This page covers a healer-focused strategy for Dark Inquisitor Xanesh in Ny'alotha, the Waking City. While it's tailored for healers, other roles may also find the information useful. If you have any suggestions or feedback, you can leave a comment below or tweet @PrestonDvorak.

This guide has been updated and maintained based on my own experiences with the encounter, logs information, and Dungeon Journal information. I'll continue to update it as-needed.

General Mechanics and Abilities

Normal and Heroic

• Tanks will be dealing with Abyssal Strike, this will force a tank switch.
• When affected by Soul Flay, run as far away from your linked Soul as possible to reduce the damage taken.
• At 100% energy, three orange zones appear around Xanesh. One player must stand in each zone to participate in the Void Ritual to prevent fatal damage being dealt to all players.
  • When the Ritual finishes, a Void Orb spawns.
  • Participating players gain Voidwoken, allowing them to safely touch the Void Orb and bounce it in the direction their character is facing.
    • On Heroic, participating players also gain Void-Touched after the Void Orb is eliminated, preventing them participating in the Ritual for 2-minutes. 
  • The Void Orb must be directed into an open Void Portal to be consumed while not allowing it to touch non-Voidwoken players, Ritual Obelisks, Queen Azshara, or the edges of the room.
    • If a non-Voidwoken player is hit, they take heavy damage and are knocked back by Revile.
    • If an Obelisk, Queen Azshara, or the edge of the room is hit, Dark Collapse deals heavy damage to all players and applies Dark Ascension, increasing damage taken by subsequent Dark Collapses.
      • Xanesh also gains Fanaticism, increasing attack speed for 30-seconds.
    • On Heroic, when a Voidwoken player touches the Void Orb, they gain a stack of Imminent Doom.
      • If this reaches 5-stacks, the player is killed by Doom.
• On Heroic, avoid the Ritual Fields around Ritual Obelisks.
• Queen Azshara
  • When Tormented, most of the room will periodically be covered in void energy, players must find the safe area as quickly as possible.
  • When Anguished, all players take light damage over time.

Mythic Differences

• When a Voidwoken player touches the Void Orb an Awakened Terror spawns.
  • Awakened Terror
    • Interrupt Terror Wave to prevent the moderate damage dealt to all players and the Fear effect.

Healing Notes

Quick Notes, All Difficulties

The notes below mostly pertain to progression difficulty, meaning if you out-gear the difficulty you're on or use extra healers they may not apply.

• Use Major Cooldowns on 
  
  • Soul Flay
• Use Minor Cooldowns
  
  • as-needed for Anguish
• Pre-heal Before (mainly for heal over time classes)
  • Anguish
• Potion of Replenishment use
  • after a Void Orb
• Other things to watch for
  • Be prepared to avoid the path of the Void Orb.

Debuffs to Track

Major

• Soul Flay causes players to need additional healing.

Minor

• Void-Touched causes players to need additional healing.

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 DBM Settings

Below are the DBM settings I'll be using for Dark Inquisitor Xanesh. You can set them up however you'd like, but these ones should work well as a starting point. Some settings may be Mythic only.

Healer DBM Settings for Dark Inquisitor Xanesh

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 Videos

Heroic Dark Inquisitor Xanesh, Restoration Druid PoV

Below is a video of me killing Xanesh in a Heroic PUG.

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