It seems soloing Normal mode current tier bosses is just not enough for Venn! He’s graduated to Heroic in these past few weeks, and Rasha’nan paid the price… again. We’ve seen Normal mode conquered, we’ve seen Season 4 Awakened/Fated kills, but not Heroic in the same patch cycle as the raid’s release in a long while. No other bosses have been soloed on Normal, let alone Heroic, so Rash seems to be very specific.
A Historic First
We may have a bit of a historic kill on our hands here. Looking back through the long list of solos, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a current-tier Heroic kill in WoW. There have been some in more recent times, but they’re all exploit-related. The last real/”pure” Heroic we’ve seen was way back in Legion. Back then it was Rextroy who took down some bosses by simply doing the regular fight mechanics. So it’s been 7 years since the last one, making this even more impressive!
The Kill and Strategy
On to the actual boss encounter. As Venn explains, the strategy isn’t massively different from the Normal kill, but there are tweaks. First off, it took Venn around 50 attempts to get it done, and considering the final kill took around an hour, that’s already a huge amount of time, completely discounting the time it took to come up with and execute the Normal version of the fight.
When it comes to relevant stats, Venn had 20k/20% Versatility and, as you’d imagine, a very defensive talent build. He used 
Refracting Aggression Module and 
Swarmlord’s Authority for even more damage reduction for the tank buster attacks. The biggest Heroic difference is the pull attack which needs to be out-ranged, but as a Death Knight that means no healing while you’re running away, which required some precision movement. Not to mention that the DK’s one decent mobility spell, 
Death’s Advance, doesn’t work on the pull! Oh, and also it does 43 million damage, since it’s not split between raid members as usual. Ouch.
A Strange Pacifist Bug
As you’d imagine in a 1-hour kill runtime, the enrage WAS reached. It’s even deadlier on Heroic, making boss abilities last longer and trigger more often. From having to avoid a stacking and very deadly DoT, to 4 tankbusters and more, the enrage is very tricky. However, after 4 phases of this enrage sequence, something weird happens. Rasha’nah seems to just sort of “turn off”, as he heads to the middle and proceeds to… well just auto-attack and use no further mechanics throughout the fight. Now, you’d think that was the reason this was even doable, but it wasn’t. Venn already survived 30 minutes of the regular fight and enrage mechanics, and could have definitely survived the next 30, even if the bug did not happen. This just made it less stressful and probably saved him some pulls.
If you’re wondering about the other mechanics of the Rasha’nan fight, head on over to the (also World First) Normal kill from a few weeks ago.
The Full 1 Hour Kill Video
For those of you that really need to know all the details, Venn also posted the entire fight.
A New Soloing Legend
Huge congratulations to Venn for this incredibly impressive and historic solo kill! He has certainly joined the ranks of the solo greats like Mionelol, Rextroy, Durendil and Raegwyn! We can’t wait to see what he does next.