Heroic Maloriak: Video Strategy Guide

[Zaxx]

First off, I have used Tankspot as a resource for a long time now and have never really been much of a contributor. I recently got the itch to change that and took a night to throw together a mock up of a Tankspot video strategy guide for the Heroic Maloriak encounter since there hasn't been an official Tankspot guide posted yet. I have uploaded it to youtube as 'Unlisted' because, atleast for the time being, it isn't affiliated with Tankspot at all. I contacted the forum moderators and was given the green light to post it on the forums.. so here it is.





Hello, and welcome to Tankspot's Heroic Cataclysm Raid Guide. My name is Zaxx, and in this video, I will be discussing the strategy for defeating the Heroic Maloriak encounter in the Blackwing Descent raid instance.

The heroic Maloriak encounter is essentially the exact same fight as normal mode. The only difference is an additional add phase in the first part of the encounter. Phase 1 of the encounter consists of a rotation of 4 different colored phases. You will always start with a black phase and end on a green phase. Throughout the encounter, Maloriak will cast Remedy on himself which does a ton of healing. This must be spellstolen immediately or purged if your raid lacks mages.

The black phase starts with Maloriak spawning Vile Swills near the center of the room. The add tank must pick them up and start kiting them toward the outside. While alive, Vile Swills will constantly cover the ground with Dark Sludge that the raid will have to continually adjust for as it does a substantial amount of damage. Keeping the adds grouped up is key to maximizing dps during this phase. It is also important that the raid not being the Swill kite path so the add tank has a clean path to kite. Meanwhile, Maloriak will be chain casting a shadow breath at the main tank. The breath will do near fatal damage over the course of each cast, and it will apply a healing debuff that makes them virtually unhealable while the breath is active. Healers need to top him/her off as soon as Maloriak starts to recast. After a minute and a half, Maloriak will enter his next colored phase.

WHen Maloriak enters his red phase, the tank should face him away from the enetrance, and the entire raid should group up in front of him. Maloriak will cast a frontal-cone flame breath that splits the damage over everyone that it hits. Be ready to use raid cooldowns in order to make these breaths easier to handle. Maloriak will also place a Consuming Flames debuff on a random member of the raid and it will increase fire damage taken by 50%. The person will this debuff should get out from in front of Maloriak immediately. And as always, interupts on Arcane Storm during this phase are incredibly important. Just a single tick of Arcane Storm going off before a flame breath can instantly kill a good attempt.

When Maloriak enters his blue phase, the entire raid should spread out around the room. Maloriak will randomly put people in iceblocks which need to be dps'd down in order to break them out. He will also begin casting Biting Chill on random raid members that will deal damage to anyone nearby. Melee that get this debuff need to move out of the group ASAP. Arcane Storm should always be interupted as soon as physically possible as it does a lot more damage in the heroic version of the encounter. If interupted within the first second of the cast, you can completely negate all of its damage and make for some happy healers.

To finish off a rotation of colored phases, Maloriak will enter his green phase. He will debuff all hostile and friendly units in the room to take 100% increased damage and cause the adds to lose their stacking damage increasing buffs for 15 seconds. The goal here is to have all the abberitions dead before the debuff falls off. The number of adds can vary depending on the strategy you want to use. The method we used in this video was to let 3 Release Abberition casts go through for each colored rotation. That way, we would only have to deal with 9 Aberrations each green phase. Some guilds choose to let a single cast go through before each black phase, and just have the add tank kite the 3 Aberrations along with the Swills. Maloriak will also be hitting the tank harder in this phase due to the debuff and should be focused by the healers accordingly. And as always, interupters must maintain that interupt rotation on Maloriak.

At 25%, Maloriak will enter is 2nd and final phase. He will immediately release any remaining Aberrations that weren't released in the previous colored phases as well as 2 larger adds that have a fixate ability. The off-tank should pick these up immediately in order to minimize raid damage and unnesecary deaths. Maloriak will summon Frost Spheres that will damage anyone that gets near them and occastionally cast Acid Nova that does Raid-wide AoE damage. Maloriak will also chain cast an ability called Flame Jets which summons a stream of fire directly in front of where he is facing. Flame Jets deal fire damage and knocks anyone that it hits into the air and cause them to take fall damage right after. The way we handled this was to have the tank pull him close to the outer walls and slowly kite him around the outside. Doing it this way gave our raid more room to be able to move to avoid other mechanics in this phase.

I've attached footage of the entire encounter incase you want to see how we dealt with the various mechanics in detail. Good Luck!

[Grakzul Slaughtbringer]

Thanks for this guide.
This encounter is very interesting for every class, I really like it as an Aberrations/Swills tank.
We managed to get through one complete vial cycle yesterday. I have a question about phase 2. How do you pick up the last adds (the two drakonids)? They are immune to Taunt and incredibily difficult to take aggro on. As they spawn, I can easiliy shield slam the first, but the other always hits someone in the raid (in normal mode, I guess this would be a problem in Hard mode.)
Any pro-tips ?

[Zaxx]

I tend to SS, HS the first one and then Heroic Leap charge to the 2nd to pick it up. I'm not exactly sure how their fixate works but I've found that if I just hold them way off by myself, they tend to just stick to me the entire burn phase. Hope that helps.

[Urud]

Well if you remember Black Temple RoS encounter it fixates the nearest person in his mele range. This is how the fixate should work but I found it sometimes buggy. Ive had several times where I 'loose' adds wile moveing arround and it getting into mele range of a caser/healer. Sometimes I was able to step in next to it and grab its fixate but other times it kept smashing another person regardless of how close I was.

MDs will also work if you are near the frontal lign where they spown they fixate after haveing mele range with a target. They just have to get your attention at the start would it be with heroic trow or a missdirect.

[Fetzie]

You get ten seconds in which normal threat applies to the primes before they cast the fixate. In this time you need to grab both of them and pull them into a corner well away from anybody else.

[Straif]

For those of you that have downed him on HM - how many healers did you run?

[Fayre]

We started with 7 healers here and ultimately can do it fine with 6 now. Mostly the healing requirement is about being able to top the raid up after the flame breath and also being able to keep 2-3 tanks alive.

[Dagray]

If you're doing this guy on 10m, you have to run 3 like any other boss outside of maybe heroic halfus. The dps requirements unless your dps are gods are just too high. Not to mention the fact that there is a definite soft-enrage when it comes to the combination of Tank Damage + the nature aoe in phase 2.

I highly recommend keeping your swill path (whether you use the outside of the room or a set side) clean of all dps and also get your dps in the habit of blowing all cooldowns on the black phase. Granted, they'll be down for phase 2, but with Hero/Bloodlust and potions, you shouldnt have much of a problem there unless your dps get hit by the exploding icicles or your main tank turns mal the wrong way and chucks a flame jet @ the raid.

Also, if on the lower side of the dps check, have the majority of your dps switch to the aberrations just before the green phase debuff gets applied. They should be out any cc by this point and you only get 15 seconds to burst them down. On 10m when you're leaving an interrupter on Mal for Ab casts, this means that you really need your dps to go all out here just like in the black phase.

If you've got a pally OT, make sure he/she is careful w/ avenger's shield unglyphed when picking up adds near Mal in order to avoid interrupting Aberration casts that should be going through.

Hunter Tips:
Be generous w/ your frost traps - They're your off tanks friend.
Go SV if possible. With equivalent skill, you'll be able to eek out a bit more dps in the aoe phases.
Save your Explosive Trap cooldown for aoe phases. During the black phase you'll need to hope that the OT gets a nice slime free spree and keeps them in your trap for a while. During the green phase, place your trap where the OT tends to tank during Green. Pre place it before green starts so that you can multi shot at full focus and put a good dent in them within the first few gcd's.
Deterrence can block the icicles in phase 2. If you don't have someone running a nature resist aura, pop into aspect of the wild during the nature aoe of phase 2. It might hurt your personal dps but it's a massive load off the healers backs.
Glyph for Raptor Strike and jump in to Raptor Strike Mal just as Scorching Breath is about to be cast.

[Xodiv]

If you are doing this in 10-man I would suggest single-target killing some of the Aberrations, tanking 9 wastes too much healer mana and is unnecessary because you'll be idle waiting for a second green phase anyway.

Our Aberration strategy is:

Interrupt cast before the first black phase (only casts about 1 time in 5 anyway).
Let 3 out in the first phase after black phase, kill 2.
Let 6 out in the second phase after black phase. Tank 7 and kill in green phase.
Let 3 out before the second black phase, kill them with the swill in the black phase.
Let 6 out before the next green phase, probably kill 1 or 2 anyway while waiting for green.