Forced Conscription: when to use Army of the Dead

Every max-level DK has a delightful little spell at their disposal called Army of the Dead. For those of you who haven’t seen it, quizzed your friendly local death knight about it, or read the link, here’s the lowdown on it:

• 6-second channel, totally unlike any other DK spell. Each second summons an Army of the Dead Ghoul. They like to arrange themselves in a half-moon around you; it kinda looks like Thriller.
• It has a 20-minute cooldown, halved to 10 with 2/2 Night of the Dead. Unholy DKs will have this roughly every boss fight in a raid; others might have it every other boss fight (or every fight if you wipe a couple times.)
• While channeling, the DK takes 50% less damage from all sources. All of them.
• Once summoned, Army of the Dead Ghouls behave a lot like the unnamed ghouls summoned when an non-Unholy DK casts Raise Dead, leaping straight into combat with a delightful “eeeeaugh!” – but with one important difference: Army of the Dead Ghouls will taunt enemies. They will taunt anything not marked as a raid boss. This includes trash, instance bosses, adds of raid bosses, you name it. On the other hand, they will not taunt anything whose level is ?? (Boss).
• From my personal experience, they don’t like to change targets once they’re on a given target, but their given target at the beginning will be slightly random if there’s multiple choices because they’re summoned in a wide circle around you. However, sometimes they do seem to change targets, and I can’t find any rhyme or reason why.

As you can imagine, the Taunt feature is both a lifesaver and a total pain in the ass. For example, I once saved a Heroic UP run after the tank was wiped at 5% on Ymiron by letting my Army tank the boss. Sure, he only has to hit them once or twice to smush them, but that’s 6-12 hits that I or someone else doesn’t have to take. But at the same time, you’ve probably been in a group with a DK who’s summoned zombies that bring Gluth’s dinner to him like they have invisible maitre’d outfits on.

Make no mistake, the ghouls are a DPS boost – a pretty significant one. Not quite the most damaging thing you can do with 5 seconds of your time, but on fights where you can use them, it’s worth it. That said, where should you go for it? Here’s what I’ve found, in the places I’ve been.

Naxxramas

• Arachnid Quarter
• Anub’rekhan: Yes! On one condition: do it once the Crypt Guards are down, and make sure Anub’rekhan is being tanked away from where the new guards will pop out before you summon them.
• Grand Widow Faerlina: Maybe! If you are fighting Faerlina in Momma Said Knock You Out style, wait till all the adds are down and let ‘er rip. Otherwise, you risk them interfering with the adds that you have to MC or kill at the appropriate time to keep her from enraging.
• Maexxna: Yes! Just be sure and do it when spiderlings aren’t up. Though really, if a ghoul occupies itself with one spiderling, it generally won’t be a bad thing. I like to save mine for that final push after 30% when Maexxna enrages.
• Plague Quarter
• Noth the Plaguebringer: Maybe! If people die to the adds during the phases where Noth is on the floor, definitely. But if you do summon the Army here, accept the fact that one or two of them are going to ignore Noth and start punching skeletons instead. I generally don’t both, Noth’s a loot pinata anyway.
• Heigan the Unclean: No! It’s a waste of your time, and you’re probably going to get hit by the fire. They don’t have enough sense to not stand in the fire, and as far as I can tell, they don’t seem to get the 70% AOE resistance from Night of the Dead, so on phase 2 they run towards the platform and just die.
• Loatheb: Yes! They do bunches of damage on Loatheb. Just don’t do it when there’s a spore right behind the tank, please.
• Military Quarter
• Instructor Razuvious: 10-man Only! Let your designated crystal people take control of their students, then summon the army onto Raz. One might leap onto a student when the crystal person drops/reacquires mind control, but it’ll leap off after control is re-established. On 25, they end up taunting the students that are being off-tanked and not mind-controlled, which is just a pain in the butt.
• Gothik the Harvester: Yes! Save them till Gothik comes down, ‘nuff said.
• The Four Horsemen: Yes! Especially if you’re fighting Thane Kor’thazz. AotD ghouls count as extra targets to soak up meteor damage. They do appreciable damage to everyone, though they’re not smart enough to get out of Blaumeux’s void zones.
• Construct Quarter
• Patchwerk: Yes! Patchwerk is the ideal fight to summon Armies on.
• Grobbulus: Yes! Do it before he has slimes up, though. Be warned, though, that they’ll probably die in a slime cloud if your tank is slow to move Grobby.
• Gluth: No! I cannot stress this enough: do not summon your Army here. For one thing, in the same vein as not using Rain of Fire on Faerlina, your fellow raiders don’t need the panic that comes with 6 ghouls suddenly appearing at Gluth’s feet. Secondly, and I have seen this with my own eyes, this is the one fight where sometimes a zombie will peel itself off of Gluth, find a nearby zombie, taunt it, and – I shit you not – carry it back to Gluth. Army is a giant liability. Do not use Army of the Dead on Gluth.
• Thaddius: Yes! Army of the Dead Ghouls are like pets in that they don’t count for purposes of charges, so while they don’t get a charge, they won’t zap everyone around them. They won’t do as significant a portion of your damage as they do on other fights due to not getting charges, though. Such is life.
• The Heart of Naxxramas
• Sapphiron: No! Don’t waste your time. They die during the summoning animation.
• Kel’thuzad: Phase 2 Only! During phase 1, they will go taunt undead. This is bad. During phase 3, they will peel the Guardians of Icecrown off of their designated offtank. This is also bad. Phase 2 is the safe time to summon them here. Summon them right as KT becomes active, and hope they don’t die to an unlucky ice blocking of the melee.
• Vault of Archavon
• Archavon: Yes! Archavon’s such a pinata that you may not need to, though.
• Emalon: No! You want to keep those adds tightly grouped up, and unfortunately they’re all there from the beginning so there’s no add-free phase. Don’t bother.
• Obsidian Sanctum
• Sarth+0, +1: Yes! If summoned while the elementals are down, or far, far away, they’ll stick to Sarth or the drake or like glue. They will not, however, dodge fire walls.
• Sarth +2, +3: Untested. One of my readers is welcome to leave a comment if they’ve got some experience summoning AotD here.
• Eye of Eternity
• Malygos: Yes! There’s two places to go for it here: pop them on phase 1, after you come down from the first vortex, or pop them immediately on phase 2, and hope your tank can steal enough hate to pull the Nexus Lords into the bubble despite the ghouls’ best efforts. The phase 1 summon is less risky, as they seem to utterly ignore Power Sparks, so they won’t be dragging any to Maly.
• Ulduar
• The Siege of Ulduar
• Razorscale: Yes! After she’s grounded, go for it.
• Ignis: No! Proper placement of adds is key for this fight. You don’t want the ghouls screwing it up, trust me.
• XT-002 Deconstructor: Yes! You don’t know how much it pains me that I cannot recommend summoning them during the Heart phase. I tried this once and single-handedly wiped us, as two ghouls went to go get a pummeler apiece (leaving our off-tank scrambling to gather pummelers) and the third grabbed a bomb-bot, blowing up everyone around it. Summon them between add phases, when all the adds are down, or at the very beginning. They’ll probably live at least up until the first Tympanic Tantrum.
• The Antechamber of Ulduar
• Kologarn: No! Since you can’t pile them onto a single target, they’ll gladly target either arm, or the body, or the rubbles when those are up, which makes them ineffective overall. Plus, a Shockwave will knock them out. OBLIVIOOOOOOOOOOON, indeed.
• Iron Council: Yes! The Iron Council is another great fight for the Army of the Dead. They might get wiped quick by AOEs near the end, but the beginning of the fight works great.
• Auriaya: Yes! This is actually a change from my previous recommendations that I’ve given to people, because I noticed something new: the Feral Defender and the Sanctum Sentries are level ??, not level 80. They won’t get taunted by the ghouls! Let ‘er rip. I like to summon them while Auriaya is summoning the Feral Defender, but that’s because usually I’m tanking one of the Sanctum Sentries and given my raid’s stellar DPS, I can’t afford to not generate threat for a second because to be honest I’m a bit undergeared in my tank mode.
• The Keepers of Ulduar
• Hodir: Maybe! They die quicker than usual, but not as quick as they do against Sapphiron. However, if your raid members are having problems remembering to break out the NPCs, you may want to consider the Army – they’ll target random Flash Freezes nearby, in addition, to Hodir himself.
• Freya: No! The adds are all level 81, not level ??, so the ghouls will taunt them like mad – but good add control is the whole point of the Freya fight. Don’t do this. Your raid will thank you.
• Thorim, Mimiron: Untested. Please let me know of your experiences with Army of the Dead on these two keepers!
• The Descent into Madness
• General Vezax, Yogg-Saron: Untested. Please let me know how the Old God of Death likes being pummeled by ghouls!