Magmaw

[Jahrakal]

@ Madcow
The purpose of the tactic is, that only one person is needed to deal with the parasites. The rest can focus on healing / dealing dmg. And victory rush heals [ if glyphed ] for about 60k after u kill one enemy .... there are about 10 parasite, aoe them low, and than kill them one after the other, the healer dont even have to target u

[smcn]

Just downed him in a pug. The key to getting this boss down is realizing that there are many ways of dealing with the parasites, and finding the strategy that works for your group. Don't be afraid to wildly change your strat between each pull. After trying 4 different things we settled on stacking everyone with the melee side of the boss except a fire mage (you read that correctly) who took the job of kiting adds.

I found the most frustrating thing about this fight to be the aggro reset after the impale phase. At least one person got gibbed by this during each attempt, even the successful one.

[kaempf]

My guild is having a little trouble with this guy. We have only gone at him once and we git him past phase one fine but at the end of phase two right when he resets to phase one our dps is getting pelted by the pillar. We use one tank on one side of the room with a ranged(hunter) standing towards the middle around 15 meters away from the boss with all other dps (ranged and melee) opposite the tank. During the whole first phase of the fight the pillar gets shot in the middle of the room by the hunter. After the second phase, when he stands back up the pillar is summoned right were all the dps is standing... Is anyone else having an issue with this, is it random where the pillar is summoned?

Thanks in advance

[Quinafoi]

I believe in order to make sure the pillar isn't cast on melee you need a preset number of ranged targets, similar to many other boss mechanics. If you don't have sufficient people at range then the targeting pool includes those in melee range. Haven't done any thorough testing on the particular encounter but I would imagine it requires 4 ranged targets on 10 man and 10 ranged targets on 25 man, give or take a few. If your strategy involves only the hunter standing at range then I would say this is your flaw. You should several people at range and they all have to dodge the pillar when it occurs however should still be stacked up to make sure the pillars occur in a predicable place.

Now the fact that you have seen it targeting the hunter could simply be luck based. Like I said, mechanics like this tend to have a set number of targets. For example, if he simply picks one of the four furthest targets, you'd still have a 25% chance of the hunter being picked if they were the only target at range.

Like I said though I haven't done thorough testing of this particular mechanic, I'm only basing this on similar boss mechanics we've seen in the past 6 years of the game. Such as Vile Gas from Festergut in Icecrown Citadel, in order to make sure it was never cast on melee you needed a certain number of ranged targets for him to choose from (3 in 10 man, 7 in 25 man in that particular case).

[Ridan]

Im fairly almost 100% sure the issue is NOT that the pillar aims for melee cause you lack range im fairly sure what happens to you guys is that when magmav goes down your "melee" group moves abit to far from melee range.

Rem you ALWAYS gotta stack up in melee doing this when he is down might be abit tricky for some tended to happen abit to us to forcing the range to be in the right spot with Leap of Faith did the trick thou that and abit of yelling on vent :P We have had bout 15 pillars or so lately AL but one targetad our 1 and single range that for me is not luck thats a mechanic. However the one that failed was out melee DK moving away abit late to pick up the adds he walked just out of range hence we got the pillar just beside our range ("melee")

[Jakhammer]

My guild is having a little trouble with this guy. We have only gone at him once and we git him past phase one fine but at the end of phase two right when he resets to phase one our dps is getting pelted by the pillar. We use one tank on one side of the room with a ranged(hunter) standing towards the middle around 15 meters away from the boss with all other dps (ranged and melee) opposite the tank. During the whole first phase of the fight the pillar gets shot in the middle of the room by the hunter. After the second phase, when he stands back up the pillar is summoned right were all the dps is standing... Is anyone else having an issue with this, is it random where the pillar is summoned?

Thanks in advance

No, the pillar is not random. What is happening here is that your "melee" stacking group isn't truely stacked in melee range. If just ONE of those players is 2 yards beyond melee range, you're likely to get a pillar right then and there.

[Ogri]

If you have only one person standing outside melee range when Pillar is being cast, it will always target him. Period. Might be different on 25 man so no promises there.

Given that you are lucky enough to have all of the Ignitions on the opposing side, the entire raid except for assigned Pillar soaker (and Spike jumpers) should not have to move a single step during the entire fight using the lone Hunter tactic.

[Vogul]

With reference to 25man

While I cannot 100% confirm it becuase we only used a lone hunter for our last 5 attempts right now we think it might work. We might just have been very lucky with RNG but on at least 12 occasions the pillar has only targeted our sole ranged guy. We found you need to be very very careful if someone strayed a couple of yards out as they would almost always get the pillar.

This seemed to work well until about 50% when parasites would start getting into the raid. My feeling is we are probably just a touch short on gear so we are loosing the battle of attrition against the raid damage and keeping enough DPS alive to deal with the adds.

Would be interested in hearing if anyone else has any success with this.

[kaempf]

Thanks guys for all the help. We are going back in tonight and I will let you know tomorrow how it turns out.

Our melee stack group was definitely out of melee range. They were backing away from magmaw in fear of his melee attack while the tank tries to grab agro again when he stands back up.

Thanks again!

[Michultradk]

Thanks everyone for posting their strats here.

Our guild downed him last night using the Hunter as bait and after 3 tries with everyone getting use to it we were able to take him down. We also had 2 Hunters in our group and stacked them together and then they would stagger thier traps towards the raid and it worked like a charm. Luckily we never had a pillar form in the raid with everyone standing in melee range along the front of the boss, with me tanking on the right.

[sorednbored]

I'm after a little bit of clarification on the Mangle mechanic. We downed him after 3 or 4 wipes last night, but I'm sure that we can make things easier on ourselves.

If an experienced Tank could just give a bit of detailed information about how the mechanic works - i.e. when he uses it, when to pop cooldowns, when to top the tank up, when and if to taunt & tank switch etc. We just kind of muddled through it last night. Which is fine as we got the kill, but I like our kills to be as a result of comprehensive knowledge of the encounter, not just due to a bit of good luck & guesswork.

As I said, we downed him, but we want to make it easier. We're going to try some of the suggestions made in this Thread for dealing with the Parasites as well.

[robbymo]

I'm not sure of the exact c/d on Mangle, it seems like he does it a minute after he finishes the prior one. DBM has a very accurate timer on this ability.

As far as warrior tanks go you can pop your first cooldown after he starts chewing on you, this is easy to spot because he throws you in the air and into his mouth. I start with a shield wall and call it out, the pally healer that is assigned to me stands in melee range and easily keeps me alive. For the second one I will pop last stand with enraged regeneration. By the time the third comes shield wall is off c/d and can be used again. You can use last stand again if you get a fourth mangle.

It's very important that the tank gets back into melee range after the impale that follows the mangle before he one shots your healer (or whomever is closest).

[Kinch]

(25 player notes)
Mangle is cast about every 90 seconds. The target can pop cooldowns while being Mangled. Mangle will stop when Magmaw is pulled down on the spike. The target will get spit out and Sweltering Armor will be applied, which lasts 90 seconds and reduces armor 50 percent. (Meaning that if there is not a tank switch, the tank will be at 50 percent armor the rest of the encounter.) Your raid needs to be efficient on the pulldown. If Mangle runs for 30 seconds, the target will die (Mangled Lifeless is applied).

[Scotthew]

Thanks for another great vid Aliena, and thanks everyone for posting their strats here.

We killed Magmaw our second night using two tanks rotating on boss, everyone stacked in melee save a lone hunter, and a Moonkin, Fire Mage, Destro Lock, and Hunter for AOE. It was fairly challenging for such an early encounter imo, but once we got the adds under control, it all came together.

I had a few questions: For those of you using a single tank, how are you dealing with the 50% armor debuff? That's a huge increase in damage to just heal through it for 90% of the fight.

For those of you kiting adds with warrior tanks, are you keeping them slowed? Does the warrior need a good bit of heals? Other general tips?

For those of you killing parasites, how much AoE are you bringing? To get it done we had four ranged AoE, this seems like a stiff 'requirement' for a 10-man group imo.

Thanks all.

[Ogri]

I had a few questions: For those of you using a single tank, how are you dealing with the 50% armor debuff? That's a huge increase in damage to just heal through it for 90% of the fight.

For those of you killing parasites, how much AoE are you bringing? To get it done we had four ranged AoE, this seems like a stiff 'requirement' for a 10-man group imo.

Thanks all.

On the tank (our MT is a PP) I guess its never been a problem, at least our healers are not complaining. We use a Resto Shaman for dedicated group healing and the other two (HP and RD) have the tank prio and only spot heal the raid. The tank damage is predictable, evenly spread and lacks spikes which makes it easy to counter with HoTs and steady healing saving the tanks CDs for Mangle.

On the AoE bit, last night we used the "Pillar" Hunter, a Mage and a Demonology specced Warlock for handling the parasites.

Its easy to get fixated on the AoE capabilities alone but this is only part of the handling. The other and IMO far more important part is control which in this case means the Hunter making sure the Pillar spawns at close to max range to the ranged DPS (if they cant reach you before they die, they cant hit you) and the warlocks Felguard and/or the Hunters pet aggroing the parasites (which ofc should spawn in the middle of the Hunters Frost Trap to begin with).

[FoxyMuffinz]

So that Debuff that he gives you, can you take it off that person or do they have to actually take the damage?

[Haur]

On the tank (our MT is a PP) I guess its never been a problem, at least our healers are not complaining. We use a Resto Shaman for dedicated group healing and the other two (HP and RD) have the tank prio and only spot heal the raid. The tank damage is predictable, evenly spread and lacks spikes which makes it easy to counter with HoTs and steady healing saving the tanks CDs for Mangle.

I dont know how to call tank damage predictable, you are getting hammered with white hits for 50k on debuffed boss every 3 sec when unlucky, coupled with aoe and everything. After mangle and before debuffs wer eup our tank ate hefty 90k hit that put him on floor.

We had some issues yesterday doing it on 10 man, we killed him last week with 1 tank 3 healers and 6 dps (4 ranged). Last week we had me (prot warrior) tanking the boss, ranged and some healers were outside, walking left and right when pillar killing parasites. We werent doing great be he went down.

Yesterday we tried same tactic, with 2 of 3 same healers as last week but ranged people kept dying as flies from his random spits, we had prot pala with worse gear then mine tanking and things were overall mess. After some time we tried with me tanking the worms, aoe switch to them for 10 sec to nuke most of them out, but since i had debuffs i would spawn extra ones that i would simply offtank until next batch. Everyone else besides poor hunter was hugging the boss, and was taking way way less damage then on tries they were outside.

Problem is our 3 healers are really struggling with damage overall, and i cant see any way to ease up that, sadly we dont have dks to kite and kill worms. If we had everyone inside (besides hunter) even slowed worms started reaching healers and ranged dps camp and making even more mess.

Our healers were putting out around 30k total hps and we just cant cut it. Granted not everyone is in 350+ gear but so far it seems we are really riding the bullet and hoping for lucky streaks or just bring 4 healers.

[Haur]

So that Debuff that he gives you, can you take it off that person or do they have to actually take the damage?

Afaik, debuff can be boubled once with pala, bouble on other person doesnt work. So with one tank you are still having it for most of the fight.

[Maeby]

We downed him in ten man using 1 Prot Warrior Tank and 1 Prot Warrior on the adds. The rest of the group stacked on the boss on the opposite side from the tank. We got a "pillar in melee" the first attempt, but it turned out that one of our healers was too far out from the group. Once we all stacked as close to the edge as possible, it has never happened again.

The Prot Warrior kited the adds around, and killed them fairly quickly. With his Piercing Howl and stacks of Vengeance and whatever else warriors do, he did 27k DPS and had no problems downing the adds and staying alive. With the adds out of the way, we were free to burn boss the whole time. Don't be tempted to try and have a ranged turn around and try to "help" with the parasites. You'll only pull them off the Warrior, and bring them to your group.

It was a touch healing intensive for a bit because the Tank takes the armor debuff, and with only one tank, he has it from the end of the first Mangle, to the end of the fight. But, since the DPS didn't have to deal with adds, and focused on the boss the whole time, we had more DPS then we needed, and opted to have our DPS Shammy go Resto for the slam dunk. I'm sure that three good healers could handle it, but if you have the option, four heals doesn't slow the fight down much at all, and makes it cake on everyone.

A couple things:

When Magmaw is first chained, he flops around, and he can stun you while getting spiked. Not great for a healer during that phase. Also, when Magmaw first comes back off the spike, he seems to randomly melee someone. Have everyone back up once he's ready to be spiked and for the burn phases, and quickly get back into position again once the tank has it, and no one should get stunned or smacked in the face.

[Ogri]

I dont know how to call tank damage predictable, you are getting hammered with white hits for 50k on debuffed boss every 3 sec when unlucky, coupled with aoe and everything. After mangle and before debuffs wer eup our tank ate hefty 90k hit that put him on floor.

There is a difference between heavy and predictable damage. Magmaw does both, he is a slow hitting Melee boss which is all about white, steady damage. Healing has to reflect that. The AoE comes at 25 second intervals, also predictable.

If your tank end up dead after mangle due to a 90K hit he is either not topped up which he should be since you can with some certainty predict a heavy hit at that particular moment, also the tank is probably not making the most of his cooldowns.

Above ofc dependant on that you actually have proper gear, Magmaw is more then anything a gear check. If your healers and especially tank dont live up to the a certain gear level you wont make it without depending on luck.