Chimaeron Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot
Chimaeron, a grotesque experiment of Nefarians, assaults players with an onslaught of deadly abilities and unrelenting damage, testing healers' abilities to keep the raid just out of deaths reach.
Role-Specific Tips for Chimaeron
DPS Tips
- Spread out completely to reduce the chance of getting the -75% hit
chance debuff from
Caustic Slime.
- Use personal defensive cooldowns during
Systems Failure while you are stacked.
- Save major DPS cooldowns for the 20% phase two DPS race.
- Be aware of when Chimaeron will target you during phase two and kite him as long as you can to buy more time for your raid.
Healer Tips
- Get accustomed to only healing players, besides the off-tank, to 10,000 health.
Anything over that is a waste of mana and time outside of
Systems Failures.
- Coordinate a raid-wide and healer cooldown rotation to survive each
Systems Failure while you do not have
Finkle's Mixer Upper.
- Healers should DPS Chimaeron during phase two as you can not heal
the raid due to
Mortality. Absorbs still work however, such as
Power Word: Shield.
Tank Tips
- The tank assigned to soaking
Break can be a DPS class with a taunt, such as
Retribution,
Frost, or
Fury since you will only ever be tanking while you have the
Finkle's Mixer Upper, preventing you from dying.
- If you are not the current tank during
Systems Failure, make sure to stack with the raid and move out whenever you taunt.
- Always have a defensive cooldown activate during the
Systems Failure on heroic difficulty as the
Feud will be stopped by Lord Victor Nefarius.
- Survive as long as you can in phase two to buy your raid as much time as possible.
Chimaeron Abilities

- Phase One
Break
Caustic Slime
Double Attack
Feud
Massacre
- Phase Two
Double Attack
Mortality
Mortality
Strategy for Chimaeron
Start the fight by speaking with Pip Quickwit in the cage at the back
of the room. Pip Quickwit will then activate his Bile-O-Tron 800
robot, which sounds an alarm that will wake up the sleeping Chimaeron.
While the Bile-O-Tron 800 is activate it will buff the entire raid with
Pip's Mixture, which prevents you from dying as long as your
health is above 10,000. This buff is required for the fight as Chimaeron
has multiple abilities that would otherwise instantly kill you.
This fight is recommended to use two tanks, with one prioritizing soaking
Break debuffs, and the other prioritizing taking the
Double Attack swings. Chimaeron has a very slow auto
attack speed, only attacking once every 4 seconds, or 4.8 seconds with debuffs.
This allows you to keep your tank alive by simply keeping them healed above
10,000 health to keep the
Pip's Mixture buff working.
Chimaeron applies
Break on his current target every 20
seconds, increasing their physical damage taken by 25% per stack, up to 4
stacks total. Every 10 seconds Chimaeron will use
Double Attack, attacking his target twice instantly. Since you
won't have time to heal the tank between these two hits, you will want a second
tank to taunt before the
Double Attack goes off to soak both of
these attacks. After the second tank takes both attacks, have the tank that is
soaking
Break taunt back. While the tank that is soaking
Break
only needs to be healed above 10,000 health, the tank that is taunting for
Double Attack needs to be healed to full. This tanking rotation
will continue until Chimaeron reaches 20% health and phase two
begins.
An alternative strategy is to simply use three tanks with one tank assigned
to soaking Break, one tank assigned to taunting before each
Double Attack, and the third tank will tank exclusively during the
Systems Failures (except for
Double Attack). If you
do this method, it is recommended that the tank assigned to soaking
Break is a DPS spec. This works as they will only ever be tanking
while they have the
Finkle's Mixer Upper buff, meaning the damage
they take does not matter as long as they are above 10,000 health.
Start off by having the raid spread out as Chimaeron will attack two
players every 5 seconds, four players on heroic difficulty, with
Caustic Slime dealing 270,000 Nature damage split between all nearby
players and reducing their chance to hit by 75% for 2 seconds. Since the
whole raid will have the
Pip's Mixture buff, this won't kill anyone
as long as they are above 10,000 health. Every 30 seconds Chimaeron
will cast
Massacre, killing everyone in the raid that is not above
10,000 health. Both
Caustic Slime and
Massacre will happen
frequently throughout the fight, requiring that you keep everyone in the raid
above 10,000 health; healing anyone besides the off-tank above 10,000
health is a waste of time and resources as the next damaging attack will simply
reduce them back down to 1 health.
Periodcally throughout the fight, Bile-O-Tron 800 will suffer a
Systems Failure when Chimaeron uses
Massacre.
This will cause Bile-O-Tron 800 to shutdown for 26 seconds, only reactivating
right before the next
Massacre. During this 26 second window, the raid
will no longer have the
Pip's Mixture buff, meaning you will now
need to actually keep the raid alive by healing through the
Caustic Slime.
When the Bile-O-Tron 800 shuts down, have the raid quickly stack up behind
the boss. Your healers now need to top the raid up as quickly as possible as
Chimaeron will begin using
Caustic Slime after 15 seconds.
After knocking Bile-O-Tron 800 offline, Chimaerons two heads
will begin to
Feud with each other, preventing it from auto-attacking
for 30 seconds. On heroic difficulty, Lord Victor Nefarius will
use
Shadow Whip on Chimaeron, interrupting the
Feud and forcing him to start auto-attacking again. While the off-tank
will need to continue their job of taunting each
Double Attack,
the main-tank assigned to soaking
Break will need to have their stacks
reset with either
Hand of Protection or
Divine Protection. You
can also simply use a battle res on them after they die here if you do not have
at least three
Paladins in your raid.
You will need to rotate multiple raid-wide defensive and healer cooldowns
while Bile-O-Tron 800 is suffering from a Systems Failure
to survive for the 10 seconds of
Caustic Slime until Chimaeron
begins to cast
Massacre. Then the Bile-O-Tron 800 will restart
and
Pip's Mixture will be reapplied to the raid again. After this
Massacre goes off, quickly spread back out as you were at the start
of the fight. You will then repeat this stacking and spreading throughout the
fight whenever a
Systems Failure occurs until Chimaeron
reaches 20% health and phase two begins.
The most important part of phase two is getting a good transition. Stop DPSing
Chimaeron once he reaches around 22%, waiting for the next
Massacre to go off. After this
Massacre goes off, use
Bloodlust to allow the healers to quickly heal the raid up as much as
possible. Once the raid is healed up a good amount, push Chimaeron to
20% to start phase two; right before he reaches 20% health, have
the off-tank taunt the boss. In phase two, Chimaeron no longer uses
Caustic Slime,
Break, and
Massacre, but gains the
Mortality buff which makes him immune to taunt and take 10%
increased damage. He will also debuff the raid with
Mortality,
reducing all healing received by 99%, absorbs however will still work. On
heroic difficulty, Lord Victor Nefarius will cast
Mocking Shadows on the raid, dealing 2,000 damage a second to all
players. This sets a time limit in phase two as the raid can not be healed due
to the
Mortality debuff.
Have the tank that is not currently tanking run to the opposite side of the
room to force Chimaeron to run around as much as possible. Reset the
tanks
Break debuffs with
Divine Protection or
Hand of Protection if possible to allow them to live as long as possible.
Whichever tank is currently tanking should use all of their defensive cooldowns
to survive as long as they can, buying time for the raid. Have your DPS and
healers spread out as much as possible for the same reason. As you can not heal
in this phase, non-
Priest healers should DPS as much as possible,
while
Priests use
Power Word: Shield on the entire raid. As you
will have
Finkle's Mixer Upper in this phase, everyone can take at
least two auto-attacks from Chimaeron. Classes such as
Rogue
getting aggro is desirable since they can use
Evasion and then
Vanish at the end of it; or a
Hunter with
Deterrence into
Feign Death. Watch your threat meter to see
who Chimaeron will go for next and have them run as far away from the
boss as possible to buy more time until the boss is defeated.
Chimaeron Loot
Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Normal Difficulty Loot
Item | Type/Slot |
---|---|
![]() |
Cloth Hands |
![]() |
Cloth Feet |
![]() |
Leather Wrist |
![]() |
Leather Hands |
![]() |
Mail Wrist |
![]() |
Mail Wrist |
![]() |
Plate Shoulder |
![]() |
Plate Hands |
![]() |
Plate Feet |
![]() |
Finger |
![]() |
Trinket |
![]() |
Wand |
Below you will find all of the loot available for this boss encounter. Use the different buttons to view the different loot between both Normal and Heroic difficulties.
Heroic Difficulty Loot
Item | Type/Slot |
---|---|
![]() |
Cloth Hands |
![]() |
Cloth Feet |
![]() |
Leather Wrist |
![]() |
Leather Hands |
![]() |
Mail Wrist |
![]() |
Mail Wrist |
![]() |
Plate Shoulder |
![]() |
Plate Hands |
![]() |
Plate Feet |
![]() |
Finger |
![]() |
Trinket |
![]() |
Wand |
Chimaeron Achievements
Achievement | Description |
---|---|
![]() |
Defeat Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent with no more than 2 raid member deaths. |
![]() |
Defeat Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent on Heroic Difficulty. |
Further Reading
Chimaeron is just one of the six encounters present in the Blackwing Descent raid of Cataclysm. If you would like to learn more about the others, please see our other pages for the raid below.
Changelog
- 30 Jul. 2024: Page reviewed for phase two.
- 30 May 2024: Added page.
This guide has been written by Abide, TBC veteran for nearly a decade. Abide is a Warrior tank and multi-class expert currently playing on Faerlina as Horde. You can find him in the the Icy Veins Discord. You can also see him live on Twitch.
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