Megaera

[Vlad 411]

This thread is for comments about our Megaera encounter guide.

[Guest Deathsreaper]

You may want to check but if I am correct the only time that two heads appear at the back is if you kill a head while it is not in wild state. There should be two states that the heads can be in and if you kill a head while it is in Wild state then no head will spawn when you kill it. If you kill it when the head is in the other state I think its called focus then two of the same heads will spawn after killing it.

[Damien 1,514]

You may want to check but if I am correct the only time that two heads appear at the back is if you kill a head while it is not in wild state. There should be two states that the heads can be in and if you kill a head while it is in Wild state then no head will spawn when you kill it. If you kill it when the head is in the other state I think its called focus then two of the same heads will spawn after killing it.

I don't see any mention of this in the dungeon journal, and we do not recall experiencing such a thing on the PTR. Better wait and see how it will be on live.

[Guest Mico]

I think tanks switching during phase 2 (when 2 haeds are up) isnt good idea. For a while heads will be faced to the raid and might damage non tank players with cone attack. Also when tank leaves his current head that head will eather attack and probably one shot melee player or heads will enrage if noone is in melee range. I think tanks can survive stacking debuff because heads die fast. Tanks will get rid of stacking debuff as soon as 1st phase start again (when 3 heads are up)

[Vlad 411]

You may want to check but if I am correct the only time that two heads appear at the back is if you kill a head while it is not in wild state. There should be two states that the heads can be in and if you kill a head while it is in Wild state then no head will spawn when you kill it. If you kill it when the head is in the other state I think its called focus then two of the same heads will spawn after killing it.

Well, I initially tried going with the way in which the fight is presented by the One Body, Many Heads ability, but I found that to be not only extremely confusing, but not really how the fight worked. So, instead, I explained the fight exactly as we experienced it on the Beta. If it turns out that that was not the intended behaviour (or that I misunderstood something), we'll of course update the guide as soon as we know more. I won't go into too many details, but, for example, this sentence was not happening on the PTR: "After twenty seconds all heads stop being Focused and start being Wild."

I think tanks switching during phase 2 (when 2 haeds are up) isnt good idea. For a while heads will be faced to the raid and might damage non tank players with cone attack. Also when tank leaves his current head that head will eather attack and probably one shot melee player or heads will enrage if noone is in melee range. I think tanks can survive stacking debuff because heads die fast. Tanks will get rid of stacking debuff as soon as 1st phase start again (when 3 heads are up)

That's a good point. It's quite possible that that will turn out to be quite viable indeed. I'll update when we know more.

[Zagam 1,982]

Ok, not sure if the guide says that, just putting what I see here...

Starts with 2 heads. Nature and Frost. When we burn Nature, the heads all disappear then reappear with all 3 targettable doing Rampage for a set amount of time. Stack for Rampage. When Rampage ends, spread out, burn Fire. When Fire goes down, they all despawn and start using Rampage again...rinse and repeat by going Nature -> Fire -> Frost -> Nature, etc. Very easy.

[Guest Kel]

Ok, not sure if the guide says that, just putting what I see here...

Starts with 2 heads. Nature and Frost. When we burn Nature, the heads all disappear then reappear with all 3 targettable doing Rampage for a set amount of time. Stack for Rampage. When Rampage ends, spread out, burn Fire. When Fire goes down, they all despawn and start using Rampage again...rinse and repeat by going Nature -> Fire -> Frost -> Nature, etc. Very easy.

The guide was written based off the PTR and what went live is a bit different apparently... I'm seeing what you're seeing Zag.

Can anyone suggest when to breath swap? Every breath? Every 2? Once a head dies?

[Damien 1,514]

The guide was written based off the PTR and what went live is a bit different apparently... I'm seeing what you're seeing Zag.

Can anyone suggest when to breath swap? Every breath? Every 2? Once a head dies?

Vlad is updating the guide as we speak.

[Vlad 411]

Thank you! Clearly, this has changed quite a bit! Updating the guide now, changes should go live in the morning:)

Thank you Zagam!

[Krazyito 521]

our kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-3ws8dsqqie3gwpfe/dashboard/?s=2651&e=3199

[Zagam 1,982]

Our tanks didn't swap at all...just waited til a head died. They died on the 7th head. Also can confirm you have to kill 7 heads to win. We went Green, Blue, Red, Green, Blue, Red, Green. Shit gets intense on the 7th head.

[Krazyito 521]

Zagam, that's pretty much the order we did, but frost for the 7th,though the last one does not really matter

[Vlad 411]

The guide was written based off the PTR and what went live is a bit different apparently... I'm seeing what you're seeing Zag.

Can anyone suggest when to breath swap? Every breath? Every 2? Once a head dies?

My updates should be going up soon, but to answer your question, you should switch every 2 breaths. Depending on your raid's DPS, this should mean that you are switching when the head your raid is focusing is at about 20% health. You could, with solid tank healing and defensive cooldowns, survive without a tank switch until a head dies, and just switch then. But doing at 2 breaths is the safer bet.

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah, I keep forgetting that I'm not in a mediocre 10 man group now and am in a top 200 world 25 man and gear/skill is a little higher than normal. I can attest that it is at least possible to only switch after a head is killed, but probably won't work as well in heroic mode. Question: why do you recommend the Ice head first? We saw it this way:

Poison = easy to avoid by all

Fire = one person takes lots of damage and has to move out of raid and get a dispel

Ice = one person guides an ice beam away from group

The reason we went Poison first is Poison is easiest to avoid so we were going to kill this twice earliest (1st & 4th).

We wanted Fire before Ice because Fire is easier to place and we'd be getting fire debuff less often.

Felt that directing the Ice Beam into fire pools required less effort and less damage taken than running over ice with the fire debuff.

Surely it won't matter a great deal in normals, but do you think for a hard mode, we could look deeper into that issue?

[Guest Auralucario]

Well this is because

Poison damages everyone ~ the more you kill poison head the more frequent you will be getting bombs. Also with more heads up the damage of the heads increases on top of the damage you need to heal through for like Rampages in between transitions.

Ice beam is easy. Only affects on person, normally a ranged and if ranged stand like at max distance and then kite it out of range you dont even need to use fire to clear it.

Fire is probably easier to handle too and if it affects ranged it is even better. they can drop it at max range.

[Zagam 1,982]

Megaera

Differences from normal mode:

-higher HP, more damage

-Arcane Head = wyrm adds

It is highly suggested that you form a kill order that does not involve the Green head. This is because of the limited amount of room you have to work with. Adding Poison Bombs to the Ice Beams, Cinders, and Arcane adds just doesn't lead to a good time. Therefore, my suggested kill order is: Blue -> Red -> Purple -> Blue -> Red -> Purple -> Blue.

In Heroic mode, the mechanics are unforgiving. Not properly kiting the Ice Beam or placing Cinders in the right area will result in a wipe due to choking the raid off of suitable places to stand. Warlock Gateways are extremely useful in that you can have players run in a round-about way to the back of the room where one portal is and instantly teleport back to the front of the room causing the Ice Beam to overlap itself thus cutting its effective area of effect by half. Ice must be kited properly so that you don't squeeze your raid group into too tight of an area.

Rampage damage will be absolutely unforgivable. All classes will need to utilize their personal defensive CDs to go along with raid defensive CDs appropriately. This will need to be set up in a pattern that covers all of the Rampages. They will increase in intensity as the fight goes on.

The most crucial part of Heroic mode is proper handling of the Nether Wyrms spawned by the Arcane Head with an ability called Nether Tear. On Heads 1 and 2, you will only deal with 1 head spawning the Nether Wyrms, so they can quickly be CC'd while you finish off your current target head. After you kill the Arcane head once, you will deal with multiple sets of Nether Wyrms. Let loose, these adds can stun random players for 15 seconds. While this is dispellable, dealing with it at all is quite troublesome. The way we dealt with these adds was to use Ring of Frost, Solar Beam, Shadowfury, and Psychic Scream to render the adds useless while we finished off our current kill target. In the small lapse of time between killing a head and the beginning of the next Rampage, we massively AoE bursted these adds down quickly and efficiently. This will be the most difficult part of the change from normal to heroic, but once this is taken care of correctly, the fight largely remains similar to normal mode mechanically.

Healer Concerns: Ice Beam shouldn't be hurting anyone. If it is, they're not moving fast enough. Cinders will need to be dispelled immediately after about the 3rd head. It's the afflicted person's job to be in an appropriate place for a dispel. Your greatest concern will be Rampage. If you are assigned to setting up CD rotations, don't forget to incorporate personal defensive CDs with weaker raid CDs such as Rallying Cry. Try to combine throughput CDs with personal CDs and mitigation CDs with Healthstones and personal healing CDs.

DPS Concerns: DPSing the heads down ASAP should be of the highest priority. The absolute breaking point of groups will be letting tanks eat a 4th breath. This cannot happen. Aside from this, the DPS on the heads should be high enough to handle the spawning of the adds. If the adds are overwhelming you, then your DPS needs to be higher or your CC chain needs to be more consistent.

[Guest Brolike]

You should add that you can just avoid killing the blue head. For our 10-man team this was the easiest way. We went green -> red -> green -> red and so on and killed the blue head last, but it doesnt matter which one you kill last.

You never need to tank swap. Just alternate who is tanking blue.

This is for 10-man normal-

[Auyssaelre 5]

We tried killing this on Normal tonight and it was a pain. First time doing this as a Feral Druid at 508 ilvl. Our order went red-green-red-green and so on and our last head we chose was green. The acid rain was a big pain for me because I couldn't move fast enough and it was like I wasn't paying attention or reacting fast enough. On the last pull I did fine, I didn't die at all from the Acid Rain. We ended up dying half way through the last Poison head. Can anyone give me suggestions about the acid? Since I don't know if its just me or a melee thing, but I was mostly paying attention to the boss more than I should of been.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Auyssaelre

[Guest Arinee]

My guild only recently got this down a day or so ago but it was our second night at attempting the boss so we had limited practice,

We went the usual approved green>red>green but one thing that helped us was our hero timing, we found the last red head (second last head before boss dies) was getting out to many burns on the tank causing at least one healer to smash heals on the tank to try and keep them alive rather then being able to mostly also focus on raid heals during the last rampage. (this time it was me a pally haste tank, the previous raid night it was our dk on the red head) If you do have a pally in the raid at all i suggest getting them to grab the talent hand of purity as it does seem to still work on the red head for the dot affect (its a 10% overall damage reduction and also reduces dots on target by 70%)on a 30 second cd, usually we used one on the 2nd red breath dot effect and tried to always kill the head before a third breath.

Anyhow our kill was hero and a singular small healer cd right at start of last red head and pummel it down during its rampage before it engages a tank (had about 20-30% left at end of rampage), if you want to you can get other tank to use some of that vengance and during the rampage to attack it also, just make sure who ever has the red head right near the end of the rampage taunts the red to get into position. Doing this we managed one breath which was easier for the healers to deal with. The last head was then just a case of some healer cds on last rampage and during the killing of the last green head.

[Scoggleon 1]

Auyss, our group does it that way as well. Healers probably want to save a cooldown or two for that last phase, easily the most intense healing part of that fight, doing it that way the acid bolts are cinders are basically just spammed. The key is to instantly dispel cinders, and just dont have people stand in the void zones, and make sure your healers have a decent amount of mana and cooldowns to use for the last part. Personal defensive cooldowns for your dps should be used too. The bolts are going to hit for a good amount of raid damage whether you are in them or not, but being inside of one is pretty much a one shot. We were stuck for a little while halfway through that head as well, the last head is basically a point where if anyone has a cooldown they need to use it.

[Oltier 471]

Alternatively, you can also include one extra blue head in the rotation. Our group usually do

G R G R B R G

You will have a blue beam kiting phase on the last red, but apart from that it does not change the fight and lessens the acid rain damage.

Keep in mind, that the fight basically starts at the 5th head... :) Your DPS and healers should already stand in a position where they can be dispelled instantly. They should make sure that their CDs are back up for the last head, because it is very important to be burnt down ASAP.

[Stoove 347]

My guild just killed this on normal mode a couple of weeks ago. We found that acid raid was a big problem because it was doing damage raidwide (And y'know; Shaman, spread raid healing.) We ended up taking them in the order

B R B R G R B

We found that this works extremely well, with the most dangerous phase being in the last Red phase. The amount of voidzones does get intense, but with good communication your group can focus on getting rid of only the ice pools that are near the front (where we stacked). The key to this was good communication; the DPS were communicating on what to clear and the healers were communicating on who to dispel and when.

We didn't have a tank swap mid-phase but each tank changed assignments after Rampage. Similarly, we didn't have specific healer assignments - communication was the key there. We sorted Rampage cooldowns out in advance and got a rotation like;

• Ascendance (macro'd with Elemental Mastery)
• Fire Elemental, Spirit Link, Devo Aura
• Tranquility and DPS raid cooldowns
• Earth Elemental and Healing Tide Totem
• Ascendance again
• Spirit Link, Fire Elemental, anything else that was up
• (after Rampage 6) all healing CDs on cooldown.

Stack number 5 is always the most dangerous for us, I'm not sure why exactly. Ascendance (when used correctly) is insane OP for that stack and any RShaman worth their salt should have an Ascendance macro for it (or look up mine). I think that because of the sheer number of cooldowns we had, Rampage was trivialised and we could afford to spend the time and mana single-targeting for Cinders. I'd recommend this tactic for any raid with good communication :)

[Krazyito 521]

For our 25 man, we just start on the right and go left. I'm not sure if we start with Green or with frost... We are just so use to killing it by now.

For heroic we completely ignore green and do B->R->A->B->R->A->B

It's also very beneficial for at least 1 or 2 healers to get the Diffusion debuff from the Arcane head. That way healers can spam some big single target heals on that person (or the tank with the debuff) for so decent AoE healing during rampage.