Two Bosses Enter: Illidan vs C'thun

Two bosses enter... but only one will get to leave in WoW Insider's series of fantasy deathmatches. We've scoured the instances of Azeroth and Outland looking for the most interesting bosses Blizzard has to offer us and picked out a group of 32 to pit against one another until we come out with a single winner in the end. And the best part -- you get to tell us who wins.

We're down to the Final Four and have arrived at the most anticipated fight in the series. Tonight, Illidan Stormrage steps into an Arena with the old god C'thun. And the one that steps out alive, will move on to the final match against the Naxxramas end boss, Kel'thuzad. Want to learn more about these two bosses and voice your opinion on who would win in a fight? Keep reading.

Illidan has a wide array of abilities at his disposal to wipe out any opposition. He's capable of heavy melee damage, high fire and shadow damage, and can summon a variety of minions to keep you occupied. Illidan's abilities at the start of the fight are as follows:

• Shear reduces the health of his main target by 60%

• Illidan will occasionally jump into the air and land in a patch of highly damaging blue flame

• Illidan will randomly target players to cast a parasites debuff on, which does shadow damage over time and then summons two parasites to attack the target

• Draw soul does heavy fire damage to targets in front of Illidan and heals Illidan

For phase 2, Illidan offers a different range of ways to kill you:

• Illidan will summon two massive fire elementals, the Flames of Azzinoth

• Every 30 seconds, Illidan will sweep an eye beam across the platform, doing heavy fire damage and leaving a trail of damaging fire behind it

• Illidan shoots fireballs that do splash damage
  

• Dark Barrage does heavy shadow damage to a random target, though it's rarely cast

For phase 3, Illidan acts nearly the same as phase 1, only with the addition of agonizing flames, a fire spell that does damage on initial impact and damage over time afterwards.

For phase 4 (a quick phase, at 30 seconds long), Illidan will unleash the demon within. He turns into a black demon with powerful abilities, but is unable to move. During this phase, he'll cast:

• Shadow blast, a high damage shadow attack with splash damage

• Flame burst, an AoE fire-based DoT that does splash damage

• Aura of dread does a high amount of shadow damage over time as well as increasing the damage taken by shadow spells (stacks)

Phase 5 is like phase 3, only with the addition of the following:

• Maiev Shadowsong joins the fight -- and though we usually don't consider adds for fights, we're keeping Maiev in this fight because Illidan is just incredibly powerful. (And Maiev would be hunting him down whether he was in the Black Temple or not.)

• Illidan can Enrage, randomly.

For those of you familiar with the fight, you'll notice something missing -- this is because we aren't considering instant-kill abilities. In a one-on-one encounter, they make the fight predictable and dull. However, if you're still curious for the full details of the fight, check Bosskillers.

C'Thun is the final boss in Ahn'Qiraj, an old god considered to be one of the most difficult pre-Burning Crusade encounters. The fight has two phases, a standard DPS phase one where you run C'Thun's health from 100% to 0% and a phase two where C'Thun takes almost no damage -- but occasionally C'Thun takes out his opponents with high nature and shadow damage along with tentacle power. In a fight with C'Thun, you can expect to encounter the following abilities:

• Eye Beam: A nature damage attack that targets a single player, but jumps from the first player to subsequent players in range with increasing damage each jump.

• Dark Glare: An incredibly high damage (read: no player could survive it) shadow attack that sweeps 180 degrees across the room.

• Eye Tentacles: These tentacles spawn at intervals throughout the fight. Individually, they have low health, but they spawn in groups and do a Mind Flay-type spell. (With generally meaner "giant" versions spawning in phase two.)
  

• Claw Tentacles: These tentacles also spawn at intervals throughout the fight and have low health. However, unlike the Eye Tentacles, these do melee damage. (With generally meaner "giant versions spawning in phase two.)

• Stomach of C'Thun: In phase two, tentacles will swallow players and send them to C'Thun's stomach. As you might imagine, it's not a friendly place, and every few seconds damaging debuffs will stack on anyone inside. There's an easy exit from the stomach, but killing Flesh Tentacles inside the stomach weakens C'Thun, allowing him to be hurt and killed -- so you might want to stick around.

Will C'thun fall to Illidan's Shear (we have to assume C'thun will swallow him as he does raid members) or will Illidan fall to what is considered one of the toughest bosses in the game?

Before you cast your vote below, a reminder: we're considering these two bosses with approximately equal health and approximately equal damage output capabilities. We aren't making this into a math equation of who's got more health than who, so when you cast your vote, cast it on fighting style, not highest level. You're welcome to factor the lore of each character into the equation. %Poll-11961%