Majordomo Staghelm Tank Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Table of Contents

• 1. Overview of the Fight
• +2. Abilities
  • 2.1. Self Buffs
  • 2.2. Cat Form Abilities
  • 2.3. Scorpion Form Abilities
  • 2.4. Human Form Abilities
• +3. Strategy
  • 3.1. Cat Form Strategy
  • 3.2. Scorpion Form Strategy
  • 3.3. Human Form Strategy
    • 3.3.1. Handling Searing Seeds During Scorpion Form
    • 3.3.2. Handling Burning Orbs During Cat Form
• +4. Heroic Mode
  • 4.1. Differences from Normal Mode
  • 4.2. Strategy Changes

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Majordomo Staghelm in Firelands. It is mostly targeted to tanks who desire to have a short but detailed overview of what is expected of them during that fight.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

Majordomo Staghelm, the sixth and penultimate boss of the Firelands raid, does not provide too many challenges for tanks.

Indeed, the encounter itself is a gear check, and puts most of the strain on healers and DPS, while tanks only need to know a few basic things.

The Majordomo Staghelm encounter is unique, in the sense that Staghelm will adapt his mechanics to your raid's actions (as opposed to the other way around, which is typical of all World of Warcraft bosses). Majordomo Staghelm will switch between his Scorpion Form, Cat Form and his Human Form based on your raid's positioning, as follows:

• Majordomo Staghelm will switch to Scorpion Form when at least 7 (in 10-man difficulty) or 18 (in 25-man difficulty) raid members are stacked together (and will remain in this form as long as the requirements are met).
• Majordomo Staghelm will switch to Cat Form when the above minimum numbers of stacked raid members are not met (and will remain in this form as long as the above mentioned requirements are not met).
• Majordomo Staghelm will switch to Human Form briefly on every third form switch.

It is not possible for your raid to keep Staghelm in a single form for the entire duration of the fight, as while in a given form (Human Form is excluded), Staghelm will use his damaging abilities increasingly often until he switches out of the form.

At the same time, each time Staghelm switches between forms, he gains another stack of a buff which increases his damage. Thus, the fight has a permanent soft enrage mechanic which will end up wiping your raid.

Your raid will need to find a balance between the amount of time you should keep Staghelm in a single form and how many times you can allow him to change forms.

While in Scorpion Form and Cat Form, Majordomo Staghelm has an energy bar. It starts out empty, and increases over time up to its maximum capacity of 100. The base amount of time for his energy bar to fill up is 20 seconds.

Majordomo Staghelm has a single ability associated with each of his Cat Form and Scorpion Form. These abilities have an energy cost of 100 each, and Staghelm will cast them as soon as he has the required amount of energy.

Each time he uses an ability in either of these two forms, he will gain a stacking buff which reduces the time until his next ability. This will be detailed below. The buff disappears altogether when Staghelm switches form.

Fury is a stacking buff which Staghelm gains each time he switches to Scorpion Form or Cat Form, which increases the damage of his abilities by 8% per stack. The implication of this is that Staghelm will do more damage if he is forced to switch forms often, and it acts as a soft enrage mechanic to the encounter.

Adrenaline is a stacking buff which Staghelm gains each time he uses an ability within Cat Form or Scorpion Form, which increases his energy regeneration rate by 20% per stack. This buff disappears when Staghelm switches out of his current form. The implication of this is that the longer Staghelm remains in a single form, the quicker his energy will regenerate and thus the more often he will get to use his abilities.

Majordomo Staghelm has a melee attack, which hits for about 20,000 damage in 10-man difficulty and 25,000 damage in 25-man difficulty. He performs this attack roughly once every 2 seconds.

While in Cat Form, whenever he reaches 100 energy, Staghelm will perform Leaping Flames, pouncing on a random raid member and dealing damage to them and leaving a fiery void zone on the ground which lasts for 1 minute. Immediately after performing his leap, Staghelm will return to the tank.

Each time Staghelm performs Leaping Flames, a copy of himself, called Spirit of the Flame, will spawn at the boss' original location. These adds have low health and have no mechanics, but they do melee quite hard. Spirits of the Flame spawn with the threat that the tank currently has on Majordomo Staghelm, and as such, the tank does not need to generate additional aggro on them.

Every cast of Leaping Flames awards Staghelm another stack of Adrenaline, causing the interval to the next Leaping Flames to further decrease.

Majordomo Staghelm has a melee attack, which hits for about 20,000 damage in 10-man difficulty and 25,000 damage in 25-man difficulty. He performs this attack roughly once every 2 seconds.

As mentioned above, whenever at least 7 raid members (in 10-man difficulty) or 18 raid members (in 25-man difficulty) are stacked together, Majordomo Staghelm will shift into Scorpion Form.

While in Scorpion Form, whenever he reaches 100 energy, Staghelm will perform Flame Scythe. Flame Scythe deals a large amount of damage split among all enemies in a cone in front of Staghelm.

Every cast of Flame Scythe awards Staghelm another stack of Adrenaline, causing the interval to the next Flame Scythe to further decrease.

Every third transformation, Majordomo Staghelm will briefly enter his Human Form. While in Human Form, he will incapacitate all raid members for 3 seconds through Fiery Cyclone, after which he will cast one of two abilities:

• If Majordomo Staghelm has switched from Cat Form, he will cast Searing Seeds.
• If Majordomo Staghelm has switched from Scorpion Form, he will cast Burning Orbs.

As you can see, which of his two abilities he casts depends on the form he is switching out of.

Shortly after casting the relevant ability, the boss will proceed to switching into which ever form he was about to enter.

Searing Seeds can not be cast on the tank and as such is of no concern to you.

Burning Orbs summons 2 large, stationary fiery orbs around the room in 10-man difficulty and 5 orbs in 25-man difficulty. These persist for one minute and deal damage to the player nearest to them with their only ability, Burning Orb. They inflict a 6 second DoT on the player, dealing 5,000 Fire damage every 2 seconds, and stacking infinitely. Players will need to regularly rotate who is nearest to the orb so that stacks do not reach excessive numbers.

Below, we detail the recommended strategy, regarding those parts of the fight which concern tanks:

During Cat Form, your ranged raid members and healers will be spread out around the center of the arena. You should tank Majordomo Staghelm and Spirit of the Flame adds in the center.

Leaping Flames is cast, with priority, on raid members who are out of the boss' melee range. However, if too few such members exist (perhaps because some are already moving in to stack for a Scorpion Form), Leaping Flames can be cast in melee range as well. Ideally, this would not happen, and if it does, it will most likely wipe your raid before you have time to react, but you should attempt to move out of the subsequent void zone.

After a while, as the boss uses Leaping Flames more often, his stacks of Adrenaline will increase, causing him to perform his ability with much greater frequency. This will not only cause more damage to raid members but will also cause your raid to become overwhelmed with Spirits of Flame. At this time, your raid should stack up and force Staghelm to switch to Scorpion Form.

When stacking up to force a Scorpion Form, your raid should make sure that they stack in a coordinated manner, otherwise you will run the risk of having Staghelm cast Leaping Flames on a ranged raid member who has just run in to melee range and having the resulting void zone kill your raid.

The best thing that you, as a tank, can do in order to facilitate stacking is to remain still and be a reference point for the rest of the raid (who will be stacking precisely on you for Scorpion Form anyway).

Your goal during Scorpion Form is to have your entire raid stacked together in front of the boss. This will ensure that Flame Scythe damage is properly distributed among your raid, making it healable.

As a tank, you should simply aim to keep the boss perfectly still (there is no reason to move whatsoever). Additionally, you may be asked to use a raid defensive cooldown at a certain point, like Rallying Cry.

Depending on which form he is switching out of, Majordomo Staghelm will cast either Searing Seeds (Cat Form) or Burning Orbs (Scorpion Form).

Generally, these abilities do not cause issues for the tank, and we will only touch on them briefly below.

Searing Seeds cannot be cast on the tank, and as such, this ability does not concern you in the least.

As a tank, you should not be involved in any Burning Orb rotation, as there is already constant damage on you from the boss and adds. That said, taking a few ticks of damage from an Orb will not be fatal, and you should feel free to move closer to an orb (without leaving the center of the arena) if soaking it will remedy an otherwise bad situation for your raid.

The heroic mode of Majordomo Staghelm is a massive DPS race. As a tank, you will notice that this fight is extremely simple and very similar to normal mode, with one notable exception.

Majordomo Staghelm has a much increased health pool in heroic mode, making the enrage timer a very pressing factor. There is a new encounter mechanics, Concentration, which allows DPS players to deal increased damage if they remain undamaged for a long amount of time. Any damage that they take resets their increased damage done buff, which then takes time to build up again. This does not concern you directly, but can alter the way that Scorpion Form and Burning Orbs are handled.

Other than this, the boss' abilities all deal increased damage from normal mode.

For an in-depth look at the changes, check the detailed guide.

The only change will occur in the Scorpion Form. Here, your raid may opt to have only you, as the tank, in front of Staghelm. There are several ways in which this will affect you, depending on which strategy your raid chooses to employ:

• You may be asked to soak Flame Scythes alone, surviving through the use of Ardent Defender and Guardian Spirit.
• Shadow Priests using Dispersion will soak Flame Scythe together with you, while you use defensive cooldowns to survive.
• You will soak Flame Scythe alone, without any cooldowns, and simply be left to die, after which you will be resurrected.

The specifics of what is asked of you will be provided by your raid leader, but what is important for you to understand is that if any of these strategies are being employed, it is crucial that you face the boss away from the rest of your raid so that none of them are affected by the damage (contrary to the normal mode execution).

Cat Form phases, as well as Human Form phases remain unchanged in execution. The only possible thing that you may be required to do differently is to soak the damage from a Burning Orb. Doing so will allow a DPS player (who would otherwise have been soaking the Orb) to remain undamaged and maintain their damage done increase.