Buru the Gorger

Buru the Gorger is a silithid colossus, a huge armored beetle, and an optional boss in the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. He sits among a clutch of giant eggs in the Hatchery, a pool-side nest between the General's Terrace and the Comb. Buru can barely be hurt by normal attacks while his shell is intact. Instead, he chases one player after another, and the raid lures him onto his own eggs and smashes them under him. It's one of the few fights in Classic where a boss is mostly beaten with the room rather than with weapons.

Background

The silithid are the insect swarms that serve the qiraji, and through them the Old God C'Thun. Colossi are among their largest breeds. The game gives Buru no story beyond his name and his job: he guards and feeds on the eggs of the hive, and he eats whatever wanders too close.

Abilities

• Fixate: Buru picks one player and follows only that player, ignoring threat. An emote names his target. He can't be taunted.
• Gathering speed: the longer he chases without being hit by an egg, the faster he moves. After about a minute he's faster than a running player.
• Dismember: if he catches his target, he applies a stacking bleed that quickly kills them.
• Thorns: an aura that damages anyone who hits him in melee.
• Eggs: when a raid destroys one of the eggs around him, it explodes. The blast deals about 45,000 damage to Buru if he's standing on it, damages players nearby, resets his speed, and makes him pick a new target. A Hive'Zara Hatchling crawls out of each broken egg.
• Creeping Plague: at 20% health Buru loses his shell. From then on every player takes nature damage that grows every few ticks, until Buru dies.

Strategy

The first phase is about timing. The raid splits into two teams. One team damages the eggs nearest to Buru's path and stops just before they break, leaving each at about 5% health. The other team kills the hatchlings that come out of broken eggs, since they pile up fast if left alone. The player Buru is chasing runs him over a weakened egg, and then the egg team finishes it. Each well-timed egg takes a big chunk of his health, resets his speed and passes his attention to someone else.

Guides of the time suggested damaging two eggs at once to keep a spare ready, marking the next egg with a raid symbol, and showing everyone where the deep water was before the pull, because swimming players are slow and Buru catches them. Horde raids could have a shaman cast Water Walking on whoever he was chasing. Paladins put Judgement of Wisdom on spare eggs so casters could get mana back by wanding them.

At 20% the shell comes off and it becomes a simple damage race. Creeping Plague stacks on the whole raid and can't be removed or resisted, so the raid uses its cooldowns, nature protection potions and every bit of damage it has to kill him before the plague kills the healers. Raids that came into phase two with few eggs left and many hatchlings alive rarely made it.

Loot

From our database (patch 1.12):

The [[forever:item:21485]] is a tank's shield with stamina, strength and defense. The [[forever:item:20890]] and [[forever:item:20886]] are the hilts that players turn in for their class weapon from the Ruins once they reach Exalted with the Cenarion Circle. Moam, Ayamiss the Hunter and Ossirian the Unscarred also drop them.

Trivia

• Warcraft Wiki's strategy notes warn that dragging Buru up a ramp and jumping down to escape him can make him evade and return to full health.

Sources

• Buru the Gorger, Warcraft Wiki
• Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, Warcraft Wiki