Maloriak Encounter Guide: Strategy, Abilities, Loot

• Save your cooldowns for when Debilitating Slime goes out as this will double your damage dealt.
• Be ready to quickly stack or spread depending on which vial Maloriak consumes.
• Use personal defensive cooldowns when Maloriak uses Acid Nova during phase two.

• Be quick to top up players targeted by Flash Freeze as they will take a large burst of damage initially and again when the ice block is broken.
• You will only have a few seconds to top your tank up between the Engulfing Darkness casts on heroic difficulty, make sure the tank gets healed to full health.
• Rotate major raid-wide defensive cooldowns and healing cooldowns for each Acid Nova during phase two as this will easily wipe your raid.

• Face Maloriak towards the raid when he drinks Red Vial, and keep him faced away during all other phases.
• Be sure you always have a defensive cooldown up during Engulfing Darkness as you can not be healed for eight seconds.
• The Prime Subject tanks in phase two should use personal defensive cooldowns during Acid Nova, as the healers will need to heal the raid during this.

Maloriak has a few abilities that he will use throughout the fight. Arcane Storm must be interrupted whenever he casts or it will deal massive Arcane damage to the entire raid. He will sometimes buff himself with Remedy, restoring health every second; purge this quickly or let a Mage Spellsteal it. While under the effects of the Red or Green vials, Maloriak will cast Release Aberrations, releasing three Aberrations from both sides of the room. There are a total of 18 Aberrations in the room, and all must be released before phase two starts or Maloriak will release all remaining Aberrations. You are able to interrupt the Release Aberrations cast if you already have enough adds up, ideally wanting to only deal with 9 adds at a time. The Aberrations buff themselves and all nearby allies with Growth Catalyst, increasing damage dealt and reducing damage taken by 20% per stack, stacking with each other. Because of this, the Aberrations must be kept away from Maloriak, and kited by a tank as they will deal too much damage to simply face-tank them. Keep them in the back of the room and use a Hunters Ice Trap to slow them down, allowing the tank to kite. It is possible to have one tank kite both sides of the adds, but will be easier to have two tanks insead, one for each side of the room. We will discuss how to deal with the adds further later on in this guide.

Maloriak will drink a different vial from his cauldron every 40 seconds, gaining different abilities depending on which vial was thrown in the cauldron first. On normal difficulty, he will either start with Red Vial or Blue Vial, followed by whichever of those he did not use first; after those two he will use Green Vial. On heroic difficulty, Lord Victor Nefarius will throw Dark Magic into the cauldron at the start of combat, and after each Green Vial.

If you are engaging Maloriak on heroic difficulty, he will start with Dark Magic in the cauldron. He will spawn five Vile Swill ooze that need to be picked up by a tank and dragged away from the boss. These will constantly cast Dark Sludge on a random player, placing a pool of sludge under their feet, dealing damage to players standing inside. The raid will need to constantly move around the room out of these pools while they hard focus on AoEing down the Vile Swill, as none of the Dark Sludge will despawn until the ooze die. Maloriak will gain Shadow Imbued, making him immune to taunts. He will use Engulfing Darkness in a frontal cone, dealing Shadow damage to all targets hit and reducing all healing received by 100% for 8 seconds. Maloriak will use Engulfing Darkness every 11 seconds, and as he is immune to taunt with Shadow Imbued, your tank will need to survive during these 8 seconds with defensive cooldowns. Afterwards, healers will have 3 seconds to top the tank off before the next Engulfing Darkness comes out. You will want to interrupt the first Release Aberrations cast in this phase, as you will get overrun if you have the Aberrations out at the same time as the Vile Swill.

When Maloriak drinks the Red Vial from the cauldron, have the raid stack together and turn the boss to face the group. He will use Scorching Blast, dealing massive damage divided among all targets hit; this requires a defensive cooldown and most of your raid to soak. He will also debuff random players with Consuming Flames, causing Fire damage over time. If players with the Consuming Flames debuff get hit by Scorching Blast, they will die; move away from the front of the boss if you get this debuff. If the Red Vial was the first one Maloriak uses, not including Dark Magic on heroic mode, interrupt only the first cast of Release Aberrations.

When Maloriak drinks the Blue Vial from the cauldron, the raid needs to spread out more than 5 yards away from each other. Random players will get targeted with Biting Chill, dealing AoE Frost damage to other nearby players. Maloriak will also Flash Freeze a player, freezing them in a block of ice as well as any allies within 5 yards. This block of ice will be attackable, allowing the ranged DPS to turn and free their ally. Flash Freeze deals nearly fatal Frost damage on impact, and deals a large burst of damage again when the block of ice has been destroyed; make sure your healers quickly top the targeted player up. If the Blue Vial was the first one Maloriak uses, not including Dark Magic on heroic mode, interrupt only the first cast of Release Aberrations.

When Maloriak drinks the Green Vial from the cauldron, everyone in the room will be covered in Debilitating Slime, increasing all damage taken by 100% for 15 seconds; this will debuff all players, the Aberrations, as well as Maloriak himself. Maloriak will then leap towards the entrance of the room, knocking back any players near the cauldron. Here you will want to group all of the Aberrations together and AoE them down, as the Debilitating Slime also removes their Growth Catalyst buffs. Your priority here is to kill all of the Aberrations, all nine must die during the 15 second duration of Debilitating Slime. Tanks should be ready to use defensive cooldowns here as they will be taking extra damage from the Debilitating Slime. 30 seconds after Debilitating Slime wears off Maloriak will drink from the cauldron again, starting with Dark Magic if you are on heroic difficulty, or Red or Blue if you are on normal difficulty. This will repeat until he reaches 25% and phase two begins.

You will need to go through two full cycles of the different cauldron buffs, Dark Magic if on heroic, Red, Blue, and Green before hitting phase two. This is required to deal with all the Aberrations as Maloriak will use Release All Minions at the start of phase two, freeing any remaining Aberrations. Ideally you want to be pushing Maloriak below 25% health right after the second Green Vial phase. The Release All Minions will free two Prime Subjects, which must be picked up by the off-tanks and should be ignored as they have too much health to kill. These Prime Subjects have Growth Catalyst, meaning they must be tanked separately and not near Maloriak. Have the tanks assigned to these mobs cycle through defensive cooldowns as they hit fairly hard; kiting them is ideal if you will not drag them on top of each other or near Maloriak.

Have the raid spread out at least 5 yards apart, with the tanks forming a "triangle" with the two Prime Subjects and Maloriak. The Maloriak tank will need to constantly move to avoid the Magma Jets that Maloriak will constantly release in front of himself. The two tanks on the Prime Subjects will need to react to this according and keep moving as well, making sure to never be near Maloriak so he does not get the Growth Catalyst buff. The raid will need to be on the lookout for the Frost Spheres summoned by Absolute Zero as they slowly move around the room, exploding for high Frost damage to all nearby targets if they touch someone. The main threat of this fight is the Acid Nova, which will cover the entire raid in an extremely deadly damage-over-time debuff. Rotate raid-wide defensive and healer cooldowns for these as this will be the main thing that kills raid members. Use all DPS cooldowns here to burn Maloriak down before the 6-minute enrage causes you to wipe.

Achievement	Description
Aberrant Behavior	Kill 12 Aberrations within 10 seconds on the Maloriak encounter in Blackwing Descent and then defeat Maloriak.
Heroic: Maloriak	Defeat Maloriak in Blackwing Descent on Heroic Difficulty.

Maloriak 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.