Getting accustomed to the dungeons in an expansion should be your first goal because of how much of the gearing process uses them. From fresh 60 runs to get started on up to high mythic+, any PvE player needs to spend lots of time in the dungeons and could do the vast majority of their gearing in dungeons if they so desired. Once you have your first character completed, you could even level in dungeons if you prefer on future alts.
The Necrotic Wake is the first dungeon you’ll have available in Shadowlands, and during the campaign, you’ll get a quest sending you into it at the end of the Bastion storyline. It’s likely to be your first dungeon in Shadowlands but it doesn’t pull punches. The bosses aren’t too bad with most featuring three or so mechanics, but be wary, the trash mobs before each boss often feature slow previews of the fight mechanics.
How To Fight Blightbone
On entry into the dungeon, you’ll already be facing down Blightbone, though there’s a small swarm of enemies between you and him. Most of them don’t sport anything particularly dangerous, so take them out at your leisure, and make enough space for the fight. Importantly, you don’t have to kill all the mobs, they won’t pull despite his arena being presented in the same style as some bosses who rally all of their trash.
Once you’ve got your space you can start the fight, and this one is really fairly simple. Blightbone will cast Heaving Retch every so often and choose a direction. The party needs to not be standing in the arc he’s facing or they’ll take heavy damage. This also spawns a set of worm adds that fixate on random party members. If they manage to get enough hits on their target before being killed they explode for a heavy AoE DoT. You do not want this to happen; even on the lower difficulties it can quickly do heavy damage. On Mythic, the worms will drop a gas cloud when they die. On all difficulties, Blightbone can drop this same cloud; it causes damage and silences anyone who stands in it. Just move out of them, and you’re good; this is why you need to make space at the beginning of the fight. The remaining “mechanic” is a big tankbuster, it’s called Crunch and it does a lot of damage, there is nothing more to it. If you’re a tank, make sure you’re ready for the spike and use your defenses accordingly.
How To Fight Amarth, The Harvester
On your way to Amarth, you’ll need to fight a large portion of the trash mobs, but sticking toward the left will help you bypass some packs halfway through. There are a few patrolling enemies that can be fairly tough, and lots of these mobs apply a healing drain debuff so manage your pulls with that in mind. The upside is that this is the last stretch of significant walking in the dungeon already, the rest is pretty jam-packed.
The boss himself is as by the books as it gets. He summons adds that need to be killed with Land of the Dead, stack them preferably in as close to a single location as possible because he will later explode their corpses. From there, just don’t stand in the Necrotic Breath and tanks need to be read for Unholy Frenzy. On Mythic, the Breath applies a debuff, but you shouldn’t be getting hit by it anyway, and you’ll face ticking that stacks up with every player death or add phase. He’s simpler than even Blightbone was.
How To Fight Surgeon Stitchflesh
Surgeon Stitchflesh’s arena is reached by hitching a ride from the Kyrian who swoop down once you finish up Amarth. You’ll need to kill all of the trash mobs in the area to engage him, though. The early mobs are composed of a mix of fodder with nothing meaningful going on and some introductions to Stitchflesh’s mechanics. Make sure that people aren’t standing in line with a cleaver target and be ready for some fixates. Notably, they use all of the boss mechanics, regardless of difficulty, so you’ll see fixates even on Normal.
Stitchflesh himself begins as a sequence of add spawns. At the end of a few waves and named enemies, he’ll cast Awaken. This is his first actual mechanic and will spawn “Creations” which do most of the actual work in the fight. Stitchflesh himself throws Stitchneedles around which cause a bleed, and Embalming Ichor, which targets a player and will deal an AoE around them and leave a ground puddle. Try not to put the puddles in places that will make getting out of other ichor tosses difficult, but otherwise, the fight is focused on the creation. They sport a generic tankbuster in Mutilate and have an aura of ticking damage around them. Treat them like they’re the boss at this stage until they cast Meat Hook. This part is imperative to the fight.
The hook will grab the first target to be hit by it, and starts by selecting a random player. It will lock in eventually and allow you to get out of the way. Whatever is grabbed gets pulled to the Creation, so you have to set up the hook to hit Stitchflesh. He will never come down from the platform on his own. Once you have him down and into your group, he’ll keep throwing embalming ichor, but otherwise drops the rest of his abilities in favor of a weak tankbuster. The Creation doesn’t despawn so keep in mind that Stitchflesh is just additional damage going in on your tank. If you fail to kill him quickly he’ll cast Escape and return to his safe platform at the back of the room and you’ll need to repeat pulling him down. On Mythic, while Stitchflesh is active in the fight he’ll cast Morbid Fixation which makes him deal quite a lot of damage and, which you might have guessed from the name, fixates. It also slows him by a comical degree, though, so it punishes melee DPS more than really being dangerous.
How To Fight Nalthor the Rimebinder
After you finish Stitchflesh, there’s no more trash to deal with, take the portal that spawns and you’ll immediately be faced with Nalthor. His arena is claustrophobic, and his mechanics are all about managing space. It sounds simple on the surface, but things can get a little hectic in practice.
To start, he occasionally gives himself Icebound Aegis, which both provides him a large shield and pulses damage out to the party. On Mythic, this damage will also apply a stacking debuff that makes further pulses deal more damage. Once the shield is broken, it stops pulsing. This forces you to put damage on Nalthor which makes dodging his later attacks more difficult to juggle with damage dealing for casters. Frozen Binds follows up and locks a player down while dealing ticking damage. It needs to be dispelled or it will cause the player to die, but when it expires or is removed all players who are close to the original target have it spread to them. The radius on this effect is fairly large compared to the arena size, so try to stay as spread as your comp allows to save space. You should have time to dispel before Comet Storm but you don’t want to get caught bunched together by a bind when that starts. Comet Storm rapidly locks in 8 targets for each player and deals heavy damage with each hit. This is compounded by each one giving a debuff that makes the next one hit harder. Cutting off your party’s path with your trail can lead to serious damage or death. Finally, every so often he’ll Dark Exile one of your DPS players. This removes them from the fight and teleports them to a separate arena where they’ll need to avoid threats and possible comet storm while chipping down an add preventing them from returning. On Mythic, they take a stacking slow while exiled and will drop a slowing ground AoE when that slow expires. Keep your paths clear of one another and minimize the time you spend dodging AoEs and you’ll take down Nalthor and the dungeon.