The Hivemind Tactics and Strategy guide

Before you start reading the strategy, we advise you to look at the abilities of The Hivemind, in our encounter journal pages.

• You fight two bosses, Ka'zir and Tek'ris.
  • They do not share health.
  • They must die within 10 seconds of each other.
  • The "active" boss changes every 70 seconds, and this changes a few aspects of the fight depending on who the active boss is.
• The fight is mainly about positioning and add damage.

• Each tank pick up one of the bosses, and position them correctly according to the active boss.
  • While Tek'ris is active, stack the bosses together.
  • While Ka'zir is active, spread the two bosses more than 20 yards apart.
• Tek'ris' tank should face him away from the raid and be prepared to side-step his Nullification Blast frontal cone attack.
• When the Aqir Ravager spawns, one of the tanks should pick it up.

• On Heroic mode, beware of the increasing damage from Devouring Frenzy each time the active boss changes. This damage increases with each change, so towards the end of the fight it can be high.
• While Aqir Darters are alive, be prepared for raid-wide damage from their Psionic Resonance casts.

• Prioritise DPS on any adds that are up during the fight.
  • The Aqir Drones should be coming towards the stacked raid together, so they can be killed with AoE.
  • Aqir Darters should be killed wherever they end up in the arena. Stunning them to interrupt their casts or knocking them around to bring them in cleave range is recommended.
  • The Aqir Drone that Ka'zir empowers, and the empowered Aqir Ravager should be focused down immediately.
  • While Ka'zir is the active boss, all adds will heal over time when below 20% health, so focus on killing off low-health targets immediately.
• DPS both bosses (cleaving them when possible), while ensuring that they die within 10 seconds of each other.

• Set up an interrupt rotation for Ka'zir's Mind-Numbing Nova.
• Stack together with the rest of the raid for most of the fight (except when spreading out for Echoing Void or for Spawn Acidic Aqir).
• When Spawn Acidic Aqir is cast, focus on avoiding being hit by any of the adds that roll around the room.

The fight is a single-phase encounter, but it can be viewed as having two phases, since depending on which boss is "active" at a given time, there are some differences to the mechanics being used. We put in "active" in quotes because you will always fight both bosses, and they both still use abilities, but the active boss is the one that affects the fight at that time, as we will see below.

Check out the full list of abilities and mechanics on our dedicated Hivemind Encounter Journal page, and then check below for more detailed explanations.

The Aqir Drone and Aqir Darter adds spawn throughout the fight, on set timers, regardless of which boss is active. However, the active boss will affect these Lesser Aqir adds in a certain way.

• Ka'zir's Volatile Eruption is only used while he is the active boss.
• Tek'ris' Accelerated Evolution is only used while he is the active boss.

Both bosses will use some of their abilities regardless of which one is active, so Ka'zir will use Mind-Numbing Nova and Spawn Acidic Aqir throughout the fight, and Tek'ris will use Nullification Blast and Echoing Void regularly.

The fight always starts starts with Tek'ris as the active boss, and the active boss changes every 70 seconds.

It is worth noting that on Heroic mode, the entire raid will take damage over 12 seconds from Devouring Frenzy when the active boss changes. This damage increases each time the ability is used, acting as a soft enrage for the fight.

Positioning plays a large role in this encounter. The two bosses need to either be kept together (while Tek'ris is active) or more than 20 yards apart (when Ka'zir is active). While these requirements are not respected, the bosses take 99% reduced damage, but this is not raid-wiping so there is some lenience. Each tank should handle one boss throughout the entire fight, as there is no reason for a tank swap.

Throughout the fight, the raid will need to perform a few steady tasks.

• Tek'ris' tank should make sure to face him away from other players, and to step out of the cone attack area of Nullification Blast each time it is cast.
• All raid members must spread out while Echoing Void is being cast.
• When Aqir Drones spawn, stack up and AoE them down as they make their way towards the raid. These adds can be crowd controlled, which is very useful.
  • On Heroic mode, these leave void zones behind when they die, so the tanks should move the bosses away from this area after the void zones appear.
• Aqir Darters should be killed immediately. These adds' casts of Psionic Resonance are very dangerous and cannot be directly interrupted, but the adds are susceptible to crowd control and the casts can be disrupted this way.
• Ka'zir's Mind-Numbing Nova should be interrupted every single time he attempts to cast it.

Both bosses must be killed within 10 seconds of each other, as otherwise they will heal up.

The raid must deal with Ka'zir's Spawn Acidic Aqir. These rolling adds cannot be attacked or crowd controlled, and must instead simply be avoided; the raid will have to rely on players' ability to move accordingly. Standing near the edges of the room can make dodging these adds much easier.

We recommend using Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp at the start of the fight, while the bosses are stacked together, all DPS cooldowns and potions are available, and the entire raid is guaranteed to be alive. There does not appear to be any benefit to saving the burst of damage for the end of the fight, even though the damage there is higher; the shorter the fight is overall, the lower the damage will be towards the end.

While Tek'ris is the active boss, the raid will firstly have to contend with all adds that spawn at this time being buffed by Void Infusion. There is nothing much the raid can do about this, but it does mean that the adds must die as quickly as possible.

Moreover, during this time Tek'ris will empower a random Aqir Drone, turning it into an Aqir Ravager, healing it and greatly buffing it. This drone needs to be picked up by a tank and focused down quickly by the DPS.

While Ka'zir is the active boss, all adds that spawn are buffed by Regeneration, which causes all adds to heal up over time when they are below 20% health. This means that low-health adds need to be focused down more aggressively during this time, and they cannot simply be cleaved down hoping that they will die.

Ka'zir will also empower an Aqir Drone while he is active. The add that is empowered by this ability must be killed before it completes its cast of Volatile Eruption, so focusing it down is crucial.