boring, but did the trick.

I only have 1 stun and its almost enough but I did a couple normal runs of halls of valor just for the trinket from the last boss which adds another 5 second stun on a not so long CD. I highly recommend everyone to get it