Going back and running old raids in World of Warcraft is usually a breeze. You zone into the raid, take down a few bosses, and collect any transmog and mounts you’re after, so long as you’re a little bit lucky. When soloing old content, the difficulty of a boss is usually the last thing on your mind as it’s practically a given that your characters are going to have enough juice in them to out-damage any mechanics that might have been a headache in the past.
But there’s one boss that’s remained consistently difficult ever since its release. And now, three expansions later, it’s still giving solo players a tough time.
In a thread posted to Reddit earlier today, one WoW player asked if Mythic-level Kil’jaeden in the Tomb of Sargeras raid was “impossible to solo.” And while he’s definitely killable, the community agreed that the boss was among the hardest, if not the hardest, to take down in the game’s history.
Why is Kil’jaeden such a hard boss to take down solo?
Kil’jaeden is still a notoriously difficult boss to solo regardless of your class, mostly due to the unique mechanics that can’t otherwise be circumvented by simply burning down the boss’ health pool. No matter how much damage you have to your name, you’ll be forced to deal with fast-paced, movement-focused mechanics during the fight’s unavoidable first intermission phase.
In the first intermission phase of the fight, you must devote all of your attention to positioning yourself around the Rupturing Singularities that fall down slowly onto the corners of the ship. These purple orbs will knock you off the side of Kil’jaeden’s platform if you don’t give yourself enough space to compensate for their relatively intense knockback.
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The “darkness phase,” officially called “Deceiver’s Veil,” forces you to hunt down adds in just an eight-yard radius around you but with the help of Illidan Stormrage, who can be a real pain to track down with such a limited range of vision. Finding and killing these adds is often viewed as the hardest part of the fight, and if you aren’t able to navigate it deftly, it will trip you up.
Kil’jaeden has always been this difficult
It’s not like Kil’jaeden was a walk in the park when he was current content, either. The Tomb of Sargeras was one of the hardest raids ever introduced to the game, and its end boss has been widely regarded as the toughest to take down in recent memory. During the raid’s Race to World First, it took eventual champions Method 654 pulls to defeat the boss, who lived for 19 days after his release, which was the longest lifespan for any WoW end boss since 2010; the mark was only tied, but not surpassed, by the Jailer in 2022, who also lived for 19 days.
How to solo Mythic Kil’jaeden in Tomb of Sargeras
After burning down the boss’ HP to around 50 percent to kick things off, you’ll trigger his first intermission phase, officially titled “Eternal Flame.” You’ll want to position yourself near (and facing) the purple orbs that descend from the sky onto the platform in the four corners of the room. If you’re too far away from them, the knockback effect that they apply will blow your character right off the boss’ platform and reset the fight.
Furthermore, you should keep a mental note in the back of your mind regarding where the next Rupturing Singularity is going to spawn and try to eke out a friendly position that allows you to avoid the knockback on one purple orb, while still giving yourself enough room to get to the next one quickly.
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After you get out of the Eternal Flame intermission phase, Kil’jaeden will descend back onto the platform. It’s at this point that we recommend burning all of your major cooldowns and making an effort to kill the boss as fast as you possibly can with nothing held back. If you’re able to burn Kil’jaeden down to zero percent within a few seconds, you’ll avoid the darkness phase altogether, and you won’t have to deal with the adds that he spawns. This is easily the most effective way to solo the boss, and if you have a well-enough geared character, you should be able to rip through his HP so that the second intermission phase is skipped entirely.
Trinkets or weapons that give you an extra, bursty active ability like Manic Grieftorch or Iridal, the Earth’s Master will make the task of killing the pesky Kil’jaeden that much easier.
