The Violet Hold Guide

Arguably the most conveniently located instance yet in the game, The Violet Hold is within the city of Dalaran itself.  A key to the instance must be obtained from a quest starting in the Violet Citadel, also in Dalaran.  Level 74 is required to start this quest.

Quests:
Only one quest, and it’s part of the same line that provides you with the key.  “Containment” has you kill the final boss of the instance, the blue dragon Cyanigosa.

Boss Strategies:

The Violet Hold is unique.  It plays out largely like The Caverns of Time: The Dark Portal, with 18 waves of enemies spawning from portals in a small area, with a boss every 6 waves.  The first two bosses in The Violet Hold, however, are randomly chosen from a pool of six possible mobs.  While what you get in a given run is random, all bosses are profiled here.

Erekem
Erekem, an arrakoa, is essentially a tank and spank.  He comes with two guards that should be picked up and DPS’d down first.  Erekem himself has no abilities of special note and can be killed easily.  Enjoy the free loot.

Ichoron
Ichoron starts the fight with a Water Shield that absorbs all damage and has 35 charges.  Every attack made against her removes a charge.  When they’re all depleted, she splits into a large number of Ichor Globules that run wildly around the room until eventually Ichoron re-spawns and they attempt to converge upon her; every Globule killed depletes Ichoron’s HP.  Once she re-spawns, wear down the charges on her Water Shield again, and kill the Globules; rinse and repeat until she’s down.

Lavanthor
A huge Core Hound, Lavanthor has the standard abilities of one of his race, and little else.  A frontal cone fire breath attack is all that supplements his normal melee damage, so as long as the tank faces him away from the rest of the group, the healer and DPS can focus on one target and he can be easily dispatched.

Moragg
A huge Floating Eye type mob, Moragg, once again, has the standard abilities of those of his type and little else.  Are you beginning to see a pattern?  He has simple eye beam attacks on the main tank to supplement his normal melee attack.  Once again, there’s little to the fight besides a tank and spank.

Xevozz
An imprisoned Ethereal, Xevozz has a large amount of arcane-themed attacks.  He will summon an Arcane Orb, similar to those from Kael’thas in Magister’s Terrace, that moves slowly and must be kited.  Anyone within range takes arcane damage and is afflicted with a stacking Arcane Buffet debuff, that makes Xevozz’s Arcane Volley attack hit much harder.  In addition, he will tele-port the group to him and perform an Arcane Explosion that cannot be easily run out of.  As long as people successfully kite the Orb and the healer keeps up with the group damage, Xevozz shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.

Zuramat the Obliterator
Zuramat is a bit tricky.  Every once in a while he will place a DoT debuff on a random target that allows them, and only them, to see adds that spawn around the fight shooting Void Bolts at random group members.  It is imperative that the member with these debuffs stops attacking Zuramat and kills the Void spawn, so the healer isn’t flooded with too much damage to heal through.  Zuramat himself, luckily, doesn’t do much besides place the debuff.  The trick to the fight is killing what adds you can while killing Zuramat quickly enough before all the damage becomes too much to deal with.

Cyanigosa
Regardless of the first two bosses, the third will always be Cyanigosa.  Her abilites are largely in line with those of a standard Blue Dragon.  A frontal cone breath attack means the tank should keep her faced away from the rest of the group.  She will place a fairly weak Arcane DoT on a random group member that can be easily healed through.  An occasional Blizzard should be moved out of if caught in.  She will also teleport all group members directly to her, but this is largely nonthreatening; everyone should just spread back out again.  As long as positioning is fine Cyanigosa doesn’t pose any big problems.