Artorius the Doombringer



Artorius the Doombringer is a doomguard disguised as a tauren named Artorius the Amiable, located in Winterspring. He was one of four vile agents of the Burning Legion which Vartrus the Ancient, a tree spirit from Irontree Woods in Felwood, wishes to see destroyed. Only a skilled hunter was able to find the demons in their disguises and defeat them.

Artorius was part of the hunter epic quest to obtain Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers and Lok'delar, Stave of the Ancient Keepers. As with all of the demons, he must be killed by the hunter alone: no heals, pets, mid-fight buffs, etc. Each demon requires the hunter to find their weakness to a hunter skill. Artorius' specific weakness is to the poison of a hunter's Serpent Sting. When affected by the sting, he gains a debuff called Stinging Trauma, doing massive amounts of damage. The key to this fight is to stay out of range of his demonic magic, which is able to mutate players into a demon, simultaneously dealing large amounts of damage to the hunter.

Abilities

 * Demonic Frenzy - increases all spell and physical damage by 300% and dispels all non-physical debuffs on the caster. It also turns Artorius red. Tranquilizing Shot will calm him but this is not needed as you need to stay outside the range of his Demonic Doom anyway.
 * Fool's Plight - When in human form, he can be attacked, even if he doesn't appear hostile, by left-clicking him and performing any attack or spell. In that case he will counterattack with an instant cast damaging for upward of 8000 damage per hit.  Also, in human form he's immune to a Warlock's Enslave Demon
 * He has a "Demonic Doom" debuff that makes you look like a demon and does about 700-800 shadow damage every 3 seconds for three minutes while frenzied and 162-208 calmed. It will basically kill you. Note that the debuff tooltip incorrectly gives the damage as 162-208 per 3 seconds, regardless of whether the demon is frenzied or not. This spell has a range of 30 yards.  You must stay out of range of this debuff to beat this demon.

Quests

 * Stave of the Ancients

Drops

 * Artorius' Head

Strategy
Once you are ready, don't bother starting out with an Aimed Shot or trap, you need to conserve as much mana as possible for Serpent Stings. (Note by Crescrendrek: This is not true. I still used a hunter's mark, immolation trap, aimed shot and serpent sting to start the battle, and I had 500 mana out of my 3500 (unbuffed) at the end, with no mana potions. I waited for my mana to recharge after using the mark and trap, though.)

Have ALL your party members follow in front of you on their mounts to train ALL the mobs that you may run into. You will have to kite him from the top of Winterspring until near the town of Everlook. Spawning him at the lower end of his path minimizes the number of mobs on the adjoining hill.

Every 4–5 seconds, apply a new Serpent Sting on him, it will stack damage. However, if you use nothing but serpent sting, he will reset. Use Arcane Shot Rank 1 to tap the demon as often as you can. This means you will be continually using jump shot, alternating between serpent sting and arcane shot.

If you are having difficulty doing the jump-shot, you can strafe the entire way. Start out facing south towards Everlook. You will occasionally have to alter your angle as you strafe so that you maintain LOS.

Use Aspect of the Cheetah to kite him. You will keep running non-stop; using jumpshot will sometimes make you get out of range. If so, stop, turn around and serpent sting or arcane shot him.

He will run faster than you while going uphill, use Concussive Shot to slow him down. If you need to make a sharp turn or other path correction, concussive shot is useful for that as well.

If you stay outside of range the whole time, you will never get debuffed or ever need to use tranq shot. Just keep running and applying Serpent Sting. If you get in the 30-yard range, don't despair; Demonic Doom is not instantly applied. You might still get away with a concussive shot. Do not use wing clip or other melee hits, this often causes him to evade bug. Avoid ever getting hit with the debuff, but if you do get his "Demonic Doom" debuff and don't have a restorative potion, the encounter is pretty much over. However, if you have a Paladin or Priest, you can immediately feign death (ending the attempt, but saving your skin) and have the cleanser cleanse while Artorius resets.

If the tactics above don't work for you, there is another way. Use two Greater Shadow Protection Potions, Dampen Magic (from a Mage), and tranquilizing shot. Let Artorious turn you into a demon when he is not frenzied. You can survive long enough to kill him, so long as you tranquilize him again right before your Demonic Doom wears off. You still have to kite him, but you don't have to worry so much about him catching up with you, and you will have time to fire auto-shots and kill him more quickly.

Specifics

 * Aspect of the Cheetah
 * Track Demons
 * Stacked Rank 9 Serpent Sting does 500 - 600 damage every three seconds to this demon in the form of a debuff called "Stinging Trauma". The first Sting will behave as normal.  Once he has the normal Serpent Sting debuff, a second Serpent Sting will be replaced by the Stinging Trauma debuff.  The effects of a third "stack" are unknown, but do not appear to increase damage output.