Dungeons & Raids of Cataclysm

[chaos5061]

Omnitron Defense System TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Blackwing Descent Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about the Omnitron Defense System, the first boss in this new Cataclysm raid instance. We completed this fight with 2 tanks, 7 healers and 16 DPS, although different compositions may work just as well.

The Omnitron Defense System is a council-type encounter that harbors 4 construct-type enemies named Electron, Arcanotron, Magmatron and Toxitron. They have a shared healthpool of approximately 100 million. You never fight all four constructs at the same time, though. When you first engage the fight, you're faced with one random construct and you'll notice that it has an energy bar that's slowly draining.

When its energy bar reaches 50, a second Construct will become active - you'll see in advance which one it is since a colored beam will be energizing it. The color indicates the construct. Green for Toxitron, red for Magmatron, Pink for Arcanotron and Blue for Electron. As soon as the second construct becomes active, the first construct will put up a shield, so DPS should always switch to the construct that last became active.

As with the first, the second construct's energy bar will start ticking down, and when it reaches 50, the first construct will turn to stone, the second will put up a shield, and the third will be vulnerable to your attacks. This cycle keeps repeating throughout the fight until their shared healthpool is depleted.

The order of constructs is completely random, so you'll need to improvise a little on the get-go when you're faced with two AoE-heavy constructs, for instance. I'll give you an overview of their abilities and then go over some basic strategies. Each Construct has 3 major abilities.

First up, Electron. His first ability, Lightning Conductor, puts a debuff on a random raid member. It's easily visible by the lightning animation flowing around that character. The debuffed raid member does not take damage, but deals major damage to anyone around him, so anyone affected needs to run out of the raid until Lightning Conductor wears off.

Electrical Discharge is his second ability. It's a chain lightning thing that hits up to 3 people within 8 yards of each other, so your raid should attempt to spread out as much as possible when Electron is active.

Unstable Shield is his third ability. When this is up, don't attack Electron, since it will deal AoE damage to your raid. Unstable Shield lasts 10 seconds.

Toxitron is a very poisonous foe that deals nature damage. His first ability, Poison Cloud, fires a missile at a random raid member and the area it hits will become engulfed in a poison cloud for a significant duration. Anyone standing in the area will take 50% more damage, which is bad for your raid members, but good when you can drag an active construct on top of it.

His second ability, Poison Soaked Shell puts a stacking dot on anyone attacking him. However, when you attack with the debuff on, you'll deal 10000 nature damage to your target. Do watch your stacks on this, there's a lot of other damage going out in this fight, so you don't want to suddenly find yourself dead just 'cause you didn't watch your poison stacks.

His third ability, Poison Protocol, summons a bunch of little poison bomb slime adds that'll each fixate on a raid member. Should they reach their target, they'll explode for about 100k AoE damage and leave a slime puddle on the ground. You really really want to avoid this. When Toxitron uses this ability, make sure to apply slows and stuns to the slimes and have anyone with a Fixate debuff run away from their slime.

Magmatron deals fire elemental damage. His first ability - Incineration Security Measure - is hard to miss since it shoots jets of flames throughout the entire room. You cannot dodge this, so just heal through it. This ability is annoying if you have Electron active at the same time, since both of them have AoE abilities.

His second ability, Acquiring Target, deals very high single target damage to a random raid member. While he's preparing to cast it, a huge red beam will point to the raid member in question. When this happens, everyone in line of the beam except the target needs to move out of it to avoid taking damage. Also, have your healers get ready to heal the targeted person since they'll take lots of damage. Any defensive cooldown is useful on the victim.

His third ability is Barrier. When he puts this up, no one should attack Magmatron until it wears off, since breaking the shield will inflict 70k AoE damage to every raid member. It absorbs 450,000 damage, so don't panic when you see it cast, but do disengage immediately.

The last construct, Arcanotron, deals arcane damage. Shocker, I know. His first ability, Power Generator, puts a blue puddle on the ground that'll give anyone standing in it a buff to damage and mana regeneration. That applies to him, too, so make sure to pull him out of it and have your ranged raid members and healers stand in it while it's up.

His second ability, Arcane Annihilator, is an interruptable spell that deals about 100k damage to a single raid member when cast. It's important to interrupt this whenever he casts it, since 100k can easily mean a death. Leave an interrupter on Arcanotron whenever he's active.

his third ability, Power Conversion, makes Arcanotron stack a damage buff whenever he's attacked. Depending on your raid composition and mood, you can either stop attacking him while it's up or have a mage or shaman spellsteal or purge it.

That covers all four constructs. It's important to mind your environment in this fight - when you have both Electron and Magmatron up, you should spread out and watch your health, since it's likely to dip low. Make use of Arcanotron's Power Generator whenever you can. When you have both Magmatron and Toxitron active, make sure to not get hit by slimes although you might be distracted by Magmatron's abilities. Getting hit by a slime can easily mean a raid wipe.

Make sure to communicate well on vent and call out the various shields the constructs have. Breaking Magmatron's Barrier is easily a raid wipe and Electron's Unstable Shield is no joke either.

Always be aware of which Constructs are active, which one is about to go dormant and which one is soon to become active. Position yourself accordingly. The Arcanotron tank should save cooldowns in case Power conversion stacks up high.

That's about it for this council fight. I'm attaching a full raid encounter in case you're curious how we dealt with the various mechanics or just enjoy watching people do silly things occasionally. Since this is a council type encounter and they tend to be confusing, I figured this is a better way of presenting it and explaining its mechanics.

I hope you enjoyed this guide and good luck on the fight

[chaos5061]

Magmaw TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Blackwing Descent Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about Magmaw, one of the first bosses you encounter in this instance. We completed this fight with 1 tank, 7 healers and 17 DPS, but similar raid configurations may do just as well.

Magmaw has two different phases and a LOT of abilities. In the first, regular phase, you deal normal damage to him and your goal is to keep the fight controlled by keeping everyone healed and killing adds in a timely manner. In the second phase, when correctly executed, you deal double damage to Magmaw while your healers can replenish their mana.

Let's start going over Magmaw's phase 1 abilities and how to deal with them. First up, positioning. You want to have three basic camps - one for your tank, one for your melee and one for your ranged attackers and healers. Both the ranged and the melee need to have room to change their camps by at least 15 yards or so.

This is because of Magmaw's signature ability, Pillar of Flame. Pillar of Flame has a short cast time and is usually directed at a random ranged raid members but can occasionally target a melee. When Magmaw casts it, a red swirl shows up on the ground of the targetted raid member and 2 seconds after, a pillar will erupt in its spot and anyone remaining in the area will get lifted into the air and take massive damage.

That's not all however. Along with the damage, lots of Lava Parasites will drop onto the ground from where the Pillar erupted. These little guys are vicious. If they manage to attack a raid member, that person will get infected with a debuff and after 10 seconds, the debuff will explode, dealing a ton of damage to anyone around and spawning more parasites.

To avoid this, it's really important to make sure that no raid member gets hit by the pillar and moves as soon as they're aware of it. Once the swirl appears, immediately have a hunter apply a frost trap to the area and then have your ranged raid members - and potentially some rogues if you have trouble taking them down in time - take out the parasites.

Pillar of Flame is roughly on a 30 second timer, so that sets the timeframe you have to kill all parasites.

Magmaw will also occasionally attempt to eat your tank with an ability called Mangle. When he places this on your tank, he takes massive damage every 5 seconds and after 30 seconds, he will be unable to take any action while Magmaw does his omnomnom thing. To counter this, either run two tanks or, if you prefer to to it with 1 tank, have him use a strong cooldown right before the timer is up.

All throughout the phase, Magmaw will shoot the raid with Lava Spew - ranged missiles that hit everyone and need to be healed through. His last phase 1 ability is Ignition. Ignition happens every phase 1 and will ignite about half of the room. It's easily visible since the ground starts steaming. To counter this, make sure your raid always keeps somewhat close to the middle of the room and can easily change sides.

Phase two happens when Magmaw slumps forward and the emote "Magmaw slumps forward, exposing his pincers!" appears. When this happens, three melee need to jump onto his head using the spike and spam the ability they then gain - Constricting Chains. If executed correctly, after a short while Magmaw's head will become impaled on the spike and he will take double damage while being unable to do anything.

This is the perfect opportunity for bloodlust, time warp and heroism and also for your healers to regen some mana. After a little while, Magmaw will recover and phase 1 starts over.

It's worth noting that if there's no one in Magmaw's melee range, he'll enrage and basically wipe the raid, so make sure to always have people near him.

That about covers Magmaw's abilities. I'll attach video of the full encounter so you can see in detail how we dealt with his various mechanics. Good luck and have fun!

[chaos5061]

Halfus Wyrmbreaker TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the Bastion of Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about Halfus Wyrmbreaker, the first boss you'll encounter in this instance. We completed this fight with 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS, but similar raid compositions may work just as well. This encounter has a 6 minute enrage timer.

As soon as you walk up to Halfus' room, you'll notice several dragonkin around him that you can interact with. The available dragons change from week to week, and you'll need them to defeat Halfus, cause he doesn't fight alone. As soon as you pull him, a Proto-Behemoth will come to his aid. Halfus' and the drakes abilities change depending on which dragons you have available.

Storm Rider allows Halfus to cast Shadow Nova. Nether Scion gives Halfus a Frenzy. Slate Dragon gives him a long stun. Time Warden allows his Proto-Dragon to cast Fireballs. Whelps give the Proto-Drake a Fire Breath. Always enable all three drakes over the course of the encounter to counter these abilities and do additional dramage to Halfus, no matter which you have up.

Shadow Nova deals moderate damage and knocks every person in the raid back. Its cast is pretty much instant, but this is where the Storm Rider comes in. Releasing him from his cage will cause him to be mind-controlled by Halfus and attack your raid, but it will also make his Shadow Nova interruptable.

Releasing the Time Warden will also cause him to be mind-controlled and attack you, but it'll greatly slow down the speed of the Behemoth's fire balls which makes them easily avoidable, in turn making your raid take a lot less damage. Lastly, releasing the whelp cage will - yep, you guessed it - cause them to be mind-controlled and attack your raid, but will also reduce damage done to your raid from the boss & drakes.

So, what's the plan here? You should release the two most menacing dragons straight away - in our case Storm Rider and Time Warden - and have your tanks secure them. We had our main tank tank both Halfus and the Time Warden and our Offtank took care of the Storm Rider. Ranged DPS then took down the Storm Rider while melee DPS stayed on Halfus to interrupt Shadow Nova. It's a good idea to set up an interrupt chain if you have a Storm Rider.

When the first dragon died, we released our third pick, the whelp cage. There's no need to actively kill the whelps, they don't do much damage at all. Keep them in cleave range and they'll die eventually. At 50% Halfus gains another ability that he'll use every 30 seconds - Furious Roar.

Furious roar will execute 3 stuns in quick succession. You're able to move a little between each stun, but you're NOT able to use any abilities. You can and should move out of fireballs between stuns. Your tank should have a cooldown up before every furious roar or he's very likely to die during it. After the stuns, Halfus will immediately cast Shadow Nova which must be interrupted.

To do this, mages can blink the last tick of Furious Roar and counterspell or you can use things such as Hand of Protection and PVP trinkets. Set up a rotation and make sure to only break the third stun, if you do it earlier you'll just get stunned again.

It's a good idea to use Bloodlust after the dragons are dead but before you hit 50%, when all DPS are focusing on Halfus as that should give you the maximum amount of DPS on him. Until the gear level rises, you're likely to need it.

That's all the mechanics to this fight. I'll attach a video of the full encounter so you can see how we handled the various mechanics. As a note, when we defeated this encounter we were not yet aware that we cannot use cooldowns between Furious Roar ticks, so that resulted in multiple tank and some DPS deaths and ultimately almost cost us the fight here.

The enrage timer is somewhat harsh if your raid is still undergeared, but if you execute the encounter correctly, it's definitely doable. Good luck and have fun!

[chaos5061]

The Conclave of Wind (10 man) TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Throne of the four Winds Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about The Conclave of Wind, the first encounter in this new raid instance. We completed this fight with 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

The Conclave is a council type encounter where you fight three Djinn at the same time, but this fight comes with a twist: All three enemies are on different platforms, and while you can move between platforms by jumping into the wind streams, you have to split up your raid intelligently to make it work. On top of that, each conclave member has to die within a minute of the first one's death, or the first djinn will regain all his health.

The three Djinn are Anshal, Nezir and Rohash. Rohash does basic wind attacks and can easily be tanked by a healer or ranged raid member. Ideally you want to leave one healer and two ranged raid members with him for most of the fight. Anshal is a nature-based enemies that spawns adds and will require a tank and a healer along with your leftover DPS. Nezir is ice-based and will also require a tank and a healer.

This fight would be simple if it wasn't for the fact that all the Djinn have an energy bar, and when their energy bar is full (in other words, when it reaches 90), they will execute their ultimate abilities. All djinn will reach full energy at the same time, and you can never leave a platform completely abandoned or it will result in a raid wipe. Let's go over the djinn's abilities.

Rohash is fairly straightforward. He has a wind slash with which he'll attack from a range, occasionally a few cyclones will circle around his platform - obviously you don't want to get caught in these or you'll take damage and get knocked back - and on a timer he uses Wind Blast, an ability that makes him slowly spin around his platform, and anyone in front of his face will get knocked back 200 yards. Yes, 200. You have been warned. This works similarly to The Lurker Below's Spout, if you were an active raider in the Burning Crusade you may remember it.

His ultimate ability is Hurricane, which creates a huge vortex of wind and anyone on the platform will get lifted up and take continuous damage for 15 seconds, after which you get dropped to the floor and take more fall damage. It's pretty much the same as Malygos' Vortex ability. This is easily healed through.

Anshal's first ability that you'll see is called Soothing Winds and looks like a green circle he puts on the ground. It heals all of Anshal's allies and silences enemies, so pull him and his adds out of it and stay away from it yourself. His second ability, Nurture, will summon multiple Ravenous Creeper adds that will use Toxic Spores, an AoE aura that deals stacking damage to anyone within 8 yards. These kinda hurt especially since your melee are likely at this platform, so they should be taken out quickly.

His ultimate ability is Zephyr, which heals all of his allies currently on the platform by 25000 per second and gives them 15% increased damage for 15 seconds. Make sure that no adds are up by the time Anshal casts Zephyr and this should not pose a problem.

Lastly, Nezir. Nezir is where it gets complicated. Nezir has both a channeled cone spell that deals frost damage called Permafrost and an ice puddle he puts on the ground that deals frost damage and slows anyone in it. His main ability is Wind Chill, which deals frost damage to everyone on the platform and more importantly increases their Frost damage taken by 10% per stack. Combined with his other abilities this means that anyone remaining on the platform for too long will get killed outright.

His ultimate ability is called Sleet Storm. Sleetstorm deals about 30000 damage per second to anyone on the platform for 15 seconds. However, Sleetstorm's damage is divided by everyone on the platform. So, as you can see, you want to have as many people as possible on Nezir's platform when his energy bar is about to turn full.

However, you also need to switch Nezir's tank and healer team with Anshal's tank and healer team periodically to avoid getting too many stacks of the debuff and at the same time you want to avoid switching too much.

What worked well for us was to switch the teams right before the Djinn cast their first ultimate (the DPS from both other platforms also need to be at Nezir's platform before every ultimate he casts, while a single healer remains at Rohash and the original Nezir tank and healer team fills in at Anshal). After the ultimate finishes, the DPS return to their original platforms. The original Anshal tank and healer team however remains at Nezir's platform until right before his second ultimate takes place, which is when they change places with the tank and healer team that filled in at Anshal again.

This cycle repeats until the Djinn are low, which could be as soon as after the second ultimate. Rohash and Anshal will likely be a lot lower in health than Nezir, but that's okay. When you're at the point that you can finish off both Rohash and Anshal around roughly the same time, do so. Afterwards everyone should move over to Nezir's platform and finish him off. You have about a minute to do this, so the timer is lenient.

It is worth noting that you cannot switch platforms in the 15 seconds that the Djinn cast their ultimates, so any switching of platforms has to occur at about 80 energy to account for travel time.

I've attached the full encounter so you can see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail. Good luck and have fun!

[chaos5061]

There now it's all been moved here. I'm opening this up now for posts if you want.

[chaos5061]

There will also be more post like this one maybe:


By chaos5061 at 2010-12-18

[chaos5061]

TankSpot's Guide to Valiona & Theralion

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Bastion of Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about the Valiona and Theralion encounter, the second fight in this new raid instance. We completed this encounter with 1 tank, 3 healers and 6 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

As soon as you enter the dragonkin room, you'll see Valiona to the right of you and Theralion to the left. You only ever fight one dragon on the ground at any given time, but while one dragon is grounded, the other one will annoy you with abilities from the air. Roughly every 90 seconds, Valiona and Theralion switch ground and air positions, and with that their abilities change as well.

You want to start out by attacking Valiona, and as soon as you do so, Theralion will take off into the air. Let's go over the abilities you're faced with in this phase. The first ability you'll notice is Theralion firing little shadow missiles at random raid members. These deal damage to everyone within 8 yards of the targeted person, so it's important that the raid stays spread out... at least until Valiona uses her first ability, Blackout.

Blackout is a Magic debuff she'll put on a random raid member. It lasts 15 seconds, absorbs 75000 healing on the target, and, when it gets dispelled or expired, it'll deal around 350,000 damage. This damage is split between all raid members in a small radius around the target, so whenever Blackout happens, everyone needs to stack up on Valiona's tail and you should have a designated raid member dispel it as soon as enough people are in range to split the damage.

If you stay stacked up for too long, Theralion's shadow missiles will wreck you, so the Blackout stack needs to be executed quickly. No slacking! Valiona's second ground ability is Devouring Flames, which works much like her counterpart in Grim Batol. 3rd boss in there, I'm sure you know it. When she starts casting this, you cannot be anywhere in front of her face. It has a 2.5 second cast and the breath has a huge radius. To improve your chances of not getting hit by it, have people spread out close to Valiona to decrease run times. Lifegrip, Body&Soul, Rocket Boots and any movement enhancing effect obviously helps too.

If you absolutely cannot make it out of the breath, run straight backwards. The breath deals less damage the further away you are from Valiona. In this first phase, you'll be phased with 2 blackouts and 2 breaths. Shortly after the second breath, the phase transition will start and Theralion will execute his second air ability, Dazzling Destruction. He sure sounds like the epitome of draconic masculinity, I know.

Dazzling Destruction will spawn about 6 pink swirly circles on random raid members, two at a time. After a short amount of time, a missile will the middle of the swirling circles and should anyone get hit by them, they will find themselves in the Twilight Zone. This is a phased area away from the encounter. You shouldn't ever be down here unless you're trying to do an achievement, but if you find yourself in the Twilight Zone by accident, avoid the small pink balls on the ground and quickly navigate your way towards a slightly bigger, pink, clickable portal. If you click it without hitting any of the balls, you should make it back to your raid without dying.

Once Theralion finishes dazzling your raid with his destruction, he'll land and you'll now have to face him directly, while Valiona will hover in the air. In this phase, you should split your raid into two different groups, a ranged and a melee group. This is to counter the first of Valiona's flight abilities, Twilight Meteorite. This puts a purple arrow on a random raid member, and 3 seconds afterwards it'll deal about 150,000 damage split between raid members within 8 yards of the originally targeted person. If you make sure to be stacked, it's easily healed through.

Theralion's first ground ability is Fabulous Flames - did I mention his incredible masculinity? Fabulous Flames will put a purple void zone at the feet of a randomly targeted raid member. Typically, this is directed at your ranged pile, so as soon as you catch Theralion turn around to look at ranged, start moving. You should have a designated direction your ranged pile moves into for Fabulous Flames, as getting split up could mean a death if Twilight Meteorite is going out at the same time.

His second ground ability is Engulfing Magic, this is also usually directed at a random ranged raid member. The person that receives Engulfing Magic will do twice the damage or healing they usually do for 20 seconds, but will also deal damage equal to their DPS or healing to everyone around them. As soon as the debuff goes out, the targeted person has to run out of their raid pile and cast from afar, but make sure they don't run into the same direction that the ranged pile moves into to drop their Fabulous Flames. If unavoidable, cease casting and when all dots/hots ticked off, rejoin the ranged pile.

There's one framerate issue with Engulfing Magic - it procs everytime a damage or healing spell of the targeted person procs, so for dot and hot classes, this is multiple times per second. That can easily kill their framerates, so we had resto druids stand out of the raid for the entire phase 2 to avoid them not being able to move out of the ranged in time.

The last ability you'll encounter in phase 2 is Valiona's Deep Breath. If you were an avid raider during Sunwell times, you're probably quite familiar with the mechanic as it works just like Felmyst's Fog of Corruption. Valiona will do an RP yell and will slowly cover a random third of the room in purple flames. She'll do this three times in succession and anyone getting caught in the fire will enter the Twilight Zone. If you get caught, same concept. Avoid pink balls, find pink portal.

Ideally though, the raid should stand towards the middle of the room during this phase, so they can easily adjust their position to either side and don't get caught in the flames at all. Having someone call out on vent where the flames are going also helps for the visually challenged and easily distracted. Her deep breath happens about 2 minutes into phase 2 and marks the phase change. Afterwards you will once more be faced with Valiona's ground phase.

This cycle repeats with one small difference: On Valiona's second ground phase, she consistently got off three blackouts instead of two. The third blackout will happen during Dazzling Destruction - that's the pink swirly things on the ground that teleport you to the Twilight Zone - so your raid needs to be ready to gather up in one spot during that time.

That about covers the Valiona and Theralion encounter. I've attached footage of the whole fight so you can see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail. Good luck and have fun!

[chaos5061]

Atramedes TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Blackwing Descent Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about Atramedes, the blind dragon you'll encounter in the second tier of this new raid instance. We completed this fight with 1 tank, 6 healers and 18 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

Atramedes is a very unique encounter. As mentioned, he's blind, so all abilities he does are centered around sound. When the fight starts, you will have a sound bar pop up in your UI. Getting hit with any of Atramedes' abilities will increase your sound level. When the bar is full - ie you hit 100 sound - Atramedes will know where you are and kill you in about two seconds.

The fight is split into two phases that'll keep repeating. As soon as you engage Atramedes, you start out with the ground phase which always lasts 80 seconds. Let's go over the abilities that he'll use during his ground phase. The first ability you'll see is Sonar Pulse - Atramedes will release 4 sound discs that start at a random point in the room and spread out from there. Touching a disc adds 7 sound to your bar and inflicts some damage.

They move slowly and aren't that hard to avoid. If you get unlucky and they spawn on you, move opposite of the direction they're moving into. You'll stack up some sound, but it shouldn't bring your bar to 100.

His second ability is Modulation- this will look like a gigantic sound disc reverberating through the room. Modulation can not be avoided or dodged and will inflict 40000 shadow damage to your entire raid on top of adding 7 sound to everyone's sound bar. He'll use this occasionally throughout the ground phase.

His third ability is Sonic Breath - this is cast at the target that currently has the highest amount of sound. Atramedes will face his target (boss mods figure out correctly who it is and this should be called out on vent) and start a 2-second cast. At the end of the cast, he'll follow his target with flames, and anyone getting caught in the fire will take massive amounts of damage and stack up sound. The more sound Atramedes' breath target has, the faster the flames will follow him.

Most often, a ranged raid member will have the highest amount of sound. To counter this (and to make healing easier for Modulation), your ranged raid members and healers should be loosely stacked up. When Atramedes picks a target and starts casting his breath, his target should move to the right and 'kite' the breath, wheras everyone else in the ranged pile should move to the left. If his breath target has a movement enhancing effect available like body and soul, no one should get hit by the breath at all. The breath is channeled for 6 seconds, so everyone needs to make sure that they're out of its way while it's being kited.

Atramedes' last phase 1 ability is Searing Flame. He'll cast this once per ground phase and it's his most devastating ability. For 8 seconds, he'll channel a fire AoE that inflicts about 20k damage to every raid member per second and stacks up a fire damage debuff. It is crucial to the fight that you do not let Atramedes cast this. To interrupt Searing Flames, you can hit one of the ten gongs that are aligned around his chamber.

Hitting a gong will cause Vertigo to Atramedes, which stuns him for 5 seconds and makes him take more damage within that time frame. However, after he recovers from vertigo, he'll shatter the gong that was used, so you can only use each gong once. This serves as soft enrage timer - when you run out of gongs, you're probably screwed.

After you survive 80 seconds of the ground phase, you'll trigger his air phase. This one only lasts 40 seconds. As soon as Atramedes hits the air, he'll once again target the player with the highest amount of sound and this time he'll chase him down with flame breath from the air. Everyone should be moving when the air phase hits to increase the chances of getting away from this flame breath.

The fire will move faster the higher the target's sound level is and on top of that will speed up the longer Atramedes is chasing someone. You will eventually want to interrupt this by using a gong, which once more will cause Vertigo to Atramedes. After Vertigo is done, he'll shatter the gong and go on to chase the player that used it. You want someone with a huge movement speed increase to be the person to hit the gong during the airphase, like a rogue for instance.

Obviously, any other movement speed enhancing buffs are are big help in this phase. The flames will leave flame patches on the ground that deal damage and increase sound when touched, so try to not kite them into the most idiotic direction you can think of. He'll also use Roaring Flames during his air phase, which adds more flame patches on the ground in random locations. Obviously, we'll do what every person with a brain does when they see fire on the ground - TOUCH THE BRIGHT SHINY MESMERIZING THI- I mean.. don't stand in it. Ever.

His last air phase ability is Sonar Pulse, which looks like the discs from the ground phase, but these ones will spawn in the location of random raid members, and shortly after they appear, a little missile will hit the center of the disc. Getting hit by the missile will deal damage and add 7 sound, so it's important that every raid member stays moving during the air phase to avoid these.. and the fire.. and the arcane ball.. and the fire breath. So yes, keep moving during the air phase and avoid getting hit by anything.

Once the 40 seconds are up, Atramedes will land again and phase 1 starts over. This cycle repeats until Atramedes' health pool is depleted. Make sure to only have reliable raid members hitting the gongs - getting the interrupts right is the most crucial thing about this encounter. Other than that, this fight is all about dodging stuff and kiting fire. If executed correctly, Atramedes should die rather easily. The soft enrage is very lenient and unless half your raid is dead, you should not get close to it. I've attached footage of the whole fight to show in detail how we dealt with his various mechanics. Good luck and have fun!

[chaos5061]

Chimaeron TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello, and welcome to Tankspot's Cataclysm Raid Guide. My name is Papapaint, and in this video I will be discussing the strategy for Chimaeron in the Blackwing Descent Raid Instance.

Chimaeron is an extremely healer-intense fight, and requires a great deal of self control on the part of your healing team--you won't be seeing very many satisfyingly full green bars.

It is important to note that you should not begin the fight by simply hitting Chimaeron in the face. Instead, go around him and speak with Finkle Einhorn, locked in a cage next to his trusty Bile-O-Tron. After speaking with him, the Bile-O-Tron comes online, stinks up the room, and wakes up the napping triple-headed monster. As long as the Bile-O-Tron is active, your raid gains Finkle's Mixture, which prevents any members of your raid dying as long as their health is over 10,000. If a raider's health is over 10,000 and they WOULD die, they're instead knocked down to 1 HP.

In simpler terms, this means that during Phase 1, your raiders' health only needs to be over 10,000 HP---healing them past that is essentially overhealing. This is due to Chimaeron's Caustic Slime. This move will target four players, splitting 320,000 damage (two players and 280,000 in 10-man) between those players and all other players within 6 yards of them. In addition, it will apply a debuff to all affected players, reducing their hit for 3 seconds. The easiest way to deal with this is to split up, staying 6 yards apart--any player hit by the green vomit will simply be knocked down to 1 HP. Heal them to over 10k HP, and they're safe once again.

The exception to the 10,000 HP rule is, of course, the tanks. Chimaeron hits hard, and has two extra-nasty abilities to look out for: Break and Double Attack. Double Attack is exactly what it sounds like--on Chimaeron's next melee, he will melee twice in very quick succession. This means that even if your tank is over 10k, they will be hit, reducing them to 1 HP, and then hit immediately afterwards, killing them. There are a few ways to deal with this. Defensive cooldowns work well, but topping off the tank will generally allow them to survive the double hit. Break is designed to make topping off the tank more difficult--it increases the damage taken by the tank by 25% and reducing ihealing taken by 15% for every stack. This is applied every 15-20 seconds, so you'll want to have your tanks trade off every 3 stacks, with your tank popping cooldowns to survive through the 2nd stack.

The last ability of note during phase 1 is Massacre. Massacre instantly deals 900,000 damage to every player and can not be mitigated in any way. This means that every single player in your raid over 10,000 HP will be reduced to 1 HP, and all raiders below 10,000 HP will die instantly. This includes the tank, so make sure you have at least one--preferably more--healers dedicated to healing up the tank as quickly as possible while the rest of your healers rush to get everyone in the raid back over 10,000 HP.

Occasionally after Massacre, the Bile-O-Tron will be knocked offline, removing the buff from your raid and taking you into phase 2. During phase 2, Chimaeron's heads will begin fighting one another, and he will cast fued for 30 seconds. You have 15 seconds to stack up and heal the entire raid before he begins vomiting poison bombs. Without the buff to protect your raid members, it's necessary to clump up in order to split the damage amongst your whole raid. After 15 seconds, he will vomit every 5 seconds, then finish off with another massacre. Use defensive cooldowns, self heals, and help top off all raid members in any way possible. While he casts Massacre, your raid should be spreading out to resume Phase One.

At 20%, Chimaeron will take your raid into Phase 3. During phase 3, your whole raid will be afflicted with a new debuff: Mortality. This reduces ALL healing effects on your raid by 99%... so there's basically no reason to continue healing. In addition, Chimaeron will become untauntable and take an additional 10% damage. To simplify the strategy of phase 3... BURN HIM DOWN. Pop Heroism or Bloodlust, have your healers help out with DPSing, and start kiting him. Watch his aggro table to determine who he's going to attack next, and have that person run across the room. Use Iceblocks, Bubbles, Fades, Feign Deaths, Guardian Spirit, and any other tricks you can think of to keep him running as much as possible. The more he's moving instead of attacking, the more DPS time you get. This is purely a race against his ability to nom nom your entire raid, one at a time. With proper cooldown usage, some hard DPS, and clever use of aggro mechanics, Chimaeron should be an exhilarating kill.

Thanks for watching this guide. I will include the second half of this fight with some minor commentary to give you a better idea of how we handled all three phases. If you enjoyed this guide and would like to stay up-to-date on Cataclysm raid strategy information, subscribe to this video channel. As usual, comments are welcome in both the youtube comment box and on the official thread on Tankspot.

[chaos5061]

Twilight Ascendant Council TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Bastion of Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you everything you have to know about the Ascendant Council, the third encounter in this new raid instance. We completed this fight with 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

The council is a three-phase encounter and you face a total of 5 opponents. In the first phase, you're up against Ignacious, a fire elemental Ascendant Lord, and Feludius, an ice elemental Ascendant Lord. In the second phase, you face off against Arion, who's an air elemental Ascendant Lord and Terrastra, an earth elemental Ascendant Lord. In the third phase, all four entities combine into an Elementium Monstrosity, which combines all four elements in one.

While the first two phases require near perfect execution, the third phase is definitely a soft enrage DPS test. As soon as one Lord in both phase 1 & 2 hits 25%, you'll trigger the next phase, but you want to make sure both Lords are equally low before doing this each time, as the Elementium Monstrosity starts out with a combined amount of health of all four lords. In short, getting all four Lords as close to 25% as you can gives you the best chance of defeating this encounter.

Ignacious and Feludius will be your first opponents, and as you can probably tell as soon as you engage them, their abilities are meant to counter each other.
Ignacious should be tanked on one side of the room, surrounded by a tank and melee, while Feludius should be tanked away from the raid, with ranged raid members loosely spread out across the room.

This is because of one of Feludius' abilities - Glaciate, which deals Frost damage to your entire raid but deals less damage the further away you are from him. As such, your ranged raid members should be assigned to DPS him while your melee are safe on Ignacious.

You'll soon notice that each Lord occasionally puts a debuff on random raid members - Feludius has Heart of Ice and Ignacious has Burning Blood. These deal increasing damage to the target but are very vital to the fight, as they give nearby raid members a buff that increases their damage done to the opposing Lord. Players with Burning Blood should make sure to run through the ranged raid members to give them increased damage on Feludius, and players with Heart of Ice need to join the melee pile to give them increased damage on Ignacious. These can be dispelled, but you should give it 10-20 seconds before doing so.

Heart of Ice is especially important whenever Ignacious is about to cast his most devastating ability - Aegis of Flame. This gives him a shield that absorbs a million damage and he'll start channeling Rising Flames, which deals increasing fire damage to every raid member. To interrupt Rising Flames, his shield needs to be burned down asap. Letting too many ticks of rising Flames go off can easily result in a raid wipe. If needed, have ranged help out with the shield, but make sure they go right back to Feludius afterwards so you bring their health down equally.

Ignacious will also occasionally leap at a ranged target, which knocks everyone around the impact point away. On his way back to his tank, he'll leave a trail of flame on the ground. While I always preach not to stand in the flames, this one is actually USEFUL. This is why: Feludius has a Waterbomb ability, which basically looks like small water missiles flying through the air. When they hit a raid member, he'll get a Waterlogged debuff which reduces movement speed.

Running through Ignacious' flame trail clears the waterlogged debuff and NEEDS to be done by everyone affected. Shortly after casting the Waterbombs, Feludius will cast aforementioned Glaciate, and any player that still has a Waterlogged debuff at that time will get frozen in an ice block and take extreme amounts of damage. This is healable, but it's not something you want to happen.

Feludius' last ability is Hydrolance, which deals big single target damage to a random target and should be interrupted. Make sure your ranged raid members and the Feludius tank watch out for this. Ignacious' last ability is Flame Torrent, which is a channeled cone AoE spell that deals major damage. To counter this, don't be in front of his face unless you're the tank.

To recap: In phase 1, interrupt Rising Flames by burning down the Aegis,power up your raid members appropriately by running near them when you have a debuff and clear Waterlogged debuff by running through the flame trail. Once you get one Lord to 25%, the next phase will trigger. It's vital that both Lords hit 25% at about the same time.

Phase 2 will greet you with Arion and Terrastra, which also have mechanics that counter each other. Ranged raid members are more effective on Arion, as he likes to teleport around the room, so leave your melee on Terrastra. As soon as the fight starts, Arion will summon a cyclone that'll move through the room and Terrastra will summon a gravity well. Hitting the cyclone will give you a sort of levitate, while standing in the gravity well will give you a grounded debuff and clear your levitate.

Both of these are very important as both Arion and Terrastra have very devastating ultimate abilities that deal about 100k damage. They'll alternate in casting these about once per minute. Terrastra has Quake, which can be countered by getting Levitate from the cyclone and Arion has Thundershock, which is cancelled by getting grounded from the gravity well. If you don't have the right debuff at the time either of these are cast, you're very likely to die. The wells and cyclones are summoned in random spots around the room and like to move on top of each other, so make sure to get the appropriate debuff early. They always alternate in their casts - so if you just survived a Quake, get grounded to survive the impending Thunderstorm.

There's one exception to the "get the debuff as soon as possible"-rule, and it's called Lightning Rod. Arion will randomly bestow 3 players with this debuff, and they'll have a yellow arrow over their heads. Players with Lightning Rods need to get out of the raid immediately and hug a wall away from anyone else, since Arion will cast Chain Lightning at anyone affected with Lightning Rod after 15 seconds. If any Lightning Rod is still near people at that time, you'll probably have a few deaths.

If you have Lightning Rod and it comes down to having the choice between being near anyone else or not getting your appropriate grounded or levitate debuff, always leave the raid. You can survive a Quake or Thundershock, but if you're firing off a Chain Lightning in the raid, there will be deaths.

Almost as important is Terrastra's Harden Skin ability, which makes him deal double damage and take half damage. This cast can and should be interrupted whenever possible, but if you fail to do so, have your ranged help out on Terrastra to burn his shield down. Lastly, Terrastra will occasionally cast Eruption, which will look like a few spikes burrowing in the ground, and after a few seconds the spikes will impale anyone still in the area for about 50k. Melee should be aware of this, although it's not the end of the world to get hit by it.

Again, the goal in phase two is to bring both Lords to 25% at the same time. If you execute this right, your Elementium Monstrosity should rise up with about 25% health left, which translates to approximately 18 million health.

Phase 3 is the burn phase and any kind of bloodlust should be saved for this. The Monstrosity will consistently spawn water puddles at his feet that kinda work like Defile on the Lich King, except the puddles expand when the Monstrosity stands in them, not your raid members. Aim to keep the Monstrosity towards the middle of the room so your casters don't have to consistently move to keep up with it. The middle area will be covered in puddles at the end, but that way you get the most DPS on it.

Throughout the whole phase, the Monstrosity will use Electric Instability, which is basically a chain lightning that deals more damage the longer the phase goes on. Eventually, your raid will just die to this, so you need to kill the Monstrosity before Electric Instability becomes overwhelming.

It has two more abilities that it'll use occasionally - Lava Seed and Gravity Crush. Lava Seed looks like little flares of fire hitting the ground, and shortly after they do so they'll explode in a little fire patch. This is the bad kinda fire. Don't stand in it.

Gravity Crush will lift 3 players up into the air and trap them in a gravity bubble. They cannot act during this and will take major damage in the bubble, so healers need to concentrate on them. When released, they'll fall to the ground and also take fall damage when they hit it. It's easy to let people die in this but important not to, with current gear level you need every bit of DPS you can get.

If you have enough DPS to defeat the Monstrosity before your raid collapses, it's more or less a tank&spank phase. This might sound like a complex encounter, but since the abilities all play off of each other, it'll be a lot easier once you engage it. Good luck and have fun!

[chaos5061]

Cho'gall TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Bastion of Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about Cho'gall, the fourth encounter in this new raid instance. We completed this fight with 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

10-man Cho'gall has 33.5 million health and is a two-phase encounter. While he has an intimidating number of abilities, the fight is actually fairly straightforward. The entire fight is based around a Corrupted Blood Mechanic that works similarly to Atramedes' sound bar. At the start of the fight, a Corrupted Blood meter will pop up in your UI, and getting hit by any of Cho'gall's or his minions' abilities will increase your corruption.

Depending on how much Corrupted Blood you accumulate, different things will happen. At 25 stacks, you get a magic debuff that greatly accellerates your stack gain. This can and needs to be dispelled. At 50 stacks, you periodically get a debuff called Sickness, that'll make you vomit onto any raid member in a 5 yard cone in front of you. At 75 stacks, you grow a tentacle that will cast Shadow Bolts at your raid members. At 100 stacks, you're immune to any healing but will deal 100% more damage.

The goal in the normal encounter is to keep your stacks as low as possible throughout the whole fight. When you trigger phase 2 at 25%, Cho'gall will activate a spell called "Corruption of the Old God", which deals shadow damage to every raid member every 2 seconds until he dies. This spell will deal more damage the more stacks of Corrupted Blood you have, and each tick of it will cause you to gain 1 stack of Corrupted Blood.

As you can see, phase 1 is all about keeping the fight controlled and avoiding as many of Cho'galls abilities as possible, whereas phase 2 is a burn phase, a race against Corrupted Blood stacks.

Let's go over Cho'gall's phase 1 abilities. As soon as you engage him, he'll switch into a stance called Flame's Orders. Cho'gall will switch between this stance and another stance called Shadow's Orders throughout the entire phase 1. While in Flame's Orders, Cho'gall's melee hits will deal an extra 20,000 damage and he'll spawn little fire puddles all over the room. Fire is bad news, don't bathe in it. Make sure your Cho'gall tank receives a lot of healing during Flame's Orders.

Shadow's Orders will cause Cho'gall to omit 3 pulses of a Shadow AoE spell. This seems to hit harder the more stacks of Corruption people accumulate and your healers need to be prepared for it. He'll switch stances approximately every 20 seconds.

The reason you need two tanks for this fight is Fury of Cho'gall - this is cast on his main threat target, deals 60k damage and greatly increases shadow and physical damage taken for 45 seconds, so when a tank is afflicted by Fury, the other tank should taunt off of him fairly quickly to minimize the chances of tank deaths.

The next ability you need to watch out for is Worship - this will mind control 2 random raid members. Worship can be interrupted by any stun, scatter, silence or fear effect and the sooner you do so, the better. While your raid members are mind controlled, Cho'gall will stack up a damage buff called Twisted Devotion. Each stack gives him 10% increased damage, and this stacks up to 20. To counter this, we had everyone stack up on Cho'gall for most of the phase, so everyone could be interrupted quickly by abilities such as Shockwave, Scatter Shot, Psychic Scream and many more.

The only exception to the stacking up is whenever Cho'gall summons a Corrupting Adherant. This happens approximately once per minute, and as soon as the add spawns, your raid should spread out to avoid getting hit by the add's Corrupting Crash ability. Corrupting Crash looks like a little shadowy swirl on the ground, and a few seconds after the swirl appears, a missile will hit its center. If anyone is still in it by the time the missile hits, they'll take damage and increase their corruption stacks by 10.

Make sure that all your DPS switch over to kill an Adherant as soon as a tank has it secured. If you're the tank, make sure to face adherants away from your raid members. If you play a class with an interrupt, make sure to interrupt their Depravity ability, which is a raid wide shadow AoE with a 1.5second cast time. The adds NEED to be killed as soon as possible. If an add is still up by the time Cho'gall casts Fester Blood - which happens 40 seconds after an Adherant spawns - the add will gain a Shadow AoE ability that will pretty much wipe your raid.

Of course, those aren't the only gimmicks the Adherants have. Upon their death, they'll spawn a black puddle on the ground that won't disappear until you hit phase 2. Standing in a puddle will deal damage and increase your Corruption, but even worse is that everytime Cho'gall casts Fester Blood, 5 little slimes will spawn from each black puddle. Yes, each. That means if you've killed 4 adherants, you will have 20 slimes coming to eat your brains.

Of course, getting hit by the slimes will increase your Corruption too, so you want to avoid that. We dealt with this by killing all Adherants next to each other at the entrance to the room, so the slimes would all spawn in the same general area and had to travel a long way to get to us. Applying a frost trap or slowing them down through other means is also almost essential. On the first two slime spawns your ranged DPS will likely be able to take the slimes down by themselves, but on later waves melee DPS might have to help them out with Fan of Knives spam or other AoE abilities.

Controlling adherants and slimes is key to this phase, and if you manage to take them all down in a timely manner and without increasing corruption stacks by much, you're well on your way to defeating this encounter.

When Cho'gall's health hits 25%, you'll trigger phase 2. Any bloodlust or time warp effect should be saved for this phase. He loses most of his old abilities but he does retain Fury of Cho'gall, so your tanks need to keep taunting off of each other whenever that happens.

As mentioned before, he'll activate Corruption of the Old God, which will increase your Corruption stacks by 1 every 2 seconds and deal increasing damage. This is unavoidable, and each raid member needs to keep a close eye on their stacks. Any raid member hitting 25 stacks NEEDS to be dispelled as soon as possible, and any raid member closing in on 50 stacks needs to face away from anyone else to avoid vomitting on them.

Of course, since you'll take increasing shadow damage, this also acts as a soft enrage timer. Eventually, your healers just won't be able to keep up. Additionally, as soon as you hit phase 2 and every 30 seconds afterward, Cho'gall will summon 4 tentacles called Darkened Creations. These will channel a beam on random targets that reduces damage and healing done by 75%, deals damage and increases Corruption, so they need to be killed immediately.

To quickly wipe them out, designate a DPS leader and have all other DPS assist him on his target. When the tentacles are down, DPS can attack Cho'gall again. This cycle will repeat until Cho'gall dies. Make sure that no one vomits on any raid member, and if you have sufficient DPS and healing and keep controlling the fight, Cho'gall should go down. I've attached footage of the whole encounter in case you'd like to see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail. Good luck and have fun!

[chaos5061]

Al'Akir TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Throne of the Four Winds Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about Al'Akir, the final boss in this new raid instance. We completed this fight with 1 tank, 3 healers and 6 DPS, but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

This encounter is split into three phases. The first one's fairly short, it lasts from 100-80% of his health. The second phase is the longest, it lasts from 80-25%, and you only have to endure the third phase for the last 25%. For once in a fight, the first phase is actually the hardest one you have to deal with!

In the first phase, Al'akir is firmly rooted in the middle of his little platform, and if his main threat target is not in his melee range, he will instead Electrocute it, which is a channeled spell that deals massive amounts of damage. To counter this, always stay below the tank's threat and don't "accidentally" pull the boss, okay? Okay. Also, any caster should stand towards the back of the platform, since he will randomly interrupt spells cast close to his body.

When you reach the platform, have your raid spread out over at least half the platform, each person on their own or in groups of 2 if you'd rather. Do make sure that 2 healers are in range of your tank, and every DPS is in range of at least 1 healer. If you're doing this in 25-man mode, utilize the whole platform and split your raid up into self-sufficient little groups of 3-4 people with a healer each.

This is because of Al'akir's Lightning Strike, which is basically a Chain Lightning except it chains to everyone in a huge cone around his target. The markers on the floor are a huge help here - if each group stacks up on a little marker, you'll never chain Lightning Strike to another group.

His second ability is Ice Storm, which spawns a Blizzard that moves rather randomly around the platform. If you stand in it, you get slowed and take damage. This is not a big issue by itself, but you'll notice that Al'akir tends to put the storm right in the middle of the platform, and this tends to get annoying due to his next two abilities:

Wind Burst and Squall Line. Squall Line is basically a line of Tornadoes he summons that have a random "hole" in them. If you've done Sartharion in Wrath, it works like his Flame Wall. To avoid getting picked up by the Squall Line and potentially die, stand in the opening until the tornadoes pass by. Al'akir will always have one of these active and moving around the platform. When the Squall Line is about to disappear, they'll kinda fizzle out - at that point they won't deal damage anymore.

Wind Burst is a spell with a 5 second cast time that he'll approximately use twice per minute. When the cast is finished, everyone on the platform will get knocked back a considerable distance, and if your raid is not extremely close to his body at the point it goes off, they'll likely get blasted off the platform. You don't die when this happens, but you'll be out of the fight for at least 10 seconds and if you get unlucky, you'll get picked off by tornadoes right when you land. To avoid this, run towards Al'Akir when he's casting Wind Burst.

The tricky part is the timing of Squall Line and Wind Burst together - make sure you're safe from any tornadoes when Al'akir is about to cast Wind Burst or else you might get blasted into one and die. Also, account for increased run times if you have an ice patch on your part of the platform. It's most important that no raid member gets picked up by tornadoes, so if it comes down to you having to choose between getting blasted off the platform or getting picked up by tornadoes, pick the getting blasted off. It's worth noting that you can currently life-grip people out of tornadoes should you absolutely have to.

Thankfully, when his health hits 80%, phase 2 starts, and this one is considerably easier and.. more boring. You still have to deal with the Electrocute, the spell interrupt close to him and the Squall Line in phase two, so make sure to look out for it and preferably call new tornadoes and their openings out on vent.

Phase 2 has a soft enrage mechanic called Acid Rain, which makes your raid take increasing nature damage every second until you bring Al'Akir down to 25%. The new mechanic this phase are Stormlings - little electric adds Al'akir will summon every 20 seconds. They deal nature damage to everyone within 20 yards of them, so have your ranged members stand in a separate pile away from your tank and melee whenever you don't have to deal with a tornado.

When a Stormling dies, Al'akir receives a debuff called "Feedback". Feedback makes him take 10% more damage for 20 seconds, and this stacks with every new Stormling that dies. However, keep in mind that Feedback only lasts for 20 seconds, so you need to time your Stormling kills just right to avoid losing the buff.

If you have very high DPS in your raid, you may choose to only have a few people on Stormlings to avoid killing them too fast and creating a gap between killing one and having the next one spawn. However, most people that are just starting to raid will want the majority of their DPS on the Stormlings when they're out. Try to find the right balance to always kill a Stormling right before another spawns, that way you should keep stacking up Feedback on Al'akir and get him to 25% before the increasing damage from Acid Rain kills your raid.

Once you do hit 25%, phase 3 starts and Al'Akir will lift your entire raid up into the sky. For the rest of the encounter, you fight him in 3-dimensional space! This phase is also a bit of a soft enrage timer, since eventually you'll run out of room to move. To give your raid the most amounts of space, have everyone fly to the very bottom of Al'akir as soon as the phase starts - fly as far down as you can without touching the lightning at the bottom.

Everyone should be at roughly the same altitude, but do make sure to spread out horizontally since Al'akir uses a chain lightning and an ability called Lightning Rod, that will cause a random person to emit lightning in a pretty wide area. The animation is very obvious and anyone affected by lightning rod needs to make sure to get away from anyone nearby.

The reason your whole raid started out at the bottom of the area is Lightning Cloud, which Al'akir summons at the altitude of a random raid member. This will look like a gigantic cloud that spans the whole area, and after 5 seconds the cloud will begin to emit lightning to anyone at the same altitude. When a cloud spawns, your entire raid needs to move upwards out of the affected altitude, since being in a Lightning Cloud will kill you within 2-3 seconds.

Al'akir uses Wind Burst in this phase, which is now instant. When you get hit by it, just return to wherever you were before. If you're too far away from him at the time he casts this and get knocked out of the Eye of the Storm, you might find yourself getting thrown around a wind hose for 6 seconds. This is usually bad news, since there's a high chance that it'll pop you out into a Lightning Cloud, so try not to move too far from Al'akir when you can avoid it.

That however concludes his phase 3 abilities, so if you burn him down quickly enough and everyone moves out of the Lightning Clouds, this phase should not cause an issue for your raid. As always, good luck and have fun! I've attached footage of the whole encounter in case you'd like to see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail.

[chaos5061]

Nefarian TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the Blackwing Descent Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about Nefarian, the last encounter in this new raid instance. We completed this fight with 3 tanks, 6 healers and 16 DPS - or 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPS in the 10 man version - but similar raid configurations may work just as well.

Nef is a 3-phase encounter and probably the most challenging fight you'll find in this tier. In the first phase, you fight both Onyxia (yep, again!) and Nefarian at the same time while skeletons try to eat you, in the second phase, you're up against three Chromatic Prototypes while Nef annoys you from the air with his fireballs, and in the third phase you only fight Nef, but he kept his Bone Warriors from phase 1 around.

The goal in phase 1 and 2 is to do as much damage to Nef as you possibly can while keeping your raid stable and without jeopardizing a wipe, while phase 3 is all about add control. You want to aim to have Nef at about 75% health when phase 2 starts, at about 65-55% health when phase 3 starts. Let's go over the different phases and abilities you'll have to deal with.

When you first jump down into the arena, you'll only encounter Onyxia, who's been turned into a bit of a living bomb. As soon as you pull her, a little electro-meter will pop up on your UI, illustrating her electric charge level. If this bar ever fills up, it's an instant wipe for your raid. The bar will fill up quicker if no one is DPSing Onyxia, so make sure not to neglect the poor girl. Your Onyxia tank should pull her to a far side of the room and have her face and tail away from the raid as she has a cleave, a breath and a tail lash. Your ranged raid members and healers should be positioned in the middle of the room.

When Onyxia's sides start sparkling, your tank must adjust her position so her tail faces the raid. This is because Onyxia is about to use Electric Discharge, which deals a ton of damage per second to anyone located to either side of her. Your raid might get tail lashed during this, but it's a lot better than standing in Electric Discharge.

Once pulled, a bunch of Animated Bone Warriors will spawn around the room. These come with a twist - they each have 100 energy and will lose 2 energy per second. WHen their energy bar is completely drained, the skeletons will enter an inanimate state and will only revive if touched by any of Nef's Shadowflame abilities. In the 25-man version, you want to designate a tank to gather up all skeletons and kite them, but the kiter needs to avoid Nef's and Onyxia's breath abilities.

Make sure to assist him by using abilities such as frost trap, frost nova and other AoE slow and stun abilities. This is incredibly important! Whenever a skeleton lands a hit on a raid member, they gain a buff called Empower, which increases their damage and movement speed by 10% a stack. This buff can grow infinitely, so it's crucial that the skeletons land as little hits as possible on your raid. It's very easy to see when skeletons stack this buff up high, as they grow enormously large.

If you're doing this in the 10-man version, it'll be 6 skeletons and you can set up a crowd control chain for them in phase 1. Fear, Shackle, Repentance and most other crowd control effects work just fine. Try to have all skeletons "die" in about the same area, this is important for phase 3.

Approximately 30 seconds after engaging Onyxia, Nefarian will land and your second tank must pick him up and pull him to the opposite side of the room, away from Onyxia. If Nef and Onyxia are within 60 yards of each other, they gain a 100% attack speed buff - obviously, you want to avoid that. Nef too has a Cleave, a Breath and a Tail Lash but no Electric Discharge, so there's no need to move him. Just make sure neither his face or tail is facing your raid.

Once Nef is stabilized, you want to designate a DPS team to switch from Onyxia to Nef. Figuring the DPS split out is trial and error - you want to leave enough DPS on Onyxia so that she's close to death when Nef is at about 75% health, give or take a few. However, don't forget about Ony's Lightning Charge level - kill her before this fills up, even if Nef's not quite as far down as you'd like.

Nef's trademark ability throughout the whole fight is Crackle. When he reaches 90% and every 10% of his health thereafter until he dies, Nef will emote "The air crackles with Electricity!" and shortly afterwards, every single raid member will take about 100k nature damage. Since it happens every 10%, Crackle is predictable, and your raid needs to be completely stable before you push Nef's health past a threshhold. Ideally, you want two Crackles to happen in phase 1, another 2 in phase 2, and the rest of his health can be burned down in phase 3.

Crackles can be mitigated by Divine Guardian, Feint and other abilities. If you have a Divine Guardian available, you can use it to mitigate up to 3 crackles throughout the fight.

Again, aim to have Nef around 75% health before killing Onyxia. As soon as she dies, phase 2 starts and the entire area will fill up with lava. This is where the three pillars around the room come into play. Split your raid up into three groups - tanks are not necessary for this phase, the Prototypes do not melee. We assign 2 healers to each platform in the 25-man, 1 healer each in the 10-man. Furthermore, each platform needs reliable interrupters. In the 25-man, you want to aim for at least 2, but preferably even more interrupters per platform, in the 10-man 1 interrupter is the bare minimum. Obviously, the DPS spread should be even.

As soon as Onyxia dies, everyone needs to run to their assigned pillar and wait for the lava to come up.

A chromatic prototype will spawn on each pillar, and as soon as the lava reaches its maximum fill level, each raid member needs to hop onto their assigned pillar. Be quick with this, the lava deals increasing damage the longer you're in it. Also, as soon as the lava reaches its max level, each Prototype will start casting Blast Nova, which is a relatively quick cast. Blast Nova needs to be interrupted at all costs, every single time it is cast. Letting even just one tick of it go off will easily cause a raid wipe. In the 10-man, Prototypes will cast this roughly every 12 seconds, in the 25-man it's roughly every 6. All interrupts will work, even the blood elf racial Arcane Torrent.

While you're fighting the Prototypes, Nef will fly around above you and spam your raid with Shadowflame Barrage. This deals a LOT of single target damage. Phase 2 is easily the most healing intense phase of the whole fight, and healers need to closely monitor their mana. Lightwells proved to be a big help for us. You should designate ranged DPS to concentrate on Nef in this phase, to bring his health down another 10-20%. It's tough, but you want at least one, better yet two Crackles to happen to make phase 3 easier. In the 10-man, DPSing Nef in phase 2 is not absolutely required, but it does help.

Co-ordinate cooldowns for phase 2 crackles, and make sure each platform is stable before pushing Nef past a threshhold. Phase 2 lasts for 3 minutes or until every Prototype is dead, whichever happens first. Remember, keeping the raid stable is of utmost priority. If you cannot afford another Crackle to go off without having people die, just push Phase 3.

Once it starts, Nef will land and your tank has to pick him up once more. Drag him to the very edge of the room, and have your raid stack up to the side of him. Again, tail swipe breath cleave, you know the drill. Hopefully all the adds from phase 1 went inanimate in roughly the same spot, as Nef will shoot a Shadowblaze missile at them right after phase 3 starts, and adds touched by this will revive with full energy and need to be picked up and kited by your tank.

Shadowblaze will also spawn pink fire that'll follow the nearest person, and if the adds are touched by this, they'll also reset their energy bar. The best way to deal with this is to have your add-tank watch Nefarian while kiting, and everytime he shoots a Shadowblaze missile at the skeletons, have him move them out of the way so they don't get hit by the initial missile or the fire that'll start following your tank once the missile hits.

The kiting should happen well away from Nefarian himself, and your add-tank should have 2-3 healers accompanying him. Ideally, the adds will not get hit by any shadowblaze and go inanimate after 50 seconds. Going inanimate will reset their buff, so they'll be a lot more managable when Nef re-animates them. As the phase goes on, more and more fire will cover the room and it will get tougher to keep the adds out of it. If they do touch it, their energy bar is reset to 100 and you have to deal with another 50 seconds of very angry large adds beating you up.

This is why it's preferable to get Nef low before phase 3. If your add-tank dies, it's basically game over, and the shorter the phase, the less chance of that happening. Of course, Crackle still happens during phase 3, and it's important to call out impending Crackles so cooldowns can be applied to your add-tank. As mentioned, it is imperative to keep your add tank up. If add control is executed correctly, phase 3 is a tank and spank with predictable damage spikes.

That covers the Nefarian encounter. Good luck and have fun, as always! Ive attached footage of the whole encounter in case you would like to see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail.

[chaos5061]

Maloriak TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello, and welcome to Tankspot's Cataclysm Raid Guide. My name is Papapaint, and in this video I will be discussing the strategy for Maloriak in the Blackwing Descent Raid Instance.

Maloriak is a relatively straightforward fight that requires little more than proper coordination of your raid for one simple awareness phase and the final burn phase. In addition, there are adds that must be offtanked for a short while, as well as a couple spells requiring interruption. Don't be too intimidated, though... at its core, this encounter is a tank and spank.

First, it's important to assign players to interrupt Arcane Storm. You can increase the cast time of this ability with Slow or Curse of Tongues (etc.), so be sure to assign someone to toss that on as well. Arcane Storm is a channeled AoE that can quickly wipe the raid if not interrupted. You will also need an offensive dispeller to remove Remedy, a heal over time spell Maloriak will occasionally cast on himself. It heals for increasingly larger amounts the longer it's on him, so get rid of it as quickly as possible.

During Phase 1, Maloriak will occasionally run to his cauldron and toss in one of three vials: red, green, and blue. Each vial causes him to gain new abilities unique to that color, so be aware of what he's selecting and respond appropriately. Whenever Maloriak tosses in a Red Vial, he will gain the abilities Scorching Blast and Consuming Flames. Consuming Flames is a small Damage over Time spell that becomes significantly more dangerous if the affected player takes any other magic damage. Scorching Blast is an AoE frontal cone fire spell that splits its damage amongst all players in range. Have your raid stack up, and the player with scorching blast can simple run out. Face Maloriak to the raid, heal through the fire damage, and the phase is trivial.

When he tosses in a Blue Vial, he gains the abilities Flash Freeze and Biting Chill. Biting chill causes a single player to deal frost damage to all other players within 6 yards, so have the ranged be spread out and assign an area for melee to run when this ability affects them. Flash Freeze will encase a player and all players within 6 yards in a block of ice which must be broken in order to free the player. They have fairly low health, so a few quick hits will do the trick.

Every third vial is sure to be a Green Vial. Maloriak will coat everything in the room with Debilitating Slime, increasing Damage Taken by 100%. This is your solution to dealing with the adds. During the fight, Maloriak will cast "Release Abberations," releasing three adds at a time. These adds take significantly reduced damage unless under the effect of Debilitating Slime, so your best bet is to have a tank round them up and hold them until the Green Vial phase. There are 18 adds total that can be released, and you only want two Green Vials in order to beat the enrage timer. Allow him to release 9 adds before each Green Vial, and then interrupt any additional casts of "Release Abberations" until Green Vial is cast again and your raid can AoE down the mobs.

During the final phase, he releases two adds called Prime Subjects. These need to be picked up quickly, as they will lock on to their target a few seconds after being released and fixate on them until death. Have the tank pick these up, and your raid can comfortably ignore them to focus on burning down Maloriak. Maloriak will cast lines of fire at your tank, so face him towards the wall, slowly kite him around the room, and ensure that no one is standing behind the tank. There are also two AoEs going out in the form of Absolute Zero and Poison Nova. Poison Nova is a small dot that must simply be healed through, while Absolute Zero summons a void zone under a player, producing an orb that will explode if a player touches it.

This fight sounds significantly more complicated than it actually is. I'll provide footage of the entire fight with some commentary, simplifying the strategy discussion along with comments on how we handled each phase.

Thanks for watching this guide. To stay up-to-date on Cataclysm raid information, subscribe to this channel and look for updates on encounter guides, including heroic mode raid guides. As always, feel free to ask questions or leave comments either on youtube or the official strategy thread on tankspot.com.

[chaos5061]

Heroic Halfus Wyrmbreaker TankSpot Guide

From TankSpot:

Hello and welcome to the Bastion of Twilight Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll show you all you have to know about the heroic Halfus Wyrmbreaker encounter. We completed this fight with 3 tanks, 9 healers - 3 of which were discipline priests - and 13 DPS. I will assume that you're familiar with how to defeat the normal encounter and will only explain the differences in the heroic version.

As soon as you enter Halfus' room, you'll notice that all the dragons and whelps are interactive and that Halfus and his dragon have all possible buffs and abilities. Yes, it's probably dawning on you, this fight is a cluster****. The enrage timer, if you were wondering, is 6 minutes.

Obviously, you have to negate all the abilities that will cause you to wipe quickly straight away. That means, the Storm Rider, Time Warden, Whelps and Nether Scion should be released straight away. You're going to need at least three strong tanks to handle the incoming tank damage. We used a warrior, a paladin and a blood death knight tank.

We start out the fight by having our paladin pull Halfus and simultaneously activating the Storm Rider. Meanwhile our warrior picks up the Time Warden and our Death Knight grabs the Nether Scion. We have a rogue break out the whelps which are then picked up by our warrior.

Everything is immediately pulled to the middle of the room and the whole raid should stay within a 15-yard radius of Halfus. This means you'll be pressed for space, but the fire balls raining down are very slow, so you still should not have any trouble moving out of them. It also ensures that your disc priests can handle all the necessary raid healing by Atonement-smiting, which frees up your remaining healers to tank heal. Make sure your priests only smite Halfus, since he's the only one taking increased damage. Also, we found it's an HPS loss to use Archangel. Each tank should have about two healers assigned to him.

Once situated in the middle of the room, ranged AoE classes work on taking down the whelps as soon as possible, while melee and single target DPS concentrate on the Time Warden. You also want to leave at least one interrupter on Halfus, to interrupt every single Shadow Nova that he casts. As soon as the whelps are dead, the AoE DPS switches over to help out with the Warden.

Since Halfus has a Mortal Strike debuff that he puts on whoever tanks him, he needs to be bouncing around your tanks. We had our tanks taunt off of each other at 5 or more stacks of the MS debuff. Keep in mind that whoever is tanking Halfus and a dragon will need extra healing, so be vocal about tank switches on ventrilo.

On the subject of tank damage, your tanks will want to use cooldowns pretty liberally throughout the whole encounter whenever they're tanking Halfus at the same time as a Drake. Try to have some kind of cooldown up for the majority of the time that you're tanking Halfus. Be vocal about this on vent, and don't be shy about asking for a healer cooldown.

Once the Time Warden dies, your now freed-up tank should release the Slate Dragon, which will occasionally stun Halfus. To make it easier on your tanks, you can also have a hunter free him and then misdirect him to the freed-up tank.

This is really useful sub-50%, since it puts huge delays on Furious Roar, and sometimes even cuts off some of its ticks. However, even though you have three drakes released, all your DPS should switch over to Halfus straight away after the Time Warden dies while the tanks just hold them. Any kind of bloodlust should also be used as soon as all DPS is on Halfus, since you won't get the full effect of it when you're continuously stunned by Furious Roar.

As soon as you push Halfus past 50%, you need to pay close attention to Halfus' Furious Roar timer. You should have a power word: barrier order assigned to your disc priests, and have them put one up on the raid each time Halfus is casting Furious Roar. Also, make sure all your tanks are at full health before a Roar. Whoever is tanking Halfus at the time needs to use a strong cooldown, such as Shield Wall, Ardent Defender, etc, or have a priest cast a Pain Suppression.

Tank deaths occur very easily below 50%. Soulstones should be placed on tanks and battle resses should be reserved for such emergencies as well. Your raid needs to be healed up completely between Roars, and you still want to assign an interrupter to blink out of the last Roar pulse, to interrupt the Shadow Nova that follows it.

To recap, by role: At the start of the fight, tanks pick up their assigned targets. Bounce Halfus around the three tanks by having one taunt when another hits 5 or more stacks of the MS debuff. Use a cooldown when tanking multiple targets. Once the Time Warden dies, the freed-up tank releases the Slate Dragon. Do not stand in fire if you can avoid it.

Healers should be within 15 yards of Halfus. Disc priests should concentrate on smiting Halfus the entire fight, which triggers raid healing through Atonement. Other healers should be assigned to the tanks, ideally two healers to each tank. Power Word Barriers should be up for most Furious Roars. Be ready to use cooldowns on tanks when they ask for it. Do not stand in fire.

DPS should be within 15 yards of Halfus. AoE DPS focuses down the whelp pack, single target DPS concentrates on the Time Warden. Once the whelps are dead, everyone should kill the Time Warden. Keep one or more interrupters on Halfus, so no Shadow Novas go off. Once the Time Warden dies, concentrate on Halfus. Use Bloodlust. Sub-50%, have a mage or another class assigned to interrupting Shadow Nova after a Roar. Do not stand in the fire.

That about concludes the changes you'll encounter in the heroic version of Halfus Wyrmbreaker. Good luck, and have fun! I've attached the full encounter with the relevant vent conversation so you can see how we handled tank cooldowns. This is footage of our first Halfus kill, so tanks have slightly different assignments than I've mentioned in this video and the last few percent are a bit... sloppy.