Valithria Dreamwalker Encounter

[Spiritus]

Hello, and welcome to Tankspot's written pre-release strategy guide on the Valithria Dreamwalker Encounter in Icecrown Citadel. My name is Spiritus and I will be going over the abilities seen on the PTR for this fight, as well as some basic speculative strategy on how to approach your first attempts.

BIG NOTE: As always, this is all speculative, but well researched. Nothing is ever certain until launch day, and even then the fight mechanics can change overnight. If I feel dodgy on something, I say so. Below are two PTR captures, one from a healer(dreamstate sequence), and one from a DPS (dealing with adds):

Environment, Positioning, and Pull:

(1) VDW's room is box shaped with two gates on either side (four total), which are where the massive waves of adds will spawn.

(2) At least two tanks are needed for this fight, one for each side of the room (each tank takes two gates).

(3) This fight is different in that you "beat" the boss by raising her health from 50%-100%. Meaning, your healers must "HPS" the boss to win, while also healing the raid. Your tanks will be picking up the adds, and your DPS will be DPSing the adds. It is very possible to get behind on adds and become overwhelmed, so quick DPS switching from single target to AoE is important.

(4) Positioning is simple enough. Split the raid into two teams, each with a tank. Each team will take a side of the dragon. Ranged should stay spread at an approx. 10yd interval. To start the encounter, you must kill the Risen Archmages channeling on VDW.

Boss/Add Abilities:
All in all, the key to success in this fight is prioritizing the add kill order. I am presenting the adds in the order which I find the most dangerous:

<---Blazing Skeleton--->

At first glance, the blazing skeleton may seem like not much of a threat. However, Lay Waste not only is a 12sec raid wide AoE, but hits VDW as well. Think of these guys as adds that would normally "heal" the boss. Bad juju.

Fireball
0.5 sec cast. Range unknown. ?Interuptable?
Inflicts 4,713 to 5,287 Fire damage to an enemy.
Standard pew pew fare.

Lay Waste
12sec channel.
Surrounds the caster in flames for 12 sec, pulsing 5655 to 6345 Fire damage to all enemies every 2.0 sec.
The reason why blazing skeletons are top priority. Lay Waste deals damage to everyone in the raid as well as VDW. Two up casting this would be devastating. A Blazing Skeleton and a Risen Arch Mage casting Lay Waste and Frostbolt Volley simultaneously is a hard heal.

<---Suppressor--->

Low HP
Suppressors come out in packs of 3-4 on each side. They have low hit points and have no aggro table. Their sole purpose in life is to make it to the boss and start channeling a spell that reduces healing taken by 10%. Again, think of this as an add that reduces damage done to a normal boss (e.g.-- crusher tentacles). Can be rooted, unknown on snares and stuns.

Suppression
Channeled spell, short range.
Reduces healing received by the target by 10%. Lasts until cancelled.
Reduce the uptime on this as much as possible.

<---Risen Archmage--->

324.6k HP

Risen Archmagi have the most ability of the adds, and cause the most trouble in the movement/positioning department.

Column of Frost
Instant Cast. 2sec delay. 3yd radius.
Marks the location under a random player target. After 2 seconds a column of frost erupts from this location, dealing 11310 to 12690 Frost damage to all enemies within 3 yards, knocking them into the air.
Completely avoidable. Make sure your melee are on their toes, or else you may have 3 or 4 knocked up in the air. Ranged should be spread out and have no issues avoiding this.

Frostbolt Volley
2sec cast. Raid wide. Interuptable.
Inflicts 8550 to 10450 Frost damage to nearby enemies, reducing their movement speed for 4 sec.
Cannot be reasonably ranged. Must be healed.

Mana Void
Instant cast. 6yd radius.30sec duration.60yd range.
Summons a Mana Void at a random enemies location. This Mana Void burns 800 mana per second to all enemies within a 6 radius. Lasts 30 seconds.
Purple void zones are not dps/hps buffs. Do not stand in them.

<---Blistering Zombie--->

252k HP
These are bad for your tanks, especially if they are tanking multiple mobs. These may be a bumped priority if your raid is behind on adds. UPDATE! It is advised to have a hunter kite these mobs.

Corrosion
6sec duration. Stacks to 5.
Whenever the caster lands a melee swing, the target takes 2000 Nature damage every 3 seconds and their armor is reduced by 10%. This effect can stack up to 5 times. Lasts 6 sec.
50% armor reduction on the tank at a full 5stack is not good when being hit by multiple mobs. Add in 10k/p3 and this can get out of hand quickly.

Acid Burst
0.75sec cast [unconfirmed]. 15yd radius. 20sec duration.
The caster explodes, dealing 9425 to 10575 Nature damage instantly and 750 Nature damage per second to all enemies within 15 yards. Lasts 20 sec.
Cast at death. Not particularly avoidable for melee and tanks, but if they are stun-able then it is advised to do so just before death to possibly negate this ability.

<---Gluttonous Abomination--->

607.1k HP
These have the most HP of the adds, but are the least dangerous in terms of causing chaos.

Gut Spray
Instant cast. 12sec duration. ?Dispel-able Disease?
Deals 2000 Nature damage per second and increases Physical damage taken by 25% for 12 sec.
I have a feeling this one will end up being dispel-able, and should be. Cone attack always directed at the highest threat target (which should be a tank).

Rot Worms
On death, the Gluttonous Abomination will spawn 7-10 rot worms. Melee for approx. 4-5k.
Low HP. Have your tank pick them up and AoE down.

===================================================================

<---Valithria Dreamwalker--->

30m HP (Starts with 15m HP)
To win this encounter, you must raise VDW's health to 30m HP. You must balance HPS on her with having enough healing for the raid damage. Since this is an add control fight, I would start with your standard healing core in lieu of cannibalizing DPSers into "HPSers." Making sure your raid is keeping up with adds is the single most important part of this fight. To note, not all healing spells effect VDW. Heals with a "raid or party member" tag will not work (e.g.- ProM, CH, Beacon, WG, CoH). VDW can be hit with buffs, and Amp Magic is certainty recommended. However, buffs that increase her max HP are obviously NOT a good idea (eg- PW:F, BoK, BoS, MotW). Guardian Spirit can be cast on VDW! It is advisable to have any priest healer switch to holy and glyph for GS. With just two holy priests, you can increase your HPS on VDW by approx 13.33% (repeating, of course).

Summon Nightmare Portal
Instant. Approx. 7sec delay.
Surprisingly enough, summons nightmare portals.
At rather frequent periodic intervals, at least 5 red beams will emanate from VDW, creating 5 red "orbs" that, in approx 7 sec, will turn into Nightmare Portals, allowing those who click it to access the dreamstate for 15sec. When in the dreamstate, players can "fly" around the room and "run into" Dream Clouds. Dream Clouds are "popped" by proximity, so depth perception can be a real pain in the you-know-what. it is advised to have your VDW HPS team stay grouped up. When they enter the dreamstate, every attempt should be made to stick together since multiple people can be buffed by the same Dream Cloud. When "popped" they bestow a stacking buff in a 10yd radius called...

Emerald Vigor
30sec [possibly 35sec] duration. Stacks up to 100.
Regenerating 200 Mana every 3 sec. Increases Damage done by 10%. Increases Healing done by 10%.
Obviously, you want your healers to take these portals to get this buff. With 5 portals, and a usual 6 healer team, you can leave one healer out to cover 15secs of healing the entire raid. If this is too much of a strain, you may wish to bump to 7, or even 8, healers to maximize this buff. High single target healers (like paladins) should always be queued to take the portals. In fact, if properly timed, it may be possible to stack up emerald Vigor over two or more trips to the dreamstate. This would require good latency and perfectly timing your last Dream Cloud kill at the last second of your time in the dreamstate, plus getting to a new Dream Cloud almost immediately after the next portal spawns.
===================================================================

Rinse and repeat until VDW hits 30m HP. At that time, she will insta-gib all remaining adds.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

(1) The key to this fight is add control. Keep up with the adds, and most guilds should find this encounter relatively simple.

(2) Two tanks are needed. Split your raid into two teams, one for each set of gates.

(3) Don't stand in circles on the ground.

(4) Run fire, frost, and nature resist. Your healers will thank you.

(5) Set up your add kill priority ahead of time. If a certain add is giving you more trouble, get it down first.

(6) Certain healing spells cannot be cast on VDW if they have a "party or raid" caveat. Guardian Spirit can be cast of VDW and should be done so on CD.

(7) UPDATE! You CAN cast beacon on VDW, it is highly recommended.

(8) UPDATE! I am advising to split up your raid DPS to handle each add type. Ranged should always be on Zombies as a hunter kites. Melee with interrupts should be on Archmagi to remove the threat of FBV. Non-specific DPS should also be given assignments for Suppressors and Aboms. ALL DPS SHOULD FOCUS FIRE SKELETONS AS A TOP PRIORITY! I would still maintain side discipline, at the very least for melee.


This encounter mechanic is new and should be fun for your healers. DPS must still be on their game, keeping the add count low.

As always, feel free to add info to this post that will further everyone's understanding of the fight.

Good luck on the Valthria Dreamwalker Encounter and clearing the first boss in the fourth wing of ICC! Stay tuned for strats on the Sindragosa Encounter.

[Chizari]

Spiritus once again I thank you for your effort

[avh]

Heals with a "raid or party member" tag will not work (e.g.- ProM, CH, Beacon, WG, CoH).

Does this mean that CH won't jump to Valithria or if you target and then cast CH it won't do healing before jumping to random raid member if any is in range?

[Trondhjem]

I wonder if its possible to ignore Mana Voids if you are a rogue, dk or warrior

[Zoso]

<---Blazing Skeleton--->

62.54m HP

Say whattttttttt

[Mihir]

Say whattttttttt

im pretty sure that should be 625.4k HP

[Dragaan]

While this encounter is doable with 2 tanks (one on each side), it might be a good idea for most guilds to use 3. Adds spawn on both sides of the room, but it seemed like 1 side in particular got a lot more adds than the other at times. Also, I believe the abominations only spawned 1 at a time on a random side of the room. By using a 3rd "floater" tank (preferably a paladin), you can have the 2 side tanks ignore the abominations and have the floater tank deal exclusively with them. By doing this, it reduces the chance of one of your side tanks being overwhelmed if their side already has a lot of adds spawning and an abomination decides to pop out at them too. This added much more control to the encounter, and having 1 less dps definitely did not seem to be a problem.

Also, first kill priority is definitely the skeletons. The second you see one spawn, alert the entire raid of where they spawned and have everyone drop what they are doing to kill it asap.


EDIT: Hmm.... while I know we used the 3 tank strat when testing it on 25man heroic, I'm not positive if we did that when we beat the encounter on 25man normal. On heroic the adds hit insanely hard and it was definitely a good idea to use 3 tanks, but right now I can't recall if it was what we ended up doing on normal (we just 1shot it on normal after several heroic wipes). Either way, it's something to keep in mind. It definitely seemed to help on heroic tho.

[Spiritus]

Meaning if cast on a party member, CH will not jump to VDW.

[Neanor]

I was under the impression that Beacon of Light worked in the later builds of the PTR. Does anyone have any more information on this?

[Odok]

I was under the impression that Beacon of Light worked in the later builds of the PTR. Does anyone have any more information on this?

I heard this as well.

[ihcTactics]

Are the Nightmare Portals static in spawn locations or are they random?

[Ciremo]

I posted this on Maintankadin as well.

I had an idea.

I noticed that the Emerald Vigor buff that you get from killing Dream Clouds stack upp to 100. While it's possible the timer doesn't reset when you get a new stack, you still should be able to get a few of them running. Combine this with a 55k+ paladin tank using Lay on Hands on the "boss" with Guardian Spirit and Avenging Wrath up.

It very well may be so that you're unable to get enough stack to make this worthwile, or even that those stacks are better spent on healers, but I figured I'd point it out at least.

[Spiritus]

I do not have any info on a possible Beacon fix. Hooray if so, but not a game changer on normal by any means.

As stated in the guide, it may be possible to get very large stacks of Emerald Vigor if you perfectly execute the mechanic. The timing on this, however, would be fierce.

[Bitterst]

You can put Beacon on the tank and heal Dreamwalker. Also, it worked well for us to just assign a hunter to each side and Distracting Shot taunt kite the Blistering Zombies. Doing so totally removes their Corrosion stacks and Acid Burst (as long as it's successfully kited away) from the the fight.

[Fawne]

Rot Worms
On death, the Gluttonous Abomination will spawn 7-10 rot worms. Melee for approx. 4-5k.
Low HP. Have your tank pick them up and AoE down.

I noticed that, while tanking the worms in the 25 man encounter, I got a rather nasty stacking debuff, or at least I think it was from these guys it may have been from something completely different, it was a bit of a mess in there. It did (2000?)xStack damage per second and stacked up to 24 times on myself before falling off. It fell off rather quickly (I want to say under 10 seconds) and may have had an armor penalty, I'm afraid I just glanced at it as I was reaching for my cooldowns. I thought it was Corission from the exploding zombies but that stacked along side it.

Anyone got anything on this?

[Dragaan]

Beacon works, and it's pretty easy to 2tank. Guess I was thinking of the heroic version when I posted above.

[Kylis]

The frostbolt Volley from the Risen Archmage has a 2 second cast time.

[easttuth]

Can anyone confirm the max number of stacks for Emerald Vigor? Most sources say 100, but I've also heard the max is 20. Our strat last night didn't allow for testing.

[Muroku]

Can anyone confirm the max number of stacks for Emerald Vigor? Most sources say 100, but I've also heard the max is 20. Our strat last night didn't allow for testing.

Our healer got 26 stacks at one point last night

[Oratory]

Blazing Skeleton's Lay Waste is only cast when their aggro target is in melee range. We had hunters assigned to each side that would get aggro with tanks range-taunting and they would do nothing but spam fireball until one of the melee pulled aggro. By then it was usually dead before it got the first pulse off.