Image, abilities courtesy of MMO Champion
The Beasts encounter consists of three separate fights within 1 encounter. Consider the strategies here in beta. The information is pulled from watching various videos and reading further into datamined abilities. Feel free to make any adjustments or corrections in the comments below. Once I knock out the fight myself, I’ll update this with further information.
Watch this video here. I’ll be referencing it.
Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler
25 man health: 8.92 million
Abilities
Deals a staggering stomp that inflicts 9263 to 9737 Physical damage to all enemies within 15 yards and interrupts spellcasting for 8 seconds.
Inflicts 150% of weapon damage to an enemy and causes it to bleed for 3500 to 4500 damage per application every 2 sec. for 30 sec. (10 second cooldown)
Your tank is going to position Gormok in the middle of the room.
The raid is going to be assaulted by Snobold Vassal. They come from the boss. Various raid members are going to be attacked by them. Seems like they jump onto players individually and prevent them from using abilities or spells. The only way for them to be removed is for your raid members to target them and kill them.
/target Snobold Vassal
I’d suggest adding that to your macro list and having it bound.
Watch out for patches of fire on the ground. Just stay out of them. No idea how much damage players take. No reason to stand in them.
You will need two tanks to handle this. The cooldown on impale is every 10 seconds. Your tanks have to switch and taunt every 30 seconds before the stacking debuff overwhelms them.
Healing Gormok
Start off with 6 healers.
Assign 2 to the tanks who are switching back and forth.
You may need 1-2 healers on the melee as they will be affected by the Staggering Stomp.
Put the last healers on raid to take care of any Vassal or fire damage. They should also help support the tanks if they’re idle.
Once he dies, you have about 15-20 seconds before the twin worms appear.
Phase 2: Acidmaw and Dreadscale
25 man health: ~6.97 million each
Abilities
| Acidmaw | Dreadscale |
| Paralytic Bite
Inflicts 12950 to 15050 Nature damage on an enemy and injects them with a paralytic toxin. |
Burning Bite
Inflicts 11100 to 12900 Fire damage to an enemy and coats them with burning bile. 5 yd range, Instant |
| Paralytic Spray
Sprays acid at an enemy and nearby targets, dealing 8325 to 9675 Nature damage and applying a debilitating paralytic toxin. |
Burning Spray
Sprays fluid at an enemy and nearby targets, dealing 8325 to 9675 Fire damage and coating them with burning bile. 100 yd range, 1.1 sec cast |
| Acidic Spew
Deals 2775 to 3225 Nature damage per 0.25 sec. to enemies in front of the caster. 100 yd range, Instant |
Fire Spit
Deals 9250 to 10750 Fire damage to an enemy. 100 yd range, 1.1 sec cast |
| Slime Pool
Inflicts 5088 to 5912 Nature damage to enemy targets within the Poison Cloud. |
Molten Spew
Deals 3700 to 4300 Fire damage per 0.25 sec. to enemies in front of the caster. 100 yd range, Instant |
You can see the similarities between the 2 snakes. One snake will be grounded at a time while the other will be above ground. They alternative every so often.
First thing you’ll notice is that the tanks immediately face them away from the group. This helps offset Molten Spew and Acidic Spew. Make sure the tanks aren’t near each other either. You want to avoid overlapping spews.
Take note that all DPS is focused on the snake currently above ground. The snake that’s grounded probably has some sort of damage reduction modifier.
Snake above ground
Kite him in a clockwise fashion. He has to be kept moving. Around the 3:25 mark, you can see poison clouds being left. Think of Grobbulus. Have a traditional tank kite whichever snake is up. What we’re seeing is a caster tank (presumable a Warlock) on Acidmaw and holding aggro (or whoever snake is grounded). You can probably keep one healer on it.
When the snakes switch, keep an eye on the ground. Look for dust particles. Get clear of them as that’s your cue as to the snake positions.
IMPORTANT!
When Acidmaw is grounded, he’s going to be able to hit any player with Paralytic Spray. Targets nearby will be hit with that as well.
Applies a paralytic toxin that inflicts increasing Nature damage every 1 sec. and reduces movement speed over time until the victim is entirely paralyzed.
This is what Burning Bile does:
Coats enemies with burning bile, inflicting periodic Fire damage to them and their nearby allies. The burning bile of a jormungar is known to neutralize paralytic toxins.
So one of these toxins is going to cause your raiders to slowly become paralyzed and take increasing nature damage. The burning bile can clean that crap off. The raiders affected by burning bile have to run towards the toxin affected players. Make it easy and have both players run towards each other to speed it up even more.
If you wish to make it even easier for yourself, just have affected raid members run towards the main tank. It won’t matter who has what buffs as they’ll be able to cancel each other out.
Be sure that you kill Acidmaw first. If you kill Dreadscale first, you won’t have a way of removing the Paralysis.
Acidmaw above ground
The situation is going to be reversed. The main tank is going to be hit with the paralytic poison. Designate a player to run in periodically and stand near the tank to wipe off the poison.
Healing Acidmaw and Dreadscale
2 healers on the main tanks, 1 on the caster tank, and 3 on the rest of the raid. Remember that raiders will take damage from Burning Bile so they have to take care where they stand.
I’m not quite sure when they switch. I don’t know if its time based or percentage based.
Phase 3: Icehowl
25 man health: 13.3 million
Abilities
Delivers a ferocious headbutt to an enemy, inflicting 69375 to 80625 Physical damage and stunning for 3 sec.
8 yd range, Instant
An icy breath that freezes targets in a cone in front of the caster, inflicting 20000 Frost damage over 5 sec.
100 yd range, Channeled
Leaps into the air and crashes down with massive force, dealing 11000 Physical damage to all enemies, stunning them, and knocking them back.
1 sec cast
Whirls around, dealing 9250 to 10750 Physical damage to all nearby enemies and knocking them back.
15 yd range, Instant
Increases Physical damage and attack speed by 50%.
Instant
No downtime between snakes and Icemaw. He’s tanked near the middle of the room.
Artic Breath doesn’t seem to be controllable. He’ll just turn and spray. Think to those big Sons of Hodir trash mobs in front of Hodir. Have an off tank ready to pick him up just in case. The Breath is a channelled. As long as hes channeling the spell, players caught in the breath can’t do anything.
Dealing with Ferocious Butt
Okay, fast forward to 7:36. Icehowl leaps in the air and knocks everyone towards the wall (Massive Crash). The boss mod will announce that Icehowl is glaring at a player and lets out a bellowing roar. A quicker way is to see if the boss is facing your direction. If he is, RUN TO THE SIDE AND GET OUT OF THE DAMN WAY. At this point, Icehowl gets stunned for several seconds allowing the raid to get back into position. It seems like he takes extra damage during this stage. Looks like the stun lasts 15 seconds.
After his stun wears off, his Whirl kicks in (spins around and knocks back everyone). Your tank needs to haul ass back in range fast.
Icehowl gains an enrage and it must be dispelled. It’s called Frothing Rage. A Hunter’s Tranquilizing Shot should negate that quite nicely. Look at 8:29 for a better idea. I think this happens if Icehowl manages to connect on a player with Ferocious Butt and kills a guy or manages to hit someone. Note that the Enrage appears to wear off after 10 – 15 seconds if you’re not able to Tranq Shot it.
Healing Icehowl
Same thing as before. 2-3 healers on the main tank (I recommend a Disc Priest). Everyone else is on raid healing.
Keep tanking him centralized. When he nukes the ground, get the heck out of the way. Resume DPS. Rinse, repeat, link loot.
I hope this helps you guys out! Again, any other observations or corrections, please post in the comments. Strategies here were pulled from watching the video and from reading the datamined stuff. I’ll probably end up modifying this later depending on how off I am or if there’s a better idea.
I think your snobold macro has a typo? It says snowbold instead of snobold.
🙂
.-= Keeva´s last blog ..Farewell, you fugly feral forms (except you, purplecat) =-.
@Keeva: You’re right. Good catch. Thanks! I’m bound to make a typo or 2 especially at 2 in the morning.
I stumbled upon your website by looking for a guide to CC on the net.
Thanks A LOT for the data mining, studying the video and assembling a great looking guide. One thing I like especially is that healing strategies are included.
Please keep up the good work.
Thanks very much for this, will be using tips from it tonight.
.-= Napaeae´s last blog ..Gut Feelings: Part Deux =-.
Awesome work! As per everyone else above, this will most definitely help tonight!
.-= Canes´s last blog ..Yogg =-.
Any thoughts on what we may expect from hard mode? I was actually wondering about all 4 mobs at once, it would require 4 tanks (with some tank swapping going on) but may be just too much for the healers to keep up with. Still, it would make for an interesting fight.
I would like to correct a few inaccuracies, especially in the Acidmaw/Dreadscale encounter.
You are missing two abilities from the list: Acidmaw’s Acid Spit and Whirl (from both). For complete symmetry, you could present the abilities of the two jormungars paired up like this:
* Both of them : Slime Pool (on the movable mob) and Whirl (performbed by the “underground” mob)
* Acidmaw vs. Dreadscale:
Paralytic Bite – Burning Bite
Paralytic Spray – Burning Spray
Acid Spit – Fire Spit
Acid Spew – Molten Spew
I think it’s not entirely clear from your post, but the two jormungars use their abilities as follows:
* Whichever is above ground (movable) uses its Bite and Spew, with the bite applying either toxin or bile as appropriate to the melee tank.
* Whichever is partially underground (immovable) uses its Spit and Spray, with the spray applying either toxin or bile as appropriate, to random raid members.
Again, it’s not entirely clear from your post, but toxin and bile always gets applied symmetrically like this:
* The toxin on the melee tank and bile randomly on the raid, or
* The bile on the melee tank and the toxin randomly on the raid.
To cope with the toxin/bile pair, only one golden rule needs to be remembered: [b]whoever in the raid has a debuff runs to the melee tank[/b], as they will always have opposing debuffs. The melee tank shouldn’t have to worry about the debuff himself, other than moving the boss around as on Grobbulus. If you check out the video carefully, you will notice that this is exactly what they are doing, with raid members running to the melee tank when needed.
If you watch the video carefully, you can actually see this being explained in raid chat. Regardless of whichever of the two jormungars is movable, the instruction the raid leader is giving that debuffed raid members run to the melee tank.
Icehowl:
The Ferocious Butt is actually something he applies to the tank whilst he is being normally tanked and spanked, and it happens fairly frequently as well. This is only dangerous only in so far that the 3 second stun on the tank as a result causes extra damage (no dodge, parry or block possible) and reduced threat generation.
When fighting Icehowl, a point of failure for us occurred immediately after the charge/stun. During that 15 second period, it appears he is more vulnerable, but all of his CDs are running as well. When he comes out of the stun, he has a the full range of his abilities.
Coming out of the stun, he can whirl, melee and head butt in very rapid succession. On our first attemtp on him, we lost three tanks at that point, as they took shots in excess of 40K damage in less than 1.5 seconds.
The problem was solvced by 1) making sure the tank was not in range of the whirl (we had him stand in the center of the arena) and 2) using various CDs as the stun wore off to make sure a big spike did not occur. We generally had no aggro issue and Icehowl returned to the center of the ring where the MT was positioned in subsequent attempts with one exception (where he diverted to backup tank who got a bit eager coming out the stun phase.
Thanks for the write up Matt- this guide was very useful in our attempts.
I love this site. Don’t get me wrong, but the strat could use a bit of editing. Especially the section on Icehowl’s Ferocious Butt.
“The boss mod will announce that Icehowl is glaring at a player and lets out a bellowing roar. A quicker way is to see if the boss is facing your direction. If he is, RUN TO THE SIDE AND GET OUT OF THE DAMN WAY.”
You never say why. The next line says….
“At this point, Icehowl gets stunned for several seconds allowing the raid to get back into position.”
Actually, he charges the player which is why the player needs to move? Just editing stuff. Keep up the awesome work.
Oh, additional note for the healers- Realize your tanks are still taking Impale damage from Gormok as the worms are coing into the arena. You have to keep healing them up during the transition 🙂
Thanks guys! I made a few slight edits to help clear things up even further ( hope)
Great stuff, gonna use this tonight
Thanks for going to the effort of compliling this