Skolex, the Insatiable Ravener Strategy Guide for Sepulcher of the First Ones

Before you pull:

• Set up two world markers, one directly under the boss and another 30 yards away.
• Assign two groups of three ranged players to alternate being the farthest away from the boss during the tank combo.

Throughout the fight:

• Everyone slowly gains stacks of Ephemera Dust. To remove the stacks, everyone in the raid needs to stack together 30 yards away from the boss on one of the markers you placed, and then get hit by the circle.
• Tanks stay stacked up until 100 energy, and then spread during the tank combo. Taunt swap during the combo in order to avoid getting hit by Riftmaw or Rend twice in a row.
• Dodge the frontal cone, and melee dodge the blue swirlies.

Let us start with a quick overview of the fight. This is a Bloodlust/ Heroism on pull, single-target boss with a bunch of precise movement requirements. The mechanics are 100% scripted, and they get into an obvious flow that you can get used to quickly.

Before you pull, set up two world markers, one directly under the boss and another 30 yards away. These will give you a clear point for the raid to stack when needed. Also, assign two groups of three ranged players each to be the farthest away from the boss during the tank combo.

• The most important mechanic of the fight is Ephemera Dust, a stacking DoT debuff that is regularly applied to every player in the raid. The only way to remove the debuff is by having the entire raid, including the tanks, stack up tightly away from the boss. This triggers the boss to burrow underground and emerge at the raid's feet, knocking the raid back and consuming everyone's debuff stacks. This also gives the boss a stacking 5% damage done increase, so you do not want to trigger this too often.
• Skolex does not move, only relocating when you get him to burrow. So on pull, the raid starts toward the marker you placed 30 yards away from the boss, and the tanks face the boss away from the raid. The first assigned group of three players should be slightly behind the rest of the raid in order to be the furthest players from the boss during the tank combo. And on heroic, they should spread slightly apart from each other. These players take extra damage during the tank combo and get extra dust stacks, so healers keep an eye on them.
• The boss's melee swings hit its current target as well as the next closest target, so the tanks need to be stacked for most of the fight. However, at 100 energy, the boss starts a combination of casts on the current tank, which the tanks need to spread for. The boss casts a triple combination of Riftmaw and Rend, and the order of the casts is random every time. Riftmaw does a ton of magic damage and massively increases the damage you take from the additional Riftmaws for a couple seconds. And Rend does a ton of physical damage and applies a heavy, stackable bleed. You do not want to get hit by two of the same cast in a row, so the tanks should taunt swap accordingly to prevent that.
• The boss occasionally casts a massive frontal cone toward a random ranged player. Ideally, everyone dodges this to the same direction and then stays around the area where you end up after dodging. This makes it so the following frontal puts you back on the marker you want to end up on for the raid stack.
• And the boss frequently throws a bunch of blue swirlies at any DPS or healers within 20 yards, so melee players have a lot of dodging to do. If you get hit, you take damage, but even worse, your haste gets reduced by 20% for a while.

Since the fight is so scripted, here is what the flow of mechanics should look like.

• Tank combo (ranged group 1 is furthest)
• Big frontal
• Tank combo 2 (ranged group 2 is furthest)
• Big frontal 2
• Stack immediately for burrow
• Repeat

We have encounter journal pages for each of the four difficulties, which you can access by clicking the links below.