Enrage (mechanic)

Enrage generally describes a boss ability which increases its damage output. Very frequently, bosses have a hard enrage timer to limit the possible length of the encounter, others may have a soft enrage as part of their normal abilities, and a few have both. The hard enrage is also sometimes called "berserk". Without a hard enrage mechanic, killing a boss would just be a question of having enough healers which don't run OOM. It adds some urgency to the encounter, and prevents undergeared raids from killing the boss.

The standard hard enrage mechanic for many bosses in Burning Crusade is:

• 10 minutes after the pull
• damage done increases by 500% (= six times the standard damage)
• cast and attack speed increase by 150% (= 2.5 times faster than normal)

Which means that after 10 minutes, the damage output by the boss is effectively multiplied by 15.

Some bosses have a different timer length or some different ability, and a few bosses have no hard enrage at all. Many bosses without it have some other mechanic in place which ensures a wipe after a certain time (e.g. the Spore Bats of Lady Vashj's encounter).

Soft enrages are a normal part of a bosses abilities and usually have nothing to do with killing him too slowly (e.g. Moroes always increases his damage output when he reaches 30% health).

Sometimes a soft enrage is described as a damage buff (on boss) or a debuff (that increases damage taken by players) that stacks at various intervals to the point where a tank cannot take/healer cannot heal through the increased damage once the buff/debuff stacks too high. Gruul, Ignis the Furnace Master, and Koralon the Flame Watcher, the Black Knight in the 5-man Trial of the Champion, and Professor Putricide have soft enrages.

A few bosses, such as Heigan the Unclean, don't have any enrage mechanic. Thus, fights lasting over 30 minutes have been reported on these fights.