Tectus Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic+Mythic Modes included)

Table of Contents

• +1. General Information
  • 1.1. Normal and Heroic Difficulty
  • 1.2. Enrage Timer
• +2. Summing Things Up
  • 2.1. Tanks
  • 2.2. Healers
  • 2.3. DPS
  • 2.4. Everyone
• 3. Overview of the Fight
• +4. Preliminary Notes
  • 4.1. Window to Kill Tectus and Shards of Tectus
  • 4.2. Motes of Tectus Can Always Be Killed
  • 4.3. Phases
• +5. Phase One: Tectus
  • 5.1. Abilities
  • 5.2. Strategy Overview
  • 5.3. Tanking Concerns
  • 5.4. Positioning Challenges
  • 5.5. Handling the Adds
  • 5.6. Intercepting Gift of Earth Void Zones
  • 5.7. Damaging and Killing Tectus
• +6. Phase Two: Shards of Tectus
  • 6.1. Abilities
  • 6.2. Strategy
• +7. Phase Three: Motes of Tectus
  • 7.1. Abilities
  • 7.2. Strategy
• 8. Wrapping Up The Fight
• 9. When to Use Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp
• +10. Mythic Mode
  • 10.1. Differences from Normal/Heroic Mode
  • 10.2. Strategy
    • 10.2.1. Tectus
    • 10.2.2. Shards of Tectus
    • 10.2.3. Motes of Tectus
• 11. Learning the Fight
• +12. Loot
  • 12.1. Armor
  • 12.2. Weapons
  • 12.3. Amulets, Cloaks, Rings, and Trinkets
• 13. Concluding Remarks
• 14. Changelog

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Tectus in Highmaul. It is targeted at anyone who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

Tectus, The Living Mountain is a boss in the Highmaul raid instance. At the start of the fight, your raid will fight Tectus and a number of adds, and as Tectus is defeated, he will split into multiple versions of himself, that your raid will keep having to defeat. Thus, the difficulty of the fight ramps up as it progresses.

This main part of this guide covers both the Normal and Heroic versions of the encounter, as far as mechanics and general strategy is concerned. The only difference between these two modes is found in the tuning, with Heroic being more difficult.

When we speak of extreme situations (such as the difficulty of a soft enrage timer, or damage from a certain source being too high to survive), we mostly refer to Heroic mode.

In addition to this, we have a specific Mythic mode section, where we present all the differences between Normal/Heroic and Mythic, as well as the strategy to defeat the Mythic encounter.

This fight has a hard enrage timer of 10 minutes. There are no soft enrage mechanics in the fight.

In this section, we will very briefly summarise what the players belonging to each of the three roles have to do during this fight. This is by no means meant to provide sufficient information to master the encounter, and it is only supposed to give you a very rough idea of what to watch out for.

• During Phase One
  • Tank Tectus and the Night-Twisted adds around the center of the fighting area. Pay attention to tank the Night-Twisted Earthwarpers facing away from other players.
  • If you are not tanking Tectus, soak the Gift of Earth void zones.
• During Phase Two have each tank handle one Shard of Tectus.
• During Phase Three, have one tank on the remaining Shard of Tectus, while the other tank tanks the 4 Motes of Tectus together.
• In Mythic mode, make sure to continue tanking the Night-Twisted adds throughout the entire fight.

• Pay special attention to when the boss or one of his copies casts Tectonic Upheaval, since this does massive raid-wide damage. In particular, watch out for moments when two or more Tectonic Upheaval casts happen at the same time.
• During Phases Two and Three, pay special attention to the tank who is tanking a Shard of Tectus with many stacks of Accretion.
• In Mythic mode, be very careful about the intense damage that the tanks will be tanking as the fight progresses and more mobs are being tanked.

• During Phase One, focus on killing the Night-Twisted Earthwarpers whenever they spawn. Also kill the Night-Twisted Berserkers, but these are a lower priority.
• Make sure that you switch to Tectus or the Shard of Tectus and do full DPS, so that they die during the Tectonic Upheaval channel.

• If you are targeted by Crystalline Barrage, kite the cloud away from the raid and in a place where it will not interfere with the raid's positioning.
• Make sure to move out of the way of the spikes of earth caused by Fracture and Earthen Pillar.

The encounter against Tectus is a three-phase fight. The central theme of the fight is that, when killed, Tectus splits up into two copies of himself, which have identical abilities to Tectus. Then, when these copies of Tectus are killed, they each split up into 4 copies, again with almost identical abilities, which must also be killed. We explain this below.

• When Tectus reaches 0% health, he splits up into two Shards of Tectus.
• When a Shard of Tectus is killed, it splits up into 4 Motes of Tectus.
• When all Motes of Tectus are killed, the encounter is over.

The Shards of Tectus each have less health and deal less melee damage than Tectus, and the Motes of Tectus have less health and deal less melee damage than the Shards of Tectus.

Tectus and his copies use a series of rather simple abilities against your raid. The most peculiar one is that Tectus and the Shards of Tectus are typically unkillable, and can only be finished off at specific times in the encounter. If your raid fails get the kill in that window, you will have to wait for a new one.

During the first phase of the fight (before Tectus splits), you will also have to face a number of adds.

We have released a video preview of the encounter against Tectus, based on our (Heroic) Beta testing. You can watch this video to get a good idea of how the fight works, but keep in mind that some things can still change before the fight goes live.

Initially, you will fight Tectus. When Tectus is killed, he will split up into two new mobs called Shards of Tectus. When these mobs are killed, they too will split up into 4 Motes of Tectus each. When these 8 mobs are finally killed, the fight will be over.

In this section, we want to go over one important mechanic that Tectus and the Shards of Tectus both share, and which is integral to the fight, and we will also explain how the phases of the fight are determined.

Tectus and the Shards of Tectus have an Energy bar that fills up over time, with the rate increasing as their health decreases. The base time (at full health) is around 30 seconds. While gaining Energy, Tectus and the Shards of Tectus have a buff called The Living Mountain and Shard of the Mountain, respectively (despite the different names, the buffs are identical). These buffs cause Tectus and the Shards of Tectus to be unkillable, although they can still be damaged during this time.

When their Energy reaches maximum capacity, the buff disappears, and they begin channeling a spell called Tectonic Upheaval for around 13 seconds. Tectonic Upheaval deals raid-wide damage, and while this spell is being channeled, the Energy of Tectus and the Shards of Tectus becomes depleted. As you can probably tell, since The Living Mountain / Shard of the Mountain buffs are not present during this time, Tectus and the Shards of Tectus can be killed. If your raid fails to kill them at this time, they will heal up for a small percentage of their health when the buffs re-appear (as soon as the Tectonic Upheaval cast finishes).

The Motes of Tectus also have Energy bars, and they also cast Tectonic Upheaval, but they can be killed at any time.

It is also worth noting that the division of the fight in phases is done artificially (by us), and not according to the Dungeon Journal or any very clear in-game events. This is particularly relevant with regards to the end of Phase Two. It is hard to say if this phase ends when the first Shard of Tectus dies, or when both of them die, but for the purposes of this guide we will consider the end of Phase Two when the first Shard of Tectus dies.

Phase One lasts from the start of the fight until you manage to kill Tectus, as explained above. Throughout Phase One, you will only Tectus and two types of adds called Night-Twisted Earthwarpers and Night-Twisted Berserkers.

In addition to the The Living Mountain buff (and Tectonic Upheaval) that we explained above, Tectus use the following abilities against your raid.

• Accretion is a passive ability that causes Tectus to periodically gain a stack of a 5% damage increase. These stacks are gradually removed if Tectus is damaged sufficiently. If your raid is doing full DPS on Tectus, he will have, at most, 1 stack.
• Crystalline Barrage is an ability that Tectus uses regularly. It creates a damaging cloud that moves towards a random raid member. Players who come in contact with the cloud take large amounts of Physical damage every second. As it moves towards the target, the cloud remains on the ground for about 10 seconds before finally disappearing.
• Fracture is an ability that Tectus uses regularly. It causes a spike of earth to shoot up from the ground, dealing very high Nature damage to anyone hit by it, and knocking these players back. The location where the spike will appear is indicated a few seconds ahead of time by a graphical effect on the ground. A few seconds after appearing, the spike will disappear.
• Earthen Pillar is an ability that Tectus uses when he reaches 25 Energy. He raises a very large spike of earth at the location of a random raid member, which deals fatal damage to any players hit by it. Earthen Pillar seems to target only ranged raid members, provided that enough such players exist in your raid. Like with the spikes of earth caused by Fracture, the area where the spike of earth will appear is clearly indicated ahead of time. These large spikes of earth persist for a longer time, blocking line of sight and restricting movement.

The Night-Twisted Earthwarpers and the Night-Twisted Berserkers use the following abilities.

• Night-Twisted Earthwarper
  • Gift of Earth is an ability that creates a void zone that moves towards Tectus. If it reaches Tectus, it empowers him, granting him 10 stacks of Accretion. The void zone can be intercepted by players. This destroys the void zone, but causes the players to take a massive amount of Physical damage and become afflicted with Petrification.
    • Petrification is a 30-second debuff that reduces the affected player's movement speed by 2%, and that causes Tectus to become empowered (gaining stacks of Accretion) each time he deals melee damage to that player.
  • Earthen Flechettes is a frontal cone attack that the Earthwarpers use.
• Night-Twisted Berserker
  • Raving Assault is an ability that the Berserkers sometimes use. They reset their threat on all targets and charge towards a random raid member. The Berserker deals a large amount of Physical damage to all players caught in the path of the charge.

The first thing you will notice is that Tectus does not have a mechanic that requires a tank switch. This is because, in later phases of the fight, both tanks will be needed in order to tank the multiple Shards and Motes of Tectus. In any case, there is something for the second tank to do during Phase One as well, since they will have to tank the Night-Twisted Earthwarpers and the Night-Twisted Berserkers.

The strategy for Phase One is not complicated. We will summarise it before going into more detail below.

• Have Tectus tanked in the middle of the fighting area.
• Have ranged DPS players and healers stand as close to the walls of the fighting area as possible. This will attract all Earthen Pillars to them, leaving the rest of the area clear.
• When Earthen Pillar or Fracture is cast, make sure all raid members move out of the affected area.
• Players who are targeted by Crystalline Barrage will have to kite the cloud away from other raid members, ideally close to the edge of the fighting area.
• Have your tanks pick up the Night-Twisted Earthwarpers and the Night-Twisted Berserkers. The Earthwarpers must be killed quickly, and tanked facing away from other players.
• Have the tank not currently tanking Tectus, or a raid member with strong damage reduction cooldowns intercept Gift of Earth void zones before they reach Tectus.
• During Tectonic Upheaval you must finish Tectus off, and your healers will have to be prepared for the high raid-wide damage that Tectonic Upheaval does.

During Phase One, your tanks will have two main concerns. The first is to tank Tectus himself. Normally, this will not be a problem. Tectus does not cast any abilities on his tank, so all there is to worry about are his melee attacks. When the raid's DPS is focused on adds, tanks may have to contend with Tectus' damage being increased by additional stacks of Accretion, but this can be handled with cooldowns, and the increase should not get too high anyway.

Tanking Tectus in the center of the fighting area is ideal, as it gives your raid more freedom to move and avoid abilities.

In addition to Tectus, the tanks will have to pick up and tank the Night-Twisted Earthwarpers and the Night-Twisted Berserkers. The Berserkers are not very problematic. The tank not currently tanking Tectus should pick them up, and DPS players should DoT it and cleave it down. The Berserkers are not a high priority. Sometimes, they will reset their threat and charge to a random raid member (this is the Raving Assault we explained earlier), but this damage is not very great. The tank will just have to pick them up again once this happens.

The bigger problem are the Earthwarpers. To begin with, these adds must be tanked facing away from the raid (and ideally, also facing away from Tectus' tank), in order to minimise the damage done by their Earthen Flechettes frontal cone attack. In addition to this, your raid will have to find a way to prevent the Gift of Earth void zones from reaching Tectus. It is possible to do this by having the tank not tanking Tectus intercept them, and this might indeed be the best way of doing it.

Aside from the tanking concerns above, the rest of your raid has a relatively easy-to-handle set of tasks during this phase. As we mentioned before, ranged raid members and healers should be grouped up at the edge of the fighting area. Whenever a spike of earth (either from Fracture or Earthen Pillar) appears, everyone will have to avoid it. Ideally, everyone should move together in the same direction, so that the raid does not get split apart by the large Earthen Pillar spikes. Of the two abilities, Earthen Pillar is the more problematic one (since getting hit by it is fatal), but this is easy to avoid since the timing of the casts is easily predictable, namely when Tectus is at 25 Energy.

Players who are targeted by Crystalline Barrage will have to kite the cloud in an area where it will not hinder the rest of the raid. This is not particularly problematic (the cloud is very slow), but it is worth noting that the cloud always spawns from Tectus, so melee players may have to relocate.

With regards to the adds, Night-Twisted Earthwarpers must be killed with a high priority, and your raid should focus on this. The Night-Twisted Berserkers are not a high priority. DoTs and cleave attacks will suffice to kill them off.

As we mentioned in the tanking section above, it is probably going to prove most viable for the tank not tanking Tectus to intercept the Gift of Earth void zones. However, it may also be the case that classes with strong damage reduction cooldowns are better suited for this task. This remains to be seen.

It is important that your raid maintains a steady flow of damage on Tectus throughout the phase. Otherwise, if all raid members switch fully to the adds when they are up, Tectus will have a chance to gain multiple stacks of Accretion, which is dangerous for his tank. Your raid will have to work out a correct balance for this to work, depending on your DPS and how must damage the tanks can handle.

Another important element is making sure that you can kill Tectus during his Tectonic Upheaval channel. On the Beta, missing one or two windows of opportunity was not a problem, but this is because the amount for which Tectus healed at the end of Tectonic Upheaval was small, and the hard enrage timer (assuming one exists) was not pressing. If either of these factors change on live servers, you may have to kill Tectus during the first Tectonic Upheaval in which it is possible to do so, depending on your raid's DPS. This is not difficult, but it is crucial that all your DPS players focus on Tectus at this time, instead of getting carried away by attacking adds.

Phase Two starts when Tectus dies and the Shards of Tectus spawn. The recommended strategy for the fight is to focus DPS on one Shard, killing it, and then killing the resulting Motes before moving on to the second Shard. This means that Phase Two ends when the second Shard is killed. You will then have to fight the 4 resulting Motes of Tectus and the remaining Shard of Tectus, which we deem to be Phase Three.

From the moment that Tectus dies, the Night-Twisted adds no longer spawn until the end of the fight, so you no longer have to worry about them.

In addition to the Shard of the Mountain buff (and Tectonic Upheaval) that we explained above, each Shard of Tectus uses exactly the same abilities that Tectus uses.

We advise you to focus on quickly killing one Shard of Tectus by having all DPS players attack it. Depending on your raid's DPS, you should be able to kill it during the first or second Tectonic Upheaval cast. When this happens, the shard will split into 4 Motes of Tectus, which we explain below in our Phase Three section.

As you can imagine, not attacking one of the Shards of Tectus at all will cause it to gain a very high number of stacks of Accretion. This is unavoidable, but with proper healing and cooldown usage, your tank should be able to survive, especially since the Shards deal less overall damage than Tectus.

One particularly important moment in this phase is when Tectonic Upheaval casts coincide. This will result in a massive amount of raid-wide damage that your healers will have be prepared for.

When the first Shard of Tectus dies, the fight reaches its most difficult moment. At this point, your raid will face one Shard of Tectus (with high Accretion stacks), and 4 Motes of Tectus.

The Motes of Tectus use exactly the same abilities as Tectus and Shards of Tectus. The only difference is that they can be killed at any time, not only during Tectonic Upheaval.

At this point in the fight, your raid will be literally overwhelmed with abilities, and trying to lay down an exact strategy ahead of time is not really possible. The idea is that you should have one tank pick up the 4 Motes of Tectus, and that your raid should try to kill them as quickly as possible. Whether or not it is viable to directly AoE them will depend on the type of DPS classes you have in the raid.

This will be the ideal time to use any and every possible cooldowns to increase damage and survivability. As the Motes of Tectus begin to die, the fight becomes increasingly easier. We remind you that, while these Motes of Tectus also cast Tectonic Upheaval, they can be killed at any time, so you do not have to be very careful about how you distribute your DPS.

Once the Motes of Tectus are killed, your raid will repeat the process with the remaining Shard of Tectus. You will kill it (during Tectonic Upheaval) and then kill the resulting 4 Motes of Tectus. This part of the fight will be nowhere near as difficult as Phase Three.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp during Phase Three, to kill off the first 4 Motes of Tectus as quickly as possible, since this is the most difficult stage of the fight.

The Mythic mode of the Tectus encounter is among the most difficult Highmaul Mythic fights.

As with all Mythic modes, the mobs in the encounter deal more damage with all their abilities and they have more health than in Normal/Heroic mode. Aside from this, several of the mechanics in the encounter are slightly changed to be more difficult, and there is also an entirely new ability. We will first look at the changes to existing mechanics, and then we will talk about the new ability.

• The Night-Twisted Earthwarpers and Night-Twisted Berserkers will continue to spawn throughout the fight, even after Tectus has been killed.
• Tectus, the Shards of Tectus, and the Motes of Tectus will all cast Earthen Pillar when reaching 50 Energy, in addition to casting the spell when they reach 25 Energy.
• Whenever Tectus, the Shards of Tectus, and the Motes of Tectus are within 10 yards of one another, they each gain a stack of Accretion when any one of them does so.

The new ability of the encounter is called Hollowed Heart of the Mountain. This is a passive ability that Tectus and the Shards of Tectus have, which causes them to respawn with 20% health when they are killed for the first time. When respawning in this way, Tectus and the Shards of Tectus will retain all of their abilities, but they can be killed directly (without the need for them to be casting Tectonic Upheaval), and killing them causes them to remain permanently dead. Also note that in this state, Tectus and the Shards of Tectus do not gain Energy at increased rate, based on their reduced health, and instead gain it at the base rate.

Initially (during Phase One), the strategy for the encounter does not change significantly. After that, the encounter becomes more difficult, and there are some alterations to be made to the strategy. We discuss all of this in the sub-sections below.

During Phase One, your raid will continue to execute exactly the same strategy as in Normal/Heroic mode, as far as both Tectus and the adds are concerned. The only difference in this phase comes from the fact that Tectus will cast Earthen Pillar when he reaches 50 Energy as well as when he reaches 25, which means that there will be extra Earthen Pillars to manage, but this does not change the strategy in any meaningful way.

Killing Tectus at the end of this phase causes him to respawn with 20% health. When this happens, your raid should simply focus him down and kill him again, something which is rather easily achieved.

Once the Shards of Tectus have spawned, and Tectus has been killed a second time, Phase Two begins. This phase will prove to be much more difficult for your raid than it was on Normal/Heroic mode. To begin with, the Night-Twisted Earthwarpers and the Night-Twisted Berserkers will continue to spawn throughout the phase. They will have to be dealt with exactly the same as during Phase One.

Moreover, the two Shards of Tectus will gain an increased number of Accretion stacks when they are close to each other. Despite this, the recommended strategy is to tank the two Shards together, cleaving them as much as possible and killing them at the same time. This will strain your raid greatly, especially since you will constantly have to handle all the abilities of the Night-Twisted adds, but it remains the most efficient way to complete the phase.

Once the two Shards die, the Motes of Tectus will spawn, and the two Shards will respawn. This will lead you into the most difficult part of the encounter, which we discuss in the following section.

Once the Motes of Tectus spawn, your raid will only be able to survive for a limited amount of time. The Night-Twisted adds will continue to spawn at this time, and the two Shards of Tectus will both be present (on low health). At this point, all the mobs should be stacked together and your raid should focus on dealing as much AoE damage as possible.

You will have to use any and all available cooldowns to stay alive during this phase. One very useful technique for this phase is to use Hand of Protection on players affected by Crystalline Barrage. This will allow the players in question to stand still and continue dealing DPS or healing, since Crystalline Barrage does Physical damage and is thus mitigated by Hand of Protection. When Crystalline Barrage expires, the player can simply side-step out of the stacking clouds. This will also prevent too much of the fighting area to be disabled by Crystalline Barrage clouds.

As you have seen, the fight increases in difficulty and intensity as it goes on, reaching its climax in Phase Three, but this does not mean that you have to wait until that phase to be able to practice for getting a kill. Indeed, the same abilities that are in use during Phases Two and Three are already present in Phase One.

As such, we advise you to make sure that throughout Phase One (and later on, Phase Two) all raid members understand the mechanics that are being used, and learn well how to handle them. Pay special attention to players who repeatedly fail to avoid Fracture, or who often lead the Crystalline Barrage in bad locations, because this type of mistake will make it very difficult for your raid to get through Phase Three.

In this section, you will find the loot table for Tectus. The section is divided in 3 subsections: armor, weapons, and the rest (neck, back, finger, and trinket items).

Item Name	Armor	Slot	Secondary Stats
Crystal-Woven Bracers (Heroic, Mythic)	Cloth	Wrists	Haste Versatility
Mountainslide Robes — LFR	Cloth	Chest	Critical Strike Haste
Chestwrap of Violent Upheaval — LFR	Leather	Chest	Critical Strike Multistrike
Mountainwalker's Boots (Heroic, Mythic)	Leather	Feet	Critical Strike Mastery
Living Mountain Shoulderguards (Heroic, Mythic)	Mail	Shoulders	Critical Strike Haste
Legguards of Ravenous Assault — LFR	Mail	Legs	Haste Mastery
Crown of the Crags — LFR	Plate	Head	Multistrike Versatility
Legplates of Fractured Crystal (Heroic, Mythic)	Plate	Legs	Haste Mastery

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Shard of Crystalline Fury — LFR	1H Mace	Intellect	Mastery Versatility
Shield of Violent Upheaval — LFR	Shield	Intellect	Critical Strike Multistrike
Spire of Tectus (Heroic, Mythic)	Staff	Intellect	Haste Multistrike
Earthwarped Bladestaff (Heroic, Mythic)	Staff	Agility	Haste Versatility

Item Name	Type	Main Stats	Secondary Stats
Cratermaker Choker — LFR	Amulet	Intellect	Haste Mastery
Flechette-Riddled Chain (Heroic, Mythic)	Amulet	Agility	Haste Versatility
Signet of Crystalline Barrage (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Intellect	Haste Multistrike
Ring of Infinite Accretion (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Intellect	Spirit Haste
Frostcap Band — LFR	Ring	Agility	Critical Strike Haste
Eye of Tectus (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Agility Strength	Critical Strike Armor
Earthfury Band (Heroic, Mythic)	Ring	Strength	Versatility Mastery
Tectus' Beating Heart (Heroic, Mythic)	Trinket	Strength	Critical Strike on proc
Mote of the Mountain — LFR	Trinket	Strength	Versatility on proc
Pillar of the Earth (Heroic, Mythic)	Trinket	Stamina	Versatility Armor

This concludes our raid guide for Tectus. We hope you have found it helpful. Please do not hesitate to post any feedback you may have on our forums.

• 15 Dec. 2014: Added Mythic mode strategy.
• 04 Dec. 2014: Updated hard enrage timer.
• 03 Dec. 2014: Added hard enrage timer.

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