The Culling of Stratholme Guide

The Culling of Stratholme 80

A new passage is open in the Caverns of Time, and it leads to a recreation of the events of the Warcraft III mission The Culling.  Here, you’re tasked with protecting Arthas as he purges the citizens of Stratholme and assaults the Dreadlord Mal’ganis.

Quests:
There are two quests for this instance, both given within the instance itself.  The first, “Dispelling Illusions,” has you reveal the plagued grain crates in the city, a very quick and simple task; the second, “A Royal Escort,” has you go through the meat of the instance and defeat the final boss, Mal’ganis.

Boss Strategies:

Meathook
On Wave 5 of the first wave-based half of the instance, you’ll find Meathook, a large abomination with a disturbing penchant for “play.”  He hits very hard in melee, and has two main abilities, one for melee and one for ranged: his Disease Explosion does moderate AoE damage around him and interrupts spell casting, preventing castesrs from standing near him.  His Constricting Chains stun a random person at range for 5 seconds and deals heavy damage over time.  The biggest problem comes in having your healer affected by Constricting Chains: to deal with it, the healer should always have HoTs and shields up on both himself and the tank to make sure they both survive the healer being stunned.

Salramm the Fleshcrafter
On the final wave, Wave 10, of the first half of the instance, you’ll face the necromancer Salramm.  He will occasionally summon two ghouls to fight with him who should be killed quickly, lest the Fleshcrafter use Explode Ghoul to deal heavy AoE damage around them.  He will also use Steal Flesh, which reduces a group member’s damage by 75% and increases Salramm’s by 75%.  His normal bread-and-butter attack is a simple Shadow Bolt.  There isn’t too much to killing this guy as long as the DPS can bring down the ghouls and the healer heals through the Shadow Bolts.

Chrono-Lord Epoch
As representative of the Infinite Dragonflight in the instance, Epoch will use abilities typical of one from that flight.  Curse of Exertion increases ability costs of the target by 100% for ten seconds, which is an inconvenience but not much of a threat.  Wounding Strike does heavy melee damage and reduces healing taken by the tank by 25% for a short duration, nothing threatening.  And Time Warp reduces the casting, attack, and movement speed of all group members for 6 seconds, once again not much to worry about.  As long as your healer can retain mana — which isn’t hard, since Epoch doesn’t hit very hard — Epoch won’t last nearly as long as his name suggests.

Mal’ganis
Mal’ganis does a fair amount of damage with his main abilities.  Besides a fairly strong melee swing on the tank, he will randomly and often cast a Mind Blast on a group member for heavy shadow damage, and uses a Carrion Swarm that does heavy damage on targets in front of him (only the tank should be hit by this) and places a DoT on everyone else in the group.  The biggest problem is his ability to Sleep a random group member for six seconds — most of the time this isn’t a problem, but if it’s on the healer, the tank might be left out to dry while the healer naps.  It’s important to keep the tank topped off and stocked with HoTs so he won’t go down if a Sleep is poorly timed.  Still, there’s nothing too bursty or difficult about Mal’ganis, so any group that got to this point shouldn’t have a big problem.