Matticus

Matticus is the founder of World of Matticus, a World of Warcraft blog.

Tips for Healing Heroic Dimensius in Manaforge Omega

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Dimensius is the final encounter of Manaforge Omega and easily the most mechanically intense fight of the tier so far. From multidimensional knockbacks to skyriding soak mechanics, this fight will demand a blend of high throughput, smart positioning, and clutch movement reads. As a Holy Priest, your abilities will shine here, especially with well-timed usage of your cooldowns and game awareness.

Let’s walk through what to expect and how to best prepare from a healing perspective.

Pre-fight Setup

Before you even start, make sure your raid is divided into two equal groups on both the left and right sides.

Phase 1: Critical Mass

The fight begins when everyone takes the portal using the extra action button. Our group typically hits the button at the 1-second mark on the pull timer. Once inside, each side needs to burn down the Living Mass. Ideally, a ranged player or healer should pick up the Excess Mass when it drops. Avoid having a melee do it, since they’ll lose uptime and might be needed to pull people down during Gravity later.

The two Excess Mass players will come together and combine their debuff to drop a large puddle that helps keep the raid rooted, preventing them from getting inhaled by Dimensius.

Dimensius - Big Suck.gif

After that, the raid splits up again. Watch for the tank smash, which knocks everyone back. Position yourself to the sides and outside the blue circular smash zone. Avoid standing behind the boss, or you’ll likely get launched off the platform. Let the knockback carry you sideways to help place your puddle at the edge as this pool remains for the rest of the phase.

We Dragon Priests have it pretty easy!

After the puddles, each side gets a group soak mechanic. You don’t have to be in it as a healer, but jumping in helps smooth things out. I like using Divine Hymn on the first set and Apotheosis on the next to stabilize the group. Once the new Living Mass is killed, ranged DPS must stand underneath the Reverse Gravity players to pull them down from the air.

When Dimensius hits 0% HP, it’s time for liftoff.

Intermission 1: Event Horizon

This first intermission sends you flying through space. I recommend using Squeakers, the Trickster or Red Flying Cloud mounts for visibility.

You’ll fly through rings and dodge obstacles like meteors and black holes. Skilled players can aim for the mini spheres in the sky, which deal around 6% damage to the large Voidwalker add when you land. Three of them spawn per ride and only one person can grab each.

Every ring you pass through refreshes your debuff timer to 9 seconds. Make sure you’re always within reach of the next one.

Phase 2A: The Dark Heart

After landing, group up in the front-left quadrant of the platform (triangle marker) on the map below. This phase is all about triage healing, light movement, and add control.

Key enemies:

  • Artoshion is the named mob here. This phase ends upon his death.
  • Voidwardens form a wall that cut off access to the rest of the platform.
  • Nullbinder‘s will have a cast ability called Nullbinding. On heroic, they deal 3.7 million damage plus a 1.2 million damage Shadow damage every 2 seconds, and it reduces movement speed. It’s a stacking effect.

Your first goal is to punch a hole through the Voidwarden wall, starting with the one closest to the middle. This gives your team travel access to the opposite side of the platform.

The raid needs to focus on punching a hole through the Void Wardens. Target the one closest to the middle that allows you to travel to the far side of the platform.

Watch Dimensius’ fist to predict meteor throws. If he pulls it back, that side is not safe. Move to the other edge accordingly to avoid the incoming pushback.

Once the meteor resolves, run up to Dimensius and get ready for a massive pushback. Use Wind Rush Totem, Stampeding Roar, or a Warlock Gateway to resist. If your group lacks movement options, you may need to break another hole through the Voidwarden wall to buy space.

The cycle continues until Artoshion dies. If he lives too long, Voidwardens regenerate and your DPS needs to refocus.

Once Arthosion is slain, it’s time to mount up and fly to the next platform!

Healing tip: AoE healing is steady, not bursty. I use Divine Hymn right before the pushback to top everyone off. Commit one of your 2-minute cooldowns here so it’s ready again for the final phase.

Get ready to mount again, because you have another set of rings to weave through.

Intermission 2: Event Horizon Bugaloo

Same concept, just without the massive meteor wall from before. Fly through rings, collect spheres, dodge hazards. You know the drill.

Phase 2B: Pargoth Platform

Pargoth is another named Voidwalker. Melee players need to watch out for his AoE ground slam, which has a wide blue circle indicator.

This phase mirrors Phase 2A:

  • Burn a hole through the Voidwarden wall.
  • Keep Nullbinders stunned or silenced. Never ever let a cast go off.
  • Be prepared to kill two sets of Voidwardens.
  • Don’t get baited by low Pargoth HP. Focus on the wall first to ensure safe positioning.

Once Pargoth falls, you’re in the home stretch.

Phase 3: Singularity

Upon landing on the last platform, pop Heroism/Bloodlust immediately. Healers can help DPS here, as there’s a brief downtime before Dimensius fully activates.

Keep the raid stacked and dodge the initial falling rocks. These will start moving around the platform and deal rot damage over time.

Healing tip: With all the movement required, Divine Hymn might be hard to use effectively. Rely on Oracle buffs and instant-cast tools to keep up.

The Rings: You’ll see a series of rings pulsing out. When the first one activates, stand close to it to apply the debuff. You have a 3-second buffer to pick up the next one. Don’t overlap or it’ll be lethal.

I recommend standing beside the first, then visually tracking the second as it charges up so you’re ready to move into it. Repeat for the third.

Devour: Dimensius casts Devour, and you’ll need to hide under a rotating rock. Pop a defensive like Fade and stay near the front of its rotation to maximize casts. Heal lower HP players first. Once Devour ends, that rock becomes a Black Hole, killing anyone it touches.

Keep using your Holy Words on cooldown. There’s lots of ticking damage here.

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The raid should move left while tanks rotate right. Don’t stack on the tank. Cosmic Collapse will knock back anyone inside their blue circle (more on this next). This is followed by a pull-in. Make sure you have a clear line of sight to the tank, free of rocks and hazards.

You’ll want to meet up with the tank on the opposite side but do not stack with them just yet. The tank will have a giant blue circle around them, and this is the Cosmic Collapse ability. Anyone in that could get knocked backwards (and off the platform). On heroic, this is followed by a pull-in mechanic. Make sure you position yourself in such a way that you have a clear path to the tank and that Dimensius or any of the rocks (or Black Holes) aren’t in the way. You can fight and resist it slightly.

This pattern repeats:

  • Move with the tank rotation.
  • Handle another set of Rings.
  • Rotate again after Supernova.
  • Continue until Dimensius is down.

As the fight progresses, the platform will shrink. Space becomes limited. Save a Battle Res for a tank. Healing isn’t too intense here, so if a healer dies early, you can delay the rez or use it on a DPS instead.

Wrap-Up

Heroic Dimensius is chaotic, but conquerable. It’s a fitting end to the expansion. Once you bring him down, sit back and enjoy the final cinematic. You’ve earned it.

Matt’s Notebook: Welcome to Season 3!

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It’s been quiet here over the past few weeks. I’ve been doing everything I can to prepare both raid teams for Season 3. I’ll share a few updates on our progression along with some of my thoughts on the Gamescom information that came out earlier.

  • As expected, Death Jesters completely cleared all of Normal and Heroic in week 1. Dimensius took us about 17 tries before we finally got him down. Phase 1 wasn’t bad at all, but phase 2 platforms was where we were trying to figure things out the most with the movement patterns. That is a part of the encounter that will require people to take reps to experience so they can understand what they need to do. We did end the second night with some pulls on Mythic Plexus but we just fell short. Lots of key activity has been happening as everyone’s trying to get equipped. I made one error on Nexus King where I stacked my debuff circle in the wrong spot causing two stars to rotate in directions that they should not have. Whoops. Managed to assemble 2 piece on the Priest and I’m hopeful I can finish it off this week with my remaining catalyst charge.
  • On the other team, Last Call only managed to get to 6/8 Heroic with a normal clear. We were quite a few ways away from getting Nexus King down. The percentages entering the final phase were too high for us to overcome. We have a lot of work to do on the bottom end of our roster to help raise the floor.
  • Last Call is still in a bit of a rocky shape to start the season. I’ve invited some of my friends to join the team who have previously raided with me in my time from my old guild Conquest and Proper Villains (as well as a friend from another casual raid team). They’ve all acclimated well and performed as I expected them to. However, all of the Priests have been challenging just trying to get them to get along or at least be civil at times. It’s been enough to give me a headache, and we almost had a situation before our raid was supposed to start. So I had to do my best to smooth things over. But really, sometimes people just need to take a step back and keep their thoughts inside. Not every opinion needs to be voiced. Not every point of feedback needs to be delivered. Not every question needs to be asked. Newer players that come in may not be aware of the atmosphere or the social dynamics of everyone, so there’s no need to antagonize or troll because everyone has different tolerance levels of bullshit (mine is actually quite low, and I just don’t react to it or I ignore and dismiss it). Some of my favourite keys are the quietest ones where we’re enjoying each others company and only calling out kicks or cooldowns with lots of silence in between.
  • We also have a fresh Loot Council in Last Call that’s working together for the first time. Even though we’ve had a blunder, I’m sure they’ll learn from it and move on. The Reshii Wraps boots were awarded to the same person twice (Normal, then a Heroic upgrade). It was missed due to time pressures. I’ve made a note to remind the team to review gear, but also to convey the option that we can always defer loot decisions till later when there is more time to breathe. Things like bracers or lower ticket items can be handed out right away since there’s not much interest in them. But bigger items like weapons, trinkets, and other cantrip items can always be held for more discussion and distributed later in the night. We’re not really coming up on any bosses where the DPS check requires that one specific item to get equipped. Plus we can always end the night a few minutes early to help distribute the remaining loot. In DJs, on the first night, we finished our pulls 30 minutes before the night ended and it took us that long to go through and hand out 8 normal and 6 heroic bosses worth of loot and tier tokens. I wanted to implement a similar system here but faced resistance. My worry is I’m going to burn out and exhaust my current loot master. I’ll either have to find another one, or potentially take it over myself.
  • Gamescom presentation was fun to watch. The Warcraft Youtube channel has some new gameplay reveal here. I was not expecting multiple raids to start the opening tier. It’ll be fun to back and revisit a refreshed and updated Quel’thalas and Zul’aman. Demon Hunters get a new spec (and I’ll play it for Legion Remix, if it’s an option – I hope). I don’t know enough about the new Harandir allied race since it seems like we haven’t interacted with them that often except for the Azj’kahet zone.
  • Last Call is still recruiting a strong healer and assorted DPS to help us move forward in the tier. Check us out and apply! If you’re looking for something more at the top, there’s also Death Jesters! We’ve got an opening for a stellar DPS player (no specific class), and you can also apply here.

Have a great week 2 everyone! I’ll share some more posts throughout the week. I want to put together some Dimensius pointers for Heroic because it can be quite difficult.

Matt’s Notebook: Bumpy Reclears

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Why are reclears so damn hard? Mug’zee took us all night!

We switched to a 3 minute Mug’zee strategy. We had enough firepower to overwhelm and skip the 3 Gaol set altogether.

We had to bring in a DJ’s alt because of some absences and technical difficulties. One player whose power went out earlier than our tank’s internet went down. We ended up killing Mug’zee on the last pull. I felt it shouldn’t’ve taken that long. We were still making some questionable mistakes, and these are mistakes I don’t want to see. These are things like hitting the wrong button, or being out of position, or not knowing where front left and front right are on the 4 Gaolset despite having the diagrams shared ahead of time. It’s people panicking and not understanding their assignments. We had a Paladin who hadn’t done the mine pops before, so that took some learning with the cadence of the bomb pops.

Healing wasn’t ideal as I didn’t have enough externals for the second rocket target, so sometimes they would die if they didn’t have a personal defence available. I know we ended up killing it in the last pull of the night, but we have to be better. Even some of our veteran players who did kill it with us the first time made some mistakes too. It’s a struggle for me to get things through and get them to stick in people’s minds. There’s a lot of stuff going on everywhere, but I try to keep it simple, even if it isn’t easy. The reclear nights have really exposed the inconsistency and the overall skill ceiling that players have.

This made me worried about how our Gallywix reclear is going to be like. Thankfully, yesterday night we were able to get cleared within 15 pulls. We had some new people who hadn’t killed it with us but learned alongside us as well. Had to get a new bomber assigned, which meant a lot of new and unfamiliar roles for a few players.

We’re still in the process of finalizing our roster and the last few pieces I need are a strong healer and a DPS Death Knight to round out our roster for next season.

Raids Fail When Leaders Don’t Explain the Why

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We had been deep in the trenches on Gallywix before we finally defeated him, and let me tell you, this boss is no joke. As with most late-tier Mythic fights, we hit that phase of progression where execution hinges on precision, coordination, and everyone knowing exactly what they’re doing. Sounds familiar, right?

What’s been interesting this time around is how much work has gone into our Raid Plan. I’m up to nearly 20 slides now. And yeah, I can already hear some of you groaning. But every revision, every screenshot, every zone marker has a purpose. Or at least I thought it did.

Let me walk you through a key moment that perfectly illustrates something raid leaders (myself included) often get wrong.

The Warlock Gate Wipefest

There’s a point in the Gallywix encounter where we drop a Warlock gate from the back of the room to the center. That’s nothing unusual on the surface, right? This one occurs right before the third coil needs to get neutralized (or using the third bomb).

However, this specific gate serves a layered purpose. It’s timed around canister soaks, or the healer soaks, specifically. The expectation is that the healers will gate into the center to meet up with DPS who are already soaking their assigned canisters, so they can get help fulfilling their mechanic. Sounds simple.

Before this, our healers were stacking with tanks. This change required them to re-learn their movement entirely.

So what happened?

  • Some players took the gate too early.
  • Others too late.
  • A few sidestepped into beams they weren’t supposed to bait.
  • The rest just stood around trying to figure out where they were even supposed to go.

For hours.

The Missing Link: The Why

I gave the callouts. I gave the slide. I even drew the lines. What I didn’t do? Explain the why.

Once I actually walked the team through the reasoning behind the gate timing and placement — how it allowed for quicker healing support, why baiting mattered in that moment, and what the positional advantages were — things just clicked. Execution became consistently cleaner. The team died less. We made real progress.

It hit me: as raid leaders, we assume that giving instructions is enough.

But if your team doesn’t understand why they’re doing something, it’s never going to land with the precision it needs. You’ll get compliance, not necessarily the buy-in. And there’s a difference.

Overexplaining vs. Clarity

I hesitated to explain too much because I didn’t want to overload people with information. I thought, “They’re smart. They’ll figure it out.” But I’ve learned the hard way that clarity supercedes brevity when it comes to raid strategy.

Some things are intuitive to me because I’ve spent hours in logs, watching replays, tweaking plans, and seeing it in action in DJs. That’s not true for the average raider. If I don’t walk them through the mental model I’m using, how can I expect them to follow it perfectly?

Ownership Starts at the Top

This ties in perfectly with a concept from Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. There’s a chapter where the leadership team makes an unpopular call, and the people under them get frustrated — all because no one stops to ask, “Why are we doing it this way?”

If I tolerate confusion or silence, that’s on me. If I don’t create space for questions or curiosity, I’m building a raid culture where people are afraid to raise their hand and say, “I don’t get it.”

And to be clear, there are no bad players, only bad coaches. That includes me. I want to be better.

Next Steps for Us

We’re going to start encouraging more midweek questions in Discord. If someone doesn’t understand something, they should never feel like the only time to ask is in the middle of a pull. That’s already too late. Alas, sometimes it doesn’t always happen though because they don’t know what to ask until they’re actually there.

This happened again yesterday night during our Mug’zee reclear. We had a Holy Paladin in who missed out on progression kill the first time. He did not stack with the group on the second rocket soak and unfortunately he got selected for the third rocket (with the four Gaol set) and it led to him being unsure what to do or where to place it.

Normally, we have five designated players soak the first rocket, then avoid the second rocket. Anyone who gets hit by the rocket receives a debuff so that they won’t be targeted again. By the time the third rocket comes around, the first five players who took the first rocket are now eligible targets for the third one, and it allows us to add consistency to where that third rocket should be positioned, and immunities can be used.

I’m also looking at bringing in a few more CE-level veterans during the offseason — people with leadership chops who can help reinforce strategy across multiple roles and add another layer of mentorship to the team. People who raid week days and are looking for something to do towards the end of the week are also encouraged, so check us out and come apply!

Final Thoughts

Raid leadership isn’t about barking orders. It’s about helping your team buy in, understand the vision, and execute with confidence. Don’t assume they know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Spell it out. Walk it through. And most of all, listen when they tell you they’re confused — even if they don’t say it directly.

Because once they understand the “why,” you’ll be amazed how much faster the “what” falls into place.

Matt’s Notebook: CE Number Two!

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Well, we did it! Last Call finally clearly Mythic Gallywix and the team get it’s first CE after the second tier of its inception. Oddly enough, our kill pull was the smoothest attempt we had. I ended up being the only death (as is tradition) really early on in the fight, trying to bait one of Gally’s blue beams, and I just wasn’t able to Gust of Wind out of the way early enough. We ended up with a 90 execution rating and managed to get Gallywix down before the final 4 set of ads at the end. It was great because the final set of those energy balls was pointed away from our Druid tank, who was carrying the bomb, and would have had a hard time getting to it because it was in the electric field.

Unofficially, Last Call finishes at US 582. It’s not going to show up on the official stat sheet.

  • Over in DJs, we said goodbye to one of our long time Warlock players due to a scheduling change. While we’re not looking to actively recruit any class at the moment, we’re still open to anyone interested in joining the team for Season 3. We’ve started selling mounts and last boss kills on Mythic. Our guild bank has already been replenished, and now we’re doing cuts for the team to resupply going into next season.
  • The new patch and raid schedule have been announced. It appears that all difficulties will be available starting August 12th. It’s right around what the public expectations were. I had hoped it would be delayed to later in August, because I don’t think we can get everyone on the team mounts before the end of the season.
  • Does it feel like a shorter PTR test cycle to anyone else? It certainly feels that way to me.
  • Next steps for Last Call is reopening our recruiting again for the next season. We’ve already started our end-of-season feedback form for class and spec change or reroll requests. We’re standing pat on tanks, but we’re open to DPS and healers, so come join! We’ll have some vacancies open as some of our players have opted to move on from us, and we’re truly grateful for their contributions in helping the team get to where they are. We wouldn’t have made it here without their efforts.
  • Now that we’ve established a baseline for where we finished in US ranks, we’re already making plans to see what we can do next season and climb up that ladder. The goal here is to try to break into the US 400s.
  • One of the things I wasn’t satisfied with was our knowledge management. Many boss changes and discussions will happen on Discord, and sometimes stuff gets lost. I’ve invested some time in having a Playbook put together using Coda as a single source of truth. It’ll have our raid plan maps, cooldowns, pre-set MRT notes, and other important boss information so players can reference it instead of getting lost in Discord threads. Any strategy changes can be discussed before it gets committed and saved into the Playbook.
  • Week one of mount farming and I basically struck out. I sent something like 12 characters into Tempest Keep, and Ashes of Al’ar did not drop.

That’s all for our team updates.