Gothik the Harvester Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot

Gothik the Harvester is the second boss of The Military Quarter that you will face in Naxxramas and was considered one of the harder encounters during his initial time in WoW Classic. Fortunately, this time around the necromancer has lost a bit of his strength, resulting in a much less stressful time for players.

• As many of the adds on this fight have low health, you will likely have to compete with other players in order to do any serious damage in this encounter.
• Since the common strategy for this fight now involves staying together as a raid, there will be a moment for massive AoE at around the 2:30 mark of the fight. Consider saving your cooldowns for it.

• For the most part, there is nothing to worry too much about for healing in this encounter. You will mostly need to be aware of players taking random amounts of damage between the time that the various adds spawn and a tank establishes threat.

• You will be spending much of this fight gathering up adds that spawn in multiple locations around your half of the room.
• Be ready to establish plenty of threat and use your AoE taunt effects when the central gate opens and a swarm of Spectral adds flood in!
• Remember to get Gothik's attention quickly once he teleports into the main encounter area.

• Gothik
  • Shadow Bolt — Gothik will be casting this on whoever is tanking him once he is active
  • Harvest Soul — Gothik will periodically reduce the stats of every player in the raid by 10% once he is active. This acts as your soft-enrage for the fight, as Gothik must be defeated before this debuff reduces your damage too significantly.
• Unrelenting Trainee/Spectral Trainee
  • Death Plague — This is a basic DoT Disease applied to players hit by the Unrelenting Trainee's attacks.
  • Arcane Explosion — Spectral Trainees will periodically deal AoE damage around themselves.
• Unrelenting Death Knight/Spectral Death Knight
  • Shadow Mark — the Unrelenting Death Knight will occasionally perform a whirlwind; any players hit by this attack become vulnerable to the Unrelenting Riders' Shadow Bolt Volley for 15 seconds.
  • Whirlwind — Spectral Death Knights will periodically deal AoE damage around themselves.
• Unrelenting Rider/Spectral Rider/Spectral Horse
  • Unholy Aura — Unrelenting Riders will radiate Shadow damage to all players within 45 yards every 2 seconds for as long as they are alive.
  • Shadow Bolt Volley — Unrelenting Riders will cast this ability on any players who have been recently debuffed by Shadow Mark
  • Drain Life — Spectral Riders will drain life from players in order to heal themselves over time.
  • Stomp — Spectral Horses will occasionally Stomp around themselves, dealing damage and snaring any players hit.

Gothik's main mechanic of the encounter is to initially split the space into two separate sections before spawning adds in the section underneath his balcony. Upon defeating these adds, they will respawn in the other section of the room as spectral variants and need to be defeated again. This repeats until Gothik eventually enters the room himself.

Ordinarily, this would mean that you need to split your raid into two groups to handle each section of the room due to a gate blocking the sides off from one another. However, this is no longer necessary. Instead, have the entire raid stay on Gothik's side of the room and defeat every Unrelenting enemy as they spawn. After approximately two and a half minutes, the central gate will open and numerous Spectral adds will swarm in. At this time, use all of your AoE abilities alongside your cooldowns to destroy the Spectral adds and continue the fight as normal. From this point on, every Spectral enemy that spawns will immediately run into your section of the room.

Continue to defeat the waves of Unrelenting and Spectral enemies until Gothik himself tires of your refusal to be defeated, upon which he will enter the room and can be slain.

Item	Type/Slot
Slayer of the Lifeless	One-Hand Sword
Spirit-World Glass	Trinket
Signet of the Malevolent	Ring
Veiled Amulet of Life	Neck
Resurgent Phantom Bindings	Cloth Wrist
Tunic of Dislocation	Leather CHest
Heinous Mail Chestguard	Mail Chest
Spectral Rider's Girdle	Mail Belt
Sabatons of Deathlike Gloom	Plate Feet
Girdle of the Ascended Phantom	Plate Waist

Item	Type/Slot
Touch of Horror	Wand
Life and Death	Main Hand Sword
Dying Curse	Trinket
Grim Toll	Trinket
Defender's Code	Trinket
Forethought Talisman	Trinket
Aged Winter Cloak	Cape
Shroud of Luminosity	Cape
Cloak of the Shadowed Sun	Cape
Shawl of the Old Maid	Cape
Cloak of Averted Crisis	Cape
Libram of Resurgence	Libram
Idol of Awakening	Idol
Gothik's Cowl	Cloth Helm
Bindings of Yearning	Cloth Wrist
Hood of the Exodus	Leather Helm
Leggings of Fleeting Moments	Leather Legs
Shackled Cinch	Leather Belt
Helm of Unleashed Energy	Mail Helm
Leggings of Failed Escape	Mail Legs
Helm of Vital Protection	Plate Helm
Burdened Shoulderplates	Plate Shoulders
Bracers of Unrelenting Attack	Plate Wrist
Abetment Bracers	Plate Wrist

Gothik the Harvester is just one of the 15 encounters present in the Naxxramas raid of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. If you would like to learn more about the others, or would like to see the loot tables of every boss at the same time, please see our other pages for the raid below.