Sludgefist Strategy Guide for Castle Nathria

• The tanks need to stay tightly stacked for Giant Fists and keep the boss away from the pillars.
• If you get chained to someone, stay very close to them ( Chain Link). If you move too far away from each other, you will both die.
• When a tank gets marked for the charge, they need to make sure it hits a pillar ( Hateful Gaze).
• Everyone needs to quickly move out of the Destructive Stomp around the boss and dodge the random brown swirlies on the ground ( Falling Rubble).
• On Heroic, a couple players need to help soak the red circle on a random player ( Chain Slam).

The Sludgefist encounter is a single phase fight that centers around getting the boss's charge to hit the four pillars in the room. The fight is very simple, but very punishing, and requires a high amount of throughput from all roles.

We recommend using Bloodlust/ Heroism on pull, because this fight has a hard-enrage that you need to beat. Alternatively, you can save it for the last 20% of Sludgefist's health where he gains an enrage that increases his damage and attack speed ( Gruesome Rage).

• The key mechanic in this fight is a charge that Sludgefist casts when his rage bar is full, Hateful Gaze. He marks the current tank and then charges in their direction after a few seconds, killing anyone in the way and only stopping when he runs into a pillar or a wall. If he hits a wall, it will almost instantly wipe the raid. So the tank absolutely needs to aim him at a pillar every time by simply running behind one when marked by the charge. When Sludgefist runs into a pillar, it gets destroyed, and he gets stunned and takes double damage for a few seconds. There are only four pillars in the room, so the fifth charge is guaranteed to hit a wall and wipe the raid, acting as the hard-enrage of the fight.
  Hateful Gaze
• On pull, tank Sludgefist where he spawns. This is a good place to start because he occasionally casts a 20-yard AoE stomp that does a ton of damage to players and destroys pillars within its circle ( Destructive Stomp). So the tanks need to make sure he is always over 20 yards away from any pillars, and everyone needs to quickly move out of the stomp.
• The tanks also need to stay tightly stacked with each other, because all of the boss's melee swings get copied onto the next closest player within five yards of the current tank ( Giant Fists). If no one else is in five yards, the current tank will take both melee swings at once, and this boss hits really hard so that would probably not end well. This also means everyone else needs to stay away from the tanks.
• This fight also has one of the most punishing mechanics of all time, Chain Link. It marks two random players and chains them together after a few seconds. If the chained players move further away than 12 yards from each other, they both instantly die. So anyone who gets chained needs to be extremely careful about moving around with their partner. This chain lasts almost an entire minute and gets recast several times in the fight, so you will need to get very used to it. Ranged players should generally stay near each other throughout the fight so that they do not have to move as much to get to their partner initially.
• All of the other mechanics are relatively minor:
  • There are randomly spawning brown swirlies on the ground to dodge, which leave permanent zones of rocks that do damage to players ( Falling Rubble).
  • Sludgefist occasionally casts a roar that does damage to everyone and pushes everyone away from him ( Colossal Roar).
  • And on Heroic, Sludgefist occasionally marks a random players with a red arrow and red circle, roots them for a couple seconds, and then pulls everyone in that circle to him and casts a slam that does split damage to those players ( Chain Slam). Three or four players need to stand in the circle in order to split the damage enough to survive.
• Sludgefist's abilities are on a strict timer, and he casts them in the same order between every charge, so this fight is all about getting used to the flow of the abilities. For instance, after the second Destructive Stomp he almost immediately casts his charge on the tank, so the tanks can just move out of that stomp toward the next pillar and already be standing behind it for the charge.
• Destroying each pillar adds a stack of a permanent DoT debuff to the raid, so the healing required will get tougher over the course of the fight ( Crumbling Foundation). And when Sludgefist gets to 20% health, he gains an enrage that increases his damage and attack speed ( Gruesome Rage). So the end of the fight is very hard on the tanks and healers specifically.

We have encounter journal pages for each of the four difficulties, which you can access by clicking the links below.

For each class, we provide advice on how to tackle the Sludgefist encounter, complete with actual tips, but also recommendations for talents and Legendary Powers.