The Stone Guard Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot

• Use personal defensive cooldowns to help survive the 1,550,000 damage from overload.
• Keep the center of the room (the designated stacking position) clear until the call is made to stack together. This will keep unwanted AoE spells out of the area.
• Cleave as much as possible; AoE everything.

• Coordinate raid-wide defensive cooldowns to survive the 1,550,000 AoE damage and quickly top players (especially tanks) back up right after.
• Tanks will take massive damage on this encounter, requiring constant major healing.

• This is one of the highest tank damage fights in this phase; make sure to properly rotate mitigation abilities and defensive cooldowns.
• Positioning is absolutely key here, making sure the 4 bosses are stacked as closely as possible.

This fight consists of a single phase with two main mechanics for players to handle. The raid will need to fight all 4 of the Quilen Guardians at once, with each representing a different stone type: Amethyst Guardian, Cobalt Guardian, Jade Guardian, and Jasper Guardian. These 4 Guardians have a shared health pool, but each Guardian has its own individual energy bar; these energy bars will quickly fill up when other Guardians are within 12 yards. When a Guardian is more than 12-yards away from the other Guardians, it will gain Solid Stone, reducing its damage taken by 90% but preventing it from gaining additional energy. If an energy bar is allowed to be filled entirely, that boss will release a powerful raid-wide attack, dealing damage based on their color ( Amethyst Overload, Cobalt Overload, Jade Overload, Jasper Overload).

Throughout the fight, one of the four Guardians will apply a debuff to the raid ( Amethyst Petrification, Cobalt Petrification, Jade Petrification, or Jasper Petrification), reducing the raids damage taken by 90% to a their specific spell school (Fire, Nature, Arcane or Shadow) and causing players to slowly turn to stone. To prevent players from turning to stone (and causing a wipe), the specific boss that is applying the same debuff must be allowed to overload; for example if Jasper Petrification is being applied to the raid, then Jade Overload must be allowed to go off from the Jade Guardian to remove the stacking petrification debuff before the raid become statutes. When one of the petrification debuffs is removed another will be applied from one of the other Guardians, requiring the raid to allow that specific boss to Overload and repeating the cycle.

Alongside these constant raid-wide debuffs will be a few additional mechanics that randomly selected players will need to handle. Amethyst Pool will be frequently created under random players feet and should be moved out of quickly. Avoid standing on the stacking spot (used and explained later on in this guide) as to prevent the Amethyst Pools from spawning where the raid will stack in the future. Cobalt Mine will spawn large blueish crystals around the room, which explode if touched by a player. These Crystal Mines will not despawn and should be cleared whenever possible to keep as much of the area open; wait until the Cobalt Petrification is active to soak these, or use defensive cooldowns such as Deterrence to clear them out in the meantime. Jade Shards is unavoidable raid-wide damage that must simply be healed through. Lastly there is Jasper Chains, which links 2 players together, causing them to deal increased Fire damage to each other the further apart the 2 players are from each other. Players linked together via Jasper Chains must stand within 10-yards of each other until Jasper Petrification is active, then these 2 players should must spread more than 10-yards apart for 15 seconds total to break the chains.

Where each of the 4 bosses are originally positioned will be a Living Crystal, which can be clicked to gain a debuff specific to the activated crystals color ( Living Amethyst, Living Cobalt, Living Jade, Living Jasper). These debuffs deal high damage-over-time per charge and energize the player, allowing them to energize nearby "White Floor Tiles" by walking over them, removing 1 charge of the debuff and turning the tiles into "Energized Floor Tiles". Each "Energized Floor Tile" will grant a stack of Energized Tiles to the raid, increasing all damage dealt and Spirit by 1% per stack. These stacks of Energized Tiles will be reset when the boss reaches both 75% and 40% health.

Keeping all of these abilities in mind, we suggest using the following strategy of stacking the bosses together to maximize AoE damage and allowing many of the mechanics to be ignored. Have the raid start off by spreading out, keeping a central stacking point clear from all players to prevent any unwanted abilities from spawning here (this position will be needed in the future). Have your Warlocks place Demonic Gateways on either sides of the bosses room, as shown in the picture above; these Demonic Gateways will greatly improve the speed at which players can stack up Energized Tiles. Assign 4-5 players on both sides of the room with the goal of clicking one of the crystals to gain the debuff ( Living Amethyst, Living Cobalt, Living Jade, Living Jasper); these players should quickly run across up to 7 "White Floor Tiles" (non-energized tiles) to grant the raid stacks of Energized Tiles. Once all 7 charges of the debuff have been used to activate tiles, these assigned players should take the Demonic Gateway back to the crystal and activate 7 more tiles. Activating these tiles as quickly as possible is the only way to defeat this boss, and this must be done three times throughout the encounter as the stacks of Energized Tiles will be reset when the boss reaches both 75% and 40% health.

With the bosses all stacks, all 4 will periodically gain energy, guaranteeing they will use their "Overload" abilities ( Amethyst Overload, Cobalt Overload, Jade Overload, Jasper Overload) at the same time. Each of these abilities hits the entire raid for 500,000 damage of a specific element, with the damage of one of the 4 overloads being reduced by 90% thanks to the petrification debuff that is currently out ( Amethyst Petrification, Cobalt Petrification, Jade Petrification, or Jasper Petrification). The normal strategy to prevent this involves tanking 2 bosses together by a single tank, while 2 additional tanks split the remaining 2 bosses apart away from each other. The tanks will then constantly be swapping the bosses around based on which petrification debuff is out at the time, as well as the bosses current energy. This adds a large amount of complexity to the encounter, requiring an additional tank as well as constant movement by the entire raid. Rather than doing all this, we will suggest a strategy of stacking 6 or more raid-wide major defensive cooldowns (such as Power Word: Barrier) and attempting to survive and heal through the incoming 1,550,000 raid-wide damage. Use the safe spot that was kept clear earlier to have the entire raid stack together and use as many raid-wide and personal defensive cooldowns as needed to survive the damage. Finish the boss off before a second overload occurs, or coordinate a second set of raid-wide defensive cooldowns if available (depending on your raid composition).

With a bit of practice, all of the Mists of Pandaria Classic class buffs, and additional gear upgrades from raids, this strategy will becoming easier and easier over time. Aim to kill the boss before the second explosion as this will be much harder to survive, with people using personal defensive cooldowns on the first. If you do have a second explosion occur, use all remaining defensive cooldowns available to keep as many players alive as possible, finishing the boss off before a third explosion (which is a guaranteed wipe) occurs. Use all major offensive cooldowns such as Bloodlust as soon as the assigned players are finished stacking up the Energized Tiles buff, cleaving the bosses down as quickly as possible.

3.

The Stone Guard Loot

Celestial Normal Heroic

Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.

3.1.

Celestial Dungeon Loot

Item
Claws of Amethyst
Ruby-Linked Girdle
Jade Dust Leggings
Stonebound Cinch
Stoneflesh Leggings
Sixteen-Fanged Crown
Stonemaw Armguards
Stonefang Chestguard
Star-Stealer Waistguard
Heavenly Jade Greatboots
Jasper Clawfeet
Beads of the Mogu'shi
Cape of Three Lanterns
Dagger of the Seven Stars

Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.

3.2.

Normal Difficulty Loot

Item
Claws of Amethyst
Ruby-Linked Girdle
Jade Dust Leggings
Stonebound Cinch
Stoneflesh Leggings
Sixteen-Fanged Crown
Stonemaw Armguards
Stonefang Chestguard
Star-Stealer Waistguard
Heavenly Jade Greatboots
Jasper Clawfeet
Beads of the Mogu'shi
Cape of Three Lanterns
Dagger of the Seven Stars

Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.

3.3.

Heroic Difficulty Loot

Item
Claws of Amethyst
Ruby-Linked Girdle
Jade Dust Leggings
Stonebound Cinch
Stoneflesh Leggings
Sixteen-Fanged Crown
Stonemaw Armguards
Stonefang Chestguard
Star-Stealer Waistguard
Heavenly Jade Greatboots
Jasper Clawfeet
Beads of the Mogu'shi
Cape of Three Lanterns
Dagger of the Seven Stars

Achievement	Description
Heroic: Stone Guard	Defeat the Stone Guard in Mogu'shan Vaults on Heroic difficulty.
Must Love Dogs	Defeat the Stone Guard in Mogu'shan Vaults on Normal or Heroic difficulty while every member of your raid is accompanied by a canine companion pet.

The Stone Guard is just one of the six encounters present in the Mogu'shan Vaults raid of Mists of Pandaria. If you would like to learn more about the others, please see our other pages for the raid below.