A solo kill in World of Warcraft lasts a whopping 6 hours. The trick behind it is cleverly thought out, but probably not recommended to replicate.
Raid bosses in World of Warcraft usually require the cooperation of an entire group – at least when it comes to current content. However, sometimes this requirement can be bypassed with good gear, clever manipulation of mechanics, and plenty of endurance.
Now a monk has defeated Princess Ky’veza of the Nexus – and did so without being in the boss room!
What happened? The player Venn has made it his mission to solo defeat some bosses from the (still) current raid “Palace of the Nerub’ar.” This time he is taking on the Nexus Princess Ky’veza with his Brewmaster monk.
Normally, the boss requires several tanks who switch out repeatedly because there’s a stackable debuff that continuously increases the damage taken. However, as a monk, Venn is able to mitigate the damage accordingly to survive these attacks long enough until the phase transition occurs.
The real problem is that Ky’veza has an enrage timer. After going through her combat pattern 3 times, she falls into a “soft enrage” and casts the spell “Darkness” – a channeled spell that deals a lot of damage and eventually wipes out the entire raid group.
At least if one can’t find a way to avoid the ability – and that’s exactly what Venn manages to do.
How does it work? Venn placed his transcendence outside the boss fight, allowing him to teleport out of the room at the start of the enrage phase and avoid the damage.
However, doing so also breaks the line of sight and prevents Venn from dealing any damage – except for two trinkets! Because his two trinkets have passive effects that deal damage to an attacker, do not need line of sight, and have no range limitation.
For the next 6 hours, Venn stands close to the door repeatedly to briefly get hit by “Darkness.” This triggers the two trinkets that deal minimal damage before he steps back and heals himself.
This process repeats over and over – for a very, very long time.
The entire fight lasts a staggering 6 hours, resulting in the kill video being over 2 hours long, despite being played at triple speed:
Why doesn’t the boss reset? There are several conditions that must be met for bosses in raids to reset. This varies by boss, but usually includes:
- All characters are dead, or there are no valid targets left (such as through stealth or playing dead).
- The boss is forced to leave its original room (for example, because it wants to reach characters outside the room).
- Multiple abilities in succession hit no targets.
Is this an exploit? In the end: Yes, definitely. It shouldn’t technically be possible to defeat the princess while being outside of her room. The fact that her ability easily reaches outside of the room and that there’s a way to defeat her with trinkets that don’t require line of sight is an exploit. It will likely be fixed in an upcoming patch.
However, the fact that this method exists to defeat Ky’veza and has been discovered is still a remarkable achievement – just as the circumstance of participating in a single fight for over 6 hours. While most players complain if a boss fight lasts longer than 10 minutes, this is quite an outstanding accomplishment.
Venn had previously soloed another boss in the raid.
