Magmaw

[Tailsz]

A quick tip for all you cats out there that want to be behind him. If you ask your tank to turn magmaw a bit you can get at his back without having to dangle yourself off the ledge.

If your tank doesnt turn magmaw and tanks him straight on you can still get an angle on his back but it's a *very* precarious spot. One may find themselves in the lava if one is not careful... not that I would know..

[Celwindia]

Regarding a few things being mentioned in this thread regarding the fight.

Firstly, we were having a problem getting the Lava Pillars in "melee." It was helpful to have someone call out a "reset" when there was 5-8 seconds until the next Lava Pillar. Upon hearing the reset, any raid members that were out a little bit DPSing the adds, knew to snug right back into melee range. That might help some of you that consistently have the Pillar spawn in melee.

Secondly, we were having trouble taking the adds out in time, even with 4 ranged on them. What ended up working for us, was having the Rogue help us out too. Our rogue was Assassination, and so he had 2/2 Deadly Brew, meaning he was auto-applying Crippling Poison to everything as well. As soon as the Lava was on the ground, he'd pop out of melee and get ready. As soon as they were spawning, he put ToTT on one of the ranged, and FoKd until Tricks dropped off. That strategy trivialized the fight, and removed the need for a ton of AoE snaring, and allowed our ranged to focus more on just burning them up.

Also, we only had an issue with the post-spike aggro reset once, and it was one of the Shadowpriests. I started calling out for priests to Fade when his head came up, and it became an easy kill.

Great video guide, cheers and good luck.

[briarfox]

We did it last night with just a Blood DK tank at range kiting the mobs. Didn't have any issue at all.

[briarfox]

Please note, this info is considered to be accurate as of the writing of this post. There is a possibility this method may be nerfed by Blizzard in the future.

For the second week in a row, we've downed Magmaw using the "easy mode" strat. I have anecdotal, yet reliable, word from 2 other raiding guilds on the server that have done it this way as well.

Magmaw Easy Mode:

Rather then splitting the raid and having your rdps run across the room, instead have all but a designated range kiter (we used a Blood DK tank with great success) stack with the melee camp. And when I mean stack, I mean get right up on his junk. This is the most important aspect of easy mode. The fireball/parasite spew will only hit people at range. Magmaw's hitbox is incredibly tight, however, and "at range" is a lot closer then you think.

So anyway. You have a tank at one side of the ledge, like normal, and you have a melee camp on the other side (like normal) joined by the rdps that would normally be at range. You have one designated kiter (hunter or DK seems to work best) remain at range. Now you burn the boss. That simple. The range kiter will move about in the room, similar to what Rdps did in the video, to avoid the flame pillars. Instead of worrying about burning any of the adds, dps remains on magmaw the entire time, instead allowing the ranged person to pick up and hold aggro on the parasites, and kite them around the room. Pop hero when the head falls, burn him, rinse, repeat, profit. It REALLY is that simple. That being said, a few caveats.

Approaching Magmaw this way forces range to think like melee, which is something they may have difficulty with. Tank positioning is important due to Magmaw's cleave, which can shred a clothy if he's faced too near the dps pool. His ground slam when he falls is something to be aware of too, positioning wise. Managing the occurrence of the steam vent, wherein half the room gets blasted, is also important. You can try to have your dps pool and tank switch places, but we found that such a thing was difficult to execute, especially while maintaining proper proximity to magmaw. While the steamblast hits moderately hard, a better geared raid may prefer to just heal through it (a feat made easier given that dps is concentrated in a small area).

Hunters provide a dilemma as well, given their need for range. Our hunter was able to dps at 2 yards (looked more like 5, honestly) and that didn't seem to trigger magmaw's flame pillar. Even so, hunter positioning leaves NO room for error and it may be wiser to have any hunters remain at range and simply avoid the flame pillar, kiting tank and the adds. Up to you. Again, I cannot stress enough how important it is that everyone be stacked as close to magmaw as humanly possible (watch the ledge).

As for kiters, you may be surprised how much of the room you use for kiting. You may find yourself having to dip near the raid. This is cool, just leave a little buffer zone. And while the latch range/chance may have been/will be soon nerfed, don't rely on it or get cocky. 1 or 2 loose parasites isn't a huge deal, but any more then that and they can get out of hand quickly. Also, be aware of where the impale pillar is. You don't want either you or parasites to get stuck on it.

While I personally don't think this violates the spirit of the fight, Blizzard may disagree and fix what is likely a bug with the purported "people at range ability cap" that was discussed earlier. For the time being, however, this method works, and well. It's a great trick to help raids that are having dps or positioning issues to help gear up and tackle some of the other content with more ease. That being said, managing the adds in Magmaw is very obviously intended as practice for the bloods you have to manage for Cho'gall, and not having practice with the mechanic may come back to bite you later on. Like I said, though, even a little gear can make a huge difference and the Magmaw Easy Mode method can provide a good, reliable method to farm some from a boss that has a respectable spread.

[Chyper]

The Too Many Melee Solution

So you're a casual guild and you don't quiet have the right raid setup. You have 3 melee, or worse yet you have 4 melee. This raid tier probably makes you want to roll a ranged . So here is a quick breakdown of how to get it done.

This fight is pretty much about add control, if you don't controll/kill the adds in time your healers are going to go oom pretty quickly. The less ranged you have in essence means the less controll you may have over the adds.

The biggest part of the lava control is they do have a threat table. This is important to note for using Melee to kill the lava. IF the Melee don't have it, they'll want to pick up an addon called TidyPlates (Which comes with Threatplates and use them).

Melee killing the adds you're insane! Well yeah, but its how we got it done when we needed too.

The basic idea is that your Melee can kill the parasites as long as they do not pull threat. As soon as one pulls threat they will get jumped on.

Its basicly about watching your threat whilst AOEing. Try your best not to single target anything you can't kill in less then 4 global cooldowns.

Any forms of slow, rogues with crippling poisons, Mut rogues speced into cripling poison when applying other poisons. Dks, hunters mages. Shamans with earth bind. Just about every class has a slow or can pick up a glyph/respec. If you unwilling to change your spec for this fight and other fights that require add control you are not going to be successful.

Its not the silver bullet and Melee will at times get a lava on them and you will just have to heal through it, although its better then all the ranged getting exploded on. We used 1 rogue as the Melee killing the lava as we found if you take too many Melee off the boss you will reach his enrage timer. It all depends on how much damage your raid is capable of doing.

If you're still having trouble with the parasites you may want to consider putting more melee on the parasites, but you'll start getting closer to his enrage timer. If you are unable to kill the parasites with 4 people dealing with them, you may which to consider going back to heroics and making sure you dont have any greens or 333s lingering


Other things to note:

If you only leave 1 Melee on the boss, one will have to run back to get on his head... the queue for this is the steam on the ground. Your designated Melee will have to run back and get ready to jump on his head at this point, if you miss 1 head phase its game over, so Melee have to pay attention to this.

[moongate]

A bit confused here. Some guy said 4 ranged ppl aoe the adds, even with the help of melee. Some guy said you just need 1 ppl to kite. Are we talking about the same boss? If 1 ppl can do this kiting, why are we talking about how to aoe adds? Honestly I really doubt any super kiter can finish adds every 30s. What if he has a second fire pillar on him and more adds spawn? What if he kites too far away and Boss is pissed cos no ranged ppl?

Someone helps me here. Thanks.

[Errvalunia]

The idea is that the kiter doesn't kill them, only keeps them occupied. It shouldn't be that hard to stay in range for flame-pillar, it's a pretty big room and the boss will cast it pretty far away.

[Mattfitzy21]

I'm in a casual guild and I've been having a particular problem on this fight, not because of parasites, but as the tank healer, I'm standing in the melee group. When the other two melee in our group go on his head (in 10 man) I am consistently killed due to a magmaw melee hit. I have tried standing in multiple spots, the one recommended in the video, towards the center, even slightly further back. And without fail, unless I am standing too far back (which causes flame pillar to be cast on me) then I am hit with his melee once the tank is being mangled and the two other melee are on his head. Any suggestions? I haven't been able to read about anyone else having the problem and I'm worried I'm just messing up the raid. Thoughts?
Thanks!

[Charonites]

Our guild has recently downed Magmaw twice, and in both of our kills we had me, as a Death Knight, as the Ranged DPS Tank, let me just explain..

I am a Frost Dual-Wield Death Knight DPS - I spent the entire fight in Blood Presence and my actual DPS on Magmaw was minimal (apart from when his head is exposed, where he has no threat table) - my job was to keep all of the worms on me whilst actually DPSing them down - I would target a worm in the center of the group, launch as many Howling Blast as I can, by this point my TidyPlates addon says that they're all coming for me, so I launch a Death and Decay just between us, and lure the worms onto it, and then I run around in a circle in such a way so that the worms are staying inside. This allows our Ranged DPS to focus their AoE's on top of my Death and Decay.. the worms were dying extremely fast during this and raid damage from people being hit by the worms was minimal to none.

It's just an idea if you've got a Frost DK in your guild and you're worried about your adds, I can personally confirm that having your DK, Range Tank, is viable and something we're going to making ALOT of use of in the future in our Guild.

If you only leave 1 Melee on the boss, one will have to run back to get on his head... the queue for this is the steam on the ground. Your designated Melee will have to run back and get ready to jump on his head at this point, if you miss 1 head phase its game over, so Melee have to pay attention to this.

Another que and one we found to be more reliable then this is when the tank gets Mangle'd, that told me (as I was Ranged tanking the adds) that I needed to get to Magmaw, if I waited for the steam on the ground, I wouldn't make it in time for him to turn round and start spewing on everyone. But when I saw "Mangle on <Insert Tank Name>", I ran for Magmaw, started DPSing him waiting to be able to jump, jumped, did the chain, repeat, rinse, loot.

[Aryianaa]

Okay...my guild has been trying to down this guy for a while and consistently fail...and since they still consider me as a new member with limited raiding experience (I have only been playing WoW for a little over a year) they don't really listen to my advice. We have been trying to defeat this guy with everyone in melee range other than one hunter who stands out for the Pillar of Flame...and I am the main one DPSing the lava parasites. I'm a Boomkin and I have been having a lot of trouble getting them down...what should I be doing to better get the adds under control?? I feel like there may be something really small that I am messing up on...Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Elwindace]

In our 10man. we use 2 tanks, 3 heals, 5 dps. Our raid group is all ranged cept for a dk. All ranged stacks up (dodges the fire thing if it pops under us). The Dk takes care of the adds by him self. I think hes frost, something like that. But he can useally kill all the adds him self by the time magmaw is spike. He rarely has to call out for the ranged dps to aoe them down (mage, lock, boomkin, ele shaman).
Works for us, but each group is different and has there own way of doing things.

[Myrkur]

Okay...my guild has been trying to down this guy for a while and consistently fail...and since they still consider me as a new member with limited raiding experience (I have only been playing WoW for a little over a year) they don't really listen to my advice. We have been trying to defeat this guy with everyone in melee range other than one hunter who stands out for the Pillar of Flame...and I am the main one DPSing the lava parasites. I'm a Boomkin and I have been having a lot of trouble getting them down...what should I be doing to better get the adds under control?? I feel like there may be something really small that I am messing up on...Thanks in advance for any advice.

Phase 1 is all about Add control. Every ranged member must focus down the Adds. Either AE them if they have good AE skills like Fire Mage, or single target them down if their AE is terrible like Arcane Mage. If they get close you can Typhoon them, but you won't be able to kill them solo.

[Aryianaa]

Thanks for the advice (: We are running it tonight so wish us luck.

[Mazianni]

My guild just downed Magmaw for the first time tonight, but we ended up using an alternate method for the Parasites, so i thought I'd post it in case it could help some other guilds as well.

OK, so, what we did was have all the ranged stand with melee, except for a hunter, the hunter then would lay down a frost trap on the pillar of fire location (which will always be on the hunter), multi-shot the parasites for aggro, and use Aspect of the Fox to kite them in circles and DPS them down with Multishot. It doesn't really matter if the hunter (or whomever is kiting them) kills all the parasites or not, just that they have aggro and are not getting hit... this opens up the rest of the DPS to focus on the boss and not worry about the parasites at all.

If you have any questions please ask, Good Luck and have fun killing the boss

[Utsusemi]

I'm playing a Shadow priest in my guild, And we are using the tank kite strat , I'm having threat issues really badly i basicly have to stand around after the dps phase and do nothing for a while, Anyone else having this or just bad tanking?

I'm sure i'm not the greatest dpser on shadow priest just heroic geared with a couple rep and tailoring epics and doing 15-16k single target on him which seems about what everyone else was doing

[Morgalm]

Are you moving out of melee range until after the tank reestablishes aggro?

[Mad cow]

@ Morgalm - depends how fast your tank is. Ours is great at taunting the second he's out, I've pugged on alts where the tank had trouble understanding "threat wipe" and would recommend backing out if you're not topped up and can't eat a 50k hit easily.

[briarfox]

Yea. there is a small threat wipe when the head comes up that seems to always catch someone by surprise.

@aryianaa - Don't even waste dps on the parasites if you're having everyone stand in melee.

THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING EVERYONE STACK AT MELEE AND 1 PERSON KITING THE ADDS IS SO THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO DPS THE ADDS AT ALL.

If someone like a death knight or fire mage can manage to kill a few of them with incidental AoE, that's fine, but it should NOT be the focus, nor should it even be a concern for anyone else (unless one manages to get away, then it's the kiter's job to catch it OR tell RDPS to turn and burn it quick). The only time anyone other then the kiter should be moving is to get closer to dps a fallen head or to get out of the steam vent. Other then that, focus ALL dps on Magmaw, forget the adds exist (unless you're kiting, then they're your entire world), stay out of the steam, and profit. I'm glad that everyone is so gung ho over the adds dying, but, strictly speaking, it's not integral to this style of approaching the fight. Pulling dps off to target the adds can actually be detrimental doing it this way. Given that the kiter will be gaining aggro via mostly AOE methods, their hold on a lot of those parasites will likely be precarious at best, especially at first. All it will take is a stray starfall or a helpful mage and his blast wave to pull parasites off of the kiter and into the dps pile, likely causing a wipe.

The whole reason, again, for leaving just 1 person to deal with the parasites is so that no one else has to worry about the parasites. So if you aren't kiting, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE PARASITES. Burn Magmaw and get some lootz already.

[briarfox]

I'm playing a Shadow priest in my guild, And we are using the tank kite strat , I'm having threat issues really badly i basicly have to stand around after the dps phase and do nothing for a while, Anyone else having this or just bad tanking?

I'm sure i'm not the greatest dpser on shadow priest just heroic geared with a couple rep and tailoring epics and doing 15-16k single target on him which seems about what everyone else was doing

Sounds like a tank issue. There is a threat wipe when the head comes up, but most tanks should be able to reestablish aggro within a few seconds, tops. Keep an eye on omen, and instead of standing around start dpsing the second you have a big enough threat window to start DPSing without worrying about the tank. Maybe use a CD like fade if it's an issue.

[briarfox]

My guild just downed Magmaw for the first time tonight, but we ended up using an alternate method for the Parasites, so i thought I'd post it in case it could help some other guilds as well.

OK, so, what we did was have all the ranged stand with melee, except for a hunter, the hunter then would lay down a frost trap on the pillar of fire location (which will always be on the hunter), multi-shot the parasites for aggro, and use Aspect of the Fox to kite them in circles and DPS them down with Multishot. It doesn't really matter if the hunter (or whomever is kiting them) kills all the parasites or not, just that they have aggro and are not getting hit... this opens up the rest of the DPS to focus on the boss and not worry about the parasites at all.

If you have any questions please ask, Good Luck and have fun killing the boss

How is this different from the easy mode strat above?