Boss Focus: Maiden of Virtue
In a Nutshell
The Maiden of Virtue is an optional boss encounter in Karazhan, that is accessible right from the start. She is controlling the respawns inside the guest quarters and is usually killed 3rd, after Attumen and Moroes.
The fight is basically a tank and spank encounter. However, it requires your raid to position correctly and your healers to keep up with some solid damage that will be going around. Additionally you will need at least one player that is able to dispel magic debuffs.
Rundown
The Maiden is standing on a small platform that should be used to tank her. There are eight pillars surrounding this spot, and is important that all players are in line of sight of each other.
Prior to the pull, all non-melee classes should line up at the walls of the room. Each player should be standing between to pillars, with his back to the wall, hugging it. As soon as the tank moves in, and combat begins, all players move forward to place themselves at the outermost stair that leads up to the Maiden’s platform. This places them well insice the circle of pillars, but outside of the Maiden’s Holy Ground.
Every now and then, the Maiden will cast Holy Fire on a player not in melee range. This will cause a lot of damage up front, but also places a nasty DoT debuff on the player, that will kill him/her very quickly. You need to dispel that debuff as soon as possible. If your maintank is alive and well, it is ok to cancel any heal on him/her and debuff the victim immediately.
Additionally, around every 30 sec, the Maiden will cast Repentance, which will deal some damage to all players and stun them for around 10 seconds. Damage suffered will break the stun effect early. Only paladins are able to escape from this reliably, but since Repentance will occur more or less predictably, you are able to place your cloth-clad behind inside the Maiden’s Holy Ground damage radius, in order to break free from the stun.
Watch out for
Stay wary of Holy Fires. They will kill players very quickly if they are not removed as soon as possible. Use raidframes that display debuffs and watch for her to change her target away from the maintank to a ranged player. This will give you some breathing room.
Watch your boss-mod-timer of choice for Repentance. As soon as there are only a few seconds left, refresh your Renew on the tank, bring him back to full and, if you are on Repentance-duty, run into the Holy Ground.
Be careful when to step into the Holy Ground. In addition to the relatively small amount damage dealt every three seconds, it also pulses an area-effect silence every second. The silence lasts for only half a second, so you will be able to cast instant spells inside the Holy Ground, but casting other spells is not possible.
Be aware of your positioning. The Maiden will occasionally cast a Holy Wrath spell, that behave like a chain spell, but increases damage with each jump. So, if you are heavy on melees and they cannot spread out correctly, you will have to deal with hefty damage spikes should the Holy Wrath hit the melees.
Healing roles
Anyone that can dispel magic debuffs will have to. If you have a damage dealer that can do it, i would suggest tasking him to be the primary dispeller, so that your healers will gain some room to finish heals and the like.
Additionally, you need to specify a player that heals the main tank during Repentance. If you have a paladin with you, this is easy due to Blessing of Sacrifice. If you don’t have a paladin with you, you need to assign a healer to jump into the Holy Ground right before a Repentance. This will break the stun and allows the healer to move back out and start healing the tank. I recommend the healer with the highest hit points total to do the job.
If you are heavy on restoration druids, you may even ignore the Repentance completely. The HoTs will keep a well-geared tank alive easily enough. Just remind them to refresh them before Repentance hits.
If you have a healer that is capable of area-healing, put him on secondary duty for the other melee classes. A priest works very well here, just cast a Prayer of Healing once in a while and you will be able to keep your melee topped of.
Other than that, just keep the tank alive and your raid more or less topped of. Else, you may loose a player to a Holy Fire followed by an early Repentance.
Rewards
The Maiden is capable of dropping some very nice priest loot. You can hope for the Bands of Indwelling, and consider yourself very lucky if you can get your hands on the rather rare Shard of the Virtuous.
