Magmaw Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot

• Save your cooldowns for Exposed Head of Magmaw as the boss will take double damage in this phase.
• Do not pad damage on the Lava Parasites if you are simply kiting them and ignoring them; focus on the boss.
• Do not ignore the Blazing Bone Constructs, especially when they are low health. Melee should prioritize killing these always to keep the tanks damage taken low.

• Save all major raid-wide defensive and healer cooldowns for under 30% to keep the raid alive from the Shadow Breath.
• Coordinate defensive cooldowns on the tank for each Mangle; never allow them to go without a defensive up.
• Have your tank healer stack with the melee group so they have to move far less often.

• One tank must always be in melee range of Magmaw at all times.
• Be ready to use a defensive cooldown, or ask for an external defensive, during each Mangle.
• Be ready to taunt Magmaw after the Exposed Head of Magmaw phase as it will reset threat.
• Tank the Blazing Bone Construct close enough to the melee that they can cleave it and the boss together.

Magmaw emerges from the pool of lava in the corner of his area and can not be moved. The tank must always be in Magmaws melee range, or he will attack random targets; if there are no targets in range he will throw a Molten Tantrum, wiping the raid. Magmaw will attack random targets with Magma Spit every 5 seconds, simply heal through this. Every 20 seconds he will use Lava Spew, dealing moderate Fire damage to the entire raid over 6 seconds; use a raid-wide defensive or healer cooldown to keep players healthy.

Start the fight out by having the melee stack together on one side of the boss, and the ranged and healers stack a bit behind the melee group on the same side. Every 30 seconds Magmaw will target a ranged player with Pillar of Flame, erupting and killing anyone in the area 5 seconds later. After the Pillar of Flame erupts, multiple Lava Parasite will spawn in the area. These Lava Parasite have normal aggro tables and will attempt to melee players to spread their Parasitic Infection, causing the target to Infectious Vomit, dealing damage to all nearby allies and spawning even more Lava Parasite. Have the range group move together out of the Pillar of Flame and far away from it before the Lava Parasites can spawn.

The recommended way to handle the Lava Parasites is to have a Frost Death Knight spec into Chilblains and use Glyph of Howling Blast. This will cause their Howling Blast to apply Frost Fever to all targets hit, with Chilblains making the Frost Fever slow targets movement speed by 50%. Doing this, the raid can entirely ignore the Lava Parasites while the Frost Death Knight will kite them around the room for the entire fight, and simply focus on killing Magmaw himself. This saves you a ton of time and damage here as you no longer need to constantly swap over and AoE down waves of Lava Parasites.

On heroic difficulty, Lord Victor Nefarius will assist Magmaw by using Blazing Inferno, calling down a burning meteorite on top of a random ranged player. Similar to Pillar of Flame, keep the ranged group stacked together and move out of this as a group. A trail of fire will move around the room from the meteors landing location, leaving patches of fire along its path; these must be constantly avoided by moving as a group away from them. After the Blazing Inferno meteor lands, a Blazing Bone Construct add will spawn, which must be picked up by whichever tank is currently not tanking Magmaw. Drag this add near the melee and face it away from them as it has a Fiery Slash cleave, allowing them to cleave it down with the boss. When the Blazing Bone Construct reaches 20% health it will begin casting Armageddon for 8 seconds and must be quickly killed; if it is not killed before the cast finishes, the Armageddon will wipe the raid.

Every 90 seconds Magmaw will Mangle his current target, picking them up and dealing extremely high Physical damage every 2 seconds. The tank will not lose control while being Mangled and can still attack the boss and use defensive cooldowns. The tank being attacked with Mangle must always have a defensive cooldown up to survive this damage, so always rotate something on them. Shortly after using Mangle, Magmaw will target one side of the room with Massive Crash, slamming his body onto the ground and killing anyone caught in the area.

After slamming onto the ground with Massive Crash, two players can jump on top of Magmaw by clicking him. While riding him, the two players will gain the ability to Launch Hook, throwing a hooked chain at the nearby spiked pillar. Both players must use Launch Hook at the same time to successfully chain Magmaw to the pillar, be sure to do a vocal countdown to time this. If this is done properly, Magmaw will become pierced by the pillar and become vulnerable, allowing you to attack the Exposed Head of Magmaw for 30 seconds; the Exposed Head of Magmaw takes 100% increased damage, making this an ideal time to use DPS cooldowns. Doing this will also immediately free your tank from the Mangle; but failing to free your tank will cause them to die after 30 seconds. After being freed from Mangle the tank will have Sweltering Armor, reducing their armor by 50% for 1 minute. Have the off-tank without the Sweltering Armor debuff taunt Magmaw and take over tanking.

On normal difficulty, the fight will simply repeat itself until Magmaw dies; however on heroic mode, Lord Victor Nefarius will assist Magmaw even further once he reaches 30% health. Lord Victor Nefarius will attack random raid members with Shadow Breath, dealing moderate Shadow damage to the target and any nearby allies. Have the raid spread out as much as possible to avoid the Shadow Breath from splashing onto multiple targets. This "phase" becomes a DPS race as this will overwhelm your raid as you still need to deal with all of the previous mechanics in the fight. To make this last 30% much easier, stop DPS on Magmaw at around 33% health and wait for him to use Mangle on the tank. After he uses Massive Crash, have two players Launch Hooks and chain him to the pillar again. This will give you another 100% damage increase window where you can use all of your major DPS cooldowns like Bloodlust to get a huge head-start on this final push.

Achievement	Description
Parasite Evening	Defeat Magmaw in Blackwing Descent without anyone in the raid becoming infected with a parasite.
Heroic: Magmaw	Defeat Magmaw in Blackwing Descent on Heroic Difficulty.

Magmaw 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.